Part 5 (1/2)

”Mark Ingram could be made to fear you,” she said. ”After all, you're a Morgan, and a Tremayne as well. There ought to be some loyalty in you.”

”I don't want to be used to make anyone afraid.”

Indignation rose in her voice. ”Then go away! Just go away. You're no good to me at all.”

”I'll leave as soon as I can,” I promised her. ”But first I want to ride up the valley to Old Desolate. I want to see Dominoand then I'll go.”

”No!” The word seemed torn from her. ”I won't have you going out there! You have no right. I can see now that it was a mistake to bring you to Jasper. You're useless to me!”

”I agree. I'm certainly of no use to you when I'm blind and ignorant of the past. I can't care the way you do about family and old traditions that I know nothing about. If you wanted me to be loyal, as you call it, that should have been shown me when I was a child. Why did you send me away-my mother and me?”

”How could I do anything else?” Her words carried the sound of old anguish in them. ”Don't you think I'd rather turn to anyone else in the world than you? If only there were someone who could meet my need!”

I had opened the door to escape, but'she spoke again, halting me. ”Why do you want to go to Domino?”

69.”I'm not sure,” I said. ”The mountain pulls me. I want to see it before I leave. There's something back there in my childhood that I'd like to recover.”

”You're not to go,” she said, and closed her eyes.

I went into the hall. Caleb had waited, sitting on a Shaker bench near the stairs. He saw my face, and led me to the bench and helped me to sit down.

”Has she told you?” he asked. ”Has she made you face it?”

”No. I asked her, but she wouldn't tell me anything.”

”I knew nothing good would come of bringing you here.”

”I suppose I've known that all along too. But I had to come. I don't know what she wants of me, but I can't give her anything. Will you tell me what I need to know? Then I can leave.”

He was shaking his head, regarding me sternly. ”No, certainly not. Your grandmother has asked us to say nothing to you about the past.”

Persis' voice, strong enough when she chose to raise it, called from the bedroom. ”Caleb! Are you there? Come here to me, please.”

He left me with a curt nod, and I sat on for a few minutes, trying to relax my tension, trying to shake off a reaction that seemed senseless and made me angry with myself. Why had I let that poor old dying woman devastate me like this? There was nothing I could do for her, and in some inchoate way I knew she meant danger to me. Now, with Caleb's further refusal, I could leave in good conscience and never need to know anything more about myself. Couldn't I?

One thing I was sure of. I couldn't endure this repressive house for a moment longer. I rose and went downstairs, straight out the gla.s.s front door.

It was twilight now in the long shadows cast by the mountains, though Old Desolate still held its head high in a last touch of sunlight. Standing on the porch, looking out toward 7.

the narrow street that led through Jasper in the opposite direction, I found it not as long as it had seemed during our slow approach. No more than four or five blocks in all. The lights of the Timberline were bright, and I longed to go down there and look for Hillary. But it was better to work out these few hours on my own.

At least the thing I most dreaded hadn't happened. In spite of so many uneasy moments no tension had started to spin inside me, to build pressure that could be released only in one frightening way. Not even the meeting with my grandmother had started it up again.

I walked down the steps and around the house within the compound formed by the link fence. Lights shone in windows just above me, and I could hear a clatter of dishes as a table was being set in the dining room. I wondered where Red was, and if I could find him and take him for a quick walk before dinner. It was chilly outside with the sun gone, and I had no jacket, but I would walk briskly and keep warm.

The fence stretched away in a large enclosure, as though Persis Morgan meant to have no one cut through on the way up the valley. A narrow cement path circled the house, ending beside a dirt road that pointed off toward the ranch buildings, where a few lights burned.

One structure appeared to be a barn, and I could hear the mooing of a cow, the stamp of horses' hooves. Vaguely I could recall rides when I was little. Again the flash of memory. Not alone. With a man who rode beside me on a horse much larger than my pony. Could he have been my father? But my father had died when I was only two. He was buried in Denver, my mother had told me. I surely wouldn't remember him even if I could have ridden when I was so small. And yet I had always harbored fantasies about him as being loving and considerate, and always interested in me. How often I had made up stories about him to fill in that empty place in my life. I couldn't go away until Persis had given something of him back to me.

Drawn by a wish to find Red and see the animals, I follow ed the road toward the barn. The building had been painted a traditional red, now faded, and its wide doors stood open on a lighted area, allowing warm, pungent barn odors to surge out upon the air. Off to the right were several other buildings- a small cabin, a garage, a long structure that was probably an old bunkhouse.

As I approached, I heard music. Someone must be playing a radio, or perhaps a record player. Then I saw the man who sat on a stool in the wide doorway, light s.h.i.+ning behind him. He held a guitar upon his knees, and I knew this was no canned music. He was singing an old song-”My Rose of San Antone” -and I stood still to listen. When the words came softly to an end, he drifted without a break into ”Somewhere in Monterrey.” These were the old lonesome songs of the West, sung in a voice that lifted to the mountains and belonged to them. Songs the rock-and-rollers had forgotten-those sentimental tunes that made something p.r.i.c.kle at the back of my neck.

This was a feeling not unfamiliar. Over the years I had found that so much as a few bars of ”Springtime in the Rockies” would start tears in my eyes, and I remembered Peter saying, ”Oh, come now, Laurie! How corny can you get?”

I didn't care. It was feeling. A yearning. I had responded to it then, and I responded to it now even more, because something in me belonged here. No matter how much my coming to Jasper had frightened me, or how firmh I'd denied any ties with my grandmother, I belonged.

The singer had slipped into the lonely sound of ”Tumbleweed” when Red, who was dozing at his feet, sensed my presence and leaped up to come das.h.i.+ng toward me. The music stopped as Jon Maddocks set his guitar aside and stood up.

That was when I knew. This man had been the boy who 72.held and soothed me so long ago in those moments of terrible fear. With a flood of emotion memory poured over me, only this time I knew for certain that it had been reality. For me it had been the one reality that for so long comforted and sustained me-even in a dream.

The years fell away, and I ran toward him with the joy of recognition surging through me.

”Now I know!” I cried. ”Now I remember!” And it was only with last-moment restraint that I kept from flinging myself upon him in the delight of discovery. That and the fact that he stepped back from my rush in some alarm.

I tried to collect myself. ”I'm sorry. It-it just hit me all at once who you are.” I tried to backtrack, to deny emotion. ”It.i.t was good of you to take Red. I hope he won't be too much trouble.”

With the lights behind him I couldn't see his face clearly, but his tall silhouette had the lean, wiry look I'd noted earlier, and black curls lay close to his head, faintly exotic and foreign. Yet when he spoke, the flavor of the West in his speech seemed easy and familiar to my ear.

He ignored my outburst. Perhaps he didn't even remember. ”We're already friends, Red and me. I get along with most animals.”

”I wish you hadn't stopped singing.” I felt wistful about that, and ashamed of my behavior.

”I sing for myself, not to entertain anybody.”

How touchy he was. How far removed from that kind young boy I remembered.

”I thought I'd take Red for a quick run before I go in for dinner,” I told him.

”Better not in the dark. The ground's pretty rough since we don't run to manicured lawns.” The words had a curt sound to them, and I sensed the same antagonism that I'd felt in him earlier. Why he wore a chip on his shoulder toward me I didn't 73.know, but it was plainly there, and if I had remembered him as a friend, he certainly wasn't reciprocating.

I agreed without rancor, however. ”All right. Then it can wait until morning. I needed to walk around a bit after the interview with my grandmother. It was-unsettling.”

His next words startled me. ”It took you long enough to come back to Jasper.”

I hadn't imagined the antagonism. For some reason Jon Maddocks resented me and was thoroughly prepared to dislike me, yet I didn't want to take offense.

”Why should you say that? My grandmother never wanted me here in the past. From the time my mother and I left Jasper until now, I've never heard one word from her. Then suddenly, without warning, she writes me to come. Just like that.”

”And you came running,” he said.

In spite of rny good intentions I began to resent this persistent baiting. ”Not because of her. Because of things you can't possibly understand.”

”Try me.” He had turned a little so that three quarters of his face was illumined and I could see the straight set of his mouth and the s.h.i.+ne of gray eyes. Smoky, they'd seemed in an earlier light. It wasn't possible to be easy with him, and I was growing increasingly uncomfortable. His words carried a sting that got past my guard.

”Why should I try to make you understand?” I asked. ”You don't sound in the least as though you wanted to listen.”

I told Red to stay and turned back toward the house, but before I had taken two steps he was beside me, his hand on my arm.

”You listen to me now! She needs you. To them I'm a hired hand and shouldn't be bothering her. But you'll be able to talk with her often. And I only hope you're half the woman your grandmother is.”