Rivals Read online

  “Ann.” Tentatively he reached to touch her. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t see you. Why? Why?”

  “What’d he do?” one of the cowboys spoke up. “Use her as a shield?”

  Chris didn’t answer, letting them think what they liked and hoping his silence might protect Kell from the dishonor his wife had brought him. He started to pick her up, gently and tenderly, not wanting to hurt her, mindless that she was beyond hurt.

  “Don’t touch her.”

  There was such hoarseness in that voice that Chris hardly recognized it as Kell’s. When he looked up, his brother towered over him, his left arm hanging limply at his side, blood dripping steadily off the tips of his fingers.

  “Boss, you’re hurt,” someone said.

  But no one took a step toward him, frozen by the look of stark, white grief that had turned his face to stone. Chris backed away from the body, his mouth and throat working convulsively as he searched for the words to tell his brother how sorry he was. But he couldn’t find them and he had a feeling Kell was beyond hearing them.

  He watched in a silent agony of his own as Kell sank to his knees beside his wife’s body and picked her up with his one good arm, cradling her against his chest and burying his face in the dark cloud of her unbound hair. Those big shoulders heaved, racked by grief, but no sound came from him—nothing at all.

  Vaguely Chris was aware that Stuart had been dragged to his feet but he paid no attention to him until one of the men asked, “What about this guy? Want us t’ string him up?”

  For an instant, he was tempted to give the order. For an instant, anger boiled inside him. For an instant he wanted to blame Stuart for Ann’s death, reasoning that none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for him. But hanging Stuart wouldn’t erase the guilt he felt. He’d been the one who pulled the trigger, not Stuart. And he couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  “Tie him up and lock him in the tack room,” he said. “And, Gus, ride into town and get a doctor for my brother. While you’re there, tell the sheriff to wire the marshal and tell him we’ve got a prisoner for the tumblewagon.”

  “She was killed,” Flame murmured absently, a touch of sadness in her voice. “The poor woman.”

  “It was ruled accidental.” The attorney held a match to the bowl of his pipe and puffed deeply, drawing the fire into the tamped tobacco. “Conjecture is—” He shook out the match and tossed it into the fireplace. “—she saw that Stuart was hit and went to his aid, inadvertently stepping into the line of fire. I find it much more logical and more in character than the supposition that she might have been nobly sacrificing her life to save him.”

  Having read Ann Morgan’s diary, Flame agreed with that, although she doubted Kell Morgan would have found much consolation in the knowledge. As her glance swung to the portrait, she noticed there were no doors along the outer wall, only a window.

  “This room doesn’t have any doors to the outside.”

  “Not anymore.” Charlie Rainwater waved a leathered hand at the paneled wall to the left of the fireplace. “They used to be there, but about a week after his wife’s death, Kell Morgan ordered them walled in and the brick path outside torn up. I figure the sight of ’em probably haunted him, makin’ him remember that night and relivin’ her death all over again.” He tipped his head back and gazed at the portrait. “From all accounts, he took her dyin’ pretty hard. It’s not surprising, I guess, when you think how much he adored her.”

  Ben Canon grunted an agreement to that, then removed the pipe stem from between his teeth to add, “I doubt if his grieving was made any easier by Stuart’s brag from his jail cell in Tulsa about how close he came to having everything that belonged to Kell Morgan—from his money and his house to his wife.” He arched a glance at Flame. “Which is what prompted Kell Morgan to insert the condition that the property must pass to a blood heir or revert—at that time—to the Creek Nation. Later, after statehood was granted in nineteen-o-seven, he changed it to the state of Oklahoma.”

  “I see.” Flame bowed her head briefly, her glance falling on the transcript in her lap. “What happened to Jackson Stuart?”

  “He was tried before Judge Isaac Parker in Fort Smith and found guilty of attempted murder. With typical harshness, the judge sentenced him to thirty years at hard labor. Ten or fifteen years earlier, Parker would probably have ordered him to be hanged, on the theory he was guilty of somebody’s death, even if he hadn’t succeeded in his attempt on Kell Morgan’s life. But times had changed, and Parker was no longer the final authority in the Territory. Too many of his decisions had been appealed to the Supreme Court and reversed.” A smile rounded his shiny cheeks, ruddy in the fire’s glow. “I suppose you could say that Stuart’s luck had returned. A prison sentence was definitely better than a hangman’s rope.”

  “And Chris Morgan, my great-grandfather?”

  “He left Morgan’s Walk shortly after the trial was over—never to return. I’m sure you can appreciate the guilt and remorse he felt over Ann Morgan’s death. However inadvertent or accidental, it was a bullet from his gun that killed her. And, as Charlie said, Kell Morgan took her death very hard. But it wasn’t something he verbalized. In the code of the western man, he held his grief inside and went off by himself for days on end. With the responsibility he felt for her death, Chris Morgan believed—rightly or wrongly—that his presence was a constant reminder to his brother of that night. So, he left.” The attorney paused, gesturing briefly with his pipe in the direction of the mahogany desk. “There is a letter from him to that effect if you’d like to read it.”

  “No, it isn’t necessary.” She refused with a silent shake of her head, convinced there was, indeed, such a document to support his statement. Gathering up the photo album, the diary, and the transcript, Flame rose from her chair and carried them over to the desk, placing them on top of it, then turning to confront the two men. “I admit this was a very interesting story—” she began.

  “Oh, but it isn’t the end of it, Mrs. Stuart,” Ben Canon broke in, again that gleam of supreme confidence lighting his eyes. “In a way, it could be called the beginning. You see, Blackjack Stuart was released from prison after serving twenty years of his thirty-year sentence. By then little Johnny Morgan had grown up into Big John Morgan. Unfortunately he inherited not only his mother’s dark hair and eyes, but many of her rashly impetuous tendencies as well. At the tender age of sixteen he was obliged to marry the daughter of a neighboring rancher. Hattie was one of those miracle babies, born six months after the wedding.”

  “But she was a chip off the old block,” Charlie Rainwater inserted. “A Morgan through and through. And old Kell spotted that right off. By the time her legs were long enough to straddle a saddle, he was taking her everywhere with him. Some of the old-timers used to tell me about watching this five-year-old tyke out hazing cattle with the best of ’em, cuttin’ out a steer or chasin’ back a cow that broke the herd. She was Kell Morgan’s shadow, all right, and closer to him than she ever was to her pa.”

  The foreman made no attempt to disguise the admiration in his voice when he spoke of Hattie Morgan. The mention of her turned Flame’s thoughts to the woman lying upstairs—and the accusations she’d made against Chance. She felt her wedding ring, twisting it about on her finger, suddenly impatient again with all this talk that had nothing to do with him.

  “I hope this is leading to something.” Pushed by a restlessness and vague irritation, she crossed to the fireplace.

  “It is,” Ben Canon assured her. “As I mentioned earlier, Blackjack—or Jackson Stuart, as Ann Morgan preferred to call him—was released from prison in nineteen fourteen. He returned to an Oklahoma vastly different from the one he’d left. It was no longer a territory. In nineteen-o-seven it had joined the Union as the forty-sixth state. The discovery of the Glenn Pool oilfield in nineteen-o-five and the Cushing field in nineteen twelve had transformed Tulsa from a dusty cowtown into the oil capital of the world. The city’s streets were
paved; electric streetcars provided public transportation; and modern “skyscrapers”—five and six stories tall—had sprung up all up and down Main Street. There were shops and stores of every kind and description, offering the biggest and best selection there was to their customers.

  “And Morgan’s Walk…” As the attorney paused for dramatic effect, his gaze rested heavily on Flame. “With statehood, Kell had finally acquired title to the twelve hundred acres that comprise this valley. He owned another two thousand acres of adjoining land besides that, and leased the grazing rights on another five thousand, making Morgan’s Walk the largest cattle ranch near Tulsa. It was a showplace for the entire area. The newly oil-rich looked at this house—one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture west of the Mississippi—and built their mansions to rival it.”

  Smiling to shift the mood, he went on. “So it was on a fine spring day in early May that Kell Morgan took his seven-year-old granddaughter to Tulsa so she could pick our her birthday present, an occasion made doubly memorable by the fact that he allowed her to sit on his lap and drive his touring car, a Chevrolet, to town….”

  Young Hattie Morgan kept a firm hold on her grandfather’s hand as she walked proudly along the crowded sidewalk. But each time they passed a store window, she couldn’t resist stealing a glance at her reflection in the glass and admiring the well-dressed girl that looked back at her. Everything she wore was new—from the shiny patent leather slippers with tailored bows on her feet to the leghorn straw hat adorned with flowers and ribbons on her head, but especially the polka-dot dress with its full skirt and lace-trimmed ruffles. Her grandfather had declared she was the prettiest girl in Tulsa in her new outfit. And she felt certain he was right. He’d never been wrong about anything. Either way, these new clothes were at least as wonderful as the hand-tooled saddle he’d given her for Christmas.

  Suddenly his hand tightened with punishing force, bringing her to an abrupt stop and pulling her back to his side.

  “Well, what a surprise! If it isn’t the great Kell Morgan himself.” A stranger stood squarely in their path. Hattie tilted her head back to look at him from beneath the floppy brim of her new hat. White streaked the hair beneath his hat and his face had a hardened, gaunt look about it, but it was the darkly bright gleam in his blue eyes that caught and held her attention. There was something about it that wasn’t nice, despite the wide smile that curved his mouth. “I wondered when I’d run into you, Morgan.”

  “What are you doing in town, Stuart?” The tone of her grandfather’s voice was chilling. Hattie knew he only talked like that when he was really angry.

  She decided this stranger named Stuart couldn’t be very smart, because he just kept smiling, too dumb to know how he was riling her grandfather. He’d be sorry.

  “The same as you, Morgan—walking wide and free,” he replied. “Although I notice you don’t throw as big a shadow as you used to, not with all these oil moguls around here now.”

  Frowning in bewilderment, Hattie turned to her grandfather. “What’s a mogul, Grandpa?”

  The stranger immediately turned the inspection of his blue eyes onto her. “And who do we have here?” He crouched down in front of her, a hand reaching out to flip the lace ruffle on her bertha. “Aren’t you a pretty little lady.”

  “I’m Harriet Morgan,” she informed him cooly and importantly. “But my grandpa calls me Hattie.”

  “Hattie. That’s a very pretty name.” The man straightened, again turning his gleaming gaze on her grandfather. “So she’s your granddaughter, is she? I heard your son was raising girls out there.” Then he winked at her. “Maybe I’ll just have to wait until she grows up and then marry her.”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good, Stuart. It wouldn’t get you Morgan’s Walk—not anymore.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the change you made—that it has to pass to a blood kin.” His smile widened. “You’d be surprised what a patient man I am. I’d be just as happy to see it pass to my son.”

  Her grandfather was getting angry. She could see the vein standing out in his neck. “That will never happen, Stuart.”

  The man’s smile faded. Suddenly he looked dangerous. “Maybe it will be over your dead body, Morgan, but I swear to you the day will come when a Stuart owns Morgan’s Walk.”

  “Approximately a month later, Stuart married a widow about twenty-five years his junior. She had a hundred-and-sixty-acre farm back in the hills that her late husband left her. It wasn’t much of a farm, with only about sixty acres of tillable bottom land, the rest rock and trees. The speculation was that Stuart had married her thinking there was oil on the place, especially when drilling rigs moved onto the property six months after he married her. Six wells were drilled, but they were all ‘dusters’—dry holes. The widow, however, ultimately gave him a son—Ring Stuart.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie spoke up. “And the threat that Miss Hattie had lived with all her life suddenly became very real when her baby sister Elizabeth ran off and married Ring Stuart.” He paused, then added, as if to make sure Flame understood the significance of all this, “Ring Stuart was your husband’s father.”

  “And that’s it?” she challenged. “That’s the extent of your proof against Chance—a threat that was made seventy-odd years ago? Because he married me, you think he’s after Morgan’s Walk.”

  “Not just because he married you,” the attorney denied, then hesitated a split second, surveying her with a considering glance. “There are other factors. For instance, how long have you known him?”

  “A month, more or less.” She tilted her chin a fraction of an inch higher, fully aware that it sounded like a very short time.

  “What a remarkable coincidence,” Ben Canon declared with mock wonder. “It was approximately a month ago that we learned of your existence and Hattie informed Chance that he would not be her heir.”

  “Did she specifically name me?”

  “No. But for a man with Stuart’s sources—and resources—it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn your identity.”

  Unable to deny that, Flame chose to ignore it. “What makes you so certain he wants this ranch? With his money, he could buy a hundred—a thousand—like it.”

  “No doubt he could,” Canon agreed. “That’s a question you’ll have to ask him. And when you do, ask him why he’s bought or optioned all the property adjoining Morgan’s Walk to the south and east. Even for him, that’s bound to represent a tidy investment of capital. Make no mistake about it, Flame, he wants this land.”

  She wanted to deny it, to argue with him, but he sounded much too confident and that made her very cautious. “Why?”

  “You mean he didn’t show you his plans for this property when you went to his office Monday morning?”

  “What plans?” she demanded, struggling to hold her temper.

  “His plans to dam the river and turn this entire valley into a lake, complete with marinas, resort hotels, condominiums, and luxurious lake homes. It’s a very impressive project, I understand.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She shook her head in quick, vigorous denial. “You’re basing all your accusations against Chance on the fact that a Stuart once tried to get control of Morgan’s Walk through marriage. Even if Chance wanted this land—which I’m not convinced he does—there are other ways he could obtain it. He didn’t have to marry me to get it.”

  “True,” the attorney conceded. “For instance, he could have tried to buy the land from you. Although he couldn’t be sure you would be willing to sell it. Which would mean he would have to bring a variety of economic pressures to bear to force you to sell. Or he could use his considerable political influence to have the land condemned. Or he could have contested the will. But any one of those options might take years—with no guarantee that at the end the land would be his. But marriage—think how much quicker, how much more certain that must have seemed to him.”

  “And I suppose you think it’s impossible he might actually love me.” A
bitterness crept into her challenge.

  “Forgive me, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that you are without considerable attractions. I’m sure he found it very convenient to love you.”

  She hated him for saying that. She hated to think that she was being used. “I don’t believe you,” she repeated tautly.

  “Well, believe this, Flame. He intends to destroy Morgan’s Walk. If he has his way, all of this will be under a hundred feet of water. You are the only one who can stop him.”

  Footsteps approached the library, their tread heavy and slow. Flame turned toward the doorway as Charlie Rainwater rose from his chair, a tension gripping him and freezing him in place.

  The doctor appeared in the opening and paused, his glance sweeping all three of them before it fell. “She went quietly. There was no pain, Charlie.”

  26

  Chance charged out of the private elevator before its doors had fully opened. His gaze sliced to Molly as she started to rise from her chair, her customary wide smile of welcome missing, in its place a look of anxiety and regret. Chance took no notice of either as he issued a sharp “Has anyone located her yet?” He caught the faint negative shake of her head and didn’t wait to hear the actual words. Without a break in stride, he swept past her desk to his office door, snapping over his shoulder, “Get Sam and tell him I want him in my office—now.”

  Anger pushed at him as he crossed to his desk, an anger that had a hot spur of desperation to it. At the sound of footsteps, Chance swung back to face the door. Sam walked in with Molly right behind him.

  He approached the desk, looking harried and rumpled, as if he’d been up half the night—which he had. “I’m sorry, Chance—” he began.