Nora

He glanced at Alan curiously. “I had a letter from Mother about her. She thought you were the one with marriage in mind.”

Alan looked uncomfortable. “I was, when she seemed gentle and in need of protection. After her father’s death, she changed. She was more woman than I could handle.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m not like you and King. I want a gentle, sweet girl, not a warring Valkyrie.”

“Not me,” Cal said, eyeing the rig. “If I marry, I don’t want a woman I can browbeat. She’ll need to be spirited and adventurous to keep up with the way I want to live. If I strike anything here, I’ll move onto the place and never leave it.”

“Camp out here, you mean?”

“Something like that. I don’t need a city woman with snobbish attitudes.”

“That sounds suspiciously like you’ve met one already.”

“Who, me? Go home, Alan. You aren’t suited to drilling. You’ll just get in the way. I don’t know why you came.”

“I’m on my way to Galveston for some fishing. It’s just the second week in September, and I won’t be gang-pressed into roundup by Father until the end of the month at least. I need a break. This was just a stop on the way,” he said, grinning. “I have a train to catch.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. Maybe after next weekend. Maybe a little later.” He frowned. “I did want to see a man in Baton Rouge about some ranch business as well. Maybe I’ll go on east first, and then double back. I’ll cable you.”

Cal clapped his brother on the back. “Go carefully, young Alan. We may be oil and water, but we’re family. Never forget.”

“I won’t.” Alan smiled. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. I’ll need it.”

Alan climbed onto his hired horse and waved at Cal as he started back toward Beaumont. Cal watched him with a peculiar sensation in his chest, a feeling of loss. He laughed at his own foolishness and turned back to his chores. He had very little time left before he had to get back to Tyler Junction and the Tremayne ranch. He envied Alan that fishing trip. Drilling for oil was an occupation that was expensive, physically exhausting and not a little dangerous. Just last week, a derrick had toppled on a nearby piece of property, and a prospector had been killed. The dry hole was an occupational hazard as well, and after days of hope for a strike, it was a bitter break. Cal hoped that this next attempt would be more successful. He hated to leave the drilling crew alone, but it couldn’t be helped. He was putting all his spare capital into the venture. He needed what he made as foreman at the ranch to supplement his income.

Besides, it gave him the opportunity to keep an eye on the family’s massive investment in the Tremayne ranch. He hated spying on Chester, but it couldn’t be helped. As much as the combine had paid to take it over, the Tremaynes stood to lose the most. In these unsafe days, it was better to cover a bet than risk the hand. He had to keep Chester solvent, for the family’s sake as well as Chester’s. If only he could bring the man around to some modern thinking. He’d have to work on that angle when he got back.

Chapter Four

THE NEXT WEEK, CAL HAD a telegram from Alan in Galveston, mentioning the fine weather and asking about progress on the rig. Cal took time enough to wire him back and tell him, tongue in cheek, that he’d hit the biggest strike in Texas history and hoped Alan wouldn’t be sorry he missed it.

He wished he could be a fly on the wall when Alan got the message, although his brother knew him very well and wasn’t likely to fall for the joke. He went back to work, but his mind wasn’t on it. He was thinking about his new venture and worried about the capital he was investing. Perhaps he was trying to build a life on dreams after all. King had said as much when Cal announced his intention to go looking for a big oil strike near the Gulf. But, then, King was practical and a realist. He was content to manage the ranch and oversee the combine with their father. He wasn’t a risk taker.

Nora was out walking when he made his way to the bunkhouse late that evening. He looked unusually solemn.

“Hello,” she said gently, hesitating when he stopped just in front of her. “Goodness, you look somber. Is something wrong?”

He’d deliberately avoided her since his return Monday afternoon. The way he felt about her confused him. He wanted to make her uncomfortable, to hurt her because of her arrogance, her treatment of Greely. But when it came right down to it, he hadn’t the heart.

He studied her quietly, aware that for the first time, she wasn’t moving back or wrinkling her nose at him. Her blue eyes were shadowed in the dusk light, and they were curious as they searched his strong, lean face.

“It’s nothing I can share with you,” he said slowly. “A…personal matter.”

“Oh, I see.” She paused. “Life is not always what we would wish, is it, Mr. Barton?” she asked absently.

He scowled at the proper use of his name. “I have kissed you,” he reminded her curtly. “How can you still be so formal with me?”

She cleared her throat and folded her hands at her waist. “You embarrass me.”

“My name is Callaway,” he persisted. “Usually I’m called Cal.”

She smiled. “It suits you.”

“What is Nora short for?”

“Eleanor,” she replied.

“Eleanor.” It sounded right on his tongue. He smiled as he studied her in the fading light. “You shouldn’t be here. The Tremaynes are very conventional people, and so, I think, are you.”

Her blue eyes searched his face. “You are not.”

He shrugged. “I have been a rake, and in some ways, I still am. I make my own rules.” His eyes narrowed and he spoke involuntarily. “While you are a slave to society’s rules, Eleanor.”

Her name sounded magical on his lips. She hardly heard what he was saying. She wanted to touch him, to hold him. He made her think of beginnings, of pale green buds on trees in early spring. These were feelings that she had never before experienced, and she coveted them. But he was a cowboy. She couldn’t imagine what her parents would think if she wrote that she had become infatuated with a working man, with a hired hand. They would have a fit. So would her aunt Helen. Just the fact of speaking with him, alone like this, could cost him his job. Why had she not realized it?

“I must go in,” she said uneasily. “It would not please my people to find me here with you like this.”

His fingers caught hers and soothed them, eased between them. The contact was shocking. He made a rough sound deep in his throat and had to fight the urge to bring her body into his and kiss her until he made her lips sore. It was in his eyes, that terrible need. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman; surely that was the reason he reacted so violently to her!

He let go of her hand abruptly and moved back. “It is late.”

“Yes. Good night, Mr. Barton.”

He nodded. He turned and walked away, leaving her staring after him.

Aunt Helen was standing on the porch, looking worried when Nora came up the steps.

“Nora, you should not be outside so late,” she said gently. “It looks bad.”

“I was only getting a breath of air,” Nora said, avoiding the older woman’s eyes. “It is so warm….”

“I see.” Helen smiled. “Indeed it is. My dear, there was the most terrible story in the paper today, about a family of missionaries massacred in China, with their little children. What a terrible world it is becoming!”

“Yes, indeed,” Nora replied. “How nice that we are safe here in southern Texas.”

THAT SATURDAY there was a storm. Cal and the other men were out getting the livestock seen to, while the water rose to unbelievable levels and tore down fences. They were kept busy all day, and when they came in late that afternoon, they looked like mud men.

Cal came up onto the porch, apologizing to Helen and the women for his appearance.

“Chester wanted you to know that he’s all right,” he said without preamble, wiping a grimy sleeve over his dirty face. “We had to pull cattle out of the mud all afternoon, and we lost a few head in the flood. Chester’s gone with two of the other men over to Potter’s place, to see if he and his wife are all right. Their house is close to the river.”

“Yes, I know,” Helen said worriedly. “What an odd storm, to come out of nowhere like this. They have said that in Arizona there have been unusual changes in the weather, causing many people to become ill. Imagine, and it is only the tenth of September!”

Cal looked uneasy. “The weather has been very odd,” he agreed. “I’d like to know if things are this bad along the coast.” He didn’t add that his brother was there and he was concerned.

“We will know soon enough, I suppose,” Helen said. “Do go and have your meal, Mr. Barton, you look so tired.”

He smiled wanly, glancing at Nora. “None of us has had much rest. Chester will be home soon, I’m certain.”

“Thank you for coming to tell us.”

He nodded wearily and turned toward the bunkhouse. Nora had to bite her lip not to call after him. If she had the right, she would tuck him up in bed and look after him. Imagine, she told herself, how silly it would sound if she voiced such a longing. She moved back into the house without saying a word.

It wasn’t until Monday that the news reached Tyler Junction about the incredible tragedy in Galveston. A hurricane had come ashore in the seaside city about midmorning the previous Saturday, submerging the entire city underwater. Galveston was almost totally destroyed, and early estimates were that thousands of people had been killed.

WHEN CAL HEARD THIS, he was on his horse and gone before anyone had a chance to question him. It was assumed that he was going to Galveston to help with rescue efforts. No one knew that he had a brother visiting there or that he was terrified that Alan might be among the dead. He didn’t cable home on the way. If no one in El Paso heard about the tragedy for a few days, he might have something to tell his family before they knew of Alan’s danger.

He managed to get on a train heading toward Galveston, but when he got to the city, all lines were down and the tracks were destroyed. He had to borrow a horse from a nearby ranch to get into the city. What he saw would give him nightmares for years afterward.

It wasn’t until he saw the devastation firsthand that he realized how impossible it would be to find his brother among the dead. Among the smashed, piled-up buildings of the city, there were more pitiful broken and mangled bodies than he’d ever seen in his life, even in the Spanish-American War. He took it for a few hours, trying to do what he could to help, and then he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t bear the thought of his brother in that tangle of lifelessness. He rode out of town without looking back, sick at heart and soul. A saint would have a hard time reconciling what he’d just seen with any sort of divine love.

Disillusioned, shocked, grief-stricken, he couldn’t bring himself to go back to the Tremayne ranch just yet. He rode until he found a depot with a train bound for Baton Rouge, with no clear idea of where he would go after that.

He booked a room in a hotel where his family usually stayed when they traveled here on business and collapsed on the bed. He lay in bed until dawn and went down to breakfast bleary-eyed and exhausted. He wondered if he would ever sleep again.

Memories of his brother and their lives together had tormented him. He and Alan had never been as close as he and King had, but Alan was very special to him, just the same. It had been Alan who’d continued to encourage him about the oil business, even as he teased him about dry holes. The boy had inspired him to do the things he wanted to do, and he was going to miss him terribly. He wondered how he would manage….

Morose, dead-spirited, he didn’t hear the door of his room open and barely felt the hard clap of a hand on his shoulder. “Well, what are you doing here, for God’s sake? I’ve just gotten in from a little town back on the bayous, and saw your name on the register. I was visiting the family of a young lady I’ve taken a shine to…. Cal?”

Cal had Alan in a bear hug, a bruising grip, and his eyes closed on a wave of relief so great that he almost sobbed aloud with it.

“Thank God,” he said huskily. “Thank God!”

Alan pulled back, curious as he saw his brother’s ravaged face. “Why, whatever is wrong?” he asked.

Cal took a minute to get a grip on himself before he spoke. “Haven’t you…heard?”

“About what?”

“About Galveston,” Cal said heavily. “It’s been destroyed. Totally destroyed. Bodies everywhere…”

Alan was very still. His face was pasty. “I haven’t seen a paper or talked to anyone except Sally for days. When?”

“It hit Saturday, but we didn’t get the news until Monday in Tyler Junction. I thought you were there. I went at once.” He smoothed back his hair, his eyes terrible. “I almost went mad when I saw what had happened. You can’t imagine. I’ve been through a war, but this was worse. My God, you can’t imagine the devastation,” he said in a terse tone as the horrible memory of the things he’d seen and heard left him sick inside.

Alan let out a breath. “And to think that I could have been there, right in the middle of it. My God! I decided Friday to leave Galveston and come here, and took a train out that very night. The weather was worse than usual Saturday, and of course, there was some flooding. But I never dreamed of such tragedy! What of Mr. Briggs and his family? I was staying with them…. Have they identified any of the dead, Cal?”

“They’ll never identify them all,” Cal said, turning away. He still couldn’t bear to remember the things he’d seen. “I’ll have to cable the ranch,” Cal said. “They may hear about the hurricane and they won’t learn all of it. We have to let them know that you’re all right.”

“You didn’t cable them from Galveston?”

Cal’s eyes darkened. “The lines are down,” he said evasively. “I’ll go over to the Western Union office and do that right now. I’ll be back in a minute.” He smiled warmly at Alan. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

Alan nodded. “So am I.” He smiled, too, because it was nice to know that his brother cared so much about him. Like King, Cal didn’t show his feelings often, or easily.

ALAN STAYED ON IN BATON ROUGE while Cal got on the next train for Tyler Junction, and slept with pure relief most of the way there. The stories he heard on the way about the flood in Galveston made him even sicker, now that he’d seen it for himself. He hoped that one day he could forget the sight, even as he thanked God that he hadn’t had a relative there. The horror grew daily, along with the threat of terrible disease. He might have offered to help again, with Alan safe, but he had his own job to do back in Tyler Junction, making sure that the Tremayne ranch’s cattle weren’t lost as well. And there was no shortage of volunteers to help in Galveston, for the moment.

There were reports of severe flooding all over Texas, and he prayed that Galveston’s tragedy wouldn’t be repeated anywhere else. If the rivers that lay on each side of the Tremayne property ran out of their banks again, there could be devastation for the combine as well as Chester and his family. They had to be his first concern, now that Alan was out of danger. He could do nothing for the dead. They would have to be left to providence and their poor, grieving relatives. He could have wept for their families.

Despite his relief at his brother’s safety, he arrived back at the Tremayne ranch pale and depressed. He said nothing about what he’d seen, although Chester had heard enough to turn his stomach; things he hadn’t dared share with the women.

Cal had enough to do for the first couple of days after his return home, making sure that the Tremayne cattle were safe. He’d cabled Beaumont from Tyler Junction to make sure that his rig was still standing. The lines had been down at first, but he’d made contact with his drill rigger, and everything was all right. That was a relief. He dreaded hearing that the wind had cost him his investment. Perhaps this was an omen that he was on the right track.

His melancholy was noticed, however, and remarked upon. He came to report to Chester a few days later while Nora was sitting on the porch alone.

He hadn’t paid much attention to his surroundings since his return. Nora had noticed his preoccupation, and she had a good idea what had caused it.

She rose gracefully from the settee where she’d been perched, and stopped him just as he was about to knock on the front door.

“You’re still brooding about Galveston, aren’t you?” she asked gently. “There was a terrible hurricane on the East Coast last year. I lost a beloved cousin. And I have seen floods, although not one on such a scale. It is not difficult to imagine the devastation.”

He was surprised by her perception. His pale eyes narrowed as he searched her earnest face. “It’s something I’ll never speak about,” he said tautly. “Least of all to a woman.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Am I made of glass, sir?”

His gaze went down her body in the slim skirt and white embroidered blouse. “I wonder, considering the blazing path of some of your contemporaries through saloons with axes.”

She giggled softly at the reference to the zealous temperance leagues. “Wouldn’t I look at home with an ax in my hand?”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t suit you.” He frowned at her. “You’ve been subdued since your arrival. You ride well, and Chester mentioned that you can even handle a fowling piece. Yet I’ve not seen you indulge your fondness for it.”

She could shoot, but not well. She had missed her shot in England and blown out a priceless stained-glass window that dated to the Tudor period. Her host had taken the loss of his prize window with stiff-lipped good grace, but Nora hadn’t been invited back. She hadn’t handled a gun since then, either. “It’s too hot to shoot,” she said evasively.

“It has been unseasonably cold lately.”

She searched desperately for a reply.

He lifted an eyebrow, waiting for it.

She cleared her throat. “Very well, if you must know, I do not like guns and I find most of them too heavy for my arms,” she said proudly. “I miss.”

He chuckled softly. “You fraud.”

“But I can shoot, after a fashion,” she said curtly. “It is only that I have difficulty with the weight of a rifle.”

“And what of the safari in Africa?” he persisted.

She paled and averted her eyes. “I do not like to speak of Africa. It is a…tarnished memory.”

He wondered at her wording and the expression on her face. What a puzzle she was becoming.

“There is a Women’s Club social at the courthouse on Saturday evening,” he recalled. “I have been appropriated for it, by one of the organizers. Would you partner me?”

Her heart stopped and then ran away. Her mind whirled through her wardrobe and she looked up at him with barely subdued excitement. “Partner…you?”

“I dance rather well for a cowboy,” he told her amusedly. “And I promise to wear my best boots and plenty of cologne. You may trust me to be discreet.”

She colored, because her aunt Helen had repeatedly made her aware of the social distance between them. To be seen with a ranch foreman in public would embarrass not only her, but her family.

He saw her conflicting expressions and his face closed up. “Perhaps one of the town girls would be a better choice after all,” he said tautly. “One of them would not be so far above me on the social scale.”

Before Nora had time to react, he knocked curtly on the door and was admitted. When he left, he didn’t even look her way. He was fuming. Back in West Texas, women had vied for his attentions. The best families from back East had invited him to stay, in hopes of making a match between him and one of their daughters. He was as accustomed to wealth and position as Nora herself, but he was in the position of a man at a masquerade. He could not tell her the truth.

And the more he considered it, the angrier he became. It was a good thing that he saw her as she actually was, he told himself. Had she met him under normal circumstances, he might never have known what an appalling snob she really was.

THE SOCIAL EVENING was hosted by the local Women’s Club, of which Aunt Helen was secretary, and the club’s colors of green and white were used in the decorations. Nora wore a simple black silk gown trimmed in duchesse lace and diamonds. Melly wore white organdy, and Aunt Helen wore black taffeta, but their jewelry was made of rhinestones. They were elegant, in their way. But none of the women could hold a candle to Nora, who was so fashionable that she drew most of the attention.

Cal Barton escorted a pretty young girl who was a daughter of one of the organizers of the event. He was attentive to the girl, and once, while he danced with his partner, he gave Nora a look that made her feel two inches high. Her dignity and social position were not enough to compensate for the contempt she saw in his pale eyes. He wouldn’t know that Aunt Helen had been very firm about Nora’s conduct, and felt a working man would not be a suitable escort for such a lady of quality. Even if Nora had been willing to defy convention on her own, she couldn’t shame her aunt and uncle or spoil Melly’s chances of marrying well. She resigned herself to losing Cal Barton’s company, but very reluctantly.

A middle-aged visiting politician asked her for a dance, and she accepted with grace, smiling up at him with all her charm as they circled the floor. He seemed to be fascinated by her, because he monopolized her through three more dances until her befuddled aunt pleaded with her not to allow one man so much familiarity with her. Embarrassed, Nora retired to the party table. It seemed that she could do nothing to please her aunt.

“Is our Mr. Barton mad at you?” Melly asked when they were standing around the hors d’oeuvres table, where a huge candelabra lit the silver coffee service and savories on silver trays.

“It seems to be my lot in life to be the recipient of his ire, when I am not accidentally creating scandals,” Nora said resignedly.

“You mustn’t mind Mama,” Melly said gently, with understanding. “She means well, but it has been hard for her out here. Like your mother, she was a lady of quality, and now she feels her loss of status keenly. It is only that she wants a better life for me than she and Father have to endure. That’s why she’s so concerned about convention.” She touched Nora’s arm lightly. “She doesn’t know that you have a…a feeling for Mr. Barton. And I would not dare tell her. But I am sorry for you.”

“It is of no consequence,” Nora said stiffly. “I could hardly expect anything to come of it, considering the difference in our positions.” She tried not to feel the wounding of the quiet words. But how she wished stuffy social convention to damnation! If only she were an ordinary woman, or Cal Barton a gentleman of wealth. She sighed more wistfully than she knew, and Melly heard her. To divert her cousin, she glanced around and said quickly, “Isn’t that Mr. Langhorn?”

Melly’s hand shook, almost upsetting her cup of coffee. Nora quickly steadied it. “Careful,” she cautioned under her breath, “lest Aunt Helen suspect and say something to you as well.”

“Thank you,” Melly said sincerely. She laughed unsteadily. “I daresay, we are both in danger from Mama this evening. And from the look of things, you seem to be on Mr. Barton’s list of preoccupations.”

“That is unlikely now, since I have been forced to snub him,” Nora said carelessly, refusing to look as she saw Cal making his way steadily toward them. “I fear that he finds me totally forgettable.”

“Really? Would you look at that scowl!” she mused as he came closer.

Nora’s own hands were none too steady, but she had poise and composure that young Melly lacked. She looked up at Cal indifferently, feeling the distance in their social stations keenly as she took in his slightly out-of-fashion suit and the scuffs on his black dress boots. She couldn’t know that he’d dug them out of the bottom of his trunk deliberately for the occasion, to reinforce his status as a lowly ranch hand.