TALBOT AND HIS two captives made a silent procession along an old horse trail that rose toward the headquarters of the Double X. The sun had gone down and a few stars were kindling in the east, but the west still glowed with last light. A coyote howled. The horses blew and shook their bridles, hooves grinding snow as they walked with their heads down.
The cowboys rode stirrup to stirrup, hands tied snugly to their saddle horns, ankles shackled with rope. Talbot rode behind them, his rifle aimed at their backs. He knew he’d run into more riders, and sure enough, two cowboys appeared on the trail ahead. In the fading light they were little more than shadows.
Behind them the Magnusson mansion rose on a hill like a Bavarian castle lit up for Christmas. It was still half a mile away, but piano music carried crisply on the frosty air, like sonorous strains from a music box.
“Tell them to back off,” Talbot ordered the foreman.
Donnelly said nothing.
“Tell ’em.”
“Stay back—he’s got a gun on us,” Donnelly said.
The two horsemen stopped about twenty yards away. “Rag, Tex … that you?”
“Give me some room,” Talbot ordered. “I mean no threat
to you or your boss, but these men bushwhacked me, and if you try the same, I’m gonna let ’em have it!”
They said nothing, just sat there wondering what to do.
Talbot peeled back the hammer on his Winchester. The man named Tex must have heard it. “Get the hell back, goddamnit!” he yelled, his shrill voice cracking.
The men sat there for several more seconds. One mumbled something, and they reined their horses off the trail. One rode left, the other right, and stopped about fifty yards away. As Talbot and his captives continued, the outriders paralleled them, keeping their distance. Talbot eyed them warily.
There were two guards at the open front gate, and Talbot had Donnelly order them back. Both men obeyed. One ran into the mansion. The other watched Talbot from a distance, tracking him, an air of defensive caution in his bearing.
Turning, Talbot saw the two outlying riders drift into the compound behind him. They fanned out around him but kept their rifles pointed skyward—for now, anyway.
Talbot and his captives halted at the hitch rack to the left of the mansion’s broad wooden steps. The house rose before them—a great peaked shadow with squares of yellow light dulled by curtains. It blocked out the stars. The deep verandah ran the length of the house, its railing decorated with fir boughs and red ribbons. From inside came the smell of roasting beef.
The piano music had stopped. It was replaced by the muffled sounds of angry male voices and boots pounding wood floors. The pounding increased in volume until the front door was thrown open and a tall figure appeared, strode across the verandah, and stopped.
The man loomed over the steps, partially silhouetted by the windows behind him, his face further obscured by a cloud of sweet-smelling cigar smoke.
“Rag, what in the hell is going on!”
The foreman’s head lowered as he expelled air from his lungs. The man wagged his head slowly but said nothing. The other cowboy simply stared at his horse, shoulders sagging with the pain of his broken nose.
“Just a little misunderstanding, I believe,” Talbot said.
“Who the hell are you?”
“The man you ordered bushwhacked. And you must be the great King Magnusson.”
Magnusson said nothing.
“I’m a friend of your daughter’s. She invited me out to join your little shindig here tonight.” Talbot paused, then added with a curled lip, “Just couldn’t wait to meet you.”
Magnusson cut his eyes at his foreman. “Rag?”
Donnelly shrugged, gave a phlegmy sigh. “He gave us the jump, boss,” he confessed.
“For Christ’s sake!” Magnusson growled. To the young man who had followed him onto the porch he said, “Cut them loose.” Like the rancher, the young man was decked out in a swallowtail coat, winged collar, and tie. The smell of bay rum was nearly as thick as the cigar smoke.
With a caustic snort, the young man moved down the steps, producing a pocketknife, and went to work on Donnelley’s ropes.
Magnusson stared at Talbot, sizing him up. Smoke puffed around the stogie between his teeth. Talbot stared back. His eyes were cool.
He said, “If I knew for sure this was all a mistake, I could put my rifle away. In the meantime I think I’ll keep it aimed your way … just so one of your men don’t get trigger happy.”
Magnusson said nothing. The smoke drifted to the roof over the verandah and hung suspended in the still air.
Another figure stepped out of the mansion.
“Mark, it is you!” Suzanne ran up beside her father, her
head rising to only his shoulder. She looked from Talbot to Magnusson, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“I think we just had a little misunderstanding,” Magnusson said with an artificial smile. “Wouldn’t you say that’s what it was, Mr. Talbot?”
“Yeah, just a little misunderstanding,” Talbot said dryly.
Donnelly had dismounted and, holding a handkerchief to the bloody side of his head, regarded Talbot with a rancorous scowl. “Listen, asshole, you may have gotten the jump on me back there, but—”
“Rag!” Magnusson hissed, jerking his head at Suzanne.
Hunching her shoulders against the cold and grasping a night cape closed at her throat, Suzanne looked up at her father. She was dressed for the evening, her long chocolate hair in ringlets. “Papa, what is going on here?” she asked with reproach.
“Just a little misunderstanding,” Magnusson said, his eyes on Talbot. “Rag and Tex mistook your friend here for trouble, that’s all.”
“Are you all right, Mark?”
“No problem.”
Confident Magnusson wouldn’t try anything with his daughter present, Talbot slid his rifle into its boot, dismounted, and tied his horse to the hitch rack. He came up the steps and stopped about three rungs down from her. “You look lovely.”
He gave a playful bow and reached for her hand. She laughed and gave it to him. He took it gently, gently kissed it, consciously easing the tension.
Laughing, Suzanne turned to her father. “Papa, I want you to meet the incomparable Mark Talbot.”
Magnusson was watching his riders leading their horses off to the stables.
Suzanne cleared her throat. “Papa?”
The rancher jerked his head to Talbot. “Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Talbot, how nice it is to make your acquaintance.”
They shook hands.
King said affably, “I’d like to apologize for the trouble. I should have sent someone to inform my outriders you were coming. I hope you can forgive my error.”
“I’ll work on it,” Talbot said.
He and Magnusson shared a look of bemused understanding. The rancher gestured at the door, revealing his long horse teeth in a broad smile. “In the meantime, why don’t we all get in out of the cold?”
Talbot followed Suzanne into the house. Magnusson paused with a hand on the door and looked again toward the stables.
Randall Magnusson mounted the steps behind him. “Never seen Rag with so much egg on his face,” he said with a self-satisfied chuckle.
King had forgotten he was back there. He glanced at his fleshy-faced progeny, said distractedly, “No … me neither,” then went inside.
KING CAUGHT UP with Talbot and Suzanne in the foyer, where a crushed velvet settee sat beneath an ornately carved mirror. “I’ll take your coat and hat, Mr. Talbot,” he said. “And your gunbelt, of course. Don’t allow the nasty things in the house.”
“Of course not,” Talbot said dryly as he started removing his coat, looking into Magnusson’s steely eyes with a tight smile.
A maid had appeared, a harried, glassy-eyed girl of no more than sixteen. Magnusson gave her Talbot’s coat, hat, and gunbelt, and the girl disappeared down the hall. Talbot watched her go, feeling naked without the gun.
Taking his hand, Suzanne led him through a long, narrow sitting room redolent with pre-dinner cigars, and through a pair of glass doors where a long table covered with snow-white linen and silver stretched between two gargantuan stone fireplaces. The head of a mountain goat was mounted over one mantel, the head of a grizzly over the other.
The cedar logs popped and sparked, tossing shadows this way and that, giving the room a warm, intimate feel. There was no intimacy apparent among the four women and six men gathered at the table, however. Dressed to the hilt in dark suits and bright gowns, and sitting ceremoniously in their high-backed chairs, they looked as festive as Lutheran deacons.
Suzanne made the introductions, and Talbot nodded at each guest in turn. Dr. Long sat beside a Mr. Wingate from Philadelphia, a stuffy little wedge of a man with a bald head and carrot-colored muttonchops connecting beneath his nose.
Harrison appeared bored. Holding a Siamese cat in the crook of his arm, he acknowledged Talbot with a slight dip of the chin and curl of the lip, eyes bright with alcohol. “We meet again, Mr. Talbot!”
“Harrison, I can’t believe you’re still here.”
The doctor shrugged. “To be honest with you, Mr. Talbot, I can’t either.”
“Why would he leave when our whiskey’s free?” Randall Magnusson said with a caustic snort.
He’d retaken his seat next to his father at the head of the table. He was a soft young man with a baby face, a thin dark beard, and chestnut hair hanging over his collar like a beaver tail. Talbot knew now why Rinski suspected Randall and another man of killing Jack Thom and raping Rinski’s daughter. Randall had snake written all over him.
A door opened to Talbot’s right and a stout, raven-haired
woman in a violet dress appeared looking harried.
Suzanne said, “Mark, I’d like you to meet my mother. Mother, Mark Talbot.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Talbot,” Mrs. Magnusson said with an air of distraction, automatically offering her hand, which Talbot shook very gently. The hand was small and plump, with papery skin and several large rings, including a diamond, reflecting the light from the fire.
The woman’s breath smelled of booze, and a fine sweat glistened above her bright red lips and on her forehead. Her eyes resembled Suzanne’s, but with an additional jaded cast, an oblique pessimism. She appeared both haunted and harried.
Turning to her daughter, Mrs. Magnusson arched her plucked eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware there would be another guest.”
Suzanne frowned. “Didn’t Papa tell you?”
King shrugged guiltily. “I’m sorry, Kendra—I plum forgot.”
Admonishing her father with a look, Suzanne said, “Fortunately I reminded Minnie to set another place.”
Talbot said, “If there’s a problem—”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Mr. Talbot,” Mrs. Magnusson said, breathing heavily and tossing her own reproachful look at King. “The more the merrier! Have a seat.” Turning to the others, she said, “I apologize for the delay with the meat, but Minnie and the girls are utterly baffled by the wine sauce King simply cannot live without.”
Magnusson said, “They’ll make do, Kendra; no point in getting riled.”
Her voice grew as stiff as her smile. “They’re going to burn it, King. I don’t see why we couldn’t—”
King raised his eyebrows and opened his hands palm down.
“Easy, easy, my dear. Let’s not bore the guests with our squabbles. Why don’t you take a seat and finish your soup before it gets cold?”
Mrs. Magnusson gave her husband a sneering grin, then took a seat at the other end of the table. The guests slurped soup from their spoons, consciously ignoring the tiff.
Suzanne put a hand on her mother’s wrist. “Really, Mother, none of us expect a New York meal in Dakota.”
Bernard Troutman, the Big Draw banker, said, “Beggars can’t be choosers, Kendra. Whatever you put on our plates will be quite sufficient, or we’ll go to bed hungry!”
He lowered his chin for emphasis, then looked pompously around for corroboration. The other guests vehemently agreed.
Drunkenly, Harrison said with a theatrical twang, “Give me a ham bone and a bottle o’ red-eyed Jim!”
“Oh, Harrison,” Suzanne scolded.
“And a bunkhouse full of cowboys,” Randall mumbled, dipping his spoon.
Suzanne looked at him angrily. “Randall, I heard that!”
“Not to worry, dear girl,” Harrison said. “I think your brother is still struggling with his own … feelings, shall we say?”
King grinned over his wineglass. Randall aimed his blunt nose at the doctor and opened his mouth to speak.
Mr. Wingate cut him off with a vociferous throat clearing. “So, Mr. Talbot, where do you hail from, may I ask?”
Shrugging, Talbot sipped his soup—cream of onion with butter pooling in the thick, slightly curdled cream. “Here and there. I was raised on the Bench.”
“The Bench?”
“My homeplace is about twenty miles northwest of here.”
“Oh, I see.” Wingate cut his eyes to Troutman, then to
Magnusson. The other businessmen did likewise. The women looked only at each other, growing tense.
King kept his own gaze on his soup. Heartily changing the subject, he said, “I read in the paper just today that Nordstrom and Fontaine bought out McAdams.”
There was a ponderous silence. Then King raised his eyebrows at Wingate and the other businessmen.
“No!” one of the Big Draw men exclaimed, catching on.
“Lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Well, what on earth will that do to the price of rail shipments?”
“God knows. I’m sending a cable to Stephen Vandemark first thing tomorrow.”
The conversation continued similarly throughout the next three courses. No one from King’s circle so much as glanced at Talbot. No one, that is, but Randall Magnusson.
Several times Talbot looked up from his venison tenderloin and parsnips, and from his chocolate soufflé with cherries, to see the cherubic-faced young scoundrel considering him darkly. Talbot met the gaze head-on, as if to say, “You murdered my brother, didn’t you, you son of a bitch?”
And young Magnusson blinked his eyes coldly, as if to say, “So what if I did?”
Sensing Talbot’s agitation, Suzanne put her hand on his thigh. Her flesh warmed him through his trousers, and he suddenly became aroused. It was an obtuse feeling under the circumstances, only vaguely pleasant. Feeling his pants tightening beneath her hand, she looked at him coyly and gave a giggle.
When the dessert was eaten and the maids began clearing the dishes, Magnusson suggested that the men adjourn to the sitting room for sherry and cigars.
Suzanne said, “Oh, Papa, do excuse Mark, please? I want
to show him around the house.” Turning to Dr. Long, she said, “Would you like to join us, Harry?”
Feeding a scrap to the Siamese in his lap, Harrison shook his head. “No, you two run along. I’ll help the girls and Minnie with the dishes. They enjoy my company, don’t you, dears?”
Twenty minutes later, when the tour was over, Suzanne led Talbot into a paneled upstairs reading room. There were two deep armchairs covered in floral damask, a mahogany tea table between them, and a brass cuspidor. Against a wall was a serpentine-back sofa with scrolled armrests.
Nearly everywhere Talbot looked were game trophies and marble busts and expensively bound books that appeared to have never been cracked. He wondered how in hell Magnusson had gotten the busts out here without breaking them, and he imagined the poor mule skinners who’d had to haul them from the boat landing at Bismarck. They’d no doubt sweated every gorge and coulee—every knoll!—and kicked up their heels when they’d gotten them on their pedestals in one piece.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Suzanne said, lightly poking Talbot in the ribs.
“Oh … sorry,” he said.
“You’ve been very quiet. What were you thinking during dinner?”
“Nothing important.”
“Liar. You were thinking something dark; I could see it in your eyes.”
Silently, she lit two cut-glass lamps, then turned to him with a serious expression. Her long neck—butter colored in the flickering lamplight—looked especially delicate above the low-cut dress that generously exposed the cleft in her opulent bosom.
“I’m sorry about the men who attacked you,” she said. “The fault is really mine, not Papa’s. I delayed telling him about your coming because … well”—her eyes flitted nervously
about the room—“because I’m absent-minded.” Her eyes came to rest on his and she smiled, perfect lips rising slightly at the corners.
Talbot raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe you were worried he wouldn’t allow it.”
Her cheeks colored slightly. “That’s silly.”
“Is it? Those men tried to ambush me, and I don’t think it was a case of mistaken identity.”
“Mark, please. Why are you being so hostile?”
He looked at her dully. “Someone killed my brother.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “That’s awful! When?”
He told her.
She got up and walked to the window but did not look out. “And you think it was Papa?”
He considered telling her about Gordon seeing Randall heading toward the Circle T that day, but decided the water was muddy enough for now. “I don’t think he pulled the trigger, but one of his riders did. Amounts to the same thing. He was trying to clean out the Bench for his own herds.”
She wheeled around and confronted him, face taut with anger. Gradually her features softened. She raised her eyebrows beseechingly. “Mark, let’s please talk about something else.”
He tried a smile. There would be little point in torturing her with all this. Besides, it was hard not to acquiesce to a woman like Suzanne Magnusson. She was as willful as she was beautiful. She was also spoiled. It was her least attractive quality, but it somehow added to her power.
Talbot could see how young men could be utterly swept away by her, like a hundred-foot rogue wave flooding the deck while you’re hanging in the crow’s nest. Young men whose brother had not been murdered by her father, that is.
“Okay,” he said.
She wheeled gracefully and collapsed on the sofa, patted the cushion beside her. “Come. Sit with me.”
He did as he was told.
“This is my favorite place in the house,” she said. “I like to sit here alone and read and dream of faraway places.”
“What places?”
“No place in particular. Just anywhere far away—anywhere I haven’t been, that is, because when you’ve been there the romance is gone, don’t you think?”
“Dakota’s a nice place, in spite of the winter. At least it was.”
Suddenly playful, Suzanne sat up and tucked a leg beneath her, then turned to him, folding her hands in her lap.
“Let’s play a game.” She wrinkled her nose, giggling, and leaned toward him, clasping his hand. “Are you game for a game, Mr. Talbot?”
He shrugged, observing her with puzzled amusement. His murdered brother was the farthest thing from her mind. “Why not?”
“I’ll say a noun and you say the first verb that pops into your head.”
“Why do you get the nouns and I get the verbs?” he asked, playing along.
“Why, because you’re a man of action, of course!”
“Oh.”
“Ready?”
He rested his head against the sofa back and nodded.
“Close your eyes. Okay. Stone. Hurry! You have to say the first verb that pops into your head.”
“Okay … throw!”
“Snake.”
“Uh—slither!”
“Horse.”
“Ride.”
“Cards.”
“Gamble.”
“Ships.”
“Sail.”
“Knife.”
“Cut.”
“Girls.”
He opened his eyes. “Girls?”
“Don’t think!”
“All right … girls … uh … kiss.”
“Kiss?”
He opened his eyes again and gave a laugh. She was looking at him with an expression of wry expectance. “You said to say the first thing that came into my head, and kissing was the first thing that came into my head.”
Her eyes flashed slyly. “Have you kissed Jacy Kincaid?”
He laughed again. “What?”
“Have you?”
“No.”
“Have you wanted to?”
He thought for a few seconds. “No.” It was a lie, but he knew it was what she wanted to hear.
Her expression becoming grave, she lowered her eyes. She spoke quietly, in a throaty, silky voice that reminded him of a gentle breeze combing woods. “Have you wanted to kiss me?”
He stared at her seriously for a moment. “Yes.” It was not a lie.
“Why don’t you, then?”
He smiled. Unable to help himself, he gently took her face in his hands and kissed her. Her lips were silky. They parted for him slightly.
After a while, she pulled away. “Mark, let’s not let any of this trouble my father’s involved in come between us, okay?”
“Suzanne—”
“Okay?”
He sighed, gave a nod.
She smiled, said in a throaty, lusty voice, her sweet breath
warm on his face, “All right, then, take it away, Mr. Talbot.”
His eyes widened. “What? Here?”
“It’ll be our secret.”
“Suzanne—”
He tried to rise, but she pushed him back against the couch, flattening her breasts against his chest and pressing her full lips to his.
“Suzanne …” he said again. But he couldn’t help being aroused by her. The feel of her hands in his hair, on his shoulders, on his arms … the beguiling taste of her tongue probing his … her thighs on his … was too much to deny.
She gently bit his upper lip, pushing away. She lowered her head, unbuttoned his shirt, and kissed his chest, murmuring, “You cut a fine manly figure, Mark Talbot. It’s been so long since …”
He reached into her hair, ran the strands through his fingers. Her head went lower. Her fingers were on his fly.
She whispered, “My God, Mr. Talbot.”
“Suzanne …”
It wasn’t long before he was arching his back and tearing at the sofa with his fists.
It took all his power not to yell.
Somewhere in another realm, boots pounded, shaking the floor. It took Talbot several seconds to realize that someone was climbing the stairs.
“Suzanne!” It was King Magnusson.
Talbot could tell by the increased volume of the pounding boots that the man was within twenty feet and closing.
Talbot tried to push her off him but could not unclench his hands from the cushions. Finally, at the last second, she lifted her head, ran the back of her hand across her mouth, and smiled with devilish delight.
“Now you’re in trouble, buster!” she laughed.