IN THE MAGNUSSON mansion, Charles Franklin Wingate III grinned in his sleep. King Magnusson’s primary eastern investor was dreaming of Suzanne. The lovely girl was asking him to remain at the ranch for another week.
She was clad in only a sheer chemise that clearly outlined her breasts. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders and her eyes were smoky with lust.
“Oh, please stay, Charles,” she begged. “I know you don’t want to be disloyal to Abigail, but I feel we’re just starting to get to know each other.”
She smelled of lilac-scented orris soap, and he didn’t know which aroused him more—her face, which fairly glowed with unadulterated beauty, or the swollen orbs of her breasts, which poked at him wantonly, prodding him from his characteristic reserve.
“Really, Suzanne, I must go.”
“Oh, please, Charles. There are so few men like you in Dakota … sensitive yet virulent.”
She ran her hands over the thick head of hair he’d lost fifteen years ago, pressed her warm lips to his. As she ground her hips against him, wrapping a bare leg around his waist, he engulfed her in his arms and fairly moaned with desire.
Someone pounded on the door. “Chuck!” It was King Magnusson.
Wingate’s heart did a somersault. He pushed the girl away as the door opened and Magnusson’s big, ruddy face appeared beneath his cherry-blond mane. The blue eyes flashed.
“King!” Wingate cried.
“In the flesh, old chap. Up and at ’em—let’s pound some grub and get ready to ride!” Magnusson studied the easterner. “Remember? We’re going hunting this morning. I’ll send Minnie up with your bath.”
He turned away and turned back. “Oh, uh … sorry to interrupt.”
“Huh?”
“Sounded like you were having quite the dream. Anyone I know?”
Wingate must have looked as stricken as he felt, because King said in a hurry, “Don’t worry, I enjoy a hot fancy now and then myself.”
Leaning forward he added conspiratorially, “Tides me over between business trips.” He winked and pulled his head back. The door closed, and his boots pounded away down the hall.
Sitting up in the bed, the tail of his nightcap wrapped around his neck, Wingate stared at the door and tried to quell the pounding of his heart. He ran a hand absently over his red muttonchops.
“Oh,” he said weakly, swallowing. “Oh, my goodness … it was just a dream.”
As he looked around the room, getting his bearings, his relief was replaced by bitter disappointment. The girl had not visited his room with her lovely breasts; she hadn’t wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her warm lips to his.
He lifted a hand to his head. His hair hadn’t grown back, either.
“Goodness me,” he grumbled, and swung his old legs to the floor. Among Magnusson’s associates, King was infamous for throwing his eastern visitors into potentially humiliating
“western” situations. It was a sort of game, Wingate knew, and he supposed it was his turn to shrink from a charging grizzly or miss a preposterously easy shot at an elk or some other four-legged beast.
Slouched there on the edge of the bed, waiting for his bath and staring out the frosty gray window—not a tree in sight—Wingate wished he were home. In New York he was not tormented by bored western ranchers and their buxom daughters.
“Hunting, for Christ’s sake. In this weather? That man’s going to be the death of me yet.”
A half hour later he was bathed and dressed, but he still hadn’t worked up any enthusiasm for Magnusson’s hunt. Oh, well, give the sadistic bastard another story to tell at the Cheyenne Club, he thought as he headed for the dining room.
“Where you going, Charles?” the devil himself hailed as he passed his office.
Wingate walked back to the trophy-laden study. King was standing in the middle of the room decked out in a buffalo coat and a fur hat. He was smoking a fat cigar and holding a rifle, caressing its glistening walnut stock with a white rag. Another, similar weapon stood against his desk. A hot fire popped in the hearth.
Wingate frowned. “Am I too late for breakfast?” he asked meekly.
“Oh, not at all,” Magnusson said. “I thought we’d go out to the bunkhouse for breakfast. I like to rub elbows with my men now and then. Keeps me in touch. Besides, the cook out there can whip together the best chuck you’ll ever taste in your life. A real treat.”
“You don’t say,” Wingate said, crestfallen. He’d been looking forward to prunes stewed in French wine, cheese croissants, and Minnie McDougal’s wonderfully airy omelets.
Magnusson rubbed the rag down the stock of his rifle and
nodded at the other gun leaning against his desk. “There’s your rifle, Charles. Fetch it up and treat it like a baby. It might just save your life today.” He looked at Wingate and grinned wolfishly.
When Wingate had decked himself out in a borrowed coat and hat like Magnusson’s, he hefted the heavy beast of a rifle—it must have weighed fifty pounds!—and followed the rancher outside. The dour and brooding Randall Magnusson brought up the rear.
They moved down the slope behind the corrals toward the bunkhouse—a long, narrow building of logs, with two brick chimneys sprouting thick gray smoke smelling like bacon.
Magnusson knocked and opened the door.
“Boss,” Rag Donnelly said as though startled. He was sitting at the table nearest the door and the first of the two stoves, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. His hat was off, exposing the fresh bandage on his ear.
There were seven or eight other men in various stages of dressing and washing, crowding around the farthest stove. They regarded their visitors from the Big House with subtle suspicion, cutting their eyes at Rag.
A big, gray-haired man with a bushy mustache and deep-sunk eyes stirred a pan of potatoes sizzling in bacon grease. A cigarette drooped from his lips, a grimy towel was thrown over his shoulder, and the thick gray hair on his chest grew out of his long johns.
“Have a seat, boss—just about to throw some vittles on the table,” he said with too much exuberance, his eyes on Rag.
“Just thought we’d come out and see how badly you’re poisoning my men, Lute,” King said, throwing his mittens on the table beside Donnelly. “Hope we haven’t interrupted anything.” His gaze circled the room, and he realized what was
wrong. Men were missing—more than should be out on the line at this hour.
“Where is everybody, Rag?”
“Who’s that, boss?”
“You know who.” Magnusson’s voice became tight, his eyes hard. “The men you’re paid forty dollars a month to keep track of.”
Donnelly looked at the other members of his crew. He was in a bad position. To keep his men’s respect he couldn’t go tattling on their every indiscretion. Some things had to stay between him and them. He had no choice now, however. If they couldn’t see that, fuck ’em.
He gave a sigh and looked at Magnusson. “They ain’t come back from the roadhouse yet.”
“They ain’t come back from the roadhouse yet,” Magnusson mimicked, lowering his eyes to his foreman’s chest and giving several short, thoughtful nods. He lifted his cold eyes again to Donnelly’s, and it was odd how the foreman had never before noticed the reptilian cast in those unblinking eyes. “How many went?”
“Twelve.”
“You know I never allow more than half a dozen men off the ranch at one time.”
“I know that, Mr. Magnusson, but they must’ve slipped off while I was up at the house last night. When I got back, they were gone and there was nothin’ I could do about it. I figured … well, I figured they’d be back long before now. Hell, long before sunup! They know they get their pay docked for this kind of horseshit.”
Magnusson’s eyes were on the table now, and he was pursing his lips. His earlobes poking out from under his beaver hat were bright red. His face was mottled white.
“Swell. Just swell,” he said woodenly. Then his head jerked
up. His face twisted savagely and he shouted, “Send someone out to fetch them, goddamnit!”
Donnelly remained calm, though his face blanched. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken both barrels of Magnusson’s fury.
He spread his hands apart, opening them, smoke from his cigarette curling and uncurling above the table. “I did that, Mr. Magnusson. I sent Press Johnson out. They should all be back in about an hour or so.”
Magnusson pursed his lips and exhaled through his nose. “Very well. Make sure they know they’re due a visit from me this evening, as well as a very substantial dock in pay.”
“I will, sir. They’re good men, sir.”
Magnusson laughed scornfully and regarded the cook, who’d been standing there watching and listening to the conversation with his cigarette dangling from his mouth while the potatoes burned. As if throwing a switch, Magnusson returned to his old offensively ebullient self.
“Well, Lute, serve up the grub. We don’t have all day, ya know. Mr. Wingate here has talked me into taking him hunting, haven’t you, Charles?”