Between the Rivers

CHAPTER 18

  Makeover

  MR. STEPHENS?” The waiter materialized at the suited man’s side, cup and saucer in hand. “Your coffee, sir. Will there be anything else?”

  Mr. Stephens almost didn’t look up. He had spent years cultivating a life, a business, a reputation under a different name. Switching did not come easily, perhaps because doing so had not been his choice.

  He had intended to get a lot more mileage out William Tarlston. He had intended to grow fat, rich and retire as William E. Tarlston. And then he couldn’t. It did not happened all at once, but piece by piece the bricks that held that man up had crumbled. Someone had infected the name with political leprosy. More and more, wherever he went, men had already armed themselves against him. Lines of persuasion that had carried him through in the past, now had as much power to convince as a barefoot shoe salesman peddling last year’s designs. But Tarlston had his own designs and, if he wanted to see them through, the name Tarlston would no longer suffice.

  Mr. Stephens harrumphed into his coffee. All that work, for what? To start over? Those backwoods louses up in the Nebraska Territory had stepped aside alright. That rancher— what was his name?— it hardly mattered. The point was, after his place went up in flames, his neighbors had settled right down. A few cents on the dollar and no more neighbors. But so what? What good was an empire isolated in the sticks when it no longer lead to an empire in the open? No. Mr. Stephens wanted more. Lots more. Hence his stay in a hotel where you did not so much pay for the rooms, as for the ostentatious display— theirs and yours. It paid to be ‘seen’ in the right places, by the right people. Thus were futures made. And they did not come cheaply. And they did not come by allowing one’s self to become distracted.

  But if he ever found out who had caused all this trouble. . .