“You have lost too much weight. You do not eat enough. I have watched you and you are pining for something—or someone.”
Morgan shook her head as the larger woman pinned the waist of her dress. “That’s silly, Lupita. I’m perfectly happy. I have everything I need right here.”
“Except a man.”
“I have Adam.”
“Yes, señora.”
“Lupita, don’t use that trick. I am happy and I mean it, and stop playing the docile servant.”
“Whatever the señora wants.”
“Lupita!” But she was gone. Morgan smiled to herself. She’s wrong, she thought, I’ve just lost weight because I try to keep Adam from crawling into the stove. Anyone would lose weight running after Adam. She kissed her sleeping son, his blond hair curling about his face. He moved and made a few sucking motions with his mouth. A deep dimple appeared briefly in his cheek. Just like Seth, she thought. Just like Seth. She tried to brush the idea from her mind and went outside to greet her guests.
Many of the people there that night were strangers, and Morgan was glad when the party was over. When she had removed her satin gown and slipped into her plain cotton nightgown, she gazed at the bed and began to cry.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked. “I have everything, but I want more.” Her voice woke Adam, and she was glad to go and comfort him. It was a long time before she went to sleep.
The snows began early that year and the winter dragged on and on. Adam seemed to grow some each day, and she and Lupita were busy sewing clothes for him. Jake and Paul whittled wooden horses and cows for him, gradually creating an entire wooden ranch, complete with house, barn, fences, wagons, and men. Lupita filled the little toy house with furniture and food. She even made a replica of Adam. Adam rewarded everyone with squeals of laughter and a sometimes rather sticky hug.
Morgan’s memories of Seth increased day by day and she began to be very restless. She wanted to go away from the ranch for a while. She worried about Seth’s return.
In February, Adam was one year old. Lupita and Morgan baked an enormous cake, and Frank and Louisa brought their six children to share in the celebration. Adam was shy around the other children for a few minutes, but quickly recovered. Frank tossed Adam into the air. “Goin’ to be as big as your pa, ain’t you?”
Jake grinned. “Looks more like him every day. Doesn’t seem to have his pa’s stubborn streak though, or at least not yet.”
Lupita watched as Morgan’s face whitened at the mention of Seth. Lupita knew the memories tormented her and she felt the pain her little mistress felt.
Soon after Adam’s birthday, Morgan wrote to her father’s lawyer in Albuquerque. She stated briefly that she had fulfilled the terms of the will and would like to know about her inheritance. She hoped she and Adam could go away together, possibly even to Europe.
She waited expectantly for weeks for an answer to her letter, but none came. She thought she might write again, but Lupita told her to wait a bit longer. The mails in New Mexico were very slow.
Now when Morgan went for her morning ride, Adam went with her. Often they took a basket of food to make a picnic.
Neither of them saw the pair of eyes that watched them every day. As the sun was going down and Jake, Paul, and Adam walked around the house, none of them sensed their quiet observer. Once the horse Adam played near was stung by a wasp, and the horse reared. Only Adam saw the strong brown arms that pulled the unsteady toddler from beneath the iron-clad hooves.
It had been nearly two months since Morgan wrote the letter. She sat under a tree some distance from the ranch house, a place where she often brought Adam to play and picnic. The stream that watered the ranch flowed here, and the grass was green and the shade cool. Their horse, grazing nearby, whinnied, but for the moment Morgan was lost in thought. She decided to send another letter to the lawyer. Why hadn’t he replied?
“Eat.” Adam smiled at his mother as she lifted him from the horse.
“No, not eat. I’m mama, remember, Adam?”
“Ma ma ma.”
“Yes, that’s right. Look Adam, a butterfly.” She pointed, but Adam continued to stare at his mother. He tried to form words, but none would come. His eyes lifted from Morgan’s to an area just behind her head. He laughed at what he saw there.
Morgan laughed with him. His dimpled smiles were infectious. Still smiling, she turned to look at what he saw. Her hand flew to her mouth in alarm. Quickly she stood up and held Adam behind her. He struggled to see around her skirts.
An Indian sat majestically on a black-and-white pony. He was slim, his hair straight and black, falling just to his earlobes. It glistened in the morning sunlight. He was naked from the waist up. There was a rawhide strip around his neck which held a little leather pouch, decorated by black and red beads.
His legs were clad in buckskin with fringe down the sides. He looked exactly like the Apaches who had taken her to San Francisco. Her voice shook. “What do you want?”
The Indian dismounted fluidly. He stared at Morgan and at Adam and took a step closer. Morgan turned and picked up Adam, pulling him close to her. He pushed her away. He wanted to walk, not to be carried. Morgan pulled him even tighter.
“Go away. Leave us alone.” Adam frowned at his mother. What was wrong?
“I’m really sorry to have frightened you so. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gordon Matthews.”
Morgan’s eyes widened. The Indian’s voice was deep, rather musical. It was refined. His words were carefully articulated and the endings sharply pronounced, unlike the Kentuckians Morgan had always known.
He watched her closely, as if waiting for something. When she pulled Adam closer, Gordon shrugged and sat down on the bank of the little stream.
“Yes,” he said. “You do look like your pictures.” He turned and smiled up at her, showing even, white teeth. “I really shouldn’t do this, I know. Uncle Charley used to say I played at being an Indian. It is really rather ostentatious of me, isn’t it?”
“Osten…” Morgan loosened her hold on Adam, who had decided to remove the trim from her riding habit. She was confused.
“I really enjoy the game, and I get to play it so seldom these days. On the ranch the men like to forget that I’m half-Indian. So I like to dress up whenever I can. I have a great deal of trouble with my hair. You see, it tends to curl, so I have to use a little lard on it. I’m sure my ancestors would disown me for not using buffalo grease, but these are modern times, are they not?” He paused.
“Morgan, please sit by me. I may get a cramp in my neck if you keep standing.”
Morgan took a step farther from him. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
Gordon sighed and then stood up. “I think one needs to keep in better shape to play Indian.” He rubbed his neck. “The name Gordon Matthews means nothing to you?”
“No.”
“Your father never mentioned me in his letters?”
“My father? Letters?”
“Morgan, please. Stop being so frightened. I won’t hurt you. Here, let me take Adam and then we can talk.”
Morgan twisted her body so that Adam was farther from him.
“It’s your decision, but he is ruining your habit. Adam—look.” He held out the beaded pouch and Adam reached for it. Gordon held his arms to Adam and Adam lunged toward him. Gordon caught the sturdy boy. “Another year and he’ll be bigger than you are, Morgan. Now, let’s sit down.”
Gordon sat down again, took off the pouch, and gave it to Adam, who happily toddled off with his prize.
“He’s a very handsome young man. I believe he’s going to look like his father. Seth is a large man, isn’t he?” Gordon turned back to look at Morgan. “You know, you look very much like your father when you frown like that. All right, since you don’t know, I’ll explain. Uncle Charley always said I took hours to get to a point. My father always said my education had interfered with my thinking. They were probably both correct.” He ch
uckled ruefully.
“I am serious, Morgan. Unless you sit down, I won’t explain one thing. My neck is really beginning to hurt.”
Morgan’s mind was whirling. This was preposterous. He looked like an Indian, one of the dirty Indians that had traveled with Jacques. But he sounded like an educated Yankee. She sat down on the bank, several feet away from him.
“I run the Three Crowns.”
“Three Crowns?”
“You really don’t know, do you? Your father and my father were partners in the ranch south of Albuquerque, the ranch called the Three Crowns. My father was killed in an accident three years ago.”
Morgan saw a look of pain cross his face. Adam came back to them and pulled at the silver bracelet on Gordon’s upper arm. Gordon smiled at the boy, removed the bracelet, and handed it to him. Adam promptly put it in his mouth, tasted it, and then walked away again, holding Gordon’s possessions, one in each hand.
“He certainly is an energetic boy. I’ll wager he never gives you a moment’s peace.”
“Go on with your story, Mr. Matthews.”
“Gordon. I don’t understand how you know nothing of your father when he knew everything about you. There are pictures, drawings of you, everywhere in the house. They show you at every age. A lot of them are of you on horseback, and some are of you peeping out a carriage window.”
“No one drew pictures of me. How could they be of me? I never saw my father again after we left New Mexico. My mother refused to answer my questions about him.”
“Hmmm. This is a puzzle! I guess you don’t remember much about New Mexico. After all, you were about the same age as Adam when you left.”
“I remember riding in a wagon and being very thirsty.”
“That would have been the trip to Kentucky. Your mother was such a stubborn woman. When she made up her mind to leave, she did. She refused to wait for the guide your father hired.
“Of course, the ranch was really nothing in those days, just a little adobe shack. And your mother had to cook and clean for two men and me. She was expecting you then, and she was so clumsy. She hated the dirt and the dryness. Pa and I used to hear her complaining to Uncle Charley—that’s your father—for hours each night about how rough her skin was, how tired she was, how she hated everything.”
Gordon reached across the distance between them and took Morgan’s hand. “Smooth, yet I know you do a fair share of work on this ranch.”
She pulled her hand back. “How do you know what I do around here?”
“I’ve been watching.” Gordon laughed at the astonished expression on Morgan’s face. “I told you it’s too seldom that I get to play at being an Indian. So when the chance arises, I take it. These rather suit me, don’t you think?” He motioned to the buckskins covering his slim, muscular legs.
Adam toddled back to Gordon and his mother. He had trouble holding onto both his treasures, so Gordon put the pouch around Adam’s neck and hung the bracelet on the leather thong along with the pouch. Adam grasped at a flower, and came away with only part of the head. As he dropped it in his mother’s lap, he fell heavily backwards. He quickly got up and ran away, stumbling every few feet.
“You were so much like Adam when you were his age, but of course on a smaller scale. You had that funny streaked blond hair even then, curling around your face. You smiled a lot then and, like Adam, you thought no one was a stranger. I think I adopted you from the moment I saw you, when you were about twenty minutes old. The day I came home and you were gone, I cried until I was sick. It was a week before I could eat again.”
“Gordon… I … this is so new to me. The impression I have of the time I was in New Mexico is so different. My mother hardly mentioned it except to tell of the miseries she suffered.”
“I know a lot about your mother, too. No”—he held Morgan’s arm—“Adam needs to fall hundreds of times before he learns to walk. Let him be… We always assumed those letters were from you. The ones after Uncle Charley’s death were from some man, some agency. I guess they were always from him.”
“What letters?”
“About a year after you left, the letters started coming, one a month, very regularly. I never read one, but Uncle Charley told us in detail what was in them. It’s funny to realize you knew nothing about us and we knew so much about you. I grew up hearing about little Morgan every day. Remember the time you fell off your horse when you were eight and cut your leg? When the doctor sewed it, you screamed so loudly that the groom had trouble quieting the horses in the stables.”
“Yes, I remember,” Morgan said quietly. It was still impossible to believe that this man could know so much about her.
“Pa and Uncle Charley and I always looked forward to those letters, and the sketches. My favorite is of you taking your first jump, when you were about seven. Your little hat was mostly over your face.”
“This is too much! My mother never told me about my father, nothing good, anyway. I grew up with little thought of him. Trahern House and my mother were my whole world. And then the will! I hated my father then!”
“Yes,” Gordon looked away, embarrassed. “I tried to talk him out of that, but Uncle Charley said, ‘That damned woman’s made her hate men. If I don’t do something, she’ll rot in that big old house and dry up just like her mother did.’ I suggested he stipulate that you come out here, but leave out the part about your having to get married. But he said that as soon as word was out about the will, lots of young men would be swarming around you. That’s what he wanted for his pretty little daughter. He knew your mother had made you afraid of people, especially men. He just wanted them to come to you so you could choose any one you wanted. It wasn’t meant to be an ordeal.”
Morgan stared ahead at the little stream, lost in her thoughts. She had thought her father wanted to punish her for some reason. He had only wanted to help her. She had been afraid of men, afraid of everything, and he had known all about it. He had prevented her from retreating. He had cared about her, cared very much.
Gordon jumped to catch Adam as he nearly tumbled into the icy water. “There now, why don’t you stay up here?” Unperturbed, Adam sauntered after more flowers.
“I was really surprised when you asked Seth Colter to marry you.”
Morgan’s head jerked up. “How do you know that?”
“Possessing a superior intelligence, I deduced it. After Uncle Charley died, the letters kept coming for a while. I was furious when I read what your Uncle Horace had planned. I was very nearly on my way to Kentucky when the last letter came and said that you had married Colter. I wrote a letter to one of Uncle Charley’s old friends in Kentucky and got all the gossip, about how Colter was such a prize catch and he had eloped after meeting you only once. I knew that anyone who had been reared as you had did not captivate ‘prize catches’ in one evening. Besides, the agent had already told me how Horace dressed you. So I put two and two together. And I was right!”
“Yes, you were right. For a while it worked out well … Adam!” Morgan jumped to her feet, but Gordon lithely ran after Adam and again caught him before he fell into the stream. Gordon tossed him into the air and Adam laughed loudly. “I’m Gordon. Can you say Gordon?”
“Or.”
“Good enough. ‘Or’ it is.”
“Eat. Eat.” Adam squealed.
“Good idea.”
“Gordon, this is all too much for me to take in. You’ve upset all the beliefs I’ve had about my father, even my mother.”
Gordon smiled. “Well, then, let’s take Adam’s advice and eat. I’d like to sample some of the cooking you learned from Jean-Paul. He cost Uncle Charley a fortune.”
“My father paid for Jean-Paul?”
“Of course. You don’t think your mother would have let a man into her house without a great deal of persuasion, do you?”
Morgan spread out the picnic lunch. “There’s something I’ve never understood. Why did my mother’s father leave Trahern House to his son-in-law rather than t
o his daughter?”
Gordon put a tiny quiche in his mouth, handed one to Adam, and laughed. “Old Morgan Trahern was a smart one. He knew how spoiled your mother was. He left everything to his son-in-law because he knew his daughter was too headstrong to control that much property. He also hoped to keep her from leaving your father. But Uncle Charley was too soft. He could have made her stay with him in New Mexico. He tried to get her to leave you with him, but—” Gordon filled his mouth again and shrugged. “—Uncle Charley never pushed anyone.”
Morgan’s eyes flashed at him. “Except me. He used his will to push me to do what he wanted.”
Gordon smiled at her. His eyes sparkled. “Still angry, huh? Well, it looks like it came out all right.” He rubbed his cheek on Adam’s head.
They finished their lunch quickly. “Excellent, Morgan. Jean-Paul was worth it.”
“Merci beaucoup, monsieur.”
“Now! Let’s go back to the house.”
“Gordon, wait.”
“No, I know what you’re going to say. ‘I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickel for a dozen gol-danged Injuns.’ That sound like Jake?”
Morgan had to laugh because Gordon’s imitation of Jake sounded so much like him.
“Watch this.” Quickly, Gordon went to his saddle-bags and got a bar of soap. Within minutes, he had soaped and rinsed his hair in the stream and then returned to his horse for clothing. He stepped behind some trees and a few minutes later emerged in a light blue cotton shirt and darker blue cotton pants. He looked nothing at all like an Indian.
He smiled at Morgan’s astonishment. “Sky Eyes, the Comanche warrior, has changed into Gordon Matthews, ordinary but rather attractive white man.”
“‘Sky Eyes’?”
Gordon looked at her fiercely, then rolled his eyes. “Sapphire-blue eyes that captivate women in four states, and you didn’t even notice.”
Morgan laughed, the first good laugh she’d had in a long time.
“That’s better. Now you look more like the little girl who used to ride with me on my pony.”