Linda Castle (16 page)

A wide-brimmed hat popped inside the tent. Rain dripped off a yellow slicker and made a puddle at the doorway. “I thought this tent looked like yours.” He stood half-inside, his gaze lingering upon Temple. “Mr. Parish.”

“Mr. Morgan.” Temple’s greeting was clipped and gruff. “What brings you out here?”

“I was goin’ to ask you and Miss Constance the same thing.” Holt slid his gaze back to her. “Are you all right, miss?”

“Yes, quite all right.” It was a lie but she could not put into words what Temple’s kiss had done to her.

“Why did you move your camp, miss? Is there anything wrong?” Holt’s eyes went to Temple in a gesture almost of silent accusation. “Do you need help with—anythin?”

The two men visibly bristled as they stared at each other in silent challenge. “I’m fine. Why don’t you come inside before we
are all soaked through.” Constance felt Temple’s disapproving gaze upon her. “What on earth brings you out in this storm, Mr. Morgan?”

“I thought you were goin’ to call me Holt.” He allowed the tent flap to fall back into place behind him as he stepped inside, shrugged off his wet slicker and dropped it near the door of the tent.

“Isn’t it a bit wet to be out riding, Holt?”

He smiled and the deep grooves appeared in his cheeks. “Ranch work don’t care about sunshine, miss. I had some things to check at the mine. On my way back I spotted the new camp and thought I should come and see if you were havin’ any trouble.”

“That was very considerate of you, Holt.” Constance felt the heat rising in her cheeks. “But I am fine.”

“What made you move, miss?”

“The digging appears to be more promising in this area so I asked Mr. Hughes to help me relocate my camp.” She saw Temple’s eyes narrow at the mention of the dig.

“I see.” Holt raised one brow and gazed at Temple. “And you, Mr. Parish? I only saw one tent when I was ridin’ in. I guess that means yours is still in the same place. How did you come to be out here so far from your camp?” Holt’s question was spiced with a touch of sarcasm.

Temple’s fingers curled into a fist, but he tamped down his anger. He couldn’t very well start a brawl in the middle of Connie’s tent, but how he wanted to wipe that smug look off Holt Morgan’s face. And just who the hell did Holt think he was, staring at Connie as if he had a right to look at her in that sort of way?

“Not that it is any of your business, but I also decided
the digging might be better at this end of the cut. I didn’t have a chance to move anything but my bedroll before the storm hit.”

“I’ve seen city slickers do worse, I guess.” A slow smile crept across Holt’s face. “Well, now that I know you’ve moved closer to the Flyin’ B ranch house Miss Constance, I’ll be sure to stop by more often.”

Something hot and bitter gripped Temple. He absolutely refused to think what he was feeling could be jealousy. “Just how close?”

“About two miles or so.” Holt grinned. “I expect I’ll be seein’ you several times a week.”

“That would be delightful, Holt,” Connie said. “Wouldn’t it, Temple?”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll be looking forward to it,” Temple grumbled.

“The way you act, Parish, a body would think you were tryin’ to keep this purty little filly all to yourself,” Holt said with a teasing grin.

Temple took a half step toward the interloper but suddenly Connie was in front of him. She placed her palms flat on his chest. Liquid fire blossomed around her fingers. Temple found himself glancing down at her hands just to see if his shirt was ablaze beneath them. Her touch caused his flesh to tingle with excitement.

“Temple.” She looked up at him. When their eyes met a strange kind of unspoken communication passed between them.

“All right, Connie, I’ll be nice. For you.” Temple allowed himself the pleasure of casting one more menacing look at Holt, but all it did was make the Montana cowboy chuckle.

“Blast and stuff!” Livingstone shrieked as Constance removed her hands.

Holt’s attention shifted from her to Livingstone. Temple found himself appreciating the black chatterbox a bit more than he had before.

“I never, a talking bird.”

“A gift from my father. I would offer you some refreshment, Holt, but because of the rain…” Connie apologized.

Holt rose from Livingstone’s cage. “Well, if Mr. Parish can stand getting a little wet, we can stretch out a canvas on a couple of poles in front of your tent to make a coverin’. I bet we can get a fire goin’.”

“I think I can tolerate a little moisture, for Connie’s sake.” Temple sneered.

“Didn’t you bring a slicker?” Holt asked as he nodded toward his.

“No,” Temple snapped.

“Wait. I have one in my trunk.” Connie scurried to the trunk and once again a flurry of bright cloth filled the tent. When she found the slicker, she stood. “Here you go, Temple.”

He tried to avoid her hands when he took it from her in case the same blazing fire accompanied her touch again. When he was covered with the bright yellow slicker he turned to Holt.

“Glad to see you’re ready, Parish.”

“I could’ve managed without it. Only sugar melts in the rain.” Temple winked at Connie and waited to see if she would grace him with another smile but Holt gave a derisive snort that drew her attention.

Holt pulled on his Yellow slicker. “Maybe in the city, but out here one or two other things melt in the rain and they sure ain’t sugar.” He disappeared out
the tent flap with his laughter ringing over the rat-atat of rain.

“Now, Temple, remember you said you would be nice…” Connie reminded.

“Yes, I know,” Temple grumbled. Thinking about what Holt had interrupted made it difficult even to be civil.

“Be nice, be nice, be nice,” Livingstone intoned while Temple stepped into the rain.

T
emple wrapped his fingers around the cup of coffee and glared at Holt Morgan over the campfire. A gust of wind blew under the canvas causing the flames to gutter before they rallied and flared blue-white.

“It will smoke like the dickens, but at least you can dry out a bit.” Holt handed Constance a cup of fresh hot coffee.

“How very ingenious of you.” She accepted the brew with a shy smile.

It made Temple even more grumpy to see that Holt had won Connie’s gratitude and the smile he had been working so hard to see.

“Sorry about the slicker, miss.” Holt apologized but he didn’t look very contrite.

“Oh, think nothing of it. I am confused as to how it got ruined though.” Connie glanced at Temple as if she were waiting for him to explain.

“Dangedest thing I ever saw—Mr. Parish seemed to get all tangled up in the canvas and rope somehow. Slicker ripped to shreds when he went sailing down that ravine.” Holt chuckled and took a sip of coffee.

“How soon will you be heading to your ranch?”
Temple stared over the fire and inquired bluntly, refusing to be baited any further.

Mock seriousness creased Holt’s face. “I was thinking about leaving soon—but if you’d like me to hang around…” He shrugged and gestured helpless compliance with his hands.

“Don’t stay on my account.” Temple knew Holt was having fun with him, but try as he might, he wasn’t able to join in the joke. “I’m sure you have important things to attend to.”

“Right now this diggin’ is about the most important thing going on at the Flyin’ B. Ma is really countin’ on this to get our bid for statehood some attention. In fact, I can bring over some of the boys to help you dig. There won’t be much we can do until the mud dries up a bit.”

Temple and Connie exchanged glances. Having more diggers was always a tempting offer.

“As long as we both have equal help, I guess that would be fair,” Connie said diplomatically before Temple could refuse.

Temple was pained to admit it, but Holt Morgan had just done him a favor. He had been agonizing about Connie doing her own digging—torn by his need to succeed and his unshakable habit of protecting her.

“Good. Tomorrow I’ll send some of my men. And I’ll send over a couple of cases of dynamite from the mine—that’ll hurry things along.”

“No!”
Both Temple and Constance shouted in chorus. They looked at each other in wide-eyed amazement.

“Your offer is very generous, but dynamite is too destructive,” Constance said tactfully.

“Do you feel that way too, Parish?” Holt was frowning.

“Yes. Dynamite destroys more than it reveals. Digging by hand is slower, but in the end it’s the best way.” Temple took another sip of coffee. He stared into the dark liquid. He was not happy to find out he and Connie agreed on the controversial issue.

“There are some experts who don’t concur with my opinion, of course.” Connie’s brows knit together above her spectacles as if she were thinking the same thing.

Temple snorted. “Most of the professors at Dandridge University have disagreed with me about one thing or another, but in this case they are supported by just about all of the scientific community,” Temple quipped bitterly.

“But you two agree,” Holt observed while a small frown creased his brow.

“So it seems.” Temple rubbed his palm over his day’s growth of beard. To learn that Connie supported his opinion was just another chip in his crumbling resolve.

Holt suddenly stood up. He tossed the contents of his cup out into the drizzling rain. “I’m headed home. The rain will probably peter out during the night. I’ll send over a few men in the morning. Then you two can get back to your competition.” Holt flashed Temple one last taunting grin. “And I will be sure to have somebody pack up your camp and bring it over tomorrow. Knowing you are bedded down on the hard earth here at Miss Constance’s camp would keep me from sleeping.”

Temple raised one brow. “I just bet it would.”

Holt Morgan laughed heartily while he shrugged
back into his rain slicker. Temple wondered why the men in this state always seemed to be laughing at some private joke, as Holt mounted his horse and disappeared into the gloomy dampness.

Temple thrashed inside the borrowed blankets and heavy canvas that covered his bedroll. He dreamed of snow falling silently over a frozen city. In the dream he struggled to find Connie, but she was lost in the white wasteland. Lost and alone just as he was without her…

The jingling of harness brought his eyes open with a start. He levered himself up and peered into the fog that shrouded him. The sky, what he could see of it, was a thick gray blanket.

“Is that Mr. Hughes?” Connie stuck her head out of her tent opening and looked down at Temple.

She was drowsy and her thick hair tumbled around her slender neck and shoulders in charming disarray. When she yawned, Temple had the overpowering urge to pull her into the cocoon of his bedroll.

He looked away, focusing instead on the sound of the approaching wagon. Squinting he tried to make out the shape in the foggy morning.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell, but I think it might be the men Holt promised.”

“Oh, how wonderful.” Connie yawned once again before she disappeared inside her tent.

Temple climbed out of his blankets and pulled on his boots. During the long cold night he had come to a sobering realization. Unless he won the endowment and Montague’s support he would continue to be nothing more than an upstart without consequence or worth to the scientific community. No matter how he felt
about her, he could not allow C.H.’s daughter to stand between him and that goal. The only hope he had for any kind of future was to defeat her without mercy.

As he greeted the new day, he made sure his thoughts were only on claiming the prize.

Thaddeus Ball leaned back and rubbed his palms over his tired eyes. The table in the main branch of the New York City Public Library was strewed with old newspapers and yellowed clippings. He had read every word the
Sentinel
and the other New York papers had printed about Temple Parish over the years. Thaddeus leaned forward once again and trained his gaze at the man’s lean face staring back at him from a blurry photograph.

Thaddeus had learned Temple’s preference on everything from women to wine, even knew the brand of suspenders he bought, but he still lacked the knowledge of one important detail. And it had to be the key to solving the puzzle of Temple Parish’s life.

It was apparent that Temple had never had any kind of monetary windfall after leaving Professor Cadwallender’s home. Rumors abounded about the missing artifacts and relics. Speculation and innuendo about a billionaire collector who had enticed the young man to steal had shown up repeatedly in each news account for years, but there was nothing solid. And there never had been.

If Temple Parish had pilfered artifacts and sold them to some nameless collector, then he had chosen to live like a pauper.

“And that I do not believe,” Thaddeus grumbled.

Why would any man struggle as hard as Temple had done, to build a career and a reputation in this
new science, if he had sold relics for a small fortune ten years ago?

There had to be a logical explanation. “And I think C. H. Cadwallender has the missing piece of this puzzle.”

He skimmed over the page in front of him once again. Faded pictures of the magnificent models of dinosaurs that had once stood in Central Park caught his eye. Temple Parish had been taken into Cadwallender’s home at about the same time they were destroyed.

“Coincidence?” Thaddeus wondered aloud. Or was there some connection between Temple and the destruction of those models?

Questions layered upon questions while Thaddeus flipped open his pad and began to scribble quick dates and notes from the articles in front of him. He grinned while he wrote and spun a fantasy about his own future. It would be quite a feather in his cap if he solved the mystery of Temple Parish and Dandridge’s tenyear-old unsolved larceny in one fell swoop.

“So, Temple Parish, it would seem both our futures rest upon me digging.up your past,” Thaddeus told the aging photograph as he gathered the clippings and stuffed them back into the dusty box.

Temple stood up straight on the small promontory and tried to stretch the kinks from his spine. He had been bent over, grubbing in the wet soil, all morning and he felt the weight of every grain of sand he had moved. He glanced upward at the sun still trying to find its way from behind the layer of clouds.

He scowled at the bank, silently cursing the rain. Suddenly a flash of movement caught his eye. One of
the men Holt had sent over stood up and waved his hat in the air while shouting a wild Indian war whoop.

“Have you found something?” Temple loped to his location and skidded down into the muddy, slick depression beside the cowboy.

“You said to give a holler, ifn I found sumpen,” the cowboy drawled.

Temple squinted at the dusty-gray earth while excitement gripped him like a tight band. He forced himself to be calm, shoving aside all hopes, refusing to allow himself to be pulled into false confidence like the last time.

He ran his fingers over the rough limestone surface and brushed away the thin layer of dirt that had fallen back into the hole while he and the cowboy were talking. The tips of his fingers tingled and he closed his eyes to utter a silent prayer of thanks.

It was bone. But was it old bone?

He knelt closer and used the tip of his finger to clean the edges. One eye socket, large as a melon, took shape while he brushed and blew aside dirt from the ages. With more haste than he should have risked, Temple scooped up more dirt until he could see the sinuses and yet the huge skull did not end. It tapered forward and as he cleared away enough dirt to examine the upper jaw, a constriction formed in his chest.

The skull was magnificent. Rows of long recurved teeth lined the upper jaw. Temple felt the grin break across his face while he wiped away the remaining mud to reveal the entire nose.

The skull was huge. From eye socket to tip it was well over four feet long—and Temple had never seen anything like it in his life.

“Is this it?” the cowboy asked.

“This is it,” he whispered more to himself than the anxious cowboys who stood in a half circle around him. “You are looking at the head of a dinosaur.”

“Would you look at them teeth?” one man whispered in awe. “I’d rather dance with a griz than meet somethin’ with teeth like that.”

Temple rubbed his palm down his face and tried to calm his growing exhilaration. “Now the real work begins. We need to free it from the limestone and dirt—and pray there is more. Be careful and call me if you have any questions.” Temple took one step up out of the hole, then he turned back grinning from ear to ear. “This is what we’ve been looking for—this is the prize.”

Constance heard the low rumble of voices from Temple’s area. She could almost feel the zeal emanating from them. The feeling was solid and unmistakable. Nobody needed to tell her what it meant, she already knew.

Temple had found something.

A sharp current of envy and joy swirled through her. The competitor inside her was disappointed that she had not made a find first. Whatever had been unearthed at Temple’s camp had the normally stoic cattle drovers thrumming with excitement.

She looked away, feeling a bit ashamed of her streak of jealousy. Perhaps she was overtired. Maybe a cup of tea would bring her back into sorts.

Constance started to climb out of the muck she and the cowboys had created in the muddy earth. Her boot slid in the sludge and she stumbled to her knees, hampered by the voluminous skirt of her utility dress. Constance had been too shy to wear her father’s pilfered
trousers around the cowboys, but now annoyance nipped at her while she struggled to regain her footing. The more she tried to climb out, the more the sodden fabric pulled her down. She was puffing with exertion, ready to call out for help, when she saw something in a shallow puddle of muddy water.

It was the outline of a large vertebra.

Constance dropped to her hands and knees. The more water her clothing absorbed, the more of the vertebra was exposed. She glanced up to find several cowboys staring at her with stricken expressions.

“Right here, we need to begin digging right here”. She didn’t care that her clothing was filthy and soaked with silt and water. All she cared about at the particular moment was freeing the bone from its cocoon of earth and stone.

By midday the sun had barely managed to unfold itself from the bank of clouds, but the attempt to remove the bone from its prison had not been quite so successful.

Constance had worked steadily shoulder to shoulder with the shocked men. She was down on her knees with a brush in her hand, when she felt the rhythmic tattoo of galloping horses telegraph through the soggy ground. She looked up to see two mud-spattered riders pulling their mounts to a stop.

“I told Holt we’d find you digging.” Bessie Morgan chuckled when she dismounted the strawberry roan.

“How nice to see you, Bessie—Holt,” Constance wiped at her face. The cold clammy feel of mud on her face made her glance down at her grime-caked hands. “You’ll have to forgive me, I look a sight.”

“Nonsense, I’ve seen dirt on a woman before. We
brought you lunch. Holt told me that you probably wouldn’t take time to feed yourself—I see he was right. I can’t have two famous scientists droppin’ over dead on my ranch, now can I?” Bessie’s smile was warm as summer sunshine.

Holt swung out of the saddle. He climbed down into the gully until he was no more than a foot from Constance. Without warning he wrapped his hands around her waist and began to lift her from the damp hole.

“Have you found somethin”? Bessie squinted at the mound of earth Constance and the men had removed from the hole.

“Yes. It’s a little early, but I think it is wonderful.” Constance heard the excitement in her voice. She cast a surreptitious glance at Temple’s camp. He was only a few feet away and scowling at her without restraint.