The Enchanted Land (26 page)

“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 chuckled 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 to 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.”

“Or. Or.” Adam tugged at Gordon’s pant leg, wanting to be picked up.

They all rode back to the house slowly, Adam riding in front of Gordon. Morgan had too many thoughts for further talk, so Adam and Gordon kept up a conversation between themselves.

Jake was waiting for them, close to the house, with a
rifle. Morgan felt that, as much as anything, he didn’t like another man so near Adam.

“This is Gordon Matthews. He and I are partners in the ownership of the Three Crowns. It’s…”

“The Three Crowns! Glad to meet you, Mr. Matthews. I’ve heard about the Three Crowns since I first come to New Mexico. You say Morgan’s your partner?”

Jake warmly clasped Gordon’s hand. As they walked together toward the house, Gordon turned and caught Morgan’s eye. He put two fingers to the back of his head and wiggled them, like feathers. Then he winked at Morgan before returning to the conversation with Jake.

Morgan laughed at Gordon’s play. She felt better than she had for a long time. She hurried after Adam, who was trying to catch up to the two men.

Supper that night was fun. Adam decided he wanted his chair moved next to Gordon’s. “Gor,” he learned to say.

Morgan sat quietly with her own thoughts through the others’ conversation.

“How many head of cattle you run on a place like that?” Jake asked. “What about Injuns? Any trouble with them?”

Morgan felt Gordon’s silent laughter at the question. After supper, the two of them walked outside together, Adam toddling behind.

“I can feel the difference between the altitudes of Santa Fe and of Albuquerque.” As Adam’s steps slowed, Gordon picked up the boy, who snuggled against his shoulder.

“Come live with me, Morgan.”

She didn’t move, but stared ahead.

“I know something’s wrong here. No one mentions Seth’s name, yet I feel he’s still alive.”

“Yes, he is,” Morgan whispered.

“Whatever’s happened is your business. I don’t need to know, but I do know that your father would have wanted you to come to the ranch. I know I’d like for you to come. I’m a bachelor. My father’s people are in the East. My mother’s people are Comanches and, in spite of my games, I know little about them.

“There are too many memories for you here, Morgan. Come back with me. I’ll make a home for you and Adam.” He stroked the hair of the sleeping child.