As he waited for her, he recalled the conversation he had had with his father, just before he left.
“You are making a big mistake by running away,” his father had told him. “You will not be able to escape your own devils.”
“I can try,” Tom said.
“Nobody is holding it against you, Tom. You did what you thought was right.”
“I did what I thought was right? I can’t even justify what I did to myself by saying that I did what I thought was right. My wife and my child are dead, and I killed them.”
“It isn’t as if you murdered them.”
“It isn’t? How is it different? Martha and the child are still dead.”
“So you are going to run away. Is that your answer?”
“Yes, that is my answer. I need some time to sort things out. Please try to understand that.”
His father changed tactics, from challenging to being persuasive. “Tom, all I am asking is that you think this through. You have more potential than any student I ever taught, and I’m not saying that just because you are my son. I am saying it because it is true. Do you have any idea of the good that someone like you—a person with your skills, your talent, your education, can do?”
“I’ve seen the evil I can do when I confuse skill, talent, and education with Godlike attributes.”
Tom’s father sighed in resignation. “What time does your train leave?”
“At nine o’clock tonight.”
Tom’s father walked over to the bar and poured a glass of Scotch. He held it out toward Tom and, catching a beam of light from the electric chandelier, the amber fluid emitted a burst of gold as if the glass had captured the sun itself. “Then at least have this last, parting drink with me.”
Tom waited until his father had poured his own glass, then the two men drank to each other.
“Will you write to let me know where you are and how you are doing?”
“Not for a while,” Tom said. “I just need to be away from everything that could remind me of what happened. And that means even my family.”
Surprisingly, Tom’s father smiled. “In a way, I not only don’t blame you, I envy you. I almost ran off myself, once. I was going to sail the seven seas. But my father got wind of it, and talked me out of it. I guess I wasn’t as strong as you are.”
“Nonsense, you are as strong,” Tom said. “You just never had the same devils chasing you that I do.”
Tom glanced over at the big clock. It showed fifteen minutes of nine. Shouldn’t she be here by now? Had she changed her mind and already checked out? He walked over to the desk.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Whitman, may I help you?” the hotel desk clerk asked.
“Rebecca Conyers,” Tom said. “Has she checked out yet?”
The clerk checked his book. “No, sir. She is still in the hotel. Would you like me to summon her?”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Tom said. “I’ll just wait here in the lobby for her.”
“Very good, sir.”
Huh, Tom thought. And here it was my belief that Westerners went to bed and rose with the sun.
As soon he thought that, though, he realized that she had gone to bed quite late, having arrived on the train in the middle of the night. At least his initial fear that she had left without meeting him was alleviated.
When Rebecca awakened that morning she was already having second thoughts about what she had done. Had she actually told a perfect stranger that she could talk her father into hiring him? And, even if she could, should she? She had arisen much later than she normally did, and now, as she dressed, she found herself hoping that he had grown tired of waiting for her and left, without accepting her offer.
However, when she went downstairs she saw him sitting in a chair in the lobby. His suitcase was on the floor beside him, but he wasn’t wearing the suit he had been wearing the night before. Instead, he was wearing denims and a blue cotton shirt. If anything, she found him even more attractive, for the denims and cotton shirt took some of the polish off and gave him a more rugged appearance.
Although Tom had gotten an idea last night that the young woman was pretty, it had been too dark to get a really good look at her. In the full light of morning though, he saw her for what she was: tall and willowy, with long, auburn hair and green eyes shaded by long, dark eyelashes. She was wearing a dress that showed off her gentle curves to perfection.
“Mr. Whitman,” she said. “How wonderful it is to see you this morning. I see you have decided to take me up on my offer.”
“Yes, I have. You were serious about it, weren’t you?” Tom asked. “I mean, you weren’t just making small talk?”
Rebecca paused for a moment before responding. If she wanted to back out of her offer, now was the time to do it.
“I was very serious,” she heard herself saying, as if purposely speaking before she could change her mind.
“Do we have time? If so, I would like to take you to breakfast,” Tom said.
Rebecca glanced over at the clock. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “And I would be glad to have breakfast with you. But you must let me pay for my own.”
“Only if it makes you feel more comfortable,” Tom said.
“Let’s sit by the window,” Rebecca suggested when they stepped into the hotel restaurant. “That way we will be able to see when Mo comes for me.”
“Mo?”
“He is one of my father’s cowboys,” Rebecca said. “He is quite young.”
Rebecca had a poached egg, toast, and coffee for breakfast. Tom had two waffles, four fried eggs, a rather substantial slab of ham, and more biscuits than Rebecca could count.
“My, you must have been hungry,” Rebecca said after Tom pushed away a clean plate. “When is the last time you ate?”
“Not since supper last night,” Tom said, as if that explained his prodigious appetite. “Oh, I hope I haven’t embarrassed you.”
“Not at all,” Rebecca said. “Tell me about yourself, Mr. Whitman. Where are you from? What were you doing before you decided to come West?”
“Not much to tell. I’m from Boston,” Tom said. “I’m more interested in you telling me about the ranch.”
“Oh, there’s Mo,” Rebecca said. “I won’t have to tell you about the ranch, we’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Tom picked up both his suitcase and Rebecca’s, then followed her out to the buckboard.
“Hello, Mo,” Rebecca greeted.
Mo was a slender five feet nine, with brown eyes and dark hair which he wore long and straight.
“Hello, Miss Rebecca,” Mo said with a broad smile. “It’s good to see you back home again. Ever’one at the ranch missed you. Did you have a good visit?”
“Oh, I did indeed,” Rebecca answered.
Seeing Tom standing there with the two suitcases, Mo indicated the back of the buckboard. “You can just put them there,” he said. Then to Rebecca. “Uh, Miss Rebecca you got a coin? I come into town with no money at all.”
“A coin?”
Mo nodded toward Tom. “Yes ma’am, a nickel or a dime of somethin’ on account of him carrying your luggage and all.”
“Oh, we don’t need to tip him, Mo. His name is Tom, and he’s with me. He’ll be comin’ out to the ranch with us.”
“He’s with you? Good Lord, Miss Rebecca, you didn’t go to Marshall and get yourself married up or somethin’, did you?” Mo asked.
Rebecca laughed out loud. “No, it’s nothing like that,” she said.