From the roof, she saw that it was indeed her father jogging along on his paint kicking up a trail of dust a half mile away. There had been no rain since he’d been gone, and the summer was bearing down hard on the summer grass. She waved, and to her relief and joy, he took off his hat and waved it back at her, kicking his horse into a faster pace. Samantha ran back down the stairs and out of the house to the edge of the compound where several ranch hands who had also spotted him had gathered to welcome him home. She waited for her father’s first reaction at seeing her. By that, she would judge if the time away had shortened or lengthened the distance between them.
“Daddy!” she cried and ran to him when she saw his face break into a large smile. Neal was out of the saddle before she reached him, his arms open wide.
“My girl!” he said, hugging her tightly. “How I’ve missed you.”
In that moment Samantha knew that everything was all right between them. Somehow, some way, her father had come to an understanding out there on the trail. He’d resolved his pain and injury, forgiven her betrayal, and emerged from his deep, dark well. His whole being made clear that no more need be said on the matter, and he would not welcome a discussion of it. Samantha would let it lie as well. What was the point of restoking a fire Neal Gordon preferred to burn down. She, too, with Sloan’s help, had come to a certain understanding and acceptance. Her temporary itch to learn the origin of her birth was only natural to an adopted child. Her curiosity carried no longing, and she had no reason to feel guilty of betraying the adoptive parents who had loved and raised her.
These adjustments in attitudes seemed to hang in the air between them as arm in arm they strolled to the house. Samantha laughed and said, “We have prepared the fatted calf for you, Daddy—literally! Welcome home. Sloan has missed you, too. I’ve sent one of the maids to invite him and his sisters over for supper. He has something to ask you.”
“Are you sure?” Trevor Waverling had asked on the Sunday Todd had gone to his boss’s residence to tell him of his discovery.
Well, hell no, Todd couldn’t be absolutely sure. No geologist could. The petroleum industry was still in its infancy. Other than a few chemical analysis procedures, laboratory and field equipment to test for the existence of energy-producing sources had yet to be developed. The bible of his profession, the First Book of Geology, hadn’t even been published until 1897, and the text had been limited to features like soils, water and air, volcanoes, the shape of sea and land. There was very little published material about the geologic branch that dealt with the origin, occurrence, and exploitation of oil and gas. Firsthand reports of drillers, wildcatters, and sheer eccentrics who for one reason or the other believed in signs that indicated oil was under their feet were all the guidelines for a geologist to go on.
So, no, Todd had said to Mr. Waverling that Sunday, he couldn’t be sure, but he was sure enough to risk his boss’s thirty thousand dollars on proving that he was.
“Okay,” Trevor had said and looked at his son, Nathan, who’d listened quietly to Todd’s report. “You ready to get your feet wet in making your first land-lease deal?” Nathan had nodded, and the three of them had set to the discussion of the price to offer for drilling rights.
Todd had been ecstatic, but he cautioned that they’d have to wait until Neal Gordon had returned from his cattle camp in Cooke County. They did not want to deal with his daughter, who would turn them down before Nathan even got his offer out of his mouth. Why? they’d wanted to know, and Todd had explained that Samantha Gordon had found the frontal portion of a fossilized animal’s head that she thought might be of archeological importance, but in his opinion it wasn’t. He did not tell them of the pictures she’d taken with her Kodak that he’d promised to mail. The camera was now stowed in a desk drawer in Todd’s office. If Samantha never received back her camera and film from the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York… well, things often got lost in the U.S. Mail.
It was now Wednesday, June 27, an eternity since that Saturday. Todd stared at the note Agatha Beardsley had scribbled and left on his desk. Your wife called while you were out to tell you that somebody named Samantha had asked her to come to Fort Worth Friday to help her plan her wedding now that her father—Samantha’s father, that is—is back at the ranch. She said you were to mull it over and give her an answer by supper time.
With an excited holler, Todd punched the air with his fist. He had wondered how he would learn that Neal Gordon was back from his cattle camp. He couldn’t believe his luck. Both his wife and Samantha would be in Fort Worth and out of his hair when he and Nathan approached Neal Gordon about leasing his land for oil drilling—that is, if the rancher agreed to see them. By now, Samantha would have told Neal about the discovery and disappearance of her dinosaur skull. Todd believed that Old Man Gordon and his wife always felt some guilt in their daughter’s decision to forgo her opportunity to attend Lasell Seminary for Young Women. Would that guilt sway him to indulge her argument against drilling?
It had already been arranged that as soon as word came of Neal’s return, Trevor’s connection in Fort Worth would carry a message to the rancher explaining why representatives of Waverling Tools wished to see him and propose an appointment. Todd would suggest to Trevor that their man contact Neal today to make the appointment for Friday. If the rancher wasn’t interested, the sooner they knew, the better. Todd didn’t think he could bear too many more days of waiting.
And waiting he’d been doing. Every day he expected to hear from a furious Samantha accusing him of theft and betrayal. Not for any reason would he then set foot on Las Tres Lomas. Neal Gordon would kill him if his boss didn’t first. When Todd finally did hear from her, it was through Ginny. “I had a telegram from Samantha today,” his wife said Monday when he walked into their apartment after work. “I can’t believe it, Todd.”
Her shocked expression told him everything, and every muscle in his body had tensed for the blow to come. “Can’t believe what?” he’d said, pretending a bad cough to cover his terror.
“Samantha and Sloan are to be married. They became engaged last Sunday.”
His jaw had dropped. He’d felt faint from relief. Holy Jesus! What had happened to Anne Rutherford? Had Sloan taken Todd’s parting shot to heart and thrown aside a banker’s daughter for a potential oil heiress? As an extra bonus, had Sloan considered that marriage to Samantha would eventually put him in control of the largest ranch in Texas when the Triple S and Las Tres Lomas were combined?
Todd would never have taken Sloan Singleton for that kind of man, but then you never knew a member of the male gender until a carrot was dangled before his nose. Todd should have heard from an angry and betrayed Samantha by now, but since he had not, he could safely assume Sloan had not told her of his skullduggery—an appropriate word, he thought wryly—and he didn’t have to worry now about that skull showing up in her hands. The rancher might even prove an ally on the side of Waverling Tools.
Yes indeedy, it had been a very tense few days, Todd thought, but the waiting was over. With a smile, he walked down the hall to his boss’s office.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Daniel Lane cupped Billie June’s breast and took its nipple into his mouth. Billie June moaned in pleasure and moved her hips to receive her lover’s ultimate expression of passion. They had been meeting in her hotel room and making love every night since Billie June’s arrival in Beaumont to spend a week, ostensibly with her boarding school friend. Her classmate had no idea that her former roommate was in town.
Billie June hadn’t had the slightest notion of how to get in touch with Daniel once she arrived in Beaumont, a small coastal town built above the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico, but such hurdles had never deterred the marching and picket-waving champion of women’s and animal rights from her course. “Where might I find the best hotel in Beaumont?” she’d inquired of the station master.
“Only one we got is the Seaway,” he said.
“That’s wha
t I thought,” Billie June said. She turned to a woman and fellow passenger whose husband had come to pick her up in his buckboard. “I wonder if I might impose on you good people to drop me off at the Seaway Hotel?” she asked.
At the hotel, she glanced at the names on the register as she signed hers. “Oh, I see that a family friend, Daniel Lane, is staying here,” she mused to the clerk. “Wonder what he’s doing in town?”
“Don’t rightly know, but when he arrived, he asked for directions to Spindletop. A couple of fools think oil is under the salt dome out there. It’s become a sort of tourist spectacle.”
“I believe I’d like to see it myself. How do I get there?”
The clerk told her she could ask Wally, the cabbie, the only one in town, to take her to the Big Hill, another name for Spindletop, among the nicer ones it was called. Make sure he didn’t take her the long way to collect a bigger fare, he warned her.
Billie June, wearing a new summer frock whose pigeon-breasted bodice and slim waist showed off her ample bust to its best advantage, climbed aboard a rickety trap driven by a knavish-looking individual she wouldn’t have trusted as far as she could have thrown his wretched horse. Later, she might have to have a chat with Wally about the upkeep of the poor creature.
“The Big Hill, also known as Spindletop, please,” she told the cabbie, “and don’t even think of divesting me of more money than the ride is worth. Believe me, if you try, you’ll be divested of a great deal more than an overcharged fare. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wally said.
Billie June, who’d heard of mysterious disappearances of women alone in strange cities, said, “To be assured we are, the proprietor of the hotel, his clerk, and my maid”—she was not accompanied by one—“know where I have gone and who took me there. If a mishap occurs to me, you’ll be the one to hang. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wally said.
Four miles later, they arrived at a barren, marshy point that Wally declared was Big Hill, also known as Spindletop. To Billie June it did not look like a hill at all but a fifteen-foot mound of skimpy grass topped with a crown of white sand. Billie June could see several men in knee boots at its base, one of whom she recognized as Daniel Lane. Billie June climbed down from the trap. “Stay here and wait for me,” she ordered.
“You goin’ down there, ma’am? Among all them menfolk? Ain’t no way to get there except on them logs they got laid down for a walk.”
“I’ll do just fine,” Billie June said. “Wait here.”
Conversation among the men suspended as they grew cognizant of Billie June holding on to her wide-brimmed hat and picking up her skirt to navigate the haphazard array of log planks set down to mark the path up to the site of interest. Daniel Lane, his mouth agape, shouldered his way past the men to greet her at the boardwalk’s end.
“My God, Billie June, what are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to see you, Daniel. Actually, I’m supposed to be seeing my school roommate. She lives here. That’s what I told Sloan, anyway, but I really came to spend time with you—alone,” Billie June said, her meaning imparted by a direct gaze and ducked chin. “I’m staying at the Seaway in Beaumont, same as you. Coincidences never cease to amaze me. Room 213 at the end of the hall. It’s very quiet. Perhaps you’d like to drop by tonight.” She nodded at the staring men, smiled at Daniel, who was speechless, and turned to pick her way back down to where Wally was watching from his cab.
“To the hotel, Wally, if you please,” Billie June commanded once she was seated.
“Yes, ma’am,” Wally said.
Daniel arrived at the Seaway Hotel at eight o’clock that night. Billie June was dressed in a robe over nothing underneath, her mouse-brown hair brushed from its pompadour and splayed about her shoulders. “Have you had your supper?” she asked.
“I don’t want supper,” Daniel said. “I want you.”
Tonight was their last night together before Billie June would take the train back to Fort Worth in the morning. “My brother is getting married,” she said, sprawled in euphoric exhaustion beside Daniel.
“To that do-gooder banker’s daughter?”
“No. To Samantha Gordon.”
Daniel rose up on an elbow to stare at her in surprise. “Samantha Gordon! I thought he was engaged to Anne Rutherford.”
Billie June played with his chest hair. “Well, they were not exactly engaged, but everybody expected them to marry.”
“My God! What happened?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but Millie May and I are pleased that it did. We love Samantha, and we can’t stand Anne.” Billie June laughed. “It happened the day after Sloan wagged home something that looked like a dried animal’s skull, I imagine to give to Samantha. That may have done the trick. She’s always been fascinated by fossils.”
“What kind of an animal?”
“I just got a brief look at it, so I couldn’t say. Sloan whisked it under his arm and took it up to his room without a word.”
Interested now, Daniel propped up on his pillows, always alert for any morsel having to do with Mr. High-and-Mighty Big Britches, and reached for a cigarette. One of the indulgences his salary from Waverling Tools afforded was machine-rolled cigarettes, generally considered effete among smokers. Cigars and pipes should be a man’s choice was the general opinion. Daniel liked neither and dared anyone to call him unmanly for his preference. Those who’d dared when he rolled his own had regretted it. He especially enjoyed a cigarette after having sex. “Why be so secretive about it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he meant it as a surprise for Samantha and thought I might spill the beans. I’m not good at keeping secrets.” She grinned. “Unless it’s you and me. Anyway, the next day, Sunday, he ended things with Anne and proposed to Samantha.”
“Really?” Daniel said, filing away that information. He knew of Samantha Gordon’s interest in paleontology and smothered a smirk, thinking maybe Sloan had proposed with a fossil instead of a wedding ring. He put his unlit cigarette aside for later. Billie June had moved her hand down to his groin.
“Of course I don’t mind you going to Fort Worth to spend a few days with Samantha and her mother,” Todd said to Ginny Friday morning at the station. “You take as much time as you need to help Samantha plan her wedding.”
“I’m so thrilled that she asked me to be her matron of honor,” Ginny said. “I would have thought that privilege would go to Millie May or Billie June, but I can see the diplomacy in asking me instead. How could Sam have chosen one sister over another?”
Ginny’s chatter barely filtered through Todd’s tense thoughts. He wondered how thrilled his wife would be over her selection as matron of honor when Samantha discovered he had engineered the possible ravage of her suspected sauropod field. Upset, puzzled, Samantha had written to him in a letter received Wednesday about the disappearance of her fossilized find, which confirmed that Sloan had not ratted on him nor shown her the confiscated skull. She had no idea how it could have disappeared, she wrote. It wasn’t the kind of thing a predator or the ranch dogs would have been interested in, and she’d found no tracks.
Maybe Saved was the culprit, he’d written back. Maybe he’d butted the thing across the pasture and destroyed it.
Todd’s euphoria of Wednesday had been diluted by his anxiety over how he could stay innocently out of the picture with Samantha never the wiser about his hand in the matter, but he saw no escape. Samantha was a very smart cookie. She knew of his burning desire to prove himself a great geologist. When she learned that he was responsible for the company’s oil interest in the area of Windy Bluff, especially when her camera and photographs did not arrive from New York, it wouldn’t take her a minute to solve the mystery of the missing skull. The only explanation was that her good friend and fellow classmate had returned to the ranch to destroy her evidence of a possible archeological phenomenon. Todd would deny the charge, of course, and defend his soil samples by saying that as a ge
ologist and employee of Waverling Tools, he’d felt it his job to report his suspicions of oil deposits on Las Tres Lomas to his boss. But he was no fool, either. To back up his claim of innocence, he’d taken measures to ensure it.
Ginny was taking the morning T&P to Fort Worth. She did not know that her husband, along with Nathan, would follow an hour later, but they would return the same day while Ginny planned to remain through the weekend. Neal had apparently not informed Samantha of his coming visitors, or she would have mentioned the meeting to Ginny. Todd had a feeling that the rancher, aware of his daughter’s views on drilling for oil on grazing land, would have kept that information and the purpose of the visit to himself, so Todd’s involvement would remain secret a little longer.
Removing—stealing—that archeological find was the most god-awful sin Todd had ever committed, and he’d bet it was for Sloan Singleton, too. The rancher’s transgression was more traitorous, though. Todd was betraying a friendship. Sloan was deceiving the girl he planned to marry. Samantha would naturally have shared the news of her discovery and its mysterious disappearance with Sloan. What would she think of Sloan’s marriage proposal if she should learn of her fiancé’s accidental meeting with Todd and the gist of their discussion at Windy Bluff the afternoon before he asked her to marry him the next day? If the man was as smart as Todd credited him, he’d get rid of that skull. In any case, Todd cringed at the idea that he was now tongue-in-groove in a conspiracy with Sloan Singleton, which was a little like a mongoose and a snake in the same cage. All Todd could do to protect himself was to make sure he kept his distance from Samantha’s betrothed.