Neal wished he hadn’t made the comparison. He recalled the rubble left behind when the ranch tributaries had dried up. Among the litter was a gun that convicted a killer of murder.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Todd stared incredulously at Trevor Waverling. “What do you mean Neal Gordon has decided not to drill at Windy Bluff! Ever?” It was Thursday morning, July twelfth, the day after Nathan’s return to Dallas from Fort Worth.
“That’s what he said,” Nathan answered for his father. “Mr. Gordon doesn’t care what the photographs show. His daughter believes a dinosaur burial ground is under that stretch of land, and that’s good enough for him.”
“But excavation could take years!” Todd shrieked.
“That’s what I understand.”
Todd pressed a balled fist to his forehead. “My God! The man’s giving up a fortune!”
“Todd, sit down before you have a stroke,” Trevor ordered. “Your neck veins are standing out. This isn’t the end of the world. We’ll find other places to drill.”
Todd plopped, stunned, into a chair before Trevor Waverling’s desk. Nathan occupied the other beside him. “I can’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it,” he said. “You bear me out on this, Nathan. Neal Gordon was burning for us to set up a rig on that property, regardless of his daughter’s find.”
“It sure seemed so,” Nathan agreed.
The trace of crow’s-feet around Todd’s eyes tightened. An idea had suddenly crawled into his head. “You didn’t by any chance talk Mr. Gordon out of it, did you, Nathan—you with your holy feeling for God’s green earth?”
Trevor creaked back in his desk chair and laced his hands over his silk vest, a subtle movement that Todd perceived could be a warning he’d stepped too close to the tail of his cub.
“No, Todd, I did not,” Nathan said without taking offense. “His respect for his daughter’s feelings did that. And you seem convinced her photographs will not bear out her theory. Why is that?”
“I told you. I saw the skull.” Todd let out an anguished sigh. “I would hope you could understand my feelings as well, Nathan. You must know how disappointed I am.” He turned imploringly to his employer. “There’s oil at Windy Bluff, Mr. Waverling, barrels and barrels of it, I just know it, and to think that it all stays underground because of a bunch of ancient fossils that mean absolutely nothing to anybody but a handful of musty old paleontologists.”
“And Samantha Gordon,” Nathan said quietly.
Todd’s eyes flashed. “She’s going to get married, for heaven’s sakes! To Sloan Singleton, breaker of women’s hearts. Married to him, mistress of a couple of ranches the size of two small countries ought to be enough for any woman. Samantha had her chance at the field of archeology when she turned down an opportunity to study at Lasell Seminary in Massachusetts.”
“You know this because you were in school together?” Trevor asked.
Todd nodded, his lips clamped in bitter chagrin. “The headmaster called me to his office to show me her acceptance letter with the hope I could talk some sense into her. One of only ten applicants was accepted. Samantha was a brilliant student and could have been a brilliant scientist. I was shocked when I learned she’d elected to stay home and help her old fart of a father run the ranch. She’s his only heir.”
“You believe her choice a waste,” Trevor stated.
“I damn sure do, and I told her so. Now she’s gone and thrown a rock into my plans for my career!”
Trevor drew back to his desk and reached for a sheet of paper, a signal that he’d had enough of this particular discussion. “Your career has suffered a temporary setback, Todd, that’s all. I know you’re disappointed, but study this report from Daniel and decide whether you think the Gulf Coast property worth a look.”
Todd took the report reluctantly. “Damn it to hell,” he said, “I could strangle Samantha.”
“Oh, come on, take heart,” Trevor said. “If those photographs come back with conclusive proof that Miss Gordon is mistaken, her father’s practical side may take over, and we’ll be hearing from him before we make a major move. I understand that camera is supposed to arrive by tomorrow.”
“Dad may be right about Mr. Gordon, Todd,” Nathan said. “You don’t know which way the wind blows with him.” He had described to his father the scene of the rancher riding pell-mell up to Windy Bluff upset that he had not been informed of Nathan’s arrival, fired up as a steam engine to drill no matter the desecration to the supposed “cemetery of old bones.” Then within minutes, he had done a 180-degree turn and was totally against drilling on what he called “sacred ground.”
Todd asked, “What… if the camera doesn’t arrive?”
Nathan squinted at Todd. “Why wouldn’t it?”
Todd hiked his shoulders. “I don’t know. Post offices lose things.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Todd,” Trevor said, his tone closing the meeting. “Okay, fellas, get out of here. I’ve got work to do. Nathan, remember you and I are going to the gym after work today.”
“Looking forward to it,” his son said.
Nathan walked next door to Jeanne’s office, repository of the firm’s accounting books. The secretary looked up at his entrance and smiled coyly. “Have you come to propose?”
Nathan grinned. He liked Jeanne. She was three years older than he and had unabashedly let it be known that if Nathan was interested, so was she. Nathan knew it to be only banter and good-humored flirtation. If he took her seriously, the fun would be over, and they both preferred the fun. “When I can afford the ring,” he said and took a seat before her desk. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Ask away, handsome one.”
“On the QT.”
Jeanne put her hand over her heart. “Always.”
“I’d like to see Todd Baker’s expense sheet, one for Saturday, June sixteenth.”
Jeanne’s brow lifted. “May I ask why?”
“It would be a waste of breath.”
“Well, in that case…” Jeanne swiveled her chair to a wooden cabinet behind her that contained drawers of lateral files. Recently acquired, the upright structure was her personal bailiwick, and she ruled over it with great pride and appreciation for an employer who recognized the importance of time-saving devices. Until the production of the vertical filing system in 1898, which gave ready access to specific information, business papers were kept in envelopes and stored in pigeonholes. Jeanne pulled open the filing drawer, flipped through the manila folders, another innovation, and within seconds extracted one with Todd Baker’s name written on the tab. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Nathan, “but I prefer it not leave this office.”
“Your wish is my command,” Nathan said.
He took the folder to a table with better light to peruse its contents. Waverling Tools did not balk at paying expenses in conduction of company business, even if associated with after-hours personal pleasure or objectives. It was a joke between Nathan and Jeanne that no item was too small for Todd to list for reimbursement. “He’d record a stick of gum if he chewed it on the job!” Jeanne once told him with a laugh.
Nathan found the information he expected on an expense sheet dated Saturday, June sixteenth, the date Todd went by train to check out Samantha’s relic. Attached were his departure and return tickets, since on that occasion he’d brought back news and evidence of the near certainty of oil on Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad. Samantha had said she drove Todd to the train station in Fort Worth to catch the two o’clock train back to Dallas, but his return ticket was stamped eight o’clock that night. It was as Nathan suspected: The company’s geologist had ample time to return to Windy Bluff to dig up and dispose of the fossil supporting Samantha Gordon’s claim. Nathan noted one expense item missing. There was no postage receipt for the camera Todd claimed he mailed on June eighteenth.
In the Worth’s restaurant, Samantha took a menu from the waitress and finished her point to Sloan having to do with the questi
on Nathan had put to her on his departure Tuesday. Sloan had met her in town this morning, two days later, to keep an appointment with a photographer to take their engagement picture for release to local newspapers.
“Why would Nathan ask me the time of the skull’s disappearance if he didn’t suspect Todd of making away with it?” she asked. “The more I put two and two together, I’m convinced Todd is responsible for its disappearance. At the train station, he was in a hurry to see me off to Mother’s. I believe he somehow made it back to Windy Bluff and stole the skull to remove evidence that would interfere with his claim.”
“But you will have your photographs as proof,” Sloan reminded her.
“That’s just it, Sloan!” Samantha said, her voice desperate. “What if Todd destroyed my camera, too?”
A muscle twitched along Sloan’s jawline, a vexation caused by unease—or guilt—he’d suffered since childhood. He kept his eyes on the menu. He wouldn’t put it past Todd to have gotten rid of that camera. He’d been a fool not to have anticipated it when Samantha told him of his offer to mail it from Dallas. The boy’s applecart had been upset, though, by Neal’s sudden decision not to lease Windy Bluff for drilling regardless of what Samantha’s photographs showed. Sloan should feel relieved as now both the skull and the photographs were irrelevant, but he did not. Samantha needed physical evidence to drag a team of archeologists to Windy Bluff.
Now was the time to say he had the skull and own up to how it had come into his possession. Samantha would believe him when he explained he’d seized it from Todd and said nothing to her because he’d thought it might widen the gulf between her and Neal. But would she wonder why he hadn’t returned it to her earlier to spare her so much undue worry, especially after she and her father had ironed out their differences? Could it be that Sloan had kept the fossil to clear the way for Waverling Tools to drill just over the fence from the Triple S? Would she wonder if he had known that her photographs would not show up? Had he and Todd come to some sort of agreement the day of their tête-à-tête across the fence, and had a guilty conscience prompted him to return it to her now? Samantha knew of the Triple S’s tenuous financial situation and what an oil well would mean to its bottom line. And then there was the suddenness with which he’d dropped Anne and proposed to her right after the discussion with Todd.
Would Samantha believe him capable of such deceit?
“You’re in deep thought behind that menu, Sloan,” Samantha said. “It can’t be that interesting. Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”
“I’ve been listening,” Sloan said. He gazed across the table at her. Samantha had never looked more beautiful. The photographer had been enraptured, going beyond the call of his usual professional fussiness to put together a summer background to show off her yellow lawn dress with a lace bodice that defined her feminine curves. Sloan was dressed in a new tailor-made suit, but he might as well have been a blank canvas for all the notice the photographer had taken of him.
Someday, we’ll be able to take pictures in color, the man had said, obviously bemoaning that he could not capture on film the glorious color of Samantha’s hair.
Sloan laid down the menu. “Actually, I’m lusting not after food, but you,” he said. “We’re in a hotel, and you’re so beautiful. I wish I could take you upstairs right this minute.”
Samantha blushed. “What a delicious thought. Hold it for twenty-four more days.”
“Why twenty-four more days?”
Awed surprise filled Samantha’s face. “Oh, Sloan… you’re not proposing… ?”
“We’re going to be married, Sam. Why wait?”
“But where? There’s no privacy at either of our ranches, certainly not at Mother’s.”
“There’s a horse auction in Dallas Saturday after next, the twenty-first. Isn’t Las Tres Lomas in the market for new horse flesh? The auction ads feature a wide choice.”
“Umm,” Samantha said, toying coyly with the ribbon at the throat of her dress. “Is there anything at the sale that might interest you?”
“There are a couple of quarter horses I’d like to take a look at.”
“What if Daddy decides he’d like to join the party?”
“And leave the ranch unattended with half his staff gone? Not if I know your father.”
Pressure mounted under Samantha’s rib cage. “How can our families not suspect us of… being tempted to do what we’re going to do if we’re alone together in Dallas?”
“That’s easy. We won’t tell them. Why do my sisters need to be informed that you’re attending the auction? Your parents certainly don’t have to be told of my plans to go. But I’m guessing it wouldn’t matter to either family if they learned we were together, especially not to my sisters. They couldn’t care a mule’s ear what we do as long as we get married. They’re probably wondering how we’ve stayed apart so long, and as for your parents… I doubt they’d have much to say about what they themselves were guilty of before they married, if guilty is the word for it. We can meet at the train station on Friday and take the two o’clock into Dallas, then go to the Strathmore. I’ll reserve two rooms, yours under Sam Gordon. We’re just two ranchers from Fort Worth in Dallas for the horse auction. What could be more innocent?”
“The rooms on the same floor, of course.”
“Adjoining.”
Samantha’s eyes danced. “Oh, Sloan, I… don’t know what to say.”
“Yes would be a good option.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Are you sure, Samantha?”
“Sloan Singleton! I’ve lusted after you since you strutted around in your first pair of long breeches. Of course I’m sure!” Samantha said.
Sloan stretched out his hand on the table, and she placed hers in its palm. “Then I must make sure you’re not disappointed,” he said.
He would wait for a more appropriate time to return the skull, Sloan decided. There might never be a need for it to come to light. A recent discovery of fossils in Utah had drawn the attention of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History by word of the finder alone. Samantha might be as fortunate. He loved the girl across the table with all his heart, in childhood his best friend, now to become his lover and wife, and he would risk nothing that would cause her to doubt it.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Daniel Lane walked out of the Morris Keaton Brownie camera shop in downtown Dallas, a smug grin revealing a sharp bicuspid. He had not known if the owner, recommended as an expert in rescuing damaged film, but who sold and worked with a simpler and less expensive camera, would be able to salvage the roll in Samantha Gordon’s Kodak. Daniel had thought he might have to mail it to the film company in New York and wait a month for the results, but the expert had lived up to his reputation.
“Not very interesting material,” the man had said when he turned over the 2¼-by-3¼-inch photographs. “They’re just various shots of a dried-up animal head and one of a skinny fellow on a big steer.”
“Well, now, their interest depends on who’s looking at them,” Daniel drawled. “Thanks very much. You’ve been a lifesaver.”
That phrase wasn’t exactly true, Daniel thought as he exited the shop. In Todd’s case, these pictures could be a life destroyer, a career breaker at the very least. Todd was to have mailed Samantha Gordon’s Kodak to New York. Instead he’d thrown it into the Trinity River, the reason obvious. The pictures could substantiate the girl’s claim of a prehistoric burial ground in the area Todd was hot to drill. His and Sloan Singleton’s motive to keep quiet about the skull was the same, which meant that they could be in cahoots. All along, Daniel had wondered how Sloan had ended up in possession of the skull. He wasn’t the sort to go digging around for fossils even to please Samantha. Todd must have given it to him. The geologist learned about Samantha’s discovery the day he was photographed on the steer at Windy Bluff. Daniel couldn’t figure when he and Sloan conspired, but he had proposed to Samantha the day after Billie June saw him wag the ar
tifact into the kitchen, right after the date listed on these photographs.
Well… well… well…
The Gordon girl’s father had backed off from leasing his land for oil drilling, a decision that made the theft of the skull pointless and scuttled Todd’s first attempt to bring in a gusher. From gossip around the office, it wouldn’t matter if the photographs told a tale one way or the other; the rancher would have no drilling on what his daughter believed to be hallowed ground, and the photographs seemed to bear out her conviction. Daniel was no archeologist, but the shots of the fossil remnant from every angle sure looked as if it could be the partial skull of a dinosaur.
He must find out if Sloan Singleton still possessed the skull, and that discovery might come tomorrow, Saturday. Billie June was taking the first train out of Fort Worth in the morning to be in Dallas by breakfast time. At first when she’d informed him of her plan to move to Dallas on the pretense of studying music at the Sarah B. Morrison Academy, he’d panicked. His job was going great. He had a comfortable apartment, a growing wardrobe, a reliable horse, and a two-seater trap he’d bought used and refurbished to look like new. He’d been able to stash away some sizable money, thanks to his increase in salary and his 10 percent share of the sales of his lathe invention. He’d deliberately moved slowly, living frugally, getting his bearings at Waverling Tools, studying investing, and learning his way around Dallas before spreading his wings too soon. When he was more firmly settled, he’d branch out into a grander manner of living, a style that included women.