Twin of Ice Read online

  They rode west, past the Taggert estate, toward the tail of the Rocky Mountains that ran along one side of Chandler. They travelled across flat land covered with fierce little chamisa plants and on until they reached the hills.

  Kane led the way up the piñon-dotted hills, up higher until they reached pines and rock formations. He weaved his horse through the spruce and fir to halt before a breathtaking view of Chandler far below them.

  “How did you find this place?” she whispered.

  “When you play, you ride bicycles and drink tea with other people. I come up here.” As he dismounted, he nodded his head toward a steep rise above them. “I gotta cabin up there, but it’s pretty rough goin’, not for ladies.”

  He began unloading food from his saddlebags as Houston dismounted by herself.

  As they ate, they sat on the ground and talked.

  “How did you make your money?” she asked.

  “When Fenton kicked me out, I went to California. Pam had given me $500 and I used it to buy a played-out gold mine. I was able to hack out a couple thousand dollars’ worth of the gold, and I used the money to buy land in San Francisco. Two days after I bought the land I sold it for half again what I paid for it. I bought more land, sold it, bought a nail factory, sold it, bought a little railroad line . . . You get the idea.”

  “Did you know that Pamela Fenton is a widow now?” Houston asked as if she weren’t interested in his answer.

  “Since when?”

  “I believe her husband died a few months ago.”

  Kane stared at Houston for several long minutes, as if seeing her for the first time. “It’s funny how things work out, ain’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If I hadn’t asked you to my house, your sister wouldn’t have gone out with Westfield and you’d be marryin’ him now.”

  She drew in her breath. “And if you’d known Pamela was free, you’d not have asked me to your house. Mr. Taggert, you’re free to break our engagement at any time. If you’d rather have—.”

  “You ain’t gonna start that again, are you?” he said, rising. “Why don’t you try sayin’ somethin’ different sometime?”

  Relief flooded Houston as she stood. “I just thought perhaps—.”

  Kane turned and grabbed her against him. “Damned woman, please shut up,” he said as he kissed her.

  Houston obeyed.

  * * *

  Early on Tuesday, Willie informed Houston that Miss Lavinia LaRue would meet her by the bandstand in Fenton Park at nine that morning.

  Houston was met by a garishly dressed woman, short, dark, with an enormous bosom. Wonder how much is paddin’, Houston thought.

  “Good morning, Miss LaRue. It was good of you to meet me so early.”

  “It’s late for me. I ain’t been to bed yet. So you’re the one Kane’s marryin’. I told ’im he could buy hisself a lady if he wanted one.”

  Houston gave her an icy look.

  “Oh, all right,” Lavinia said. “You didn’t expect me to hug you, did you? After all, you are takin’ away a source of income to me.”

  “Is that an Mr. Taggert is to you?”

  “He’s a good lover, if that’s what you mean but, truth to tell, he scares me. I never know what he wants from me. Acts like he can’t bear me one minute, the next he can’t get enough.”

  Houston knew she’d felt the same way but said nothing.

  “What’d you wanta see me about?”

  “I thought perhaps you could tell me something about him. I’ve really known him a very short time.”

  “You mean what he likes in bed?”

  “No! Certainly not.” She didn’t like to think of Kane and another woman. “As a man. What can you tell me about the man?”

  Lavinia stepped away, her back to Houston. “You know, one time I did think of somethin’, but I know it was silly.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Most of the time he acts like he don’t care, but one time he saw that friend of his, Edan, out the window walkin’ with a woman, and Kane asked if I liked him. If I liked him, Kane, I mean. He didn’t wait for me to answer ’fore he left, but I thought then, he’s a man no one’s ever loved. ’Course that couldn’t be true, a man with all his money must have lots of women in love with him.”

  “Do you love him? Not his money, but him. If he had no money—.”

  “If he had no money, I’d not get near ’im. I told you, he scares me.”

  Out of her pocketbook, Houston pulled a check. “The bank president has instructions to cash this only if he sees that you’ve purchased a train ticket to another state.”

  Lavinia took the check. “I’m takin’ this because I wanta leave this two-bit town. But no money could buy me if I didn’t wanta leave.”

  “Of course not. Again, Miss LaRue, thank you.”

  * * *

  On Tuesday afternoon, just when Houston was getting tired of yet more wedding plans, Leora Vaughn and her fiancé, Jim Michaelson, stopped by the Chandler house on a tandem bicycle. They asked if Houston could possibly persuade Kane to rent another double bike and ride in the park with them.

  After Houston had changed, borrowing Blair’s Turkish pants, she rode on the handlebars up the hill to Kane’s house.

  “Goddamn Gould!” They could hear Kane’s shouts through the open window.

  “I’ll ask him,” Houston said.

  “Do you think he’d mind if we waited inside?” Leora asked, her eyes greedily roaming over the front of Kane’s house.

  “I think he’d be pleased.”

  Houston never knew how Kane was going to greet her, but this time he seemed glad of the diversion. He was a little hesitant about the bicycle, since he’d never ridden one before, but he mastered it in minutes—then began challenging the other men in the park to races.

  By late afternoon, when they returned the rented bicycles, Kane was saying he was going to buy a bicycle manufacturing plant. “Maybe I’ll not make any money off it,” he said, “but sometimes I like to gamble. Like recently I bought stock in a company that makes a drink called Coca-Cola. I’ll probably lose ever’thing.” He shrugged. “You can’t always win.”

  In the evening they went to a taffy pull at Sarah Oakley’s house.

  Kane was the oldest person in the group, but all the games and diversions were new to him, and he seemed to have the most fun. He always seemed a little shocked that these young society people accepted him.

  And it wasn’t because he was easy to accept. He was outspoken, intolerant of any ideas he didn’t agree with, and always aggressive. He told Jim Michaelson he was a fool to be content to run his father’s store, that he should expand, get some business down from Denver if he insisted on staying in Chandler. He told Sarah Oakley she ought to get Houston to help her buy dresses because the ones she wore weren’t as pretty as they should be. He got taffy on Mrs. Oakley’s draperies and the next day had delivered to her fifty yards of silk velvet from Denver. He bent a wheel of a rented bicycle, then yelled for twenty minutes at the owner for having inferior merchandise. He told Cordelia Farrell she could get a better man than John Silverman, and that all John wanted was somebody to take care of his three motherless children.

  Houston prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her when Kane invited everyone to his house for dinner on Wednesday night. “I ain’t got any furniture downstairs,” he said, “so we’ll do it like Houston done for me one night—a rug, pillows to lay down on, candles, everything.”

  When three women dissolved into giggles at the look of pain and disbelief on Houston’s red face, Kane said, “Did I miss somethin’?”

  And Houston soon learned that everything connected with Kane involved an argument. He called it “discussin’” but it was more a verbal wrestle. On Tuesday evening, she asked him to sign some blank cards, beside her signature, which would be included in the little boxes of cake to be given away at the wedding.

  “Like hell I will!” he said.