Page 72 of Calder Country

Taking advantage of the mild fall weather, she’d washed the windows. She’d also had one of the hired men haul the rugs outside to the clothesline. Ruby had spent an afternoon beating them until her arms ached. Then they were carried back inside to be laid on the floors she’d mopped.

The work kept Ruby occupied. She liked being busy. But her thoughts dwelt constantly on Mason, especially when she lay in his bed, in the darkness of his boyhood room. Was he still in prison? Was he safe? Could she trust the federal agents to get him out when the time came, or would they break their word and turn on him the way they’d turned on her?

One incident worried her, although not in the way she worried about Mason. She’d been outside, beating the rugs, when an airplane—a Jenny—had flown over the house, coming in so low that its wheels almost skimmed the trees. The roar of the engine had rattled the windows.

These days, airplanes were becoming a common sight. Ruby hadn’t been unduly alarmed—until she saw the identification number stenciled on the fuselage. The plane was the one she had flown for Colucci.

Panic had shot through her body. Ruby had willed the fear away as the plane flew south over the airstrip and the cave, then rose, banked, and headed back toward Miles City and the farm.

Colucci must have hired a new pilot, she reasoned. It made sense that they would be checking out the delivery routes. Maybe they wanted to see if the site was still active or if any cargo had been left behind. Now that Mason had been re-arrested, they would have no reason to come back.

Putting her worries aside, she’d done her best to focus on the tasks at hand. She’d cleaned and polished the big coal stove in the kitchen and scrubbed the floor and fixtures in the bathroom. Then, after consulting with Amelia, she’d turned her efforts to the parlor.

The floors had been mopped and the rugs laid back into place, but the rest of the room hadn’t been touched. The shabby furniture, although it needed replacing, would probably have to stay, especially Amelia’s high-backed armchair with its worn brocade upholstery. But the walls and ceiling were in want of a thorough cleaning.

Ruby started early with a stepladder from the tool shed and a pile of cotton rags she’d gathered the day before. The plastered ceiling needed wiping to remove the coal dust and cobwebs. While the ladder was in place, she cleaned and polished the electric chandelier. The room was looking brighter already. But the papered walls would probably take hours.

Amelia, dressed and coiffed for the day, came into the parlor, followed by the loyal Brutus. Ruby had covered the chair with a sheet while she cleaned the ceiling, then uncovered it again. Like a queen ascending her throne, Amelia took her seat and waited for Sidney to bring her breakfast of tea and toast.

“So you’re working in here today, are you?” she asked Ruby.

“That’s what we decided.” Ruby was perched partway up the ladder. “I was about to start on the walls.”

“You’ll want to be very careful,” Amelia said. “That wallpaper is old, but it was made in Italy before the war and cost a great deal of money. Damage it, and you’ll be out the door.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Ruby said. “First, I’ll need to take down those pictures on the walls. I’ll clean the glass and polish the frames before I hang them up again.”

“That will be fine.” Amelia sipped the tea her butler had brought. “Leave the nails in place. We don’t want to hammer new holes in the walls, do we?”

“I’ll be very careful.”

Framed photographs of different sizes and ages decorated the parlor walls. Ruby counted sixteen of them. She found it odd that whoever had hung them over the years hadn’t hesitated to hammer nails into the costly Italian wallpaper. But that wasn’t her problem.

Taking care, she began lifting each picture off its nail and laying it on a sheet she’d spread on the floor. The wallpaper she uncovered behind each one was almost pristine, a lovely white and gold damask. The framed pictures, like the wall between them, were grimy with dust. But the photographs, she realized, showed the history of the ranch and the people who’d lived here—including Mason. Ruby wanted to know more. Maybe Amelia would tell her.

“Who’s this?” She held up one of the smaller photographs as she wiped away the dust with a clean cloth. It showed a slender, handsome man in an old-fashioned suit.

Amelia leaned forward, her green eyes squinting slightly. “That’s my father, Loren Hollister. He bought this land and built this house. It was one of the few choice parcels Benteen Calder didn’t get his greedy hands on first. My father was a gentleman, not a roughneck like Benteen. He raised fine cattle and blooded horses.”

“And your mother? Is her picture here, too?”

“No. My parents separated when I was a little girl. My mother never came here. I stayed in the city with her until I grew into my teens. Oh, I was a handful—there, that picture with the silver frame. That’s me at sixteen.”

Ruby picked up the photograph and wiped off the dust. The young woman in the picture, wearing ecru lace and holding a fan, was gazing at the camera with a roguish smile on her face. She was stunning. “What a beauty you were!” Ruby exclaimed.

Amelia chuckled. “That was a long time ago. I had plenty of beaux, but I was a wild and willful little thing. When my mother couldn’t control me, she sent me to my father with orders to find me a husband who could keep me in line. He found me Joe Dollarhide.” She pointed to a larger picture. “Over there.”

Ruby cleaned off the wedding photo—the bride wearing a veil and a radiant smile, the groom tall, dark and rugged, with a restless look about him, as if he were anxious to be done with the wedding and get back to building his kingdom.

These were Mason’s parents. She could see parts of him in each of them. His mother’s green eyes and chestnut hair. His father’s athletic build and chiseled features. And what about Mason’s reckless, passionate nature—had that come from the young Amelia?

“I’d have burned that picture a long time ago, but I wanted Mason to see where he came from. I loved Joe, but it wasn’t meant to be. He didn’t want to work for my father, even if it meant inheriting this ranch as my husband. He wanted his own land, his own kingdom on the bluff. And when his first love, Sarah, showed up with their son, that finished it for us. Our divorce gave me sole ownership of this ranch. I never married again.”

“So you ran the ranch yourself, all these years.” Ruby dusted off the picture of a woman seated on a tall bay horse. She was strong, confident, and beautiful. A rifle in a scabbard was slung from the saddle. One gloved hand held a coiled whip. It was a younger Amelia.

“I did, with hired help, of course,” she said. “But why should that matter to you? Why should you even care about our family and how it fell apart? Is it because of Mason?” Her eyes drilled into Ruby. “Do you love him?”

Ruby’s silence answered the question.

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