Hillary came to put an arm about me. "That's my girl."

I still felt surprised. I hadn't thought that Hillary was really in this fight. He had seemed a little too indifferent to Jon's injuries, and I didn't want to play dramatic games.

Caleb's words cut through our rally round the flag. "You are talking nonsense, all of you. You are young and inexperienced, Laurie, and this is becoming much too dangerous."

"Dangerous enough to call in the police," I said.

Before he could answer, the phone rang, startling us all.

"Answer it, please, Laurie," Jon said.

When I spoke into the receiver, Persis' voice sounded in my ear, strong and indignant. "Laurie, is that you? What has happened? Caleb said that Jon was hurt, and then he went rushing off. Tell him to come back here at once and let me know what is happening."

"I'll tell him," I said. "I'd like to see you myself if you'll tell me when I may-" But she had hung up with a click that expressed her displeasure and gave me neither yes nor no, I repeated her message to Caleb, and he shook his head. "I can't leave now. Jon may have to be driven to a hospital, and I would need Hillary's help. You go and talk to her, Laurie. You're the only one we can spare right now."

"All right," I said, "I'll do what I can. But you'd better call her and tell her your plans as soon as they're made."

"Just don't upset her with your nonsense." He gave me a light push toward the door, as though he feared I might change my mind. I glanced at Jon, whose eyes were closed again, and at Gail and Hillary. No one had anything else to offer, so I went outside and whistled for Red. He didn't come, and I thought nothing of it. With all this acreage in which to run loose, my f.e.c.kless dog could have followed his interests in a hundred directions by now. He would come back when it pleased him, and he couldn't get outside the fence.

i78 Over in the direction of Old Desolate the ranch gate that opened on the trail up the valley stood wide, as the riders had left it. I was a city girl, and I didn't even glance in that direction.

XII.

Persis awaited me in a chair by the window that looked out toward the barn and Jon's cabin. When I tapped at the open door she called to me to come in, still sounding vigorous and outraged. If Gail had tried to sedate her, it hadn't worked this time.

"Well?" she said when I stood beside her. "Pull up a chair and sit down. I don't like to be kept in the dark about what's going on. Why isn't Caleb here? Why you?"

I found that she alarmed me less when she was out of bed and not fading away against a pillow.

"I'm glad you've decided not to die," I said. "Getting mad suits you."

The lines between her thick dark eyebrows deepened. "Don't be impertinent, Laurie. Tell me about Jon."

"I'm sorry. Caleb sent me because Jon has been beaten, and may have to be driven to a hospital. Two men on horses came in and jumped him. They got away. I saw them go. But they wore ski masks and I could never identify them."

Someone had helped her into a long wine-colored robe and placed a blanket over her knees. Her hands, weathered by life iSo and marked with veins and freckles, clenched themselves upon the blanket.

"That cruel, terrible man! How is Jon?"

"Gail doesn't think it's serious. She's patching him up. Why do you believe that Ingram was behind this?"

"Because it's what he would do. He's ruthless. I've had Caleb investigate that big operation of his in Kansas. There was plenty that was unscrupulous in the way he got the land, and others always suffered. But he moved just this side of the law, or bought the law when he could. I don't think he'll stop at much to get what he wants."

"But why Jon? Even if Jon wants you to fight him, what can either of you really do?"

"He's making a threat to me through Jon. A promise of what may come if I don't give in."

I could readily believe that. "It's more than the ski resort, isn't it? Is there any real way he can hurt you, force you?"

She stared at me grimly, and I knew she wasn't going to answer. When she spoke again, the strength was draining out of her.

"I don't want anyone to be hurt/' she said.

"You can't give up now. You can't let Ingram get away with this!"

Her eyes came wide open. Those deep-set eyes that could see so much and that still burned with an appet.i.te for life. "I won't give up if you can go on sounding like that. But you could be hurt too, Laurie."

"I think we've got to try."

She held out her hand, and I felt again the force that could still surge through her weakened body.

"Maybe you'll do," she said. "I can still remember you as a little girl. You were curious about everything. I taught you to ride and shoot and play a rope. Your father was always a tenderfoot, with his nose in books, so he and your mother hated what I was doing. Maybe they were right and I was wrong. But I wanted you to grow up to take over the ranch and make it the way it used to be. Now maybe you will."

"Nothing's the way it used to be," I said. "And it won't ever be again. You can't go back to those days you liked best."

"Yes, I can! I go there all the time. Even back to Domino. Whenever things get too much for me here, I go there in my mind. And when I return I don't feel so helpless anymore."

"I haven't ever thought you were helpless."

"They think I am. Not Jon. Caleb and that nurse. I don't need a nurse, but Dr. Burton believes she's necessary. I pack her out of my room whenever I can, and I don't always take those pills she shoves at me."

"Then let's send her away, now that I'm here."

"In a little while. I want to know what she's up to first. I don't trust her, Laurie. I'm not sure why she's here. I'm not sure of the real reason."

I thought of what Belle had said about Gail sneaking over to the hotel, and I began to think I knew. Ingrain's machinations reached everywhere.

Persis turned her attention sharply upon me. "How is Caleb behaving about all this?"

"Caleb?" I was surprised at the question. "He seems his usual self-counseling caution, and all that."

"Has he sent for the police?"

"He hadn't at the time I left, but I suppose he will."

She was shaking her head. "Sometimes he worries me. I understand him very well. All his life he has been a projection of what others thought he should be."

"How do you mean?"

"First, his father. Always criticizing him. Never letting him breathe for himself. Not even trusting Caleb to take over the firm when his father got too old. I haven't given him an easy i82 time either. That's why-" She hesitated, letting the words die away.

"That's why-what?"

"Never mind. I'll tell you one of these days. At least Caleb has his own ways of fighting. Sometimes they can be rather tricky ways of trying to get his own back. But he's been loyal to me for most of his life, and I think he still is. Just don't trust him completely, Laurie. I'm never quite sure anymore what he's up to."

I felt mystified by her words, and not at all rea.s.sured. "He doesn't like me. And I don't trust him at all."

"That was to be expected-his not liking you. But never mind about Caleb now. There's something else I want to talk about. I still don't like the way you went into the Domino house today when I'd asked you not to."

"If I stay, Grandmother, I may not always do exactly what you tell me to."

"I don't suppose you will. Not if you're Morgan and Tremayne. Tell me about the house. Tell me what you felt and thought when you were in it."

I was willing enough to talk about Domino. "I don't know why, but I feel a strong pull to that place. As though something in me belongs there. I loved the house, and I kept trying to imagine Malcolm and Sissy Tremayne living there. And you as a little girl. Jon says you were born there."

"I was. Go on."

"One of the rooms I went into was yours, and I brought this back with me."

I still had the bit of torn wallpaper in my jacket pocket, and I held it up for her to see Away from the house where they belonged, the daisies that had once been bravely gold and lavender looked faded, dingy.

Nevertheless, her eyes brightened. "My mother loved those mountain daisies that grow everywhere in the summer, and she i83 picked that wallpaper from a catalogue. I remember her telling me that she wanted to bring summer back in the long wintertime. Why did you tear that piece off the wall?"

"To remember Domino by. Perhaps to have something from a time that belongs to me too."

She closed her eyes, and I couldn't guess what she was thinking.

"Shall I come back after dinner tonight at the Timberline and tell you about whatever happens? There has to be a confrontation now."

"Yes." She spoke without opening her eyes. "I don't sleep long at a time these nights. So look in on me. I'll want to hear."

I hesitated, and then put the question that was haunting me. "Tell me one more thing, Grandmother. When my father died -did Noah Armand come back here? Caleb says he left the week before. But I wonder if that's true. Did he come back to this house, Grandmother?"

Though she was looking at me again, her eyes were lost in shadow, and I couldn't read their expression. For a little while she was still, though I saw the tightening of her hands on her lap, so that the knuckles grew white against the splotches of brown.

"He came back," she said. "I've cursed him for it a thousand times since-but yes, he did come back."

"To steal your jewels and kill my father?"

"Get me into my bed," she said. "I can't sit up a moment longer. Help me!"

She sounded frantic, and I took away the blanket, drew her to her feet so that she could stand. When I put her walking stick in her hand, she moved more strongly than I would have expected across the room to the bed and sat on the edge of it. With an arm about her shoulders I helped her to lie back upon the pillows and stretch out her legs as I drew the covers over them.

"Run along now, Laurie." She still sounded autocratic, but her voice was weak.

I plumped myself on the edge of her bed. "No! You're not going to do this to me. I think you're a fraud a good part of the time. I think you get what you want by threatening to fall apart. I'll go the minute you answer my question. Did Noah Armand steal those jewels and kill my father?"

She stared at me as though she didn't like what she saw. "You look fragile and easily intimidated, but you're not, are you?"

"I expect I am," I told her. "Most of the time. I just get mad and fight against it when I'm too disgusted with myself."

"All right, I'll tell you. Noah did come back after I sent him away. He came back a week later, but he stole none of my jewels and he didn't kill your father."

"Then why did he come back?"

"To persuade your mother to run away with him. He was a miserable creature with a great attraction for women--until we found him out. The worst thing I ever did was to marry him. I've paid for it ever since."

I gaped at her. "Noah-and my mother?"

"I told you she was beginning to find Richard dull. And Noah never did care about anything but my money. That's what he married. And he knew by then that he wasn't going to get his hands on much of it. I should have known what he was up to with Marybeth, but I thought I was sending him away in time. I thought your mother would come to her senses."

She was telling me something I didn't know how to accept, and I could only wait numbly for her to go on.

"You may as well know it all," she said. "He'd promised to come back for her. She stayed home on some pretext that day when Caleb, Richard, and I went into town on business. You were supposed to be in bed with a cold, but she forgot to check. He was waiting for her in the back parlor, and she left her bags at the foot of the stairs to go tell him she was ready. That's when we all came home, earlier than expected."

I could hardly bear to speak the words, though I knew I must ask the question. "Did my father shoot him?"

"Your father never shot anyone. He hated guns."

"Then what-"

"That's enough!" She cut me off abruptly. "Go away and leave me alone. Go now."

There was such sudden venom in the words that I felt a little sick. The truth looked out of her eyes at that moment. She detested me. I walked away from her without another word and went downstairs to my room.

There I stood looking out toward the long, spreading shadows that sealed the valley in a too early twilight. I tried to empty my mind, to reach a state of nothingness and peace. It wasn't possible.

When I closed my eyes, my mother's face was there. I thought of her often, for she was still part of my life. What she had said and done would always affect me. Yet I'd never really known her Not as a woman in her own right, without relationship to me.

I had considered her nice-looking. After all, the way one's mother looked was right. Neither homely nor beautiful. Yet I had come across an old photograph of her taken in her twenties, just before she'd married my father, and she had seemed strikingly beautiful. But a stranger-not my mother.

Now I was trying to see her as a woman apart from us all. A woman with whom Noah Armand, the younger man who had married my grandmother, might have fallen in love. I could well believe that he had wanted to escape what must have become the tyranny of Morgan House and Persis Morgan. But i86 my mother . . . ! How could she possibly have turned away from my father to a man like Noah Armand?

Yet, in the end, she had stayed with me. My father had died, and she had not run off with Noah, even though his shadow must have hung over her life from then on. Whether he had ever tried to get in touch with her again I would never know.

Without warning my thoughts took a new and shattering turn. Was it possible that Persis Morgan had fired the gun that killed my father? Had she aimed at Noah and killed Richard Morgan instead? If I had witnessed this, then I could understand much of what had happened afterward.

Caleb would have gone along with any story that would protect Persis. In fact, he might have helped concoct such a story. My mother and I would be sent away as quickly as possible, so we couldn't talk. That would have been easy, since I had become desperately ill. And then? Perhaps Marybeth, keeping the terrible secret, had waited helplessly for Noah to come looking for her. Or had what happened left her broken and unable to recover and make a new life for herself? What had Noah done afterward?

For the first time I was beginning to wonder how my mother had felt. Had she loved my father? She had always been reluctant to talk about him to me. If she had come down those stairs with packed bags, she must have been serious in her intent to run away with Noah. Whatever had happened, I had been so deeply and darkly affected that I had become ill and shut it all out of my consciousness ever since.

Standing before the window, I knew one thing. There had been enough of secrecy and of this shutting out of the truth. Tomorrow morning I would go into the back parlor downstairs and I would open that box which had frightened me so badly. I would face whatever had to be faced and let the memories come as they would. Gail would tell if I insisted, but I didn't want to hear it second hand from her. Persis Morgan wouldn't tell me at all if she could help it. So now I would have to do this for myself.

My eyes caught movement in the direction of Jon's cabin as Gail, Caleb, and Hillary came out the door, got into the jeep, and started toward the house. Apparently they weren't taking Jon to a hospital after all, and a sense of relief and grat.i.tude swept through me. With the relaxing of concern for Jon, I could realize how worried I had been.

Now I had time to wonder where Red was. I'd begun to feel lonely without him, missing his excitable presence. In a little while I must get ready for this dinner at the Timberline that I dreaded. But first I would go outside and look for my wandering dog. When I went down, Hillary was nowhere in sight, and I supposed he had returned to the hotel.

Red responded to whistling or calling of his name, and as I walked about I grew increasingly uneasy. Sam was coming in with the horses, so I walked to the barn and asked if he had seen Red.

He shook his head. "Lots to interest dogs around here. If I see him I'll bring him up to the house."

I thought of looking in on Jon, but if Gail had given him something quieting, it was best to let him rest. When I told Sam what had happened, alarm came into his eyes.

"I saw those men ride up the valley, and I wondered about them," he said. "But I was a long way off and I couldn't see who they were. I don't think they were wearing masks by that time. They took the trail to Domino, so they could be anywhere by now. There are a couple of roundabout trails that circle back to Jasper or turn off south. Has Mr. Hawes notified the highway patrol?"

"I suppose he has," I said. "Sam, can you look in' on Jon before you go home? You live in Jasper, don't you?"

"My dad runs the livery stable. Not much doing there now, i88 but Mr. Ingram says he'll have plenty of business for us later on, so we've moved in, and Dad helps around town where he can. Maybe I can stay with Jon tonight. I'll phone the Timberline and get word to my ma. Then I'll finish the ch.o.r.es and move into the cabin."