Moreover, she was perfectly aware that she was entering upon a field of battle where allies were to be won and enemies defeated by what weapons she could muster, and she proposed to leave no one in doubt as to the weapons she brought to the field.
Her dress was of jersey, the new elastic cashmere fabric which offered elegance of shape and finish as well as freedom of movement. Her skirt was much narrower than anything Alamitos had seen, or for that matter, Philadelphia or San Francisco, and the polonaise of flowered material was startling.
Followed by an embarrassed young man in a dark suit who had offered to carry her bags, Lottie crossed the street to the Grand Hotel, pausing a moment to look about her.
Alamitos had little to offer, and that little could all be seen, a few shabby buildings, the cottonwoods for which the town was named, the loafing cowhands.
What startled her was the sky. It was enormous and blue, more blue than any sky she had seen, the vast sweep of it something she could scarcely grasp.
Women stood frozen, watching her, fascinated by clothing they had seen only in Godey”s Lady’s Book or Harper’s Bazaar, and the men were scarcely aware of the dress at all, seeing only the girl.
Lottie Kettleman swept into the lobby of the Grand and the clerk hastily swung the register toward her. “I am Mrs. Kettleman,” she said. “You have a reservation, I believe?”
Within the hour she was sitting opposite Porter Baldwin in the dining room. “Where is he, Port?” she demanded.
“I wish I knew,” Baldwin said irritably. “I have men looking for him, but we’ve had no description. I never saw him, and the telegraph operator at McCartys couldn’t or wouldn’t give us any adequate description.”
“That’s ridiculous! How many men are there in this town? If you ever see Jim Kettleman you won’t forget him.” She paused, debating whether to say what she had in mind, then decided against it.
Apparently nobody but the doctor and Jim knew that he was dying of cancer, and she was not planning to tell, not yet. She was sure the information would be of use.
Without seeming to do so, she studied Port Baldwin. He was a handsome man in his own brutal fashion, but uncouth. She had never cared for him.
“Leave it to me,” she said, “I’ll find him. Or he will find me.”
She sipped her tea. “Port,” she said, almost whispering, “he knows we tried to have him killed.”
Baldwin was astonished. “How could he know?”
“That fool, that gambler you sent to Father. He must have talked before he died. Anyway, Jim had the Pinkertons investigating. I don’t know how much he knows.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He paused. “There’s no reason why he should go back East at all. There are a lot of strange gunmen in town, and there have been half a dozen killings,”
Lottie made no reply. She did not trust Port Baldwin, and whatever was done she meant to do herself.
She listened while Baldwin told her what had happened in Alamitos and of the sudden telegrams sent from McCartys by a man who signed himself Kettleman.
“When I first heard it, I didn’t believe it, then I saw the paper reporting his disappearance.”
“I can’t understand it.” Lottie was puzzled. “He is not the sort of man you pass by in a crowd. He’s almost as tall as you are, and dark.”
Alone in her room she sat down in the rocker near the window and tried to think out her problem. More than three months had now gone by since Jim Kettleman disappeared. Until Epperman had located the doctor and learned his diagnosis, she could think of no reason why he should disappear.
He was a strange man. Somehow he had always defeated her, even in this. She had been frightened when she realized he had discovered her complicity in the attempt to kill him. She had waited, wondering what he would do.
It was not until he had gone that she realized how much it had meant to her to be Mrs. James T. Kettleman. For the first time in her life she was somebody, she had position and money. Before that she had pretended, she had struggled to keep up appearances, she had connived and cheated.
Surprisingly, she discovered Jim Kettleman was a well-liked man. He had been aloof, in business he had been utterly ruthless, but at the same time he had been responsible for many little kindnesses of which she had known nothing.
Why had she come West? She found the question difficult to answer. If she was Jim Kettleman’s widow, and inherited his money, she would be an extremely wealthy woman. But would she inherit? Burroughs had not seen the will, but he assured her that, judging by his actions, Kettleman had no intention of leaving her anything and it was highly probable that she would get little or nothing. In any event, if he disappeared, the estate could not be settled for seven years.
Disturbed, she went to the mirror and began touching up her hair. She always thought best while working on her hair.
Another woman.
The thought came to her as a shock. Somehow, she had not thought of that, for though Jim had admired women he had never shown any inclination to seek their company.
But no. The fact that he was dying was enough reason for him to disappear. What she had to do was find him, care for him, get back in his good graces, and get him to change his will. That was reason enough for coming West.
Yet somehow she was not satisfied with this conclusion. There was something else … something more.
She was standing on the walk by the hotel in the late afternoon when she saw the rider on the big red horse. She was staring at him when Port Baldwin came up behind her.
“There comes that Flint,” he said to her. “He has more lives than a cat, and he has caused me a lot of trouble.”
“I can understand that, Port,” she said. “That is James T. Kettleman!”
Porter Baldwin had believed he was beyond astonishment. Despite her words, the thought refused to register. “That’s Jim Flint,” he said. “He’s a gunfighter.”
The man on the red horse was almost up to where they stood, and he had seen her. “Hello, Jim,” she said.
He walked his horse over to them. “Hello, Lottie,” he said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“Is that all you have to say to me?”
He smiled. “Why, Lottie, I don’t remember that we ever bad much to say to each other.” He glanced at Baldwin, amusement in his eyes. “I never saw two people who deserved each other more.”
And he walked the red stallion off down the street.
“So that’s Jim Kettleman … it isn’t reasonable.”
“He looks well, doesn’t he?” Lottie commented. “I mean, those clothes suit him.”
He did look well. Not like a dying man.
“Where do you suppose he’s going?” she asked.
Port Baldwin took the cigar from his teeth. “Why, he’s probably going to see that Kerrigan woman. She owns a ranch out south of here. She’s a fine-looking girl.” He relished the remark. “Real quality. Old Virginia family. Her father and uncle migrated West a long time back.”
Lottie Kettleman abruptly walked away, her heels clicking on the boardwalk. Baldwin looked after her and chuckled, but he did not feel like chuckling. He went to his room, sat down on the bed with the pillows propped behind him, eased his sleeve garters, and studied the situation anew. If Kettleman and Flint were one and the same…
It was almost midnight before he got up and re-fastened his collar. The saloon was open and he wanted a drink. From the window he could hear the tin-panny piano, and a shrill soprano.
If Kettleman had sent those telegrams they would get results in New York. Baldwin’s approval from the land office of the railroad company would be denied. The injunction would stand up, and his plan for a quick deal was finished. Moreover, he was holding thousands of head of cattle that represented the bulk of everything he owned. There were too many for the Nugent range with Nugent’s cattle already there, and his hired gunmen were showing little interest in bucking the kind of shooting they had encountered at the Kaybar.
Kettleman, or Flint, had been the backbone of the defense at Kaybar. He had also got Hatfield to issue that injunction and thus stopped his railroad land deal.
Baldwin remembered what he had said to Lottie. The town was full of gunmen, and anything could happen.
At this moment, Saxon and Strett were hunting Kettleman. Suppose they found him and killed him?
There would still be a chance to save something here, and back East. Baldwin began going over the possibilities, trying to judge the effect Kettleman’s death would have on the stocks in which he had invested. There had to be a way to make a killing.