Centennial (93 page)

She therefore focused her attention on Oliver Seccombe, and before he was aware of what was happening, he was in love with her.

They got off the train in Cheyenne, now a cleaned-up, booming young city with the whores out and the churches in. There, in the railroad hotel, they waited for the horses that would take them down to their inspection of Line Camp Four, and in the interval they explored Cheyenne, meeting numerous attractive Englishmen who had come to try their luck at ranching. One morning, with the air crisp and the sun radiant, she clasped Seccombe’s hand and cried ecstatically, “Oh, Oliver, I do wish I could stay here forever,” and she waited for him to say, “You can, you know.” But he remained silent. There followed delightful days visiting with English ranchers and listening to their euphoric accounts of how they would make their millions. “It’s fabulous,” a young fellow named Tredinnick cried. “Really, Charlotte, all you do is lead the cattle onto the land, and the bulls take care of the cows and the cows take care of the calves, and each year you ship the surplus off in a great goods train to Chicago and pocket the gold. It comes rolling in.”

Have you sent any shipments east?” Buckland asked.

“Not yet, but Harry over there has.”

They talked with Harry, a young man from Leeds, and he had shipped cattle east. “At a simply staggering profit. This year, of course, what with the panic, prices won’t be so fantastic. But you can’t help making money, bundles of it.”

These enterprising Englishmen had not forced their way into Wyoming and Colorado; they were here because Americans simply did not have surplus money to develop their own country. Foreign investment was essential if the west was to develop. So the British, with an excess of funds from trade with their great empire, were invited to do what Americans were incapable of doing, and Charlotte was constantly surprised at the imaginative way they applied their capital. She felt especially proud of Oliver Seccombe. But she supposed that he feared marrying a girl so much younger, and she began making clever and even bold observations to the effect that difference in age was not disqualifying. Once, as they inspected Freddy Tredinnick’s herd, she said quietly, “I notice the good ranchers build their stock from young cows and proven bulls.” As soon as she said this she blushed.

“I’m not a proven bull,” Seccombe parried. “I’m just an old one.”

She teased with him like this for several days, always thinking that he was holding back because of her age and never once detecting the real reason for his restraint. Erroneously she deduced that he was fearful of his sexual competency with a partner so young, and she concluded that this was a problem which only she could resolve for him, so on their last night in the railroad hotel, after the Negro servants had closed the doors and overfed Henry Buckland had plodded off to bed, she said goodnight to Seccombe, and they went to their separate rooms. She prepared for bed, waited till the halls were quiet, then slipped along to Seccombe’s door, opening it gently. She stood so that she was silhouetted against the light burning in the hall. Hearing Seccombe gasp, she went to his bed and whispered, “It’s not complicated, Oliver, not when you’re in love.”

Next day, on the ride down to Line Camp Four, Seccombe could not refrain from congratulating himself on his good luck in snaring a girl like Charlotte Buckland—wit, wealth, family association with the Vennefords, and above all, an affection for the west. When she saw the camp, with its piñon trees and eroded pillars, she cried, “This is the Colorado I dreamed about,” and he said wryly, “We’re still in Wyoming.”

This unkind remark sprang from the deep apprehension he felt toward any permanent involvement with this attractive girl. She was wrong in assuming that he held back because of anxiety over their difference in ages. He knew that she thought he was forty-eight, three years younger than her father, when he was really fifty-five. But he also knew that his vitality was not impaired. When she contrived opportunities to be alone with him among the piñon trees or in the secrecy of the barn, and she managed several, their enjoyment of each other was complete.

Nor was his affection for her passive. He loved the sound of her voice, her British manner of singing words and giving a lilt to her sentences, so refreshing after the years of flat American accents. When she said, as they were halting for a picnic, “The curve of that hill reminds me of the strangest thing, the lovely terraces of Bristol,” he would see again the noble sweep of Georgian stone houses he had known as a boy.

She reminded him of his Englishness, and whereas he had been content in America, growing to respect its extraordinary diversity from Santa Fe to Oregon, he did remain English at heart, and it was good, in these later years of his life, to have that heritage refreshed.

“You’re slow in proposing, Oliver,” she said one afternoon as they returned from the barn. “I should like to live here, to know that each summer we could come out to this camp.”

“I’m too old,” he said, although he had just finished proving that he was not.

He was restrained not by age but by a sensible conviction that if he got too entangled with the Bucklands, he would face disaster. He was far more worried about Henry Buckland than he was about Charlotte, because the canny merchant had begun to ask those penetrating questions which the curators of the Venneford Ranch could not answer.

For some years Seccombe, in an effort to keep his Bristol investors happy, had been declaring cash dividends when none had been earned. In 1872, for example, he had paid a tidy eight percent by the simple device of buying 6626 mature longhorns from L. D. Kane in Wyoming and turning around and selling 2493 of them to packing houses in Chicago for beef. He entered the sale on his books as a profit, as if it had been 2493 calves raised on the ranch that he had sold. There had also been unusual expenses connected to the acquisition of land, items he did not want to appear on the books, like the train fare for the spurious homesteaders from Elmwood, Illinois. Oliver Seccombe had not misappropriated any Venneford money for his own use, but he had diverted much of it into channels that he could not now explain satisfactorily.

Buckland, becoming increasingly suspicious of Seccombe, started to make cautious inquiries among the ranch hands. One day at Line Camp Four he showed Skimmerhorn a report which had been assembled by Finlay Perkin. The Scotsman had lifted from the Venneford records an account of every animal the investors had paid for. It was an impressive list:

To Henry Buckland:

When you reach the ranch you should find these cattle on the premises:

1868
delivery by R. J. Poteet, Texas
2934

purchase from L. D. Kane, Wyoming 4817

1869
delivery by J. J. Stoat, Texas
2404

purchase from John Skene, Colorado 4419

1870
delivery by R. J. Poteet, Texas, two lots 4559

purchase from L. Y. Frame, Wyoming 6697

1871
delivery by R. J. Poteet, Texas, two lots 4816

purchase from K. N. Kennedy, Illinois 86

1872
delivery by R. J. Poteet, Texas, two lots 4831

purchase from L. D. Kane, Wyoming 6626

purchase from K. N. Kennedy, Illinois 93

--------

Total stock acquired
42,282

It would be desirable for you to check on the presence or absence of every animal listed, especially the expensive Shorthorns acquired from Illinois.

Finlay Perkin

When Skimmerhorn saw Perkin’s suggestion, he could not suppress a smile. “Sir,” he said disarmingly to Buckland, “God himself doesn’t know where all those cattle are.”

And for the first time a Bristol member of Venneford Ranch Limited realized that running a herd of Texas longhorns on a ranch containing more than five million acres was not the same as importing bolts of silk from India, or investing in consols, where a paper certificate proved that you had actual possession of the consols. Running cattle on a great western ranch was a little more imprecise.

With this discovery, Buckland’s questioning became more detailed, and now John Skimmerhorn faced his second moral problem as manager of the ranch. The first one had come when he had helped Potato Brumbaugh fight off the gunmen. This one centered, as it would on every western ranch owned by absentee Englishmen, on the phrase
book count
.

Mr. Buckland pointed to the two purchases made from L. D. Kane, of Wyoming. “They total eleven thousand head of cattle. A good many dollars are involved. Now, I feel sure you counted them as you got them.”

Skimmerhorn smiled nervously. “You see, sir, that’s what we call book count.”

“If you count, you count.”

“But when you buy in that number ... After all, Kane didn’t have his cattle penned up.”

“Where were they?”

“Book count means that there ought to be that number of cattle and that they ought to be somewhere.”

“Good God!”

“You’re dealing with honorable men. If Kane says he has ...”

“I wouldn’t accept that kind of statement from the most prestigious merchant in India. If he says he’s sending me three hundred bolts ...”

“Cattle are not bolts of silk,” Seccombe interrupted.

“I’m beginning to think they’re invisible.”

What Skimmerhorn did not tell Buckland, hence the moral question, was that he and Jim Lloyd had always had grave suspicions about the various book counts passed along to the Venneford Ranch. Finlay Perkin’s figures showed that the ranch had paid for more than forty-two thousand head of cattle; Skimmerhorn doubted that more than twenty-five thousand were on hand now. And there was also the matter of how Seccombe paid dividends.

Skimmerhorn did not consider Seccombe dishonest, although the Englishman did do irregular things. He was a man of vast ideas and enthusiasms who behaved as if he had forty-two thousand head of cattle, when in reality he had only twenty-five. And every year, in his tight little Bristol office, Finlay Perkin would add up the absent stock, accept Seccombe’s estimate of how many calves should have been produced, and the truth grew even further from reality.

Some day this miserable bubble would burst. Skimmerhorn judged it might happen when the outlying portions of the ranch were lost, or when fences framed in the actual land owned. Then the cattle could be counted, and the deficit would be astonishing. In the meantime, Skimmerhorn would keep meticulous records of each transaction in which he was personally involved, and if Finlay Perkin ever wanted to see his books, their facts would stand forth with crystal clarity. Under no circumstances could Skimmerhorn betray Oliver Seccombe; he would not alert Henry Buckland to the inherent falsity of the Venneford accounts. But he would not allow Seccombe’s manipulations to contaminate him. Through the bitter experience of being the son of Colonel Frank Skimmerhorn, John had learned how fatal a lack of discipline could be. He had made himself into a man of terrible, rock-hewn integrity, unafraid of Comanche or Kansas outlaws, not hesitant to help gun down the rustlers trying to steal Potato Brumbaugh’s farm, and he would remain that way.

When Skimmerhorn left the camp, Henry Buckland remained as perplexed as ever. What it means, he reflected, is that in the cattle business the investor has to trust the manager. And he supposed he would have to trust Seccombe, in spite of doubts about book count. The fellow was congenial, and if he was what Charlotte wanted, she could do worse.

And so the last days at the camp became a period of drift during which three people moved toward decisions about which each had apprehensions. Buckland’s concerning the stability of the ranch were never dispersed.

Charlotte, seduced by the loveliness of Line Camp Four, was satisfied that come autumn Seccombe would propose to her, and she began inspecting the northern range as if she were already its proprietor. It was certainly not the life she had planned for herself, but it was acceptable.

Oliver Seccombe still felt that close association with the Bucklands could be dangerous for him. He’d had a very bad moment when Henry started boring in on details. Who could calculate to a bookkeeper’s satisfaction the number of cattle on a range so large? True, he had sold off breeding stock to get the funds to pay dividends, but many managers in Wyoming and Colorado were doing that, and if in the years ahead the calf crop was even average, the losses would easily be made up. But to give specific figures? Who could be sure that some bull found every cow in heat, or impregnated her successfully if he did. Who could possibly know how many calves were born dead on a ranch with more than five million acres? Or how many were killed by wolves? Or stolen by rustlers!

Somewhere beyond the horizon Venneford had forty-two thousand cattle. Hell, that number could now be sixty thousand, or even seventy, if the calf crop was good. As low as twenty-five thousand, as Skimmerhorn had suggested? Impossible. The cattle were out there, and when they were needed they would be found.

As he rode south with the Bucklands to ranch headquarters, they in a buckboard, he on horseback beside them, he decided to take the risk, to marry this challenging English girl and to get her father back to England as quickly as possible. Give me six good years, he said to himself, and I’ll get this thing straightened out.

When the Bucklands were installed at headquarters, he rode in to Zendt’s Farm to consult with practical Levi and imaginative Lucinda, especially the latter. Perched on a stool in their kitchen, with a cup of hot coffee clutched in his hands, he confided, “It looks as if I might marry.”