“I’m not so sure all the things people say about him are rumors,” Leander said. “Jacob Fenton said—”
“Fenton!” Blair exploded. “Fenton is a conniving, thieving—.”
Houston didn’t bother to listen but leaned back in the carriage and gazed at the house through the window at the back of the buggy. Lee and Blair continued arguing while he halted the carriage to wait for one of the new horse-drawn trolley cars to pass.
She had no idea whether what was said about Mr. Taggert was true or not, but it was her own opinion that the house he’d built was the most beautiful thing she
’d ever seen.
No one in Chandler knew much about Kane Taggert, but five years ago over a hundred construction workers had arrived from the East with an entire train loaded with materials. Within hours, they’d started what was soon to become the house.
Of course everyone was curious—actually, a good deal more than curious. Someone said that none of the construction workers ever had to pay for a meal because all the women of Chandler fed them in an attempt to get information. It didn’t do any good. No one knew who was building the house or why anyone’d want such a place in Nowhere, Colorado.
It took three years to complete, a beautiful, white U-shaped building, two stories, with a red tile roof. The size of it was what boggled people’s minds. One local store owner liked to say that every hotel in Chandler could be put on the first floor, and considering that Chandler was a crossroads between north and south Colorado, and the number of hotels in town, that was saying a great deal.
For a year after the house was completed, trainloads of wooden boxes were delivered to the house. They had labels on them from France, England, Spain, Portugal, all over the world.
Still, there was no sign of an owner.
Then one day, two men stepped off the train, both tall, big men, one blond and pleasant looking, the other dark, bearded, angry. They both wore the usual miner’s garb of canvas pants, blue chambray shirt, and suspenders. As they walked down the street, women pulled their skirts aside.
The dark one went up to Jacob Fenton, and everyone assumed he was going to ask for a job in one of the mines Fenton owned. But instead, he’d said, “Well, Fenton, I’m back. You like my house?”
It wasn’t until he had walked through town and onto the land of the new house and then through its locked front door that anyone had had any idea he mean that house.
For the next six months, according to Duncan Gates, Chandler was the site of a full-fledged war. Widows, single women and mothers of young women made an all-out attack for the hand in marriage of the man they’d swept their skirts aside for. Dressmakers by the dozen came down from Denver.
Within a week, the women’d found out his name and Mr. Taggert was besieged. Some of the attempts to get his attention were quite ordinary; for instance, it was amazing how many women fainted when near him, but some attempts were ingenious. Everyone agreed that the prize went to Carrie Johnson, a pregnant widow who climbed down a rope and into Mr. Taggert’s bedroom while she was having labor pains. She thought he’d deliver her baby and of course fall passionately in love with her and beg her to marry him. But Taggert was away at the moment, and all the assistance she got was from a passing laundress.
After six months, newly every woman in town’d made a fool of herself with no success, so they began to talk sour grapes. Who wanted a rich man who didn’t know how to dress properly? And his grammar was that of the lowest cowboy. They started asking questions about him. What had he meant when he’d said, “I’m back”?
Someone located an old servant of Jacob Fenton’s who remembered that Kane Taggert had been the stable lad until he started dallying with Pamela Fenton, Jacob’s young daughter. Jacob kicked him off his property—and rightly so.
This gave the town something new to talk about. Who did Taggert think he was, anyway? What right did he have to build that outlandish, garish house overlooking the peaceful, pretty little town of Chandler? And was he planning revenge on dear Jacob Fenton?
Once again, women started sweeping their skirts aside when he passed.
But Taggert never seemed to notice any of it. He stayed in his house most of the time, drove his old wagon into town once a week and bought groceries. Sometimes, men would arrive on the train and ask directions to his house, then leave town before sundown. Other than these men, the only people to enter or leave the big house were Taggert and the man he called Edan, who was always with him.
“That’s Houston’s dream house,” Leander said when the trolley car had passed, bringing Houston back to the present. He’d finished—or stopped—his argument with Blair. “If Houston didn’t have me, I think she’d have joined the line of women fighting for Taggert and that house of his.”
“I would like to see the inside,” she said with more wistfulness than she meant to reveal, then, to cover herself, she said, “You can drop me here, at Wilson’s, Lee. I’ll meet you at Farrell’s in an hour.”
Once out of the buggy, she realized she was glad to get away from their constant bickering.
Wilson’s Mercantile was one of four large, all-purpose dry-goods stores in Chandler. Most people shopped at the newer, more modern store, The Famous, but Mr. Wilson had known Houston’s father.
The walls were lined with tall, walnut, glass-doored cases, interspersed with marble-topped counters covered with goods.
Behind one counter sat Davey Wilson, Mr. Wilson’s son, a ledger open before him, but his fountain pen was unmoving.
In fact, neither the three customers nor the four clerks seemed to be moving. Everything was unnaturally quiet. Instantly, Houston saw the reason why: Kane Taggert stood at one counter, his back to the few people in the store.
Silently, Houston went to a counter to look at a selection of patent medicines, which she had no intention of buying, but she sensed something was happening.
“Oh, Mamma,” Mary Alice Pendergast wailed in her high voice, “I couldn’t wear that, I’d look like a coal miner’s bride. People would think I was a no-’count . . . servant, a scullery maid, who thought she was a big cheese. No, no, Mamma, I couldn’t wear that.”
Houston gritted her teeth. Those two women were baiting Mr. Taggert. Since he’d turned all the women in town down, they seemed to think it was open season for their nasty games. She glanced toward him and, when she did, she saw his face in an advertising mirror behind the counter. There was so much hair surrounding his face that his features could barely be seen, but Houston could see his eyes. He most certainly was hearing Mary Alice’s nasty little comments and, what’s more, they were bothering him. There was a furrow between his eyes.