Rafe looked at Houston for a moment. “What sort of illegal goods?”
“Nothing much,” she answered. “Medicines, books, tea, soap, anything we can fit inside the vegetables. It’s not what he makes it seem. And as for Mr. Fenton, since he does know and hasn’t done anything about it, perhaps he’s protecting us, seeing that nothing interferes with our trips. After all, we hurt no one.”
“No one!” Kane gasped. “Honey, someday I’m gonna explain to you about stockholders. If Fenton’s stockholders found out about you, and how you’re takin’ profit out of their greedy little mouths, they’d string all of you up. But before Fenton swung, he’d use all you women, and all the daddies and husbands he could, to get himself off. I’m sure Fenton loves what you’re doin’, ’cause he knows that, any time he wants it, he has power over Chandler’s leadin’ citizens—just so long as his investors know nothin’ about nothin’.”
“Just because you’d blackmail a person, doesn’t mean that other people would do the same thing. Perhaps Mr. Fenton—.”
She stopped, because Rafe was shoving her out the door. “I think you better go tend to your wagon. The woman that‘s gonna help you lives next door. Just knock on the door and she’s ready.” With that, he shut the door behind her.
“How long’s this been goin’ on?” Rafe asked Kane. “And what’s she do with the money she’s paid for the food?”
Kane didn’t know all the answers to his uncle’s questions, but between them they were able to figure out most of the story. Rafe agreed with Kane about why Fenton allowed the women into the mine camp.
“He’d sell ’em out in seconds,” Rafe said. “So what’re you plannin’ to do now? You gonna let her keep on drivin’ the wagon and risk gettin’ hurt someday? If the guards found out that she’d played ’em for the fool for a couple of years, they’d act first and ask who was protectin’ her later.”
“I told her she wasn’t to go into the mines today and you see how she obeyed me. The minute she thought I was out of sight, she bought a load of vegetables to bring up here.”
“She paid for ’em?”
Kane pulled out a chair and sat down. “She ain’t too happy with me right now, but she’ll come around. I’m workin’ on her.”
“If you wanna talk about it, I can listen,” Rafe said as he took a seat across from his nephew.
Kane had never talked to anyone in his life about his personal problems, but lately, things were changing rapidly. He’d told Opal some of his problems and now he wanted to tell his uncle. Maybe a man could help him.
Kane told Rafe about growing up in Fenton’s stables, about his dream of building a bigger house. Rafe nodded in understanding, as if what Kane said made perfect sense to him.
“Only thing was, Houston got real mad when I told her why I’d married her, and she walked out the front door. I got her to come back but she ain’t exactly happy about it.”
“You say that you’d planned to have her sittin’ at your table, but what about afterward?”
Kane started looking at his fingernails. “I didn’t want a wife and I thought she was in love with that Westfield that jilted her, so I was sure she’d be glad to see the last of me after the dinner with Fenton. I thought I’d give her a box of jewelry and then I’d go back to New York. Damnest thing was, though, I gave her the jewelry, but she didn’t even look at it.”
“So why don’t you just leave her and go back to New York?”
Kane took a while to answer. “I don’t know, I kinda like it here. I like the mountains, and it ain’t hot here in the summer like it is in New York and—”
“And you like Houston,” Rafe said, grinning. “She’s a pretty little thing, and I’d rather have a woman like her than the entire state of New York.”
“So how come you ain’t married?”
“All the women I like won’t have me.”
“I guess that’s the same with me. When I didn’t really care whether Houston married me or not, and thought somebody else’d do just as well, she kept tellin’ me that she loved me, and now, when I don’t think I could live very well without her, she looks at me like I was a pile of horse manure.”
The two men were silent for a moment, the air heavy with their feelings of injustice.
“You want some whiskey?” Rafe asked.
“I need some,” Kane answered.
As Rafe turned away to get the whiskey, Kane, for the first time, looked around at the house. He calculated that the whole place would fit into his dressing and bathing area. The house was dirty in a way that no cleaning could remedy. There was no light to speak of in the room, and the air gave off a smell of the deepest poverty.
On the mantelpiece were a tin of tea, two cans of vegetables and what looked to be half a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth. Kane was sure that that was all the food in the house.
Quite suddenly, Kane remembered the rooms above the stables where he’d grown up. He’d sent his sheets and clothes to the Fenton laundress to be cleaned and, when he’d grown up, he’d coaxed the maids into cleaning his rooms. And there’d always been food in abundance.
What was it that Houston had said she was taking to the miners? Medicines, soaps, tea? Whatever she could hide in a head of cabbage. Never had Kane actually had to worry about food. And no matter where he’d lived, he’d never lived like this.