Epilogue
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New York in high summer was an unpleasant sort of place and every window of Harper's offices was open in the hope that a breeze—any breeze, however small and errant—would find its way in and relieve the poor sufferers drooping in the heavy, hot air. Charles found it hard to get his full breath.
Henry M Alden stared at him over gold-rimmed spectacles, frowning, as if he were trying to remember who Charles was. Charles waited, more or less politely. He could almost see the cogs and wheels whirring inside that overly high forehead, the furrows forming between the weak eyes. Großer Gott, but the man was a weak physical specimen of the human race. If the Aldens of this world bred true, then one day, perhaps, all humanity would be little more than huge brains housed inside large heads that showed all too much forehead and all too little chin.
"What," said Alden, by way of greeting after Charles's three month absence, "is that?"
Elizabeth hadn't taken to it either. Despite the ornate design and the workmanship, she had an unaccountable aversion to it, and Charles had either to bring it to the office or risk that it would have a terrible accident while he was out of the apartment at work.
"It was a goodbye present from some friends in California when I left them after a visit to their extensive estates in the San Joaquin," he said. "Did you get my articles?"
Alden forgot everything else. His thin face lit up and he took the proofs from the pile of papers on his desk, settling in for what he would undoubtedly find an almost orgiastically exciting period of crawling, metaphorically, over every word, comma and line. The man could be reduced to a mass of quivering nerve ends over a misplaced semicolon. Charles had put in several, for the entertainment value of each of Alden's crows of triumph when he found them.
The articles were excellent, of course, for all that they said nothing at all about the most fascinating aspects of California. Charles left Alden to it and let his gaze wander around the familiar office with its smell of paper and ink, taking in the piles of proofs, the heavy iron and brass Sholes and Gliddon type-writer on the desk, the books and magazine editions stacked haphazardly one on top of the other in the corners of the rooms.
Once it had been his ambition to rule supreme in this room or one like it. Now… well, now he'd had his horizons stretched a little. The room felt small, confined.
Charles glanced down at the hat resting on his knees. Scott had laughed when he presented it on the eve of Charles's departure from Lancer, its brushed black surface covered in delicate silver embroidery. Murdoch and Johnny had been there, a smouldering silence between them although they at least had exchanged a few words at dinner and refrained from open hostilities. Teresa had kissed his cheek. A memento of California, Scott had said, gripping Charles's hand. To remember us by.
Charles smiled. He lifted the sombrero and settled it at a jaunty angle on his head. He didn't think he'd forget, somehow.
No. He didn't think he would.
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Authors Note: This story started out to do two things: provide an interlude between the incidents in Blood Rock (in Hackamore 12 : Trade Secrets) and Chase A Wild Horse and, principally, sow the seeds of why Murdoch and Johnny were so prickly with each other in the Chase a Wild Horse episode. It is also an exercise in 'Outsider Point of View', using a narrator who *isn't privy to all the information, or every last nuance of speech and behaviour*, so much of what Johnny and Murdoch are arguing about isn't within his knowledge - he reports that without commentary, because he doesn't know enough to comment.
It strikes me that to a new reader, the fact that the exchange between Johnny and Murdoch isn't elaborated on in this story may be an annoyance. To that, all I can say is that every story in Hackamore builds on the one before it. We will come back to that angry exchange. Only it won't be somewhere where a relative stranger can eavesdrop. Stay tuned!