San Antone. V. J. Banis

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      Borgo Press Books by Victor J. Banis

      The Astral: Till the Day I Die: A Novel of Psychic Projection

      Avalon: An Historical Novel

      Charms, Spells, and Curses for the Millions

      Color Him Gay: That Man from C.A.M.P.

      The Curse of Bloodstone: A Gothic Novel of Terror

      Darkwater: A Gothic Novel of Horror

      The Devil’s Dance

      Drag Thing; or, The Strange Tale of Jackle and Hyde

      The Earth and All It Holds: An Historical Novel

      The Gay Dogs: That Man from C.A.M.P.

      The Gay Haunt

      The Glass House

      The Glass Painting: A Gothic Tale of Horror

      Goodbye, My Lover

      The Greek Boy

      The Green Rolling Hills: Writings from West Virginia (editor)

      Kenny’s Back

      Life and Other Passing Moments: A Collection of Short Writings

      The Lion’s Gate

      Moon Garden

      The Pot Thickens: Recipes from Writers and Editors (editor)

      San Antone: An Historical Novel

      The Second House: A Novel of Terror

      The Second Tijuana Bible Reader (editor)

      Spine Intact, Some Creases: Remembrances of a Paperback Writer

      Stranger at the Door: A Novel of Suspense

      Sweet Tormented Love: A Novel of Romance

      The Sword and the Rose: An Historical Novel

      This Splendid Earth: An Historical Novel

      The Tijuana Bible Reader (editor)

      The WATERCRESS File: That Man from C.A.M.P.

      A Westward Love: An Historical Romance

      The Wolves of Craywood: A Novel of Terror

      The Why Not

      Copyright Information

      Copyright © 1985, 2012 by V. J. Banis

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      Dedication

      I am particularly grateful to Karen Nelson of the Big Bear Lake Branch of the San Bernardino County (California) Public Library, not the least for remaining cheerful while facing that barrage of questions attendant upon writing a historical novel.

      I am also deeply indebted to my friend, Heather, for all the help she has given me in getting these early works of mine reissued.

      And I am grateful as well to Rob Reginald, for all his assistance and support.

      Prologue

      “Bother the doctor’s orders.”

      It was impossible to sleep. The closed windows, the shutters fastened over them, could no more shut out the maddeningly repetitious sound of gunfire, the terrified bawling of cattle, than they could hold at bay the fine, gritty Texas sand that forever seeped into the house—into food and drink, and bed linen, and undergarments, and even, she sometimes shocked people by mentioning, the very crevices and openings of the body.

      She struggled unavailingly to sit up, surrendered to necessity, and reached resentfully for the cane kept now at bedside.

      The room was dark, the motionless air hot and weighted. She crossed to the French doors, trying to muffle the sound of the cane on the tiled floor; someone was likely to hear and come to badger her.

      After the gloom inside, the afternoon sun was blinding, and scorchingly hot. Farther along the wooden balcony, a curtain of vines provided little dappled pools of shade, you could almost smell the cool, but there was none here, directly outside her room. She liked the sun, and the Texas heat—as thick as molasses, sometimes you had to push your way through it. She never minded that. After all, that was what she’d built the balcony for in the first place; that, and the entirely private satisfaction of surveying her domain, if she felt the whim.

      Not that she could, of course, not literally. A million acres now to the Folly; no, closer to a million and a half. Even from the airborne view of that hawk—or was it, yes, a buzzard, and she knew what he was after, damn him to hell, it wasn’t just the wind stirring up those mountains of dust across the plains, there—even from his soaring heights, it would be impossible, the eye could not take it all in. Sometimes even her mind’s eye could not.

      It was her domain, though, there was no question of that.

      At least for the moment, though the time was fast approaching when the reins must pass into other hands. No easy choice, either: Into whose hands? She’d made her choice, and she was content with it; but others, she well knew, would not be. There would be challenges, battles. Those reins would not be so easy to hold.

      Unconsciously she smacked her lips at the thought. She wished she could be here to see—oh, well, not that she wanted to live forever. The truth was, she often found herself admiring those old Indians who, feeling the end approach, had ridden out alone into the wilderness to wait for death in dignified privacy. If it weren’t for the concern, the bother that it would cause others...or maybe she simply lacked the courage.

      Though to her thinking, it took no small courage to face that day-to-day dwindling of one’s strength, one’s resources. Never knowing when or how you were going to make a fool of yourself again—the stumble on the stairs, the food spilled on dress-front, the train of thought slipping from the mind in mid-sentence. When you got down to it, in the end, living was a swindle.

      No, she’d be glad to be done with that; she looked forward with a sort of hopeful dread. Who could say, maybe there’d be challenges wherever she ended up, and she wasn’t going to take any bets just where that would be; it would be awfully dull otherwise, wouldn’t it?

      But, she couldn’t help wondering what her successor would do with all the responsibility she was handing over. Yes, and all that power as well. You played that down with others, but there was no need to pretend to herself; she had amassed power, too, along with all the rest.

      Well, if you wanted to sum it all up, she hadn’t done so badly with it, if she did say so herself. When she thought back, to South Carolina—to that simpering southern belle....

      Her thoughts drifted. South Carolina. Eaton Hall. She suddenly found herself remembering Ellen Goodman.

      Good heavens, forty years or more since she had seen that woman. It was odd, sometimes she could not summon up in her mind the faces of her children, her husband, people she saw every day. And yet she had but to close her eyes and there was Ellen Goodman, in the dining room at Eaton Hall, her eyes wide, her mouth agape, for they had both just heard, for the first time, those words that would come to mean so much....

      Part One: Journey Home

      Chapter One

      “San Antonio?” Ellen Goodman’s plump cheeks quivered on the words. “But that’s out west someplace, isn’t it?”

      “Texas,” Lewis Harte said curtly.

      “Texas? I don’t think I—”

      “Our new state,” Mr. Mallory said. “Our twenty-eighth, I believe.”

      “But, still, a wilderness.... Aren’t there Indians, and things like that?”

      “Horse feathers,” Lewis said, and drained his glass of claret. The black man standing just behind his chair moved swiftly, silently, to refill it. Lewis’s wife, Joanna, counted mentally: his fifth glass.

      “And