In The Beginning by Gail Daley (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

"Ah—which of you is A. McCaffey?" the messenger inquired looking desperately from one to the other.

"That would be me." The younger man held out his hand for the letter.

The messenger thrust a clipboard at him in haste. "Oh, please sign here, sir."

A. McCaffey dipped a quill in an open inkwell on the desk and scrawled a signature. He accepted the letter pushed at him and flipped a small handful of copper chips at the messenger who caught the tip deftly. He exchanged grins with the old man as the young man fled their office.

"You suppose he’ll change his drawers after he gets back to the Runner Office?" the older man, who called himself Henry Miller, was trying hard not to laugh. "You oughtn’t to scare the boy that way. It’s bad for business."

McCaffey made a rude noise. "Shut up, Henry. Besides, maybe it was your sour puss that scared him."

The return address was the Golden Tricorn ranch in River Crossing. McCaffey turned the letter over several times before he opened it and read it. Afterwards, he shoved it at Henry and went to stand looking out the window although not directly in front of it, as Henry read.

Henry was a slow, deliberate reader. When he was through, he refolded it carefully. Thoughtfully, he tapped it on the desk.

"Well, now. This is quite a proposition. Going to do it?"

"How, the Hell should I know?" Alec demanded almost fiercely.

Henry tapped the letter again. "Don’t hurt nothing to meet her, check out the situation. You can always say no. Been awhile since we got out in the field."

Alec gave him an old-fashioned look over his shoulder. "You think I should go find out, don’t you?"

"Son, you ain’t been happy for a while. Oh, we’re making money, especially since we now hire men for fieldwork, instead of doing the tough jobs ourselves, but you been looking for something. Maybe this is it."

The Arrangement

THE GOLDEN TRICORN Ranch lay at the base of the foothills above a wide valley in the City State of Kenefic. The ranch had been originally owned by a family of First In settlers. They had died out, and the last of the family had sold the ranch to Michael St. Vyr, a placer miner who had made his fortune working claims in the rolling hills above the Valley. He still owned a Bluestone mine higher up in the mountains that separated the valley and settlement of River Crossing from the neighboring City State of Azure. He also had substantial shares in some placer gold and gemstone claims in the hills.

After buying the Golden Tricorn, St. Vyr, a canny man, put in wells, collected water in ponding basins, and diversified the fork-horned, shaggy cattle and the huge goats that were the ranches traditional crops by adding orchards of fruit trees to be harvested in the winter and nuts in the hot summer. He added a dairy goat farm and raised geese to sell for meat and eggs. His two younger daughters now managed the dairy farm and sold the eggs and geese.

After St. Vyr had been shot, the family had converted Michael's library into a bedroom, and his once vigorous body lay wasting away in the four-poster bed replacing the overstuffed chairs and tables, but his mind was still as sharp as ever.

The books had been moved into his den, but the room still smelled of the dearly bought leather bound books printed on rag paper, and the citrus and glycerin mixture the housekeeper, Margo Alveraz, used to polish the desk and tables. That pleasant smell was overlaid now by the less pleasant scents of chamomile, camphor and bandages.

According to the doctor, he would never walk again. Michael eyed the new wheeled chair, an ingenious affair brought by the doctor, in disgust. It was going to be his transportation from now on. A large chair body with the legs removed had been placed between four wooden bicycle wheels with a short axle connecting them. The chair moved when the front wheels were turned by hand.

His daughter Bethany sat in the straight-backed chair across from him looking down at her clasped hands. Except for her red hair and grey eyes, she bore little resemblance to her father. At twenty-four she couldn’t be considered a girl any longer—in fact by the standards of the pioneer society in which she lived, she was considered a spinster; old enough to be on the marriage shelf while younger women passed her by. She was wasn't unmarried because of her looks; Bethany's full, lush figure, fiery red hair and icy grey eyes as well as her father's riches had attracted many men in the past, but by choice she was still unmarried. Although there was no social bar to a woman competing for work with men on St. Antoni, most of the work in the frontier society still required more physical strength than all but a few women possessed. With so few opportunities for women except marriage, Bethany should have been grateful for the marriage proposition her father had just presented to her. Instead, she regarded it with mixed feelings.

"Papa—"

"Mind, I’m not forcing you girl. If you’ve got a fancy for someone else, why, I can put this to Iris as she’s the next oldest. But so far as I can see, you haven’t got anyone else in mind."

‘No," she retorted, "and there is no one else eligible either! At least no one I could stand to be married to."

"Just so. The only eligible bachelors around here aren’t fit to sire pigs—well except for Carlos Madonna and I think he’s got eyes for Iris."

"And she for him—not that she would admit it. Very well, Papa. I will meet this Alexander McCaffey. If we agree we are suited, I will marry him; but I won’t consent until after I meet him."

He scowled at her. "You’re as red-headed stubborn as your mother, but I agree. Now go and tell those two with their ears glued to