Saturday's Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

fifteen and she was twelve. They might have been wed already but for the restlessness that stirred in him, an urge to see more of the world. And Alice had understood that restlessness. She'd be waiting, she told him.
    So he'd gone to Alaska. Less than a year before, word had come of a great gold strike on the Klondike. The reports were that nearly two tons of gold had been unloaded on the Seattle docks. Some said it was the richest gold strike in the world, with nuggets just lying on the ground waiting to be picked up by any enterprising young man.
    Quentin was not so foolish as to believe that, but it seemed as good a place as any to start seeing the world. And see it he had. He'd seen men gone mad with gold fever, unable to believe that their fortune wasn't just lying about. He'd found a little gold himself, barely enough to pay his expenses, and he'd counted himself lucky to find that much.
    But the price he'd paid had been far too high. He'd come home only long enough to visit Alice's grave, needing to see it before he could make himself believe in the reality of her death. And then he'd left again. There was a war beginning with Spain and he'd joined a bunch of cowboys, college students and misfits, who'd come to be called the Rough Riders.
    And when Cuba was safely free of Spain's domination, he'd left the service and traveled around the world, just as he'd planned before Alice's death. He'd gambled in every back alley in every port he'd visited. He'd worked his passage more often than purchased it and he'd spent what money he made. He'd been home a time or two to listen to his father tell him he was going to hell in a handbasket, to have his mother look at him with tears in her eyes and his grandfather with understanding.
    He turned from the window abruptly. "Maybe Alice's death wasn't Joseph's fault, but it's no doubt the first time he's been blamed for something he wasn't guilty of."
    "I'll not argue with that." Tobias leaned back in his chair, reaching for one of the cigars the doctor had forbidden him to smoke. When a man got to his age, there were few enough pleasures in life. He wasn't going to give up one of those left him.
    He lit the cigar, puffing at the rich Cuban tobacco for a moment as he watched his grandson move restlessly around the room. Something was on the boy's mind, there was no doubt of that. Of all his family, Quentin was the only one worth a damn. His daughter was an empty-headed fool, who'd married a stodgy businessman with the imagination of a turnip. His granddaughter hadn't a thought in her head but fashion, and now her wedding.
    But Quentin—Quentin was the son he'd never had, a true kindred spirit. Let the rest of them wring their hands and weep and wail over the boy wasting his life. He'd understood Quentin's anger, his pain and his need to work it out in his own way. Everything had turned out well enough.
    Four years ago, he'd won title to a ranch in Wyoming, drawing to fill an inside straight at poker. Tobias smiled at the memory, remembering a time when he'd drawn to fill his own inside straights, though cards had never been his weakness. But there was more than one way to gamble and he'd done his share.
    Maybe Quentin had always wanted a ranch, or maybe he was just tired of roaming the world, belonging nowhere. Whatever the reason, he hadn't gambled the ranch away sight unseen, nor had he sold it. He'd gone to take a look at it and there he'd stayed.
    Until now.
    "You still haven't told me why you came home."
    Quentin looked up from the fist-sized piece of gold ore he'd been studying. The first chunk of ore his grandfather had ever mined, taken from the Sutter's Mill strike back in 'forty-nine, the strike that had founded the family fortune. How many times had he heard that story, sitting on a hassock at his grandfather's knee, listening wide-eyed to tales of days gone by?
    He set the ore down, slipping his hand into the pocket of his neat gray trousers. If anyone would understand his