Serena Read Online Free PDF Page B

focused on Pemberton as if to better sight a target.
    “Though on second thought, maybe you should hide her away. If she is all you say.”
    “You’ll see,” Pemberton said. “She’s over on Noland. We can get horses and ride up there.”
    “I don’t have time for that,” Harris said. “Much as I’d enjoy meeting your bride, this park nonsense takes precedent. Our esteemed Secretary of the Interior got Rockefeller to donate five million. Now Albright is sure he can buy out Champion.”
    “Do you think they’ll sell?”
    “I don’t know,” Harris said, “but just the fact that Champion’s listening to offers encourages not only Secretary Albright but the rest of them, here and in Washington. They’re already starting to run farmers off their land in Tennessee.”
    “This needs to be settled once and for all,” Pemberton said.
    “Goddamn right it needs to be settled. I’m tired as you are of lining the pockets of those Raleigh pettifoggers.”
    Harris pulled a watch from his pocket and checked the time.
    “Later than I thought,” he said.
    “Have you had a chance to look at the Glencoe Ridge tract?” Pemberton asked.
    “Come by the office Saturday morning and we’ll go see it together. Bring your bride along too,” Harris said, and paused to nod approvingly at the valley’s stumps and slash. “You’ve done well here, even with those two fops you have for partners.”
    Pemberton did not go back into the office after Harris left but instead rode out to Noland Mountain. He found Serena eating lunch with two foremen. Between bites of sandwiches, they discussed whether buying a second hi-lead skidder would be worth the extra cost. Pemberton got off his horse and joined them.
    “The cane ash is at the saw mill,” Pemberton said as he sat down beside her, “so Campbell will have the board feet by five-thirty.”
    “Any of the other men make side bets with you?”
    “No.”
    “Would either of you care to wager?” Serena said to the foremen.
    “No ma’am,” the older worker replied. “I don’t have a hankering to betagainst you on anything concerning lumber. I might have before this morning, but not now, especially after you showed us that trick with the choker.”
    The younger worker merely shook his head.
    The two men finished eating and gathered their crews. Soon the sounds of axes and cross-cut saws filled the nearby woods. The Arabian snorted and Serena walked over and placed her hand on the horse’s mane. She spoke to the horse softly and the gelding calmed.
    “Harris came by,” Pemberton said. “He wants the three of us to go look at the Glencoe Ridge tract Saturday.”
    “Will he be looking for anything other than kaolin and copper?”
    “I doubt it,” Pemberton said, “though some gold has been panned from creeks in the county. There are ruby and sapphire mines near Franklin, but that’s forty miles from here.”
    “I hope he finds something,” Serena said, stepping closer to take Pemberton’s hand. “It will be another beginning for us, our first real partnership.”
    Pemberton smiled. “Plus Harris.”
    “For now,” Serena said.
    As Pemberton rode back to camp, he thought of an afternoon back in Boston when he and Serena were lying in bed, the sheets damp and tangled. The third, maybe the fourth day he’d been with her. Serena’s head had lain on his shoulder, her left hand on his chest.
    “After Carolina, where to next?”
    “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Pemberton had replied.
    “’I’?” she’d said. “Why not ‘we’?”
    “Well since it’s ‘we’, Pemberton had replied playfully, “I’ll defer to you.”
    Serena had lifted her head and met his eyes.
    “Brazil. I’ve researched it. Virgin forests of mahogany and no law but nature’s law.”
    “Very well,” Pemberton had said. “Now the only decision ‘we’ have to worry about is where to have dinner. Since you’ve decided everything else for us, am I allowed to choose?”
    She