Legend (Legend, Colorado 1)

She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she knew that with Cole she didn’t have to earn his love. She didn’t have to clean the bathrooms as she’d done for Jane’s mother, didn’t have to cook economically as Mrs. Norman demanded. She didn’t even have to keep her mouth shut and not complain as she’d had to do with her mother.

“I can do anything I want,” she said, lifting her eyes and staring straight ahead at the bookshelves filled with leather bound volumes in front of her. Abruptly, she pushed the chair back and stood. “Maybe I can’t leave this place, but I can bring anything that 1873 Colorado has to offer here to me.” As she stood in front of the window to stare out at the view of mountains and valleys, she whispered, “So what do I want to do more than anything else in the world?”

As she looked out the window, she thought of her favorite movie, Babette’s Feast. The heroine was a great chef who, for some political reasons, had to hide in a remote village with two poor sisters. When Babette inherited some money, enough to allow her to quit her job, instead of being “sensible,” she’d spent every penny of it on the ingredients to prepare a feast such as no one had ever eaten before.

Kady owned the video of that movie and had played it hundreds of times. At each viewing her imagination went wild as she thought of what she would cook if she had no constraints of money and “pleasing the public.”

I would first have to make an inventory, she thought. I’d have to see what was here and what I could buy. Maybe I can’t go to Denver, but others could go for me. Then I’d have to dig pits, make outdoor ovens, and start pickling vegetables. I’d need help in picking mushrooms and salad greens and herbs. And I’d need—

By the time she got to the last thought, she was at the desk and making notes. “I’ll invite the whole town,” she said aloud. “For three days they will eat at Cole Jordan’s expense.” She bit the end of the pencil. “If you’ll eat it, I’ll cook it,” she wrote, then marked that out. “I won’t cook anything cute or endangered,” she wrote. “No turtles, raccoons, mountain lions. And no bugs!”

Grabbing the notepad, she left the library and headed for the kitchen. But as her mind raced, so did her feet, and she entered the kitchen in a rush. Manuel and his wife, Dolores, were slowly chopping vegetables for the evening’s enchiladas. “Do you two know where I can hire people who know these mountains and can gather mushrooms for me? And people who can help with butchering and fish cleaning?”

Manuel and his wife looked at each other; then Manuel spoke. “In our town of Socorro there are such people.”

“How many people live there?”

“Thirty-six.”

Kady smiled. “Can I hire them all?”

Manuel seemed to have been rendered speechless, but Dolores spoke up. “For what? No one will kill Señor Jordan for you.”

“Perhaps Juan would,” Manuel said matter-of-factly.

“Is this what you want?” Dolores asked, looking at Kady hard.

Kady blinked for a moment, considering this possibility, then shook her head. “No, I don’t want to kill Cole, even though he deserves it. I want to put on a feast. A feast such as no one has ever before dreamed of. I want to experiment; I want to create new recipes and eventually write a cookbook. I want to try every dish I’ve ever contemplated and see what it tastes like. I want to wrap fish in paper, salt, clay, and in wet leaves. I want to marinate meat in herbs that no one has ever tried before. I want to make mistakes and have some triumphs. I want . . . I want . . .” She smiled as she looked at the two old people, their faces unreadable. “I want freedom.”

At that she could see Manuel did not understand and that he was about to tell her she could not leave the ranch. “I want to spend Cole Jordan’s money. Lots of it. Will you two help me?”

“Gladly,” Manuel said, grinning.

“All right, then, come with me and let’s start planning this thing. Oh, and send someone to fetch all the inhabitants of Socorro. Tell them I’m paying everyone ten dollars an hour.”

At that Manuel had to catch his wife to keep her from swooning. Kady wasn’t sure, but she figured the average wage in 1873 was a dollar or so a week, so ten dollars an hour was more than they could comprehend.

“And the babies?” Dolores gasped, her husband’s arms around her.

“Bring them and I’ll pay them as taste testers. I’d love to write a baby-food cookbook. Come on, time is wasting.”

In a state of bewilderment, Manuel and his wife followed Kady into the library.

Chapter 13

AS COLE JORDAN RODE INTO LEGEND, COLORADO, HE WAS sure that in the ten days he had been away, it had become a ghost town. His first thought was that Harwood’s men had returned and slaughtered everyone, but if that had happened, there would be evidence of such murder. As he looked into the windows of the hotel and saw no one, he thought maybe everyone had gone through the rock with Kady. But that couldn’t have happened because he’d given orders he knew no one would dare disobey.

If not violence, then maybe smallpox had wiped them out. Or maybe . . .

He couldn’t think of any more things that could have happened to everyone, but the eerie feeling of the empty town was making him nervous. Something horrible had happened; it must have. But he could see no signs of disaster, no burned-out buildings, no one walking about with tragic faces.

There was just a deserted town and no clues as to what had happened to everyone.

“Is anyone here?” he shouted, but his voice echoed off the empty buildings and came back to him. Dismounting, he tied his horse up, then went into the mercantile, where he was further shocked. Two-thirds of the shelves were empty. Clothes still hung on the racks, and there were boots for sale, just as always, but the grocery part of the store was picked clean; not so much as a can was left. Even the “mystery” cans that had fallen into a river and had their labels washed off were gone. No barrels of crackers or pickles stood before the counter.

Cole went back outside and started walking. The laundry was empty; the barber’s chairs had no customers; the freight depot had a wagon in front of it, loaded with ore, but there were no horses attached to it, no driver in the seat.

The more he saw, the more anxious he became, and he started running. The livery stable had no horses; the boarding house was empty. No one was at the newspaper office or the telegraph office. The ice cream parlor had no people in it, nor did it have anything to eat. The icehouse out back had no milk or cream; in fact, even the ice was gone.