Duchess For A Day. Nan Ryan

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      Five

      At straight-up noon the handsome, thirty-two-year-old Hank Cassidy stepped onto his private rail car—alone—for the journey across the country. The muscular, rough-around-the-edges, hardworking Westerner who had made tens of millions in the mines was better known as Nevada’s young Silver King.

      Hank looked the part of royalty on this sunny summer day. With his smoothly shaven face bronzed by the Nevada sun and wind and glowing with good health, his midnight hair slightly damp from his bath, Hank was impeccably dressed in buff-colored custom-tailored trousers and sky-blue linen shirt. He had the self-assured manner and sleek, self-satisfied appearance of a man who had been born to the purple.

      Nothing could have been further from the truth.

      Hank Cassidy came from modest means. He never knew his mother. She died giving birth to him. When he was seventeen his quiet, frugal father, a lifelong miner who rarely talked or smiled, was killed in an explosion deep underground. To Hank’s surprise, his undemonstrative father had managed to save a small sum of money and left it to his only son.

      Hank had invested every cent of his meager inheritance in what everyone told him was a worthless hole in the mountain. He hadn’t listened. He’d bought the long-boarded-up quarry from an old miner who was a pallbearer at his father’s funeral.

      Hank christened his mine the Black Cat and immediately went to work. He spent years laboring deep in the darkness, searching for buried veins, patiently coaxing the precious metal out of stubborn solid rock. The mine hardly yielded enough silver to pay his hands.

      Hank didn’t give up.

      Four long years after his first day in the Black Cat, Hank and his employees hit the mother lode. Overnight, young Hank Cassidy was a millionaire. He bought more mines. He made more millions. He continued to work alongside his men, sweating and straining and toiling and, as he worked, filling the cavern with the sound of his rich laughter. He encouraged the miners to joke around and make play out of work as much as possible.

      His men loved him.

      Hank paid his workers far above the average wage and supported their widows when things went wrong below.

      Soon every miner within hundreds of miles had heard of Hank Cassidy and all wanted to work for the young, likable Silver King.

      Hank’s mining empire grew and finally he came up out of the darkness into the daylight to enjoy his riches. He had a huge three-story mansion built on the bluffs above Virginia City. He purchased, sight unseen and fully staffed, a stately home on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. He ordered a private rail car from the Pullman company. He commissioned the building of a yacht to be harbored in San Francisco with a full crew at the ready for whenever he felt like a cruise.

      A generous man, he also lavished expensive gifts on his trusted employees. Especially on their delighted wives. Hank liked to say that they were the only wives to whom he would be giving presents. He had no plans to ever have one of his own.

      No one doubted he meant it. Everyone who knew the handsome, footloose, cavalier Silver King agreed that marriage was not in Cassidy’s cards, to the disappointment of many a young lady.

      A lover of fast horses, Hank was leaving today for Saratoga Springs where he would spend the summer racing season. Prized Thoroughbreds from his Kentucky farm were being shipped to Saratoga to compete at the historic old track.

      The blooded horses would be transported in special rail cars, escorted by Hank’s loyal friend and winning horse trainer, Fox Connor.

      Once Hank reached Saratoga, he would spend the warm, pleasant days watching his Thoroughbreds go up against some stiff competition. And the cool, mountain nights dining and dancing and taking strolls with the fairest of the Eastern beauties.

      Life was good indeed for the Nevada Silver King.

      Now as Hank settled comfortably in a big easy chair in the plush private rail car, he felt the vibration of the wheels beginning to turn on the tracks, heard the engine’s whistle sound a loud warning blast.

      Hank smiled, took a Cuban cigar from a nearby humidor and sniffed its fragrance, nodding his dark head in approval. He stuck the cigar in his mouth, clamping it firmly between his even white teeth, then lifted his feet up onto an ottoman. He reached for a match, struck it and lighted his expensive cigar. He dropped the smoking match into a crystal ashtray and took a long, slow pull.

      Hank exhaled with pleasure, blowing the smoke out as he turned his head and glanced out the window. The train was slowly moving now, leaving the station where СКАЧАТЬ