She thought of him often now, but then so did everyone in the region. The level of the Big Two-Hearted dropped and dropped until only a sluggish, shallow stream flowed in the deep channel. Although it was clear to some Olympians that lack of rain was causing the river to dry up, more people thought the dam was at fault, as though Landar, Creel, and Quinn were responsible for this new devastation. When it became clear that the longhorns were barely getting sufficient water to drink, a group of Pennington’s men had ridden up into the Sacajawea, only to be turned back by a dozen armed Chinese.
“We’ve got to do something about Landar,” was a refrain heard more and more often throughout the countryside.
But what could they do about him, holed up as he was in a kind of natural fortress?
Emmalee herself wondered what to do about him, but her ruminations were more personal. Again and again she replayed in her mind their conversation in the schoolhouse. “You’ve come a long way, Emmalee,” he’d said, “but not far enough. You’ll have to offer me what I once offered you.”
What had he meant?
It was as if she were a dull pupil called upon to recite a lesson she hadn’t yet grasped.
Several weeks after the wedding, Delilah invited Emmalee over for dinner. She went. Randy seemed a little nervous, but very happy in his new life, and Delilah was radiant. Their crops were burning like everyone else’s, but it didn’t seem to matter all that much to either of them.
“Something good is bound to happen,” said Delilah, sitting down at the table and serving a succulent rabbit hash with garden greens, fresh biscuits, and beer. “It’ll rain when it’s ready to rain.”
But talk turned inevitably to the situation in the territory.
“When will the dam be completed?” Emmalee asked the new Mrs. Clay.
“I think before spring. I never paid too much attention. It was something the men did, that’s all.”
“But what’ll it be used for? Certainly not to keep water from us down here on the plain?”
“Oh, no. I heard Uncle Jake and Garn discussing milling, mining. Things like that. Garn has a lot of good ideas.”
I bet he has, thought Emmalee, with a combination of pride and rue. Many ideas, and she was excluded from them.
“Bye-the-bye, I saw Mr. Tell in town the other day,” said Emmalee. “He certainly looks the cock-of-the-walk these days.”
Randy showed a flash of honest anger. “Yes. He thinks we’ll all fail now. He offered to buy out Burt Pennington, if the drought continues. Can you believe it? He’s offered to buy out a lot of people, farmers and ranchers both. And if people default on their loans to him, he’ll have the land anyway. He can’t lose.”
“I feel so sad for them,” said Delilah, who had her own money.
Emmalee had a question. “Let’s say a farmer goes bust and has to abandon his land. How much would it take to buy his plot?”
“Fifty cents per acre,” said Randy, chewing rabbit hash.
No wonder Tell looked so content, thought Emmalee. He couldn’t lose, no matter how he had arranged his scheme. If he’d gotten the money he’d loaned the ranchers from bankers back east, he would have to repay it sometime. But if he wound up owning or controlling most of the land in Olympia, he would become virtually a baron. He could pay off his backers readily enough and still be left immensely rich.
“I was right all along,” she said. “Tell never cared for either group. Loaning to the ranchers was just a wise card in his private game.”
“You may have a point there, Em,” Randy admitted. “But Tell is only a nuisance. The real danger to all of us comes from…from that dam.”
“Oh, honey,” said Delilah, “I don’t think so…”
“And something’s going to be done about it too. Mr. Torquist and Burt Pennington, and some others are holding a meeting later this week.”
“Are you going, honey?” his wife inquired.
“You bet I am.”
“Do you think you should? I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”
“What trouble? What will Tell do? He’s the law? Ha! Alf Kaiserhalt is dead and in the ground and Tell didn’t lift a finger.”
“There was the business about trespassing,” Emmalee offered.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Randy continued. “It’s not that I grieve much for Alf, after what he tried to do to you and me, Em. But it’s the principle of the thing. Murder can’t be allowed. Something’s going to have to be done about that, and about the dam.”
“So that’s the purpose of the meeting?”
“You bet.”
“When is it? Maybe I’ll come too.”
Randy looked at her, hemmed and hawed a little.
“You don’t want to get mixed up in it, Em,” he said.
“I thought you said there wasn’t going to be any trouble, honey,” worried Delilah.
“There won’t be. That is, only the necessary…only what’s necessary to survive here in peace.”
Emmalee wondered why talk of peace always seemed so closely related to the possibility of struggle and violence. She also recalled Cloris Hamtramck’s suspicion that the men were planning something that would bring new havoc to the territory.
“Well, when is the meeting?” she pressed Randy. “Just in case I want to attend.”
“You better not, Em.”
“Randy, when is the meeting?”
He didn’t look at her directly, sort of stared at the bridge of her nose, then said, “You have to be invited by Mr. Torquist.”
“It’s men’s business, is that it?”
“Well,” offered Delilah, innocently displaying a trait that made her a good wife for Randy, “I guess it is men’s business, isn’t it, Em?”
Emmalee didn’t have to spend much time deciding that Horace Torquist was not going to send her an invitation. But she had an ominous feeling that the many currents alive in Olympia were beginning to converge. She had no intention of letting that happen without her knowledge. What one doesn’t know can hurt an awful lot.
Both of her cows were pregnant, thus dry, so she didn’t have milk to sell these days, but she candled and packed her eggs, mounted Ned, and rode into town. Myrtle, who lived right outside the village, had no use for the beast anymore. She’d agreed to sell it and Emmalee was going to pay for the mule as soon as she had the money.
Tell was not at his desk by the telegraph and there was no one in the store except Myrtle and Hester, who were drinking coffee and listlessly fanning themselves.
“What? No customers?” Emmalee placed her eggs on the table and sat down.
“Too hot,” said Myrtle.
“People are scared.” Hester shrugged. “They don’t spend money—assuming they got some—when any minute they think the prairie is gonna bust into flame.”
“One spark and my cornfield would,” said Emmalee.
“Help yourself to some coffee.”
“It’s too hot. Where’s Mr. Tell?”
“He went out.”
“Out where?”
“Dunno. He was all upset. He heard there was some kind of a meeting coming up that he didn’t know anything about. I figure he’s out trying to locate the information. You hear anything about a meeting, Em?”
“No,” lied Emmalee. Whatever Torquist and Pennington were planning did not include Vestor Tell.
“Maybe he just slept late today,” she offered, making conversation. Tell owned one of the new houses right in the village.
“Naw. I seen him ride away,” said Myrtle. “He’s gone all right.”
“Too bad. What if I wanted to send a telegram?”
“Who would you send one to?”
“President Ulysses S. Grant. I figure he’d enjoy how things are going out here in this part of his country.”
The two older women laughed.
“Well, the United States Land Office would, I’m sure,” said Emmalee.
“They will, in time. That inspection team’ll come next year.�
�
Next year might be too late, thought Emmalee. “Say,” she demanded, remembering her first sight of Myrtle, Hester, Garn, and Ebenezer huddled around this table on the day she’d arrived in Olympia, “did you two know about the dam from the start?”
“Yep,” said Myrtle.
Hester nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The other two exchanged glances. “You never asked,” drawled Myrtle.
“Why did Garn let you in on his secret then?”
“Guess he liked me.” Myrtle grinned. “I told him he reminded me of a cross between the two men I shouldda married but didn’t have the brains to.”
“I’ve known Garn since he was a little shaver,” Hester said.
“You have?” This was news to Emmalee.
“Sure. Back in Wyoming. His ma died early on. She had had some bad luck and was in what is considered a real old profession, just like me. She was sweet. His pa got framed by some shysters and they hung him. Me an’ the girls sort of raised Garn, you might say.”
So Garn’s story was true. Emmalee did not quite know whether to laugh or cry. Was it possible that she had misjudged almost everything about him from the start?
“He told me that story once,” she said. “He didn’t mention any names, though.”
“True story, every word,” Hester said. “Including about me and the girls who raised him.”
“So, you seen Garn lately?” asked Myrtle.
“Not since the wedding.”
“Why not? That man loves you, girl.”
They were alone, the three of them, and Emmalee had been thinking about Garn. She decided to speak frankly.
“He told me that he did…once,” she said. “I don’t know about now.”
“Huh!” said Myrtle. “You’re just chicken, is all.”
“Garn Landar is a proud man,” Hester put in. “He’s not about to ask for what he wants more than one time. Did you know that?”
“He…he told me,” Emmalee realized.
“An’ you didn’t do nothin’ about it?”
“Listen here, Em,” Myrtle said, putting down her coffee cup and leaning forward, “a lot of things aren’t as hard as they seem to be, nor half as hard as you’ve been makin’ ’em out to be. What do you think you’re gonna lose anyway if you admit that you love somebody? I keep tellin’ you, love ain’t surrender, girl! You don’t have to run up a white flag an’ say, ‘It’s over, I give up, I ain’t my own person anymore.’ But you sure do seem to think about it that way.”
“I guess it’s because I had to get used to being on my own, relying on myself, very early.”
“So did Garn. Maybe you’re two of a kind.”
“Well, could be Olympia’s a big enough place for both of ’em,” Hester said.
The Hamtramck ranch was about five miles south of Arcady, and by the time Emmalee reached it, she and Ned were parched. She couldn’t remember having been this thirsty last summer on the hottest days crossing Kansas. Three towheaded Hamtramck children were playing in a narrow wedge of dusty shade next to the Hamtramck’s squat sod house.
“Is your ma here?” Emmalee asked them.
“Well, where the hell else would I be?” asked Cloris cheerfully, poking her head out the door. “Come on in and set a spell before you get sunstroke. What brings you way out here?”
Emmalee tied Ned in the shade, treated him to a basin full of water that Cloris said she could spare, and then followed the woman inside. The sod house was dark and gloriously cool, but plain in the extreme. Just one large, dirt-floored room, it contained a table, a few stools, and two beds, one for the children and one for their parents.
“Joe’s out trying to dig a well,” Cloris said, mentioning her husband: “If it don’t rain in four, five more days, I don’t know what we’re gonna do for our poor longhorns.”
“If they’ll eat burned corn, I have plenty.”
Cloris served tea made from hot water and the dried leaves of Queen Anne’s Lace. It tasted fine going down but left a bitter film in the mouth that, oddly, helped to relieve thirst.
“Quite a social whirl here today,” observed Cloris. “First Vestor Tell and now you.”
“Tell was here?”
“He’s still here, far as I know. He rode out into the field to talk to Joe.”
“Do you know what it’s about? Are they maybe talking about a meeting?”
“I never heard about any meeting.”
“Does your husband know?”
“If he does, he ain’t said. That man gets more secretive on me every day, I swear. Course he’s holdin’ a lot of things in these days, on account of we might go bust here if the drought don’t let up. He don’t want to talk about it, know what I mean?”
“I guess I do.”
“When’s this so-called meeting going to be held?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. You told me at the wedding that you had a suspicion something was about to happen. I think that time is coming. I haven’t liked the way that Tell has been operating since we arrived here, and almost everyone has come around to my way of thinking. The men are up to something that doesn’t involve Tell, and knowing that is bound to make him more dangerous than he is already.”
“Somebody ought to do something,” Cloris said.
“That’s why I’m here. I’ve got something in mind. It might work, but I’ll need help.”
“I’ll sure do what I can.”
“Could you invite Vestor Tell to stay here for supper tonight?”
“That’s all you want me to do?”
“Yes. Just have him for supper and keep him here as long as you can. I need the time.”
Cloris’s eyes narrowed. “You ain’t gonna go an’ get yourself in deep trouble, are you?”
“Not if I can help it, Cloris. Believe me, not if I can help it.”
Tell’s house was grand by Arcadian standards, a two-story clapboard affair with many windows, a little porch, and even a decorative cupola atop the steep, shingled roof. It was located down the street from the general store, its back to the store. The porch faced the river.
Emmalee approached it shortly after nightfall, coming toward it from the river side. The town was hot and quiet. Emmalee had waited for a long time down by the river, growing increasingly nervous. She needed darkness, and Tell’s absence.
Pastor Runde’s choir was practicing inside the church, a much-needed exercise since “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” sounded off-key and discordant on the evening air. Emmalee stepped up onto Tell’s porch, sure that the creaking of his floorboards was more than sufficient to awaken the dead. The front door was locked, but she found a side window partially ajar to receive the breeze, had there been any. She hitched up her skirt, hoisted herself up on the sill, and swung inside. It was hot in there, and very dark.
She stood near the window until her eyes had adjusted to the gloom. There were several lamps on tables, but she was afraid of too much light. Instead she hunted around until she found a candle in the kitchen. After lighting it, she shielded the flame with her hand and took a look about. The stories about Tell having come from a monied family seemed to be substantiated. His furniture was massive, gleaming, and ornate. The walls were even papered, something unheard of out here in frontier Olympia. The lamps had shades, fine, fragile, elegant things. Paintings hung on the walls, large glossy oils of people and scenes Emmalee could not quite make out by the light of her candle.
She passed through a dining room, then a parlor, entering a smaller room behind the parlor. A little stone fireplace stood along one wall, and bookcases, crammed full of papers and volumes, loomed above a huge desk. The desk was bare, however, and its drawers contained nothing more than a couple of outdated newspapers from Salt Lake City.
Then she thought she heard hoofbeats. Blowing out the candle, she edged toward the window, wondering how to get out without being seen. She was cursing herself for her recklessness now, but when she saw that th
e horseman was only some cowboy heading toward the general store, probably for a brew, she relaxed, lit the candle again, and returned to her search.
It was fairly easy, once she had determined that Vestor Tell was a methodical; organized man. The Morse code book, a thin little volume, was next to a history of telegraphy and a fat tome dealing with modes of human communication down through the ages. As an added bonus, regulations regarding banking operations in the territory had been inserted between leather-bound volumes of finance and law.
Emmalee urged Ned homeward through the hot night, like an eager schoolgirl who cannot wait to do her lessons.
Vestor Tell was at his desk in the general store next morning, sipping coffee contentedly and telling rancher Royce Campbell no, he was real sorry, but he just could not see his way clear to lend him money for the purchase of a drill bit that might locate water beneath the prairie sod.
“It’s too bad, but what can I tell you,” Tell oozed. “Whyn’t you go over to the chapel and say a prayer for rain? That might just do the trick.”
Campbell stalked out, mute, angry and impotent.
“Hello, Emmalee,” Tell called. “How you be?”
“Fine,” she answered, stealing a second look at him. He seemed to have no idea that she’d been in his house last night.
Hester was a little surprised to see Emmalee. “You give up on farming, or what?” she asked. “You were just in here yesterday.”
Em made a big fuss about needing material for a dress she planned to sew, and this pretext got her alone with Hester back behind the stacks of fabric and dry goods.
“Now here’s some likely cotton cloth…” Hester was saying, holding out the material for Emmalee to feel.
“No,” Em whispered. “Forget about that. I’ve learned something very important.”
The orange-haired woman was all ears.
“Tell loans money as a business,” Emmalee said. “He’s allowed to do so under the Territorial Banking Charter of June, 1866.”
“What’s that got to do with the price of tea in—”
“Everything. The charter states that, all along, he’s supposed to have used a set interest rate for all parties and treated all applicants equally. Hester, he’s lied about this to the land office. That’s why he’s been delaying the inspectors. He’s corrupt!”
The Passionate and the Proud Page 32