Shadow on the Land

by Wayne D. Overholser

  “All right,” he said heavily, and motioned toward a chair. “What do you want me to do?”

  She moved back to the window, slowly, and lowered herself into the chair. “I want to make a deal, Lee. I can clear up some things you haven’t been sure about. In return, I want you to see Mike as soon as you can. Tell him you’re not the father of my child.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “No. I was two months pregnant. It’s Mike’s baby, and he’s got to believe it before it comes. I didn’t tell him when we were married, and, when he found out, he jumped to the conclusion that it was yours. He thinks you wouldn’t marry me, and I married him just to give my baby a name.”

  Lee nodded, knowing the jealousy of which Quinn was capable, his quickness to anger and the depth at which his fury ran. “I don’t think Mike would believe me,” he said.

  “You’ve got to make him believe you, Lee. I want my baby and I want a home and I want Mike. I don’t know how you can do it, but there must be a way.”

  There was agony in her, as much agony as there had been in Mike the night he had found Deborah in Lee’s arms. And because there was in Lee the sense of guilt for having brought this thing upon them, he said: “I’ll do what I can.”

  She relaxed against the back of her chair, as if his words had released a tension in her. She said: “Then I’ll deliver my part of the bargain. You knew that I was associated with Jepson before I married Mike.” Lee nodded, and she went on: “I teamed up with Jepson because he was a schemer and we both wanted money. We weren’t very particular how we got it.”

  Lee had filled his pipe, and, lighting it now, he watched her and held his silence.

  “Jepson knew that a railroad was bound to come. A railroad meant suckers, and Jepson was very good at separating suckers from their money. The trouble was, we’d had a bad deal on California real estate, and we’d lost about all we had. He fixed that by staking out Jepson City, running off a bunch of fake advertising folders, and sending them all over the world. He sold a lot of Jepson City property, but none around here. I doubt if three people in central Oregon ever saw one of those folders.”

  “Highpockets saw one. An Australian on the stage showed one to him.”

  “I know. That Australian stopped at Redmond and showed the folder to Herb Racine. That’s why Jepson killed Racine. You see, Jepson saw that the people’s movement was a way to make our fortune, and that Racine was the key man in the movement, so Jepson buttered him up until he had him where he wanted him. He even fooled Hanna, and she’s sharper than her father ever was. Racine agreed with Jepson that the proper route for the people’s railroad was to swing east through Burns and Vale and Jepson City. That railroad would have meant a million dollars for us. But Racine was too honest. The minute he saw the folder, he swore he’d expose Jepson and see that the railroad missed Jepson City by fifty miles. They had a quarrel in Redmond, and that night, when Racine was coming home, Jepson shot him.”

  “Racine didn’t talk to anyone about Jepson?”

  “No. Jepson promised to return the money and quit advertising until he did have a city. Racine believed him. I’m not sure, but I think the Australian is buried in the desert somewhere. I do know he threatened to make trouble when he saw Jepson City, and he disappeared rather suddenly. After that, Jepson expected to use Hanna the way he had planned to use her father, and he had fixed up some political connections himself. That’s the way it was when we heard about the Hill and Harriman lines coming up the cañon. Jepson had seen Stevens somewhere . . . Montana, I think . . . and he heard Stevens was in a Portland hotel, registered under the name of Sampson. We went to Portland, stayed at the same hotel, and kept an eye on him. That’s how we spotted you. I fixed it so you could talk to me on the Inland Belle, and wiggled my hips once or twice so you’d keep coming. You did, but I never succeeded in prying anything of much value out of you. I already knew Mike well, but neither Jepson nor I dreamed things would work out the way they did.”

  “Neither did I,” Lee murmured.

  “Mike didn’t know about my connection with Jepson. He doesn’t know yet as much as I’m telling you. He put me on a salary, and I traveled with him part of the time, because I knew the country and could help him with some of the people he had to deal with. Actually I was passing on to Jepson everything I found out from you and Mike. What we wanted to know mostly was whether either line was building across the desert and whether they’d follow the known surveys.

  “What Jepson hoped to accomplish was to get the two lines to fighting so much that the Oregon Trunk would quit or sell out, and, if that happened, he thought the Harriman line would slow up or stop building entirely. Then the people would start thinking about the state-owned railroad again. Every move he made, such as that dynamite scheme and the time they tried to ambush you and all the rest, was made to make you or the Harriman people think the other side was doing the dirty work. Those schemes might have succeeded if you hadn’t held back.”

  “You knew about them?”

  “Not until afterwards, but I couldn’t have stopped him anyway. He said my job was to spy on the men and his was to make our plan go. I failed because I began to think more of Mike than I did of my job, and Jepson failed because he couldn’t stampede you into making a fight. Now he’s changed his tactics. He’s given up the people’s railroad, but the Harriman survey across the desert runs through his property, and he plans to move his town site to it. The Hill survey misses him by miles, so he wants to hold the Oregon Trunk back and help the Harriman line beat it into Bend. Then he believes the Harriman people will build across the desert and he’ll still win.”

  “Was he really drunk in Shaniko that time?”

  “He never gets drunk. He’s built that idea up until people believe it, and he uses it as an alibi.”

  “What about the time they tried to kill me at your place?”

  “I don’t know anything about that, Lee,” she said earnestly. “It was Jepson, but I didn’t have any inkling of what he aimed to do until we found you in the snow. Jepson is in love with me, or so he says, and he’s bitter because I married Mike. He knew when I played cards, and I think the killing was planned to fix the blame on Mike.”

  “But Mike wasn’t . . .”

  “He’s crazy jealous, Lee. You know that. If he wasn’t, he’d believe me. He’s made some threats around town about what he’s going to do to you, and it might have been hard for him to prove an alibi, because he was alone between here and Trout Creek.”

  Lee leaned forward, empty pipe held in his hands. “Will you tell this in court?”

  She shook her head. “It would make me lose Mike, and I’ve been into too much of it myself.”

  “I’ve been able, through luck and using my head a little, to keep Jepson from doing too much harm,” Lee said slowly, “but as long as he’s alive and free, he’s dangerous. He’s just cagey enough so that I’ve never been able to get the proof I need.”

  “I’ll go to court if it will help you, Lee,” she said then, “and if you can get Mike back for me.”

  “He doesn’t know about Jepson?”

  “Not much, and he doesn’t believe what he has heard. He thinks Jepson is just a smart-talking, insignificant little man who is betting on a long chance with his town site.”

  The door swung open, slamming hard against the wall. Lee came to his feet and, turning, saw Mike Quinn in the doorway, his cheeks ruddied by both wind and anger, his gray eyes made ugly by a compelling bitterness. He stood in silence for a long minute, and there was no sound in the room but Deborah’s labored breathing. Outside in the street a drunken man raised a shout, and the wind roared around the corners of the hotel and sent an empty can banging down the street.

  Lee said: “Come in, Mike. We were just talking about you.”

  “I’ll bet you were,” Quinn said coldly, “and I don’t need to come in. I can do what I came to do from here. I found you two together once before in this hotel in a little different positi
on. Isn’t it enough for me to marry the . . .”

  “Mike!” Lee shouted.

  Quinn waved a big hand in derision. “Don’t like to hear it, do you? You aren’t man enough to stand up and take the blame for what you’ve done. I can marry her and raise the kid . . .”

  “Shut up and listen,” Lee cut in, anger cording the muscles of his jaws.

  “Listen, hell! You’ve got nothing to say I want to hear. Jepson told me about that night in Shaniko a week before we were married. If it happened once, it could have happened before, and it leaves me just one answer to make.”

  Quinn’s hand came from his pocket, a gun clutched in white knuckled fingers, and Lee, standing helplessly across the room from Quinn, saw violent hatred sweep across the wide, craggy face.

  “No, Mike, no!” It was Deborah, and she came too quickly from her chair. She stumbled and fell and did not rise.

  Mike Quinn shoved his gun back into his pocket and there was horror in his eyes, as if he had just realized what he had planned to do. Then he came to her and, dropping to his knees, lifted her head. Her face was distorted as a spasm of pain swept through her. Then it passed, and she whispered: “Get the doctor, Mike.” She tried to smile, and a hand came up to touch his cheek. “It’s your baby, Mike. If anything happens to me, don’t ever doubt it.”

  * * * * *

  After Deborah was in bed in another room, and the doctor and a woman were with her, Quinn came back to stand in the doorway of Lee’s room. He stared at Lee in silence for a time, shoulders hunched forward in a characteristic menacing roll; his face was sullen, but the violence of his anger was spent. “We’d better get a long ways apart, Dawes, and stay that way,” he said bitterly. “We’ve always wanted what the other fellow had, but I won’t share my wife.”

  “Funny thing, Mike.” Lee got up and began pacing restlessly around the room. “I don’t want Deborah. I asked Hanna to marry me, and she turned me down. I always thought I could have any woman for the asking, but when I find one I want to marry, I can’t have her.”

  “Hanna? Well, I’ll be damned. Jepson said . . .”

  “You’re a bigger fool than I think you are, Mike, if you believe anything Jepson tells you. Why do you think he told you what he did?”

  “He’s just an old woman, I guess. Wanted to shove gossip along.”

  Lee laughed shortly. “If you had any brains at all, you’d know he’s been trying to get us to tangle all the time. You’ve got the woman that half the men in the country would give an arm to have, but you aren’t satisfied. She came here tonight to ask me to tell you that it’s your baby she’s having and not mine. You’ve been jealous so long you’re letting it make a bigger fool of you than Nature intended, and you’re breaking the heart of the only woman who ever did love your ugly mug. Damn it, Quinn, you are a fool.”

  Quinn sat down on the bed and rolled a smoke and nursed the doubt that had been in him so long.

  Lee watched him a moment in silence, and then said testily: “You gave me some sanctimonious talk about me bringing out the devil in a woman and you having respect for Deborah. Maybe if you could think back about nine months, you might remember at least one occasion when that respect kind of slipped. You don’t think this kid isn’t yours, Mike. You just think you haven’t got all of Deborah, and you’re so damned thick-headed you can’t tell when you have.”

  Quinn threw his cigarette stub out of the window and brought his eyes to Lee’s face. He said huskily: “We’ve fought and cussed each other, Lee, but we’ve never lied to each other. You aren’t lying to me now, are you?”

  “I’m not lying, Mike,” Lee said.

  They waited through the long hours until, near dawn, a woman came to stand in the doorway, a small, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She said: “Your wife thought you’d want to see him, Mister Quinn.”

  Quinn came to his feet, eyes briefly on Lee, and then he slowly crossed the room, and stood looking down at the baby. He remained there a long time, and Lee came to stand behind him. He laughed, a great belly laugh that broke the tension. “The spit’n image of you, Mike. Red hair, flat nose, and an ugly Irish mug if I ever saw one.”

  “Ten pounder,” the woman said, and took the baby away.

  Pride was in Mike Quinn then. He stood with his shoulders back, doubt drained fully out of him. “He’s a fine broth of a lad, and that’s a fact. We’ll call him Michael O’Brien Quinn.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing,” Lee jeered. “Whoever heard of O’Brien for a middle name?”

  “I can’t think of any name that’s more Irish than O’Brien,” Quinn said stiffly.

  They faced each other, and it was as if a great tide had washed the rancor from them. Slowly Quinn held out his hand, and Lee took it.

  “I’m sorry, Lee,” Quinn said huskily. “I’m going to ask her to forgive me.”

  “She’ll forgive you, Mike, because she loves you. I’ve been thinking some about what I’ll be doing when this railroad gets finished. There’ll be a lot of building here in central Oregon. Maybe we could team up in a construction business. We could have a sign that said ‘Quinn and Dawes. We build anything.’ How does that strike you?”

  A grin lighted Mike Quinn’s craggy face. “That’d be fine, Lee. It sure would.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Construction was at its height this spring of 1910. Strung the length of the cañon, nine thousand men pounded and dug and blasted. With shovels and pickaxes, drills and dynamite, they inched their way along the rock walls, clawing out a forty-foot shelf until there was a hundred miles of grade—and first steel was laid at the mouth of the Deschutes. Ahead of them the engineers hung from ropes along the sheer walls of the cliffs and charted the plans for those behind.

  While man with his weapons of violence altered swiftly the face Nature had given this earth, the river kept steadily on, growling and slowly gnawing a deeper channel, as it had for unmeasured time. And atop the west rim, Indians on the Warm Springs Reservation pondered the strangeness of this white race that had waited so long, and then in a sudden burst of wild energy had started pushing two paths of twin steel up the cañon.

  Dozens of human difficulties must be worked out. They ranged from the job John F. Stevens had helped to do in Washington in getting the Ellis Bill passed, authorizing the Oregon Trunk to bridge the Columbia at Celilo, to agreeing upon the depot site in Madras. But toughest of all for the Oregon Trunk was the high trump the Harriman interest had played—the securing of the Smith homestead at Mile Seventy-Five that set athwart the Oregon Trunk right of way in the cañon, exactly as the Girt place had set athwart the access road to Horseshoe Bend.

  Both sides recognized the Smith place as the strategic key to the battle. Oregon Trunk construction was held up at this point for two months. George W. Boschke, chief engineer of the Harriman Northwestern System, and builder of the Galveston sea wall, was in camp when a messenger rode in on a lathered horse and handed him a telegram that said that the Galveston sea wall had been carried away by another great hurricane. Boschke read it, and smiled. He said: “This telegram is a lie. I built that wall to stand. Double the force on Mile Seventy-Five.” Boschke was right. The message was based on a false report, and the Harriman people hung doggedly to their obstructing position.

  March spun out with its driving wind that pierced a man’s clothes and flesh and laid its sharp chill into his bones, then April, with its clear skies and days that were longer and warmer and full of spring’s eternal promise. The bunchgrass began to grow, and a slow green came to the valley floors. Meadowlarks sang lustily, and their melody, drifting with the wind and coming to Lee Dawes’s ears, sent his thoughts trailing back over the months. Centering those thoughts was the image of slight, pretty Hanna Racine, who had said she would not marry him.

  Lee was standing in front of the Green Hotel in Madras on the May morning that Highpockets braked a new automobile to a stop and called with great pride: “What do you think of this here contraption, son?�
��

  “The contraption’s all right, but you sure look out of place sitting behind the wheel. Don’t you feel kind of funny without a fistful of ribbons?”

  Highpockets climbed out and shook down the linen duster that he was wearing. “The way I figger it, the horse is done. We ain’t gonna have no more use for ’em. Folks are gonna travel in these dad-burned gas buggies, and I’m never one to stand in the road of progress. So I up and bought me a car. Let’s go for a ride. Ain’t got nothing to do, have you?”

  “Not right now. Just got back from Grizzly Butte. Some of the freighters forgot they had a contract and started hollering about not getting enough for hauling lumber.”

  “Jepson?”

  Lee shrugged. “I figured it was, but no sign of him or Bull.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Not after I busted a couple of noses. Busting noses always goes a long way toward ending trouble if you bust the right noses.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have gone to Portland,” Highpockets said sourly. “Might have knowed I’d miss some fun. Climb in. Let’s go.”

  Lee didn’t think to ask where they were going until Highpockets turned off the road at Hanna’s place. “What the hell, you strung-out wash line,” he said irritably. “She don’t want to see me.”

  “You’re an ignorant cuss for a feller who allows he knows all about women. Now shut up.”

  They bounced over the twin ruts and turned into the ranch yard, Highpockets pulling on the steering wheel and yelling: “Whoa!” Then he thought of the brake and looked at Lee a little sheepishly. “Sometimes I forget what I’m driving. Kind of scares me when I think I’ve got forty-eight horses out there in front.”

  Lee stepped down and knocked on the front door, but only the Indian girl Mary was at home.

  “Miss Hanna out riding,” Mary said. “You wait. She soon be back.”

  It was half an hour before Hanna rode in. She waved when she was still in the junipers and some distance from the house. When she rode around the barn, and reined up, Willie circling her mount and yapping ecstatically, she called: “It’s nice to see you two, but I don’t think there’s a thing in the house to eat, Highpockets!”