Even so, she staggered to her feet and started again toward home. It was, at least, her own.
Finally she reached the cabin, fumbled with the doorlatch, and fell inside. For a long time she lay on the floor as the rain pounded down on the sod roof, a muffled, droning sound. Then she got up, stripped off her sodden clothing, put on an old robe, and stood by the window. Murky clouds of rain slashed down across the fields of her promised land, mocking both the future and the past. She thought of the tender roots of corn, washed away by flood, each delicate tendril missing forever the opportunity to live and grow strong in the fullness of the seasons.
Just hold on! she thought, picturing the tiny plants bent beneath rain and wind. Just hold on until the sun comes out!
She was praying, really, although not completely conscious of it. And out of the prayer came a flicker of her old strength.
I’m going to hold on too! she vowed. When she realized that, Emmalee knew she was all right. She started to feel better.
I’ll go on from here, she told herself. I don’t want to be completely on my own anymore. I’m going to find someone. She knew just who he was.
There was, of course, a chance that he would no longer want to have anything to do with her; she hadn’t responded carefully when he’d asked his ultimate question. She’d barely been civil to him since.
There was even the danger that he would laugh at her. “I don’t care,” she said aloud. “I’m going to see Garn again. I’m going to find out what went wrong between us before.”
But what if he did scorn her? After all, it was no secret that Randy had cast her aside. Wouldn’t it appear that she was desperately in quest of a man to replace the one she’d lost? What if he just gave her his mocking grin, told her she’d already had her chance with him. What if he just plain told her to go away?
Well, as Myrtle had said, “It hurts, but you live.”
“You got to take a risk,” Myrtle had said.
“I will,” said Emmalee.
At first it appeared as if the storm would depart as quickly as it had come, just a ferocious summer shower sweeping out of the mountains, over the plains, to blow away into the west. But it poured all through the waning afternoon and into the evening, so heavily that in the dismal gray twilight Emmalee could not even see the horizon. The plain was covered with water, a glassy sheen upon the earth, and still the storm went on. Thunder crashed above Olympia, resounded off the slopes of the mountains, and came roaring back to sound again. She prepared a supper of porridge and biscuits in flickering lamplight, and fell into a troubled sleep. Great jagged forks of lightning turned the interior of her cabin bright as day. The darkness that followed was eerie and premonitory.
She awakened sometime after midnight. Her blankets were wet and water dripped steadily down upon her. Springing up, casting away her sodden bedclothes, she swung her feet over the side of the bed. There was water on the floor. The rain had soaked through her sod roof, and even as she wondered what to do, a section of the roof collapsed, leaving a ragged hole through which wind and water blew. Her cabin was useless as a shelter now. After debating the situation a moment, she decided the hell with pride. She would go to Randy’s house.
But with her cloak pulled tightly around her, standing in the open doorway of the cabin she was about to abandon, Emmalee saw horsemen in the illuminating blasts of lightning. The sight made no sense to her at first. Why would men be out in weather like this? Then an especially bright flash tore across the heavens and she had her answer. They were pulling down the barbwire fence that Randy had so painstakingly erected and driving his animals out of the enclosure. She saw cows and pigs start across her field of corn, saw the horsemen gather for a moment, then ride away into the falling shroud of rain and night.
Burt Pennington had struck.
It rained, off and on, for two more days and nights. The Big Two-Hearted showed its dark side, flooding the low-lying farms, washing away barns and new houses that had been built too near the channel. Horace Torquist’s barn was washed completely off its foundation and lay, like a shipwrecked vessel, in the slowly receding pool of water that had once been his yard.
Whole fields of rye and wheat were washed away. Wisps of surviving stalks poked out of the water here and there, and when the water finally seeped into the ground or ran in eroded ditches down to the river, the stalks looked like fugitive hairs on the head of a bald old man.
Most of the barbwire fences were down, and farm animals roamed the countryside as freely as longhorns. Agonized, udder-swollen cows stood on the prairie, waiting to be found and milked. Hogs rooted in gardens; chickens ran everywhere.
When Emmalee rode into town to make her outraged report, Vestor Tell demanded that she identify the men she thought she’d seen tearing down Randy’s fence. She couldn’t, of course.
“A rain like the one we had will easily wash out a fenceline,” he pronounced.
Everyone knew that the rain hadn’t wreaked the dirty work, but there was nothing to be done about it. The farmers, bedraggled and impotent, dreamed savagely of revenge.
The ranchers tried not to show their jubilation. Before the growing season was even well under way, it looked as if their rivals, the farmers, were ruined. And for the ranchers, the deluge proved a godsend. In its aftermath the grass on the prairie had never been so rich, so green and thick, perfect for cattle to graze and grow fat.
“God didn’t mean for the sod to be plowed up and turned over,” Burt Pennington was reported to have said. “I see His hand in this.”
Now the turnabout is complete, thought Emmalee. Pennington is invoking the Lord just as confidently and familiarly as Torquist once did.
There was only one bright spot. The farmers who had planted corn, Emmalee among them, did not lose their crops. The corn was hardier, better-rooted in the soil than rye. So when the rainwater ran or seeped away, the stalks grew even faster than before. Randy, busily replowing and replanting, looked across toward Emmalee’s fields with what, in a lesser man, would have been envy.
In his case, it was respect.
Two weeks after the flood, Vestor Tell approached Lambert Strep and offered to buy him out. “You’re going to fail anyway,” Tell pronounced pleasantly. “Sell now. Don’t wait. I’m doing you a favor. I’ll offer you less—and you’ll be desperate enough to take it too—later on.”
Strep refused and angrily spread word of Tell’s arrogant offer throughout Olympia.
Tell didn’t care; he could wait.
And now Emmalee knew what the claims agent had had in mind all the while: His so-called loan policy and all of his actions, including his efforts to keep an inspection team from visiting the territory, were designed solely to ensure that he ended up with the farmers’ land. No wonder he had gazed with such a wry, uncaring eye upon the individual one-hundred-sixty acre claims; he had intended all along to own the whole shebang.
Bitter Harvest
“Do you, Randy Clay, take this woman, Delilah Quinn…”
Pastor Runde was a jovial, heavyset man, temperamentally more disposed to baptisms and weddings than to sick calls and funerals. He stood in front of the altar beaming at Randy and Delilah, who held hands before him.
“…to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”
“I do,” said Randy, in a strong, deep voice.
“And do you, Delilah Quinn, take this man…”
Emmalee sat near the front of the little church, in the second row of pews. She would gladly have been elsewhere—almost anyplace elsewhere—but she was damned if she’d let the snickering spiteful gab behind her back get to her (“No, Em simply couldn’t face it. He jilted her, you know?”).
Still, she’d gotten to the church early and taken a seat in front so she wouldn’t have to face a whole roomful of eyes observing her entrance. Pride had its needs, but there were some limits to its spirit.
“I do,” said Delilah Quinn.
Pastor Runde’s round fac
e was almost split by a joyous grin. “In the sight of God and our friends and neighbors,” he intoned, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Randy and Delilah kissed.
Emmalee managed to smile and keep her eyes open.
It was the Fourth of July, 1869, and a festive occasion in the territory. By a miracle of splendid weather and rich soil, the second plantings of the farmers who had been washed out had thrived, and it seemed as if they could expect a fairly decent harvest after all. Morale was good, if guarded, because there never was a farmer who confessed to feeling optimistic about a crop, not even if his corn grew ten feet tall or his wheat yielded a hundred bushels to the acre. So the weather, the holiday, and the wedding combined to put everyone in a celebratory mood. The church was crowded with people who knew Randy, and, even as the wedding progressed, Emmalee could hear the sounds of other farmers and ranchers arriving in town to shop and socialize, to take a respite from their everyday labors.
When the wedding was over, and Delilah Quinn was Mrs. Randy Clay, the newlyweds turned from the altar and walked up the small aisle between pews full of wellwishers. They were trailed by Delilah’s uncle Jacob, who had given her away, and by the pastor. Jacob Quinn looked pleased but extremely tired. Whatever engineering he was doing for Garn Landar, it was certainly taking a lot of energy from him.
As the wedding couple walked past her pew, Emmalee turned to watch them go. Randy did not seem to see her, but Delilah smiled, although there was something vague about the smile, as if the bride, caught up in her own happiness, did not really see any of the individual faces that smiled back at her.
Then Emmalee saw Garn Landar. She’d assumed that he would attend, since he obviously knew Jacob and Delilah as well as anybody except possibly the Chinese. He was sitting in the middle of the church, on the aisle. As Emmalee turned to follow the passage of the newlyweds out of the church, she caught him looking at her, ignoring Randy and Delilah completely. His eyes widened slightly when her eyes met his—he’d been surprised by her sudden turn—but he did not glance away. Instead he seemed to increase the intensity of his gaze, almost as if he were asking her a question, attempting to communicate with her through the very air. Emmalee could guess that much, but she had no idea what he was trying to tell her. Nor did she want to look away, lest the growing spell being woven between them disintegrate and go spinning away. It was a terribly intimate glance, as well as a puzzling and unsettling one, and in a sense it was as personal an exchange as she had ever had with him.
“Are you gonna stand here all day, or what?” hissed Myrtle Higgins, who was next to Emmalee in the pew.
Suddenly conscious of the fact that the church was almost empty now, that only she, Garn, Myrtle, and a few other stragglers were still inside, Emmalee finally broke off the glance. Garn seemed to smile slightly—Emmalee couldn’t tell for sure—and headed for the door.
“What the hell was that all about?” Myrtle wanted to know.
“What? I have no idea what you mean.”
“Come on,” Myrtle said. “I may be uneducated but I ain’t dumb.”
By the time Emmalee got outside and made her way down the line of people waiting to congratulate Randy and Delilah, Garn was nowhere to be seen.
Emmalee kissed Delilah on the cheek. “I hope we can grow to be true friends,” the bride confided. And Randy kissed Emmalee on the cheek. “Thank you for coming, it means a lot to me.”
“We’re neighbors,” she replied as cheerfully as she could, wondering why the sight of the married couple vaguely depressed her.
“I know you’ll find what you’re seeking,” Randy said. “You always have before.”
Was that true? Emmalee wondered, walking away from the church. She had wanted to come west, and she had. She’d desired a farm, and she had it. She’d needed a domicile and a crop in the ground. These were hers—with even a new shingled roof on her cabin. But she had also come to realize that those things, while she would never give them up, were not enough! She needed something more. And if that something was love, was its price surrender? Was that what she’d read in the faces of the bride and groom? If so, it was not the kind of union she was looking for.
In honor of his niece’s nuptials, Jacob Quinn threw a big party for them after the ceremony. Picnic tables were set out beneath the spreading cottonwoods behind the general store. Cakes and pies of every kind covered the tables. The smell of fifty fried chickens was succulent on the air, and a side of beef browned on a spit over a slow fire. Six barrels of beer stood beneath the trees, and there were a dozen earthenware jugs of hard liquor for those who wished it. While the wedding itself had been by invitation, Jacob did not care if the whole territory came to the party. “We’ve all been working too hard,” he was heard to say. “Everybody come. Share the feast and raise a glass.”
Most did, including Festus Bent. His jaw had healed but the four front teeth were gone. Still, he did not hate Jacob. Bent was the type of fellow who instinctively respected any man who could beat him.
Emmalee had just drawn herself a glass of beer from one of the barrels. She stood next to the general store, watching the people arrive, sipping the beer. Priscilla and Darlene Bent sidled up next to her, looking happier and more satisfied than Emmalee had ever seen them.
“Hi, Em.” Priscilla giggled. “Bet you don’t feel s’ hot today, huh?”
“Bet you feel pretty bad, huh, Em?” echoed Darlene. “You lost your man.”
“It wasn’t anything like that,” said Emmalee, realizing that she ought to keep her mouth shut and ignore these frivolous scatterbrains.
“You know why?” taunted Priscilla. “Our ma done told us. She said you lost Randy and you’ll always lose men because you want things on your terms all the time. That’s why.”
“Tell her thanks for the information,” said Emmalee, walking away from their spiteful snickers. She knew that she hadn’t lost Randy, but she confessed to being a little startled by the phrase “on your terms.” What, after all, was wrong with wanting important things in one’s life on one’s own terms? If those things—dreams, desires, property, love—were on someone else’s terms then they wouldn’t really belong to one at all, would they?
She was munching on a chicken wing when Otis and Lottie strolled by, hand in hand.
“Hello, Emmalee,” Lottie gushed. “Did you go to the wedding?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That must have taken a lot of nerve. I give you credit.”
“Pipe down. Lottie,” Otis said.
The crowd grew and grew, getting noisier all the time. One barrel of beer was emptied to a great cheer, then a second. Half the side of roasted beef was consumed within ten minutes, the men stuffing thick wedges of the tender, dripping meat between thick slabs of fresh-baked bread, the women eating more decorously with plates and forks. Emmalee made herself a sandwich. Someone gave her a glass of applejack, strong but good. Cloris Hamtramck, herself feeling no pain, came over to pass the time of day.
“Haven’t seen much of you lately, girl,” she said. “What you been up to?”
“Hoeing corn, mostly.”
“Should be able to find more to do than that.” Cloris winked. “Say, did you catch the latest on Vestor Tell?”
“Not that I know of. In fact, I haven’t seen much of him lately. What’s he up to?”
“Well, he’s around, that’s for sure. He met with my husband and a bunch of the ranchers last weyk.” She lowered her voice. “He offered to sell them a big chunk of farmland.”
“What? He doesn’t own any farmland.” Not yet, she added to herself.
“That’s what I thought. But he sure as hell is talking like he does. You know, me and some of the other women don’t like the way things seem to be going. There’s more trouble ahead, though we don’t know what it is. But I can tell you for gosh-darn sure, we don’t look forward to some of these men messing things up. Life is goin’ pretty well these days. Our kids are growin’, we’re all eatin’
, an’ we like it that way.” She gave Emmalee a cagey glance. “You know if Torquist is up to something? I’m sure he didn’t forget that business about the fences being ‘washed out’ and all.”
“I don’t know. I’m just a woman with a farm of her own. Sort of an oddity. No one tells me much.”
“Think you could maybe keep your ears open a little wider an’ let us know if anything comes up?”
“I’ll try.”
“Good. You want another drink?”
“I’d better not.”
“Come on…”
Cloris started to draw Emmalee through the crowd toward the liquor jugs, but they halted when Jacob Quinn climbed up on top of a picnic table and raised his arms for attention. Standing next to the table were the newlyweds and Garn Landar. Emmalee was surprised. She hadn’t seen him since he left the church. She thought he’d gone back to Landar’s Folly.
“A moment of your time, please!” cried Jacob exuberantly. “I think a few words are in order to mark this happy occasion.”
An affirmative cheer arose from the crowd.
“Yeah, but make it short,” somebody called.
Everyone laughed. The mood was good.
“All right, I shall. As you know, today we honor and celebrate the marriage of my niece, Delilah, to Mr. Randy Clay. She’s very happy. He’s happy. And so am I…”
Emmalee watched Garn Landar. His eyes were on Jacob Quinn. He looked as if he was enjoying himself too. Emmalee wondered where Ebenezer Creel was.
“Let me say this,” Jacob continued, “before I get so I can’t talk and you all get so you can’t hear.”
More laughter.
“I know there’s been quite a lot of speculation going around as to exactly what’s happening up on Mr. Landar’s and Mr. Creel’s claim in the Sacajawea…”
Emmalee noted that Burt Pennington and Horace Torquist were paying very close attention to Quinn.
The Passionate and the Proud Page 30
