“Honey, I know he’s corrupt. You know he’s corrupt. Lots of people do. But he’s got Olympia by the short hairs. What’re we gonna do? The people makin’ it on their own—and I confess I’m one of ’em—say live an’ let live art’ let a sleepin’ dog lie.”
“Well, I’m not going to do that anymore.”
“Oh, Lord. More trouble. And exactly what kind of uproar have you got planned?”
“I’m going to telegraph Washington, D.C.”
“Big talk. How you gonna do that? Vestor’s gonna do it for you, huh?”
Emmalee reached inside her bodice and withdrew the thin book of Morse code. “No,” she said, “I’m going to do it myself. All I need is for you to figure out a way to get Vestor out of here.”
“Jee-zussss! All you need is—”
“Shhh!”
“Shhh, yourself!”
“Well? Will you help me?”
“It might seem exciting now, but it’s gonna backfire on you.”
“I’ll take the chance. That man is a parasite of the worst kind. I know that the rich feed off the poor. That’s nothing new. But Tell is even more vicious. He savors the suffering and defeat of others…”
Hester Brine listened. She remembered who she’d been, what she’d gone through, the things she’d had to do in order to live her life.
“All right,” she said. “I wouldn’t have had him for any sum in the old days—even then I had my self-respect—but I’ll get Tell out of here.”
She did.
“Vestor, honey,” Hester said, about fifteen minutes later. “There aren’t too many customers now…”
“’Bye,” called Emmalee, going out the door.
“…and I just had a sudden hankerin’.” She walked over to him and rested her hand on the inside of his thigh, high up.
“You know what I mean, Vestor? Day like this, slow, I can afford to take a little time off.”
“How little?” Tell said in a hoarse, surprised voice.
“Or how long?” responded Hester. “What do you say?”
Tell bought it. “I’ll leave first,” he said, panting. “Give me about five minutes. And make sure nobody sees you.”
“Nobody but you, Vestor. Nobody but you.”
Tell left, then Hester, locking the front door. Emmalee went around in back, came in through the rear entrance, and locked herself inside the store. She went to the telegraph desk, opened the code book, and unfolded a piece of paper. She’d already composed her message. She pressed the key, expecting to hear the clatter that Vestor produced, but nothing happened. What was wrong? Had he turned it off, or something? Had all of her effort gone for naught?
Then she examined the instrument closely and found a small switch. Moving it forward, the machine came into humming life. Emmalee stood in a country store on the prairie beyond the Rocky Mountains, scarcely believing that she was about to send her message, her words, herself, all the way back across the mighty country whose expanse she had trod, step by slow step. It was a feeling of power such as she had never experienced before. It cleared her mind. It made her heart steady and her hand sure.
UNITED STATES LAND CLAIMS OFFICE
WASHINGTON D.C.
WE NEED THE INSPECTION TEAM RIGHT AWAY
BANKING RULES HAVE BEEN BROKEN PEOPLE
WILL LOSE THEIR CLAIMS THERE ARE PLOTS
AND DANGER PLEASE HELP
Then she tapped: EMMALEE ALDEN
And, after thinking it over for a moment, she added: AND THE PEOPLE OF OLYMPIA
But there was no answer. No message came back, not a dot, not a dash. She wondered how long it might take. At that moment some women rode into town and knocked their fingertips on the windowpane, wanting to get inside to shop. Emmalee barely ducked away from the telegraph in time to avoid being seen there. She opened the store and made up a story about Hester having had to go out, that she’d be back in just a moment, and they should go ahead and shop.
Hester did return, too, not long afterward, in the company of Tell. He seemed very pleased with himself, and wholly content.
Finally Emmalee had to leave. Remaining any longer would have seemed very suspicious.
I must have done something wrong, she thought. I don’t think my message went through. She felt like a failure. Perhaps I’d better write a letter.
Disspiritedly, she went back home to watch her corn burn.
Salvation
A hot wind burned down from the north that night, sweeping out of the Sacajawea. Sun by day and wind by night. The million leaves in Emmalee’s cornfield rustled like dry parchment. A full moon had risen huge and brilliant, its cheerfulness mocking the plight of all Olympia.
Emmalee pulled a chair over to the front window in her cabin and kept an eye on Randy and Delilah’s house. If Torquist’s meeting was going to be held tonight, she wanted to be there. And if the meeting was tonight, she would know when she saw Randy leaving his home.
But an hour passed, then another. Midnight drew near. The last light was extinguished in the Clays’ house. Emmalee yawned, fighting sleep, and wondered if she might not just as well go to bed herself.
Then she saw a lone rider coming over the crest of the hills to the west. The horse moved slowly and it seemed as if the rider was slumped over in the saddle. Emmalee felt a shiver of alarm, the more so when it became clear that the horseman was headed toward her cabin. She rushed outside and across the yard to find out what was wrong.
It was Hester Brine, or rather what was left of Hester Brine. Both of her eyes were blackened. Her nose was swollen out of shape. She was not wearing her false teeth, and the lower part of her mouth appeared hollow and collapsed.
“Emmalee.” Hester groaned. “I’m so glad to see you. Thank God you’re all right.”
“Me? Of course I’m all right. But, my God, what about you?”
The older woman was on the verge of passing out, it seemed. Emmalee helped her down from the horse and half-carried her into the cabin, easing her gently down onto the bed. In lamplight, Hester looked even more devastated than she had outside. There were cuts and bruises on her wrists and even on her neck, as if she’d recently escaped lynching.
“Hester! You poor thing. What happened? Let me get some compresses…”
“No. No! Don’t. That can wait. I’ll be all right. It’s you I’m worried about. That’s why I came.”
“What?”
Painfully, Hester gasped out her story. “I kept an eye on Vestor all day,” she said. “I knew you sent that telegram and I wondered if there’d be any return message. I figured if he got upset, somebody back east had responded to your wire. There were a couple of short messages that came in during the day, and a fairly long one about midaftemoon, but he stayed real calm. By that time I figured nobody was gonna answer you and I was feelin’ bad about that ’cause I knew you’d be disappointed.
“Then along about suppertime he sidles up an’ says to me, ‘Hester, you made me feel real good this mornin’ an’ in return there’s somethin’ over at my house you can have.’ He’s got real nice things, you know, an’ I confess I wouldn’t mind havin’ some of ’em. So I left Myrtle in charge of the store and went with Vestor.
“I shouldn’t have. Soon as we got inside his place, he jumped me and tied me up. I was a considerable scrapper in my day an’ I mighta fought him off, but he surprised me. He’d received a return message to your wire…”
“Tell received it?”
“Yep. From what he said, I gather they didn’t refer to you, but somebody chewed him out right royal. A territorial officer is on his way up here from Salt Lake an’ it won’t be long before those inspectors from Washington show up too.”
“Why, that’s wonderful. But—”
“You mean why he worked me over? That was part punishment and part his way of finding out who’d sent the wire. Em, I had to tell him. I couldn’t take the beating no more.”
“It’s all right. You should have told him it was me in the first
place.”
“But I was afraid that he was going to even it up with you. After he left, I got free of the ropes and came here as soon as I could. I was prayin’ he hadn’t gotten here first.”
Emmalee raced to the door and locked it. But, as she did, she saw Randy leaving his barn aboard the dapple-gray. Damn it. The meeting was tonight!
“Hester, do you think you can walk a hundred yards? I’ll help you.”
“If—if I have to. Why?”
“There’s something I’ve got to do. Now, I’m going to take you over to Delilah’s. She’ll take care of you. I’m sure she will.”
“I don’t think you better go anywhere, girl. Vestor’s out there somewhere.”
“I’ll be all right, now that I know he’s on to me.
“But he’s mean. You gone and ruined his whole set-up out here. He’s finished now.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. The men are having that meeting tonight and I have a sneaking suspicion they’re about to mess things up almost as much as Tell has.”
“You got a gun?” asked Hester.
“No.”
“I wish you did.”
Emmalee didn’t say so, but she wished she had one too. Slowly and with difficulty, she walked Hester over to Randy’s house and banged on the door until Delilah opened it. She looked distressed.
“Emmalee! Hester, oh my…what is happening? Have you seen Randy?”
“Yes,” said Emmalee. “He just rode off. You didn’t know?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“It’s that meeting, I think. Can Hester stay here?”
“Oh, look at me. What am I doing, standing here? Of course, come in, come in.”
There were at least twenty horses tethered outside Torquist’s big tent, in which he’d been living again since the flood had washed his house away. Thin shafts of lantern light filtered through small rents in the canvas and a triangular patch of light came from the folded-back flap in front and fell upon the ground. Emmalee tied Ned to a bush fifty yards from the tent and approached as quietly and calmly as she could, so as not to spook the horses.
Holding her breath, she edged up alongside the tent and heard Torquist speaking.
“…time to deal with the foe before he destroys us all.”
There was a chorus of affirmative grunts. Emmalee found a small tear in the fabric and peered inside. The leader stood in the middle of the tent, holding a lantern. Burt Pennington stood next to him. The other men squatted or sat on the floor of the tent. Emmalee recognized Otis, Randy, Virgil Waters, Royce Campbell. They all looked grim.
“There is a risk to this thing,” Pennington said, warning the men. “If this leads to a big investigation, what we did to the fences is gonna come out. Likewise, you farmers can’t keep it a secret forever that Horace here made those fake claims.”
“Water under the bridge,” offered Virgil Waters. “You don’t charge us, and we don’t charge you.”
“Everybody in agreement with that?” Pennington demanded, looking around at all the men.
There were no complaints.
“All right, we’re together then,” said Torquist. “There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring good men together.”
Emmalee remembered how Torquist had once felt about the ranchers and realized how much his thinking had changed. For the worse, she felt, because whatever was being planned here smacked of evil. She thought the common enemy he’d referred to might be Vestor Tell, until Otis asked:
“What are we gonna do about Tell?”
“I saw him ridin’ out of town, goin’ like a bat out of hell,” Virgil Waters informed everyone.
“Out of town?” asked Otis. “Which direction?”
“West.”
The men mulled that over, but couldn’t tell what it signified.
“Yep,” said Waters. “I saw him leavin’ his place, saddlebags jammed full, just after supper. Me an’ the missus was ridin’ through town about then.”
West? Emmalee wondered. There would be no reason for him to go west, unless…
…unless he had run away from Arcady, fleeing the mess he’s made for himself. Then maybe he wasn’t coming after her for revenge at all! The black sheep was on the road again, heading away, toward California, anywhere…
“The hell with Tell,” said Pennington. “We ready to move?”
Assent was low-keyed but determined.
“All right, Otis has the explosives. You’re all armed.”
Emmalee saw Torquist nodding, his face dark, set as if in stone. His wild bush of hair looked red in the lantern light, hued by fire, a ferocious prophet who had forsaken a dream of heaven for the more immediate rewards of hell.
“The main problem,” Pennington was saying, “is that we got to face those Chinamen before we can get close enough to plant the explosives in that dam.”
Emmalee shuddered. Now she knew what this meeting was about. They feared the dam, but feared more the power Garn Landar would exert over them with it.
“Just shoot straight,” Torquist said. “Everybody ready to ride?”
And they were going to blow up the dam this very night. Garn! she thought, gripped by the horror of what she’d just overheard. Garn was in danger. So was Jacob Quinn and all the men working up there in Landar’s Folly. The great dream of Olympia had wound its way down to the bitter reality of mayhem and death. An image of Garn came to her, lying dead on the banks of the Big Two-Hearted.
Next thing Emmalee knew, she was on Ned’s back, spurring the mule fiercely northward, up into the hills in the face of the burning wind.
“Oh, go. Go. Move, for God’s sake,” she exhorted the obstreperous beast, slapping it about the ears with the ends of the leather reins. The men were mounting up now, back at the tent. If they rode fast, she had no chance. They’d overtake her easily. Even if they proceeded slowly, they might see her ahead of them on a moonlit night like this and take her captive before she reached Landar’s Folly with her warning. She looked over her shoulder. They seemed to be moving slowly. That was good. Ned trotted a bit, then slowed. She urged him on. Far ahead, she could make out the dark shapes of the hills toward which she rode. When at length she dared to look back again, she could not see the men at all, only the swinging light from a few lanterns they carried with them.
Ned quit on her when she reckoned herself to be at least a mile from the borders of Garn’s land. One minute he was plugging along, slowly but surefootedly, and she was swaying on his back. The next he had halted and stood head down, looking stubbornly at the ground. Emmalee kicked him, lashed him, but he did not move. He had gone as far as he was going to go, and that was that. The hot wind sighed all around; dark wisps of clouds skimmed low over the mountains; a thin, forlorn gurgle sounded from the wasted riverbed.
Behind her, Emmalee heard the riders coming on. They’d find the mule for sure, and they knew—or quite a few of them knew—that it was hers now. Let them puzzle it out, she thought, jumping off Ned and scrambling up the hill. The land sloped steeply upward now and she didn’t see how she could miss walking right into Garn’s area. The problem was that she’d never been up there before and she didn’t know what to expect.
Glancing backward, she saw that the men had extinguished their lanterns. The moon disappeared then reappeared from behind a thickening cover of fast-moving clouds. The air felt jittery, electric and tingling. Emmalee’s sweat-soaked dress clung damply to her skin. She hurried on.
If Torquist and the men caught her, what would they do? If they didn’t guess outright that she was trying to warn Garn, would they make her talk? Randy might try to protect her—she was sure that he would—but after all he was just one of many, and the stakes were high. To men bent on murder and destruction, men desperate enough to employ violence to protect their futures, how much would one extra death matter?
And then Emmalee realized the full extent of the risk she was taking for Garn’s sake. A risk that he would never know about if she were caug
ht.
Behind her, she heard a cry of surprise and knew what it meant. The men had come upon Ned. She could imagine their consternation, their speculation. And their anger. She continued on her way, panting, gasping, exhausted already but unable to stop. Just keep moving, she exhorted herself. Just keep on moving. Ten more steps, that’s all, just ten. Good. Now ten more. That’s it. Now just another ten, and then I’ll let you rest…
And then she saw a dark, squat building far up the hill, on the bank overlooking the side of the river. There was a light burning inside, a dim, distant glow. She started toward it but her foot caught onto something and she went sprawling. Gritty dirt and small stones scraped the palms of her hands. Her knees were raw and painful. Somehow she managed not to cry out.
But it made no difference. Before she could get to her feet, Emmalee was seized roughly from behind and yanked to her feet. Turning, she looked into a hard, alien face, from which a pair of black, suspicious eyes regarded her with a mixture of interest and amusement. One of the Chinese. Two of his mates stood behind him. They were all armed with rifles. The men looked at one another and arrived wordlessly at some decision. Emmalee found herself dragged along toward the whispering river. Cloud cover rolled in heavily now and blotted out the moon and the sky. She had a sensation of great height. A note of fear sounded tremulously in her heart.
“Take me to Mr. Landar,” she said, trying to remain calm even as they pulled her along over the rocky ground.
They didn’t understand her. Perhaps they didn’t want to. She was a trespasser.
Up there in the high country, the Big Two-Hearted passed through a long, deep canyon, the slopes of which spread upward and outward in the shape of a ragged V. In a ghostly light that came partly from the whitish-gray rocks on the sides of the canyon and partly from an oil lamp carried by one of the Chinese, Emmalee could now see the outline of the dam, a thick stony band in the middle of the canyon itself, and a flat, shallow lake spreading back up the gorge. The dam was just completed and held back very little water, but she could see by the size of the dam and the depth of the gorge that, when completed, millions upon millions of gallons of water could be harnessed for limitless power. The view from these heights was awesome. Two of the guards dragged her to the edge of the abyss. Both of them were grinning.
The Passionate and the Proud Page 33
