The Passionate and the Proud (17 page)

“Name’s Vestor Tell,” he drawled. “Claims agent here. You deal with me. Treat me good, I do the same for you. Likewise the opposite. Simplest way to do business. Who’s your wagonboss?”

“I am,” answered Torquist, stepping to the front of the crowd. His hair was as wild and unruly as ever, but his fervently righteous prophet’s eyes were marked by that strange new light that Emmalee could not interpret. “We’re here to register for the right to take part in the land rush.”

Vestor Tell shrugged and nodded. “It’s a free country,” he said. “Sort of got beat out by these ranchers so far, but that don’t make no never-mind to me. Got your passenger list handy?”

“Passenger list?” asked Torquist, standing there in the dust in front of the general store. His clothes were covered with dust, his boots full of dust, trail grit coated his tongue. Yet the claims agent ignored his discomfort, ignored the fatigue of them all, to pursue this detail.

“Right,” said Tell. “Maybe you don’t understand. I got to keep track of things. Can’t have more parcels of land claimed than you have eligible people to claim them, if you get my drift?”

“Of
course
,” said Torquist, understanding. He turned to Randy. “Clay, run back to my wagon, will you? Beneath the seat there’s a metal chest. In a gunnysack. Inside you’ll find a tablet with a list of names on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Randy hurried away. Tell watched him go.

“That boy hurt his arm, eh?” he asked, making small talk. His eyes swung to Emmalee. “That your husband, ma’am?”

Before Emmalee could respond, Torquist interrupted. “I see that Pennington’s people are positioned to get land all along the river.”

“So?” said Tell.

“Do you think that’s fair? We’re farmers. Crops need water just as badly as longhorns do.”

Tell shrugged. “So grab the river land first. That’s your job. Mine’s just to handle the claims you do make. Oh,” he added, as if it were an afterthought, “I also loan money. Case any of you need it.”

Emmalee stored this information in the back of her mind. She certainly needed money—she needed five hundred dollars, to be exact—but she wasn’t prepared for a decision of that kind yet. Borrowing money was a very risky thing if you’d never done it before. Besides, Vestor Tell did not strike her as terribly trustworthy. He was too confidently lackadaisical, almost arrogant, and his casually sleepy look was just a little too carefully affected.

Randy came back with the tablet, which Torquist took from him and handed to Vestor Tell, who proceeded to go over the list slowly, name by name.

“Oh!” Tell exclaimed then, looking up at the crowd. “No need for you all to hang around here. Can’t deal with you but one at a time anyway. Get yourself a drink, find some shade. You can start formin’ up a line in ten, fifteen minutes or so.”

Some of the pioneers drifted off, others slumped down beneath the big cottonwoods that grew around the general store. Randy took Emmalee’s hand again.

“Let’s go in. Bet they’ve got sarsparilla in this store.”

“Just a minute,” Emmalee said. Her instinctive mistrust of Vestor Tell, combined with a formless but increasingly powerful premonition regarding Horace Torquist, compelled her to remain within earshot.

“Em, you’ve made me so happy…” Randy said, as they leaned together in the shadow at the side of the general store.

Emmalee heard him and was glad. But she also heard the exchange between Torquist and Tell. It was unsettling.

“How many’d you lose?” Tell asked, running his finger down the list of names, counting.

“Only two,” Torquist replied. “Little girl named Petunia Petweiler, couple of days out of St. Joe. And an elderly lady, Bernice Creel. Lost her in Denver.”

Emmalee was so amazed that Torquist would tell a lie that she did not immediately understand his reasons. This complicated man, a leader by the strength of his will and the power of his purse, had turned away from what he thought was corruption in Galena, Ohio, to form a better community in this new land, Olympia. But the rigors of the trail, the thievery of the Arapaho, and Burt Pennington’s ability to come out ahead time and again, these factors were bringing forth dark features from the depths of Torquist’s soul, in spite of himself. Bernice Creel had been the
sixteenth
member of Torquist’s train to die…

“That all you lost?” asked Tell, with some surprise. “Even Pennington had nine fatalities, and he had along a doc and plenty of medicine.”

“Just those two,” maintained Torquist.

“No men at all?”

“Didn’t lose a one,” said Torquist.

“…and we’ll build a big stone house…” Randy was saying, “with this huge fireplace…”

Emmalee heard him, but she continued to follow the conversation between wagonboss and claims agent. Now she understood what Torquist was up to. Seven men
had
died on the trail. Five of them, two almost as old as Ebenezer Creel, had succumbed to natural causes. Young Teddy Barnstable’s horse had fallen on him, and Dolph Beidermann had slipped off a cliff in the Rockies. The ages of these men, however, didn’t matter. They would have been eligible to claim land. And Torquist was working on a scheme to pretend they still
were
alive and somehow claim land in their names!

“You wouldn’t try to pull any fast ones with me, would you?” Tell demanded drowsily.

“Sir, I resent that,” Torquist declared in answer, his big chin jutting toward the heavens.

Emmalee resolved to speak to Torquist at the first opportunity. She was worried. Stress and defeat seemed to have dangerously cracked the wagonmaster’s rigidity, and he was on the verge of compromising everything. True, there were hundreds of ranchers and farmers ready to claim land. A small number of false claims might be concealed for a time. But eventually the truth would be known. It could not be otherwise.

Certainly Torquist must be aware of this? He would not threaten the future of his community for the sake of seven parcels of land.

Would he?

“All right.” Tell shrugged, handing the tablet back to Torquist. “Get your people lined up. I’ll register them one man or one couple at a time, depending on their status. My office is inside.”

With that he ducked into the general store, leaving Torquist with Randy and Emmalee.

“Yo!” called Torquist to his pioneers. “We’re about to register. Form a line here next to the store. I’ll go in first and learn the procedure.” He glanced around nervously, then added: “Uh…Japser Heaton, Strep, Redding…and a few of you others there…you hang back. I got to…ah, discuss details with you before you boys register.”

Emmalee was sure that this conversation would have something to do with Torquist’s apparent scheme. He would
never
get away with it! He was about to enter the store, but Emmalee had time for a discreet remark that might serve to restore his good sense.

“Don’t these land claims papers eventually become permanent government records?” she suggested, calling up the images of Olympia’s territorial government and Washington, D.C., where the Homestead Act had originated.

Torquist understood that Emmalee was warning him. Shifting moods passed quickly across his broad, strong face: surprise, offense, anger.

“You have your own problems, Miss Alden,” he snapped. “I suggest you tend to them. I…we…did not come all this way to be beaten by Pennington and his ranchers. The soil is sacred, meant to be tilled. The Lord will understand what we have to do.”

I just hope the government does, thought Emmalee.

Torquist went into the store.

“What did you say to him?” asked Randy. “He looked mad.”

Emmalee hesitated, uncertain whether to tell Randy or not.
Tell him, of course! He’s going to be your husband
! She was very new in the role of betrothed; it was hard to think of herself as someone’s wife.

“I think,” she said quietly, “that Mr. Torquist lied to the agent about the number of people who died during the trip.”

“Oh, Em! Nonsense!” Randy said. “Horace Torquist would never lie. You didn’t accuse him?” he asked worriedly. “Was that why he looked mad?”

“No, I didn’t accuse him.” Emmalee sighed, feeling a burden of unwanted knowledge and responsibility coming down upon her. No one in the train would believe that Torquist was capable of the least moral lapse. She alone had strong reason to suspect that the wagonmaster was contemplating a strategy that would jeopardize all their destinies. Yet there was nothing, just now, that she could do about it.

“I wonder what kind of duties he’ll assign me,” she mused.

“I don’t know. But I promise you this, Em: No wife of mine is going to be beholden to another man. We’ll find a way to pay Torquist off before we’re married.” He put his good arm around her waist and squeezed gently. “I can’t wait
two
years, my God!”

Torquist went inside, registered, and reappeared in the doorway of the general store. “You just sign your name, is all,” he said. “Make your mark if you can’t write. Every able-bodied man has the right to claim a hundred and sixty acres. Likewise every couple.” He glanced at Randy and Emmalee, who were close to the head of the line, just behind Festus Bent and Willard Buttlesworth. “Pretty crowded in there,” he said enigmatically. “Place does a lot of business of various kinds.”

Then the wagonmaster went off to talk to Heaton, Strep, and the others beneath a cottonwood. Emmalee hoped he’d given up his scheme.

Festus Bent, his wife, Alma, and their three daughters went in to see Tell. Buttlesworth hung back.

“Come on, Willard,” Randy said. “Let’s go in. Might as well have a look at the store and wait where it’s cool. They can’t do nothin’ but kick us out.”

The sawmill operator shrugged and entered the store. So did Emmalee and Randy, as the line of people behind them shuffled closer to the door. Once inside, Emmalee looked around. The place was unprepossessing, constructed of unpainted wooden beams and flat wooden planking with plenty of knotholes. Piles of dry goods, some brightly colored, some plain, were stacked at one end of the store, and from the beams hung scores of cured hams and rows of farming implements: hoes, forks, shovels, and axes. There were even a few precious posthole diggers, spadelike devices used to make the deep, narrow holes in which the wooden posts of fences could be set. Farmers fenced their land.

Just beyond the space in which these goods were arrayed for inspection and purchase, a squat, black stove crouched coldly on a stone slab in the center of the floor. A trio of tables occupied the floor on the far side of the stove, at which men and women were seated, talking, eating, and drinking mugs of cold, pale beer. Emmalee saw a barrel of beer at the far end of the store.

Then her eyes were drawn back to one of the tables. Familiar people there, bent toward one another like conspirators, talking. Myrtle Higgins, Ebenezer Creel, and a strange woman with hair of a bright-orange color not found in nature.

And with them was Garn Landar. His back was toward Emmalee, but it was Garn, all right.

Emmalee felt something very much like a shudder pass through her body. Her hands grew moist and her heart beat faster. She felt betrayed. Myrtle and Ebenezer knew what had happened between herself and Garn up there on the hill in Denver. Everybody had heard. Yet here they were, talking to him as if nothing had happened. Well, to be fair, they also knew that Garn had saved her from Fire-On-The-Moon, but still…

Before Randy could catch a glimpse of Garn, Emmalee positioned herself so that her betrothed’s back was toward the table. She didn’t want Garn to see her or Randy; she didn’t want even the hint of an incident.

Moreover, she did not want to face Garn at all. She had no idea what her reaction to him might be.

Vestor Tell’s desk was in the corner of the store, next to the telegraph machine, which rested on a long, low table against the wall. Tell sat on a spindly-legged stool, entering names on a long roster in front of him. Festus Bent had already registered—he and his wife and girls were examining dry goods—and Willard Buttlesworth concluded his business as well.

“We could sure use a sawmill in these parts,” Tell told him, “but the high ground is rugged.

“Next,” he called, motioning Randy and Emmalee to approach his desk. “Name?” he asked, taking up pen and preparing to write.

“Clay. Randolph Anthony.”

“Place of birth?”

“Galena, Ohio.”

Tell glanced up at Emmalee. “Man and wife?”

“No, she’s my fiancée,” declared Randy, loudly and proudly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emmalee saw Garn Landar turn around. She also caught glimpses of Ebenezer and Myrtle staring at her.

“Congratulations,” oozed Tell, bending to write. “Name?”

“Emmalee Anne Alden. Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

“You’re a lucky man there, Clay. So the two of you want to claim a piece of land together?”

“No,” said Emmalee, “we both want plots.”

Tell shook his head. “No can do. Couples are only entitled to one portion of land.”

His voice had risen slightly. He was not used to being challenged in any way. Emmalee was aware of conversations ceasing in the store as people turned to listen.

Emmalee could not believe that her enduring dream of owning land was going to end so abruptly, so pointlessly. Randy, who had counted on her claiming land, too, was staring helplessly at her, realizing the damage he’d done with his proud proclamation.

“Wait,” she said, “if we’re not married yet, then we aren’t a couple. You said that
couples
were entitled to one portion. That means married couples, doesn’t it?”

“Well, now…” Tell began.

“It must be written down somewhere,” Emmalee persisted. “Let me see the rule.”

Tell glared balefully at her for a long moment.

“Won’t be necessary to read the law on it,” he growled. “The point doesn’t come up much, but I recollect, now that I think a bit on it, that you’re right.”

He entered Emmalee’s name in the space beneath Randy’s.

“Now here’s the rules,” he told them, with an amused glint in his eyes as if he had the final joke. “When the land rush starts, day after tomorrow, you two got to put wooden stakes with your names on ’em in the four corners of the land you want to claim. According to the rules and regulations of the government of the United States of America, the land is yours free. However,
if
within one year you have not tilled and planted one fourth of the arable acreage on your claim, and
if
you have not constructed a domicile on said claim, you forfeit your right to the land and it goes up for sale to the highest bidder.”