The Passionate and the Proud (26 page)

“Borrowing four hundred dollars might just turn out to be an even worse deal,” he said.

“I don’t think so. Will you lend me the money?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I have to tell you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fair. Unfair. Who’s to say?”

“I have farmland, you know. I’d put that up as security. It’ll be worth a lot more than four hundred dollars. In not too long a time.”

“We all know that, dear.”

“Don’t call me ‘dear.’”

“Suit yourself. I’m just trying to be pleasant. Anyway, it’s my policy not to loan to farmers. They’re poor risks.”

“That’s true, if they aren’t able to borrow enough for stock and cattle and equipment. They need a little help to get off the ground. But they’re good people.”

Tell grinned with satisfaction. In a flash, Emmalee understood that one of his basic goals was to see the farmers
fail
! Was this desire based upon some personal animosity that she didn’t know about? What good would it be to Tell if the farmers failed? He hadn’t loaned them money. He could not foreclose upon them if they defaulted on their repayments. Either he had a peculiar animus against the farmers themselves, or he had other schemes afoot. These had to have something to do with his biased loan policy.

“You’ve lent to the ranchers readily enough.”

“They aren’t poor risks.” He shrugged. “What more can I tell you?”

“All right,” she demanded, having decided to confront him forthrightly, “where are you getting the money that you do loan out?”

He looked startled, then suspicious. “Why do you want to know?”

“Is it from a bank back east? Or from a private source?”

“None of your business. Besides, what’s the difference?”

“I’ve heard talk about you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Have you, now?”

“Yes. Normally, I try and discount gossip. But what I heard leads me to believe that you weren’t entirely on the up-and-up back east. Do you know what that suggests to me?”

He was getting angry, and his reply was clipped, cold. “I don’t care what it suggests or does not suggest to you.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. I’m not very old, but I have learned this: People don’t change all that much. If you were less than honorable back in Pennsylvania, you might be that way here too.”

“My, my. What a smart girl.”

“Mr. Tell, I want to know what the rules are.”

“The
what
?”

“The laws. The rules that govern what you can and cannot do in your position.”

A smooth mask of blandness came down over his face. He appeared perfectly self-confident now, but Emmalee could sense the effort he was expending in order to show her that oh-so-calm facade. “I don’t know that there are any, particularly,” he said.

“I don’t believe that. There is a land office in Washington, D.C. It has a policy. Its claims agents must be subject to that policy. Banks are not totally independent either.” She looked him directly in the eyes. “I’m just interested in the rules,” she said.

“They wouldn’t interest you because they don’t apply to you,” he said smoothly.

“Let me be the judge of that. I’d like to send a telegram.”

Tell’s expression changed. He still looked unruffled, but his eyes turned brighter, sharper.

“Where to? Washington, I suppose. Be glad to send it for you, of course, but it’ll cost money.”

“No. I want to wire Salt Lake City.”

“Salt Lake? What in heaven’s name for?”

This plan of action had been in the back of Emmalee’s mind. She had already guessed that Tell was reluctant to get her information on the actual laws that applied here in Olympia. She would definitely have to acquire that data herself. Tell wasn’t going to provide information that, she was sure, would threaten him considerably. But wiring Salt Lake City might solve her more immediate problem: money.

“I want to wire the Pacific National Bank,” she told Tell. “Randy Clay told me it’s the biggest bank there. I just wonder if they’d consider loaning me the money I need. With one hundred and sixty acres of excellent land as security.”

Tell paused, thinking it over. His eyes were hard. Emmalee could see that she’d touched him to the quick. He didn’t want her wiring the bank in Salt Lake. But she did not yet know the reason for his reluctance.

“Well,” he said, affecting a drowsy air, “you certainly are persistent. I like that. I really do.” His mien told her that he didn’t like it at all, not one bit.

“Then you will send the wire?” Emmalee was unable to keep a measure of surprise out of her voice. She glanced behind Tell and saw the telegraph keys on the table next to the wall, the wires leading out of the store, connecting little Arcady with the larger world. She saw the drawers beneath the table. Perhaps directions for sending and receiving Morse code were in one of those drawers? It was a thought…

“No need to send the wire to Salt Lake at all,” Tell was saying.

Emmalee didn’t know whether to be suspicious or angry. “There isn’t? And why not?”

“Because I’ll loan you the four hundred.”

There had to be some sort of a trap here. Emmalee wondered what it was. Vestor Tell was not the sort of man who would capitulate so readily. “Yes, but why?” she asked. “And all of a sudden?”

Tell’s smile was friendly and benign. “I was just testing you, is all. Had to see if you stuck to your guns, if you had the gumption to keep on pressing me for the dough.” He lowered his voice and glanced at the people who were shopping in the store. “Too many of those farmers,” he said conspiratorially, “don’t have the gumption to keep on coming back. That’s how I judge who’s worth a loan and who isn’t. You are!” he added expansively.

Emmalee knew that this was untrue. There were farmers Tell had turned down three and four times. He was lending her money because he didn’t want outside interference, from Salt Lake or anywhere else. It was highly useful information, and it proved what Emmalee had already suspected: Tell was engaged in activity questionable at best, and illegal at worst. She still did not know what it was but that fact was of less immediate importance than her loan.

“What terms?” she asked, bracing herself for another set-to over interest rates.

The claims agent showed her the palms of his hands. A small patch of dried blood showed on the bandage.

“Why, the same as for my rancher friends,” he exclaimed, as if hurt by her mistrust of him. “Three percent, and three years to pay back. That all right with you?”

Randy and Emmalee hastily erected a log-and-sod cabin close to the new house at the three pines. The walls were pine, the roof sod, the chimney fieldstone. Dried mud blocked the chinks between the logs. Randy could not believe that Emmalee had been successful with Tell where so many others had failed.

“It was my charm, I think,” she said gaily, kissing him. “Charm and the fact that he’s afraid of something. And I aim to find out what it is.”

“Now, Em. Go easy.”

“Well, you’re right I guess. But let’s face it. We’re lucky. But we shouldn’t crow about it. Our luck doesn’t erase the fact that a lot of us farmers are in trouble. Winter is coming fast. You can feel it in the air.”

Emmalee had brewed a pot of tea, which she served Randy in her new cabin. There was also a plateful of biscuits and fresh honey. The tea had arrived in Arcady via the biweekly supply train of wagons that now came regularly from Sacramento. Emmalee had made the biscuits herself. Willard Buttlesworth had provided the honey; he’d cut down a bee tree in late November, a hollow maple in which he’d found thousands of frost-numbed bees and a mountain of swollen, dripping honeycombs.

The cabin was snug but somewhat dark. It had only one window. Randy planned to cut a few more, but for now the place would have to do. The main point had been to get a shelter built on Emmalee’s land, both to satisfy the requirement that a domicile occupy the claim and to give Emmalee a place to live.

This tea was a celebration of the cabin’s completion, and Emmalee poured it into old china cups, gifts of Ebenezer Creel from his wife’s things.

“To us,” she said, taking a seat opposite Randy at a little carved table given her by Horace Torquist. The leader had at first been incredulous when Emmalee presented him with five one-hundred-dollar bills—one of them tom—and then shocked when he’d learned of her borrowing from Tell. But Emmalee was adamant. She would buy her freedom. Emmalee believed Torquist had eased his conscience by giving her the table. “You’d be better off with me,” the wagonmaster had said. Emmalee hadn’t thought so, still didn’t think so, and there she was serving tea in her own little house.

“Good,” said Randy, sipping cautiously. “I’ve never had tea before.”

It was only Emmalee’s second time, the first having been at Hester Brine’s store. Trade with the Far East was bringing the brew, practically unknown in the Middle West, to California ports, and from there to Olympia.

They drank in silence for several minutes. Randy spooned a huge dollop of thick honey on a biscuit and ate it slowly, savoring the taste. The day was cold and overcast. A sharp, steady wind blew down from the Sacajawea Range, but the logs in the cabin’s little fireplace burned steadily. Emmalee felt warm and secure, then increasingly drowsy. She wanted to hug and cuddle.

“Hope it’s an early spring,” said Randy. “Then we can start plowing right away.”

“I hope so too.”

“Thought I’d sow some rye, first thing.”

“Wouldn’t corn be better?”

“What?”

“Corn is hardier,” Emmalee said. “We don’t really know what the weather will be like during the growing season out here. Corn can take more punishment, if need be, and still give a good yield.”

“I’ve already asked Hester to order rye seed for me,” said Randy, looking at her.

“You could change that. Besides, corn seed is cheaper, and the extra money might go to buy another cow.”

“The cows I have will give us enough milk.”

“We could sell the extra milk in Arcady.”

Randy set down his teacup and stared at her.

“Who’ll buy that milk?” he asked, a little sharply. “The farmers who haven’t been able to buy cows don’t have money. If we only hadn’t run smack-dab into Fire-On-The-Moon out there in Kansas…”

“Ranchers drink milk, too, I suspect,” said Emmalee. “They don’t use longhorns as milking cattle, as far as I know.”

“The ranchers? Emmalee, what are you talking about? We’re not going to sell anything to
ranchers
! It’d be like betraying our own kind. They hate us and we hate them.”

“I just thought…that it’d be a good idea. If they want milk, we have it. And they can afford to pay for it, so we both come out ahead.”

Randy laughed. “Don’t be a goose, Em,” he said. “The farther we stay from Pennington and his crowd, the better off we’ll be.”

She didn’t like his laugh, or the easy manner in which he’d dismissed what she thought was a good idea.

“If they begin to realize that we can be of use to them and vice versa,” she said, “why, I bet things’ll begin to go much more smoothly around here.”

“Forget about that. The die is cast.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid it’s a fight to the finish, Emmalee.” She noted he had called her Emmalee; he usually said “Em” or “honey” or even “darling.”

“I still think it doesn’t have to be that way,” she maintained. He poured himself some more tea, added a spoonful of honey, and stirred it in vigorously.

“I haven’t seen any signs that it’s going to be different, have you? Do you have any indication that Burt Pennington likes us any more than he used to?”

Emmalee had to admit that she had seen no such signs. Oh, Otis was friendly enough when she chanced to run into him in town. He always tipped his hat and stopped for a moment to pass the time of day, but he knew that Emmalee was really engaged. As for Burt and Lottie, they were seldom seen in Arcady. Their magnificent hacienda-style dwelling at the ranch was the talk of Olympia. There, with lovely Lottie serving as hostess, Burt planned strategy with his followers exactly as Torquist did with the farmers. No, there were few signs of amity coming from the other side of the river.

“Perhaps if we made some gesture of friendship,” she suggested.

“Gosh, Em, what’s got into you? I know you’ve said things like this in the past, but I thought you’d have learned different by now.”

“There hasn’t been one real fight since that big brouhaha in the general store.”

“That’s just because Pennington is biding his time. Mr. Torquist explained it all to us the other night, over at his place.”

“You went to one of his meetings?”

“Yes. Is anything wrong with
that
?”

Emmalee studied his expression. He looked surprised and a little hurt. He even looked a little angry. She herself was aware of feeling a bit miffed over his attitude. He didn’t like the idea of making money by selling milk. He didn’t care for her suggestion of planting corn instead of rye. He thought she was naive about Pennington and the ranchers.

Well!

But Randy realized, as did she, that they were having a disagreement.

“Sorry, Em,” he said sheepishly. “Our first fight, I guess.”

“Just a few different ideas.”

“It’s not important.”

“Sure, we’ll work it out.”

“I guess I’m just a little more cautious than you by nature,” he said.

They leaned across the little table and kissed each other.

“Better than honey,” he said.

“Let’s forget all about it. Do you know what I think would be a good idea? It’s almost Christmas. What if someone were to organize a big party and dance for everybody?”

“You mean for all of our people?”

“No, I mean for
all
of the people. Everybody in Olympia, farmers and ranchers alike. I just thought of it a moment ago, when it occurred to me that there hasn’t been a fight in a long while. I know there’s been hostile talk, but if we got everybody together…”

“Who’s ‘we,’ Em?”

“…maybe in Hester’s new hotel—it’s almost finished and she’s got that big hall on the first floor—why, I bet there’d be enough good feeling started up there to see us through the whole year without a bad incident!”