The Passionate and the Proud (32 page)

“This is just as…friends,” she said lamely.

“Okay, Em. Want to walk down to the
riverbank
?”

She was sure now that he was mocking her about the time he’d seen her with Otis, but if there would ever be an opportunity to discuss her feelings with him, it was now.

“All right, let’s go,” she agreed.

They left the party, walked through Arcady, and soon came in sight of the river. Children were shouting, splashing, and swimming in it.

“Some people got here first,” Garn said.

They’d just passed the new schoolhouse. Not yet painted, the square little building smelled fragrantly of pine. It was cool and quiet inside. Four rows of small desks were bolted to the plank floor. Portraits of, Washington and Lincoln hung on the wall along with two maps, one of the United States and one of Olympia Territory. A globe rested on the teacher’s desk in the front of the room.

“I hope no one saw us come in,” Emmalee said nervously.

“Would it matter to you if someone did?”

“I—I guess not,” she said bravely.

“Why not?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Why wouldn’t it bother you to have been seen?”

There was a slight smile playing about his mouth, but his eyes were dark and serious, boring into her. It was the same way he’d looked at her in church.

“I don’t know,” she said.

He seemed disappointed.

“Did I say the wrong thing?” she wondered.

“Yes. You ought to have said that it didn’t make any difference because you wanted to be with me.”

For an instant, she wanted to flare up at him, as she’d always done in response to his similarly arrogant remarks in the past. But this time she held herself in check. She was above fencing with him now, too grown up for that kind of game at last. And she did want to talk to him, to tell him how mixed were her feelings about the way they’d behaved toward one another in the past. His closeness was having the old effect on her again, yet it was neither his appearance nor his physical magnetism that seemed to freeze her tongue.

What’s wrong with me? she thought. All I have to do is say that I’m sorry for the past, I’m ready to set it aside. All I have to do is ask him if he’ll at least think of seeing me again. That’s what I decided to do on the day of the storm.

But the words would not come, even though she had prepared them, even though she was ready to say them.

Garn did not make it any easier. He stood before her, still smiling slightly, as if he knew the struggle she was going through and knew, too, the reason for the struggle.

“You’re not too often at a loss for words, angel,” he said finally.

The tender term of endearment, his use of which she’d protested so fiercely in the past, stirred her now. It showed, she thought, that he felt deeply for her. But she still couldn’t put her mouth on the words she wanted, the words that would tell him that she cared.

“I’ve said all I wanted to already,” Garn was telling her. “I’ve done all I could. So you see that it’s up to you now…”

Emmalee remembered the first time she’d seen him, on the docks in Cairo, Illinois, recalled her first suspicious impressions of his casually reckless indifference. He was a man of grand gestures and pronouncements, facing the world alone and unafraid. In her mind’s eye, she saw him climbing aboard the roulette table in the swirling Mississippi current, temporarily bested but undefeated, not even needing to be defiant, totally undaunted. She remembered—her body remembered—how he could set her passions aflame, like a flash fire sweeping through the fields of her heart. And she hoped that she had the power to set a similar flame in his soul.

So she stepped forward, put her arms around his neck, and pulled his head down for a kiss. Her lips sought his mouth, found his lips, and in an instant she was lost. He would not need her words at all; he would be able to understand this kiss. She had never kissed him, nor anyone, so fervently before, never initiated the kissing, and it seemed as if every tender word she might be able to recall or invent would pass unhindered from her mind to his, every promise of physical sensation would be there to grasp and hold. Other kisses with other men had always left an emptiness greater than anything a mere kiss could have filled, but this was not true with Garn. She wanted everything from him, with him, and realized now that she didn’t care one hoot if the price of having it would be the surrender of her body and soul…

But, gently, he pulled away from her, looked down at her almost with sadness.

“I did love you once, Emmalee,” he said, in the cool quiet of the little schoolhouse. “Perhaps I will again. You’ve come a long way, but not far enough.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe this!

“You’ve learned many things, but not the whole of the lesson. You see, you have to offer me as much as I once offered you.”

“But I don’t understand.” What did he mean? That she had to prove Alf Kaiserhalt a liar? Disarm Vestor Tell? Trade a silver hatband in order to save him from Araphaho Chief Fire-On-The-Moon? It occurred to Emmalee that he had, indeed, done a great deal for her, quite selflessly for a man she’d so often accused to being self-centered beyond redemption.

“You know where to find me,” he was saying, loosening her fingers from the back of his neck, pulling her arms away. “I’ll be there when you understand my meaning, when you find the words…”

It was hard to meet his eyes. They seemed so disappointed and…accusing.

Outside, over the sounds of people at their pleasure, Garn and Emmalee heard the sharp crack of a pistol shot. Garn bounded to the window. Emmalee followed. A lone horseman was riding across the prairie toward Arcady, waving a pistol in one hand. As they watched, the rider fired a second time.

At first Emmalee thought it might be someone who’d had a bit too much to drink, a plowhand or cowboy engaging in a bit of dangerous revelry. But then why would he be riding
toward
Arcady from the north?

“Trouble?” she asked, putting her hand on Garn’s shoulder.

“Afraid so,” he replied, turning abruptly from her and running out of the school. “That’s Ebenezer Creel.”

Ebenezer headed straight for town, reining his sweat-flecked beast to a stop under the picnic cottonwoods just as Garn and Emmalee arrived on the run. The pistol shots, along with Creel’s agitated appearance, brought partying to a shattering halt. Music died, dancing stopped, glasses were set down upon tabletops. Another horseman, riding more slowly, could be seen coming toward Arcady. The old man glanced fearfully back toward him.

“What is it, Ebenezer?” demanded Jacob Quinn, who’d run up to see what the matter was.

“Big trouble, I’m afeerd.”

“Well, out with it, man,” demanded Garn.

The second horseman drew nearer and nearer.

“It was this way,” babbled Ebenezer, scratching his head. “We had a few trespassers. They hid in the bushes for a while an’ then-fired on Yo-Bang and the boys.”

“Fired on?” Hester Brine asked. “You mean ‘shot at.’ Why on earth?”

“An’ Yo-Bang, he done shot back. He kilt one of ’em.”

“Killed?” repeated Garn, as if he could not understand, as if a great dream had suddenly come tumbling down. “This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to avoid, this was the reason for all the secrecy.”

“I know, boss.” Ebenezer moaned. “But that’s what happened.”

The second horseman, in the person of Leander Rupp, came into town now and slowed his mount. Behind Rupp, draped behind the saddle, across the horse like a sack of flour, was another man. He was obviously dead and he was just as obviously Alf Kaiserhalt.

Emmalee wondered briefly why one of the farmers and one of the ranchers would have been out together spying on Garn Landar’s property.

“Oh, Jesus…” Jacob Quinn said.

Delilah, the bride, was white-faced. Randy, looking stricken and puzzled, stood beside her.

Rupp came up and halted his horse. He didn’t exactly have tears in his eyes, but a lot of sweat ran down. Nor was he bothered that every eye was on him.

“They shot old Alf!” he yelled. “Me an’ old Alf was up in the hills an’ that Chinaman with the yellow hankie in his hair done shot him. Wouldda shot me, too, if I hadn’ta been so quick.”

“I came as soon as I could,” Ebenezer was telling Garn and Jacob. “I wanted to explain what happened before he”—the old man jerked his thumb toward Rupp—“got here with his version of the story.”

“There ain’t but one version,” yowled Rupp. “Alf got shot and I wouldda, too, if they’d been able. You see, they’re keeping something secret up there, an’ it ain’t gonna do none of us any good. It’s gonna ruin the lot of us, farmers and ranchers alike.”

Kaiserhalt and Rupp, Emmalee reflected. Did their cooperation in this spying mission presage a realignment of forces in Olympia?

Garn Landar leaped onto a picnic table.

“All right, everybody,” he said. “There’s been an accident here.”

“Alf’s been shot through the head,” observed Vestor Tell, grabbing the dead rancher’s head by the hair and examining it. “That doesn’t seem like much of an accident to me.”

“He was a trespasser!” shouted Ebenezer. Emmalee hadn’t seen the old man so upset since his wife, Bernice, had died in Denver.

“They’re buildin’ a
dam
up there is what they’re buildin’,” yelled Rupp above the rising din of horrified and outraged commentary. “Landar and Creel and Quinn and them foreigners mean to contol the river, the main thing that gives life to all of us in Olympia.”

“A dam?”

“A dam!”

“It’s not that way,” pleaded Garn, still up on the table. “You don’t understand…”

But the Arcadians thought they understood all too well. He who controlled the river would subdue to a considerable extent the ravages of heavy rain and spring flood. But he who dammed the Big Two-Hearted would then be able to hold back or release the water at will, and upon such power would depend the welfare of the entire plain.

Emmalee realized that Garn Landar was on the verge of becoming the most powerful man in the whole region.

If he lived.

“Tell, I want Landar, Quinn, and Creel charged with complicity in murder!” demanded Burt Pennington, as the women dropped back and the men came forward toward Garn and the others.

“Yes,” agreed Torquist. “It’s got to be done.”

Tell looked a bit hesitant. He had faced Garn’s weapon before, and Garn’s revolver hung right there on his hip.

“I’m going back up the mountain and ask Yo-Bang what happened,” Jacob Quinn began.

“I already done
told
you what happened,” protested Rupp.

Emmalee looked around, studying the situation. Ebenezer was still on his horse. Garn was atop the table and Jacob stood next to it. She saw Garn’s black stallion tied to a cottonwood not far away, its great head high, ears perked, as if he sensed the tension of the moment. She slipped away from the crowd, ducked behind the tree, and untied the horse. Puzzled for a moment to find himself free, he backed away from her and reared slightly.

“Garn!” she called sharply over the noise of the crowd. She ducked back behind the tree, but he turned and saw his horse free and unfettered. The men were closing in on him fast. There was little time, so he stuck his fingers against his teeth and let out a shrill whistle, a summons. The black stallion lifted his head high, saw his master, and set off at a fast trot toward Garn. Nothing and no one would get in his way.

Emmalee peeked out from behind the cottonwood and watched. Garn saw the horse approaching, yanked Jacob Quinn up on the table with him. When the stallion passed, the two men leaped aboard. The crowd fell back. Ebenezer took his cue. Two horses and three men broke from the crowd, galloping out of Arcady, people scattering every which way as they fled. Guns were drawn and a few errant bullets were fired, but with all the women and children around no one could get off a good shot.

Emmalee didn’t even know if Garn realized that she’d been the one to untie his horse and make his escape possible. She contented herself with the fact that, at least, she’d done something to save
him
for once, in partial repayment of all the times he’d gotten her out of hot water.

The Arcadians, farmers and ranchers alike, were livid in their rage and florid in their curses. There could be no dam, not now, not ever. No one man—or even two or three men—could ever be allowed such power.

And someone had been murdered!

“Now, I ain’t all so sure that charge’ll stand up,” drawled Vestor Tell blandly. He was not about to go poking around in such an affair, after all, it didn’t affect him directly yet, did it? “Trespassing’s a pretty serious offense in these parts. A man’s land is sacred. You all bring me proof,” he told Pennington and Torquist.

“Come on, Horace,” Burt Pennington said to his former enemy. “We got to consider this. I understand it’s also a tradition in these parts for men to take care of their own problems.”

The sun turned against them all in mid-July, just when the clover was beginning to blossom, the ears of corn beginning to form, the kernels of wheat and rye starting to grow full and fat upon the stalks. No one divined this great betrayal at first, because it came so insidiously. An ally may become an enemy overnight, but it usually takes a while longer before the victim realizes what has happened.

Each day the sun came up over the Rockies to the east, burning brightly, coolly at first, then rising in a proud, hot, merciless arc above the land. All day long it blazed down, sinking finally into the west and leaving the Arcadians gasping in hot, muggy twilights. Sleep came hard in sweatsoaked bedrolls. People rose tired and cranky, the high summer sun already hot on their faces.

Very soon, people began to awaken worried as well. As July wore on into August and there was neither breath of wind nor sign of rain, the once-green leaves of corn sagged pale and limp from their sun-blasted stalks. A faint smell of burning leaves rose from the fields of wheat and rye. Even the prairie grass began to turn brown, and the ribs of hapless longhorns grew more visible every day.

Drought.

Garn had been all too right, Emmalee reflected, when he’d once told her that merely getting to Olympia would be the easy part.

She thought of him often now, but then so did everyone in the region. The level of the Big Two-Hearted dropped and dropped until only a sluggish, shallow stream flowed in the deep channel. Although it was clear to some Olympians that lack of rain was causing the river to dry up, more people thought the dam was at fault, as though Landar, Creel, and Quinn were responsible for this new devastation. When it became clear that the longhorns were barely getting sufficient water to drink, a group of Pennington’s men had ridden up into the Sacajawea, only to be turned back by a dozen armed Chinese.

“We’ve got to do something about Landar,” was a refrain heard more and more often throughout the countryside.

But what could they do about him, holed up as he was in a kind of natural fortress?

Emmalee herself wondered what to do about him, but her ruminations were more personal. Again and again she replayed in her mind their conversation in the schoolhouse. “You’ve come a long way, Emmalee,” he’d said, “but not far enough. You’ll have to offer me what I once offered you.”

What had he meant?

It was as if she were a dull pupil called upon to recite a lesson she hadn’t yet grasped.

Several weeks after the wedding, Delilah invited Emmalee over for dinner. She went. Randy seemed a little nervous, but very happy in his new life, and Delilah was radiant. Their crops were burning like everyone else’s, but it didn’t seem to matter all that much to either of them.

“Something good is bound to happen,” said Delilah, sitting down at the table and serving a succulent rabbit hash with garden greens, fresh biscuits, and beer. “It’ll rain when it’s ready to rain.”

But talk turned inevitably to the situation in the territory.

“When will the dam be completed?” Emmalee asked the new Mrs. Clay.

“I think before spring. I never paid too much attention. It was something the men did, that’s all.”

“But what’ll it be used for? Certainly not to keep water from us down here on the plain?”

“Oh, no. I heard Uncle Jake and Garn discussing milling, mining. Things like that. Garn has a lot of good ideas.”

I bet he has, thought Emmalee, with a combination of pride and rue. Many ideas, and she was excluded from them.

“Bye-the-bye, I saw Mr. Tell in town the other day,” said Emmalee. “He certainly looks the cock-of-the-walk these days.”

Randy showed a flash of honest anger. “Yes. He thinks we’ll all fail now. He offered to buy out Burt Pennington, if the drought continues. Can you believe it? He’s offered to buy out a lot of people, farmers and ranchers both. And if people default on their loans to him, he’ll have the land anyway. He can’t lose.”

“I feel so sad for them,” said Delilah, who had her own money.

Emmalee had a question. “Let’s say a farmer goes bust and has to abandon his land. How much would it take to buy his plot?”

“Fifty cents per acre,” said Randy, chewing rabbit hash.

No wonder Tell looked so content, thought Emmalee. He
couldn’t
lose, no matter how he had arranged his scheme. If he’d gotten the money he’d loaned the ranchers from bankers back east, he
would
have to repay it sometime. But if he wound up owning or controlling most of the land in Olympia, he would become virtually a baron. He could pay off his backers readily enough and still be left immensely rich.

“I was right all along,” she said. “Tell never cared for either group. Loaning to the ranchers was just a wise card in his private game.”

“You may have a point there, Em,” Randy admitted. “But Tell is only a nuisance. The real danger to all of us comes from…from that dam.”

“Oh, honey,” said Delilah, “I don’t think so…”

“And something’s going to be done about it too. Mr. Torquist and Burt Pennington, and some others are holding a meeting later this week.”

“Are you going, honey?” his wife inquired.

“You bet I am.”

“Do you think you should? I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”

“What trouble? What will Tell do? He’s the law? Ha! Alf Kaiserhalt is dead and in the ground and Tell didn’t lift a finger.”

“There was the business about trespassing,” Emmalee offered.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Randy continued. “It’s not that I grieve much for Alf, after what he tried to do to you and me, Em. But it’s the principle of the thing. Murder can’t be allowed. Something’s going to have to be done about that,
and
about the dam.”

“So that’s the purpose of the meeting?”

“You bet.”

“When is it? Maybe I’ll come too.”

Randy looked at her, hemmed and hawed a little.

“You don’t want to get mixed up in it, Em,” he said.

“I thought you said there wasn’t going to be any trouble, honey,” worried Delilah.

“There
won’t
be. That is, only the necessary…only what’s necessary to survive here in peace.”

Emmalee wondered why talk of peace always seemed so closely related to the possibility of struggle and violence. She also recalled Cloris Hamtramck’s suspicion that the men were planning something that would bring new havoc to the territory.

“Well, when is the meeting?” she pressed Randy. “Just in case I want to attend.”

“You better not, Em.”

“Randy,
when
is the meeting?”

He didn’t look at her directly, sort of stared at the bridge of her nose, then said, “You have to be invited by Mr. Torquist.”

“It’s
men’s business
, is that it?”

“Well,” offered Delilah, innocently displaying a trait that made her a good wife for Randy, “I guess it
is
men’s business, isn’t it, Em?”

Emmalee didn’t have to spend much time deciding that Horace Torquist was not going to send her an invitation. But she had an ominous feeling that the many currents alive in Olympia were beginning to converge. She had no intention of letting that happen without her knowledge. What one doesn’t know can hurt an awful lot.

Both of her cows were pregnant, thus dry, so she didn’t have milk to sell these days, but she candled and packed her eggs, mounted Ned, and rode into town. Myrtle, who lived right outside the village, had no use for the beast anymore. She’d agreed to sell it and Emmalee was going to pay for the mule as soon as she had the money.

Tell was not at his desk by the telegraph and there was no one in the store except Myrtle and Hester, who were drinking coffee and listlessly fanning themselves.

“What? No customers?” Emmalee placed her eggs on the table and sat down.

“Too hot,” said Myrtle.

“People are scared.” Hester shrugged. “They don’t spend money—assuming they got some—when any minute they think the prairie is gonna bust into flame.”

“One spark and my cornfield would,” said Emmalee.

“Help yourself to some coffee.”

“It’s too hot. Where’s Mr. Tell?”

“He went out.”

“Out where?”

“Dunno. He was all upset. He heard there was some kind of a meeting coming up that he didn’t know anything about. I figure he’s out trying to locate the information. You hear anything about a meeting, Em?”

“No,” lied Emmalee. Whatever Torquist and Pennington were planning did not include Vestor Tell.

“Maybe he just slept late today,” she offered, making conversation. Tell owned one of the new houses right in the village.

“Naw. I seen him ride away,” said Myrtle. “He’s gone all right.”

“Too bad. What if I wanted to send a telegram?”

“Who would you send one to?”

“President Ulysses S. Grant. I figure he’d enjoy how things are going out here in this part of his country.”

The two older women laughed.

“Well, the United States Land Office would, I’m sure,” said Emmalee.

“They will, in time. That inspection team’ll come next year.”

Next year might be too late, thought Emmalee. “Say,” she demanded, remembering her first sight of Myrtle, Hester, Garn, and Ebenezer huddled around this table on the day she’d arrived in Olympia, “did you two know about the dam from the start?”

“Yep,” said Myrtle.

Hester nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The other two exchanged glances. “You never asked,” drawled Myrtle.

“Why did Garn let you in on his secret then?”

“Guess he liked me.” Myrtle grinned. “I told him he reminded me of a cross between the two men I shouldda married but didn’t have the brains to.”

“I’ve known Garn since he was a little shaver,” Hester said.

“You
have
?” This was news to Emmalee.

“Sure. Back in Wyoming. His ma died early on. She had had some bad luck and was in what is considered a real old profession, just like me. She was sweet. His pa got framed by some shysters and they hung him. Me an’ the girls sort of raised Garn, you might say.”

So Garn’s story
was
true. Emmalee did not quite know whether to laugh or cry. Was it possible that she had misjudged almost
everything
about him from the start?

“He told me that story once,” she said. “He didn’t mention any names, though.”

“True story, every word,” Hester said. “Including about me and the girls who raised him.”

“So, you seen Garn lately?” asked Myrtle.

“Not since the wedding.”

“Why not? That man loves you, girl.”

They were alone, the three of them, and Emmalee had been thinking about Garn. She decided to speak frankly.

“He told me that he did…once,” she said. “I don’t know about now.”

“Huh!” said Myrtle. “You’re just chicken, is all.”

“Garn Landar is a proud man,” Hester put in. “He’s not about to ask for what he wants more than one time. Did you know that?”

“He…he told me,” Emmalee realized.

“An’ you didn’t do nothin’ about it?”

“Listen here, Em,” Myrtle said, putting down her coffee cup and leaning forward, “a lot of things aren’t as hard as they seem to be, nor half as hard as you’ve been makin’ ’em out to be. What do you think you’re gonna lose anyway if you admit that you love somebody? I keep tellin’ you, love ain’t surrender, girl! You don’t have to run up a white flag an’ say, ‘It’s over, I give up, I ain’t my own person anymore.’ But you sure do seem to think about it that way.”

“I guess it’s because I had to get used to being on my own, relying on myself, very early.”

“So did Garn. Maybe you’re two of a kind.”

“Well, could be Olympia’s a big enough place for both of ’em,” Hester said.

The Hamtramck ranch was about five miles south of Arcady, and by the time Emmalee reached it, she and Ned were parched. She couldn’t remember having been this thirsty last summer on the hottest days crossing Kansas. Three towheaded Hamtramck children were playing in a narrow wedge of dusty shade next to the Hamtramck’s squat sod house.

“Is your ma here?” Emmalee asked them.

“Well, where the hell else would I be?” asked Cloris cheerfully, poking her head out the door. “Come on in and set a spell before you get sunstroke. What brings you way out here?”

Emmalee tied Ned in the shade, treated him to a basin full of water that Cloris said she could spare, and then followed the woman inside. The sod house was dark and gloriously cool, but plain in the extreme. Just one large, dirt-floored room, it contained a table, a few stools, and two beds, one for the children and one for their parents.

“Joe’s out trying to dig a well,” Cloris said, mentioning her husband: “If it don’t rain in four, five more days, I don’t know what we’re gonna do for our poor longhorns.”

“If they’ll eat burned corn, I have plenty.”

Cloris served tea made from hot water and the dried leaves of Queen Anne’s Lace. It tasted fine going down but left a bitter film in the mouth that, oddly, helped to relieve thirst.

“Quite a social whirl here today,” observed Cloris. “First Vestor Tell and now you.”

“Tell was here?”

“He’s still here, far as I know. He rode out into the field to talk to Joe.”

“Do you know what it’s about? Are they maybe talking about a meeting?”

“I never heard about any meeting.”

“Does your husband know?”

“If he does, he ain’t said. That man gets more secretive on me every day, I swear. Course he’s holdin’ a lot of things in these days, on account of we might go bust here if the drought don’t let up. He don’t want to talk about it, know what I mean?”

“I guess I do.”

“When’s this so-called meeting going to be held?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. You told me at the wedding that you had a suspicion something was about to happen. I think that time is coming. I haven’t liked the way that Tell has been operating since we arrived here, and almost everyone has come around to my way of thinking. The men are up to something that doesn’t involve Tell, and knowing that is bound to make him more dangerous than he is already.”

“Somebody ought to do something,” Cloris said.