The Passionate and the Proud (6 page)

“My gear—” she began.

“Leave it,” he said. “Nobody’ll touch it. We’ve got decent people on this train. Not like some others I could name.”

He kicked the horse lightly with his heels and the beast lumbered into a trot.

Emmalee indulged in a small measure of satisfaction. Things seemed to be progressing fairly well. Randy had said that good people belonged to this company, and that was nice to know. Moreover, he would personally introduce her to the leader, Mr. Torquist. That was ever so much better than having to stumble up on one’s own, a stranger out of nowhere. There was just one small matter, however, which had yet to be resolved.

“What is the fare on this train?” she asked, trying to assume an air of casual confidence.

“A hundred and thirty dollars.”

Her heart sank. After the train trip and the purchases in Hannibal, she had four dollars and twenty cents left.

“Less than most,” he said.

“Oh, yes. I shopped around. What is Mr. Torquist like?” she asked. “As a person, I mean?”

“Well,” said Randy Clay, hesitating, “that’s sort of a hard question to answer.”

“What I mean is…well, is he a good man?”

“Oh, definitely good.”

“Has he taken a wagon train out west before?”

“No, but he’s a strong leader, that’s for sure. I doubt there are any stronger.”

“Somehow you don’t seem especially enthusiastic about that.”

“Oh, I am,” replied Randy. “It’s just that Mr. Torquist is
very
sure of everything. Sometimes this causes him to have trouble with other people. Not serious trouble, mind you, but…”

Emmalee decided to approach Horace Torquist warily. “And he is a farmer?” she asked.

“You bet! He had a huge farm in Ohio, near Galena. That’s where I’m from. But his wife died, he turned sour on the people there, and so he sold out. For a big profit, I might add.”

“Turned sour on the people?” asked Emmalee.

“That’s the only way I know to describe it. You see, the Civil War changed a lot of things. People passed through, settled, started businesses and such. Galena changed. Mr. Torquist wants to go out to Olympia and set up a pure, simple farming community of God-fearing people. To start all over again, in a manner of speaking.”

“Then I bet he’s pretty particular about who gets on his train?” guessed Emmalee.

“You’re right quick, Emmalee Alden.” Randy laughed.

“I guess I’m God-fearing,” she said. “I read almost the whole Bible at the—” She was about to say “at the Lutheran orphanage,” but that didn’t exactly suggest that she possessed the price of a fare. “Why did you decide to leave Galena?” she asked.

Randy guided the gray horse past a well at which men were busy filling barrels with water and hoisting them onto a flat-bedded wagon. Emmalee could see, just up ahead, a fine, new Conestoga with a large tent set up next to it.

“My family’s got only a small farm there,” he said matter-of-factly, “and I have five brothers. No way to make a living if the land is split six ways, or even two ways, actually. And the price of land is too high for me to afford an Ohio farm. I’m on my own. Sold my share to my kin to get up money for this trip. I hated to leave home, but I just know everything’s going to turn out fine.”

He sounded wistful and confident at the same time.

“Then you’re alone too?” she blurted.

“’Cept for my horse.” He laughed and reined the dapple-gray to a halt in front of the tent. “Mr. Torquist?” he called. “You available for a minute? Got a young lady out here wants to discuss something important with you.”

Emmalee slid down from the horse and adjusted her skirt and her hair. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, looking up at Randy. Then the tent flap was thrown abruptly aside and a man stepped out of it and into the sunlight, shielding his eyes with his hand.

“What is it?” he demanded, glancing from Emmalee to Randy.

“This is Emmalee Alden, sir. She wants to talk to you.”

“About what?” Horace Torquist demanded peremptorily, looking at Emmalee. It seemed as if he were glaring, so forceful was his manner, so imposing his bearing. Torquist was only of medium height, but he carried himself with such fierce erectness that he seemed tall, an effect enhanced by a mane of wild white hair that appeared incapable of being tamed by brush or comb. That unkempt head of hair seemed incongruous to Emmalee at first, but then she realized that it suggested some immense inner drive on Torquist’s part, a single bizarre feature on a man otherwise fastidiously groomed. His wild hair rendered the wagonmaster singular and prophetlike.

“I’d…I’d like to talk to you about a place on your train,” Emmalee said, managing to sound reasonably crisp and businesslike.

Torquist’s troubled gray eyes showed interest.

“I do hope you’ve some room left,” Emmalee pressed.

“Just yourself?”

“Yes. Sir.” He was the type of man to whom one instinctively felt a need to say “sir.”

“What’s your background?” he demanded.

“I’m a farm girl from Pennsylvania. My parents died on the trail…”

“You a churchgoer, Emmalee?”

“Yes, Lutheran,” said Emmalee, thinking of the chapel at the home.

Horace Torquist thought it over, making judgments and calculations Emmalee could not assay. “Be off about your business. Clay,” he ordered Randy then. “Miss Alden, you come inside with me and I’ll explain a few things to you.”

Randy gave Emmalee an encouraging smile and jerked the gray’s reins, trotting away. Emmalee followed the dour wagonmaster into his spacious tent. Its furnishings were austere, like the man himself, but of excellent quality. A narrow bed with a mahogany headboard and a thick, quilted coverlet rested on a rich rectangle of carpeting. The washstand, also of polished mahogany, bore a pitcher and basin of the finest porcelain. Two ornamentally carved straightback chairs flanked a sturdy desk that gleamed dully in the subdued lighting. The tent was clean and cool.

“Sit down, Emmalee.”

It was an order, not an invitation. Emmalee sat down.

“My fare is a hundred and thirty dollars, payable in advance.”

Emmalee was about to explain that she didn’t have a hundred and thirty dollars, but Torquist took a seat behind the desk and went on speaking.

“First there are certain matters to consider,” he said. “Matters much more important than mere money.”

“Yes, sir.” More important than money? This set of priorities sounded encouraging.

“Do you know why I am making this mighty venture, Emmalee?” Torquist demanded. “This great trek west?”

Emmalee decided to use the information she’d learned from Randy Clay. Torquist might be pleased to know that she was aware of his ideals.

“Yes, I do,” she responded briskly. “Parts of the eastern United States have grown oversettled and—”

The wagonmaster nodded, put up his hand, and interrupted. He wanted to do his own explaining. “Jefferson and God,” he said. “I’m taking this community of souls out across the Rocky Mountains because of Thomas Jefferson and God Almighty.”

Emmalee decided to keep quiet.

“What do you know about Thomas Jefferson, Miss Alden? That he was our third president, a Founding Father, a great man?”

Emmalee nodded energetically.

“Of course. Everyone but the most benighted fool knows those things. But Jefferson was more. He was a
prophet.
Miss Alden.” Torquist thumped the big desk with the flat of a powerful hand. “He was a prophet
scorned
!”

Nothing Randy Clay had told her about Horace Torquist prepared Emmalee for this kind of display. The whitemaned leader was as different from blunt, businesslike Burt Pennington as any man she could imagine.

“Jefferson,” Torquist railed, “believed that America—the idea and the reality of America—could be preserved only if our country remained true to its agrarian roots, true to the
land,
Emmalee. He was a farmer, do you see what I mean? The farmer is close to the soil, gives to it, receives from it, and both are made strong. But people here in the east have forgotten that purity, that essential nobility, in the pursuit of crass wealth. Moneychangers have invaded the temple. Do I make myself clear?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Emmalee.

“God knows it too, Emmalee. Mark my words. God knows what has become of our country. And that is why He is showing us the way to a new, unsullied horizon. The west. It is our last chance to make good the bounty He has lain before us, and it is my conviction that this time,
this time
He will not permit corruption and decay and degradation to ruin His handiwork. We shall have to fight for it, of course, and fight hard. But we shall be victorious.”

Torquist paused a moment, savoring his rhetorical flight.

“Are you a fighter, Emmalee?” he asked quietly.

Emmalee hesitated. Was this some sort of a trick? Torquist had said that “hard fighting” might be required in the settling of the west. But he was also a man of God, whose followers had been admonished to turn the other cheek.

“I stand up for myself when I have to,” she said, truthfully but cautiously.

Torquist was pleased. “That’s what I like to hear, Emmalee. Stand up for yourself, and for the rest of the community. We’ve got to stick together if we want to beat Burt Pennington to Olympia and, even more importantly, to claim the best land out there for farming purposes.”

“But Mr. Pennington is ready to leave St. Joe almost any day now,” Emmalee said.

The wagonmaster, who seemed to have been in the process of warming up to her, now grew instantly suspicious. And angry.

“What do you know of Burt Pennington?” he snapped. “And how did you come by such knowledge?”

“Well, I’d…I’d seen his advertisement in a newspaper and when I reached St. Joe I looked him up. I didn’t know he was a—”

“A rancher?”

“Yes. In fact, that’s why I’m here. Mr. Pennington mentioned that the people on your train are farmers and—”

“So he wouldn’t take you on, eh?” Torquist was studying her with narrowed eyes. “And how do
I
know that you’re interested in the land? How do I know that you’re not just using me to make your way out west? Yes, you’re strong and young. I can see that. No doubt you’ll make some man a fine wife before too long, and a community needs sound marriages…”

Emmalee chose not to respond to that remark.

“…but do you really know anything about farming?”

She recalled Pennington’s query about the “dogie.”

“You might ask me some questions,” Emmalee said.

Mr. Torquist leaned forward. “All right, I will. What do you plant first in the spring, corn or oats?”

“Oats. It has a shorter growing season and must be harvested before frost in the fall.”

“Hmmm. And how do you shock oats?”

“Three bundles on one side, three on the other. Two on the ends as braces, and one on top to keep the rain off.”

“What’s a stanchion, Emmalee?”

“A couple of bars that serve as a neck-yoke to keep cows in the barn.”

“You had milking cows on your farm in Pennsylvania?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What breed were they?”

“Jersey.”

“Black and white, eh?”

“No, Jerseys are brown.”

The wagonmaster seemed satisfied that she knew something of farming. “All right,” he said, “you strike me as a girl who might fit into my plans. You’re willing to fight if you have to—and, mark my words, we’ll have to face down Pennington sometime—and you come from farm stock. Something else bothers me, however, and don’t get the idea that I’m being insensitive, but I’d be remiss in my responsibilities if I didn’t bring it up.”

Torquist almost sounded as if he were hemming and hawing, which was uncharacteristic of him.

“Just go ahead and say it,” Emmalee invited.

He frowned. “It has to do with your…ah…with your nature or…ah…your circumstances.”

“Yes?” This must be where the money part came up.

But he surprised her. “Miss Alden,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes, “you are…you are a, well, a handsome young woman…”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But you’re not attached to any man. What I’m getting at is that…is that, while I assume everyone to be moral and righteous until I find out differently, there
are
a number of single men on the train. It is a hard and tedious journey, and if they were to be distracted by…well, you can see what I mean, can’t you?”

Emmalee could see quite clearly. Torquist meant that
she
had better not “distract” those unattached men, or any other men. He was putting the burden on her, as he would certainly place the blame on her as well.

“Any troubles of that kind,” he warned, shaking his thick finger at her, “and I’ll be forced to leave you in Denver. We stop there for a couple of weeks to reoutfit the train before crossing the Rockies. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, you do. You won’t have any trouble from me.”

“It’s not only you, of course. I require the highest comportment from everyone, at all times. Myself included. Now, you wish to travel with us and sign on as a member of our group. The fare is a hundred and thirty—”

“I’m afraid I don’t have that much.”

“How much do you have?”

Emmalee told him.

“Four dollars! Why on earth are you here? I admire pluck, but this is business, not charity.”

“I’m not asking for charity. That’s the last thing I’ll ever want. It was just that I thought…well, maybe some sort of arrangement could be made…”

Torquist hadn’t thrown her out of the tent yet, so Emmalee felt there was some hope left. “I could work,” she offered.

“Miss Alden, everybody on my train works. It is a condition of passage.”

“Perhaps something extra?”

Torquist’s gray eyes glinted shrewdly. “Situations like yours are not unknown to me,” he said. “So I will make you the only offer possible under these circumstances, and only because you appear to be an upright Christian girl who wants to better herself. I will take you to Olympia without fare…”

Emmalee listened.

“…if, in return, you agree to work for me for a period of two years.”

“Two years?”

“Take it or leave it, Miss Alden.”