Shadow on the Land (11 page)

Harriman was to seize the strategic points along the line, it was said, without waiting for the conflicts to be decided in the courts. This meant war. Chief Engineer Boschke, of the Harriman lines, equipped and dispatched a record crew of engineers, which reached Grass Valley and left immediately for the Deschutes.

Lee Dawes heard and watched, his own excitement being sharpened by each new piece of news. He was glad to see action breaking into the open at last. It would ease his own labors against the widespread doubt. Too, Grass Valley would be the first hot spot, and, when the action came, it would be fast and perhaps smoky. With that picture prodding his mind, the desire grew in him to be there rather than here in the south.

It was the evening of July 9th that Lee rode into the livery stable, left his horse, and, after a bath at Tripplet's, angled across Wall Street to the Pilot Butte Inn. As he stepped into the lobby, the clerk called—“There's a note here for you, Mister Dawes!”—and slid an envelope across the desk.

Lee tore it open, premonition setting up a faint disturbance along his spine. The note read: I'm at the Bend Hotel in Room 20. James F. Sampson.

Lee headed out through the door again, knowing he was in for a hiding from Stevens, who was posing as a man named Sampson, and wanting to get it over with.

John F. Stevens was standing before the window when Lee entered his room in response to the engineer's invitation.

He wheeled around as Lee came in, and his greeting was a sharp question: “Why haven't you got our right of way through the Racine property?”

“If you knew Hanna Racine, you'd know,” Lee answered with equal sharpness.

Stevens waved the point aside. “She's a woman, and there are methods for handling every woman. I thought you knew them all.”

“I don't know the method for this one,” Lee said.

Stevens grunted—“Sit down.”—and began pacing the floor, a big man dominated by one compelling urge. Watching him from a chair beside the bed, Lee saw that a change had come over him since their talk on the
Inland Belle
. His temper was honed to a razor sharpness, a tension confirming the fact that things were about to break.

“It's ready to blow, Dawes. Porter Brothers are moving in. Within a few days I'll announce my identity and the fact that Hill is behind the Oregon Trunk.” He paced to the window and back. “But that's not the reason I called you over. When we talked on the boat, I told you that the Racine property would be a tough nut to crack.” He leveled a finger at Lee. “You're supposed to be an ace trouble-shooter. You don't realize the size of the stack I shoved in behind you, Dawes.”

“I'll get it.”

“You've got to. The entire success of our tactics depends on you getting that right of way. We can't keep stalling around. We can start condemnation proceedings . . .”

“I wouldn't advise that, sir,” Lee cut in.

“Oh, you wouldn't advise it. And why?”

“Because Hanna will fight it, and her neighbors will fight it, and we'll kick up a hell of a lot of bitterness. With this people's movement going on the ballot, we need all the public support we can get. This road will be here a long time, Mister Stevens. It strikes me that good will is worth waiting for.”

Stevens stood pulling at his mustache, a half smile striking at the corners of his mouth. “There's some horse sense in what you're saying, all right.”

“Time is on our side. If we let the people's movement run under its own power, it'll bust itself. One of these days Hanna will do business with me in her own way and her own time.”

Stevens nodded, the anger gone out of him. “All right, Dawes. Now about the second assignment I gave you.”

Lee pulled his pipe from his pocket and dribbled tobacco into the bowl. “I've done a little better on that. I'm sure it's the people's movement, and our third party is Cyrus P. Jepson, but so far I've got no proof, nor any evidence that he's done anything criminal.”

Lee told what had happened, and, when he was done, Stevens nodded. “I remember Jepson City. Nothing unusual about it.” He thought about it a moment, and then asked skeptically: “It would seem, the way you tell it, that Jepson is using the people's movement for his own selfish purpose. Why?”

“I think I've figured out the answer. There are no towns between Bend and Burns. Jepson undoubtedly feels that the proposed people's east-west railroad will go through his town site. If that country becomes a wheat-growing section, as people think it will, there will be a good-size town somewhere out there in the desert. If Jepson City happens to be that town, Jepson stands to make a million dollars.”

Stevens nodded. “That might be the story. Well, Dawes, keep your eye on this Jepson. If you've got it sized up right, he'll come into the open with some definite action. Then do what you have to do. And about Hanna Racine. It's something new for me to have my railroad hanging on a woman's whim. Wind it up as soon as you can, because I want you in Grass Valley.”

A quick, expectant grin broke across Lee's tanned face. “I was hoping to hear that.”

“There s a stretch below Sherars Bridge called Horseshoe Bend, with room for only one good roadbed through it. The Harriman people got the jump on us by putting in a big camp and building an access road. I wish we could throw a monkey wrench into their machinery, but I don't see how. In any case, you'll report to Porter Brothers, and be on hand if they need a man of your caliber. I'm guessing that Jepson will be around Shaniko or Grass Valley when the music starts. And”—Lee had paused at the door—“I'll expect you to have the Racine right-of-way agreement in your pocket.”

Chapter Nine

S
ummer had come to central Oregon, with some of the days cloudlessly bright and warm, the nights cool and softly starred, or again with thunderheads rising, black and grim, on the Cascade skyline. At times storms struck in the mountains or foothills or in the eastward desert, sharply and without warning, with ragged flashes of lightning running through a close bombardment of thunder.

Sometimes nearly half an inch of precipitation fell in an afternoon, first hail, and then rain, with pools forming in the ruts of Wall and Bond Streets in Bend, water stirring their surfaces with constant unease and streaming from roofs in swift, noisy streams. Always, then, the air, so high and thin and crystalline, became pungent with the heady tang of sage that was like wine taken in great drafts.

Searching the town one Saturday afternoon for a farmer with whom he had been unable to deal, Lee was caught by the rain in front of Lara's store. He stepped inside, bought some fishing tackle, and, seeing Hanna at the dry-goods counter, crossed to her. He said: “So you've come to taste the excitement of city life.”

Hanna whirled, recognized him, and smiled. “It's just lucky for you I wasn't carrying my gun. I shoot men who come up behind me and scare me.”

“I hope you're staying in town,” he said. “I owe you a meal or two.”

She nodded guardedly. “It's a long way back to the ranch.”

“Then let's have supper at the inn. They keep trout on the table every day, and that's something I never had enough of in my life until I came to Bend.” He showed her the flies he had bought. “I'm learning to fish, but when I catch one, it's because of something I accidentally do right. Now . . . about supper?”

She hesitated a moment, and Lee, watching her, sensed that she was thinking about the time on the
Inland Belle
when he'd left her standing beside the rail and had gone to search for Deborah Haig. Then she smiled, as if putting it out of her mind, and said: “Why yes, if you like.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Bend Hotel.”

“I'll meet you in the lobby at six.” He lifted his hat, nodded, and left the store.

Lee was surprised how much his running into her had lifted his spirits. Five o'clock found him in his room putting on his best suit, and he was waiting in the lobby fifteen minutes before the hour. When she came down the stairs, she looked at him, noting his careful grooming, and said ruefully: “No fair. I didn't come to town prepared to make myself beautiful.”

They sat beside an open window in the dining room. Sunlight laced by the shadows of pine needles fell on Hanna's hair, painting a golden glow upon her head. Lee, watching her and seeing the keenness of the quick expressions that crossed her face, felt a rising admiration for this girl, so alive and utterly honest. And for this hour she was the focal point of all his interests.

“Always the rainbows,” Lee murmured, and passed the platter of trout to her.

“I wish I could make up my mind about you,” Hanna said.

“I'm no puzzle,” he said quickly.

She lifted a trout to her plate. “You are to me. Perhaps it's because we live in different worlds. Highpockets was talking about you the other day, and he thinks you're the biggest man who ever walked.”

He looked at her in sharp surprise. “Thanks. I'll tell you something nice someday.”

“You're a man's man. And a woman's man in a way that sort of scares me. Life seems to be a series of rooms to you. You have such a good time in each one, and then rush madly into the next one.”

“I hadn't thought of it that way.”

“Lee, you're missing a great deal in not having a room of your own, a room that echoes your yesterdays, and all your tomorrows.”

He shook his head, dry amusement curving his lips in a smile. Again this sharp-minded, pretty girl was talking in a way he had never heard a woman talk. “I'm afraid I'd feel cooped up in that room.”

Hanna smiled. “Have some more trout, Mister Dawes. I guess you'll spend your life rushing through other men's rooms.”

When they had eaten, he said: “Let's have a look at the river.”

She nodded her agreement, and, circling the inn, they found a place among the pines on the riverbank. Lee filled his pipe, finding the tension that had gripped him since Stevens's visit completely gone.

“What will you do when this is over?” Hanna asked suddenly.

“Hadn't thought about it.” He wondered why she took such pleasure in dissecting him. “I guess there'll always be railroads to build. Mexico. Maybe China.”

“The Mexican
señoritas
would appeal to you,” she said lightly.

He chuckled as he thumbed tobacco tightly into his pipe. “They're a tempestuous lot. Quinn and I were together in Nicaragua.”

“Was that where you knew him?”

“It goes back further than that.” He lit his pipe, and said between puffs: “I'm not trying to start another argument, but my boss mentioned forcing a right of way through your property. I talked him out of it for the moment.”

“I'm sorry, Lee,” she said flatly. “I made a sort of promise to my father when they brought his body in from the Trail Crossing bridge.”

“I respect him and you, Hanna, but I can't see why it should be a matter of principle.”

She placed her hands, palm down, on the needled ground behind her and leaned back, eyes on the Cascades, where snow peaks flamed in the dying light of the sun. “It's something you feel, Lee, a kind of workaday religion. This state has taken such a kicking around from big railroad interests. Your Jim Hill once asked . . . ‘What must we do to be fed?' Have you ever thought about the countless people who have come here trying to answer that question? I have, Lee, because I've seen them. Everything they owned in a covered wagon that was held together by rope and bailing wire. Sometimes they've starved and moved on, but lots of them make a living, which means they've lived through the vastness and silence and terror of the desert trying to answer Hill's question. Hill doesn't give them any answer . . . not to my little people. And the Harriman Fence has kept out other railroads. That's why Jepson says the Lord gave us a bright land, but there are man-made shadows upon it.”

“The Oregon Trunk is breaking down that fence, Hanna.”

Her eyes were on him gravely. “What will it be after you've broken it down?”

He was getting nowhere, and he saw that emotions had set her attitudes strongly. He said: “If we condemn through your property, you've lost.”

“Losing and giving up are two different things, Lee. There will be so many opportunities for a man like you here. Why don't you stay?”

“I'm afraid Horace Greeley's advice was not aimed at me.”

“But this is the last frontier, Lee.”

He shook his head. “No. There'll always be a frontier. Somewhere. There are a lot of hills to climb.”

“So you can see on the other side. So many things yet for you to do, a lot of women to love, a lot of liquor to drink, and a lot of fights with Mike Quinn.”

“I guess that's right.”

“Not what I'd call a frontier.”

Suddenly he was irritated. It seemed to him that she was like a little boy who had stumbled upon a new clock, and was bound to take it apart to see what made it run. Then she was equally determined to put it back together again and gear it to operate at a different speed and in a different direction. He said with more sharpness than he intended: “Someday you'll forget yourself, and have a good time.”

She rose, and stood looking down at him, slim and small and shapely. And desirable. “Perhaps someday I will,” she said softly, and, whirling, walked rapidly away.

Lee caught up with her, knowing he had made another mistake. Lee Dawes, expert with women, had been given this job because a woman held a crucial position, and he had fumbled it again because he knew nothing at all about Hanna Racine. He walked in silence beside her to the Bend Hotel, reaching into his mind for something to restore that spirit of warm understanding that he had thoughtlessly destroyed.

He stood in front of the hotel, facing her, and said more humbly than was his habit: “I've got a cousin who's a bull. Once he got into a china shop.”