The Passionate and the Proud (29 page)

Emmalee was sure, too, sure that Jacob had not wanted his pretty niece to talk about what was happening on Landar’s Folly. But she had learned, maybe, that whatever it was had something to do with the Big Two-Hearted.

Watching the second dance was worse than watching the first. Everybody was having fun, and Garn Landar was dancing with Lottie Pennington! Emmalee saw the shameless way that Lottie pressed against him every chance she got, and she did not care either for the manner in which Garn smiled down at her. Emmalee decided she needed a breath of fresh air and went outside into the lantern-lit chill. She heard the music end and the cheer that followed. The band started playing “Ora Lee.” I’d better go back inside, Emmalee thought. She was beginning to feel a chill.

Then Garn emerged, alone, from the hotel. He was smoking a thin cigar. His posture, his alert glance, told her that he’d come outside for a purpose. She attempted to brush past him but he caught her arm and held on.

“Yes?” she asked coldly.

“Will you accept a ‘Merry Christmas’?”

“Yes. Merry Christmas.”

He didn’t release her. “Em, can I talk to you for a moment?”

He had that same cool, detached air about him, yet she sensed a seriousness of intent toward her. She didn’t know if she liked that or not.

“If you think we have something to talk about,” she answered noncommitally.

“It’s possible,” he said. “I just wanted to say once and for all that I’m sorry about the way it ended for us in Denver. Since you arrived here, I’ve tried to treat you properly when we’ve seen each other. I don’t think I’ve embarrassed you or imposed myself upon you. Would you mind if I began to show a bit more friendliness now?”

“As you wish,” she said coolly. “But I must go inside.”

Still he did not release her. He tossed away his cigar.

“Come on, Em.” He smiled. “Friendship is a two-way street. I said I was sorry.”

Emmalee felt herself softening, exhorted herself to stay on guard. “It’s too late to be sorry. Everything worked out fine. Forget about it.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“I’m like you in one way, maybe. I never say what I don’t mean. Why do you care, anyway, when Lottie Pennington rides around on your horse?”

The words were out before she knew it. She saw his gleaming smile. It infuriated her.

“Does that bother you?” he asked.

“No,” she lied.

“Good. And I certainly don’t care what you and Otis do at night along the riverhank. But how does Randy feel about it?”

There was a faint trace of mockery in his voice now, a part of the Garn she’d known. She was about to respond in her old manner as well, by flaring at him with a taunting retort, but then she put herself in his position for a moment. What
was
he to think? He’d seen her, a woman engaged to be married, in a highly compromising position with another man. If she’d once thought
him
reckless, hedonistic, and selfish, what must he now think of
her?

“Otis Chandler,” Garn was saying. “He’s all right, I suppose.”

“At least he got his people to Denver like he promised!”

Garn laughed. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “Keep it up. Myrtle and Hester told me you’d changed. I didn’t believe a word of it, and now…”

Myrtle and Hester talked about her with Garn? Emmalee was surprised and insulted.

“And for your information, angel, Lottie’s horse went lame in town one day and I loaned her mine for a few hours. Is that all right with you?”

“A likely story. And don’t call me ‘angel.’”

“I’ve told you before, I never lie. Now tell me how you and Otis ended up out there listening to crickets.”

“I’m not going to waste my time…”

Emmalee tried to twist away from him. She did not succeed. He spun her away from the hotel doorway, forcefully but not harshly, drew her along the hotel’s brightly lit facade, around the corner and into the darkness. She felt his arms around her then, but before she had a chance to struggle his mouth came down on hers and he kissed her. At first, she tried to resist, to pull away, but the insidious power he’d always held over her was still alive. Her mind dimmed, a surge of heat rushed through her body, colored lights flashed behind her closed eyelids, and inside the hotel, behind this wall against which he pressed her, the band began to play, very sweetly, “Greensleeves.” That ancient, haunting melody, the darkly irresistible power of Garn’s kiss, took her out of herself, loosed the sweet nectar of love inside her, and she began to drift beneath a spell she believed to be unwanted, undesired…

Instinctively she’d closed her eyes during the kiss, but some remnant of sixth sense alerted her from deepening reverie. Still in Garn’s embrace, she caught a glimpse of Randy. He was standing out in front of the hotel, looking up and down the street. Looking for her? She twisted away from Garn, and pulled him more deeply into the shadow. Randy went back inside the hotel. Garn saw what had happened.

“You’ll never cease causing me trouble,” she flared at him, her voice a husky whisper in the darkness. “Look what you almost did this time!”

She went back toward the hotel entrance by herself. Garn’s words followed her.

“It wasn’t just me, Emmalee,” he said.

Randy was talking to Delilah Quinn when Emmalee came back inside, or rather it was the other way around.

“…and you’ve claimed land here?” Delilah was saying in her wonderfully enthusiastic manner when Emmalee walked up to the two of them. “That’s so adventurous! I’d just love to do that, to stay out here forever and live off the land.”

“It’s not all as easy as that,” Randy said, thoroughly flattered, charmed. “But every year things’ll get better. I hope.”

“Of course they will. Hi, Emmalee. Where’ve you been?”

“I went out for a little fresh air.”

“You should dance. Randy and I just danced to ‘Greensleeves.’ It was fun. Isn’t it amazing what a little band like that can do? Oh, I’m sorry, have you two met? Emmalee, Randy. Randy, Emmalee.”

“Well, yes,” said Emmalee, as Randy toed the dancefloor with his boot, “actually, we’re—”

She was interrupted by a sudden commotion at the doorway. The people inside the hotel were laughing, drinking, and making a lot of noise, but the newcomer’s howl attracted everyone’s attention. Heads turned to see Alf Kaiserhalt, stumpy, half-drunk, but triumphant. He still had one arm in a sling but he held his other arm high above his head. And in his hand was a looped length of barbwire.

“Hey, everybody!” he called. “Lookee what I found over at Torquist’s place. And there’s a whole lot more of it, let me tell you!”

There was a short silence filled with tension. Barbwire. The symbol of division between farmers and ranchers, reflecting, as nothing else could, the difference in the way the two groups viewed freedom, survival, and the land. Was the countryside to be open, as it had been for thousands of years, with men and animals roaming freely? Or was it to be fenced into plots and tracts, with one man’s destiny and domain set apart from that of his neighbor?

“My barn was locked!” roared Horace Torquist, rushing toward Kaiserhalt. “You broke in, damn your soul!”

He was blocked and seized by Royce Campbell.

The evening, which had produced an amity unknown since the settlers had first arrived in Olympia, disintegrated completely, instantly. The thin veneer of civilization, so hard-bought, so prized, spun away utterly as the two groups remembered the roots of their enmity.

“Don’t you say a word about your precious barn,” shouted Burt Pennington. “You fellows knew all along how we feel about barbwire. Just let me tell you this: First farmer who sets up a fence gets it tom down. Second farmer who does gets his barn burned. Next one, barn and house. Take it from there.”

The ranchers gave a brutal cheer. The farmers shouted in angry horror.

“Then your longhorns are gonna be found dead on the range,” bellowed Torquist. “Dead on the range, do you hear me?”

“Next to every dead cow of mine,” Pennington shot back, “there’ll be a dead sodbuster.” He used the cattlemen’s derogatory term for farmers.

Hester Brine’s voice rose above the din.

“You all get out of here,” she shouted. “Every one of you. I’m ashamed to live in the same town with the lot of you. Here Emmalee and I went and tried to make things better, and now look what you’ve gone and done. It’s a pity. It’s a damn crying shame. Now just get out.”

There was no war that night, but its seeds had been planted in fertile soil.

“Well, you tried,” said Cloris Hamtramck to Emmalee sensed a seriousness of intent toward her. “These goddamn men. Look, if there’s anything I can help you with, let me know, hear?”

The sod had lain upon the land for millennia, a rich carpet of grass whose matted roots twisted thickly, deeply into the earth. Emmalee attacked it bravely, armed with an iron-bladed plow drawn reluctantly by Myrtle’s Ned. She had to work at least as hard as the mule, constantly pressing the wooden handles of the plow so the tip of the blade would stay in the ground. The sod had to be turned over so that seeds could be planted in black earth never before warmed by the sun. It required all of her effort and half a morning to plow one furrow a hundred yards long. Ned halted of his own accord and Emmalee looked back at her narrow, shallow furrow. She sat down on the grass and wiped dripping perspiration from her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “I’ll never be able to do this,” she moaned aloud.

Ned gazed at her dolefully. He agreed.

Across the fence, Randy plowed his land alone. He was only Emmalee’s neighbor now.

Spring had Finally come, after a long, hard, troubling winter. In Emmalee’s estimation, the only good thing about it had been the snow, which prevented farmers from putting up barbwire fences. Burt Pennington had had no cause to make good his threats; a shaky half-truce existed in the territory.

Emmalee wanted to forget all about winter. She shuddered at the very memory of isolation and loneliness. During the short, harsh days, Randy had worked at building his barn, had hewn fenceposts to be set when spring came, had tended his cattle. Emmalee saw to her little cabin, cooked, cleaned, mended, and sewed. They met for the meals she prepared, which they ate huddled near the kitchen stove with the wind howling outside. It had seemed rather like an adventure way back in January, the two of them holding out against wild nature, but the shattering
sameness
of the days had a dismal, cumulative effect upon them. No matter how Emmalee tried to be cheerful, no matter how hard Randy sought to dwell upon future dreams, workaday concerns intruded. Along with those matters, such as the relative merits of corn versus rye, or the continuing question of barbwire, came conflict. At first their disagreements were cloaked in a lighthearted, teasing manner, as if the question of fencing was really not
that
important, as if it didn’t matter whether corn or rye would be planted in the fields come spring. But gradually their differences of opinion were expressed more forcefully, as on the night in late February when Randy said, “That’s it, Em. I’ll plant rye and you plant com. We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

And they hadn’t. As time passed, there were fewer and fewer things to talk about.

To make matters worse, their moments of tenderness, attenuated as they were, merely built up the tension of desire without offering the pleasure of release. Even a sweet kiss, a light embrace, left in its wake the frustration of unsatisfied need. At night, alone in her cabin, Emmalee would stand by the window, looking out at the fields of blowing snow, hugging herself for warmth, feeling her heart grow as cold and lonely as the distant hills. Only a year ago she had cuddled next to Val Jannings in the sleigh; how fine it had been to be warm and beloved, and how she longed now to be held and caressed, kissed and stroked, yes, and how much she wanted to be taken. She remembered, during those long, long nights, every kiss she’d ever had, every touch, and how she had felt receiving them. And she imagined, with a vividness that sometimes made her gasp, what it would feel like to be utterly shaken by passion, breathless in the dazed and dazzled splendor of her flesh.

Only once each week was there anything really to look forward to. She and Randy would ride into Arcady together on Sundays, to sell a little milk and a few eggs to Hester and to attend services at the new church. They would ride on Randy’s dapple-gray, negotiating with difficulty the ruts and drifts on the windswept prairie. Sometimes it snowed as they rode along, the wind-driven flakes cold and stinging on their cheeks. But the trek was always worth the trouble because there would be people at the church, company, conversation, and these were necessary to stave off the assaults of cabin fever during the rest of the week.

On the second Sunday after Christmas, a new face appeared among the worshippers: Delilah Quinn, who rode Garn Landar’s big black stallion down from the Sacajawea in the company of Yo-Bang. The somewhat frightening foreman, with his long knife and unblinking gaze, would wait in the vestibule while Pastor Runde conducted services, would wait still longer while Delilah drank coffee and visited, and then would escort her back into the hills, to return again on the following Sabbath.

Emmalee appreciated seeing Delilah, who was funny and candid and lively, characteristics not easily found among the general lot of churchgoers. Myrtle and Hester, who, it was rumored, had had a colorful past, spent Sunday mornings drinking coffee and brandy at the store; Cloris Hamtramck didn’t come to church at all. But after a very few Sundays, Emmalee realized that there was a definite pattern to Delilah’s appearances. She would arrive a bit late, after Pastor Runde had finished reading the gospel and while the choir was nearly through “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” She would remove her cloak in the vestibule, stand at the back of the little church for a moment, and then try to get a pew as close to Emmalee as she could. After the service concluded, she would laugh and drink coffee and talk with Randy and Emmalee until it was time to leave. Delilah never mentioned anything specifically about Landar’s Folly, or about Garn himself, and it would not have done to inquire either, because the girl was full of bright chatter, little adventures she’d had that week, her impressions of Olympia, a new way she’d found to broil a joint, bake a cake, fire the stove.

It did not take long for Emmalee to realize that Delilah had eyes for Randy. She also saw that Randy was tom. He brightened as soon as he saw the Quinn girl and always followed her conversation closely. He laughed at every single witticism she uttered, and never failed to fall into a gloomy, shamefaced silence when he rode with Emmalee back to three pines. One Sunday, after a week of particularly heavy snow, Delilah did not show up for church at all. Randy was clearly beside himself but trying not to show it, looking out the church window time and again, even getting up in the middle of the service—to Pastor Runde’s disapproval—and going outside to check for a sign of Delilah Quinn. Her very presence gave him pleasure, her absence dismay. Afterward he was elaborately attentive to Emmalee.

Almost as soon as she saw what was happening, Emmalee felt herself accepting it, and she knew that it was over between Randy and herself. If I really cared. I’d fight, she understood. So she waited for him to realize the truth.

On a bright Sunday in early March, when warm Pacific winds again moved across Olympia, melting the snow and caressing the newborn buds of trees and plants, Randy Clay and Emmalee Alden, bethrothed, became Mr. Clay and Miss Alden, neighbors. It was a Sunday that felt and smelled like Easter, still three weeks hence. Delilah was at the top of her form. Randy laughed and laughed as she described Yo-Bang’s attempt to explain American ways to his countrymen. Her uncle Jacob had overheard the foreman telling his men, among other things, “To understand Yankee, it is first necessary to realize he is by nature very tricky and complicated. He does not say what he means, nor does he mean what he says, and he does not appear to know the difference. If he tells you to do something, wait, for he will soon change his mind. Chinese be simple and direct. Yankee be inscrutable.”

To her credit, Delilah tried to bring Emmalee into her conversations. But this was an afterthought. Her performances were clearly for Randy. After church, she and Yo-Bang rode with Randy and Emmalee, separating where the surging stream ran down into the bucking, rolling, roaring Big Two-hearted.

“See you next Sunday,” called Delilah, in a voice that suddenly lost its cheerfulness and became wistful, lonely, a little sad.

Randy was gloomy, too, as he guided the gray up over the hills toward Three Pines.

It was time.

“Randy, please would you stop the horse,” Emmalee said quietly.

Randy did so. Emmalee dismounted and so did he. They gazed spiritlessly for a moment across the land they’d claimed, which had such a short time ago held for them the hope of a glorious future together. Hope for the future it still possessed, but something had happened, something wholly natural but irremediable, to end the togetherness.

Emmalee waited.

“Oh, Em. I feel so awful about what’s happened,” he said at last.

She went to him and they held each other for a long moment.

“I didn’t mean for it to be this way,” he said. “I just felt betrayed at first, and then when Delilah came along every Sunday…”

What was this? “Betrayed?” Emmalee asked.

“I wish you would have told me why, Em. Then maybe Delilah wouldn’t have begun to mean so much to me.”

“Told you why? You wish I’d told you why what? I don’t understand.”

He looked directly into her eyes. “You and Garn Landar. On Christmas night outside the hotel. If you’d just explained it to me, told me why…”

Randy
had
seen her kissing Garn Landar that night, and it had preyed on his mind ever since.

“I couldn’t help it…” she started to say.

“Don’t, Em.”

“Garn Landar means nothing to me…”

“I don’t think that’s true, Em. Whatever you might think you feel. All I know is that Delilah is beginning to mean something to me. It’s tearing me apart inside, because I gave you my promise…”

His voice trailed off.

“Randy,” said Emmalee slowly, quietly, her face pressed into his chest, “I want you to be happy. And I’ve seen how much you respond to Delilah. She makes you happy. There isn’t much more to say. You’re free.”

It was a difficult moment for them both, a time of tears and regrets on the windy hill. But after the moment was over, Randy walked upon the earth as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

Emmalee strode—and plowed—her fields alone.

Feeling guilty about resting when there was so much work to be done, Emmalee got up off the grass and returned to her plow. She had better get to work, what with the problems she faced. Foremost among them was the fact that she owed four hundred dollars to Vestor Tell, the first payment of which fell due in September, only six months hence. If she defaulted, her land would be lost. She did have the cabin, a domicile, but there were all those acres to plow and plant and she and Ned were having trouble enough gouging a couple of furrows out of the sod. She had purchased the plow from Festus Bent for a dozen eggs and half a gallon of milk. It was a rickety old thing, brought out all the way from Arkansas. He hadn’t been able to claim land and now worked for Horace Torquist as a hired hand; he didn’t need the plow. In spite of its age, it did have an iron blade. Some plows were made entirely of wood, blade and mold-board alike. These were quickly ground to pieces in the age-old sod.

Emmalee urged Ned forward, bent to the handles of the plow, and began another furrow. Suddenly the plow lurched in her grasp and a grinding metallic crack of rending metal sounded from the earth, Ned stopped of his own accord. Emmalee leaned down to see what had happened.

The plow had struck a rock buried in the sod; the precious iron blade had cracked jaggedly in two. Emmalee felt like crying. But she compromised and cursed instead. She ought to have ordered a new plow from Salt Lake for twelve dollars, but she’d wanted to save the money. And now look! She would have to buy a new plow anyway, and it would take at least two weeks to arrive. Two invaluable weeks during which she might have gotten at least a portion of her corn crop planted. (Emmalee was putting in com; across the way, Randy had opted for rye.)

There was nothing else to do but go into Arcady and place an order for a new plow with Hester. She was thinking that maybe she could borrow someone else’s plow and work at night when she rode by Torquist’s big new farm on the river. He and several hired men were out putting up a fence. She saw the posts driven out across the prairie, and the spools of barbwire waiting to be unstrung and nailed to the posts. She also saw horsemen in the distance watching the proceedings. They were ranchers and that meant trouble.

Myrtle Higgins was out spading her big garden when Emmalee rode by the old woman’s cabin. Catching sight of Emmalee, Myrtle gestured vigorously. Emmalee went over and stopped. Myrtle stroked Ned affectionately and gave him a once-over.

“He don’t look like he’s being overworked.”

“That’s because not much work has been done.”

“How come, honey?”

Disconsolately, Emmalee explained about the plow.

“Too bad. Shows to go you, never beg, borrow, or buy anything off an unlucky man, an’ Fes is that, in spades. Get on down from Ned and join me in a cup of tea. You look plumb tuckered.

“You also look like you lost your last friend on earth,” Myrtle added, when she and Emmalee were seated with teacups in the shade of a cottonwood behind Myrtle’s cabin. “Having some of those before-marriage doubts, or what? How’s Randy making it?”

“Randy’s doing fine. It’s me I’m concerned about.”

Surprising herself—she thought it rather unseemly to dump problems on somebody else—Emmalee poured out the whole tale: Garn on Christmas night at the hotel, Delilah Quinn, everything. She felt like crying, felt a need to let go. But a girl who crossed the Great Plains wasn’t about to shed tears over bad luck or a man!

“Sounds like you and Randy might not have made it work anyway,” Myrtle said, after Emmalee had finished her recital.

Emmalee was a little hurt. When a casual observer seems able to interpret your life easily, you’re bound to feel dumber than a cootie in heat.

“Oh, I had my hopes for you there for a while,” Myrtle continued. “You gave it your best shot, I know. But I guess the fit just wasn’t right.”

“You mentioned the ‘fit’ once before.”

“Shore did. It’s mighty important.
Mighty
important. Guess you and Randy just didn’t have it. Wrong kind of signals. Wrong kind of responses.”