Angle of Repose - Wallace Earle Stegner [58]
Stranger scrambled out from under the porch and went off up the trail. That should mean Oliver was coming. In a minute he appeared, so much like a farmer returning from the fields in his corduroy pants and blue shirt that he might have been her father, or John Grant. He made a pass at Stranger's ears, the dog bounced around him like a playful plow horse. She saw a letter in Oliver's shirt pocket. His forehead and nose were red from working all day Sunday in the yard. She sat still, placid and waiting, until he was clear up the steps. Then she lifted her smiling face to be kissed.
"Oh," she said, "it's been so beautiful I hated to think of you down that grim old mine."
"I came out at noon and had a good mule ride over to Guadalupe."
"Good, I'm glad. What for?"
"Remember that hoisting machinery Kendall was going to put in at the Santa Isabel, the rig he saw in the Sierra, that I didn't like the looks of?"
"I guess I don't remember."
"Oh, sure you remember. Kendall wasn't pleased when I questioned it. I told you."
"If you did it didn't penetrate. I haven't much of a head for things like that "
"I guess your head will do. Well, anyway. I knew it wouldn't work here because-never mind. He thought it would. So I proved it to him. Captain Smith and I have been redesigning it; and when Smith was down last I showed it to him. So they're going to try it out over at Guadalupe, and if it works there, which it will, they'll install it in the Santa Isabel."
For him, it was a speech. She could tell what it meant to him by the words it forced out of him. He succeeded in everything he did. She could see him broadening down, like freedom, from precedent to precedent, and because she was proud of him, and wanted his value acknowledged by his employers, she said, "Shouldn't you get something from that? Couldn't you take out a patent?"
She made him laugh. "What is it about Quakers? My time belongs to the company."
"Even Sundays? I'll bet that's not what Mr. Smith would say."
"Maybe not, but Kendall does. He also said something else today. He may not like to have me prove him wrong, but he just told me I've got a three-hundred-dollar raise."
"Which you've earned and a lot more. You're such a child anybody could take advantage of you. You've probably saved them thousands. Aren't you going to give me my letter?"
He touched his pocket. "This? It's not yours."
"Oh, pshaw. Who's it from?"
"My mother."
"Mayn't I read it?"
"It's private."
"Well, you are queer," she said, disappointed. Then she saw slyness in his face. "What are you up to?"
"Can't a man have private letters from his mother? You have private letters from your old beau Dickie Drake."
"Oh, Oliver, thee may read them if thee wants! Anyway he's fallen preposterously in love with a Jewish poetess named Emma Lazarus."
"Good for him, she can help raise him from the dead. After she does, I'll read his letters. What I really want to talk about is you having some decent help when the baby comes."
"Yes?" she said. "Who? You know what Mrs. Kendall pays that clumsy girl she has? Her Chinamen are better servants."
"I wasn't thinking of getting you a Chinaman."
"I should think not. You're not going to get me anyone. Lizzie can manage."
"Lizzie's got all she can do to cook and keep house and look after Buster. You need somebody just for you and the baby."
"Tell me this instant," she said. "You're up to some extravagance. We can't throw away what little we've saved, just on some ..."
Looking comfortably unpersuaded, Oliver sat on the steps scratching Stranger's ears. "It's no extravagance. I told you I wasn't going to bring you West to live in a shack, and I didn't, quite, only I spoiled it by not having the money for your fare. I didn't intend you should have a child in this camp, either, but here we are. So the least we can do is see you're looked after. Mother's found somebody who's willing to come out."
"Oliver..."
"Wait a minute. Not a servant, a lady. Mother guarantees her. Something happened to her man, or maybe she never had one. She's