Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [110]
Had he done without her for so long he was indifferent to her coming? Did he blame her, as she blamed herself, for that empty year? Did he think she was insane to force herself on him now, just when he was getting on his feet but before he felt Leadville was prepared for her? She thought he looked closed-in, watchful, perhaps resigned.
Then the expressionless eyes found her, and she saw them change. All at once unbearably excited, she waved a black mitt. Foolishly they beamed at each other across forty feet of bedlam, and then here he came, and down she went to meet him. Folded up against him and lifted off the ground, she heard him say, “Ah, Susie, you made it! I was afraid it was another false alarm.”
“I couldn’t do that to you twice. You’re so thin! Are you well?”
“Tiptop shape. But the altitude’s not fattening. Neither is the Clarendon’s food.” He was holding her out to look her over. “You’re a little thin yourself. How was the trip? How’s Ollie?”
“I’m fine,” she said, out of breath. “The trip was fine. The conductor even invited me to ride in the locomotive, but I didn’t. Ollie’s much better. He’ll get well fast, now I’m gone. I was bad for him.”
“Come on.”
“Oh, I was!” She was all to pieces. In the middle of bumping shoulders and clumping boots, in all the dust that swirled around them, she wanted to confess her mistakes and get started right again. No more foolish protectiveness about Ollie, no more timorous holding-back from sharing her husband’s life, no more–ever–of these meetings and partings at the steps of transcontinental trains. “I was always at him,” she said. “It scared me so to see him delirious that I couldn’t let the poor child rest, and the ague fits and the sweating fits were almost as bad as the fever. Mother and Bessie finally shut me out of his room. That’s when I decided that even if he wasn’t fully well, I was coming out to you. I won’t be in your road, I promise.”
“I guess you won’t,” he said, and laughed.
“Oh, isn’t it ironic?” Susan cried. “I wouldn’t take him to Deadwood because I was afraid in a rough camp like that he’d get sick and I’d be lonely. So I take him home to Milton and he gets the old Milton malaria and I’m lonelier than I’ve ever been anywhere. But I’m sorry about last month. I was all ready to come when he fell ill, and I was so upset I left it to Mr. Vail to telegraph you. I thought he could be trusted, since he was coming West on the same train I’d have taken.”
“He could be trusted, all right,” Oliver said. “He just wanted to save me a dollar, so he didn’t send his telegram until Chicago. By that time I’d already left Leadville to meet you. So he saves me a dollar and costs me two hundred, and leaves me standing on this platform gnashing my teeth. I met the train for three days before Frank finally got word to me. On the way back over the range I said a few things to myself about Mr. Vail.”
“Ah, but now,” she said, and let herself be wagged back and forth between his big hands. “Now we can have a good trip in, together. It’ll be like going in to New Almaden for the first time.”
He was indulgent and paternal; she could see that every move she made and every word she spoke fascinated him. “Well, not exactly,” he said. ”Getting over there is no picnic, and you won’t have my special satisfactions to compensate for the discomforts.”
“What are your special satisfactions?”
“Upon arrival, I will instantly be one of the two most envied men in Leadville. Horace Tabor’s got all the money and I’ve got the only wife.”
“Really? Aren’t there any women?”
“Some women. No wives. There are some widows, as they call themselves, and some boardinghouse keepers, and a couple of hard cases who wear pants and dig all day in prospect holes. Well, maybe one wife. Her German husband herded her over Mosquito Pass with sixty pounds on her back.”
“Mercy,” she said, between real and comic dismay. “It sounds like