Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [115]
A door opened on lantern light, another lantern bobbed toward her, throwing the shadows of moving legs. The sigh of one of the horses was like the breath of her own relief.
The stable boy unhooked the tugs and led the team away. Oliver helped her down, hauled the bags after her, put the lantern in her hand. “Can you carry this?”
“Of course.”
“Just a little way back to the hotel.”
The street was muddy and rutted, but he steered her down the middle of it, and she understood gratefully that he was avoiding contact with the men on the sidewalk. Where lamplight threw the shadow of a potted palm across the planks and revealed the hatted heads of men sitting inside, a sign said HOTEL. He led her in: a smoky room, an American flag on the wall, half a dozen men in chairs, smoking, others in the bar in the next room, brass spittoons that rounded the light. Diffident, stupid with fatigue, she stood blinking. She heard the talk pause, and felt the eyes on her. She let Oliver take the lantern out of her hand.
Behind the desk that angled across a corner a young man in striped arm garters rose and laid down a newspaper. His eyes photographed Susan in one unblinking look. He said, “Sorry, folks. Full up.”
“I’ve got a reservation,” Oliver said.
The clerk’s full-lidded eyes met Oliver’s in pleasant denial. Smiling his public smile, he looked first at Oliver, then at Susan, then back at Oliver. He spread his hands. “I wish I could. I filled the last room two hours ago.”
With the slightest indulgence, the sagging disappointment in Susan’s muscles could become panic. Where would one sleep, in this wild place full of rough men? The stable? A hayloft or manger? Probably there were as few accommodations for horses as for people. She hung onto Oliver, who was looking with hard insistence at the clerk.
“If you did,” he said, “you gave away the room I reserved for my wife and me two days ago. The name is Ward. I put five dollars down.”
At the word “wife,” Susan felt the clerk’s eyes again, like the flick of a moth’s wing against her face. For the first time it occurred to her what the clerk thought she was, and in a chilly passion she said, “Is there no other hotel? I think I should prefer it if there is.”
“Wait,” Oliver said. To the clerk he said, exaggerating the patience of his explanation, “I came through here day before yesterday and reserved a double room from a fellow with a twitch in his face. Do you recognize him?”
“Remple, yeah. But . . .”
“I put five dollars down. I signed the register. Have you got it there? Let me see it.”
“Sure you can see it,” the clerk said, “but I’m telling you, Mr. Ward, we haven’t got a thing open. There has to be some mistake.”
“You bet there has to be.”
Oliver took the register and turned it around. He flipped back a page. Reading past his elbow, Susan saw his name, the familiar signature, with a pencil line drawn through it. “There it is,” Oliver said. “Who crossed it out?”
“I don’t know,” the clerk said. “All I know is we haven’t got one single solitary bed. The best I could do for anybody would be to give you bedroll space in the hall.”
“That’d be fine,” Oliver said. Watching him, Susan saw the fury come up so suddenly into his face that she was afraid he was going to lean over the desk and slap the clerk. The clerk thought so too–she saw his eyes widen. She said again, “Oliver, perhaps there’s another hotel.”
“There isn’t.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” the clerk said. Susan thought he might really be. She did not forgive him for what he had assumed about her, but she thought he might really be sorry. “There’s the boardinghouse,” he said. “I could send the kid down to see if they’ve got a bed.”
“Don’t bother,” Oliver said. “Where is it?”
“Next block up, on the left. Look, Mr. Ward, I can have the kid run up, you folks sit down a minute.”
“Just give me back the five dollars and forget it.”
Surprising her with his promptness, the clerk opened a drawer and got a five-dollar gold piece out of it. He laid it in Oliver’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
Outside, Oliver pushed her with