Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [186]
“Never mind,” he said, and took the brochure from her lap. “Can you imagine one enormous sage plain that drops in benches–a big nearly level plateau for a mile or two, and then a fifty-foot drop, and then another bench? Can you visualize it? That canal will eventually run seventy-five miles and not cross any man’s land. Do you know what that means?”
“I know what it sounds like.”
He waited.
“It sounds like a country without life, people, schools, anything.”
“It sounds to me like a country with a future.”
“And no present.”
The impatience she created in him troubled her, and yet she had to resist his enthusiasm. For her own sake and the children’s sake and for his sake she had to be sensible. But she smiled, trying to express love even while she blocked his way; she felt that she begged, that he could not insist if she made it clear how much the prospect appalled her.
He flapped the brochure against his knuckles, thinking. “Boise’s not a village, it’s a little city, the territorial capital. The Oregon Short-line will go through it and put it on the main line to Oregon. There’s a cavalry post, there’re balls even. The mountains rise up right behind town, the riding’s wonderful. You can have a horse, so can Ollie.”
With her hands in her lap she sat, not wanting to look up at him. “And he can go to a one-room school. He’ll be starting, you know. This fall.”
“You were going to take a tutor along to Morelia. Why not to Boise?” But she remained silent, and he exclaimed in exasperation, “Don’t you see it? Any of it? Doesn’t it challenge you at all? Do you even see the significance of those seventy-five miles of canal across the public domain?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“No right of way problems. Not one old coot who can make you divert your ditch around his land. No lawsuits. Just one big simple engineering problem.”
“And one big money problem.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“What?” Now she did look up.
“General Tompkins has already lined up backing from Pope and Cole. We’re talking to them in New York tomorrow.”
Slowly she rose. Her shoulder twitched, she felt weak and tired, aggrieved that he kept her talking and resisting him instead of letting her go to bed. “You mean you’ve already committed yourself. Without ever talking to me.”
Beyond his head the maple leaves outside hung without movement, as still as his face. The air was brassy. “Everything moved so fast,” he said. “I hoped I could persuade you.”
“But how can I decide so suddenly! It’s so different from anything I was prepared for. I’m not strong yet, you really can’t expect . . .”
Women’s tactics, unfair. She saw them take effect. Moodily he turned his eyes out the window.
“It’s not only me,” she said. “Baby’s too small. I wouldn’t dare, with winter ahead.”
“Winters there are a whole lot milder and healthier than they are here.”
“But there’s no safe job. There’s only this . . . speculation.”
“Do you think superintending a mine is safe?” he said, and laughed so unpleasantly that she wanted to cry. “Didn’t Almaden or the Adelaide teach you anything?”
“Yes,” she said, looking down. “So did Mexico. How easily something can go wrong–always goes wrong!”
“Sue, I know this scheme. I made it up, I surveyed it, I laid out the plans. It’ll work.”
Wearily she looked up, let her eyes meet his stubborn blue ones. “Well, go in to your meeting tomorrow and see what they say. We can’t settle it now.”
“There’s no point in talking to Pope and Cole if you aren’t willing.”
The flick of their eyes meeting and breaking apart again. “Suppose I wasn’t,” she said. “What would you do?”
It took him a few seconds. Then he answered steadily, “Stay here, I suppose. Get some sort of job. Pick apples. Hire out to John.”
The ghost of Mrs. Elliott was whispering to her. She took her throat in her hand and swallowed against the pressure of her fingers. “You know I wouldn’t stand in your way or make you . . give up what you want. Could you run it from out there and come back here for –between whiles? Like Conrad and Mary?”
“That’s the sort of arrangement