Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [189]
Now that we are here and the work is going forward, there are even indications that the West which so lightly and cruelly separates and scatters people can bring them together again–that the binding force of civilization and human association is as strong, perhaps, as the West’s bigness and impersonality. I allude to the fact that Oliver has managed to locate his old assistant, Frank Sargent, and has arranged for him to join us here. I am glad–but not because, as you once or twice playfully suggested, Frank is romantically attached to a woman ten years older than himself. I have been concerned about him, a well-born and educated young man from the East, thrown among rough men in the rough camps where he has worked the past several years. He used to talk to me in Leadville about his mother and sisters, and about the temptations that assail any young man in the West, and his determination to resist them. But if rumor is correct, he has not been able to evade them entirely in Tombstone, as dreadful a camp as the West ever spawned. Oliver tells me that in Arizona Frank participated in the hunt for a man who had murdered a friend, and that the hunt ended, down across the line in Mexico, with the murderer swinging from a tree. It is hard to believe this of the Frank I know, so ardently gentle–and yet there was always a young warrior in him. When Pricey was beaten in Leadville, only Oliver’s restraint kept Frank from going after his assailants with a gun.
To us, he is a dear and loyal friend, and to boot, as they say out here, a beautiful and patient model. He would try all day to balance on a toad-stool while I drew him as Oberon, if only I asked it. He will add much to Boise. He arrives next week.
How gossipy this sounds, like chattering with you and Katy and Emma in the halls of Cooper!
Oliver’s other young assistant is a Boston Tech man named Wiley, as sunny and good natured as some cheerful bird. You must know, having had it from the beginning, what a happiness it is to have one’s husband completely contented in his work. O. has always handled his jobs conscientiously and well, but I think his heart was never in a job until now. He works all day, and at night buries himself in the history of irrigation, and reports on systems in Persia, India, China, everywhere. Reading aloud to him the other night when he had a headache, I came across a quotation from Confucius that made us both laugh, it so perfectly expressed Oliver Ward. Confucius said, “I find no fault with the character of Yu. He lived in a mean low house and expended all his strength on the ditches and water channels.” Oliver at once painted the whole quotation on a board and nailed it above the door of the canyon shack, like an epigraph at the beginning of a chapter.
I must end this. Ollie has just come out and asked if he can go up to the post, where a sergeant–one of the men who hunted down Chief Joseph–has promised to teach him and some of his playmates to ride like cavalrymen. I suppose it is safe, but at least I must go up and take a look at this sergeant. At five, to ride like a cavalryman!
Good-bye, dear Augusta. It eases me to talk to you through half an afternoon this way. You will have many miles of my illegible hand to decipher, I fear, before we have brought this valley into the civilized world.
Your own
S.B.W.
2
I have heard publishers, lamenting their hard life over Scotch and soda, complain that they must read a hundred bad manuscripts to find one good one. Having practiced the trade of history, I feel no stir of sympathy. A historian scans a thousand documents to find one fact that he can use. If he is working with correspondence, as I am, and with