Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [250]
“You’re a witch,” he said, “but I’m the head wizard. Shall I put you under a spell? Shall I fix you so you can’t come to the fireworks until you spell imbrication? Or should I make it trapezoidal?”
“Not either!”
“Then you’d better get on to Nellie.”
She fled, screaming with laughter, and he looked up to find the older, tenser version of her face waiting for him. He made a smile, he gestured with his head at the drawing pad. “Working. I guess if the world was going to end tomorrow you’d be hurrying to finish something before Gabriel blew.”
“I must!” she said. “How else will we live? Tell me what happened.”
“He won’t sell.”
“Not even the one.”
“No.”
“And there’s nothing we can do.”
“We could sue. I doubt it’d do any good. I’ve got no proofs.”
“Your word ought to be proof enough against the word of that . . .”
“You don’t get far suing a lawyer in a town like this.”
“Then we must buy someone else’s claim!”
“Any claim with water is going to cost plenty. We haven’t got it.”
“Isn’t there any land not filed on?”
“Not under the Susan.”
“There must be something we can do!”
Oliver laughed through his nose. “I can keep my eyes open and when somebody fails to complete his improvements I can pre-empt him.”
“It’s hardly a thing to joke about.”
“I wasn’t joking. It’s about the only thing I could do.”
“What if we gave them a farm out of our land? What do we need a thousand acres for?”
His eyes were steady and–she thought–pitying. “I’d do it in a minute. But what good is land under the Big Ditch if the Big Ditch is dry? What can John do with three hundred and twenty acres of sagebrush?”
“What can we?” she said, and turned away bitterly, not wanting him to see her face. “Oh, I had set my heart on having Bessie here! I wanted the children to have some companions whose mouths weren’t filthy with barnyard talk.”
“I was thinking some of letting the Malletts go. We’ll probably have to anyway. Bessie and John could have their cabin, and maybe my office for an extra room, till the company gets straightened out and we can finish the Big Ditch. Then they could take their pick of our land.”
“Finish the Big Ditch,” she said, and bent her head to stare at the red tile floor. Her hands were tucked up in her armpits as if they were cold. Her feet took her down the piazza, along the balustrade where Agnes had hopped a few minutes before, and across the end and up along the wall. Her hands were tight in her armpits, her head down, her face set and flushed. She was not one who easily went pale, even during great stress; it was her rosy complexion, as much as anything, that made her look ten years younger than she was. Stopping at the table where her drawing lay, she raised her head and gave him a glance of scorn and misery. “Of course,” she said, “when the Big Ditch is finished, then the stock will be valuable, too.”
“Sue . . .”
“Oh, I can’t bear it!”
“Sue, that stock’s still got a chance to be worth thirty times what they paid for it. General Tompkins hasn’t given up. Neither have I. We’ve got assets to burn. The Susan’s producing a little revenue, the Big Ditch is well started. They’re crazy if they pull out now. They’ll reorganize, buy out the ones that want to quit. If they stick a little longer they’re in clover. The project’s just as good as it ever was.”
“Yes,” she said on an indrawn breath. “Just about.”
In anger he took her by the shoulders. “Susie, you too?”
Unyielding, stiff in his hands, she cried into his face, “Oh, how could I help it! Eight years of exile, eight years of living on hope. For what? Till now it’s been all right, I could put up with it, I had faith in it. . . .”
Her voice gave out, she was hung up on his eyes. He let go of her arms. “Did you?” he said.
“What? What do you . . .”
Very still, he stood before her. His face was weathered like a cow-hand’s, his fingers hung half closed at his sides, constricted by their calluses. Almost whispering, he said, “Did you? Did you have faith in it? Did you have faith in me?”
As if he had slapped her, she stepped