Atlas Shrugged [49]
She could say nothing.
"I'm not going to build a line through one of their blighted areas,"
he said in the same indifferent voice. "That's what they tried to hand me for a consolation prize, but I think it's just talk. You can't build a railroad where there's nothing for hundreds of miles but a couple of farmers who're not growing enough to feed themselves. You can't build a road and make it pay. If you don't make it pay, who's going to? It doesn't make sense to me. They just didn't know what they were saying."
"Oh, to hell with their blighted areas! It's you I'm thinking about."
She had to name it. "What will you do with yourself?"
"I don't know . . . Well, there's a lot of things I haven't had time to do. Fishing, for instance. I've always liked fishing. Maybe I'll start reading books, always meant to. Guess I'll take it easy now. Guess I'll go fishing. There's some nice places down in Arizona, where it's peaceful and quiet and you don't have to see a human being for miles. . . ."
He glanced up at her and added, "Forget it. Why should you worry about me?"
"It's not about you, it's . . . Dan," she said suddenly, "I hope you know it's not for your sake that I wanted to help you fight."
He smiled; it was a faint, friendly smile. "I know," he said.
"It's not out of pity or charity or any ugly reason like that. Look, I intended to give you the battle of your life, down there in Colorado.
I intended to cut into your business and squeeze you to the wall and drive you out, if necessary,"
He chuckled faintly; it was appreciation. "You would have made a pretty good try at it, too," he said.
"Only I didn't think it would be necessary. I thought there was enough room there for both of us."
"Yes," he said. "There was."
"Still, if I found that there wasn't, I would have fought you, and if I could make my road better than yours, I'd have broken you and not given a damn about what happened to you. But this . . . Dan, I don't think I want to look at our Rio Norte Line now. I . . . Oh God, Dan, I don't want to be a looter!"
He looked at her silently for a moment. It was an odd look, as if from a great distance. He said softly, "You should have been born about a hundred years earlier, kid. Then you would have had a chance."
"To hell with that. I intend to make my own chance."
"That's what I intended at your age."
"You succeeded."
"Have I?"
She sat still, suddenly unable to move.
He sat up straight and said sharply, almost as if he were issuing orders, "You'd better look at that Rio Norte Line of yours, and you'd better do it fast. Get it ready before I move out, because if you don't, that will be the end of Ellis Wyatt and all the rest of them down there, and they're the best people left in the country. You can't let that happen. It's all on your shoulders now. It would be no use trying to explain to your brother that it's going to be much tougher for you down there without me to compete with. But you and I know it. So go to it. Whatever you do, you won't be a looter. No looter could run a railroad in that part of the country and last at it. Whatever you make down there, you will have earned it. Lice like your brother don't count, anyway. It's up to you now."
She sat looking at him, wondering what it was that had defeated a man of this kind; she knew that it was not James Taggart.
She saw him looking at her, as if he were struggling with a question mark of his own. Then he smiled, and she saw, incredulously, that the smile held sadness and pity.
"You'd better not feel sorry for me," he said. "I think, of the two of us, it's you who have the harder time ahead. And I think you're going to get it worse than I did."
She had telephoned the mills and made an appointment to see Hank Rearden that afternoon. She had just hung up the receiver and was bending over the maps of the Rio Norte Line spread on her desk, when the door opened. Dagny looked up, startled; she did not expect the door of her office to open without announcement.
The man who entered was a stranger. He was young, tall, and something about him suggested