Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [117]
“Frank, that’s your assistant?”
“General Sargent’s third son, come out West to be an engineer.”
“Just like you.”
“just like me.”
Her quick, upward, smiling look asked or gave forgiveness for what had been between them. “Is he going to be as good as you?”
“That’s a hard standard to hold him to.”
They laughed. It was better already. At the ditch bank she took his hand and teetered prettily before jumping down. The ditch was like no ditch she had ever imagined. This was as clear as water in a glass, and it shot past as if chased. When she stooped impulsively to drag her hand in it it numbed her fingers.
Two planks crossed it for a bridge. Oliver tied the team to a stump and led her across as if it were as dangerous as a high wire. At the door he stood a moment, frowning, listening to the crowd noise from below, and then with an odd, angry shrug he yanked the buckskin latchstring. “Maybe we should begin with the right omens,” he said, and gravely lifted her across the sill and set her down. “In case you think you’ve come down in the world, let me tell you there’s nothing grander in Leadville.”
It was one room, perhaps fifteen by twenty-five feet. Two windows, curtainless. Five chairs, one broken, one a rocker. A Franklin stove with a fallen, ashy fire smoking in it. Two canvas cots made up with gray blankets. A table that had been knocked together out of three wide boards and two sawhorses.
“Don’t look around for the kitchen or bedroom,” Oliver said.
Perhaps she had been remembering the New Almaden cottage, so much better than her expectations, and so had built up expectations of this cabin that it could not support. It took an effort to conceal her disappointment. Yet as she looked around she had to admit that a log house was picturesque, and a house with a welcoming fire on its hearth was touching. She summoned back for her inner eye the image of the peaks rimming the world outside. “It’s charming. I can hang curtains around the cots. We’ll be snug. How will we cook?”
“Breakfast on the Franklin, dinner out of a sardine can, supper at the Clarendon. I’m afraid I won’t be here for dinner much.”
“I’m sure you’ll be welcome when you can come,” she said. “But I’ll be busy-you’ll have to keep out of my way. I brought some blocks for a novel of Louisa Alcott’s.”
He said seriously, “Maybe you’ll want to stay at the hotel.”
She pulled off her hat, she made herself at home. Feeling better all the time, she went around examining the cabin. She rocked the table –the sawhorses wobbled. She bent and tried one of the cots, and looking up to find him gravely watching her, she smiled at him with a great rush of affection and said, “I think it will do very nicely here.”
“You could have a lonesome summer.”
“I’ll manage, I’m sure.” He looked so solemn, responsible, and concerned that she skipped up to him and hugged his arm.
“It’s only women we’re short of. Plenty of perfectly presentable men. Plenty of other kinds too. Plenty visitors likewise. I think Conrad and Janin are coming through. Every mining man has to see Leadville once.”
The thought of Oliver’s elegant brother-in-law in that cabin started her giggling. “Can you imagine entertaining Conrad here? Cooking him a steak on the Franklin? Walking around that table with a bottle of wine in a napkin?”
“Do him good. He’s got effete.”
“Anyway, by the time he comes we’ll be fixed up. Can I buy some calico for curtains?”
“I’ll take you to Daniel and Fisher’s tomorrow.”
Just then she looked out the window and saw a man running hard up the ditch bank. Below the standing team he jumped the ditch, and his corduroy coattails flew out behind. “Someone’s coming in a terrible hurry,” she said, and turned in time to see the doorway filled by a very tall young man, panting, ablaze with some news.
“Frank,” Oliver said, “you’re just in time to meet Mrs. Ward, our civilizing influence.”
She thought she had never seen a face more alive. His brown eyes snapped and glowed, he was hot from running, the smile that he produced for her, swallowing both his panting and his news, showed a mouthful of absolutely perfect teeth.