Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [120]
He made the breakfast because, as he said, there was no point in her getting out in the cold, when he was a better camp cook than she was. He was, too, she admitted it. He could broil a steak, fry bacon or eggs or flapjacks or potatoes, make mush and coffee, in half the time and with half the effort she would have expended. He had a trick of chopping up frying hash browns with the edge of an empty baking powder can. He kept insects and dirt out of an opened can of condensed milk by plugging the two holes with matches. He could flip flapjacks so that they alighted in the mathematical center of the pan.
And it was cold. Leadville was said to have one month of summer, but no one would say when it began or ended. It had not yet begun. She propped herself against the logs, bundling into the heartwarmer that Augusta had sent her when she was carrying Ollie, and watched with interest her husband’s efficient movements, thinking that this hour of the morning was their best time together.
“You didn’t tell me when Conrad is coming,” she said.
“Yes I did. Next week.”
“We ought to ask him to stay with us.”
His look went around the cabin, and then he leaned in sideways, squinting against the heat, to turn up the brown crust of the potatoes. “Where’d we put him?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we can’t. It just seems so unhomelike at the Clarendon.”
“He might think it was a little too homelike here.”
“I love it,” she said. “I really love it, all except having to cook and eat and sleep and dress and wash and entertain all in one room. Can we build on an ell before Ollie comes?”
The coffeepot boiled over. He tipped its lid open with the edge of his hand. “You still think you want to bring him out?”
“I’m determined to. I won’t have us separated again for so long.”
The cabin was full of the smells of coffee and bacon, and she shook the covers, flapping away greasy odors, while she watched Oliver fork the bacon onto a tin plate and crack eggs into the grease. He did it with one hand, cracking the shells against the edge of the pan and then opening them upward with his long limber fingers until the insides fell out. She saw them solidify in the pan like golden-hearted, frilly edged flowers.
“Can you ride today?”
“Not today, I’m afraid. I’ve got to go over to Big Evans.”
“Might I go along?”
He considered, squatting. “Not there. I’ll send Frank or Pricey to take you out.”
“Can you make it Frank? Pricey is such a goose. I’m always afraid he’ll fall off, and I have to poke along because he bounces so if we run.”
“It’s easier to get along without Pricey. Anyway you shouldn’t run a horse at this altitude.”
“Yes sir,” she said pertly. “And how did you manage day before yesterday to ride sixty miles? Your horse must be the fastest walker in Colorado.”
“I go fast because I want to get back quick.”
She loved the way his eyes rested on her, she thought he had a strong, masculine, unflighty sort of face. He looked like a contented man. And she was a contented woman, or would be as soon as she could get Ollie out.
He was gone by seven-thirty. For an hour she lay in bed, letting the stove and the sun work on the cabin’s chill. Then she got up in her dressing gown and assaulted the disorder–made up the cots, washed the dishes, swept the floor. If she didn’t do that at once, her disposition remained disheveled all day. She opened the door and the two windows to let the morning sweep away the cooking odors. Only when the place was clean and fresh could she settle down contentedly to drawing, reading, sewing, or writing letters.