Shadow on the Land (24 page)

“Ten pounder,” the woman said, and took the baby away.

Pride was in Mike Quinn then. He stood with his shoulders back, doubt drained fully out of him. “He's a fine broth of a lad, and that's a fact. We'll call him Michael O'Brien Quinn.”

“That's a hell of a thing,” Lee jeered. “Whoever heard of O'Brien for a middle name?”

“I can't think of any name that's more Irish than O'Brien,” Quinn said stiffly.

They faced each other, and it was as if a great tide had washed the rancor from them. Slowly Quinn held out his hand, and Lee took it.

“I'm sorry, Lee,” Quinn said huskily. “I'm going to ask her to forgive me.”

“She'll forgive you, Mike, because she loves you. I've been thinking some about what I'll be doing when this railroad gets finished. There'll be a lot of building here in central Oregon. Maybe we could team up in a construction business. We could have a sign that said ‘Quinn and Dawes. We build anything.' How does that strike you?”

A grin lighted Mike Quinn's craggy face. “That'd be fine, Lee. It sure would.”

Chapter Nineteen

C
onstruction was at its height this spring of 1910. Strung the length of the cañon, nine thousand men pounded and dug and blasted. With shovels and pickaxes, drills and dynamite, they inched their way along the rock walls, clawing out a forty-foot shelf until there was a hundred miles of grade—and first steel was laid at the mouth of the Deschutes. Ahead of them the engineers hung from ropes along the sheer walls of the cliffs and charted the plans for those behind.

While man with his weapons of violence altered swiftly the face Nature had given this earth, the river kept steadily on, growling and slowly gnawing a deeper channel, as it had for unmeasured time. And atop the west rim, Indians on the Warm Springs Reservation pondered the strangeness of this white race that had waited so long, and then in a sudden burst of wild energy had started pushing two paths of twin steel up the cañon.

Dozens of human difficulties must be worked out. They ranged from the job John F. Stevens had helped to do in Washington in getting the Ellis Bill passed, authorizing the Oregon Trunk to bridge the Columbia at Celilo, to agreeing upon the depot site in Madras. But toughest of all for the Oregon Trunk was the high trump the Harriman interest had played—the securing of the Smith homestead at Mile Seventy-Five that set athwart the Oregon Trunk right of way in the cañon, exactly as the Girt place had set athwart the access road to Horseshoe Bend.

Both sides recognized the Smith place as the strategic key to the battle. Oregon Trunk construction was held up at this point for two months. George W. Boschke, chief engineer of the Harriman Northwestern System, and builder of the Galveston sea wall, was in camp when a messenger rode in on a lathered horse and handed him a telegram that said that the Galveston sea wall had been carried away by another great hurricane. Boschke read it, and smiled. He said: “This telegram is a lie. I built that wall to stand. Double the force on Mile Seventy-Five.” Boschke was right. The message was based on a false report, and the Harriman people hung doggedly to their obstructing position.

March spun out with its driving wind that pierced a man's clothes and flesh and laid its sharp chill into his bones, then April, with its clear skies and days that were longer and warmer and full of spring's eternal promise. The bunchgrass began to grow, and a slow green came to the valley floors. Meadowlarks sang lustily, and their melody, drifting with the wind and coming to Lee Dawes's ears, sent his thoughts trailing back over the months. Centering those thoughts was the image of slight, pretty Hanna Racine, who had said she would not marry him.

Lee was standing in front of the Green Hotel in Madras on the May morning that Highpockets braked a new automobile to a stop and called with great pride: “What do you think of this here contraption, son?”

“The contraption's all right, but you sure look out of place sitting behind the wheel. Don't you feel kind of funny without a fistful of ribbons?”

Highpockets climbed out and shook down the linen duster that he was wearing. “The way I figger it, the horse is done. We ain't gonna have no more use for 'em. Folks are gonna travel in these dad-burned gas buggies, and I'm never one to stand in the road of progress. So I up and bought me a car. Let's go for a ride. Ain't got nothing to do, have you?”

“Not right now. Just got back from Grizzly Butte. Some of the freighters forgot they had a contract and started hollering about not getting enough for hauling lumber.”

“Jepson?”

Lee shrugged. “I figured it was, but no sign of him or Bull.”

“Any trouble?”

“Not after I busted a couple of noses. Busting noses always goes a long way toward ending trouble if you bust the right noses.”

“I knew I shouldn't have gone to Portland,” Highpockets said sourly. “Might have knowed I'd miss some fun. Climb in. Let's go.”

Lee didn't think to ask where they were going until Highpockets turned off the road at Hanna's place. “What the hell, you strung-out wash line,” he said irritably. “She don't want to see me.”

“You're an ignorant cuss for a feller who allows he knows all about women. Now shut up.”

They bounced over the twin ruts and turned into the ranch yard, Highpockets pulling on the steering wheel and yelling: “Whoa!” Then he thought of the brake and looked at Lee a little sheepishly. “Sometimes I forget what I'm driving. Kind of scares me when I think I've got forty-eight horses out there in front.”

Lee stepped down and knocked on the front door, but only the Indian girl Mary was at home.

“Miss Hanna out riding,” Mary said. “You wait. She soon be back.”

It was half an hour before Hanna rode in. She waved when she was still in the junipers and some distance from the house. When she rode around the barn, and reined up, Willie circling her mount and yapping ecstatically, she called: “It's nice to see you two, but I don't think there's a thing in the house to eat, Highpockets!”

Willie came bounding across the barnyard, and Lee, catching the dog, turned him over on his back, and roughed him up for a moment until Willie broke loose and went tearing back to Hanna.

She said: “I guess he'll never forget a favor, Lee.”

“Memory like an elephant,” Lee said, and thought of the frigid welcome he'd received when he'd brought Willie. He had spent a bad thirty minutes wondering how she would treat him, but when she stepped down from the saddle, a pleasant, smiling girl who was genuinely pleased to see him, he saw that he had worried needlessly.

“I was beginning to think you'd left the country, Lee,” Hanna said, “after you'd got your right of way.”

“I wanted more than that,” he said more sharply than he intended. “I was after the top prize, but I didn't get it.”

“Oh.” There was the whisper of a quick breath, and the color of her cheeks deepened.

“I want to show off my new auto,” Highpockets cut in. “Figgered you'd like to take a ride.”

“I'd love to. It's a beauty, Highpockets.”

“I'm right proud of her.” The tall man glowed. “Dad-burned near as proud as I was of that black gelding I bought off you . . . the one that ran away from all them other horses in the races at Prineville.”

“They're firing some coyote holes on Willow Creek,” Lee said. “Let's go watch.”

“Wait till I put on a dress.” Hanna motioned to her Levi's. “These won't do in Madras.”

Lee watched her run into the house, a straight, lithe figure, and he wondered at the hunger for her that rose in him. He tried to think ahead, to think around this girl who said she would not marry a man who asked her upon impulse or who held another woman in his heart, but he could not. His job with the Oregon Trunk would soon be ended, and the trail ahead seemed somber and without interest.

When they reached the site of the blast and saw the crowd, Hanna said: “Looks as if most of Madras is here.”

“It'll be a good show,” Lee said. “They've got six hundred kegs of powder in that cliff.”

It was a good show; a great mass of earth and rock was hoisted into the air more than a hundred feet, hung there an instant as if defying the law of gravity, and then came crashing down on the opposite side of the cañon, the earth shaking with the impact of it as dust rose and swirled skyward. Rocks avalanched down the side, and their going brought others. It was minutes before the rumbling and shifting ceased, leaving the new face of the cliff brightly raw.

As they turned back to the car, Hanna asked: “Is it true that the Harriman people are quitting?”

“Just a rumor,” Lee answered. “They are all denying it.”

Highpockets snorted. “They ain't gonna quit as long as they're holding down the Smith place like they are.”

“Jim Hill's been in Portland,” Hanna said suggestively. “Perhaps they've done some trading.”

“I've been having the same idea,” Lee said. “Nobody can build railroad the way things are now, and that doesn't suit men like Hill and Stevens. There's another rumor about the Oregon Trunk canceling the work south of Bend.”

They had reached the car, and Hanna turned now, troubled eyes on Lee. “Does that mean they won't build across the desert?”

“I don't know, but there will be a railroad into Bend. How did you hear that rumor about the Harriman line?”

“Jepson told me. He's worried about the future of Jepson City, and he's still terribly angry because I sold you the right of way.”

“Jepson is a different man from the one you had him pegged for,” Lee said gravely. “He's a scheming devil who's used his friends to make a fortune out of Jepson City. He's done the same thing with the people's movement, talked big and fine about ideals that didn't mean a thing to him.”

“I know,” Hanna said slowly, and stepped into the car.

They said little on the way back to the Racine place, Hanna staring at the snow-peaked Cascades, which were alive now with the sunset's transient glory. Lee, glancing often at her, wondered if she suspected who had killed her father.

It was dusk when they stopped before Hanna's house, a lighted lamp in the front room signaling a welcome to them. Highpockets heaved a long sigh. “Sure is tough having to wait this long for supper.”

“Empty all the way down through your hollow leg, I reckon,” Lee said.

“Sure am. Hanna, I'm hoping that there Mary girl has enough supper fixed to keep me from starving complete.” Highpockets got down and stamped into the house.

“Jepson has tried to stop us,” Lee said, “using his own methods. And he's been slick enough not to leave much of a trail. I think he'll do something a little more direct before he's licked, and, when he does, I hope you will forgive me for what I have to do.”

“There will be nothing to forgive,” she said. “I found out what he was when he tried to get me to sell to Quinn.”

Hanna started to step down, and Lee put a hand up to help her. Then, for apparently no reason at all, she slipped and fell and Lee caught her. She lay in his arms, her face a blur in the twilight, her eyes on him, and she was soft to his touch. He let the wildness in him go and, bringing her to him, kissed her in a hard, hungry way. She clung to him, her arms tightly around his neck, and there was that about her that carried him far out into a deep, uncharted sea.

He let her go and stepped back. “I'm sorry. I suppose now you'll like me less.”

She made a still, vague figure against the car. “Why?”

“When I asked you to marry me, you said you'd never marry a man who asked you on impulse. It wasn't impulse, Hanna, and there is no other woman in my heart.”

“You had been close to death,” she whispered, “and I was there beside you. I'd let you have the right of way. You felt an obligation.” She paused, and then added: “Quinn had married Deborah not very long before.”

“I had never asked Deborah to be my wife,” he said quickly. “I'm asking you again, and I won't believe you if you say no, after the way you kissed me.”

Still she did not move or speak, and the minutes ran on into what seemed an endless silence. There was something else that had to be said, and her answer waited for it. He said: “There'll never be another woman like you. I shouldn't say what I'm saying, but it's the way I feel, and I've got to say it. I love you.”

She gave her lips to him again, and, when she drew away, she said: “You remember that time in Bend when you told me that someday I'd forget myself? You've made me do that, Lee.”

“I haven't heard your answer to my question.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?”

She laughed. “You're never one to wait, are you?”

“There's no sense in waiting, Hanna, for something you want, when there's no reason for waiting.”

“All right, Lee,” she said, her voice so soft that he barely heard. “Tomorrow.”

Riding back to Madras that night with Highpockets, Lee Dawes smiled in the darkness as he thought about the way Hanna had fallen into his arms, and he wondered if she had tripped purposely. One thing he did know. There were capacities in Hanna Racine that he had never suspected.

Chapter Twenty

W
hen Lee returned from Hanna's place, Johnson Porter was waiting for him in the lobby of the Green Hotel. “Did you get that trouble at Grizzly Butte straightened out?”

Lee nodded. “No sign of Jepson or Bull, but it's the same kind of play they've been pulling off.”

“You'll soon have some sign of them,” the contractor said soberly. “I've got news, and I'm curious to see if you read it the way I do. We've come to an agreement with the Harriman people regarding the Smith ranch, so there's nothing to keep us from building into Bend at our own speed.”