He said he thought the proposition was worth looking into. She did not reply because she feared her voice would not be steady. In the pause he added that he would go over and look at it next Tuesday. She unfolded the map again. Her fingers were cold and stiff paper rattled between them, but the moment had come to test her success, and she would not deceive herself with false hopes.
She told him that she wanted to reserve a certain farm for him to see. She pointed it out at random. It was a very good piece, she said, the best piece unsold. She feared it would be sold before Tuesday. It could not be held unless he would pay a deposit on it. If he did not buy it the deposit would be returned.
“You don’t want to waste your time, Mr. MacAdams, and neither do I.” She felt the foundations of her self-control shaking, but she went on, looking at him squarely. “If this piece suits you, you will buy it, won’t you?”
He would. If it suited him.
“Then please let me hold it until I can show it to you.”
She waited while time ticked by slowly. Then he leaned sidewise, putting his hand in his pocket. “How much will I have to put up?”
When she backed out of the boiler five minutes later she had a twenty-dollar gold piece in her hand, and in her wallet was the yellow slip of paper with his signature on the dotted line. She stumbled down a lane between whirring machinery and dropped over a doorsill into the hot dust of the road. Her grip on herself was being shaken loose by unconquerable forces. She ran blindly to the buggy, and when she had somehow got into it she heard herself laughing through sobs in her throat. The horse trotted gladly toward Coalinga.
During the long drive across the desert she sat relaxed, too weary to be troubled or pleased by anything. The sun sank slowly beyond cool blue hills, and darkness crept down from them across the level miles of sand. A crescent of twinkling lights appeared on the lower slopes, where the western oil fields lay. Their lower rim was Coalinga, and she thought of bed and sleep. Clutching the gold piece, she reminded herself that she must eat. She must keep up her strength until she had sold that piece of land. She was too tired to face that effort now. The horse took her quickly past Whiskey Row and dashed to the livery-stable. She climbed down stiffly.
“Charge it.” Her voice was stiff, too. “Clark & Hayward, San Francisco. I’m representing them. H. D. Kennedy—I’m at the hotel.”
Her body lagged as she drove it to the telegraph-office. She had written a telegram to Clark & Hayward before she realized that she dared not face any inquiry until after Tuesday. It occurred to her then that she had committed a crime. She was not certain what it was, but she thought it was obtaining money under false pretenses. She destroyed the telegram.
Later, when she laid the twenty-dollar gold piece on the check for her supper, it seemed to her that she was embezzling. A discrepancy vaguely irritated her. Could one obtain money under false pretenses and then embezzle it, too? She was too tired to be deeply concerned, but as an abstract question it annoyed her. The waitress looked at her sharply, and she wondered if she had said something about it. In a haze she got up the stairs and into bed.
XIV
Very early Tuesday morning she drove to the Limited lease and got MacAdams. He looked formidable in his good clothes, and now that he had shaved the scrubby gray beard his chin had an even more obstinate line. She talked to him in an easy and friendly manner, without mentioning land. She must not waste her strength. There was a struggle before her and a menace behind. She had opened a livery-stable account against Clark & Hayward, who had never heard of her. The hotel, she knew, had let her go only because she took no baggage and had told the clerk casually that she would return tomorrow. The ticket to Ripley left five dollars of the twenty that belonged to MacAdams. And every moment that the sale was delayed might make it impossible to save Bert.
She sat smiling, listening to a tale of MacAdams’ youth, when he was a seafaring man.
The train reached Fresno, and MacAdams’s gaze rested with joy on leafy orchards and vineyards and the cool green of alfalfa fields. She perceived the effect upon him of that refreshing contrast with the arid desert. Before they reached Ripley his mind would be adjusted to a green land and ditches filled with running water. She had lost one point.
Her attention concentrated upon the thoughts slowly forming in his mind. Each word he spoke was an indication which she seized, considered, turned this way and that, searching for the roots of it, the implications growing from it.
The train was now running across a level plain covered with dry grass. Desolation was written upon it, and small unpainted houses stood here and there like periods at the end of sentences expressing the futility of human hope. She smiled above a sinking heart. They alighted at Ripley.
She had never seen the town before, and she saw now, with MacAdams’s eyes, a yellow station, several big warehouses, a wide dusty road into which a street of two-story buildings ran at right angles. It was not much larger than Coalinga. She looked anxiously for the agent from Ripley Farmland Acres. That morning she had telegraphed him to meet her.
He came toward them and shook MacAdams’ hand heartily. His name was Nichols. He had a consciously frank eye, and a smooth manner. He hustled them toward a dusty automobile whose sides were covered with
