Imogene started to cry and, hugging Sarah fiercely to her, she crumpled Nate Weldrick’s note in her hand.
29
DUST MOTES DANCED IN THE SUNLIGHT AND THE ROOMS WERE UNNATURALLY still. All the girls but those who’d stayed for the dance had gone home for the summer. The others were in church, and Bishop Whitaker’s School was empty but for Imogene. She sat at her desk, looking over the neat rows of inkwells, chairs, pencil trays. After two years of use, everything still looked new and smelled slightly of furniture polish. She sat motionless, her chin resting on her folded hands, sunlight pouring in through the open door of the recitation rooms on the east side.
“I thought I’d find you here.” Kate Sills appeared in the doorway, her neat Sunday hat pinned squarely on her head, her white gloves immaculate. “I met the bishop’s wife before the service; she told me you’d handed in your resignation.”
Imogene smiled wanly. “Oh dear, I’d hoped to slip away without good-byes. I’m glad I didn’t. We’re leaving Reno, Kate.”
“You love Bishop Whitaker’s.”
“I love Bishop Whitaker’s. But we’re leaving today, on the morning stage.”
Kate unpinned her hat and set it and her gloves on a desk. “You’re certainly not doing things by halves, are you? Where, may I ask, is the morning stage bound?”
“Round Hole-among other places.” Imogene laughed. “I’m going to be an innkeeper, Kate.”
“At Round Hole? The stop on Smoke Creek? Imogene, you must be unbalanced! Have you ever seen the Nevada desert? It is truly a land God forgot.” Kate gave Imogene a hard look. “You’re in trouble. Let me help. I am not without influence in this town.”
“I’m not in trouble. Sarah hasn’t been very well-even before Wolf died. Innkeeping is something we can both do. Something we can do together. I used to think teaching was my life, but it takes me from Sarah and she needs me.”
“We need you too, Imogene. You have a gift for teaching.”
“There are other teachers in the world. Sarah Mary needs me.”
“As an innkeeper? Just the two of you? You’ll break your backs and your hearts.”
“It’s a stage stop. Mac says it’s isolated; he goes through it twice a week on his run. It will do Sarah good to live out of town; she’s too easily influenced by what people think.” Imogene gave vent to a small bitter smile. “Or what she thinks they think. We need to get off by ourselves if she’s to get away from that.”
Kate sat on the edge of the desk, cool and unblinking, regarding Imogene. “Is that all?”
Imogene sighed and pushed impatiently back from her desk. “The sheriff is letting Nate Weldrick out of jail this afternoon. Mac told me.”
“And Mr. Weldrick will push Sarah into marriage if you stay.”
“It would be a mistake. Sarah won’t stand up for herself; she’d be little better than a servant.”
“So you’re going to push her into innkeeping-stagestopping.”
“That’s right,” Imogene said without remorse.
“The desert will make her little better than a slave. It is not work for a woman like Sarah,” Kate said.
“I’m strong as an ox. I can do the work of a man. Two, if they are small.” She won a dry smile from Kate. “Sarah needn’t work herself to death, I will see to that. You have never seen her around Mr. Weldrick. The man reduces her to a child. In her own mind as well as his. Sarah can’t fight that right now. It would destroy her spirit.”
Kate heaved a sigh and reached out to take Imogene’s hand. “My thoughts are with you, you know that.”
“I know it, Kate. It’s one of the many things that will make it hard to leave Bishop Whitaker’s.”
Dizable & Denning’s representative shared the Wells Fargo office with Judge Curler and Harland Maydley. His name was Ralph Jensen. He was a slim man of middling height, sandy-haired and colorless, with watery blue eyes. He stood behind the counter, one hand splayed over the lease, the other holding a letter. When he’d finished reading it, Imogene asked for it back, folded it in a businesslike way, and put it in her purse. “Mr. Ebbitt has asked us to secure a position,” Imogene lied easily. “He’ll be coming out to join his wife within the month,” she said.
“We’re in a hell of a fix, with Van Fleet pulling out the way he is, or I wouldn’t send you two out without this husband of yours showing up to do his business himself.” Ralph Jensen pulled on his nose. It was long, the end flattened like a spade, as though he’d tugged it out of its natural shape years before.
As Imogene reached for the lease, he pulled it back over the counter. “Now wait a damn minute. I’m going to have Mrs. Ebbitt sign this, and you can give me the twenty-seven dollars. Harland or the Judge or anybody can witness. But it’s not legal. A woman signing a lease won’t hold water, even if she has got a letter from her husband with say-so. Take the lease with you and as soon as Mr. Ebbitt shows, have him sign it and send it to me. Understood?” He waited until Imogene and Sarah had nodded like obedient children before he removed his hand from the paper and shoved it and the ink across the counter.
“Round Hole’s a ways from anywhere,” he warned as Sarah stepped forward to take the pen, and she hesitated.
“Isolation won’t bother us, Mr. Jensen,” Imogene assured him.
“This ain’t isolation, lady, this is right damn in the middle of nowhere.” He took in Sarah’s soft uncertain glance, Imogene’s solid answering gaze, and he shrugged. “Go on, you’re holding up the stage. Noisy’ll tell you the particulars and the Van Fleets said they’d stay on a day or two and show you the ropes.”
The leavetaking was subdued. Lutie and Fred saw them off. Fred was to send their things after them by freightwagon. Lutie and Fred were confused and hurt by the sudden departure, and Harland Maydley, newly promoted to the post of Jensen’s assistant, puffed about officiously.
The two women climbed quickly into the mudwagon-a coach smaller than a Concord, with an even more jolting carriage. Mac was on top with the driver, Noisy Dave. Noisy was a rubber-faced man of middle years, with thinning blond hair. A belly as big as that of a woman eight months with child hung over his belt. A mustache of startling proportions, a soup-strainer, completely hid his mouth; the tips were waxed and pointed toward his ears. The driver hawked, spat over the side, wiped his mustache, and, with a bellow, shook the reins and the horses pulled the mudwagon down the main street.
Imogene and Sarah were alone in the coach, seated side by side so neither had to ride backwards. Dust boiled from under the horses’ hooves and was churned into the air by the wheels. Sarah leaned back against the upholstered seat and pulled the shade down.
The ribbon of green that the Truckee unfurled through Reno was quickly behind them. Sarah raised the shade a couple of inches and looked out. They were traveling through a dry valley bordered by hills of sage and rock. “I’m not sure about leaving Reno,” she said, and dropped the shade.
“It will be all right. As Mac says, ‘I can feel it in my finger bones.’ It will be better, we’ll have something of our own. A lease is almost like buying,” Imogene said with more confidence than she felt.
“We had teaching,” Sarah said after a while. “You loved it.”
“I’ll learn to love innkeeping. We’ll learn. This time we’ll learn together.”
Sarah looked out the window again. At the end of the valley, a mountain of rock reared shimmering in the heat, its broken sides supporting nothing but rust lichen and an occasional patch of sparse desert grass. “It’s so dry,” Sarah observed. “Mac says it’s as bad at Sheep’s Hole. Worse.”
“Round Hole. There’s a round spring there. The stop is close to a big lake. How bad can it be?”
Sarah tried to read to pass the time, but the jouncing moved the book so violently she couldn’t follow the text, even using her finger. Eventually she leaned back to wait out the journey.