When Imogene and Sarah were ushered in, herded like ducks before the nonstop quacking of Mrs. Van Fleet, the men paused in their silent shoveling to glance at the newcomers. Tired beyond talk, dusty and bedraggled, Sarah and Imogene let their garrulous hostess take them where she would. After several indecisions and shufflings of chairs, she seated them at a table near a window.
“There. Got you a window seat.” She laughed nervously, an exhalation of air through pinched nostrils. “Not that there’s anything to see. You sit tight here, rest yourselves. Can I get you a little something?”
Imogene looked to Sarah; she was staring out over the baked earth. The forbidding wall of mountains beyond inked a ragged black edge to the translucent silver of the late-evening sky. The moon, rising, shone warm and golden between two peaks.
“Sarah?” Imogene lightly touched her arm.
Sarah shook her head.
“Just water for now,” Imogene said to Mrs. Van Fleet. “We’re still a little unsettled from the ride.”
Elmira hovered near them a moment more, patting the chairbacks and making agitated chirping sounds as though afraid they would flee if left to themselves. Finally she left them alone. “These’re the folks come to take over the lease,” she said as she passed the men at the bar. The leather-faced diners looked curiously at the two women. Sarah and Imogene pretended not to notice.
“Hell of a place to bring your womenfolk, if you ask me,” a short, thick-necked man grunted.
“Nobody asked you, Lyle.” The scrutiny over, the men went back to their suppers.
Imogene pulled off her gloves and reached across the table to take Sarah’s hand.
The moon cleared the mountains, bathing the desert with soft light. In the courtyard, men moved about at their chores, black shadows in the moonlight.
“There’s just nothing,” Sarah whispered, staring out the window.
Imogene pressed her fingers. “It will be all right, Sarah.”
“I know it will.” Sarah made herself smile and return the pressure of Imogene’s hand.
Mrs. Van Fleet returned with a glass of water in each hand, both dripping from being thrust under the pump. Sarah thanked her and drank thirstily. Before she had taken more than a swallow or two, she gagged and shoved the glass from her so abruptly the water slopped on the table. She hid her mouth with her handkerchief, coughing and dabbing at her eyes. Imogene picked the glass up before Elmira could retrieve it, and put it to her lips. She recoiled at the smell.
“Smells like rotten eggs, doesn’t it?” Elmira exhaled through her nose in a silent laugh. “Tastes like them, too. And the water isn’t half of it. Hon, I should’ve warned you, but I’ve got so used to it I sometimes forget. Beau says he’s got so he prefers it, but it still tastes like rotten eggs to me. Everything gets to tasting of it-coffee, tea, lemonade, even your baked goods. It’s the alkali in the water, they say. But it doesn’t seem to hurt you.”
As she mopped at the table with her apron, she poured out a stream of talk that allowed no time for reply. Sarah recovered herself and sat clutching her handkerchief. “Made me just choke,” the woman was saying, “but now I drink it right along with Beau. I’ve almost forgot what good water tastes like.”
“All the water tastes like this?” Imogene pointed an accusing finger at the half-empty glass.
Elmira looked from one to the other. “Oh my,” she murmured, “I go on too much. It’s not so bad, you won’t even taste it in a week or so. Sooner. You get used to it right off.” She turned to Sarah. “You okay, hon?”
Sarah nodded unconvincingly.
“If you could show us our rooms…” Imogene said with a tired smile and a gesture at her dust-stained traveling clothes.
Upstairs, two long low-ceilinged rooms, imperfectly hidden behind dingy curtains, opened off a small landing. Mrs. Van Fleet left them just outside the doorways. “On your right,” she said, and retreated down the stairs. Imogene raised the candle she’d been handed; WOMEN was scrawled over one lintel in chalk, MEN over the other. She pushed aside the curtain on her right and held it until Sarah had passed through. Their bags were already piled in the middle of the room. Five cots thrust their feet out into the middle of the floor. Two of them were made up; stained mattresses, cotton breaking through the ticking, covered the others. The room was hot and airless. Several flies, mistaking the candle’s reflection for the last light of day, battered themselves against the glass in a last mindless attempt to reach it.
Imogene opened two of the windows and settled the curtain more modestly over the door.
“Where will we begin?” Sarah’s eyes swept over the dreary walls and bare wooden floor. Even in the cheery light of the candle flame, everything showed the same dull brown of the desert.
Imogene sighed and shook her head. “The first thing we are going to do is clean.”
30
MR. AND MRS. VAN FLEET REMAINED AT ROUND HOLE FOR THE better part of a week, helping Imogene and Sarah learn the needs of the stop. Stages came through twice a week. The stage from Reno, usually driven by Noisy Dave with Mac as his swamper, traded passengers with Ross, the driver of the northbound coach that ran up through Buffalo Meadows and Deep Hole, through Eaglesville, Cedarville, and Lake City to Fort Bidwell. Passengers on the night stage stayed overnight at Round Hole, but the main bread-and-butter of the stop came from the constant traffic of wagons hauling freight; Round Hole was a regular stopping place on most of their routes.
With Beau Van Fleet’s help, Imogene renegotiated the agreements he had with the wagoners that supplied Round Hole. Food that couldn’t be raised or killed in the Smoke Creek Desert had to be brought in from Fish Springs Ranch to the south or Loyalton to the north, and all manufactured goods were ordered from Reno. Imogene, Sarah, and the illusory Mr. Ebbitt-who figured strongly in all the business discussions-were responsible for providing the transient livestock with hay and grain. It was brought in three-hundred-pound bales from Sierra Valley via Portola, a town over Beckworth Pass eighty miles southwest. Dizable & Denning leased the stop a wagon primarily for that purpose.
Mrs. Van Fleet grew visibly calmer as each day passed and Imogene showed no sign of condemning the Van Fleets to another prolonged stay in the desert by changing her mind. By the time Elmira and her husband left on the Sunday stage for Reno, she was actually good-tempered.
An hour after the Van Fleets departed on the Reno-bound stage, several three-hundred-pound feed bales were brought in by freight wagon from Sierra Valley and Sarah and Imogene started inn-keeping in earnest. They fed the driver and saw him on his way, set to work breaking down the bales and storing the loose hay.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the barn walls in golden stripes, and the air was warm with the scent of hay and horses. Imogene and Sarah worked in their shirtsleeves, with bibs and tuckers hastily fashioned from old bedsheets protecting their clothes. Dust motes danced to the desert’s silence in the still air.
Sarah lifted a forkful of hay and tossed it into the growing mound at the back of the barn. Straws sparkled like gold as they fell through the fractured light.
“Rumplestiltskin!” Imogene called as the straw turned to gold and spun to the floor.
Sarah laughed and suddenly threw aside her pitchfork. “Watch me, Imogene.” Running headlong, she dove into the hay. “Come on,” she cried, “oh, you whose father couldn’t abide leaf-diving.”
Imogene laughed self-consciously.
“Dive!” Sarah ordered. And, awkwardly at first, then gaining speed, Imogene ran for the pile of hay and flung herself on it. Sarah scrambled to the top, scratching straw down on Imogene. Grasping the rope tied over the beam, she began to shinny up as best her petticoats would allow. Halfway to the top, she let go and tumbled backward into the soft hay. Following her lead, Imogene climbed the wooden ladder affixed to the barn wall. Up near the high loading window, she called, “Look at me!” and hurled herself into space to fall fanny-first into the pile.