There was a shuffle behind him. He turned. Lee set a teapot on the table and shuffled away.
Samuel began to talk to push the silence away. He told how he had first come to the valley fresh from Ireland, but within a few words neither Cathy nor Adam was listening to him. To prove it, he used a trick he had devised to discover whether his children were listening when they begged him to read to them and would not let him stop. He threw in two sentences of nonsense. There was no response from either Adam or Cathy. He gave up.
He bolted his supper, drank his tea scalding hot, and folded his napkin. “Ma’am, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll ride off home. And I thank you for your hospitality.”
“Good night,” she said.
Adam jumped to his feet, He seemed torn out of a reverie. “Don’t go now. I hoped to persuade you to stay the night.”
“No, thank you, but that I can’t. And it’s not a long ride. I think—of course, I know—there’ll be a moon.”
“When will you start the wells?”
“I’ll have to get my rig together, do a piece of sharpening, and put my house in order. In a few days I’ll send the equipment with Tom.”
The life was flowing back into Adam. “Make it soon,” he said. “I want it soon. Cathy, we’re going to make the most beautiful place in the world. There’ll be nothing like it anywhere.”
Samuel switched his gaze to Cathy’s face. It did not change. The eyes were flat and the mouth with its small up-curve at the corners was carven.
“That will be nice,” she said.
For just a moment Samuel had an impulse to do or say something to shock her out of her distance. He shivered again.
“Another goose?” Adam asked.
“Another goose.” The dusk was falling and already the tree forms were dark against the sky. “Good night, then.”
“I’ll walk down with you.”
“No, stay with your wife. You haven’t finished your supper.”
“But I—”
“Sit down, man. I can find my own horse, and if I can’t I’ll steal one of yours.” Samuel pushed Adam gently down in his chair. “Good night. Good night. Good night, ma’am.” He walked quickly toward the shed.
Old platter-foot Doxology was daintily nibbling hay from the manger with lips like two flounders. The halter chain clinked against wood. Samuel lifted down his saddle from the big nail where it hung by one wooden stirrup and swung it over the broad back. He was lacing the látigo through the cinch rings when there was a small stir behind him. He turned and saw the silhouette of Lee against the last light from the open shadows.
“When you come back?” the Chinese asked softly.
“I don’t know. In a few days or a week. Lee, what is it?”
“What is what?”
“By God, I got creepy! Is there something wrong here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
“Chinee boy jus’ workee—not hear, not talkee.”
‘‘Yes. I guess you’re right. Sure, you’re right. Sorry I asked you. It wasn’t very good manners.” He turned back, slipped the bit in Dox’s mouth, and laced the big flop ears into the headstall. He slipped the halter and dropped it in the manger. “Good night, Lee,” he said.
“Mr. Hamilton—”
“Yes?”
“Do you need a cook?”
“On my place I can’t afford a cook?”
“I’d work cheap.”
“Liza would kill you. Why—you want to quit?”
“Just thought I’d ask,” said Lee. “Good night.”
5
Adam and Cathy sat in the gathering dark under the tree.
“He’s a good man,” Adam said. “I like him. I wish I could persuade him to take over here and run this place—kind of superintendent.”
Cathy said, “He’s got his own place and his own family.”
“Yes, I know. And it’s the poorest land you ever saw. He could make more at wages from me. I’ll ask him. It does take a time to get used to a new country. It’s like being born again and having to learn all over. I used to know from what quarter the rains came. It’s different here. And once I knew in my skin whether wind would blow, when it would be cold. But I’ll learn. It just takes a little time. Are you comfortable, Cathy?”
“Yes.”
“One day, and not too far away, you’ll see the whole valley green with alfalfa—see it from the fine big windows of the finished house. I’ll plant rows of gum trees, and I’m going to send away for seeds and plants—put in a kind of experimental farm. I might try lichee nuts from China. I wonder if they would grow here. Well, I can try. Maybe Lee could tell me. And once the baby’s born you can ride over the whole place with me. You haven’t really seen it. Did I tell you? Mr. Hamilton is going to put up windmills, and we’ll be able to see them turning from here.” He stretched his legs out comfortably under the table. “Lee should bring candles,” he said. “I wonder what’s keeping him.”
Cathy spoke very quietly. “Adam, I didn’t want to come here. I am not going to stay here. As soon as I can I will go away.”
“Oh, nonsense.” He laughed. “You’re like a child away from home for the first time. You’ll love it once you get used to it and the baby is born. You know, when I first went away to the army I thought I was going to die of homesickness. But I got over it. We all get over it. So don’t say silly things like that.”
“It’s not a silly thing.”
“Don’t talk about it, dear. Everything will change after the baby is born. You’ll see. You’ll see.”
He clasped his hands behind his head and looked up at the faint stars through the tree branches.
Chapter 16
1
Samuel Hamilton rode back home in a night so flooded with moonlight that the hills took on the quality of the white and dusty moon. The trees and earth were moon-dry, silent and airless and dead. The shadows were black without shading and the open places white without color. Here and there Samuel could see secret movement, for the moon-feeders were at work—the deer which browse all night when the moon is clear and sleep under thickets in the day. Rabbits and field mice and all other small hunted that feel safer in the concealing light crept and hopped and crawled and froze to resemble stones or small bushes when ear or nose suspected danger. The predators were working too—the long weasels like waves of brown light; the cobby wildcats crouching near to the ground, almost invisible except when their yellow eyes caught light and flashed for a second; the foxes, sniffling with pointed up-raised noses for a warm-blooded supper; the raccoons padding near still water, talking frogs. The coyotes nuzzled along the slopes and, torn with sorrow-joy, raised their heads and shouted their feeling, half keen, half laughter, at their goddess moon. And over all the shadowy screech owls sailed, drawing a smudge of shadowy fear below them on the ground. The wind of the afternoon was gone and only a little breeze like a sigh was stirred by the restless thermals of the warm, dry hills.