Apathetic with the dust and the rolling of their stomachs, the women stared blankly through the moving frame of the coach window, then fell back against the seat to look at nothing.
Past the lake, the road curved northeast up a sand and gravel hill to a pass in the low hills that marked the end of the Pah Rah Range, northwest of Pyramid Lake. Noisy Dave pulled up at the summit, bellowing boistrous whoas. “Sand Pass,” he hollered. “There’s Round Hole below. If you gals want to step out, take a look, and stretch a bit, go ahead.” They climbed stiffly from the coach, not trusting their cramped legs to support them.
Winding down the shadowed side of the pass, a white wagon track snaked through a sea of sage; mountains, rounded and covered with the same coarse blanket of vegetation, rose to the northeast. To the south, rock-faced and sharp, the granite peaks of the Fox Range curved away in a jagged wall. Held between these pincers of rock and sand was the Smoke Creek Desert.
Near the middle of the broad valley floor, the sagebrush stopped abruptly in a wavy shoreline; beyond, there was nothing but the white glare of an immense alkali flat baked until the crust had cracked into a crazy network of lines. On the edge of the flat, in a blunt finger of sage that poked out onto the dead lake bottom, huddled Round Hole Stop. In an oasis of green the size of a postage stamp, its few trees looking like refugees in an alien land, three buildings, bleached the same drab gray as the sage, clung to the green skirts of a spring.
“Oh my Lord,” breathed Imogene.
“You gals change your mind?” Noisy asked.
“I knew it was desert,” Imogene replied crisply, but still she stared down on the desolate valley.
“Imogene,” Sarah whispered, “nobody can live down there.”
“Staying or not,” Noisy put in, “we’re going to be there tonight. There’s no place else within a half-day’s ride.” He started talking to the team as Imogene and Sarah climbed back into the mudwagon.
Stars were shining in the long desert twilight when they at last pulled up at the stage stop. A low, open-faced building formed one side of a square of hard-packed earth. Flanking it were a stable and a long two-story building with a veranda and two chimneys. The fourth side of the quadrangle, across the coach road, was the spring itself, a barn, and a squat icehouse.
The spring was aptly named, a round hole about forty-five feet across, with high, grass-covered sides. Under the darkening sky the spring lay black and placid, but the sound of moving water was everywhere. In the parched desert landscape it fell on the ear like music. A windmill pumped water to fill a trough in the small meadow to the south-forty acres of green crowded on all sides by the thirsty Smoke Creek. A narrow irrigation channel gurgled in front of the house and down through the paddock beside the barn, and another ditch ran full behind the stables and out across the square of dirt between the buildings. Planks had been laid over it where the paths to the shed and the stables crossed it.
Noisy held the horses in a hard grip, shouting soothing words at the top of his voice until Mac could get around to the lead team to hold their heads. The animals had smelled water several miles out and were frantic to drink.
A small man appeared from the murk of the stables and hurried across the yard to help with the unharnessing. Noisy Dave climbed down from the box and pounded his thighs with the flats of his hands. “Long haul, that,” he boomed, “but we brought you some passengers. I don’t know if you can rightly charge them, Van. It’s the folks took over your lease.” Noisy called through the coach window to Imogene and Sarah, “This is Beau Van Fleet.”
The man’s face had lit up when the lease was mentioned, and he ran halfway to the house. “Elmira!” he shouted in a high, boyish voice. “Come on out, it’s the folks took over the lease.” He laughed. “You hear me, pet?”
A hard-faced woman, all angles, stepped out on the porch, half-hidden in the gloom of the veranda. “Well, it’s none too soon for me,” she called back, and hurried down the steps to meet them. In her eagerness she pulled Sarah bodily from the mudwagon and bustled her and Imogene into the house.
Several freightwagon drivers were eating supper; they sat at a bar that ran half the length of the room. At the far end was a large stone fireplace with a varnished wooden mantle. A rattlesnake skin was stretched on the stone, the gray and brown diamonds shimmering in the lamplight. Several tables, mismatched and without cloths, were set between the bar and a row of windows overlooking the coach yard. Near the fireplace a motley assortment of comfortable chairs were scattered about. The ceiling was low and unpainted, of the same planking as the floor. The walls had been papered, but it was peeling in several places and faded wherever the direct light of the sun hit it.
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.”