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.
Scooping up double handfuls of hay, Sarah showered Imogene, keeping up the barrage until the older woman shoved half a mountain of straw down on her in retaliation. Sputtering, Sarah dug her way out only to be buried again as Imogene, at the top of the heap, yelled, “King of the mountain!” and kicked down hay. With renewed vigor, Sarah let out a roar and charged up the side of the stack. She threw herself on Imogene and they rolled over and over until their hair fell free and their petticoats tangled.
“That,” Imogene laughed as she recovered her breath, “was all the childhood I have ever had. Thank you, Sarah.”
Sarah brushed the straw from Imogene’s face and kissed her eyelids. “My childhood is over,” she said. “I’m not a bit sorry.” She smiled into her old friend’s eyes and, with a fingertip, traced the line of Imogene’s mouth. “Lord, I think I’m going to like being a woman. You’ve always been my teacher; teach me to make love to you.”
Imogene arrested Sarah’s hand and held it. “Why now, Sarah?”
“God lost. We won.”
Imogene didn’t understand, but she answered the young woman’s smile. “We’ll learn together.”
Sarah touched her lips to her old friend’s, the sigh of her breath soft against Imogene’s cheek, and the schoolteacher felt the warm rain of Sarah’s tears. “My love,” she whispered, “what is it?”
Sarah laughed. “I think I’m melting. I have been in love with you since I was fifteen. You’ve peopled all my dreams. Your face, your dear beautiful face.” She kissed Imogene again and the strong arms folded around her. Lightheaded with the scent of Imogene’s hair and the cut hay, Sarah felt her heart lifting, light as a dry desert cloud.
Imogene felt as though she had finally reached home.
A sense of celebration claimed Imogene and Sarah as they moved their things from the women’s dormitory into the bedroom they would share.
Over the next week they cleaned every surface inside the stop, boiled every stitch of cloth-the curtains, the bedding, what tablecloths there were-and dusted and polished until the freight drivers retreated out of doors with their hastily prepared meals, grumbling that Round Hole wasn’t what it used to be.
Fresh meat was a problem; the freighters were a carnivorous lot, and beef and lamb were expensive. Beau Van Fleet had saved himself a great deal of money by hunting venison, rabbit, and occasionally duck, pheasant, or even squirrel. Nearly three-quarters of a large doe had been left when he and Mrs. Van Fleet departed. The haunch of meat hung thirty feet above the ground at night, away from the flies, like a macabre flag, and was buried in a cool earthen pit lined with straw during the day. Mr. Van Fleet said the crust that formed over the flesh would keep the meat almost indefinitely if it was kept cool. Day by day the chunk of venison grew smaller. Finally, ten days after they’d taken over the stop, Imogene steeled herself to the task and took down the rifle she had purchased from the Van Fleets. In the cool of the evening, after they had eaten and seen to the needs of the one guest-a freighter from out of Salt Lake hauling cloth goods-Imogene and Sarah taught themselves to shoot.