“This is pretty sudden.”
“Not to me, it isn’t. From now on, waiting time is time wasted, the way I figure it. You can sort of imagine she had me here so you could look me over. Maybe you and me we don’t get on so good together, but I know you’re fair enough to see that doesn’t mean Laura and I couldn’t get on just fine.”
“That could have been a reason for her getting us together.”
“You’ll know for sure when she asks you what you think of me.”
“Yes, I guess I will.”
“Funny thing. After Edith, I never thought I’d find another woman I’d want to marry. Edith got cheated, you know. She got the wandering years, the years when I was doing a lot of scratching. She missed out on the fat years, most of them.”
“What about this place?”
“It’s done the good it was supposed to do. She isn’t a woman meant to live a widow’s life. I’d have her sell it right out, and put the money where she’d have the income from it all her own to use any way she wants.”
“You have it all figured out.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for some time, Cal.”
“I’d like that same opportunity. To think about it.”
“What is there to think about?”
“It’s the process one generally goes through before one hands out any gratuitous advice, Stan.”
“But you know it’s right for her.”
Laura rejoined them then. The three of them talked idly for a long time. Cal realized Colby was trying to outsit him, and in spite of his weariness he did not want to let that happen.
Finally Laura reminded Stan of the lateness of the hour and his long drive home. Colby was obviously reluctant, but soon he said good-night graciously enough and drove off, accelerating through the night, heading east through Mesilla toward Las Cruces.
“Sweet guy,” Laura said idly.
“Seems a very decent man.”
“I’ll walk you to your cottage, sir, so you won’t lie down and go to sleep in the path.”
“There’s a definite risk of that.”
“I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you. Will you be in shape for talking tomorrow?”
“If I happen to wake up. Sure.”
It was noon when he awakened. He had slept so soundly he could not at first comprehend where he was. He felt rested, but when he remembered the Colby problem he felt strangely depressed. He showered and dressed and went down to the main house. Laura was full of high spirits. She gave him coffee, and told him they were going on a picnic brunch. She had hired a girl to help Maria in the shop for the rest of the time he would be there.
They went in her car. She drove because she knew the roads and knew exactly where they were going. She headed in a generally northwesterly direction, taking little roads that became increasingly rough the higher they climbed. They left the car at the mouth of a small canyon, then climbed a winding path which ended in a picnic grove of ponderosa pines looking out over a distant vista of desert and mesas. A shelf of rock formed their picnic bench.
“Like it?” she asked.
“Wild and beautiful. How did you find it?”
“Pure luck. A year ago. I come here alone when I feel broody and beat. It renews me, sort of. I’ve come here fairly often lately.”
“Broody and beat?”
“Just thoughtful, Cal. Wondering. Thinking.”
“What about?”
“Let’s eat first.”
After they had finished, he said, “You have been coming here to think about what?”
“The worst of my venture is over, and I’m on safe ground. So now I begin to feel... I don’t know... unutilized... unrealized. I could start a big expansion program and get all overworked again, I suppose. Too busy to think. But that doesn’t seem to be a good answer.”
“You’ve done a wonderful job.”
“And where am I?”
He found the next words astonishingly difficult to say. “Maybe you’re the sort of woman who can’t feel any genuine sense of usefulness unless she’s married.”
She turned and looked at him gravely. “I’ve thought of that, of course.”
“Could that be it?”
“I think that could be it,” she said in a small voice.
“But to be married just for the sake of being married doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
“I’d have to be in love.”
“Are you?”
“That’s a good question, Cal. That’s a dandy question. I sort of think I am.”
“You should be sure, you know. You should sound a little more joyful.”
“Should I?”
He got to his feet and stared at the faraway desert.
Laura said again, “Should I, Cal? Is that the way you tell you’re in love?”
He turned and saw that she was standing, too. He looked at her, almost with consternation and something seemed to click into place at the back of his mind. She was turned toward him, waiting. With his voice pitched slightly higher than usual, he said, “What do you want? What do you want me to say?”
“I want to hear anything you want to say.”
He took her by the upper arms. There was a strange expression on his face, and the pressure of his fingers hurt her.
“What I want to say, and what you want to hear are different things, Lollie. What do I want to say? Good God, I feel as if the bottom has fallen out of the world.” He shook her, a small surprising violence. “I love you. I didn’t know it until last time when I was here helping you buy from those crafty old thieves. I didn’t really know it until I got back, and then I knew that way back as far as the time we parked on that road and sat at that table. Even then.” He shook her again. “How could I feel joyful? Thirty-five letters from you. Thirty-five exactly. I read them all again, last night.”
Her voice was so low he couldn’t hear the first part of her response. “...impossible for you to have come here just once in the last twenty-one months.”
“What? I wanted to.”
“And I asked you to, didn’t I, in at least a dozen little ways?”
“But all that would have done was made it worse.”
“Made what worse?”
“Wanting you, and knowing I didn’t have a prayer.”
“There was love in your letters.”
“What?”
“I have thirty-four from you. I read them all last night, all of them. Love, Cal. Clumsily hidden.”
He looked at her soberly. “How about Colby?”
Her eyes went wide. “Colby? How did he get into this?”
“Wasn’t he on display last night?”
“Heavens, no!”
“But you’re wavering on the edge of saying yes to him.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Some wavering! I’ve given him a dozen answers, and every one has been no. He’s a bore about it, dear. I couldn’t possibly marry him. He’s a dear, sweet, reliable, earnest man. But he is absolutely humorless. Could I endure that? Of course not. He’s good-humored, but without humor. And there is a tragic difference. I couldn’t marry a man like that. Now let go of my arms. I’ll have to wear sleeves for two weeks.”
He released her suddenly and, just as suddenly, she came into his arms, vital, lithe and very sure of herself.