“Oh?”
“Wet or dry, you’re the handsomest woman I ever did see. You’ve got spirit, and a fine, sturdy body—a noble combination. Why, to you child-bearin’ would come easy as rollin’ off a log.”
“If you leave it to me, Mr. Morgan,” she said dryly, “I’d rather roll off the log.”
“Ma’am, I’m tellin’ you. You got the build for it, and that’s what I’m lookin’ for. I want you for my wife. I’ve got a cattle outfit just below the Merced, an’ I’ll be settlin’ down there, fit an’ proper.”
“I’m sure you’ll be very fit and proper, Mr. Morgan.” “Then you just naturally couldn’t do any better than to marry me. We could have ourselves a fine family in just no time at all.” “I believe it, but I can’t accept your proposal, Mr. Morgan.”
“Why not?”
“A woman likes to hear something more inviting in the way of a proposal, something to indicate she is valued for herself.” “Ain’t that what I been doin’? Invitin’ you? I’m invitin’ you to share my life, Miss Prescott.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan.”
“It’s something else, something naggin’ at you. Well, I don’t intend to let it stop me, you can count on that.”
As quietly as he could, Cleve completed his job with the trace chains, and saddled his horse. He heard Agatha speak then.
“What did he want?”
“Children.”
“Children? Well, I’ll—Why don’t he come shoppin’ to the right store?” They stood at the rear of the wagon, and the jangle of harness chains had helped to deaden the sound of his own soft movements. Lilith emptied the bucket of water she had brought from the spring and started toward the front of the wagon. Guiltily, he started to worry with a stirrup strap, keeping his eyes averted. “Mr. van Valen?” He glanced around. Her eyes were cool. “How long have you been standing there?”
“I’ve been harnessing up, but if you mean did I hear the proposal, I did. In fact,” he said seriously, “I think he made you a good offer, and he’s a good man. Of course, I might have done it a little different.” “You already have—or had you forgotten?”
“How could I forget? Children … I guess every man worth his salt would like to have children—a son, anyway. But he would also like to think he’s marrying a girl who loves him, somebody he can do things for.” “And what would you do for a girl, Mr. van Valen?” “Why, I don’t rightly know,” he said honestly enough. “A man thinks of this sort of thing, but when it actually comes—well, for one thing, I’d try not to ever let her forget she’s young and beautiful.”
He dropped the stirrup into place and gathered the reins. “If I didn’t have the money for perfume or fine clothes, I could at least go into the fields and gather flowers.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, as if measuring his sincerity. After a minute, she said, “You could teach Mr. Morgan a good deal about women, Mr. van Valen, but his example could also teach you a few things.” Irritated, he demanded, “What, for example?”
“That a woman also likes stability, Mr. van Valen. If she is to have children, she will want a home for them. Men may think only of today, but women must plan for the months, and for the years. It is not a light thing to have a child, Mr. van Valen.”
She paused, remembering something her father had said, long ago, beside the Ohio. “A woman wants a man, not a wisp of smoke!” But even as she spoke the words she recalled the man to whom her father had referred, for Linus Rawlings had made Eve a good husband; moreover, he had understood when Lilith wanted to go away and try her wings. It was he who had provided the money that gave her a start in the theatre. It had not been much money, but it gave her respectable clothes, an accordion, and enough to live on while finding her opportunity. He had given her all but a small portion of the money obtained from the sale of his furs. She remembered that morning out by the woodpile when he had handed her the money. “Eve an’ me,” he said, “we want you to have this.” He looked into her eyes and he said seriously, “Lil, when a dream becomes so much a part of you that it shines out of your eyes, you’d best give it rein.” Linus had rested his hand on his axe handle. “I followed a dream into the West, and I seen the far-off places an’ the shining mountains. I rode the rapids of streams no white man had ever seen, and trapped fur alongside of Carson an’ Bridger. I fit the Indian an’ I seen the varmint, an’ this much I know: without a dream a man or woman is less than nothing; with it you can be anything. “You doubt what you’re of a mind to, Lilith, but never doubt your dream. No matter how hard it gets, you hold to that. That, an’ your self-respect. Folks will judge you as you judge yourself.”
She had looked down at the money in her hands … how much that money could mean to her! And yet, how much of struggle, danger, and hardship had been demanded to earn it.
“I can’t take it,” she had said, brokenly. “I simply can’t. It’s yours, and it’s Eve’s.”
“What’s the use of a dream unless it can help to build another dream atop of it? I had mine. I seen the things I said. I seen the buffalo running and heard the coyotes holler at the moon of a nighttime. I seen the grizzlies fishing salmon, and moonlight on the Teton snows. I made tracks where no man had been, and I left my print on the land. Now I’ll raise a boy to follow where I went, a boy who’ll blaze fresh trails himself.
“I know what you want, Lil, believe me I do. I know the hollow ache of yearning inside you, I know how desperate you feel sometimes of a morning when a day has come again and finds you trapped in the same place. You go … you have your dream. And don’t ever rate yourself cheap, or settle for anything less than all you want.
“You’ll come on hard times, but when you do, you remember the tale I told you of Hugh Glass, wounded sore an’ left for dead, an’ how he crawled and dragged himself hundreds of miles through wild country to get to help. “You think of John Coulter, naked, with his feet torn to bloody flesh, escapin’ the murderin’ Blackfeet. You think of them and try a mite harder.” She took the money; and now she recalled every instant of that time out there by the woodpile. Her eyes had been blind with tears, and she remembered how Linus patted her shoulder. “You go on now,” he said, “somewhere out there things are waitin’ for you. I seen it in you from the start.” Linus Rawlings had been like that, a drifter and a mountain man, but strong when strength was necessary, and with a vision in him. She remembered another thing he had said: “A land needs heroes. Small men and small thoughts come from small dreams. A man is as big as his dreams are. There are always those who scoff and bicker and cower … but if you want to make big tracks on the land, you got to step out and start walking.” Was Cleve van Valen like that? Or was he simply a gambler, a drifter, a fortune-hunter?
Gabe French liked him, and Gabe French was a canny man who wasted no time with the second run of things. In horses, dogs, and men, Gabe respected only quality. When she had eaten and went to their wagon to sleep, her hand touched something on her pillow—rough stems, soft petals. The perfume was delicate, as that of prairie flowers is likely to be.
She gathered them up and held them close to her face, and tried to remember the last time a man had given her flowers. They had offered her clothes, money … even a carriage and horses. But none of them had ever picked flowers for her. The coarse stems brushed her cheek, and when she put them carefully aside and settled down to sleep, she did not feel like a worldly-wise young woman, with the hard, direct mind she seemed to have. She felt like a girl who might swing on a garden gate, waiting for a boy. And it was a nice way to feel … a very nice way.
In the morning there was rain, a rain that came with a sly whisper on the canvas wagon cover just before daybreak. It settled the dust and lifted an odd smell into the air as rain will do when it first falls into the dust. The wagons rolled westward when the first light was yellow on the grass, but this morning there was no dust cloud.