Chapter 10

"Isn't it a break I brought my skis along?" said Caroline, striding in. "I had to talk to you at the first possible moment."

Wouldn't she ski? thought Sheila, and chalked up another debit.

She invited Caroline in, was about to warn her about the lounge chair, held her breath as she sat down on it, released it as the chair remained upright.

Caroline was going to town to pick up a few things.

"Of course you'll run out of snow," Sheila warned.

"Of course; I'm prepared for that." She brushed aside the long hike ahead as being of no consequence and plunged into her subject. "I want to talk about Andy. I've come to ask you not to tell him I'm here. I didn't want you to know, but your father said you would have seen us drive in.

"He said the decision was up to you."

Before Sheila had time to frame a proper reply, she continued, "It's not as though you were formally engaged to him, you know."

Nate could have seen the signs. It was possible Jed would have recognized them. Caroline didn't.

"I can't think of a better way not to be, can you?" she asked sweetly.

"Oh, well," Caroline whisked up, and this time the chair folded, "if you're going to be difficult ... It's only that I wanted Dad to have one real vacation before the boom lowers. He's been dreaming about something like this ever since I can remember. I had to wrangle leave to get up and save his blessed old hide."

Sheila waited until she ran down, then said pleasantly, "Miss Carter, I neither had nor have any intention of telling Andy about you. I can use the snow as an excuse for not writing. Here," she went to a box she used as a desk and drew out the slip she'd written the previous day, "is the telegram I'd planned to send in with the first person going to town."

For a moment Caroline stared at her, then, showing the most beautiful teeth Sheila had ever seen, smiled and thrust out her hand.

"Now how about some coffee?" asked Sheila.

"I'd love it. Imagine my stuffy brother finding a girl like you."

"Maybe," Sheila held the measure, looking into the rapidly dwindling coffee grains, "Andy seems stuffy because he's had responsibility thrust on him."

"Meaning I ran out on the family? I had to, Sheila. I had to live, and if you don't live in today, how can you be sure you'll live in tomorrow?"

They spoke then of other things. Caroline said she had until late spring to decide whether or not to sign up for another stretch. She liked it in the hills. If her mother would be content to stay home and let her and her dad work the claim, they might get their bread and cheese out of it.

"No Cadillacs?"

"Just plain food, exercise, and fresh air. What else is there?"

After she'd left, to become a moving shadow across the low hills beyond, Sheila enumerated what she believed should be added to Caroline's list. Topping it was romance.

At that she took a shameful pleasure in the sight of the sun growing stronger by the moment, lapping up snow with a hot tongue.

Caroline couldn't come skimming in like a bird if this kept on.

She didn't. She came rolling home in a jeep. Sheila grabbed the field glasses her mother had left there, thinking at first it could be the boys. It wasn't. This one had been painted red, and standing up behind the seat were Caroline's skis.

"Ha!" said Sheila as the figure jumped out, went to a boulder and returned with something she began affixing to the wheels. "So that's why the boys let her borrow the chains, though why she couldn't buy chains-"

She watched until the jeep started with a buck, gained momentum and finally disappeared between snow banks, then stood watching a lonely scene with a lonely heart.

Everybody in the group had somebody. Caroline was hurrying home to her father. Jed and Danny had long ago started to settle in their place. Her father and mother were cozily housed against the cold.

And here she was alone with millions of acres of snow-covered hills. How had it happened? She was supposed to be here so her mother wouldn't feel as she was feeling right now.

Ah yes, Andy had looked upon the project as an opportunity. She would file for both of them. His idea had been good; it just hadn't worked out.

She had nothing to do and days in which to do it. She had cabin fever.

Soon after dark she was curled up on her bed, book in hand, wantonly wasting the batteries in the electric lantern.

Sheila awakened to rain on the roof. In this area at this time, it meant spring had her toe in the weather door. Everything would be easier now. The water would still be icy, but they could start working their claims. Not that she could do much along that line. Many women made a pittance gold panning, she knew, yet her dad had a plan for working the two claims together. She'd find other chores.

Perhaps the overhang on the southwest. If the posts were set and the frame was spiked into place she could nail on the roofing. She'd show the men she wasn't completely useless.

It took her three days after her father had set up the frame. It rained much of the time, but not until she had one corner more or less covered. The rainy periods she spent beneath the cover, sawing the odds and ends she had brought up from the old site. Her father's metal shears cut odds and ends of roofing paper into usable sections, and after she had laid them out on the ten-by-eighteen roof she achieved a pattern of sorts.

She achieved it twice. The first time a sudden wind came up. She had no cabin fever that evening. By the time she had picked up the breeze-scattered sections, only stubbornness kept her from falling asleep over her evening meal.

"Fine," said Mrs. Norris, toiling up the cliff the next day. "Gives a sense of space, doesn't it? Shade your shack in the summer too. Sheila, how is your money holding out?"

"What money?" she returned. "Sorry, Mother. Do you need some?"

"Plenty of provisions, but your father needs gas for the jeep. He's going in to look for work, now that we're pretty well settled. I told him to sell the car, but he said he doubted we'd get thirty dollars for it. We couldn't buy another for that."

"He has the jeep."

"I know, but we have to have something here to use next summer when the camps open."

When Sheila offered her mother ten dollars, she shook her head. "Five is enough. Nate would be sure to find some part he thinks the jeep needs." Then she chuckled. "Some wives worry about drink and gambling. I have to protect your father from machine shops. Well, he's a good man."

Sheila agreed and conceded each man had some weakness. She only wished her father's was less expensive.

"Sheila, what are you thinking?" demanded Mrs. Norris sternly.

Needing some quick cover for her treasonable thoughts, she spoke quickly. "Planters. I thought I'd set boulders between the posts, have double rows with soil between, then plant them with seeds."

"Fine. If you have any boards left from the shack, we'd better build seed beds. Fern sprouts and nettles will be popping up after the first good spell of sunshine and give us some greens, but I want young vegetable plants ready to go in the first minute we're clear of frost threat."

It was quite a trick to fit the big rocks together so a minimum of chinking, to hold in soil, was necessary. One she would forever after call "the big bruiser" refused to settle on anything but three of her toes, which chanced to be where it landed.

She had finished the first section when she heard the frantic bleep of a jeep below and, running down the first steps, saw Jed and Danny.

"Come on; distress signal," Danny called.

That meant trouble at the Carters'. Sheila hurried as fast as she could, took the seat Danny vacated and hung on as they bounded over the rough terrain.

They didn't know what was wrong, but they'd heard shots, then had seen smoke puff up from a small fire.

"It may be the old man," Danny worried. "And she can't handle him alone."

It wasn't the "old man." He came up to meet them, looking like the central figure on a Western magazine cover, looking alive and much younger than when Sheila had last seen him.

Then it was Caroline? She came racing up in smartly tailored breeches, boots, white shirt topped by a golden tan sweater that just matched her hair.

A salute and a gay, "We're ready for inspection."

Suddenly Sheila was aware of wind-tousled hair, of red dust on her sweater and slacks and on her face.

"You're all right?" Jed asked in an even tone.

"Wonderful."

"Never felt better."

"Don't ever do that again! Get that through your head. Don't ever send a distress signal unless you mean it!"

Sheila forgot dirty sweater, slacks, and dirt-begrimed face.

"Why, even Sheila would know better," Jed went on.

"I only wanted to show you what could be done in a short time with proper management," Caroline bristled.

She said this wasn't the service. This life was no more than a game being played by people who should be out working at jobs which would help the government in its present crisis. In fact, she said so many of the wrong things, Sheila's loyalty swerved a little. After all, Jed could have left that last line unsaid.

"I'd like to see the cabin," Sheila offered an olive branch, and when they were inside, "Men act tough when they've had a scare."

"Oh, so that's it. Say, you look like you've been working."

Sheila started to say she'd been building a planter, but seeing the utilitarian neatness of the cabin, changed to, "rock wall, to keep the wind from sweeping in under the shack."

"Good girl."

Maybe. Now she had to build that wall next to the building as well as finish the planter. While it would cut off the cold winds of winter, winter was over. Before the next one rolled around she and Andy would be living in a steam-heated apartment.

She kept that thought firmly in mind; otherwise, she would have started rolling up rocks for a fireplace with the idea of closing in the shelter for an extra room.

A week later, she allowed herself to stand at the top of the cliff path and look at the shack as though she had never seen it before.

"Why, it's lovely," she cried, surprised, finding that in piling the rocks she had cleared a neat space in front of the shack, and at one side had created natural steps which led up to a flat-topped knoll.

She adjusted one last rock, wiped windblown curls from a moist brow, and belatedly ran her muddy hands down the sides of her slacks.

"Sheila!"

Luckily she wasn't standing near the edge. She jumped, wheeled, and looked down, and there was Andy!

"How did you get here?" she cried.

"It wasn't easy," he informed her darkly, came up the last few steps to look at his pride and joy and cried, "Sheila, you're not living in that."

"Come inside," she said. "I'll make coffee."

Almost on tiptoe he followed her, trying to answer the questions she asked.

"Sit down," she said hospitably, and too late, "Oh, not there."

He was on his hands and knees, making a painful recovery, when a second voice sounded: Caroline's, crying out, "Was that Jed? Will he rush me to town? We just had a letter from Andy; he's on his way up."

The little building had held five one evening. It wasn't big enough for three when one was an indignant brother and the other a startled sister.

"I think I have another rock I should put in," murmured Sheila, and squeezed past them.