Chapter 3

"Oh, stop looking tragic," cried Welma. "Think of the fun ahead. Instead of bending over stacks of papers, forever sorting and filing, you'll be in the mountains with peaks and canyons before your eyes. No stuffy apartment, no office smelling like the inside of an oil can."

Sheila lifted her head. She remembered a gold and scarlet sunset at the foot of a purple mist-filled canyon. She remembered the scent of pine and cedar, not drenched with an oil base.

"Sheila, you've changed so," Welma went on. "When I first knew you, you made a lark of living. Remember the weekend we were both broke?"

"Correction: we had eighty cents between us."

"And I talked a butcher out of bones for a dog we didn't have, and we made soup."

"And we found an old package of cake mix and made pancakes because we didn't have an oven. Weren't they delicious?"

"Of course they were. It was our attitude toward them that counted, Sheila. We could have sat and groused and lost a whole weekend of fun. A person can lose a lifetime of fun by looking at things the wrong way."

Fun. Sheila's mind dwelt on the word. The Norris family had always had fun. And look at them now. Oh well, as long as she couldn't be happy letting her folks go alone to wherever they were going, she might as well enjoy it as much as she could.

"Ready?" Welma asked, and when Sheila nodded, Welma dropped an enveloping parka over her head. "I'm supposed to have brought you in for this. Picked it up at the surplus store."

Sheila made a convincing entrance. "Look, Dad, I'm wearing my tent. Now if you two will let me in on the secret, just where are we going?"

They tried to talk at the same time. Welma had a friend with a mining claim. They'd proved it and now owned the land. The claim was nothing, but the big cabin in the hills was a source of constant comfort.

"They knew of other claims available," Nate took up the story. "Quite a few were staked out in accessible areas, but later they were abandoned."

"And Jack knew of an abandoned logging camp. For some reason everyone had walked off and left things, even dishes on the table. He believes it was because of a slide that cut off their rail line and road."

Sheila shuddered. She'd lived in slide areas, knew how mountains could grow restless when man began interfering with their sides, and in retaliation slough down tons of dirt and rock.

"I'll fix a windlass," Nate went on, "drag lumber up the hill to this claim of Welma's friend, then haul it to the one we find. And I'll get such furniture as we need until I can make some. I'll buy a stove, some kerosene lamps-"

They crowded into the tiny kitchenette, talking, forgetting to eat until Sheila, aware of food and its cost, made a remark.

Welma was called away, by a prearranged plan, Sheila believed, so she and her father might have an hour alone before he left for the northbound bus.

"Dad, how much money do you have?" Sheila demanded. "And no hedging. We're in this together."

"Nine dollars and eighty-seven cents cash." He pulled out a wallet and spewed the money on the table. "And," probably he reached for an inside pocket and drew out a savings account book, "one hundred and thirty dollars. I've been saving ten a week out of my unemployment. Your mother like to've died when she found out, but I told her we wouldn't have had a penny if she'd known about it."

It was more than she thought, but pitifully inadequate to start such a venture. Of the two more unemployment checks coming, only one might be saved.

"I'll have to give two weeks' notice," she murmured. "I'll save what I can."

He said there was no point in her using carfare to see him to the bus. He'd be getting on his way. She was not sorry. She wanted to talk to Andy immediately, to break the news over the telephone so their morning meeting at the office would create less of a strain.

"Feel pretty good about this," Nate said as he stood at the door. "With you coming along, your mother won't mind. It's the loneliness of claims that women have to buck. I figure that's why most men give up before they've proven up on their land."

She waited until he had left the building, sat a moment staring out on the lights, dusky with misty rain, then squared her shoulders in anticipation of the ordeal ahead.

Fifteen minutes later Welma came in to find Sheila striding around the small apartment, curls bobbing.

"Men," she replied to Welma's question. "Men!"

"Which means you called Andy and he couldn't see the advantage of-"

"See it?" cried Sheila. "He nearly came through the telephone. Here I was ready to dry his tears because I'd have to be away for months, and do you know what he said?" she demanded indignantly.

"I don't dare guess."

"He said, 'Wonderful. What's to keep you from filing near your folks so we'll have a claim too?' He even offered to subsidize it, whatever that means."

"Pay for the improvements required to prove a claim." Welma spoke laconically but her voice was bubbling.

"But Andy-I mean he doesn't believe in gambling on anything."

"Except the stock market."

"Welma, you know he only buys sure things."

"Umhum, whatever those are. Well, it should relieve your mind. Now you can sally forth, knowing full well your tall, blond, and handsome won't look at another girl; his eyes will be full of gold dust. Wonder if he knows anything about the slim pickings?"

"I told him," Sheila reported grimly. "I told him people were panning and counting themselves lucky if they found enough flakes to buy bread and hamburger. However, he said, having a place in the hills was worth something, when we could get it for nothing."

"What's for nothing?" quipped Welma, and quickly said she was going to bed. She'd had a long weekend babysitting with nieces and nephews too old to paddle.

She said not to worry about the apartment; she could find someone readily enough. Or maybe she'd break down and marry a man with a house. She had two weeks in which to decide.

Two weeks! Imagine tossing away all you'd worked for on the chance of finding something better. Two years of small jobs during the day and school at night. Finding a type of work she liked with enough salary to make privacy possible. Above all, finding a man who would provide security in all things, then in two weeks just tossing them over one's shoulder.

"Attitude," warned Welma, trailing her robe to the cubicle they called a bathroom, arms loaded with creams and curlers.

"But-"

"Ah, but think of your parents settled, and you and Andy with a summer home, perhaps a home which you can use when you run up winter weekends to be sure that your folks are all right. And if Andy ever did lose a job, perish the thought, you would have a choice: living with his folks or in them thar hills."

Except that she and Andy would have a home of their own in town; eventually, that is. Right now Andy said the taxes made town property a poor investment for someone with his income.

For one awful moment Sheila had a vision of a dilapidated car loaded with children and household goods huffing and puffing up some mountain road; history repeating itself.

"Ah," she breathed, "but Dad never had a roof to tuck his family in under."

She felt more cheerful when she awakened.

Now that she was handing in her resignation they could go out to lunch openly. Sheila's spirits soared as Andy discussed possibilities. He wouldn't see her that evening, because he was going to the main library to pick up everything available on mining claims and related subjects.

"I'll be up as soon as your folks are located," he confided. "Then we'll choose a place within shouting distance. I was telling Mr. Hathaway about the venture this morning. He said his great-grandparents chose claims with others in their party. Building at corners enabled them to create a small settlement. Like this."

He drew out an envelope and on its back drew a vast square; then he crossed it, cutting it into four parts. Where the lines met in the center he drew small buildings.

"We could build right across the line here. You could almost step into your folks' cabin."

Soberly Sheila nodded, wondering if Andy had ever been in the mountains, if he had any idea of the terrain; above all, if he had any idea how much a water supply meant and just how one could coax a stream into a precise section.

Her first letter from my mother reflected her own doubts but did clear the air. "Anything is better than having your father pace the floor and worry. Now he can pace lines, dig and saw and be too tired to worry."

She was pretty well packed and wasting sleeping hours wondering whether to ship her luggage or find some way for her folks to carry her worldly goods, when a letter from her father solved that problem.

"You'd be surprised at the fellows interested in this deal; some of them with wives and young kids, a couple of oldsters like myself and some singles.

"One of these will bring my car down for you to use. He's picking up a truck to deliver farther up the coast from our turn-off and will carry us and our load."

There was more, but this portion was important. She wondered why, if other wives were going along, she should accompany her parents; then she remembered the mountains and how far apart cabins could be located.

"That's a break," Welma murmured when she spoke of the car.

"Wait until you see it," Sheila told her. "Even two years ago I felt like I was driving an eggshell."

She didn't meet the man who brought the car. It was left in the nearest supermarket parking lot, a note stuck under her door telling her where to find it.

Andy joined her in the search, and though the rain had stopped and low fog clung to city pavements, nothing could disguise the car's age or its weariness.

"But it runs," Andy insisted logically, "or it wouldn't have reached here. Now, instead of paying parking fees at a garage, I'll take it in for a thorough servicing.

"Tomorrow I'll let you off at noon and you will have a half-day's start. What do you think of that?"

"Do you want the truth?" she asked.

After a moment spent studying the somber eyes under the mop of fog-curled hair, he shook his head. "No. We haven't time to make up. You trot home. I'll stop by as soon as I've talked to a garage man, and then we'll have dinner."

"Andy, I'd better drive it to the garage."

"Are you intimating I'm not as good a driver as your father?"

"I'm not intimating. I'm telling you. If Dad was ever given a good car, he'd plow down traffic like an unmanned power mower. But he can handle wrecks that won't budge for anyone else, except me."

They almost quarreled on this last evening. Sheila saw young couples inside the supermarket wheeling carts, gathering food from the shelves. She wondered if she and Andy really had any idea how lucky they were. Within an hour they'd be sitting across a narrow table, planning a future together.

And here Andy was wasting their last evening together, even giving her half a day off to get rid of her faster.

It took him only two hours to drive four and a half blocks. But they didn't have dinner together. Andy had to go back to his apartment to clean up and, Sheila presumed, to cool down.

"But never mind," he said staunchly over the telephone. "You're going to have a real car to drive. I left orders to give her a thorough overhaul. The night shift will work on it. See you in the morning."

Welma welcomed the change in plans. "If you're smart, you'll take so long to pack the car you can't start before the next morning. I've half a mind to chuck everything and join you."

"I wouldn't ask it of you."

"Ask it? Sheila, what's wrong with you?"

"Maybe it's the weather."

"Well, you're taking the inside route. You'll run out of fog once you're over the mountains."

Sheila left the next day at one o'clock. Welma had forgotten Andy's efficiency. He knew how to pack cars. He had overlooked nothing.

Methodically he checked her driver's license, made sure of car insurance, kicked all four tires, a habit Sheila had never been able to understand, and finally handed her the hundred dollars he'd drawn from the bank the first day.

"If you have it, you won't need it," he informed her.

When he kissed her goodbye, Sheila had the weird sensation he'd kicked a fifth tire, made sure it was solid and waved a starting flag.

Instantly the car responded and she drove off.

Hours passed, but the miles were slow in keeping pace. Fog clung to the highways like a last hope. Gargantuan trucks roared up, all lights blazing, swept past her and were swallowed up. Passenger cars either wheeled recklessly or felt their way along. Sheila adopted a snail's pace.

She felt relieved when the junction appeared, turned east to the shortcut Andy had marked on her map. She'd find a sunny hilltop and stop for the box lunch Andy had thoughtfully provided, complete with a thermos of coffee. She was ready for it; breakfast had been eight hours ago.

The car found the mountain, pulled huskily up and over the foggy summit, down the other side and onto a long highway, a deserted one with only deserted summer cottages or eating shacks plastered with "Closed For the Season" signs. Even in the fog she could see these.

"It's like a nightmare," Sheila worried as the old dial clock moved from three to threethirty and the fog pressed closer; an icy fog that -rimmed such bushes as she could see with silver.

"Only thirty miles to go," she said aloud. "Thirty miles to the nearest motel. Then I'll find out if I've been dreaming or simply died and wakened in a deserted land."

Behind her the fog seemed to thicken and billow, yet it was a different color, a deep blue color.

Startled, she pulled into a turnout. In another moment she was out of the car and the car was enveloped in a cloud.

"Smoke," whimpered Sheila. "It's on fire!"

For one horrible moment she stood frozen to the graveled turnout, counting every precious possession packed within the car: linen and dishes and small pieces of silver bought and hoarded for the day she and Andy would have a home; letters and favorite books and clothes.

And then she began to run. If the car was afire, in time the gasoline tank would explode, and she didn't want to be within striking distance when it blew up.

Tires screamed and a horn blared, and Sheila ran back. Out of nowhere had come a truck, its very brake bands telling her in a trucker's language what it thought of anyone who dashed onto a highway, even one as deserted as this.

In another moment the big vehicle had turned in, stopped, shuddered, and out of the cab had jumped an angry man.

"Just what," he roared, "have you done to that car?"

Shock was replaced by anger of her own. "And just what business is it of yours?"

"I spent three hours on it. It worked perfectly when I left it for-say, are you Nate's daughter?"

"Do you think anyone not related to him would steal such a wreck?"

"You're Nate's daughter," stated the man. Then he pushed past her, lifted the hood and said, "Aha, just what I thought. What fool fixed that thermostat?"

Andy had said he'd had something fixed so she'd be sure of keeping warm in this icy weather. She sure had. So had the car. "Get in. When I bring up water, start the engine. Can't leave you here all night. No tools to take the blasted thing off. Have to take you to the next town."

"You," she informed him, "don't have to take me any place." Then curiosity overcame her anger. "How do you happen to be here now?"

"Stopped at your apartment to make sure you'd found your car. Girl there came home from work early to give you a good send-off and found you'd already gone. She called some guy and learned the route. He should have his head examined. The idea of sending you out on a cutoff with no houses and nearly no traffic this time of the year."

"It saved sixty-two miles," Sheila informed him loftily, "and no end of time."

"Yeah?"

That was all he said. He wheeled around, brought tin gas cans from the truck and disappeared into the fog.

Shivering with shock, chill, and exasperation, Sheila crept back into the now smokeless car.

Out of the fog came the man, the front of his pants and jacket slathered with mud, a good portion of it on his face. Must have slipped coming up some bank. To Sheila it looked wonderful. That would teach him not to bark at strange girls.

"Okay, sister, turn her over."

Sheila jerked to attention, caught the sharp glance of eyes as gray and icy as the landscape, and pressed the starter.

This man, she thought, idling the engine, is as stimulating as a splash of cold water, and then a second frightening thought struck. He was one of the two single men who'd be joining the group following her own family into the mountains to file claims. They were stuck with each other as members of the same party.