Chapter 8

Nate and Jed stood staring at Sheila with such blank expressions, she cried, "Say something."

Nate obliged. "The poor old duck."

"What will he use for transportation?" asked Jed.

"Probably thinks he can pick up a string of burros and pack in," came the thoughtful answer. "Sheila, what was that young man of yours thinking about to let his father build up a dream?"

"He is not my young man," flared Sheila before she thought. "I mean, how do I know what any man thinks, or if he does? From what I've seen of the male of the species, they leap in and act and then think."

"That," cut in Jed companionably, "is because you women get into such predicaments, we have to leap first and think second to get you out."

"This calls for a mug," stated her father. "Come, daughter, you can read your love letters while we drink." And, sizzling, Sheila had to follow them to a cafe.

"Coffee," Sheila told the counter girl.

"And doughnuts," Jed added.

"I don't want any."

But what waitress ever listened to anyone else with Jed around? All right, let him pay for uneaten ones. She would read her mail; plow right through Andy's letter, then creep through one from his mother.

She sputtered as she crept. "I am counting on you to see Andrew keeps his feet dry," wrote Mrs. Carter. And Sheila gulped coffee and crammed half a doughnut into her mouth, then gulped coffee to get it down.

Be calm, she told herself, wishing she could slip an unused doughnut back on her plate before Jed saw what she'd done.

"I am mailing an extra supply direct to you. Please use only lukewarm water in your washing machine."

"Washing machine!" And the second half of the doughnut started after the first.

Ice-gray eyes danced, and the waitress came swiftly, obeying a signal.

"Electric blanket!" Sheila's voice came out full force this time. "Is the woman crazy?"

She handed the letter to her father. Soberly he read it, but his shoulders moved. Finally he sat shaking his head thoughtfully. "That Andy of yours is a better guy than I figured. He knew his Dad could never cut away from her apron strings if she knew what old Andrew was getting into. Figure she's been seeing Westerns and thinks there'll be hotels."

"Well, Jed?"

Jed stood up. "Just trying to reason it out. Is this Andrew coming to file or prove what his son's-"

Sheila wheeled. "You know Andy isn't coming in on my ground."

Nate nodded, his lips twitching. "See what you mean. 'Course there are folks who don't know gold when they see it in the window passing by."

"Yeah," agreed Jed. "Finish that second doughnut and let's get going," he ordered Sheila.

And she, finding she'd worked her way right around to one small piece, lifted it to throw it, saw the waitress, popped it into her mouth and smiled. "Just always taking care of me, aren't you, Jed honey?"

He was first out of the door, but Nate caught it before it smashed back into them.

He had the grace to apologize when they started up the street, and Sheila accepted.

"Now that that's settled," said her father happily, "will you two wildcats join me in a few moments of figuring what to do with Andrew. If we had a little more cash-"

"He'll have that, Dad," Sheila assured him.

"I know, but we can't charge him room and board no matter how much he has and we haven't. And we can't turn the old boy loose in the wilds to make his own way. All he knows is what he's read in a book. If that book didn't happen to be set up here in our hills, he's a gone goose."

They walked absently for a block, then Jed said, "Think we could teach him smoke signals? That old canyon house is in pretty good shape. Needs a new roof and a new floor, but it has walls. We can see the chimney from our place."

"How's the claim?"

"Understand it's not bad; not really worth working, but what around here is right now? Costs more to get it out than you get for it if you hire. Can the old man cook?" he asked Sheila.

"I doubt it," she murmured. "And he isn't that old; he's younger than Dad, sort of."

"Is anybody?" Jed asked, and ducked.

Sheila supposed she should call Andy. She couldn't place a collect call to his office, and when she thought of paying for a daytime call all she could see were pans of beans, a few stews, and a soup bone.

"How's his heart?" Jed barked suddenly. "We're only up a little over two thousand feet, but he's been living at sea level. Add physical exertion at altitude-"

"If it were even later in the year, with prospects of good weather-" Sheila worried.

"Now look, you kids," Nate stepped in front and faced them, "you can talk about hardships. You can point out every tough deal he'll-have to face up here, and there will be plenty.

"But I'm telling you this: any physical strain up here will be nothing to what he'll face with a dream shattered and that wife of his gnawing at his nerves. If he has to crack up, let it be up here where he's doing something he wants to do for a change."

Jed nudged Sheila as she started to protest.

"All right, so I spend a two-pound can of coffee on a telegram," she sighed. "Come on, boys. I'm going to need help composing it."

"Give us a few days' leeway," Jed urged. "I'll go pick up a stove now and start drying the place out. Let's check with the weather bureau, get a five day forecast."

After much waste of paper, the telegram was handed in and the three went on their ways.

When the three converged at the jeep, Sheila's eyes widened. Jed was trying to fit two purchases into the small boxed rear that had replaced the second seat.

"Look what I found," he said happily. "When the old fellow's son comes up to check on his dad, he'll find you still belong to the human race."

"Oh, Jed," was all Sheila could manage. For there, wrapped in some tattered old quilts, were two large windowpanes.

"And a package of dry calcimine. Found both where they're wrecking a store; highway is cutting through." And because Sheila wasn't looking at her father, she accepted happily, giving hardly a glance at the big stove destined for the Carter cabin.

She visited the cabin next day with her mother. It took a two-hour hard climb. Once when Mrs. Norris sat on a boulder to catch her breath, she wondered aloud if Jed had had a motive in suggesting the place.

"We won't be tempted to run over with a pan of hot biscuits or a bowl of soup."

"Why should Jed care?" Sheila asked, but her mother had started on, saving her breath for the climb.

There was an easier way, but that called for a seven-mile hike.

When they came out on the lip of the canyon, which ran north and south, Sheila nodded with satisfaction. This should be paradise to a man who'd lived in adventure stories. A log cabin was set into a shallow half-moon of a cliff, and below and beyond, hundreds of miles of mountains lay like a rumpled rug.

Jed and Danny were busy with the stove, Nate chinking the storm wall.

"Why didn't you take this for yourself?" she asked.

"Look at the soil; think your mother could garden here?"

She hurried forward. "I'll clean out."

"Now don't go spoiling the place for Carter," rapped her father. "Get it all prissied up and he'll think he's back in his wife's home. You girls set out the lunch and keep from under our feet."

They found a spot next to the wall of the east side, sun-warmed and free of the icy wind, rolled up some small boulders and built a low fire for the coffeepot. When the rich aroma came out to mingle with the fragrance of wood smoke, they called the men.

Danny came from an upper hill to say water could be piped down; not much of a flow, but enough to keep one person going if he wasn't impatient.

"Picnic," he added, settling back against a sun-warmed rock.

They all rode back in the jeep, each confident Mr. Carter would be comfortable and at the same time would be unaware of the work that had gone into creating that comfort. He would firmly believe he was roughing it, just like the heroes in the stories he read.

"Seems almost a shame," Danny commented.

"He won't have any idea of the muscle work Sheila put into her place."

Jed and Danny left early the next morning for the coast town, the trailer bumping along behind their jeep. They would bring supplies and such furniture as Mr. Carter might need up to his cabin, dropping him off to walk down to the Norris place.

Sheila spent the morning bringing up water in every available pail to empty into pots and bringing into the cabin as much wood as she could store.

She had finally set her clock by the radio though she was a little hazy as to the date, and now watched it. The clouds still held their burden. If the boys could get back before snowfall, she could run down and talk to Mr. Carter.

Mrs. Norris came up shortly before noon, carrying Nate's field glasses. With these they could watch the distant ledge along which the jeep would travel after dropping Mr. Carter.

Sheila kept the little radio going. At two o'clock snow was falling up the coast.

"If they don't get a hump on," Mrs. Norris remarked, "they're going to find themselves snowed in at the wrong place."

Sheila borrowed the glasses, searched the ridge, then cried, "Mother, look and see if you see what I do."

Obligingly she complied. "I declare that's the boys' jeep, but there are four heads in it, and one's a woman's. And, Sheila, they're going straight on to the canyon lip."

"You don't suppose Mrs. Carter-"

"Who else? Or, maybe that's Andy with a scarf around his head."

Sheila doubted it. He had a ski outfit that made him look like an advertisement for Timber Line, Sun Valley, and Squaw Lodge combined.

"Well, I won't have to cook for a couple of days. Guess I'd better get back home. Want to come along?"

For a moment Sheila was tempted, then she shook her head. "Not after all of the work I did to be snowed in comfortably."

"You'll be all right; fire a few shots if you're not. Nate can make his way up."

Sheila sat before the window looking out on a scene she might have painted as a child: a hodgepodge of dark blues and grays. Behind her, stove and radio vied in making sound effects, but her attention was focused on the sky.

The snow began falling.

Sheila spent a good part of the afternoon at the window looking at nothing, but was finally rewarded with a bleep from the jeep. The boys were making their way back to their own camp.

"Hey, Sheila, open up!" roared a voice outside. "Friend approaches with a box of candy from the best beloved."

"Quit teasing her," ordered Danny. "It's us, Sheila."

The two big young men stomped into the cabin, shaking snow from their shoulders, taking off caps to shake them outside and let in half the icy wind on the mountain.

"Great, isn't it?" Jed asked, and Sheila didn't know whether he meant the storm or the big box he thrust at her.

"Coffee?" she asked hopefully.

"And anything else you have handy," Jed agreed. "Mr. Andrew Carter and his girl friend had no time for food, except to buy."

"Girl friend?"

"It's his daughter, Sheila." Danny told her.

"And wow! Is she a beauty," added Jed. "And is she strong and capable! She mended the jeep for us on the way up."