“I should think she would find this an opportunity,” he agreed. He had caught a hint of returning fires in the calm gray eyes.
The thin lips were pursed musingly. “But it is pretty hard for her to leave New York. Her publishers keep her pretty busy.”
Rickard’s silence was not inactive. He was thinking of the diverted lives; of Brandon living out his banishment in a western desert tent; George Verne weaving her stories hundreds of miles away in a New York apartment-house.
“The separation is hard on both of us.” The man was revealing his renunciations in this instant of homesickness; his guards were down. “When my trouble came, I had hoped that her work might make it possible for her to come out with me, at least half her time, that she might gather material. But they crowd her with orders; she works right through the hot summers; I don’t remember when she has taken a vacation. I run out once in a while to try to stop her, to make her play a little. But my cough comes back; she has the habit of grind by this time. I’m hoping this will appeal to her as a chance; it’s a tremendous setting, this!”
He chatted about valley happenings for a few minutes before leaving.
“Anything I can do for you?” inquired Rickard.
“Thank you, no. I’m off now to the Crossing to see Marshall’s gate. And I want to see Matt Hamlin. He was my host once, years ago.”
Rickard’s mail that morning included a letter from his chief at Tucson. Marshall delivered a peremptory mandate from Faraday. The borrow-pits and muck-ditches were to be constructed according to precedent. The stream-side excavating was to be continued. Marshall added that this order admitted no argument.
Rickard, fuming helplessly, read the letter to MacLean, Jr. “Everybody sticking his precious fingers in the pie. Tying me up with orders. What does Faraday know about it, I’d like to know?” MacLean observed a Hardin inflection.
The mail had brought other exasperations. A classmate he had been wiring for, an engineer specialist on hydraulics, was ill. There was another letter from Marshall, with enclosures. More complaints from Chicago. Rickard declared he could “smell” Washington.