It seemed to her that these women should have started at the sight of her as at a death's-head. There was nothing but friendly interest in their eyes, and their obliviousness gave her the comfort that darkness gives to a tortured animal. The hours were going by, relentlessly taking her one hope.
"Do you own any California land?"
"Yes." There would be a flicker of pride in tired eyes. "My husband just bought forty acres last week, near Merced. We're going to pay for it out of his wages, and have it to go to some day!"
"Isn't that fine! Oh yes, the land near Merced is very good land. Your husband's probably done very well. Do you know any one else who's looking for a ranch?" No one did.
She kept on doggedly. When she left each cottage desperation clutched at her throat, and for an instant her breath stopped. But she was so hopeless that she could do nothing but clench her teeth and go on. At the next door she smiled again and her voice was pleasant. "Good afternoon! Might I ask you for a drink of water? Oh, thank you! Yes, isn't it hot? I'm selling farm land. Do you own a California ranch?"
It was when she approached the sixteenth cottage that the steps, the wilted vine, the little porch went out in blackness before her eyes. But she escaped the catastrophe, and almost at once saw them clearly again and felt the gate-post under her tight fingers. The taste in her mouth was blood. She had bitten her lips quite badly, but wiping her mouth with her handkerchief she found that it did not show. She was past caring for anything but finding some one who would buy land. All her powers of thinking had narrowed to that and were concentrated upon it like a strong light on a tiny spot.
In the twentieth cottage a woman said that she had heard that Mr. MacAdams, who worked in the boiler factory, had been to Fresno to buy land and had not bought it. Helen thanked her, and went to the boiler factory.
It was a large building, set high above the ground. Circling it, she saw a man in overalls and undershirt lounging in a wide doorway above her. The roar and bang and whir of machinery behind him drowned her voice, and he stared at her as at an apparition. When he leaped down beside her and understood her demand to see Mr. MacAdams his expression of perplexity changed to a broad grin. MacAdams was in a boiler, he said, and still grinning, he climbed back to the door-step and drew her up by one arm into a huge room shaking with noise. He led her through crashing confusion and with his pipe-stem pointed out MacAdams.
MacAdams was crouching in a big cylinder of steel. In his hand he held a jerking riveter, and the boiler vibrated with its racket. His ears were stuffed with cotton, his eyes intent on his work. In mute show Helen thanked the man beside her and, going down on her hands and knees, crawled into the boiler. When she touched MacAdams's shoulder the riveter stopped.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "I heard you were interested in buying a ranch."