"Of course not. I don't like it either."
"Does Vickers know the boiler's arrived?" Sam asked.
"Not yet, I think," Mr. Jay said. "My information is that his messenger was delayed. I dare say that he will get word, though, before the day is out. And I dare say he will send Mr. Tesno down there at once."
Finding no comfort in the solitude of his room, Tesno left the hotel and strolled aimlessly up the street. His big Raymond watch showed only a little after eleven. He would wait till noon, he decided, before dropping in on Persia.
He stopped at the new tobacco store and bought a handful of cigars. Lighting one, he sauntered past the livery barn and up the slope behind it. Most of the timber had been logged off here, and brush and ferns were already claiming the ground. Finding a degree of solace in the faint warmth of the sun, he pulled himself up on a stump and found he had a view that drew him out of himself.
It was a cloudless day, and the range jutted its ragged vertebrae into a sky as blue as a mountain lake. Below him, the town seemed a naked, ugly fungus sprung newly from the earth. The camp, almost hidden by pines, was less intrusive. Beyond the gulch, above it, the crisp black arch of the tunnel scarred Runaway Mountain.
Here it all is, he thought, spread out in front of me. I've either got to become a part of it or get the hell out. He tried to plan what he would say to Persia. He would tell her flatly that the time had come for the gamblers to go, he guessed. He would ask her to have Madrid clear them out, all of them. If she stalled or refused—well, he would do it himself. Or resign.
The townhouse lay off to his left, and he found himself staring at it, thinking that she was in there somewhere, wondering what she did with her mornings. He watched two men come out of the back of the far part of the building, each carrying a small bundle. At this distance he could tell little about them except that they must have come up from the cattle country east of the mountains. One wore woolly chaps. Both wore Stetsons and walked with the peculiar swagger of men in high-heeled boots. They disappeared behind one of the outbuildings, and when they came into sight again, they were mounted on horses. He watched them ride eastward out of the gulch. He supposed they had come to sell beef or hay, or on some such business, and he quickly forgot them.
When his watch read almost noon, he started downhill, avoiding the street and heading for the townhouse. Persia answered his knock, smiling when she saw him. It wasn't the polite and pretty company smile now but a special one, personal and tender, an eager doorway closed quickly behind him as she came into his arms.