Shadow on the Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

It forced the water out, and held it. The fight was over.” He gestured toward the Washington cliffs. “It’s all gone now but the traces that tell the story. We have a bright land of golden sunshine left to us with only one shadow falling across it.”
    â€œI’ve heard that somewhere,” Lee said thoughtfully. “It must be a party slogan.”
    â€œIt could well be,” the little man said.
    â€œDo you know Hanna Racine?”
    â€œI know her very well. I saw you talking with her on the boat, and she may have said something like that. It’s a favorite expression of mine. What I was trying to show you, my friend, was the cosmic principle of conflict. It’s inherent here, the same as everywhere else on the face of the earth.” He made an all-inclusive motion. “We quarreled with Britain. The whites fought the Indians. White men fight each other.”
    â€œI take it you don’t believe in this cosmic principle.”
    The little man smiled. “That’s beside the point. I have to accept conflict whether I like it or not, and I have to fight to gain my ends the same as you or anyone else does.” He tossed the frayed cigar butt away. “Violence is brewing again. But, of course, you know that. A railroad man thrives on violence.”
    It was a shrewd guess. Lee, glancing obliquely at him, wondered whether it was entirely a guess. He said: “I don’t know about railroad men thriving on violence. The Oregon Trunk wants to build a railroad, and I want to buy right of way. We are not asking for violence of any kind.”
    â€œBut you will have it. Harriman’s Deschutes Railroad wants to build, too, and there are places in the cañon where you won’t be sitting side-by-side and cheering the other on.” He nodded toward the incoming train. “I believe this is ours. Perhaps we’ll meet again.” He moved away.
    The Columbia Southern two-car train backed slowly up the spur. Lee waited while the crate imprisoning Willie was brought from the baggage room and put aboard. Then, climbing into the coach, he saw Hanna seated at the other end, the little man standing in the aisle and talking to her. Hanna sat half turned in her seat, and, when she saw Lee, she broke into the little man’s words. He nodded, and sat down beside her. Lee, taking a seat in the opposite end of the coach, fancied that she had been afraid he was going to sit with her and that she preferred the little man’s company to Lee Dawes’s.
    Stretching his long legs in front of him, Lee leaned back, his thoughts on the little man and the deliberate way he had struck up a conversation. Whatever the man’s object was, Lee at least had discovered he was a close friend of Hanna Racine’s, and Hanna believed in the people’s railroad.
    It took most of the afternoon to reach Shaniko. Lee stared through the window while the little train toiled up the steep grade of Spanish Hollow and wound along the cañon until it reached the plateau. There it rolled with increased speed through the wheat fields, on through Wasco, Moro, Grass Valley, and Kent, and up the steeper climb to Shaniko. There was the sharpness of the sun upon the earth, upon the young grain bulging now with the growth-urge of spring, and then the occasional flow of shadow as a cloud crossed the sun. The long run of the Cascades lay westward—blue in the distance except for white, sharp-peaked Hood and Jefferson. As the train approached Shaniko, grain fields gave way to the forlorn emptiness of the sagebrush desert.
    Lee saw now that he had ridden the length of the Columbia Southern, that Stevens had been right when he had said that this was not a feasible route into the interior. The grade was too steep. And he saw more clearly than before how important was the Deschutes cañon—twisting a dozen miles to the west—as an avenue for draining the great pool of wealth held in