Read Online The Passionate and the Proud by Vanessa Royall - Free Book Online Page B

a thick, quilted coverlet rested on a rich rectangle of carpeting. The washstand, also of polished mahogany, bore a pitcher and basin of the finest porcelain. Two ornamentally carved straightback chairs flanked a sturdy desk that gleamed dully in the subdued lighting. The tent was clean and cool.
    “Sit down, Emmalee.”
    It was an order, not an invitation. Emmalee sat down.
    “My fare is a hundred and thirty dollars, payable in advance.”
    Emmalee was about to explain that she didn’t have a hundred and thirty dollars, but Torquist took a seat behind the desk and went on speaking.
    “First there are certain matters to consider,” he said. “Matters much more important than mere money.”
    “Yes, sir.” More important than money? This set of priorities sounded encouraging.
    “Do you know why I am making this mighty venture, Emmalee?” Torquist demanded. “This great trek west?”
    Emmalee decided to use the information she’d learned from Randy Clay. Torquist might be pleased to know that she was aware of his ideals.
    “Yes, I do,” she responded briskly. “Parts of the eastern United States have grown oversettled and—”
    The wagonmaster nodded, put up his hand, and interrupted. He wanted to do his own explaining. “Jefferson and God,” he said. “I’m taking this community of souls out across the Rocky Mountains because of Thomas Jefferson and God Almighty.”
    Emmalee decided to keep quiet.
    “What do you know about Thomas Jefferson, Miss Alden? That he was our third president, a Founding Father, a great man?”
    Emmalee nodded energetically.
    “Of course. Everyone but the most benighted fool knows those things. But Jefferson was more. He was a prophet. Miss Alden.” Torquist thumped the big desk with the flat of a powerful hand. “He was a prophet scorned !”
    Nothing Randy Clay had told her about Horace Torquist prepared Emmalee for this kind of display. The whitemaned leader was as different from blunt, businesslike Burt Pennington as any man she could imagine.
    “Jefferson,” Torquist railed, “believed that America—the idea and the reality of America—could be preserved only if our country remained true to its agrarian roots, true to the land, Emmalee. He was a farmer, do you see what I mean? The farmer is close to the soil, gives to it, receives from it, and both are made strong. But people here in the east have forgotten that purity, that essential nobility, in the pursuit of crass wealth. Moneychangers have invaded the temple. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Oh, yes, indeed,” said Emmalee.
    “God knows it too, Emmalee. Mark my words. God knows what has become of our country. And that is why He is showing us the way to a new, unsullied horizon. The west. It is our last chance to make good the bounty He has lain before us, and it is my conviction that this time, this time He will not permit corruption and decay and degradation to ruin His handiwork. We shall have to fight for it, of course, and fight hard. But we shall be victorious.”
    Torquist paused a moment, savoring his rhetorical flight.
    “Are you a fighter, Emmalee?” he asked quietly.
    Emmalee hesitated. Was this some sort of a trick? Torquist had said that “hard fighting” might be required in the settling of the west. But he was also a man of God, whose followers had been admonished to turn the other cheek.
    “I stand up for myself when I have to,” she said, truthfully but cautiously.
    Torquist was pleased. “That’s what I like to hear, Emmalee. Stand up for yourself, and for the rest of the community. We’ve got to stick together if we want to beat Burt Pennington to Olympia and, even more importantly, to claim the best land out there for farming purposes.”
    “But Mr. Pennington is ready to leave St. Joe almost any day now,” Emmalee said.
    The wagonmaster, who seemed to have been in the process of warming up to her, now grew instantly suspicious. And angry.
    “What do you know of Burt Pennington?” he