The car was raising great clouds of dust on the dry dirt road. "Uh huh.

The money came from Mother's side of the family. Since she died, I more or less keep the old man in emba.s.sies. She left him only cigarette money." She was very cold and matter of fact about it.

"I see," he said.

"Don't be so shocked. I always talk the way I feel. The old man's a stuffed shirt and you know it. If he hadn't married money the best he'd get out of life would be a career as a floor-walker in Macy's. No, he's too aristocratic for Macy's. In Wanamaker's Philadelphia store. Do me a favor. There's a big heavy ledger in the side door pocket. Take it out and put it on my lap. No, with the binding facing the radiator. Thanks."

"What's it for?"

She opened the front ventilator in the cowl. The gush of wind which poured in lifted her skirt to the edge of the book. "See?" she said.

"Keeps my skirt from blowing over my head when I open the vent."

Hall glanced at her bare legs. "Some day you'll catch cold," he smiled.

"What have you got planted on your land? Looks to me like soy."

"It is soy. Three thousand acres."

"That makes you a farmer."

"The h.e.l.l it does. That makes me an Amba.s.sador's daughter. The Rockefeller committee planted it, with local help, of course. It's part of a demonstration project. The idea is to teach them how to grow new crops so that after the war Detroit can keep the home price on soy down by importing just enough soy to keep it growing in South America. All I did was donate my land."

"What happens to the proceeds when you sell the crop?"

"Oh, I suppose the old man will make a big show of donating the proceeds to the Red Cross in San Hermano."

"That the house?"

"That's my hideaway. The old man can't come out here. He's violently allergic to soy beans."

She started to talk about the soy-bean project and the by-products of its crop. The words flowed without effort. She knew the facts, the theories, the statistics, the chemistry of the soy-bean industry as well as she knew the road to her house. She discussed them as she might yesterday's weather, or a neighbor's dog. I don't give a d.a.m.n about soy beans, she seemed to be saying, I just know about them because I was roped in to lend my land and I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll give my land without knowing why.

"Well, that's enough talk about soy, I guess," she said when she turned off the road to the lane leading to her house.

"I don't imagine there's anything else to know about it," Hall said.

"Here we are, Matt."

"Say, it is a nice house."

"Hollow tile and stucco. I found the plans in an old issue of _House and Garden_."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned. It looks as Spanish as the Cathedral."

"Oh, it should," Margaret said. "It's supposed to be an authentic New Mexican ranch house. Let's go in and get a drink."

Like the railroad station, the house was also covered with tiger vines.

It was built around a flagstone patio. Leaded gla.s.s doors opened from the patio to the two-story-high beamed living room, the kitchen, and the back corridor. This corridor opened on both the living room and the stairs to the upstairs quarters. Inside, the living room was furnished like a quality dude ranch--hickory and raw-hide furniture, Mexican _serapes_ and dress sombreros hanging on the walls and over the large stone fireplace, a Western plank bar with a battered spittoon at the rail and a lithograph of the Anheuser-Busch Indians scalping General Custer. The saloon art cla.s.sic, of course, hung in a yellow oak frame behind the bar.

"Holy G.o.d," Hall said, "when I was a kid this litho used to give me nightmares. It used to hang in the dirty window of Holbein's saloon on West Third Street in Cleveland--that's my home town--and every time I pa.s.sed it I used to see more gore pouring down old Custer's throat."

Margaret took off her eye shade and went behind the bar. "A drink should drive away that terrible memory," she said. "Scotch?"

"Black rum, if you have it."

"Coming right up. That's a pirate's drink, though. Although when you come right down to it, you do look like a freebooter."

Hall had his foot on the bar. "Better smile when you say that, Pard," he said.

She smiled out of the side of her mouth and laughed. "Here's to Captain Kidd," she said, raising her Scotch.

"This is good rum."

"Wait. I can improve it." She reached below the bar for a small wooden platter and a lemon. Deftly, she carved off a slice of thick skin, twisted it above an empty gla.s.s, dropped the peel into the gla.s.s and covered it with rum. "Try it this way."

"It is good. So you're a bartender, too!"

Margaret refilled her own gla.s.s and sat down on the edge of a wheeled settee. "Right now I'm farmer, bartender, chambermaid and cook. If you must know, outside of the dogs in the yard and the horses in the shed, we're the only living things within five miles. All my help is in the next town celebrating some saint's day or something."

"You'll manage to survive," Hall smiled.

"I'm a pretty self-sufficient lady," she said. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

"I'm not blind."

"Hungry?"

"I could eat. What's cooking?"

"Sandwiches. Cold beef sandwiches and coffee. And if you're nice you can have some _montecado a la_ Skidmore."

"Real ice cream?"

"No. But a reasonable facsimile. Let's go to the kitchen. You can help me carry the tray and stuff."

They ate at the monastery table in the living room. Margaret told Hall the story of how she had supervised the building of the house and then ordered her furniture from a dozen different stores between Houston and San Hermano. She spoke of plumbing and artesian wells and wiring systems with the same detailed knowledge she had displayed of soy-bean culture.

"Do you know San Hermano politics as well as you know soy beans and housing?" he asked.

"Better," she smiled. "I'm closer to it. But we've got plenty of time to talk about San Hermano. I thought we'd saddle up two horses and go for a ride in the backwoods. Do you ride?"

"After a fashion. I spent a summer vacation as a ranch hand in Wyoming once."

Margaret concentrated on Hall's feet for a minute. "Oh, I can fix you up with boots and breeches. You sit here and I'll go on up, change, and find you riding things. Just turn on a radio and relax or fix yourself a drink while I'm changing."

She went upstairs to her room. Hall lit his pipe, turned on the radio.

He found a program of Mexican marimba music.

"That's swell," Margaret shouted through the open transom of her door.

He could hear the water splashing into the bath upstairs. He lay back and closed his eyes, the radio keeping him awake. In San Hermano, the announcer looked at the studio clock, gave the station's call letters, and read another "no change" bulletin on the health of the President.