He reached up and laid his hand over hers. ‘I wish I could be as confident as you are. Every letter I get from Theo is full of hope and reassurance, and yet what have we actually done? We’ve found a railroad route over the Sierras, we’ve surveyed it, and we’ve filed the papers. All at our own expense. So now what happens? Do we have to wait for war? Do we have to dig our way through the mountains with our own bare hands?’

‘Collis,’ said Hannah, ‘you mustn’t lose faith.’

‘I know,’ he told her. ‘But it’s damned difficult not to, sometimes. I used to have visions of that railroad. I could see the rails themselves, stretching all the way towards the horizon. But now, whenever I think about it, the rails just melt away in front of my eyes, as if they were cast out of nothing but ice.’

‘Collis …’ said Hannah. ‘God will find a way.’

‘God?’ he asked her. ‘Don’t you think you and I have called on God a few too many times already?’

‘You don’t think that He would help us again?’

Collis released her hand, stood up, and walked across to the rail of the veranda. There was a row of apple trees in the small, dusty yard, and their leaves had caught the last of the daylight, so that they flamed like torches against the lavender-coloured sky.

‘I don’t want to take His generosity in vain, that’s all,’ Collis said quietly. ‘I prayed that your life should be saved, when you were dying in Panama, and it was. I prayed that we should be able to marry, and we were. But miracles don’t come free. Even if you don’t have to pay for them, someone else does, and that’s what I’m afraid of. This railroad has already cost more than I care to think about. Only God knows what would happen if I asked for divine intervention.’

‘There’s no harm in trying, Collis,’ Hannah said intently. ‘There’s no harm in prayer.’

‘Isn’t there?’ he said, glancing at her sideways.

She reached for his hand again. ‘Prayer brought us together, and kept us together. Where’s the harm in that?’

‘You’d never understand.’

Hannah frowned. ‘What’s come over you, Collis? You talk as if I’ve done something terrible.’

He stared at her. ‘Maybe you have. Maybe you’ve convinced me that as long as I believe the Lord is on my side, I can do anything I want. Build railroads over impossible mountains, ruin women’s reputations, blackmail respectable businessmen, even take innocent people’s lives.’

‘You’ve never taken anybody’s life.’

‘Haven’t I?’