The Lost Wagon Part 6

He caught up a lantern, lighted it, and with Tad trotting protesting at his heels, stamped out to the barn. The wildcat had already seen to its own liberation. Tad had put him in one of the mules' feed boxes, covered it with a board, and weighted the board with a rock. The imprisoned cat had worked the board free and slipped away.

"Blast his ornery hide!" Tad e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Joe said sternly, "What's that you said?"

"You say it."

"So you can too, huh? Get this, don't let me ever again hear you say anything that even sounds like a cuss word. And no more wildcats."

"It was only a little one."

"You heard me!"

Tad's face was stubborn, a little sullen. For a moment he said nothing and Joe repeated,

"You heard me!"

"Yes, Pa."

Joe lighted their way back to the house, blew the lantern out before he entered and hung it on a wooden peg. The gesture was automatic, and brought about by a lifetime of necessarily frugal living. One never stinted his family, himself, or his animals, in that order, on food. But one never wasted anything at all that cost money. Though the circuit-riding Reverend Haines often thundered to those of his flock who lived in Tenney's Crossing that money was the root of all evil, Joe had never believed that. Money was simply the hardest of all things to come by.

For once hardly savoring the food--and Emma had an almost magic touch with the plainest of viands--Joe ate because it was necessary to eat.

Only vaguely was he aware of Barbara's keeping a watchful eye on the chattering younger children; of Tad, sullenly disappointed and still rebellious but not letting that interfere with his always prodigious appet.i.te. He seemed closest to Emma, in whom everything else always seemed to center, and he knew that she was watching him while she worried about him. Before very long he would be asleep.

The youngsters slid from their chairs and went back to the bits of string they had been playing with. Obviously, for the time being, Emma's sadirons were horses because they were all tied at different places around the room. They wouldn't need him tonight, and Joe excused himself.

"Reckon I'll go see if the sky's still in place."

He rose from the table and stepped outside into the pleasant summer night. There was only blackness, unrelieved by any hint of moon or star light. Tad's dog came to wag a welcoming tail and sniff, and even while Joe petted the dog he thought that Mike wouldn't herd stock and he wouldn't hunt except with Tad. Therefore, in a land where everything had to earn its keep, he was useless. But young ones had to have something and Tad liked his pet largely, Joe suspected, because Mike could whip any other dog, or any other two dogs, in the whole country.

Joe breathed his fill of the night air, went back into the house, and for a few moments idly watched his four younger children at their play.

Emma and Barbara were doing the dishes and, with a trace of sullenness still lingering about him, Tad sat at the table cutting a new sheath for his knife. Joe leaned against the door jamb and drowsed for a second. He seemed to be back in Tenney's store, listening to tales of unlimited land and unlimited opportunity in the west, and he saw his children with those opportunities before them. Joe shook himself awake.

He felt numb with fatigue as he took off his clothes and methodically hung them up. Though there were nights when he liked to stay late with the men at Tenney's store, tonight sleep was more inviting. But for a few minutes he lay wide awake and he knitted his brows because he was troubled about something. However, it was nothing he could clearly define and after a while Joe forced it from his mind. As soon as he did, he fell into a sound slumber. When he awakened, gray dawn again lingered behind the curtains with which Emma had draped the windows. Not for another three quarters of an hour would the rising sun change the gray to gold, and for a few moments Joe knew sheer contentment. Restful slumber had driven away the exhaustion and physical aches of the night before. Beside him, Emma still slept soundly.

Then, out in the lightening morning, Tad's dog barked. Emma came slowly awake, and turned to smile at him.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, darling."

He moved a little nearer, feeling the warmth of her body against his.

Joe remembered his youth and bachelor days as a somewhat fruitless period, and he had not reached fulfillment until his marriage. Their life had never been easy. But it had always been good and this was one of the best parts of every day. For a little while they could be together in complete idleness, each happy because the other was near.

They were rested and refreshed, ready to cope with the problems, big and small, that the day might bring. But in the morning, just before they arose, the big problems seemed small, and the small ones trifling.

"What's the dog barking at?" Emma asked drowsily.

"He's probably found a varmint out in the field. I'll go see. You rest a while yet."

Joe slipped out of bed, stretched luxuriously, stripped off his night s.h.i.+rt and put on his clothes. He went to the door, swung it open and stared stupidly at what he saw.

A rangy black steer stood in the center of the trampled corn patch, chewing placidly on a stalk of corn that projected like a green stick from its mouth. A herd of varicolored cows and steers were foraging listlessly or switching tails in what remained of the oat field. The vegetable garden lay in ruins. Though most of the cattle had filled their stomachs and were now contented to digest the rich fare they had eaten, a few calves and yearlings were still cropping eagerly at anything green that remained.

Joe's immediate reaction was a vast weakness, as though his body were no longer a solid thing but a liquid ma.s.s. He wilted like a melting candle, everything that had gone to make him suddenly dissolved, and only the feeble flame of a sputtering wick remained to prove that there ever had been anything else. Then he braced himself and fought back.

His whole life had been a struggle, with the odds tremendously against him. He'd been close to the breaking point only a month ago, when the desire to go west had swept around him like a flame, and he'd been forced to blot it out and forget it. Forgetting it had left him curiously empty and deflated. But he'd pulled himself together and knuckled down to the job of making this crop a good one. Now the crop lay before him, destroyed. A seething anger began slowly to gather in Joe's chest, and he held on to the doorframe to steady himself.

Emma appeared at his shoulder, and when he looked at her Joe saw that her face was pale. She said nothing but her comforting arm slipped about him. Joe said inanely,

"They're Pete Domley's cattle."

"I know."

Joe exploded, "I'll--!"

He wheeled, went back into the bedroom, and took the rifle from the pegs where he had hung it. His brain was on fire, so that priming and loading the weapon were mechanical functions which he knew nothing about but which he did well because he had done them so often. Not seeing anything else, aware only that destroyers had come to take that which rightly belonged to Joe's family, he leaned against the door jamb and took careful aim at the black steer. His finger tightened on the trigger when Emma's voice cut through the red mists that seethed in his brain.

"No, Joe!"

She looked almost ill, but there was desperation in her words that was far more effective than any physical barrier. She spoke again.

"It is not the way."

The red rage that flamed in his brain burned less hotly. He lowered the gun so that its stock rested on the floor, and looked from her to the destroying cattle. Then sanity rea.s.serted itself. He put the rifle back on its pegs and said dully,

"I'll drive them away."

Joe strode toward the cattle with Tad's dog at his heels. He was well aware that it was futile to drive the raiders away for there was no more damage to be done. Yet he knew that the cattle did not belong where they were, and since there was no one else to chase them, he must.

The rangy black steer in the corn patch looked at him with mildly surprised eyes as Joe approached. He caught up a fallen corn stalk, slashed viciously at the animal's rump, and the steer galloped off to join those in the oat field. A blocky white and black cow with a calf at her heels bolted toward the end of the field and the rest followed. They crowded clumsily through the hedge that marked the boundary of Joe's land and went back into their pasture. There they all stopped to look, as though telling him that they knew they'd done wrong but informing him that they had a right to be where they were. When Joe did not pursue them any farther, the cattle wandered toward their water hole and Joe noted mechanically that there were many more than there had been. Pete had several herds which he kept in different pastures. Probably, guided by the mysterious senses which animals possess and which no man can explain, one or more of the other herds had come to join the cattle Pete kept here and together they had organized the raid.

Joe tossed his head furiously, and the veins in his head and neck were so taut that they stood out and throbbed visibly. The old restlessness returned with a force so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to resist it. He felt himself grow huge, and it seemed that if he took a step in one direction he would be right among the marauding cattle. A step in the other direction would be sure to bring him face to face with Elias Dorrance. There was no place to take his family where they would not be hemmed in and preyed upon by something. Unaccountably he thought of that night when he had walked to Tenney's store and looked at the stars that never shouldered each other aside. Joe voiced his explosive thoughts to the startled dog:

"This place is just too blasted small!"

The dog at his heels, Joe walked back to the house. Crus.h.i.+ng disappointment was a luxury, and he had never been able to afford luxuries. And the past was forever lost, and now this belonged to the past. The fields could be plowed and planted again, and with luck the crops would mature before frost killed them.

Joe looked at Emma, still standing mutely in the doorway, and a hot knife turned in his heart. She seemed, with her eyes, to be asking him for forgiveness. If they'd gone west when he wanted to go, they wouldn't be faced now with the destruction of the whole summer's work.

He could see in Emma's eyes the fear that things would get even worse than they were, that the new crop that Joe would start to plant now might be lost just as the present crop was already lost, and that they would go into the winter with no money, no feed for the animals, no provisions for the family.

He groped for words to comfort her, and could think of only,

"I chased them. Everything's all right now."

"I--I'm terribly sorry, Joe." Her voice trembled.

"Now don't you go fretting your head! I'll get new crops in!"