The Way West Part 17

"I got the cattle south, beyond where I figured to put the fire."

"Don't know as it makes any difference. No matter where they're at, they'll likely run if the buffler do."

"We'll set the biggest fire south then. And if we got time, we'll cut some sage, I thought, so's to be sure this wood catches good enough."

"Need a wagon for haulin'," Holdridge put in. "I got one as has some room in it with the cook stuff out."

"Find a team then and bring it on."

d.i.c.k said, "I'll see can I beg some salt."

Evans began chopping again. When Holdridge came up with the wagon, Evans helped load it and went to the next pile and helped with it and afterwards led the way, showing where the fires would be. They cut sage at each place, and at each one Evans put a man in charge, taking the south post himself. "Get what help you can. An' take rifles. Shootin' might turn 'em if they run." He studied the sky and the land lying red under it and the herds still to be made out from the light of long streamers slanting above the cloud. "I don't guess you need to fire up yet. We got time to eat."

Evans went to his wagon, joining d.i.c.k there for the supper Rebecca had ready. "Brownie et?" he asked.

"Come in and gobbled a mouthful and went back to the cattle. That boy works too hard, Lije."

"No helpin' it tonight. Everybody works. I got to get out there and tell the guards not to stick if the buffalo start runnin'. We'll set the tent later." He put his plate aside and got up, telling himself he'd best get more powder and ball while he thought of it, and also the Colt's six-shoot pistol that he never had bothered to carry. It was loaded but not capped.

When he came back, d.i.c.k said, "I raised some salt here and there." He sat cross-legged on the ground near the pot. "Not that I know it'll do any good." As he spoke, a little gust of wind worried at them.

"That wind!" Rebecca pa.s.sed biscuits she'd cooked in the Dutch oven. Evans knew it wasn't the wind she was thinking of, but of the storm maybe a-coming and such a sea of buffalo around and Brownie out with the cattle. Still, he couldn't baby Brownie. Brownie was a grown man, almost, and as a man had to take his chances with the rest.

The gust whipped at them again, and d.i.c.k said, with the look in his face of expecting something, "She's comin', Lije."

Evans got up, a sudden anxiety on him. "I'll round up the men." The wind took the words from his mouth. Mixed with the whine of it he could hear the restless bellowing of the buffalo, now sounding far off and now close. The red light still lay on the land, grown to a kind of dark fire like that shed by a camp blaze. A bolt of lightning jagged down the western sky, and thunder rumbled.

He saw as he pa.s.sed a curve of the circle that Weatherby was holding services, though not a handful listened. Some of the words came to him. "Let us put our trust in G.o.d. He rules the earth and the seas and the mountains and the savage tribes and the wild beasts and the storms ..."

"Patch! Brewer! Tadlock! Inskol All of you! To the fires!"

Of a sudden the world was all wind, all fierce and driving wind that choked the words back and scoured his throat with sand. "Mack! Gorham!" The cloud reared up, closing off the dark fire, and let loose a bolt that stunned the eye. In the dark that followed it, all Evans could see was a stream of sparks blown from a campfire. "Fairmanl" He didn't know when it was he had begun to run. "Patch! Come on!"

He ran south, feeling his shot pouch beat on his middle and his pistol bulky in his belt. A small rain drilled at the side of his face, and lightning blinded him again and thunder boxed his ears.

He grabbed wood from the pile, and sage, and s.h.i.+elded it with his body and poured powder out and reached for flint and steel, until he felt someone at his side and, in the glare of a bolt, saw that it was Patch stooping with his firemaker. The powder flashed and went out. Patch pulled a rag from his pocket and rubbed a hand of powder in it and tried the spark again. The fire started slow, nibbling at the edges of sage while the wind tried to tear it away, but at last it was going, blowing low to the east.

"Keep feedin' it! I got to see the herders." Evans ran again, heading still to the south, bowed into the wind that tried to slant him off, crying to himself, "Come on, Brownie!" as if the wish could reach him.

He ought to have had sense enough to bring a saddle horse, he told himself, and then the night exploded. Lightning tore the sky and broke the earth and left after its crack and boom a sudden, breathy silence in which he thought he heard the thin howling of wolves. He thought he heard it and then it went from his mind, for under it, under the high whine of the wind, another sound came on, deep like a far drum. He slowed. He had to tell himself this was it, this was a million buffalo gone crazy, the pound of their hoofs beginning to shake the world so that not even thunder sounded.

He ran again, crying, "Brownie!" into the wind, into the swelling drum of hoofs, crying, "Guards! Run!"

Closer, he heard the newer rumble and a bolt split the sky, and he saw the cattle sweeping to him, pushed, he took it, by the buffalo beyond. He stumbled ahead and fell and drew himself up and fired into the black memory of them, hearing the poor pop of the rifle, seeing the little fire jet from the muzzle. The end had come, the end to Brownie and Rebecca and all his good knowing of them, but he ran on, tearing the pistol from his belt and firing while he ran until there was nothing to do but wait for the charging heads and the outflung hoofs and the long trample over him. No need to run for the fire. No time to reload. Stand straight and go down and call it quits. Hurrah for Oregon!

Noise drowned out thought and feeling. The swell and beat of it drowned them. There was no feeling but noise, thunder shaking out of the earth, rolling to the shaken land, unseen and awful thunder, all the brutes of G.o.d gone mad while G.o.d hid beyond the night. He thought it queer that he should notice now the camphor smell of broken sage.

He felt the first beasts pounding by. He could make out the black blur of their flight. He breathed the breath of them and knew their heat and waited, all of him caught up and held in the moment.

Lightning flashed again. He saw the cattle heaving by on his right and the humped buffalo hard on their heels, hump beyond hump to the end of sight, and he thought without feeling that the stampede might miss the corral.

He knew he had a chance now. He might make it back to the fire. But he stood still, he didn't know for how long, fronting up to his time, if this was it, while his body shook to the shake of the world and the face of Brownie kept forming in his mind.

After a while he realized it was all over. The drag of the herd had beaten by and was gone and the drum of feet was drawing off, and the wind had gentled and a softer rain was falling. Back of him he saw Patch's fire and back of it the fires of camp.

Feeling flooded back on him then, relief and misery both, so that his voice broke as he ran, "Brownie! You there, Brownie?"

No one answered. He heard Patch call to him, but he ran on, tripping on the battered sage and calling out. A hump would show him, a hump that had been a horse, or a flat, thin shadow. "You here, Brownie?"

He didn't know Patch was with him until Patch took him by the arm. "Better come on, Evans. If he isn't at camp, we'll get all the men out."

He pulled away, resentful and afraid to speak, and Patch came to him again, gently, saying, "He may be at camp, you know."

Evans let himself be led, noticing but hardly noticing the rain and the lightning flas.h.i.+ng fitful to the east, thinking how could he face Rebecca.

Hoofs, soft in the muddy ground, sounded ahead. Patch called out, "Who is it?"

"That you, Patch!" It was d.i.c.k's voice.

"Right."

"Seen Evans?"

"He's here."

"Pa! Are you all right, Pa?"

The young voice sounding in the night, the boy's face with a boy's high hopefulness, the voice bending him down, bursting his chest. "All right. I was afeard for you, Son."

"I told Ma you'd make out. d.i.c.k come and stayed with us herders, and when the storm broke, and the stampede, we rode wild as could be. I swear, it was fun."

The letdown from worry left Evans suddenly tired and sore. He said, "Fun, was it!" So it was d.i.c.k again, d.i.c.k always Johnny-on-the-spot while he himself was stumbling around in the dark like a fool. A man would think d.i.c.k couldn't make a mistake.

Patch spoke up quietly. "If it hadn't been for Evans that herd would have overrun the train. He ran out into it, firing."

"You can always count on Lije," d.i.c.k said.

Evans found only a grunt for that, while the notion came and grew in him that he ought to apologize for words thought if not said. A right man couldn't prize d.i.c.k enough.

"Take us half a day, at the least, to gather up them cattle," d.i.c.k went on, "and then like as not we won't find 'em all."

Chapter Sixteen.

JUDITH FAIRMAN straightened slowly and pressed her two hands at her sides, easing the ache in her back. "Toddie, you stay close." She sighed while she looked up at Independence Rock where some of the men were climbing, hunting good places to chisel their names. Was.h.i.+ng was a hard ch.o.r.e, even on a balmy day on the bank of a good stream. And riding and walking were hard, and mornings were hard, though she hadn't been bothered much by nausea but only by a feeling of discomfort and distention that sometimes at night brought her bolt upright in bed. She would belch then, from deep in her, and Charles would stir and ask, "You all right, Judie?" and she would sink back, relieved but burdened by the unloveliness of the act while she rea.s.sured him.

She wasn't the only one, and she found courage in that. There was Mrs. Brewer, who accepted her condition as she might have accepted the coming of a season, and Mrs. Patch, who hadn't much to say, and Mrs. Byrd, who made a kind of meek to-do, hoping again and again that she'd have a roof over her head and a decent place to lie when her time came. Maybe there were others, keeping the secret in them along with the seed. If there weren't, how did they manage? Mrs. Mack, for instance, with her wide-set, green eyes and her good shape?

The question came and went, leaving the thought that today was a day of relaxation and play for all except the women. The men and boys climbed the rock, and children romped, and even the oxen, lying in the eastward bottom, had a chance to rest thteir feet. Charles had ridden out with d.i.c.k Summers and Lije Evans. They would make a scout, they said, and bring in meat, returning in plenty of time for the Fourth of July oration that Tadlock was to deliver, prematurely, for today was the first.

Work or no, she welcomed this one day in camp. What did it really matter, except in men's imaginations, if the backward trains caught up? What did it matter if they pa.s.sed, as one -the first so far- had done today? It was a little company with little stock that overtook them and waved and shouted and went on, too bent on leaders.h.i.+p to waste time with a visit. Their captain informed Evans, though, that four of his command had died. Well, let them go. Let them race. Let them put the eager miles between them and the graves behind.

Standing while the pain in her back lessened, Judith thought that the whole train needed a rest, even though it had made poor time since the crossing of the Platte. One whole day and part of another had been given to a hunt for the cattle that the stampede had scattered. Most of the men, delegated by Evans, had ridden hard while the rest watched camp and fiddled with repairs and chafed at inaction and wished that the sun would go down, for it cast a breathless heat. The women had cooked and sewed and longed for a patch of shade and clean, cold water and had acted fretfully with the fretful children hanging to their skirts. The riders found parts of the herd here and parts of it there and came trailing them in, one after another, sitting their saddles as if too cramped to change positions, their hats pulled low over burned faces. Some of the cattle had mired in the sinkholes and some had crippled themselves and some just weren't to be found. Three of the twenty left behind had belonged to Charles.

"Don't get too close to the water, Toddie."

Yes, she said to herself, the sight of idleness was good, though she was not a part of it -the wagons halted tongue to tail along the green banks of the Sweet.w.a.ter, the casual breeze stirring the loosened covers, the cattle and horses farther out under the lazy guard of men who had dismounted and sat half reclining in the gra.s.s, letting ground and breeze renew them; and westward the rock, the bald, gray lift of rock waiting the ages out. Cool water. Shade. Rest. Only around her, only here where the women worked was there the purposeful fret of living. Only here were the little, draining businesses of rubbing and scuffing and wringing out and hanging on a line. Did the other women feel the load of things, the day-by-day doing of ch.o.r.es that would just have to be done again? Mrs. Tadlock? Mrs. Daughcrty? Mrs. Gorham? Mrs. McBee? Rebecca Evans? Any of these with wet, red hands that the dry air would chap worse still? Did they feel the load? And, beyond it, did they share the dark disquiet that afflicted her, the wordless apprehension that made all troubles big?

She knew she was feeling sorry for herself, but for the moment she didn't care. She bent over and soaped a s.h.i.+rt and began rubbing it on the board that slanted from the tub and asked Tod again to stay close to her. Charles had set blocks under the tub, but still she had to stoop and, stooping, bring back the ache in her back. Underclothes, s.h.i.+rts, Tod's things, dresses, a pair of woolen breeches she felt sure would shrink despite all pains. Wash them and wear them and wash again, week on week to Oregon, to the end of life. For a little while she let herself think she suffered more than others because her life had been gentler. She knew what it was to have black help, to find time for the pianoforte and for needlework and to care for her hands. A tear slid from her eye and fell on the washboard and disappeared in suds.

She pinched other tears off, impatient with herself and touched by guilt. Work was work for anybody, and she always had worked if not at such long drudgery. She always wanted to work; it was just that she was tired now and filled with forebodings.

"Tod, please don't wander off. Come back. Mother's busy."

He lifted his face to hers, his eyes light blue like her own, his cheeks and mouth still marked by babyhood. "Can't I wade, Mother?"

"Afterwhile. You stay close now."

While she spoke to him, Rebecca Evans came from the line she had strung. "I got my things all done," she said. "Lemme help you. You look tuckered." Her strong hands went to work with the rinsing and wringing. It occurred to Judith that she was the type of woman for the trail. She was stout and a.s.sured .And able and unafraid. If ever a cloud hung over her, no one knew it. If ever the thought of miles depressed her, she didn't let on.

Miles. Distance. Distance was the enemy, not Indians or crossings or weather or thirst or plains or mountains, but distance, the empty, awesome face of distance, the miles on wrinkled miles of it, the levels and hills and hollows and bluffs, unconquerable by the slow turn of wheels or the creaking step of oxen. There was no end to it, not even any shortening. Morning and night it was there unchanged, hill and cloud and sky line beyond reach or reckoning. Sometimes she wondered at the stubborn, crazy courage of men who thought that day on day would add to Oregon.

"It seems so far," she said to Rebecca.

"Don't it, though?" Rebecca tossed a twist of clothes into a basket. "Tell you what helps, though. Don't think how far. Just think one day at a time."

"And one piece of underwear at a time, and one s.h.i.+rt?"

"I declare, Judie, you are wore out!"

Judith felt the quick, inner spasm of tears and wrestled it down, ashamed but close to crying still at this excitement of self-pity. She turned her face away, to Toddie who was punching at the ground with a stick. "I wish I was more like you, Rebecca."

"Like me?"

"Things don't seem to bother you."

"An' I never feel broke down or sad or anything?"

"Do you?"

"Sometimes I walk on my lip, it's drawed so low."

"No one would know."

Rebecca's breath came out in a little explosion. "Don't ever think that what you feel ain't felt by all at one time or another. I get down in my mind, and then I think I got a good boy and a good man, and I ought to be praisin' the Lord. You got a good man yourself, Judie."

Judith agreed by nodding. A kind and thoughtful man, Charles was, earnest and well intentioned if not forceful even in the quiet way in which Lije Evans was forceful. Give him time, she thought, give him Evans' years, and he might be so. "I don't know why I get so gloomy."

"Same with all of us, more or less," Rebecca answered while she kept busy with her hands. "Less with me, now. I'm pretty perky mostly. Course, with you it's different. Maybe a woman's got to feel sick and low and go through birthin' so's to set a proper store by her baby."

"Maybe."

"A woman ain't cut like a man, not so adventuresome or rangin' and likin' more to stay put -but still we foller 'em around, and glad to do it, too." Rebecca laughed a throaty, halfrueful laugh as she pitched another twist into the basket. She was, thought Judith, more masculine than most women. She had a broad face, like her husband, and the suggestion of a mustache on her sun-darkened lip. Rebecca went on, "Your boy there's chipper as a squirrel."

"We think he's cured of the fever." She ought to be overjoyed at that. She ought to be singing thanks to this high, raw country and the sharp smell of sage that d.i.c.k Summers said was medicine itself. She ought to be happy at the tanned glow of health in the delicate, still-baby face bent now to the ground and the stick that stirred it. But old misgivings rode her, the weeks-long sense of overhanging misfortune. In her was the heavy impulse to retreat, to flee to the plantation in Kentucky, to go to her mother, who lived graciously in Lexington, to visit her sister, safe and happy at Vicksburg. She hoped the letters she had written and left at Fort Laramie to be carried by the first eastbound travelers seemed as cheerful as she had tried to make them.

"Yes," Rebecca said. "He's in good case all right."

Tod lifted his head. "Can't I go and play with the other children, Mother? They're all playing."

So they were. One group was down the river, splas.h.i.+ng in the shallows, only half watched by their elders. Another kept streaming around and out from the corral, frisky, like pups, at iclease from the grind of travel, the young voices raised in diouts and screams and laughter. But still Judith said, "We'll go wading soon."

"I want to play now."

"I know, Son. It does get tiresome."

Rebecca's face asked why she didn't let him run along.

"I'm too careful, I guess," she answered, "but he was so sick. So sick. So long." To Tod she said, "How about mud pies?"

"I'm tired of nothing to do, Mother."

"How about mud pies?" she asked again, thinking how time bore on a child, remembering from her girlhood how long an hour could be. She put herself in his place, imagining the nevernever-ending roll of wheels, the hot sun unmoving in the blank sky, the slow and deadly daily round, and all the bursting energies pent up, confined to fidgets and complainings. How much farther to the Southern Pa.s.s, Mother? How long before we stop? How far is it now to Oregon? Nothing to do. Nothing to do except to wait on time that wouldn't pa.s.s. And now, when he could play, she feared unreasonably for him to leave her side.

"I'll get the water, Toddie." She took her hands from the tub and picked up a piggin and walked to the stream and filled it and brought it to him. "You'll have fun, playing mud pies. I'm almost through." She bent to kiss the small, protesting face.

They finished the was.h.i.+ng, all but the hanging, and she said to Rebecca, "That was a big help. You go now."

"Things'll be all right with you. We'll get to the Willamette long before your time."

"I'm not worried about that. It's just -I don't know- I'm just foolish."

"What comes usually ain't near so bad as feared. You remember that." Rebecca smiled and flicked the water from her hands and went to gather up her things, walking straight and sure and strong. The other women were dumping tubs and collecting the tools of their work and one by one trailing back toward their tents.

Judith was lifting the basket when Hig came by. He said, "Mornin'," and let his lean limbs down by Toddie, favoring the wound that Botter's accidental shot had made. "How you, boy?"

"Mother won't let me play."

"Why sure, now, she will. Me and you'll build us a fort. Get that dead branch over there."

Judith set the basket down, wanting the dry, queer cheer of Hig. "I thought you'd be on the rock."

"Fer what?"