The Way West Part 2

As Fairman approached, the woman of the house opened the door and with a split broom fanned out the dirt she had swept tip. As always, the tip of her nose was red from cooking. "Oh, it's you," she said, stopping her sweeping and letting her arms hang loose from her hold on the broom handle. "They was a man here." Her glance s.h.i.+fted from him to a sleepy sow that had lifted herself from the mud of the yard and stood grunting, her small eyes winking with dull alarm. The woman flourished the broom. "Git, you! I declare!" The sow gave a quick, outraged grunt and lumbered away.

Fairman asked, "What?"

"They was a man here. You been saying you wanted another man."

"Oh! That's good. You mean to go with us?"

"He said he would -for the ride and victuals."

"Did he talk to my wife?"

"Wouldn't do it. Said G.o.d knows women have aplenty to say, but no say-so." The red nose sniffed.

"I see. Where did he go?"

"He traipsed off somewheres. Said he'd be back."

Fairman said, "I see," again, hoping the man would be back. With two wagons and the cattle he expected to trail, he would need two men at least. He had one, a quiet hand who chewed tobacco all day long and had spent his life working with horses and mules and oxen.

Fairman stepped into the house.

"He had a pinched-up face," the woman said over her shoulder.

He walked through a room and opened the door to the quarters he and his family occupied. He looked at Judith, letting his face ask how Tod was. She smiled and called out, "Toddie, your father's home." Tod came out of the kitchen, riding a stick for a horse.

"Pretty frisky, aren't you, boy?"

Tod unstraddled the stick. "I'm going to ride him to Oregon."

"That's a fine horse," Fairman said, touching the stick. "For a five-year-old you're a good picker."

Judith smiled at the boy and put her hand on his head. "He'll be ready. He's getting to be a stout boy."

"This is still fever country," Fairman cautioned her. "Not like Paducah."

"Maybe not. He does look better." Fairman told himself it was true that Tod did. The boy was still thin as a twig and fraillooking, like a young bird, but his eyes were clear now and his color better.

"I'm fine," Tod said. "Why don't we go now? Why do we have to wait, Pa?"

"We'll be going soon. And remember to say Father."

Judith barely shook her head as if to say not to bother over trifles.

"I don't like 'Pa,' " he answered, knowing she was right.

"We've eaten," Judith told him. "You were so long. There's cold chicken and corn bread and milk on the table."

He went into the kitchen, or the room that pa.s.sed for a kitchen, and sat down at the hand-hewn table. "Judie," he said while he tore a thigh and drumstick apart, "we're doing right." She and Tod had followed him in.

"Oh?"

"Not the fever alone. The whole thing."

"I hope so."

"It makes a man feel like something, this -this big adventure. We'll have a good company. I've been talking to some of the men."

He let his thoughts move ahead while he munched on the chicken, seeing the farm they would have in Oregon and the wheat waving yellow and the great s.h.i.+ps riding the Columbia for their produce. He saw Tod strong at last, with healthy flesh covering the thin bones, saw him growing up with the country, saw him growing important with it. He felt almost gay, free of the quick irritation that forebodings aroused in him.

"It'll be rough at first," he said, "but we can stand a little roughness all right. Eh, boy?"

Tod, astride the stick again, called, "Whoa!"

"There's just one thing," Fairman said while he studied Judith. "I almost wish I had tried bringing a slave along."

"Don't worry about me. I'll get along."

"All right," he said, making his tone hearty, but his mind had slipped back to Kentucky, to country where the Tennessee and the c.u.mberland joined the Ohio, and one lived in a house, not a cabin, and colored folk did the drudge work, and life, except for sickness, seemed now to have flowed smoothly. For a minute he felt again a great misgiving, doubting that even Judith could hear the hards.h.i.+ps before them. She was not a strong girl, but, G.o.d knew, not languid, either. She worked to the limit of her strength, so that night often found her near collapse, and it seemed to him then that the flesh of her cheeks and lips was almost transparent, and he would look into the gentle, paleblue eyes with quick and secret alarm.

She often fell victim to fever, too, and went through the agonies of chill and heat, the induced vomitings, the calomel ind blisterings and quinine. It was for her sake, if not as much as for Tod's, that he had sold his small plantation and placed his few slaves and taken the steamboat for St. Louis and then for Independence. A few wretched Kaws had been aboard and, for a pint of whisky offered them by some travelers themselves half drunk, had sung a rusty, discordant Indian song. The boat was ,I i rty, the men dirty, the Indian beggars verminous. Along the ,ho>res the bare trees crowded, straining up for room and air, theirlower trunks lost in a tangle of vine and bush. It seemed to Fairman he could see sickness there, could see fever breeding in the breathless overgrowth. It ran with the water under the boat, too, with the yellow, sickly flow of the Ohio and the Mississippi. He felt like turning back.

But he was right, he told himself now. He knew himself to be a not very practical man, but he had to be right about Oregon. They knew -he and Judie- that Tod couldn't live in the low river country. Sickness lay deep and malignant in him, easing away only to return as regularly as time, shaking him to pieces with chills, wasting his flesh with fever. If ever he recovered from one illness -which was to be doubted- he promptly caught another. And so Fairman and Judith had come to live in dread, mostly unspoken but real as a burden on the back. He had lain at night and thought about the boy in health, with his hair like tow and his skin touched with the color of gold, and then, in spite of himself, he had turned about and dreamed about fever and seen the boy withering under it -the dread realizing itself- and had awakened in a sweat, his heart thumping in his chest, and had sat up in bed and tried to shake the picture from his head.

Tod asked, "What you thinking about?"

"I thought I might go out and look at some mules."

"Isn't it still early?" Judith said.

"Prices probably will go up later, when the real crowd gets here."

"Tod asked, "Can I go, Pa -I mean Father." Fairman looked at his wife.

"I don't think it will hurt him, if you're not gone too long. It's nice out."

"I guess you can, Son," Fairman answered, rising.

Tod came and took his hand, and they left the house and walked down toward a yard that Fairman had noted before, a pole yard built to keep sale stock in.

It was a good day, the kind of day that made a man want to start at once, while the sun was friendly and the spring wind down to a breath. Only the mud argued for waiting. No matter how wide-tired, wagons would have a hard time in the mud. Fainnan picked his way through it, guiding Toddie before him.

He was having his own wagons retired with three-inch iron, bolted on, though most tires were two inches wide and some even less. He had bought two substantial wagons, made of wellseasoned wood, with falling tongues and well-steeled skeins. He had contracted for boxes for their effects, to be built of even height so as to provide a flat surface to lie on if need be. He had laid in a good supply of horse gear and gathered some simple tools and had bought a good rifle and a pistol and a shotgun for fowling. He had purchased a sheet-iron stove with a boiler, and aDutch oven and skillet and plates and cups of tin, since queen's ware was heavy and likely to break. He had a tent, two churns -one for sour and one for sweet milk- and two plow molds and a supply of rope for tethering animals.

The list of equipment, he estimated as he counted the items off, was almost complete. Now he had to think about supplies flour, meal, bacon, sugar, salt, dried stuff, coffee, rice, maybe a little keg of vinegar. And books, especially schoolbooks. Books would be scarce in a new country. With two wagons he could transport more than some travelers -a cherry chest that Judie liked, the best of her dishes, buried in the flour, quilts, extra clothes, dress shoes, jams and jellies. Whimwhams they would be called by men who swore to travel light.

More important was the question of stock -oxen for the wagons, seven or eight yokes of them at least; mules to ride, milk cows and cattle to drive. Should he try to take sheep, chickens, geese? One got all manner of advice. He wished he could be sure.

And medicines. He mustn't forget an ample supply of medicines.

He had arrived at that subject when a voice called from behind him. "You lookin' for a man to go west? Be you Mr. Fairman?"

He turned and said "Yes" and waited, seeing a long splinter of a man in a hickory s.h.i.+rt and high-hung homespun breeches and an old piece of felt hat.

Name's Hig," the figure announced. "Or that's what they call me. It's bobtail for Higgins. I been on your trail, as maybe the lady told you."

The lady had been right when she said his face was pinched up. He wasn't old but had lost his teeth, so that the mouth turned in and the small jaw sat snug under a thin nose. The eyes seemed crowded, too, under the close line of brow, but the forehead, Fairman noted, was good, as if nature had tried to make up for the stinginess below.

"I hanker to go," the man said. "Gimme a place to lay my head, any old place, and somep'n to feed on, and I'm your gooseberry. How-de-do there, boy."

"You're experienced?"

"A man don't live to my age without learnin'."

"I mean you can handle stock, drive a wagon, lend a hand when needed?"

"Sure, mister. Maybe I look green like a gourd, but I'm ripe inside."

"What's your purpose in going?"

"I dunno. Jest to get where I ain't."

It was, Fairman reflected, as good a reason as most. "How old are you?"

"That I wouldn't know. As my pap used to say, too young to die and too old to suck."

A grin appeared in the pinched face, a thin but merry grin which might have been wider had there been room for it.

"The man I take mustn't be afraid of work."

"Can't say I love it, but I done enough to find it won't kill you. Same time, I might as well tell you, I like fun. I got me a fiddle." The slitted eyes questioned Fairman. "You'll stand in need of fun, time you eat a bushel of dust and your critters get sore-footed and your woman's askin' how was it you lost your mind and headed for Oregon."

"Where you from?"

"Now or then?"

"Well-both."

"Now, from Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Louisville, and p'ints between. Then, from right here in Missouri."

"This is serious business. You'd have to stay sober."

"That ain't hard. Not for me. Not to say I ain't been drunk, neither."

Fairman debated, looking the man over, from the good forehead to the squeezed face to the spare figure to the feet shod in old peg boots. He did need another man.

While he debated, Hig said, "I'm a fixer, too. Used to be a pewter tinker. I can doctor sick rifle-guns and busted wheels and all. You'll see." He waited, and when Fairman's answer didn't come at once he thrust his hands out. "Lookit! These here paws didn't get that way lyin' folded in my lap. I'm skinny but strong, like a razorback hog. I ain't askin' anything but to go along and help you and eat out of your pot."

"Well-?"

Hig had bent down to Tod. "Me and you'll make a team, young'un. We'll have us fun."

Fairman felt Tod's hand tighten in his own and looked down and saw that the boy was smiling. "My name is Tod," he told the man, "and I got a horse already."

"Tod it is," Hig said. His face lifted to Fairman's. "If it's all right with you, mister, you done hired yourself a man."

Fairman said, "Well-?" again, not wanting yet to commit himself. "I was going to look at some mules."

"I'll tail along if you don't mind."

Hig reached down and took Tod's willing hand, and Fairman thought, a little helplessly, that, sure enough, he had done hired himself a man.

The mule trader was standing by the pole fence, smoking a cigar and looking through the smoke at the animals inside. He was a puffy man with a round belly and a loose mouth that squirmed around the b.u.t.t of the cigar. In his belt he carried a dirk. He said, "Figurin' to buy mules?"

"I thought I might."

"I got some the likes of which ain't often found."

Hig said, "That's Scripture, I bet."

The man looked at him sharply and went on, "You take that b.a.s.t.a.r.d there." He pointed with his cigar. "He'll take you there and bring you back. Broke to saddle, pack, harness, and all. Good in a team or by hisself. And sure-footed! He can turn around in a hen's nest and never crack a egg." The man puffed at the cigar as if to restore his wind. "Tolty's the name."

"Fairman, and this is Higgins."

"Strangers, ain't you?"

"I haven't been here long."

"Me, neither," Tolty said. "Jest long enough to get set up for the Oregon trade. You bound for Oregon, I reckon? Good country, Oregon is."

Tod said, "I won't have fever any more."

"Now that's good. Fever's d.a.m.n mizzable, congestive, relapsin', intermittent, bilious, or plain shakes. Now about them mules-" He walked to the fence and let down the bars of the pole gate, pausing as he did so to look at a horseman who had jogged up and sat quiet for a minute and then swung out of the saddle.

"Lookin' for mules?" Tolty asked while he held a pole in his hand.

"Just easin' home," the man answered. "Neighbor asked me to see if you had some smart ones." He took off his hat and ran his hand through a thatch of silvery hair. His movements, like his talk, were deliberate and easy, as if he had lived long enough to feel at home in the world.

"d.a.m.n right I got smart ones," Tolty said. "I'll git to you directly." He turned to Fairman. "I can let you have one or a dozen. That there big mule'll pull hisself blind if you don't watch out. Man, he's a puller."

"I just want riding stock. I'll buy oxen for the wagons."

"You ain't bought 'em, eh?"

"Not yet. I'm in the market for some cattle, too."

"Now let me tell you something," Tolty said, gesturing with the cigar. "I sell mules and oxen both, even if I ain't got ary oxen right now. And if I was goin' to Oregon, I'd go by mule."

"Why?"