The Way West Part 20

He took a dozen steps up and called to Rock. Rock held his head to one side, his whitish-blue eyes full of thought, and then, as if he had done with figuring and come to an answer, he stepped up to the face of the stone, took one great bound and found his footing and bent low to the climb, traveling faster than a man could go.

"Easy, Rock. You think I'm a bird? An' you got nothin' to carry -remember that!- no hammer or chisel or nothin' but you.

Brownie climbed by d.i.c.k's advice, while Rock followed by little dashes, catching up and stopping, feet braced, while his face asked why so slow. After a while he went ahead, as if sure of the way now or put out by the pace.

Toward the top Brownie met the sun, floating lazy in a sky bluer than he could find a word for. This way, he thought as the curve of it came in sight over the rock, it was as if it lay still, waiting for him to rise out of the west. He could be the sun, opening his eye on river and plain and hill while the world thought Brownie's come up, Brownie's s.h.i.+ning, see, on yonder b.u.t.te.

By d.i.c.k's system it didn't take much time or too much wind to get to where the rock leveled off, running then in dips and b.u.mps not to be seen from below. Here the names were fewer, cut or scratched in the stone or painted red or black, for most men chose the footings of the rock to north and south, where they could stand on the ground or on boxes or kegs while they worked.

He found a spot he liked, the lip of a cup unmarked by brush or chisel, but before he sat down to his task he stood with his head up, letting the wind blow him while he looked around. Only the tops and edges of the world showed here, far off, the rest hidden, all ways, under the spread of rock. He couldn't see old Nellie fighting flies or the train crawling for the gap or last night's camping place or Tod's grave. There was just the flowing stone and the wind and himself and Rock and distance and the voice of distance.

He ran his thumb over the edge of the chisel. He would put her name first. That was the proper thing. He would put her name and then his own and then the day of the month and the year and maybe box them all in, so as to close forever in the stone the oneness of the two of them.

A long time from now she was teasing him. Care for her so far ago? Ah, it was a dream, Brownie, a made-up thing, and you can't josh me. And so they came back, man and wife, by stage and turnpike, and climbed the slant and were here again, and he pointed, saying, "There she is, just like I cut 'er back there in 'forty-five." She kissed him, tenderness in her eyes and laughter, and said, "I knew you did, Brownie. I always knew you did. Don't you know I just like to be told how you care for me?"

It took longer than a man would think to cut a letter. The tap of the hammer on the chisel left just a whitish scar that had to be deepened by tapping and more tapping, until the hammer arm tired and the chisel hand cramped. By and by he found it better to hit harder, to set the chisel careful and hit harder, squinting against the bits of stone that shattered out.

Rock loped after some little birds -ground sparrows or rock wrens or something kin to them- and came back and lay down, his head on his paws, his big mouth leaking a little at one corner.

"Just you wait, boy. It won't be so long."

He got her first name spelled out, and it was pretty, and set to work on the last after flexing his arm and hand to get new strength in them, thinking what would the people in the train be saying if they knew what his secret business was. They would smile at each other, probably, and make little jokes, as if his feeling was no more than a boy's notion and not to be taken serious. He couldn't let them know, he couldn't let even Ma or Pa know, not till later, not till things turned out. Then it would be different. Then they could see they would have been making fun where fun wasn't fitting.

"Just me and you," he said to the old dog. "Just me and you's all that'll know, Rock, and you think it's all right, don't you?"

Rock gave a slow wag of his tail for an answer.

Just himself and Rock and the little birds and the watching sun and maybe Mercy herself, knowing with a woman's knowing as she urged the team along that he had held back to set their secret in the stone. Just them and the wind, which spoke but didn't tell.

Should he chisel the name he went by or the full and proper name of George Brown Evans? The short one matched the length of hers better, so let it be Brownie. Mercy McBee.

Brownie Evans. July 2, 1845- Set chisel. Swing hammer. Set chisel. Swing hammer. The sun was pretty high.

Before he finished, Rock rose on his forelegs, facing south, and growled deep in his throat, holding back the bark while he kept sampling the wind.

"What do you smell, boy? A b'ar or something?" There was nothing in sight except what had been there before. Whatever Rock had smelled he couldn't smell again. He let himself down as if not sure yet that his nose was right.

Set chisel. Swing hammer. He had it now, all but the box to close it in. Set. Swing. Set. After he was through, he sat for a while, letting the wind dry up his sweat. Sweat was different here from in Missouri. It came and went. Didn't keep pouring out, sopping the clothes and dripping from the chin and smarting in the eye.

He got up, stiff from sitting, and spoke to Rock. It was pretty chiseling, he told himself before he turned, and all the prettier because of what it stood for. "All right, boy. Let's go down."

The chiseling had taken longer than expected. When he came to the brow of the b.u.t.te, he saw that the train was somewhere out of sight beyond the Gate, maybe pulled up already for its nooning, for the sun was sailing high. He would climb on Nellie and gallop to it. He would hurry, since a kind of emptiness, like homesickness, was on him now that he had done his work and had nothing to take his thought. It wasn't fear. It wasn't the dread of anything he could put a name to. It was just emptiness. There came to mind a mole that he had pitched out of its tunnel once. Sun and s.p.a.ce had scared it witless, and it had run crazy on the open ground, wanting the close, blind walls of home.

Rock stopped and growled again, his shoulder hair rising while he sorted the air, his eyes searching for what his nose suspected.

"What ails you, Rock? Tryin' to scare me? You got to be a fraidy-cat?"

Only by the quick dipping of an ear did the dog show he had heard.

Brownie freed his arms for the down climb by putting the chisel and hammer in his pocket. He stepped short, so as to keep his heels under him, ready to catch himself with his hands if he slipped.

"You comin', you old fool?"

Rock looked down on him and back to where his nose had pointed and then, like a guard leaving his post, began to sidle down, his throat still rumbling.

There was Nellie, fighting flies. There was his rifle, standing as he'd left it. There was the trail leading away to the gap. In a minute he would be mounted. Not so far off in time he would catch up with the train, and men would be saying, "How-de-do, Brownie. What kep' you? Break your leg in a badger hole?"

Quartering down ahead, Rock halted, stiff-legged on the slant, and the growl in his throat boiled into his hoa.r.s.e bay.

He saw the reason then, saw the mounted Indians rounding the turn from the Sweet.w.a.ter, their hides s.h.i.+ning dull in the sun, their faces lifting to him from the wind-shelter of hunched shoulders. He saw them and froze, a wild sickness turning in him, while Rock jumped ahead, baying. He could turn and scramble for the top while their mouths worked at seeing him and their arms waved him down and a hand lifted a bow. He could run and be outrun or get an arrow in the back. Or he could jump. It wasn't much more than a long jump to Nellie, a long jump and a long slide, and then maybe a leg broken and the skin ground off his backside and the Indians on him before he could mount. Beyond his thinking his voice sounded, "Back, Rock! Back!"

He tried to lift his arm, as he would have to Hig or Botter. He stepped downwards, fighting the rottenness of fear inside, fighting the show of it on his face, willing his hands to be steady, his feet to be sure. Easy was the way, if there was a way, poky and easy and a.s.sured. His mouth said a cracked "h.e.l.lo."

One slid from his horse and ran and grabbed the slanted rifle, waving it as a prize, and the rest came on after the little startlement of seeing him and sat their horses by Nellie, their dark faces upturned, their eyes narrowed under ratty hair. The wind brought him the smell of them, the rank, smoke-greasebody smell. Nellie was trying to pull free of the sage. She reared up, smelling them, too, and fought the air with her forefeet. A young Indian with a long blister of scar along his cheek dropped from his horse and stepped to her and knocked her quiet with a stone he had picked up. She stood trembling, beaten by the blow on the head, while he stripped the saddle from her.

One shouted and another, and they all were shouting, and motioning him to come down the dozen steps between. They pranced around, waving bows and raising spears, coming at him as if to run him through and then turning and yelling while the wind bent the feathers in their hair. The scar-faced Indian was throwing Nellie's saddle on his horse.

There was no choice but to come on, against the bows and lances and a battered carbine that another young Indian kept aiming, hollering fit to kill as others brushed it off its bead.

His mind and body felt far away, and fear was a thing reaching through a dream, and all below him came quick and sharp to his eyes -the Indians numbering upwards of twenty, the bare hides and crotch covers and leather breeches and one man with nothing on at all except a pair of moccasins and sh.e.l.ls hanging from his ears, the sorry horses behind them and their sorry fit. tings, the mule rigged with white man's gear, the lean dogs looking up, barking back at Rock.

Then he was down, and hands were poking at him and arms pulling and voices yelling and eyes looking for the look of fear in his. "Here, now! Here!" He tried to make his tone strong. "Me, friend."

His hat lifted from his head, and his s.h.i.+rt tore to a yank and it wasn't any use to fight. He could only push back, trying to act man-size and unafraid while they pried and tugged and drew bows and made as if to spear him.

Above their crazy yelling he heard Rock's big voice and with it snarlings and the yelps of hurt, and he wrenched clear and saw Rock swarming with the wolf-dogs of the Indians. Rock went down and rolled up, set upon from front and rear and sides by the half dozen of them, his teeth flas.h.i.+ng, his gray muzzle already red-scarred. His old head ducked, and a dog cried high, like a whistle, and stood aside, one leg hanging while the fight heaved away from him.

Rock sank under the pack and came up again, like a block out of churned water, and leaped free and could have run but stood fierce and proud and met the new charge and was carried over by it.

He would die. The teeth were too many for him, the weight too great. He would die unwhimpering, not running or begging mercy or even asking for the help he had a claim to. He would die forgiving while the rightful help looked on, scared by Indians who had stopped their fun to watch.

Brownie felt weight in his pocket and knew of a sudden it was the hammer, not taken from him yet, and he jerked it free and lunged through the Indians, crying out without words. He swung, hammer head on dog head, and swung again while the fight surged around him and teeth ripped his shank.

It didn't take them long, not him and Rock together. The two Indian dogs that weren't killed or crippled ran off growling. He knelt down and felt of Rock and saw he wasn't hurt bad and got up, telling Rock to stay to heel, for the Indians were coming up.

He held the hammer tight, thinking they would want to kill Rock, but they pointed at him while he growled his dare at them and shook their heads and made noises in their throats as if they prized bravery, too. For a minute in this quieter time Brownie felt the touch of cheer.

It was just a touch, for they turned on him then, twisting the hammer from his hands and wrestling him down on his tail while he cried to Rock to keep out of it. Two of them took places behind him, poking him with spear or arrow points when he so much as s.h.i.+fted on the ground. The others began to talk again, quieter than before, arguing for one thing or another. They mixed in front of him and waved their weapons around while they spoke, all except the scar-faced one, who'd gone to beat the brains out of the crippled dogs.

When he came back, he joined in, louder than the rest and violenter, and the young Indian with the carbine and the one with Brownie's rifle sided with him. They dashed at him, turn and turn about, one with a spear outheld, the others with the carbine and the rifle, as if to put an end to him instanter, and faced around and yelled their thought and came at him again. If he flinched, he saw the jeering in their eyes and felt the points p.r.i.c.k him from behind, and he made himself sit quiet, holding his fear in, holding it down so it wouldn't race the heart or shake the face or show up in his gaze.

The three set the rest to shouting, as at first. They were all shouting, shouting and prancing and pointing and swinging weapons, so that the eyes swam and the head rang while the held-in fear beat deep with the heartbeat. Temper showed in the slant-eyed faces and hunger for blood and the marks of scheming and the stain of old war paint not washed off clean. An older Indian with a hawk's nose and hawk's eyes and deeppocked skin talked most against the three. He yelled at them and tried to wave them back and shouted at the shouting others, as if to make them see.

But still there was no kindness in his face, none there and none anywhere, and no way to make them know he didn't wish them ill. He thought he couldn't listen more, or watch, or hold his load of fear. A man could hold only so long, and then he broke out, wild for an end to things, good or bad. It was hours they'd yelled and swung their arms and made their dashes at him. It was last year he'd climbed down from the rock. Better to be dead quick. Better to fight and die than sit like a chicken while they argued whether to spear him or shoot him or wring his neck and did they do it now or later.

The sun was swinging down from overhead, making for the west and home. Somewhere the train was lurching along, its people thinking of camp and supper and rest while d.i.c.k rode out looking for wood and water. Ma and Pa would be anxious by now, for they didn't look for him to be gone so long. Inside him tears welled up to be shed and an unsaid cry wrenched at his throat. Let the wanting legs jump and the wanting arms strike out and the chest get its spear.

While he teetered between sitting and acting, the shouting died away and heads turned, and he strained for a look, not prodded by the points now, and it was d.i.c.k Summers like an answer to prayer, old d.i.c.k Summers galloping his horse across the flat, riding straight as a drawn line, his uncovered hair silvery in the sun, d.i.c.k Summers not scared of one Indian or a nation, coming to save him from his fix. The rising murmur of the Indians drowned out a cry that was half sob.

d.i.c.k broke his horse to a jog and then to a walk as he rode closer. He clinched his rifle under one arm and got his pipe out and made as if to be pounding tobacco in it. He held it up and came on. Twenty feet from them he reined in. He wasn't in a hurry to talk. His eyes ran over the Indians and took in the side of rock that flanked him on the right. His voice came big and rough out of his throat, Indian-fas.h.i.+on, and his hands and arms began making motions. He had just a glance at Brownie, but at the tail end of his Indian talk he said, "Easy, hoss. I'm makin' medicine."

The hawk-faced Indian answered him, talking loud and gesturing as d.i.c.k had done.

The carbine was itchy in the young Indian's hands. It kept waggling as if about to come up and go off. Brownie slid over, unnoticed by his guards.

d.i.c.k talked again, for what seemed a long time, making shapes with hands and arms and turning in his saddle and pointing back to where the train would be. Brownie thought it was in the nature of him, in his looks and carriage, in the straight, gray eye and the unafraid face, that the carbine should dangle in the restless hand and the young, wild mouths be silent.

Hawk Face answered, shorter this time, and d.i.c.k spoke in turn, and for a minute there was silence, until the scarred Indian broke it, nerved somehow to argue in spite of d.i.c.k. He gave courage to the two he teamed with. They shouldered up to Hawk Face, their mouths running with words.

d.i.c.k spoke short and, when he had their eyes, came up easy with his rifle, aimed toward the side of the rock, as if just pointing with it. The rifle cracked, and where one of the little birds had been was now just a pinch of feathers, glued to the stone by a spatter of blood.

The Indians brought their hands over their open mouths, and their eyes hunted one another's and went back to d.i.c.k. d.i.c.k spoke Indian again and got a quieter answer and said to Brownie, "Come on, hoss. This here spree's over. Git Nellie."

"They got my gun and saddle."

"Best d.i.c.ker for 'em later. Your hair's still on."

Not an Indian raised a hand as he untied Nellie and climbed on, bareback, and called to Rock. They watched him silently and went to their own horses that had strayed toward the river for graze.

Brownie rode alongside d.i.c.k, and Hawk Face and two others rode up, and the rest trailed behind, quiet except for what might be self-talk, slow-spoken.

"Sioux, these n.i.g.g.e.rs are," d.i.c.k said. "Teton, or some cut of Sioux."

"d.i.c.k?"

"Got a camp somewheres pretty close. They was just h.e.l.lin' around."

"d.i.c.k?"

"Speak out. They don't savvy."

"I'm much obliged, I reckon you know."

"It wasn't nothin'."

"d.i.c.k?"

"This child's listenin'."

"I made a poor out of it, d.i.c.k."

"How so?"

"I'll feel better for tellin' you, I'm that shamed. I was scared puky."

d.i.c.k put a hand on Brownie's knee. "Shoo, boy! Every hoss is scared in a fix."

"Not as bad as me."

"I seen you slide over to knock that Injun off his aim if need be."

d.i.c.k looked around, not as if to see that none was fixing to settle them from behind. "It's these young n.i.g.g.e.rs you got to watch. The Sioux ain't much for mindin' their chiefs."

"How'd you do it, d.i.c.k?"

Before d.i.c.k answered, he and Hawk Face traded words. "First, I asked 'em if they'd seen the great, white war party, meanin' Kearny and his men."

"Did they?"

d.i.c.k shook his head. "Then I told 'em we spoke with one tongue and was headed for the big water and would kill any of their enemies we saw, specially Blackfeet. Said we had some red earth for their faces and beads and awls and such and maybe a little of the red firewater from the hollow wood, meanin' whisky from a keg. That's why they're trailin' along -for presents."

d.i.c.k talked to the other two Indians fronting up with him, speaking sure and comfortable as if to old friends. They came to the river and let their horses drink and forded it and lined out for the gap that the sun was turning golden brown. Not till then did Brownie notice the wind was dying down to nothing. It was, he thought, like the wind that had blown mad in him and now was eased off, leaving him tired but good-spirited. d.i.c.k had said he hadn't done bad. Everyone was scared in a fix, the first time, anyway.

"I didn't look for you to shoot," he said.

"Kearny and presents didn't gentle 'em enough. So I said we had thirty men who would black their faces if you was hurt, an' everyone could shoot as good as me. That's when I fired."

"What if you'd missed that there d.i.c.key-bird?"

d.i.c.k's face creased to a slow grin. "Next I'd've said, 'Pleased to meet you, Jesus. Shake hands with my friend, name of Brownie Evans.' " The smile faded, leaving just the marks of good humor. "I reckon you ain't looked at this gun, Brownie. It's my second one, an' double bar'1, an' I was readied up for fowl. The bar'1 I fired had bird shot in it."

Chapter Nineteen.

EVANS WOKE UP early, before the camp was astir. He lay quiet, feeling done in but relaxed, done in from yesterday's long worrying, relaxed from knowing that Brownie was safe in camp again and none the worse for his mix-up with the Sioux. If he listened, he thought he could hear Brownie's breathing, from the bed laid near the tent under the sky.

While he c.o.c.ked his ears, there came to them a soft padding that he guessed was made by Rock, up early to see what the day had brought.

It was dark inside the tent, so dark he knew Rebecca slept by him only by the soft breath-heave of her body. Outside it would be dark, too, and the juttings of land would rise strange and misshapen, the secrets of the night still on them, yielding slow to the weak forecoming of the sun.

He let his muscles melt into rest, let run in him the returned confidence in the trip and Oregon and all. They would meet more trouble. The hardest travel, the steepest climbs, the biggest rivers, the greatest calls on strength and purpose still lay before them; but he was equal to it. Now, resting, knowing all was well, he was equal to it.

A person could change in a day, or even an hour, from low spirits to hope. Yesterday, while anxiousness weighed on him, he had wanted to give up, to turn around and head back for the tame life of Missouri. He hadn't been able to keep himself from looking behind for Brownie, though he knew Rebecca was watching him from her seat in the second wagon, building up fears in her mind as he was in his own. Independence Rock was out of sight now that they had pa.s.sed the Gate. There wasn't anything to be seen eastward except the rise they had come over in rounding the spur of mountain through which the Sweet.w.a.ter cut. Only ahead could the gaze travel, running along the high, flat, sagebrushed valley, picking up Split Rock in the distance.

It was, he had thought, as if all that lay behind them was forever gone, as if there was no return, as if the one hard choice was to go on. It never had struck him so strong before that he couldn't change his mind. They were cut off behind and closed in, far but fast, at the sides, by bald and stony mountains on the right, by green, high-rising ridges to the left. Where could that boy be? Blowed away by the tarnal wind that just now was falling off?

"He'll be all right, Becky," he called back, setting his face in a smile. "You know how boys are. They got to have a look at everything, and time don't mean nothin' to 'em. Don't be gettin' in a flutter."

He was in a flutter himself. What could have happened? What could be happening? Here it was drawing on toward camptime, and no Brownie. By now he could have chiseled out the names of all the company, alive and dead.

He shut off the horrors that kept coming up -the rattlesnake lying on a ledge ready to bite the groping hand, the horse falling on its rider, the Indians sneaking up with drawn bows and scalping knives ready. He told himself it was just Tod's death that made him nervous, but still the fears arose. He should have gone back with Summers. He should have taken a party and gone back, though Summers waved the idea away. What good was Summers, good as he was, against a bunch of Sioux? He should have put aside the push, push, push to Oregon. Oregon didn't mean anything without Brownie, just like it didn't mean anything to the Fairmans without Tod.

The shapes that rose ahead, like Split Rock, seemed queer and dangerous, standing hard and bare, standing purple and red under the tiring sun. They might be warnings, he thought, warnings not to go farther, to keep off wild, outlandish land untouched by the feet of the likes of him. Where was that boy?