The Way West Part 30

Summers led them across the island and angled upstream, and the water bore on them again and the oxen leaned into it, pitching on the tricky bottom, fighting upward step by step while the wagon balked behind. The second island was close at hand before d.i.c.k made a leftward turn and led them out where wheel tracks scarred the banks.

They stopped again to let the oxen catch their wind. Summers said to Hig and Evans, "Next one's hardest, you kin see." He raised his voice to reach to Brownie. "We head well up for two rod or so and then quarter a little down for six or eight and then turn up again for fifteen or twenty. Then point for where the tracks come out. Heavy water, but not so deep as some we've crossed. Watch out for that there ripple. We got to keep above her." The lined face grinned at Brownie. "What skeers me is your pa will git hisself washed off. Can't swim no better'n a salmon."

Fighting the current, seeing the lunge and sway of the wagon and the oxen half falling in the holes, Evans thought that only mountain men would have called this place a crossing. Only they would have found it and, finding, thought it possible to get a wagon through. This wasn't a ford, this wild, deep, uneven-bottomed water. It was an invitation to drown. Let a team be pulled over the muscled ripple to his left, let even a saddle horse pa.s.s over! Go it, critters! Again it was as if the solid land swam to them while the current banked against teams and wheels and wagon boxes and boiled off white at front and back. It swam to them, and the oxen lifted to it, and wheels ground in the gravel of the sh.o.r.e.

"We done it!" Evans yelled across at Hig as the leaders found the bank. "By G.o.dalmighty, yes!"

Hig didn't answer. He didn't need to. His thin grin answered for him.

"d.i.c.k, we done it!"

"'Lowed we would."

"Fun," Brownie put in from the wagon seat. "Man, it was fun."

"Take the outfit up a ways, Brownie, and you and Mercy mind the young'uns. Don't want 'em underfoot."

"Want to take the team back?" Brownie asked.

"Unhitch and leave 'em rest awhile. We'll git some more across, I reckon, before usin' 'em again."

Later, with Becky across, and Mack and s.h.i.+elds and Carpenter, Evans told himself the talk last night was right: there wasn't anything to it. The crossing had the looks of danger; it sure enough was danger, close-sweeping in the stout and angry tide; but with d.i.c.k to lead and him and Hig to ride, there wasn't anything to it, not if a man took care. They'd be across, the whole set of them, by noon or maybe sooner.

Back on the southern sh.o.r.e Evans changed his blown horse, taking Nellie in its stead. "You ready, Byrd?"

"Ready."

"Ain't much to do except set, you and your missus."

"I'm grateful to you. I felt the children would be safest with you."

"Wasn't nothin'. Say you're ready?"

Byrd nodded, sober and watchful as a cornered c.o.o.n. His woman was the same. Summers had said once she put him in mind of a pigeon, but, looking at her now, Evans figured she'd swelled out to a duck.

Behind them were more wagons. The Patches weren't over yet, or the Daughertys. After the last of them had made the crossing, Insko and Gorham and Holdridge and Botter would push the loose stock over. The herd wasn't so big now that Tadlock had quit the train.

Evans rode to the head of the line. "Good for another trip?" he joked at Hig, who sat like a bent stick on his horse. A k.n.o.bby skeleton of a man, Hig was, with a face like an old white potato, but he could ride a horse or swim a stream or mend a rifle, and, what was more, he had a think-piece behind that withered skin.

"Good as gravy," Hig answered.

"Lead away, d.i.c.k."

They had hitched six yokes to Byrd's wagon, for it was medium heavy and the oxen either partly spent or smallish for so hard a ch.o.r.e.

They took the first stretch fine, barely swimming here and there, for, after all the trips across, the best course had been learnt. Glancing back as the leaders pulled up the bank of the first island, Evans thought Byrd looked like a churchman facing sin, a proper banker-churchman for the first time meeting evil in the flesh.

The next stretch went fine, too, the critters slanting up the stream and bending left and coming out like other teams before them.

While the oxen caught their wind, Evans made his horse step back. "Just one more hitch," he said to Byrd. "I honestly believe it looks worse than it is."

"It ain't so bad. Scare you, Mrs. Byrd?"

She said it didn't.

"Just hang on."

Evans walked his horse back and nodded at d.i.c.k, and d.i.c.k led off again.

It happened suddenly, close to sh.o.r.e. It happened all at once, without warning or good reason, like something bursting into an easy dream. The team was going all right, the wagon rolling safe above the muscled ripple, and then a leader slipped and thrashed for footing, and the hungry current took it and wrenched its mate along.

They descended on Evans, their legs scrambling the water into spray, the weight of them dragging the second yoke out of line. "Gee!" he hollered out of habit and poked with his stick and beyond the tangle of them saw Hig and the hold-rope taut and Hig's horse floundering with the pull on it. "Gee."

Nellie wouldn't hold. She broke before the thras.h.i.+ng push of them, frightened now and unsteady in the tear of water. The line clear back to the wheel yoke skewed to the pull, slanting the wagon below the come-out trail, slanting toward the ripple, slanting off to wicked depths.

The wagon began to skid, half sailing, half grinding over gravel. It was swinging like the tail of crack-the-whip, dragging the wheelers with it, bending the yokes into an arc that it yanked to a straight line, angled up into the tide. The swing squeezed Nellie toward the lower sh.o.r.e, into swimming water she couldn't swim against.

Too late the leaders found their feet. Every yoke was off the course, some trying to swim, some trying to set themselves, and all of them wild and all being beaten back. The landing place was drawing off.

Evans heard Hig shouting and Byrd crying out, in words that lost shape in the rush of water. His eye glimpsed people on the sh.o.r.e and d.i.c.k moving with his horse. And then the swinging wagon caught on an unseen boulder and the current tore at it and the upstream wheels lifted. Wrenched between the rock and wash, the wagon flopped over on its side.

For a flash, it seemed to Evans, things happened slow and sharp to see -Byrd grabbing for his woman and missing and she pitching out and he climbing like a squirrel up the side and she floating feathery as a hen tossed into a pond.

It wasn't a pond, this water. It was power and muscle to shame the power and muscle of a man. It was fury. It was the cold fury of the offended land. It rushed at arms and legs and tried to wrench the body over -and ahead of him was just the opened mouth of Mrs. Byrd, the hen's beak opened for a final squawk above the dragging feathers.

The beak went down, but underneath his hand, underneath the rippled water, he saw the blinking blue of cloth. He struck for it and caught a hold and squared around and tried for sh.o.r.e. It wasn't far away. It was a hop, skip and jump without an anvil in one hand. It was the stroke of an oar on peaceful water. It was here. It was streaming here, almost where he could reach it, and he never could. He hadn't strength enough, or wind. He hadn't legs and arms enough to take him over. Beyond, above the waves that lapped his face, he saw the people huddled, watching, and the wagon washed close to the bank and the oxen struggling and one yoke safe on land and Nellie standing near.

He lost them as a wave washed up. There was the water around him and the near-far sh.o.r.e and the suns.h.i.+ne dazzling to wet eyes and heaviness in arms and legs and strangles in the throat. There was the water and the power of water and the voice of it and over it another voice, over it, "Lije! Lije!"

The voice of Summers and the person of him, busy with his horse, and his arm swinging and a rope looping out, and his own arm catching for it and missing and catching it lower down.

Summers pulled him in, easy so as not to break his holds, and slid from his horse and drew Mrs. Byrd farther up the bank. The folks came running, Byrd in the lead, crying, "Ruth! Ruth!"

"She can't be dead," Evans panted at him. "Ain't had long enough to drown."

"Ruth!"

d.i.c.k said, "Easy," and turned Mrs. Byrd over on her stomach and lifted her at the middle to get the water out.

"You all right, Lije?" It was Becky, scolding him with her eyes for he didn't know what.

"Winded, is all."

They stood by, mostly quiet, while Summers worked on Mrs. Byrd. "She's comin' round," he said. "I kin feel the life in her." He turned her over, and she opened her eyes, and Byrd leaned down and pulled her dress so it wouldn't show her leg.

"Are you all right, Ruth?"

She didn't answer right away. Her eyes looked big and washed-out, and they traveled from face to face as if to ask what she was doing on the ground with people looking down on her. Of a sudden her eyes filled and her face twisted, and Evans switched his gaze.

She was all right, though, except for the crying. Directly she got up, helped by Byrd and Weatherby, and let them lead her toward the wagons.

"She'd best lay down awhile," Becky said, and followed them to spread a blanket. The women trailed off with her.

"Poor way you picked to git to Oregon," Summers said to Evans then. His smile said something different.

"What's the loss?"

"Ain't had time to count."

Hig shook his head, as if still unbelieving. "I don't think there's a thing except a cracked tongue and some plunder wet."

"Not a critter?"

"Don't seem reasonable, but that wagon kind of coasted into sh.o.r.e. I hung to the rope and the team done the best it could, and she kind of coasted."

"What did Byrd do?"

"Just rode 'er out."

"I swear! What's holdin' the wagon now?"

"Team's still hitched." Byrd was coming back from the wagons.

"Anything wrong?" Evans asked as he came into hearing. "No. I think she's all right. I forgot to thank you. I just came to thank you."

"Fergit it! Just happens I can swim."

"I can't forget it, ever. I want you to know that." When Evans couldn't think of more to say, Byrd faced around and walked away.

"Funny n.i.g.g.e.r," Summers said, watching him. "But still I reckon you got thanks comin', Lije."

"Owe some myself." He turned away from the faces fastened on him. Across the river the other wagons waited. "We'll camp here. There's more outfits to bring across and Byrd's wagon to haul out and fix, and the wood we put in the boxes'll give us fires. You all think that's best?"

Their heads said they did.

"And it'll give the stock another fill of gra.s.s," Summers added. "There's more hard goin' ahead."

Evans had the wide-eye, from being overtired and overanxious, though anxiousness had eased. They'd whipped the Snake and mended Byrd's wagon and dried his things as best they could, and Mrs. Byrd was feeling fair.

He turned over in bed, trying to get from his head the picture of the water. Once he shut his eyes, it streamed by him. It tore at wagons and at teams, breaking white around them. It ran a s.h.i.+mmer over Mrs. Byrd's blue dress. The s.h.i.+mmer and the blue and the push of the current on his chest kept flowing into Rebecca's face and Rebecca's words said later. "I wouldn't trade you, Lije, for a pa.s.sel of Byrds. You might remember that." He remembered, and the remembering streamed on into water boiling round him.

A breeze stirred outside the tent, mixing with the mutter of the river. A horse kept up for herding blew its nose. It seemed to him, listening, that if he listened hard enough he heard old Rock padding around the tent, the ghost of old Rock following on to Oregon.

How many nights, he wondered, had he lain and listened? How many nights had his mind done and done again what his body did by day? How many times had he traveled the trail besides the one real time? How often, waiting for sleep, had he heard bird call and wolf cry and the bawling of buffalo? Long nights, listening nights, thinking nights, nights of casting ahead, to Boise now, and the Blue Mountains and the Columbia and the Dalles. And what would they do with their cattle? He hadn't got around to asking d.i.c.k, feeling somehow backward, as if the asking would show a doubt d.i.c.k hadn't earned.

But still, while the water climbed against his horse, the question nagged at him.

He turned back and felt Rebecca stir to his movement, Becky who wouldn't trade him for a dozen Byrds, who stayed with him through thick and thin, the most of which was thick. Or was it thin? How did you name heat and dust and mud and rain and rocks and racing water? Thick or thin? He thought he must be on the sh.o.r.e of sleep to worm in such a subject.

Rebecca began to snore, to snore the light and easy snore that he had heard ten thousand nights. There was a thing now. Snoring was a puky sound except by her. How was it that he felt with her no ugliness in anything she did or had? Did other men find rawness in their wives or didn't they, or was he just a simple man and, being simple, different? He wished the same for Brownie and his wife.

Raw or not, the women did their part and more. They traveled head to head with men, showing no more fear and asking no favor. Becky. Mrs. Patch. Judith Fairman with her load of grief. Mrs. Mack. Mrs. Daugherty. And, yes, Mercy too. They had a kind of toughness in them that you might not think, seeing them in a parlor. So, on a trail, women came to speak and men to listen almost as if to other men. It was lucky for the pride of men that few traveled with their wives to Oregon. They'd never quite believe again a woman was to look at but not to listen to.

The breeze was busy again. It ran a little chillness along the ground inside the tent. Overhead, Evans imagined, the stars would be sharp, for the night had come on clear. They would be dancing in the water that kept rus.h.i.+ng in his mind. The breeze brought the whisper of footsteps. A voice said, "Evans! Captain!"

"Who is it?"

"Byrd."

"All right."

"My wife-"

"What's the matter?"

Rebecca had quit her snoring. Evans knew as well as if he could see her that she was listening.

"I think she's in labor. It's-it's ahead of time."

"Becky!"

"I heard." Louder she said, "I'll be right over, Mr. Byrd."

"Please!"

"We'll be right along," Evans said.

"You'd best get a fire goin'," Becky said to both of them. She was getting out of the bed.

Evans heard Byrd's footsteps whispering off. While he hunted for his clothes he asked, "How fur along is she?"

"Goin' on six months." Evans felt rather than saw his wife getting into her things. "Not long enough for a live baby."

"Scared out of her, I reckon. Or maybe she got a b.u.mp."

"It ain't any one thing, Lije. It's bein' worked and worried for so long."

"She didn't mention any b.u.mp."

"See can you find a candle, Lije. There's a nubbin or two in the oak box."

He found the candles and walked with her to Byrd's tent, taking a brand from the fire there to light the candle with inside.

It was just flickering shadow he saw at first, and then the beds slung around and the eyes of two young ones fastened on him. It was a big tent, as it had to be, with four beds in it. Mrs. Byrd was lying with her youngest one, in a bed that was rumpled where Byrd had got out. Byrd was squatting by her. She breathed something to Rebecca. Evans lit a candle with the brand and stuck it to the bottom of a bucket.

Rebecca had knelt by the bed. She twisted her head toward Evans. "Get the chirren out, Lije. Some can go to our bed, and likely the Macks or Fairmans or Patches'll see the others have a place to lie."

Byrd said, "Get up, children! Get up! Elizabeth! Mother's sick. You don't need to dress."