The Way West Part 31

They squirmed out of bed, big-eyed, it seemed to Evans, with some young wisdom that knew without being told. They straggled out, gazing back as they left the door of home, none of them speaking. As Evans stepped out, he saw Rebecca take the littlest Byrd from his mother's side and lay him in one of the empty beds.

He and Byrd got the children placed and came back and freshened the fire and put a second kettle on to boil. The night was darker than Evans had expected, or maybe it was just the fire that made the world seem black. There was the red light of it and the glimmer of the tent and the bulge of the wagon top, and nothing to see beyond.

While Byrd poked at the fire, Evans went to the tent and entered, stooping, and said, "We got everything fixed, and two kettles b'ilin'. Anything else, Becky? Mrs. Mack is comin', and Mrs. Patch and Mrs. Fairman if you need 'em."

As he spoke, a spasm came on Mrs. Byrd's face, and her body writhed under the covers. Becky nodded, saying Byrd was right, saying this was it.

The spasm pa.s.sed, leaving the face loose and tired. Mrs. Byrd opened her eyes, opened them dead into those of Evans. In that instant, in that flash of knowing, Evans saw not Mrs. Byrd or Mrs. Anybody. He saw Rebecca and Brownie and Mercy and all the members of the train. He saw everybody. He saw himself. He saw the humble, hurtful, anxious, hoping look that was the bone-deep look of man.

He went out, meeting Mrs. Mack coming in. A fire was going by the Fairmans' tent and Mrs. Fairman was a shadow by it, cooking up a broth, he thought, to take to Mrs. Byrd. A little mist of steam was coming from the kettles on the fire close by. Byrd was putting on more wood. He gazed at Evans as if to ask a question. Evans couldn't think of anything worth saying. He sat down by the fire to give the man his company.

A pigeon, he had thought, and later on a duck, and later on a chicken, a woman mild as milk, with no inner force to fix her in the others' minds. Even the moaning that brought Byrd to his feet was a weak moaning. Had things gone right with her, who could call her name ten years from now? What was her name, they'd say, you know, that quiet, little woman?

But, for a breath, he had looked into her eyes and seen below and known that she was kin to him.

The child was born dead, like Rebecca said, an hour or two before the eastern sky warmed up. They buried it, unnamed, and Weatherby spoke a prayer, and they rigged a bed for Mrs. Byrd and dragged away for Boise. It was August 15. Who could say when snow would be blowing in the Blues?

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

WE GOT to be decidin' things," Evans said to open the meeting of the council.

It was a changed council, with Brewer and Tadlock gone and Patch and s.h.i.+elds elected to their places -a changed council but a better one, it seemed to Curtis Mack as he rumped down in the circle with the rest of them.

Evans wasn't in a hurry to proceed. He had his jackknife out, whittling on his nails. Underneath his thin-worn s.h.i.+rt Mack could see the bulge of muscles. A balanced man was Evans, big, slow, balanced, growing in stature with the captaincy. Mack felt with a twist of envy that here was a person sure to make his mark in Oregon, sure to lead in the organization of the territory, sure to represent it in some major office. It wasn't the future of him, though, that excited envy. It was the man himself. It was the suggestion in his looks and manner that he was at peace with himself, at a kind of modest peace that won men to him. Did he have no inward weaknesses, no secret conflicts, Mack wondered; no faults beyond the doubtful fault of unsure confidence, beyond the disappearing fault of indecision? Did he know the outlaw impulses? Did he wake up at night and try to run from judgment?

Mack took his gaze away from the broad and downturned face. The sky was overcast, but without much threat of rain. Through the clouds to the west he could see the bright spot that would be the sun.

"First thing to decide is to get away from this G.o.ddam fort," s.h.i.+elds said. "Fis.h.!.+ Whew!"

They sat back from the corralled train, closer to the river. The fort squatted on beyond, but still the smell of fish was all around, the smell of fresh, dried, rotting fish, of fly-blown leavings from the riches of the Snake.

"Couldn't sleep last night for them fish slappin' the water," s.h.i.+elds went on. "Fish in the ears and fish in the nose and fish, by G.o.d, in the tobacco you chew. Worst fort we've saw."

Fort Boise was the worst, Mack agreed inwardly while the other men joined s.h.i.+elds in small talk. It was the smallest and the worst -the dirtiest, stinkingest, the least concerned with order. Indians swarmed around it, fish-fat, filthy, witless Indians who couldn't learn, the fort men said, to store up food against the starving winters. What was it Summers held: that war alone -that love of war- gave fiber to the Indians eastward? In any case the other forts were better, Hall for one, and Laramie. Laramie? How many trains of thought led back to Laramie?

Evans was saying, "We'll pull out tomorrow now we've done our tradin'. Got enough dried fish aboard to last me all my life."

"I'll be glad to put the Snake behind," Patch said. "Let England have it."

Evans bent the talk to business. "The big thing is, what do we do with the cattle? Like old Greenwood said, what do we do with the cattle?"

His words, it seemed to Mack, were like pebbles dropped into a pool, or like the afterwash of pebbles into quiet water. His own attention rippled to them and ran back to Laramie, to Laramie and night and the one night afterwards along the trail. And it flowed along to Soda Springs and the girl despairing and to Fort Hall and the marriage and Brownie giving his stiff no to the offered gift of oxen, to a gift that wasn't a gift but a cheap offering to peace of mind.

Patch said, "I imagine we can drive the cattle through. The trail from the Dalles to the Willamette can't be any worse than some we've traveled."

"Who's we?" Evans asked.

"Well, one of us. Some of us."

"There ain't any trail to speak of. Remember that. Got to find your own, and no one knows the way, except Summers has a good idee."

"What's wrong with Summers?" s.h.i.+elds asked Evans.

"He said he'd trail 'em."

"Well?"

"Don't think we ought to let him do it." Daugherty asked, "And why not?"

"We paid him just to get us to the Dalles and didn't pay him much, and he's done all and more'n we could ask."

Mack put himself into the conversation. "There's nothing standing in the way of a new contract. We can offer him more money."

Evans answered quietly, "Ain't everyone well fixed like you." The words seemed almost like a reproach. Mack said quickly, "I'll pay him myself then. I'll be glad to pay him, for all of us."

Again Evans spoke quietly, while in the eyes around him Mack saw the answer turning. "Wouldn't keer for you to do that."

Mack asked, "Why not?" but he already knew. Evans, being too stout for help himself, thought others just as proud. He wasn't penniless, or Patch or Fairman, either, but sided with the penniless to spare them the imagined shame of charity. And the two would go along with him, acting poor as Byrd and s.h.i.+elds and Daugherty while they refused his offer.

No, Mack thought suddenly. Always no. Brownie's no and Evans' no and the council's no -as if his very situation were a crime, as if it set him off from them. They wouldn't let him do a favor no matter how he wanted to.

"Just wouldn't keer," Evans answered.

"If you won't let me pay, all right. You can owe me. You can owe me for your share until you're better situated."

Before he finished, a barefooted, bare-bodied Indian ambled up, carrying a fish by a finger hooked through a gill. His other hand dug at his scalp. Evans shook his head and waved him off, "No trade," he said. "No trade. Maybe trade later." He gave the Indian a pinch of tobacco to get rid of him. "That's good o' you," he said to Mack, "but let's see if there ain't another way."

"Does Summers want to take the cattle through?" s.h.i.+elds asked.

"Not for hisself." Evans was quiet for a minute, as if the words, soaked in, would show they couldn't let themselves use Summers. "Like you all know, on a ways we could hit north for Walla Walla."

"Extra miles," Patch put in.

Evans nodded. "But it might be the fort there'll take our stock and give us orders for a trade at Fort Vancouver. I hear they done it before."

"But we can't be sure they will again?" Fairman asked.

"Not certain-sure, but the man here at Boise -what's his name? Craigie- Craigie said they might."

"Then we'd have the river trip from Walla Walla," Patch said. "That would take money, too -for boats and Indian navigators. Money or trinkets, if we had any trinkets left."

"I hate to be beholdin' to the British any more than need be," Evans told him.

"They seem all right. They've been hospitable."

"Not sayin' they ain't, though I notice they don't give nothin' away but a meal and charge ten prices when it comes to trade. The point is, this here ain't their country."

Heads bobbed to that, and a silence followed in which, it seemed to Mack, the issues stood as plain as cactus. They had their choice of Walla Walla and the chance of credits for their cattle and of the nearer Dalles from which d.i.c.k Summers, paid or not, could take the livestock overland. The man had said he'd go for nothing. Mack had said he'd pay him. But still the council hesitated, as if from out of nowhere would come the magic answer.

Evans spoke into the silence. "Cows has been got through, we know. Not sayin' how many was lost along the way."

"Hate to think of more hard goin'," s.h.i.+elds said. "Them last days comin' on to Boise River like to ruint me. Christ!"

"Like to ruint everyone," Daugherty chimed in. "And then the good G.o.d brought the river and the trees."

"What about the single men?" Patch asked. "Who?"

"You know. Higgins. Botter. Insko. Moss." Evans inquired, "What about 'em?"

"They're going on to Oregon City, aren't they?"

"That was the agreement with my men," Fairman said. "Moss, too. And Insko, I think," Mack added. "Can't they drive the cattle?"

"When the travelin's hard, it's easy to leave a critter behind, or all of 'em, if the leavin' ain't no skin off you," Evans answered. "Might work out, but it's a heap to ask of 'em, to take the whole thing on themselves." He had folded his knife and was turning it over and over in one hand.

Mack spoke even before the thought had come clear in his mind. "I'll go."

"You'll go?" Evans asked. "I'll go."

"Ain't no more call for you to go than any of the rest of us."

"I've got more cattle, and just one person to look after."

"What o' her?"

"That will depend. Isn't it possible a whole train will be going overland? I mean from this company and others?"

"Not in wagons. d.i.c.k thinks it ain't for wagons."

"On horseback then, and one of you can float my property down. Or, if there's not a party overland, maybe Amanda can go with you."

"Course she could," Evans answered slowly while he picked a stem of gra.s.s.

"What do you say then?" Mack found himself speaking with a kind of urgency, as if, for reasons lying back in mind, it was important that he get them to accept. Their faces were thoughtful,tentative with the brain's trial of yes and no.

"Wouldn't like to ask it of you," Evans said.

"You didn't."

"Right handsome of you," s.h.i.+elds put in, low-voiced, as if embarra.s.sed at the need of comment.

Evans moved his head from face to face. "What you say?" They didn't speak at once, but, watching, Mack foresaw the answer. He thought without irritation, he thought with understanding that, while they wouldn't take his money, they would take his toil and sweat and time, for they had that to give. And it was right, right for them and right for him.

"It's generous," Fairman said to Evans, "too generous, but -if he will?"

Mack got to his feet, seeing others nod. "It's settled, then? I'll see them through. The single men and I will."

Later, lying in bed, listening to the salmon in the river, he thought about his case. He didn't believe in G.o.d, at any rate the G.o.d that other people seemed to. He doubted the moralities. He wouldn't say what const.i.tuted sin, if sin existed. He knew in honesty that, with provocation, he might offend the rules again. As for the deed, it was committed. He couldn't wipe out the fact. Not all his offerings, not toil or time or sacrifice, could undo what was done. The part of good sense was to forget. Soon enough, he thought wryly, a man made new regrets that crowded out the old. Was there some hidden purpose in his treatment of the girl, some wish to overlay with fresh remorse the dismal recollection of the killing of the Kaw?

No, he didn't believe there was. He had acted out of hunger, out of disappointment, out of anger, out of then insufferable fester. Out of them he had shot the Indian and seduced the girl. And was he to blame? Or was it circ.u.mstance? Or was it the G.o.d he couldn't credit? Pushed so far, a man knew strange compulsions. So forget! Just forged He hadn't succeeded in forgetting. No one so molded could, no man so haunted by the ghosts of faith, no mind so tied, beyond the touch of reason, to old admonishments. Be ye therefore perfect. Be ye perfect but ye can't, so be ye burdened with thy sins. Repent! Oh, sure, repent, and make atonement!

Well, the unbeliever had. The unbeliever was going to. The unbeliever would trail the stock to destination for the sake of his nonexistent soul. Repentance? Atonement? Rest.i.tution? The churchy words. The pious words. The solemn words of Weatherby. To h.e.l.l with them! It wasn't to G.o.d he made his offering, to Jesus, G.o.d or Holy Ghost. It wasn't to the train. It was to self. Its purpose was to square himself with self, to equalize accounts and so walk upright in the sight of Curtis Mack. That much remained, that stubborn much, of what was taught him as the way of heaven.

He was ready for sleep, tired and ready for sleep, but it struck him before he slipped into it that now he could follow thoughts like these with less of his old soreness. The singular, fresh-milk fragrance of Amanda came to his nostrils. Her gentle breathing sounded in his ears. He would see the herd across the mountains. He didn't know when he had felt better.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

HERE, from Boise to the Dalles, was the windup of the trail, the finish of the test, the yes or no to Oregon. Here by slow wheel tracks at last was being written the answer to a question raised years ago last spring, raised so long ago a man lost its beginning across the plain-peak, sage-tree, sandrock field of time. He lost it along with places, people and doings remembered from before, so that none of them came real to him and he asked himself if sure enough there was an Independence, a Missouri and a spot he once called home, or were they vapors in his mind.

Asking, he would ask if there was a Dalles, an Oregon, a Columbia that, unseeing, he still had seen, streaming richly to the sea. Was anything behind him or before, anything but rolls of land, anything in all his life but distance to be covered so more distance could be covered? All he could swear to was this walking by his team.

And yet the days of hardest doubt were gone. The days of any doubt were gone. Evans didn't need to tell himself that it was so. The truth of it was big in him. It filled his head and toned his muscles and gave cheer to his words. Not since boyhood had he felt this way, not since his home town of St. Charles had set itself for an illumination. He could hardly wait then, seeing in advance the great fires in the street, answering already to the pitch of celebration.

He had to hold himself in. He had to keep from pus.h.i.+ng, from asking of the teams and people more than they could give. He had to keep in mind that he was born with strength that others didn't have. Soon enough, if not soon enough for him, they'd reach the r.i.m.m.i.n.g hills and see the broad Columbia below. While he drove and double-yoked and watched the weak ones over, he saw it in imagination, rolling with the sun, and a shout swelled in his throat, to be choked down to easy, easy. Easy to the promised land.

He counted each day's going against the miles ahead. The Malheur. Birch Creek. The leaving of the Snake, and no one sorry that it lay behind. Burnt River. The Powder. The rough ridge road he followed now to get to the Grande Ronde.

Burnt River. There was a place. Burnt River -the Brule, as Summers called it- so shouldered in by mountains, so thick with brush and briers, that no one would have dared it, maybe, except for knowing someone had.

Two days of it. Two days of such hard travel that man and brute arrived at camp with no wish but to rest. Unyoked, the oxen dragged off, waiting on the strength to feed. Men worked slow-motioned, tiredness pulling at their muscles as they pitched their tents and struck their fires and did the little ch.o.r.es while they waited for the food that droopy women fixed. The children quarreled, worn down to orneriness. Their whiny voices filled the air.

But still the days of doubt were gone. Still Evans felt the climb of celebration. They'd whipped the trail. They'd whipped it all but for a few mean miles, whipped the Platte and Green and Snake, whipped the deserts and the mountains, and they would whip the rest.

Sometimes he thought of cost, of Martin dead and Tod Fairman buried with his poisoned leg and Mrs. Byrd delivered of the too-soon child and old Rock rotting who used to trot at heel. He thought of other costs, of his fight with Tadlock, of oxen down and left to die, of losses from the Indians, of strength spent and juices sweated and courage whittled to a nub. Each reach of trail had taken toll -Platte, Sweet.w.a.ter, Green, Bear, Snake. And yet -and yet- the thing was worth the cost. No prize came easy. Free land still had its price. A chance at better living had somehow to be earned. A nation couldn't grow unless somebody dared. The price was high, but who would say it was too high -except for those who'd paid so dear?

Byrd might think it, though without much right. None could mourn deep at a stillborn child, seen but for a moment and as a stranger then, with no life in it to leave a memory. But Byrd might think it, being beaten down. Byrd, born timid and out of luck to boot.

It would have to be his wagon, Evans thought, that wrecked along the Brule, his one-remaining wagon that broke a wheel the second day.

The first day had been bad enough, on a narrow, crooked, stony trail that crossed the river only to cross back, that pushed through stubborn thickets, that crept sidelong on ridges shooting into mountains. They'd made twelve miles or more that day and pitched their camp and fallen into bed, each hoping that the worst was past.

It wasn't, though. The worst was still ahead. Evans, in the lead, had stopped his team where the trail wormed through a tangle of cottonwood, alder, brush and briers. Beyond, the mountains squeezed the stream. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "I swear, d.i.c.k!"

"Don't look possible," Summers said from his horse, meaning that it was.

"Ain't room, hardly, for a pony cart to go through here. Bush looks liable to wipe off the wagon tops."