Fair Land, Fair Land (5 page)

"
Comin' today, huh?" Higgins said, just to
make talk.

"
Said he would. Been gone two weeks now."

"
So what you got in the tradin' line?"
Summers asked. "A good rifle, maybe?"

"
Not like that there cannon of yours. Hawken,
ain't it? But I A got a good Kentucky, full stock, sugar wood. Big
enough for deer, even elk. It shoots true."

"
Might have a look later. How"s the jug
holdin' up?"

Newton renewed the drinks. "Got here too late
for rich pickin's," he said, resting an elbow on the bar.
"Started the cabin and then figured what the hell. No goods to
sell. I contracted for two wagonsful, and they was long comin'. I'll
do me better next season."

"
Bound to be a crowd, I"m thinkin',"
Summers said.

"
Bein' green," Newton went on, "I
stocked a heap of the wrong things. Powder and ball for one. What did
a passel of farmers want with that in peaceable country? Heavy
clothes for another. Should have stocked slickers. Live and learn,
they say, and I'm learnin'."

"
Yeah. I reckon you might as well tell your
woman to be makin' that tasty sauce."

Newton disappeared through a door, and they heard him
giving directions. When he came back, he asked, "Would it be
fittin' to ask where you're bound?"

"
East," Summers said and didn't add to it.

"
Well, good luck. I sure hope you make it. It's
comin' on to the second half of August, you taken note?"

"
We'll make it."

Newton didn't hear him, for he was saying as the
outer door opened, "How there, stranger? We been talkin' about
you."

The man who entered was short, swarthy and dressed in
buckskins. He wore his hair in braids. He answered, "
Comment
portez-vous
?"

"Cut out the Frenchy act," Newton said.
Then to Higgins and Summers, "He means how are you?"

The man took a seat, and Summers told Newton, "I'll
buy a round."

Before he drank the man said, "
Merci
.
I be Christian."

"
I be Dick. Here's to you, Chris."

The man sipped at his whiskey, put the mug down and
answered, "No. No. My name it is Antoine. Christian my
medicine."

"
My mistake." Summers gestured with his
left hand. "Whitman Mission?"

Again the man shook his head. "Not so. True
faith for me. Book of Heaven. The big medicine."

For an instant Summers looked puzzled, but only for
an instant. "The black robes?"

"
Oui. Oui," Antoine answered, his smile
pleased. "On Racine Amére."

"
He means Bitter Root country," Summers
said to Higgins.

"
That's over the mountains." He turned back
to Antoine.

"
You're a long way from home."

Antoine nodded. "See my friends. What you call
the Umatilla, the Nez Perce, even Cayuse. Ask them come see the black
robes. Find out truth."

"
I take it you're a Flathead."

"
White man's talk. We no flatten heads."

"
Heap sorry," Summers answered. "When
you go home?"

"
Moon of wild rose, maybe. Many to see."

"
I'm headin' that way myself."

"
Ah, to see black robes?"

"
Find out the truth," Summers answered, not
smiling. "Not sure how to go. Think so, but not sure. You tell
me?"

"
Oui. Oui. Say you saw Antoine, yes?"

"Sure. Sure."

Summers turned his head toward Newton. "Would
you ask your woman to please put another name in the pot?"

"
Figured he'd be here. On you?"

"
On me."

Summers and Antoine began talking sign language. It
made no sense to Higgins, that waving and pointing and playing with
their fingers. He paid them little mind until Summers said,

"Hig, get one of them lamps, will you?"

At Summers' signal Higgins put the lamp on the floor.
Summers and Antoine squatted there, and Antoine began drawing lines
in the dust, explaining with more sign language. In between gestures
Summers called to Newton, "We could stand another dose of that
good whiskey."

"
On the house this time," Newton told him.

Higgins didn't want another drink. He was liquored up
plenty as it was. He put one hand over his mug, to be told by Newton,

"
When Joe Newton buys, everybody drinks."
The damn man was still touchy. Higgins removed his hand.

Summers and Antoine talked some more, by tongue and
hand. By and by Newton said, "You boys want to neaten up, I put
a bucket of water and a basin and towel out on the bench. Grub's
about ready."

Higgins hadn't even seen him go out.

Antoine was the first to go wash. While he was gone,
Summers told Higgins, "I figured my nose was pointed right, but
now I sure God know how to go."

"
Just so it gets us to yonder."
 

7

TO HIGGANS, looking backward, it seemed the days and
nights were all one, each different in the doing and seeing but
still, taken together, all the same. Get up before the sun, eat, pack
up and saddle up and ride, make camp just before dark, eat again, gab
a while, sleep. And ford the rivers, the Deschutes, the John Day, the
Umatilla, and maybe take time to wash the dirt off.

The trail, so far as they followed it, was empty of
travelers. The Oregon-bound had passed this way, the men, the women,
the children, the wagons and livestock, and had pushed on by water or
trail to the promised land that he and Summers were putting behind
them.

They had met some Indians along the Umatilla, a
tatter-assed, beggarly bunch to whom Summers paid little attention
except to call back, "Watch your outfit, Hig. They got quick
hands."

The days and nights were the same but the country
changed, from forest and ferns to pieces of prairie and cottonwood
patches. It was good to take note of them all but bad not to know
what was seen. What's the name of this plant? What kind of tree's
that? A damn shame that a man went through life ignorant of the life
around him. Too late, though, to do anything about that.

At the edge of the Blue Mountains Summers slanted
them to the left, to the northeast. He pulled up where water ran from
a spring and let the horses drink. He pointed. "Whitman
Mission's over there a piece, and, I hear, a fort. Can't see 'em from
here."

"
You aim to skip both?"

"
Palaver would just hold us up. Besides, we got
what we need."

True enough, Higgins thought, though they'd have to
find game for the pot. The list of things bought at the Dalles ran
through his head. Two blankets to add to their bedrolls. A couple of
plugs of cheap tobacco. One jug of whiskey. A square of canvas big
enough for a tent. Powder and ball. A packet of salt. And for Higgins
himself Summers bought a short heavy coat like his own. He called it
a capote. He added warm wool pants and the Kentucky rifle. For good
measure the man had thrown in a piece of salted deer meat and, at
Higgins' hint, some corn meal and a trifle of honey. That wasn't all.
"In them old felts you men will freeze your goddamn ears off,"
the man had said. "Now I got just the right thing. Can't sell
'em to sod-lovers, not in rainy country, so I'm makin' a gift."
He poked through a pile of goods and came out with two coonskin caps.
And he wasn't from Kentucky or Tennessee, huh?

As they were about to leave the Dalles, Higgins had
said to Summers, "Dick, how in hell am I going to pay you back?
You spend money like you got no use for it."

"
Used it, didn't I? And where we're goin' it
don't count for much. As for payin' me back, I'll worry about that
when my taxes come due."

That meant never, of course, and all Higgins could
think to say was, "Well, shit. Thanks."

So there, day by day, was Summers riding ahead,
pushing his horse to a good clip. If he ever got tired, he didn't
show it. The damn man was made of whang leather. At the end of the
day he'd say, "Best just set a spell, Hig. You look fagged. I"ll
tend to things."

But a man couldn't let him do that, not if he had any
pride, not when he must be twenty years younger.

Sometimes Higgins wondered why he trailed along.
Sure, to get yonder. To see things not seen before. Just to mosey
along, careless, and think free and easy. To be away from folks and
close to God if there was one. All the same, he wouldn't be where he
was but for the man that Summers was.

They lived on meat, deer meat mostly. It was Summers
who shot it. He could see game where there couldn't be any. A time or
two they ate rabbit or fool hen that Higgins bagged with his old
scattergun. They were easy targets even if a man aimed at the head
so's not to get birdshot in the carcass.

One morning Higgins mixed corn meal with melted meat
fat, added a dab of honey, poured in hot water and made what his maw
called corn dodger. Eating it, Summers smiled and said, "Please
to pass the butter and buttermilk."

That was the morning Summers heated water, took from
his possible sack a hunk of homemade soap brown as dung and then
started to sharpen his Green River knife. Satisfied with its edge, he
fixed a piece of tin mirror in the loose bark of a tree.

At last Higgins asked, "What in hell you aimin'
to do?"

"
Mow the crop down."

"
Shave? Jesus Christ! With that toad-stabber?"

"
Done it many's the time."

"Why?"

"
Don't like to be called dog face. That's Indian
for whiskers."

"
You wasn't always so tidy."

"
Them west-coast Indians don't count."

"
They was mostly pretty smooth-faced, though."

"
Yup. Indian face skin can't grow much of a
crop. If a hair happens to come through, the Indians pluck it out."

"
Goin' to braid your hair, too?"

"
Maybe. When it gets long enough."

"
Well, let me borrow some of that hot water and
soap. I got my own razor."

That night they let the campfire burn out, the air
being soft with a touch of breeze in it. The horses grazed close,
Feather's bell sounding clear to his step. Summers got the jug out
and passed it, and they drank while butted on the ground by the dead
fire.

Higgins looked up at the sky, at what he told himself
was a glory of stars. "You ever see so many stars, Dick?"

"
Wait till we get out on the plains."

"
You ever tried to count 'em?"

"
Sure did. But when I got to a million, I kind
of dozed off. Take another swaller and pass the jug."

The liquor eased the ache in the bones and brought
the mind to a sort of lazy life.

"
What men may be doin' seems no account here,"
Higgins said. "Don't amount to a damn. But back in Missouri they
was talkin' hot about war with Mexico so's to get Texas. What we want
with Texas, Dick?"

"
I never been there. Down south to Taos and
around, but Texas wasn't for trappers. Put it the other way round.
What does Texas want with us for a fact? Either way don't make sense,
I'm thinkin'. We take it, and what do we get? More people, and we got
a God's plenty of people. That's what spoils a country."

"
All of us guilty, I reckon. I humped a little
slave gal for a while. She was young, no older'n a yearling by animal
count, but I never hung around to see what come of it. When it come
to couplin', I can tell you, she was plumb human. That's what gets me
about slavery. Countin' niggers no good except for work, then havin'
a high old time with their heifers. You ever owned a slave, Dick?"

"Never wanted to."

"
Me, neither. But if it ever got down to war,
what would you do?"

"
Cuss both sides probably. I don't know."

Summers fell silent. When at last he spoke, his voice
sounded sad. "I seen this country in its prime, Hig. Beaver in
every stream. We found passes, we did, and followed trails only game
knew. But, hell, I jabbered about all this before."

"
Not so plain as now. Go on."

"Where we set foot we might have been the first
man there, and we breathed new air into our lungs, and all the time
felt glad and free inside and never gave a thought about what was to
come. About farmers and plows and hide-hunters and all that. We
figured our life was forever. We screwed ourselves, me included,
finding trails and passes and kind of gentling the country. It makes
a man cuss himself."

"
And that's why we're goin' where we're goin'?"

"
One reason. To see what's left. To pleasure
ourselves while we can."

A star fell down the sky, and the breeze stirred the
ash of the fire, and Summers said for good-night while he looked up,