Fair Land, Fair Land (7 page)

Once away from the tent he put the gloves in his
pocket and lowered his pants. God wouldn't ask a man to bare his ass
as he had to. It was the devil at work. Finished he wiped himself
with the rag and adjusted his clothes. He washed his hands and face
in the snow and used the capote for a towel. The pile he had laid
steamed behind him.

Like a fool, he had forgotten the ax. He went back
and got it and set to work. While he was working, he heard one shot.
One was all Summers ever needed. He was bringing in the last load
just as Summers showed up.

"
Horses all sassy," Summers said. He swung
out a hand that held a rabbit. "One lousy snowshoe."

The sun was up now. It had no heat in it, only light,
and a man could go blind from the glare on the snow.

Summers skinned and cleaned the rabbit and tossed it
in a pot, ready for boiling. The tent had become fairly warm, warm
close to the fire but chilly at the edges, so that a body felt half
hot and half cold and kept squirming to thaw out the chilled parts.

"That sun might take on some meanin' later,"
Summers said, "but what we need now is more air."

Higgins took a deep breath and blew it out in a white
plume. "I was just hopin' you could rustle up some."

"
Air in the shape of more wind."

"
Sure. I miss it."

"
To scour out the trail. To lift up the snow.
Sure, it will leave some drifts, but we can bull through."

"
I'd as lief stay safe for a while as risk my
neck."

"
Risk is the name of it all, Hig. You can break
a leg any time, get kicked by a horse, fall off"n a cliff, get
lost and give up. But how'd you like to live without it, like a milk
cow, say, or a prize stud horse? You want pamperin'?"

"
Yeah. Like a woman to take the fret out."

"
It's weather and chances we're talkin' about.
The first snow goes away fast. You can bet on that."

Higgins put a stick on the fire. He looked through
the open end of the canvas. "It's not meltin' now by a long
shot."

"
It's goin' away. Shrunk already by two inches
or I'm a nigger."

"
It's just settled, is all."

"
That's not the half of it. This high up the
air's pretty dry, and it sucks up the snow."

"
I don't see any goin' back up."

"
It evaporates. That's what it does. Goes up in
a mist you can't see."

"
Like the soul, huh?"

It was good to hear Summers laugh. Through the laugh
he said, "Quit play-actin' the muttonhead."

With nothing else to do,
they sat by the fire, lay down and snoozed, fed the fire and snoozed
some more. Half-drowsing, Higgins heard the wind again. The soul that
went up in it would get one hell of a ride.

* * *

Empty-bellied, they set out in the gray of morning.
Summers had been right. The snow had shrunk, been blown away or gone
up in mist. Or some of it had. Where it hadn't, the horses shuffled
through, knee-deep in places. The wind had turned into a cold breeze.
The red ball of the sun came up, cold-firing the snow. Higgins
squinted and moved his cold butt in the saddle.

His life hadn't been worth a damn, he knew and didn't
care. A man took things as they came and, if he had gumption, went
out to meet what was coming. So he had thrown in with Summers and
wasn't sorry. He wondered about the sadness he saw sometimes in
Summers' face, a sadness that never poked through to sour his manner.
He wondered if, like Summers, he had distance in his eyes, of long
trails traveled and others that lay ahead. Summers had said risk was
the all of it, but in his face, off-guard, was the look of search, of
long wanting.

Anyhow, it was plod, plod, on and on, while the cold
tried for a man's vitals and the breath of his horse came out frost.
Times like these, it seemed a long way to yonder, but who
wanted it underfoot?

Ahead of him Summers dismounted, his rifle in one
hand. It was always with him, like a part of himself. He let the
reins drop and went ahead, tramping a trail in a drift. Now Higgins
saw why. The drifted snow slanted down to a drop-off, a cliff face
with a base a hundred, two hundred feet down. A misstep or slip would
shoot a man over the edge.

Higgins forgot he was cold. He raised his eyes from
the drop. He tried to shut it out of his mind. Let him fall, he
thought, looking up, and the mountains, dressed in starched white,
would be his uncaring tombstones.

Returning, Summers said, "Better get off and
lead your horse, Hig. Stay on the upside. It ain't so far."

Summers took Feather's reins and led away, walking
careful. There was nothing for it but to follow his tracks. He kept
his eyes on them. He hoped his horses were sure-footed. They ought to
be, having four feet, if that didn't double the trouble. The horses
followed readily enough, the dumb brutes.

Once past the drift, Summers held up and waited, his
face smiling. "I was a mite scared we would roll the string,"
he said.

"
I was scared we would roll me."

"
You were, huh?"

"
You ought to see what I got in my pants."

"
I figure it's downhill and easier goin', here
on out. Sun's warmin' up some, to boot."

"
I hadn't took notice till now."

They pushed on, by and by leaving most of the snow.
Summers' head was alert. He would be looking for meat. High time,
too, Higgins' guts told him. But there wasn't any game, not even a
track. And there weren't any birds in the trees. Of a sudden Summers
checked his horse and shot. He dismounted and walked off a piece and
came back carrying some kind of animal.

"
Bobcat," he said, "but it's meat.
Don't usually see 'em in daylight."

He tied the cat to his saddle, mounted and rode on.

So it was on again the next morning with the pukey
taste of cat meat in his mouth, and the sun turned kind and the snow
went away and the breeze let up, and there was spring in the steps of
the horses. Down, down, the trail turned, and now ahead lay a valley
where the sun buttered the turned grass of meadow and slope. A river
ran through it, fringed by cottonwoods and aspens and willows that
hadn't yet lost their leaves.

"
There's the Bitter Root," Summers said.

Higgins just looked, looked at the gentle valley and
the leafed trees, feeling the sun as soft ,as a woman's touch. He
called ahead, "And to think them people went clear to Oregon!
Where's all the Indians?"

"
Upstream by the mission, I reckon."

"
Man, this is cozy. Just pitch a tent alongside
the water and let time run by. It's a hellish temptation, Dick."

"
Won't be that way for long. Someone will find
it, and them that follers will ruin it. That's the way of things."

"
The Flatheads haven't."

"
Injuns don't. Got more sense."

"Right now, all I want is to go down to the
river, get my tail out of the saddle and eat. I'm bound to say I
ain't strong for what we been puttin' into our stummicks."

"
Grouse tonight. Change of victuals. Let's get
along."

Higgins brought in the grouse that afternoon, four of
them, plump as fed chickens. Summers had unpacked the horses and now
sat by the makings of a fire. He said, "Look off to your left,
Hig."

A black bear stood there, its nose working. There was
rust on its muzzle and paws.

"
No harm in it," Summers said.

"Be a shame to shoot. Everythin's so tame, like
friends. The grouse was more like tame hens. Tame fish in the river,
too, I bet."

"
Catch us a mess, then. I'll ready the grouse."

There was no trick to catching these fish. A man
didn't even need bait. Just tie a bit of grouse feather to a hook and
start casting.

Higgins gutted his catch and brought it in. Summers
had a couple of grouse spitted over the fire.

"
Fish, too?" Higgins asked.

"
Sure thing."

"
We got no grease for fryin'."

"
Put water in the skillet, not too much. Poach
'em."

"
If you ain't one smart son of a bitch!"

They followed the river down the next day and the
next. It joined what Summers said had to be Clark's Fork of the
Columbia. There Summers turned the string upstream. By and by they
came to a great hole in the mountains, a giant deep saucer with peaks
and high tumbles of hills for its rim. Mountains on all sides, some
of them snow-capped, some of them thick with forest, but down here
the weather was warm and the trees scattered more, and the river sang
by, merry with its travels, and all a man wanted to do was to eat and
sleep and let the sun shine on him. Someone would find this place, as
Summers said, and others would be on his heels, but now this cupped
world was all theirs, and the only tame sounds were the far-off
barking of dogs in an Indian camp that Summers had sighted and
sneaked them around, saying only, "I don't hanker for
pipe-smoking and palaver, not now, though the Flatheads is
peaceable."

Lying down in his bed that night, hearing the busy
river, thinking of this valley in the high hills, Higgins told
Summers,

"Wake me up when the last trumpet toots."
 

10

THEY WERE OVER the Bitter Boot, over Clark's Fork and
well up the Big Blackfoot, the River of the Road to the Buffalo. Give
them two more days, maybe three, Summers thought, and they'd spill
out on the plains. Winter was holding off, and now he knew for a fact
just where he was, though not once on the long trail from Oregon had
he had to backtrack or correct course.

It was no more than the middle of the day, but
Summers pulled up his horse and the string halted behind him. Here
was a long, level open space, grassed, shrub-clumped and not thick
with trees, and at its side flowed the Big Blackfoot, reduced now to
stream size as the trail approached the divide.

"
Hig," he said over his shoulder, "I'm
thinkin' it would be smart to make camp and let the horses rest and
fill up."

The horses were pretty gaunt, but, thanks to Higgins,
there wasn't a sore foot in the bunch or a saddle sore. The claw
marks on Feather's rump were healing up good.

"
Suits me," Higgins said, "and will
suit the nags even better, that's if they remember what full bellies
feel like." His thin face screwed up as he studied the lay of
the land. "We'll be needin' fodder our own selves."

"
Name it. Deer. Elk. Maybe moose. I reckon you
could catch us a mess of trout, if'n you feel like it."

Some aspen trees, still carrying a good half of their
leaves, fingered down from a coulee, and they rode around them so as
to have cover if the night wind blew. They unpacked and unsaddled the
horses. The horses rolled, got up, sneezed and stepped off, feeding.

Higgins took a piece of rank meat from a pack and
started cutting it in pieces for bait. His nose twitching, he said,
"Fur as I know fish can't smell." Bait, fish line and hooks
in his hand, he went on, "I'll cut me a pole down by the river."

Summers watched him as he made off. A man wouldn't
think there was any strength in that long, scrawny body or any push.
He wouldn't think so, and he'd be surprised. Like as not, Higgins
would catch some fish. He usually did what he set out to do.

Summers gathered wood for the night fire and set
rocks around so's to nest it. Then he sat down and allowed himself a
pipe of tobacco, taking note to tell Higgins, for what they had they
shared, much or little. They'd gone mighty easy on the whiskey, too,
though they might drink some tonight.

He felt ease in him, the ease of almost arrival, and
with it a sort of unease. Would the high plains be as remembered?
Would buffalo graze there and antelope bucket away and halt, curious,
and the sun shine long, morning and evening, and the buttes rise
clear against the painted sky? And if they did, would it be as it was
once? Too often, things weren't what they were cracked up to be. He
let himself nap.

Higgins woke him up, Higgins coming into camp with a
nice string of trout on a willow stick. "Nothin' to it," he
said. "Gave up when my bait ran out. Ain't they pretty, though?"

Summers got to his feet. "They shine for a fact.
My turn now. What'l1 it be?"

"
Quail on toast, if it be so's to please you."

He didn't have to go far. With dusk closing in the
deer were coming down to feed and water in this natural pasture. He
lay behind a clump of brush and waited. A doe came first, her growing
fawn behind her. They hadn't learned to be hunter shy. They had only
to watch for the big cats, wolves, and sometimes a bear. Then came a
plump doe — no fawn. She was a pretty thing, as delicate as, well
as delicate as a she deer. She would be good to eat. He killed her
with one shot from the Kentucky.

"
He went up to her, made his cuts and rolled
out the guts, saving the liver. He was ready for Higgins when Higgins
showed up with a pack horse.