How the West Was Won (1963) (18 page)

It must be from Lilith. Quickly, she ripped open the letter. Mr. Peterson ... Corporal ... can you wait just a minute? I may want to answer this one right away.

I was sort of hopin' Zeb would come with us, Peterson said. He's about the best shot around here-most as good as his pa.

His father went when the first bugle blew. Isn't one Rawlings enough? Zeb vaulted the split-rail fence and walked up to the porch, grinning at Peterson. Say, now! You look mighty fittin' in that uniform! He picked up the gourd dipper and dipped it into the bucket standing in the coolness of the porch. The cold water dripped from the gourd into the bucket as he started to drink.

Zeb, Eve said, your Aunt Lilith says there is no war in California, and they don't believe there will be. Business is good, and there are a lot of opportunities for a young man.

Listen to this: There's talk of building a railroad east, and with his business connections what they are, Cleve believes he will be in on the ground floor. We would welcome Zeb if he wishes to come- Ma, Zeb asked suspiciously, did you write to her about me? Did you?

Not exactly, but--

Did you?

I only told her you didn't like farming any more than your pa did. Ma, Zeb said persuasively, you've got a wrong idea about this war. It ain't goin' to be so bad. And you know pa's havin' the time of his life- Mrs. Rawlings, Peterson interrupted, I got it from the Captain himself-we won't be gone any time at all. Them easterners had trouble at Bull Run, but when us westerners hit them Johnny Rebs they'll run like rabbits. Why? Eve asked coldly.

It's simple! Them eastern soldiers are all city boys, ribbon clerks and the like. Us westerners, we cut our eyeteeth on a gun barrel. We'll give them Johnny Rebs what for, now don't you worry!

Ma, Zeb said, pa left it up to you whether I joined up or not, but you know how he really felt.

Mrs. Rawlings, Peterson argued, there ain't much glory trompin' behind a plow. I'd sure hate to think I'd missed my chance. Think how it's goin' to be for the boy ... everybody gone but him.

It was no use. From the beginning she had known it was no use. When Linus had gone she had hoped that Zeb would be willing to stay on at home, but deep in her heart she knew such hope was wasted. It was in him to go, and go he would. She shared none of their optimism. She was nothing if not a realist, and she could see clearly, all too clearly what might lie ahead. She had listened to some of the southerners talk, and she knew their fierce pride, their certainty of victory. They were qualities not easily to be given up. Thank you for waiting, Corporal, I guess there is no hurry about answering this letter. Thank you again.

You mean I can go? Zeb asked excitedly.

There will be things to do, Zeb. We've got to plan.

Peterson winked at Zeb. So long, Mrs. Rawlings. Be seein' you, Zeb.

Zeb turned quickly and hurried after his mother. Ma? We'll have to get your underwear washed and your socks darned. Do they give you a uniform?

I reckon.

But maybe they won't give you any shirts. Take that one off and I'll wash it.

The other two are clean but they ain't ironed yet.

Mother--

She turned quickly, her eyes wide. Why did you call me that? It's always been ma, before.

I don't know, he replied seriously; seemed all of a sudden ma wasn't enough, somehow.

You'll be wanting to cast some bullets, she said, fighting back the tears. You an' your pa always favored makin' your own. You'd best cast a lot of them, Zeb-I don't think those Johnny Rebs are any more inclined to run than you'd be. Don't you forget that most of them were raised just like you and Jeremiah.

They'll be good boys, and they'll shoot straight. She must keep busy. That had always been the answer. If she was busy enough she would not have time to think. After they had buried pa and ma down by the rock she had worked hard, worked so hard that Linus had to stop her a time or two, but the work proved a blessing.

She turned to the window and paused for a long minute, looking at the green hills, and up the fine meadow where the cattle grazed. Beyond it was the wood lot where the trees had never been touched. Right at the start Linus had set that piece to one side, so to speak, and would never let anybody touch a stick of it except to gather fallen branches after a storm. That was for wild game, a refuge where not even Linus himself would hunt, a full section of timberland left just as nature intended it, as wild as the first day a white man set foot on the land.

The neighbors thought him foolish, but he would have it so. It's for the game, he would say; they need a place in which to breed, a safe place. Besides, he would add, the country is fillin' up with folks, and soon none of them will know how it was when we first saw it. I think we owe it to the land to keep this piece just like it was.

Had she had the right to take Linus from the wild, free life he lived? And was not her sense of guilt impelling her to let Zeb go off to the wars? Was it not that she felt she had tied one man down to the land, and so must free the other? Linus had not been unhappy, she knew that, and yet how many times had she caught him looking off into distance with that strange, longing look in his eyes? How many times had he gone off into the wilderness among the wild things? And Zeb was like him.

A time or two she had wondered if Linus would ever come back. Like the time he went after the clubfoot bear. That bear was known wherever men gathered, a great old bear, far larger than any seen around that part of the country, and mean. She heard talk of him from the first, and so had Linus. Folks of an evening would set by the fire and talk of the clubfoot bear almost like it was superhuman or something. It came and it killed ... one winter it was their white-face calf. And the following spring it was two pigs. He killed the Hennington boy ... hardly a boy, for he was all of eighteen. That Hennington boy wanted the name for killing that clubfoot bear, and he took after him. It was days before they found him, and it looked plain enough there on the ground ... he had followed the bear and the bear laid for him. Linus had heard Indians talk of bears in the far north, up Alaska way, that would lay for a man, but in the Ohio country it didn't seem right. No Indian would hunt the clubfoot bear, and after he destroyed the Simpson hounds nobody wanted any piece of that bear.

Then he killed a colt Linus set store by, and Linus taken down his old rifle. Zeb wanted to go, but Linus would have none of it. He walked away with that springy woodsman's walk of his and it was nigh two months before he came in from the woods.

He was gaunt and rail-thin, his eyes hollow like he'd been spooked, but he was as happy as she'd ever seen him. And he took that clubfoot out of his pack and laid it on the step. That paw looked bigger than any natural bear would be likely to have, and the Indians and settlers came and stood around and stared at it like they couldn't believe their eyes. But pa had trailed the clubfoot bear, trailed him far into the deep woods and killed him. Nobody ever got all of that story from Linus, but for months he would start suddenly awake from a sound sleep and grab for his rifle, which he kept close by. For Linus it had been a wild and strange thing, that hunt for the clubfoot bear, and toward the end it was a hunt of man for bear and bear for man, and one time he came up on that bear just a-settin' waitin' for him. The bear set there starin' at him, lookin' right into his eyes the way no animal ever does look into a man's eye, and that bear looked into him like he wished to see what manner of man had hunted him so long and so consistent. Even the bear was ganted up, pa said, there at the end.

It was a long time later before he could put lead into him. That time the bear just looked at him, and before pa could unlimber his rifle, why that old bear taken off into the brush, just faded away.

Finally, on a sandy stretch of beach along the lake-one of those Great Lakes you hear tell of-with a raw, cold wind blowing in off the water, they met and settled it between them. That bear tried to lay for pa, but pa had been studying his tricks too long, and he was not following right down the trail, but off to one side.

He and the bear, they had seen each other at the same time, and when pa ups with his rifle, the bear came for him. That clubfoot never had seemed to slow him down none, but pa put a slug into him before the bear got to him. The slug hit hard, but it didn't slow the clubfoot bear, so pa drawed his pistol and fired into his mouth and the bear hit him a swipe that laid pa's shoulder open, then came for him, and pa got another slug into him, and that stopped the bear. Pa out with his knife with his left hand and his tomahawk with his right, and when the bear, stopped by that last bullet, reared up and came for him, pa fetched the bear a clout with that tomahawk and then jumped away. He saw then that a bullet of his had broken the bear's shoulder, but that bear wasn't figuring to run, no more than Linus.

Linus came at him with a knife, because the bear had wound up atop of his rifle, and Linus was bleeding from that laid-open shoulder. Linus got the knife into him, though, and ripped up the bear's jugular, and then he backed off and fell down, all done up and losin' blood, and there they sat, facin' each other on that windy stretch of sand, two old wild ones.

There at the end, Linus said, that bear looked almost pleased it was me that done it. We understood each other, him an' me. Had he lived on, some tenderfoot might have shot him accidental, and shamed him in bear heaven. Zeb had grown up on that story, and it was only one of many stories told about Linus Rawlings.

Eve's parents, Zebulon and Rebecca Prescott, who were buried out there in the shadow of the great rock, would have been proud of her boys. She said it to herself, and then frowned-she was wrong to call them boys, or to even think of them in that way. They were men, and did the work of men. Moreover, reluctant as she might be to see Zeb go, it was time for him to try his strength against the world.

Two days later she watched him trudge away up the road, carpetbag in hand. She had struggled to control herself while Zeb could see her, for he was having a hard time of it, without her tears. After all, Zeb had never been away from home except on short hunting trips with his father. When he at last disappeared around the bend, the tears came.

Jeremiah put his hand on her shoulder. We'll get along, ma. I'll work hard, and I won't be lookin' over the fence all the time the way Zeb was. There was no criticism in the remark, for the two boys had loved and respected each other. It was only the truth. Jeremiah was much like Rebecca, sturdy, hard-working, and serious-minded, although not without a touch of poetry in him, too. But his poetry was of the earth, and he loved the good soil and all he could bring from it. He was a man who treated a farm like a mistress, and the farm responded accordingly.

You go up to the house, son, and start the fire for supper. You go on. He turned away, knowing where she would go now, for Eve Prescott Rawlings turned always along the same path during her moments of trial. She went to stand beside the graves of her parents and the two children she had lost, for these as much as the house up yonder represented her home. They were the graves of her people. Edith lay there, Edith who lived almost seven years and then died of pneumonia; and Samuel, who saw only one Christmas and one New Year's Day, and did not quite reach his first birthday.

Standing alone now beside the graves in the twilight of the evening, she spoke aloud. What else could I do, pa? He is Linus's son, and somehow he's always seemed more of Linus's blood. Maybe that's why I love him so. But you've got to help me pray, pa ... you've got to help me pray. Captain Linus Rawlings lay face down in the orchard studying the situation before him. The peaches were in bloom, and along the creeks there were thickets of redbud, their darkly handsome branches clustered with magenta blossoms. It was Sunday evening, April 6th, and what he had seen that day he would like to forget, but he knew he would never forget it. Of the two armies who came together near the little church called Shiloh, eighty per cent were green troops, commanded by officers who were, for the greater part, without battle experience, and committed to the noble but foolish adage that soldiers should stand up and fight man-fashion.

The lesson that Washington had tried to teach Braddock was still, after one hunderd years, unlearned by the military. And the fault lay on both sides, and with all the commanding generals.

Sherman had informed Grant there were only twenty thousand Rebel soldiers facing him. Actually, there were forty thousand. The untrained, poorly commanded troops had walked into a slaughterhouse.

Perhaps never in the history of the world had there been so many officers assembled who knew more about the art of war and less about fighting. For there is a difference, and the difference is written in blood. Battles are initiated by generals; they are won by company, platoon, or squad actions, and it is an Alice-in-Wonderland feature of all armies that soldiers are taught hours of meaningless maneuvers on the drill field until they move with beauty and precision ... almost as well as a group of chorus girls. Nobody ever thinks to teach them to fight. That they must learn in the field, if they survive long enough to learn. Linus had learned and he had survived, but he had learned against the Plains Indians, perhaps the greatest fighting men the world has known.

Now he lay carefully studying the terrain before him. He had been given a mission, and he intended to carry it out-with as little loss of life as possible.

His company lay scattered among the trees behind him, sixty-six men in all, including a few stragglers from other outfits who had survived the destruction of less ably commanded units. They liked the tall, quiet, former mountain man and they understood his way of fighting.