The Big Sky (55 page)

"Be plenty of critters at Independence afore then."

"Uh-huh. Mules with forty devils in 'em and ox straight from hell, and all of 'em set at fancy figures."

The man's face was on Summers, waiting for him to agree. It was a round, open face, a face, Boone thought, that never could keep a secret.

Summers said, "Get shet of your furniture afore you start."

"Get shet of it?"

"You will by and by, regardless. Soonest done, soonest mended."

"Cherry chists and chairs and beds and all?"

"All of 'em."

The man said, "Good Lordy!" and added a question: "You ever try to throw your woman's stuff away?"

"She don't have no fixin's much, savin' what I built myself and can build again. Have a drink?"

The man shook his head slowly while his tongue came out and slid along his lips. "Reckon not. Liquor don't make for easy goin' in my fambly."

Boone said, "Your woman, now, she must be some. It was her notion, going to Oregon, I bet."

"Come to think on it," the man said as a child might have said it, "maybe it were."

"What for you goin'?"

"What for I'm goin'! My God, man, where you been? I'm goin' for soil rich as gold and crops the like of which you never see, and weather that suits a man come winter or summer, and no fevers to shake the bones loose. That's why I'm goin'. Ain't you hearn about Oregon?"

"You been there?"

"I been told plenty."

Boone turned to Summers. "We've half-froze in Oregon. We have, now. And gone with our bellies squeezed up, livin' on wildrose buds and damn few of them about. Ain't it so, Dick?"

"Many's the time."

The man's eyes were full of doubt as he studied them. "That ain't what I hear."

"Besides," Summers put in, "you'll be fightin' Britishers afore you know it. Britishers and Indians both."

"It's our country, by God! It's good old Americky, clean to fifty-four forty, or will be, anyway."

"You'll freeze out and starve out," Boone said, "or maybe get rubbed out, if'n ever you get there."

"What you mean, `rubbed out'?"

"You'll go under, that's what."

"Go under?"

"Get kilt. Don't you know white man's talk?"

"I reckon maybe you got a reason to scare a man off."

Boone swallowed another cup of whisky and wiped his mouth with his knuckles. "It ain't your country, nor any greenhorn's country. Why'n't you stay to home?"

"I reckon there's room for all."

Boone got up. "There ain't. She crowded now so's a man can't catch his breath. It belongs to them as found it and lived in it. Hear?"

"You an Injun?"

"Piegan, me!" Boone shouted and whooped a war cry and jumped for the rifle he had leaned against the cabin.

The man backed off, his eyes wide and white as onions. "All the same," he said while a look of balkiness covered the first surprise in his face, "a man's got a right to go where he wants." He turned and walked down the path, his shoulders held straight under his checkered shirt.

Boone leaned the rifle back against the cabin and sat down again. "Give me another drink, Dick. Damn greenhorns!"

A twinkle shone in Summers' eyes and then went out. "A passel of 'em's went a'ready, and more's a-comin'."

"They won't shine in Oregon. They'll come draggin' back, them as don't go under."

"I do' know, Boone. They got the bit in their teeth, some of 'em, like you just seen." Summers was quiet for a while and then went on, "I reckon they'll be trompin' over the trails we made and climbin' the passes you and me saw first and pokin' plows in along the river bottoms where we used to camp. They got a hunger, they have. This nigger don't look for the old days to come back."

They sat quiet, drinking, as the dark closed in around them. A screech owl began to whimper in a tree behind the cabin. Ma would say someone was going to die. Old Blue got up and stretched and looked at Boone as if asking his leave and went moseying away.

"Changes come on, regardless," Summers said while he poured more whisky. "Ain't nothin' in beaver -not since them Londoners took to silk."

"Beaver's sceerce."

"Not even a rendezvous any more."

"Bridger's set up a fort on Black's Fork where the free trappers aim to go."

"What you figger to do, Boone?"

Boone let his empty cup dangle from his finger. It was a long time before he felt like answering. Then he said, "There's buffler aplenty."

"You, a true mountain man, hunt coarse fur!"

"Maybe." In his mind's eye Boone could see Zeb Calloway, sitting there in the dusk by Fort Union. He heard his voice, coming through all the time since: "Another five year and there'll be naught but coarse fur, and it goin' fast."

It was as if Summers saw and heard Zeb, too, for he asked, "How long since we seen your uncle?"

"Thirteen year or so, it was."

"Thirteen. It don't seem that long, in a way, but in a way it seems so far back it wasn't even us as heard him."

"He was wrong, wrong by eight or ten years." "Close enough to be right. What went with him?"

"He went under there at Union, went under happy, with his belly so full of whisky it kilt him."

"It's a good way, if a man's got to go."

"Good as any."

"You ain't said about Deakins and Teal Eye. You goin' back to Teal Eye?"
 
 

Summers studied Boone. He was heavier than he had been, and even stronger, as strong as a buffalo bull, by the looks of him. The muscles of his arms showed under his shirt, and the thick column of his neck spread out along his shoulders and down the swell of his chest.

"Have another."

For all his strength, though, there was trouble in him. Summers could see it in his eyes and around his mouth and in the way he drank liquor, as if apurpose to make his mind blank. He was a man with a misery eating at him -a deep misery, that would come out by and by, likely, if he kept downing whisky. Somehow Summers was reminded of a thing hunted, and no way for it to turn. Already the whisky was showing on Boone. His eyes slid slow in his head, and his mouth moved around a word as if to shape it careful before turning it loose.

"We had us some times, Boone."

"Y'ever see the upper Teton, or what they called the Tansy?"

"Where it meets up with the Marias is all. It's had more names than most. Rose was one of 'em."

"Higher up there's two buttes and the valley wide above and, where the river comes out'n the mountains, a peak like an ear on its side."

"I never seen that."

"Christ, but it's fair country, Dick! Mountains to the west, and the valley and the plains rollin' away. And buffler! Christ, I seen buffler thick as gnats. I seen 'em chased over pishkuns and lyin' kickin' below by the hunderds, and the Piegans with clubs and knives and arrers runnin' among 'em, makin' meat."

It wasn't so dark yet that Summers couldn't see. Boone brought his cup to his mouth. His eyes were set far off, seeing the Teton, Summers imagined, and the mountains and the buffalo, and seeing Teal Eye, too, though he didn't speak of her. For an instant Summers saw it all, too, and he felt himself wrench inside, wanting to be loose again, and free, wanting to trap and hunt and to know danger and good loneliness, wanting to see bucks with feathers in their hair and squaws in scarlet blankets. And then the feeling went down in him, leaving a small deep sore that didn't bother him if he just didn't pick it. He was too old now, and he had a white wife and a baby coming on, and the old days were lost, anyhow. Farming was the right caper for him, when he really thought things out.

"I know," he said, watching Boone. "Feel like eatin'?"

Boone came up on his feet and steadied himself.

"I'm goin' on, Dick."

"Better stay all night." Summers arose. Boone was rocking back and forth as if he rode the deck of the old
Mandan
in a storm.

"I got to go on."

"You ain't right to go, Boone. You had a sight of liquor."

"Maybe I'll see you."

"You'll need more whisky, come mornin'," said Summers, thinking maybe he could change Boone's mind through delay. "Come inside and I'll pour you some." He went through the door and lighted the oil lamp with a splinter held in the coals of the fireplace. He found a bottle on the shelf. "Set a spell longer."

Boone didn't seem to hear him. He stood rocking, his eyes distant and fixed and a look on his face such as Summers never had seen there.

"The world's a-comin' at me like a sea," he said, "a hill and then a holler rollin' under my feet, tryin' t'upset me. I drunk too much, Dick, but I got to go on. Got to go for'ard." His hand took hold of the latch on the half-opened door.

"Don't hurry yourself. I ain't got this bottle ready yet."

Boone looked down in his palm, at the latch his hand had broken off. "It's all sp'iled, I reckon, Dick. The whole caboodle."

"I don't guess we could help it," Summers answered, nodding. "There was beaver for us and free country and a big way of livin', and everything we done it looks like we done against ourselves and couldn't do different if we'd knowed. We went to get away and to enj'y ourselves -free and easy, but folks was bound to foller and beaver to get scarce and Injuns to be killed or tamed, and all the time the country gettin' safer and better known. We ain't seen the end of it yet, Boone, not to what the mountain man does against hisself. Next thing is to hire out for guides and take parties acrost and sp'ile the country more. You must've heerd about old Tom Fitzpatrick pilotin' movers to Oregon last year, damn him! It's like we heired money and had to spend it, and now it's nigh gone."

"This here hand done it," Boone said, holding the hand before him. "This here finger pulled the trigger. I reckon I sp'iled it all, Dick." He looked at Summers, his eyes so dark and troubled the gaze of them was like a quick, deep pain in a man. "I kilt Jim."

"Kilt Jim!"

"I been tellin' myself I done right, Dick. But I don't know. I don't know for sure. Maybe I ain't honest."

"Kilt Jim!" Summers said again.

"It's like it's all sp'iled for me now, Dick -Teal Eye and the Teton and all. Don't know as I ever can go back, Dick. Goddam it! Goddam it!"

He had pushed the door clear open, and his feet shuffled and found the step and took him out. Summers followed him, forgetting to give him the bottle he held in his hand. A dog barked, town-way, and another took it up and another until finally Boone's old blue-tick hound came loping from behind the cabin and stopped and pointed his nose at the sky and let loose with his deep bay. For a while Summers could see Boone, weaving big and dark into the darkness, and then he couldn't see him any more, and he turned and went back into the cabin. There was cold corn pone on the table, and cold poke greens and a ham butt and a pitcher of buttermilk. His woman had gone to bed, she tired so easy these days.