The Way West (27 page)

   "Nup. Who's payin' you, Caleb?"
   "Glad you asked me that. It's a honest question and desarvin' of a honest answer. Cap'n John Sutter down in the Sacramento valley, he figgered maybe some would want to come his way not throwin' off on Oregon- and he says, 'Caleb, here's a little piece of money fer your old age, and whyn't you traipse to Hall so's to show any poor folks the way?' There's a good man, and one to make you welcome."
   Evans said, "Tell him I'm obliged, but that them that goes with me will go to Oregon." Patch nodded to the words, and Daugherty and Mack and Gorham and Weatherby, and he understood with a little gush of good feeling that they were committed to Oregon like himself. The reason for it he didn't quite know. Was it just because they'd got their necks bent? Was it because they mistrusted Greenwood and kind of disliked Captain Grant, him being British? Was it because the thought of change just didn't set with them? It didn't matter. "I figger we'll make it," he said.
   Captain Grant's voice had in it a touch of dander and a touch of giving up. "You Yankees will do whatever you set out to do, I suppose."
   "We kin try."
   "What is it you aim to do with the cattle?" Greenwood asked. "Swim 'em. Didn't I tell you? Swim 'em down from the Dalles."
   Summers stood up. Evans saw then that Brownie had come into the fort and stood back from the circle. He thought he saw trouble in the boy's face until he told himself it was just the darkening twilight putting shadows there. "Want me, boy?"
   "No. There's -there's someone wants to talk to Dick."
   Before Summers went to Brownie and walked with him to the big gate and disappeared outside, he grinned at Greenwood. "Caleb, them California beans sure work up a blow."
 

BROWNIE'S SAD-EYED, half-hound dog was waiting by the gate. He gave a slow wag of his tail as Summers and Brownie came out and fell into step behind them. "That your dog or your pa's, you figure?" Summers asked. He went on when Brownie didn't answer. "Or maybe Mercy McBee's. I see he's claimin' her, too. Where's this hoss wants to see me?"
   Brownie walked on, silent, away from the fort.
   "Where you say he's at?"
   "Dick?"
   "Uh-huh."
   Brownie shuffled to a stop. He slid his eyes up to Summers and down to the ground. "You got time'to talk to me?"
   "Sure, boy. Time aplenty. Train don't roll till tomorrow."
   "I got no business botherin' you, I reckon."
   "You catched a party that loves to palaver. Jus' name your subject."
   Brownie's lips tried a word or two, not making any sound. Not until then had Summers noticed the worry in his face.
   "This is poor ground for talk, I'm thinkin'. Too all-fired open. Let's set somewheres."
   Brownie nodded.
   "Me, now, I can't hardly think to speak unless it's by water or a tree. River ain't so far."
   Summers had thought maybe the boy would loosen up, walking, but he didn't. He just lagged along, his head bent as if from the weight in it. It could be he was waiting for the dark that was settling on the land. Words sometimes came easier when the mouth that made them couldn't be seen working. They passed a Shoshone lodge, and a fat-faced squaw watched them as if sight was the only life in her, and two ribby dogs ran out growling and held up at Rock's fierce answer.
   "Glad you come and got me," Summers said. "It tired my tail to hear ol' Greenwood talk of this an' that, as if naught but a cross of bird and beaver could make it to the Willamette."
   Brownie asked without interest, "Is that what he was sayin?"
   "Roundabout. Caleb allus comes up from behind. He snorted some of them hosses, too."
   "Nothin' skeers you, I reckon, Dick, nor frets you."
   "A heap of things, but not Greenwood."
   They came to the river where the bank was open and sat down by it. Brownie picked up a piece of dead branch and tossed it in the water. It stayed in sight for a minute, and then the dark roll of the river took it. Rock sniffed along the shore, and, out of sight in the falling night, a fish leaped clear and smacked the water coming down.
   "Fish'll do to live on in a fix," Summers said, "but they ain't like buffler. That's a trouble with Oregon, no buffler to speak of." For all the answer he got, he might as well not have spoken, but he let his voice run on, thinking words would lead to words. While he talked, he wondered what was in the boy to make him act so heavy. Nothing much, maybe. Young ones could build a pimple to a peak. "One day you'll want to foller up the Snake. That country's some, now, Jackson Hole and the Tetons and all, and Henry's Fork and the Yellowstone close by, that we used to call the
Roche Jaune
from the French. It's high land, top of the world, and pinched up so that water runs nigh any way you face. There's snow on her, and b'ilin' springs, and thunder underground. You best be thinkin' about a trip to her."
   "Can't think of that, Dick. Not now."
   "No?"
   "I been thinkin' on marriage." The words came tight, the leanness of strain in them.
   "Ain't nothin' wrong with that." Now that night had decided to set in, it had set in quick. From the corner of his eye Summers could see just the dim white of Brownie's face and the outline of his body, the shoulder slacked and the head down-turned.
   "I don't know the answer to it."
   Here was a spot for silence, Summers figured. Silence was the best come-on.
   "I didn't know no one but you to come to."
   Summers picked a grass stem and nibbled at it while he waited. There was the taste of fall in it already, the taste and toughness of fall.
   "Maybe I got no rightful business talkin', to you or anybody. On'y I had to talk."
   The night had taken in the far shore, so that land and water were just one. Rock came out of the darkness and smelled around them and snuffed away, following a trail in the grass. "This can't git out, Dick."
   "I allus forgit to tell."
   "I wouldn't be tellin' myself, except for thinkin' you could help me to the answers."
   "It's yes or no, ain't it?"
   "There's other things."
   Answers, Summers thought while he waited. Brownie wanted answers. Always people wanted answers, the full and final, everlasting answers, not learning that answers answered only for the
time, and none too well at that. His mind followed the idea along. What seemed true and right today was changed tomorrow. It all depended. On time and age and accident, and were our bowels all right. Brain and bowel went together, brain and bowel and body heat and the dream dreamed the night before. The brain made up its mind according but gave the credit all to self, standing high and prideful with its answer, not thinking that what it was thinking wouldn't be thought but for some
outside partnership.
   "Supposin', Dick-?"Just supposin'."
   "Supposin' there was a girl, and a man aimed to marry her if she said yes?"
   Again Summers held his tongue and waited for the tight, hard spoken words.
   "Supposin' he found out somethin' about her?"
   "I'm follerin'."
   "And might be she would have a baby?"
   "Found out from who?"
   "From her. And she didn't know if she cared for him and she didn't know if she didn't, but she had to marry up with someone?" Beyond the leanness of the tone, Summers caught a cry that stirred him the more because it was held in, the cry of hurt, the cry of not-understanding, the cry for help, the cry for answers.
   "What about the man that done it, Brownie?"
   "Goddam him, Dick! I'll kill him. I swear I'll kill him."
   "Easy, hoss."
   "Or tell the train and see him whupped for it."
   "Easy."
   "You think I won't!"
   "I think you won't."
   "Whatever do I do, Dick?"
   "Might as well lay it open. I know it all but for the man."
   "It's Mack."
   "Wasn't none of my business to ask, Brownie. The who of him don't make no difference. Let's think on it." Summers searched for what was right to say. He tried to put himself in Brownie's place, tried to put there the him that used to be, not the him of now, worn hard and doubtful by the knocks of living. You couldn't tell a boy how few were the things that mattered and how little was their mattering. You couldn't say that the rest washed off in the wash of years so that, looking back, a man wanted to laugh except he couldn't quite laugh yet. The dreams dreamed and the hopes hoped and the hurts felt and the jolts suffered, they all got covered by the years. They buried themselves in memory. Dug out of it, they seemed queer, as a dug-up bone with the flesh rotted off of it might seem queer to the dog that had buried it.
   And the rules that people set and broke and suffered from in the breaking? Like the rule against naturalness that animals had more sense than to deny? Like the rule that a girl couldn't lie with a man unless a preacher said amen? Big as it was now, how big would the lying seem to Brownie when the years had rubbed the fuzz off of him? How would Mack seem then? A man was a man by the nature of him and, grown up, knew himself in secret for what he was, unless he had an extra-sore religion. When a chance came, he took it, or, not taking, thought he was half a fool. The boy he had been came to look so soft and starryheaded that he shook his head and laughed, thinking of the good things he had missed.
   Into the silence Summers said, "She didn't have to tell you, Brownie."
   No matter, though, what the grown man learned, the dream was in the boy, like a green, high-growing shoot, the dream of goodness and happiness and never-ending love and true, right meanings. When a man lost it, he lost something that went to make life worth living. He lost something good, if foolish, and half his grown-up scorn of it came out of disappointment and half came from the buried doubt that the man was equal to the boy. So let the dream be dreamed, Summers thought. Let the shoot stand. He wouldn't cut it down, even if he could. Let time do it. Let life do it. It was work too dirty for a man.
   "She didn't have to tell you, Brownie," he said again.
   "I already told myself how honest it was of her."
   "And she could've made out she took to you, 'stead of sayin' she didn't know."
   "Maybe she never will take to me."
   "I ain't in doubt about that."
   The boy's voice had a kind of eagerness in it. "Ain't you, Dick?"
   "Not a mite."
   The voice sank back. "Even so, I don't know. A man don't like less than what he'd hoped."
   No, thought Summers, leaving the words unsaid, a man didn't like to take less than he had hoped, but he had to take it. Maybe that was the big lesson, maybe that was all he'd learned did all that anyone could learn -always settle for half.
   "Kin you git along without her, Brownie?"
   "I don't feel so. Don't feel like I ever could. On'y -on'y-"
   "There's your answer then," said Summers, and knew that there it was. Closer than his fool thought, closer than the wide ranging of his mind, there it was, plain as day. There it always had been, and he had seen it from the first but still had passed it by.
   "How is it, Dick?"
   "By God, take her!"
   "You mean it?"
   "An' never hold agin her what she's done. Put it out of mind. She'll make a smart wife."
   "You think she's all right, don't you, Dick?"
   It was confidence the boy wanted, and Summers tried to give it to him, saying, "Goddam it, why you ask a fool question like that! She's tip-top. She just ain't been favored in her pa or ma, and maybe thought what was the use, or maybe was carried beyond herself just because a nabob played up to her. Forgit, and take her, and count yourself lucky."
   "Dick-?"
   The one word wrenched out of Brownie, and Summers moved to get up, made uncomfortable and sorehearted by the tone of it. "That's all. Let's go. I done forgot what you told me."
   "Didn't aim to be a baby. It's just what you said."
   "Le's go!"
   "And what if there is a baby?"
   "It ain't hard to take up with a baby, no matter whose." Brownie got to his feet. "I got to tell Pa that I'm marryin'."
   "Lije'll be all right. He thinks just of you."
   "I know't. I'm thankful to you, Dick."
   "No cause fer it."
   "Here, Rock! Where'd that dog go?"
   "He's foolin' around somewheres."
   "Maybe to see Mercy."
   Walking back, Summers thought how mixed up was a man. Here was a bad thing, and he knew it for a bad thing, and yet, remembering the girl's grave face and the young and rounded lines of her, he could understand, with Mack, how the thing had come to be.