The Way West (32 page)

WE GOT to be decidin' things," Evans said to open the meeting of the council.
   It was a changed council, with Brewer and Tadlock gone and Patch and Shields elected to their places -a changed council but a better one, it seemed to Curtis Mack as he rumped down in the circle with the rest of them.
   Evans wasn't in a hurry to proceed. He had his jackknife out, whittling on his nails. Underneath his thin-worn shirt Mack could see the bulge of muscles. A balanced man was Evans, big, slow, balanced, growing in stature with the captaincy. Mack felt with a twist of envy that here was a person sure to make his mark in Oregon, sure to lead in the organization of the territory, sure to represent it in some major office. It wasn't the future of him, though, that excited envy. It was the man himself. It was the suggestion in his looks and manner that he was at peace with himself, at a kind of modest peace that won men to him. Did he have no inward weaknesses, no secret conflicts, Mack wondered; no faults beyond the doubtful fault of unsure confidence, beyond the disappearing fault of indecision? Did he know the outlaw impulses? Did he wake up at night and try to run from judgment?
   Mack took his gaze away from the broad and downturned face. The sky was overcast, but without much threat of rain. Through the clouds to the west he could see the bright spot that would be the sun.
   "First thing to decide is to get away from this goddam fort," Shields said. "Fish! Whew!"
   They sat back from the corralled train, closer to the river. The fort squatted on beyond, but still the smell of fish was all around, the smell of fresh, dried, rotting fish, of fly-blown leavings from the riches of the Snake.
   "Couldn't sleep last night for them fish slappin' the water," Shields went on. "Fish in the ears and fish in the nose and fish, by God, in the tobacco you chew. Worst fort we've saw."
   Fort Boise was the worst, Mack agreed inwardly while the other men joined Shields in small talk. It was the smallest and the worst -the dirtiest, stinkingest, the least concerned with order. Indians swarmed around it, fish-fat, filthy, witless Indians who couldn't learn, the fort men said, to store up food against the starving winters. What was it Summers held: that war alone -that love of war- gave fiber to the Indians eastward? In any case the other forts were better, Hall for one, and Laramie. Laramie? How many trains of thought led back to Laramie?
   Evans was saying, "We'll pull out tomorrow now we've done our tradin'. Got enough dried fish aboard to last me all my life."
   "I'll be glad to put the Snake behind," Patch said. "Let England have it."
Evans bent the talk to business. "The big thing is, what do we do with the cattle? Like old Greenwood said, what do we do with the cattle?"
   His words, it seemed to Mack, were like pebbles dropped into a pool, or like the afterwash of pebbles into quiet water. His own attention rippled to them and ran back to Laramie, to Laramie and night and the one night afterwards along the trail. And it flowed along to Soda Springs and the girl despairing and to Fort Hall and the marriage and Brownie giving his stiff no to the offered gift of oxen, to a gift that wasn't a gift but a cheap offering to peace of mind.
   Patch said, "I imagine we can drive the cattle through. The trail from the Dalles to the Willamette can't be any worse than some we've traveled."
   "Who's we?" Evans asked.
   "Well, one of us. Some of us."
   "There ain't any trail to speak of. Remember that. Got to find your own, and no one knows the way, except Summers has a good idee."
   "What's wrong with Summers?" Shields asked Evans.
   "He said he'd trail 'em."
   "Well?"
   "Don't think we ought to let him do it." Daugherty asked, "And why not?"
   "We paid him just to get us to the Dalles and didn't pay him much, and he's done all and more'n we could ask."
   Mack put himself into the conversation. "There's nothing standing in the way of a new contract. We can offer him more money."
   Evans answered quietly, "Ain't everyone well fixed like you." The words seemed almost like a reproach. Mack said quickly,
   "I'll pay him myself then. I'll be glad to pay him, for all of us."
   Again Evans spoke quietly, while in the eyes around him Mack saw the answer turning. "Wouldn't keer for you to do that."
   Mack asked, "Why not?" but he already knew. Evans, being too stout for help himself, thought others just as proud. He wasn't penniless, or Patch or Fairman, either, but sided with the penniless to spare them the imagined shame of charity. And the two would go along with him, acting poor as Byrd and Shields and Daugherty while they refused his offer.
   No, Mack thought suddenly. Always no. Brownie's no and Evans' no and the council's no -as if his very situation were a crime, as if it set him off from them. They wouldn't let him do a favor no matter how he wanted to.
   "Just wouldn't keer," Evans answered.
   "If you won't let me pay, all right. You can owe me. You can owe me for your share until you're better situated."
   Before he finished, a barefooted, bare-bodied Indian ambled up, carrying a fish by a finger hooked through a gill. His other hand dug at his scalp. Evans shook his head and waved him off, "No trade," he said. "No trade. Maybe trade later." He gave the Indian a pinch of tobacco to get rid of him. "That's good o' you," he said to Mack, "but let's see if there ain't another way."
   "Does Summers want to take the cattle through?" Shields asked.
   "Not for hisself." Evans was quiet for a minute, as if the words, soaked in, would show they couldn't let themselves use Summers. "Like you all know, on a ways we could hit north for Walla Walla."
   "Extra miles," Patch put in.
   Evans nodded. "But it might be the fort there'll take our stock and give us orders for a trade at Fort Vancouver. I hear they done it before."
   "But we can't be sure they will again?" Fairman asked.
   "Not certain-sure, but the man here at Boise -what's his name? Craigie- Craigie said they might."
   "Then we'd have the river trip from Walla Walla," Patch said. "That would take money, too -for boats and Indian navigators. Money or trinkets, if we had any trinkets left."
   "I hate to be beholdin' to the British any more than need be," Evans told him.
   "They seem all right. They've been hospitable."
   "Not sayin' they ain't, though I notice they don't give nothin' away but a meal and charge ten prices when it comes to trade. The point is, this here ain't their country."
   Heads bobbed to that, and a silence followed in which, it seemed to Mack, the issues stood as plain as cactus. They had their choice of Walla Walla and the chance of credits for their cattle and of the nearer Dalles from which Dick Summers, paid or not, could take the livestock overland. The man had said he'd go for nothing. Mack had said he'd pay him. But still the council hesitated, as if from out of nowhere would come the magic answer.
   Evans spoke into the silence. "Cows has been got through, we know. Not sayin' how many was lost along the way."
   "Hate to think of more hard goin'," Shields said. "Them last days comin' on to Boise River like to ruint me. Christ!"
   "Like to ruint everyone," Daugherty chimed in. "And then the good God brought the river and the trees."
   "What about the single men?" Patch asked. "Who?"
   "You know. Higgins. Botter. Insko. Moss." Evans inquired, "What about 'em?"
   "They're going on to Oregon City, aren't they?"
   "That was the agreement with my men," Fairman said. "Moss, too. And Insko, I think," Mack added. "Can't they drive the cattle?"
   "When the travelin's hard, it's easy to leave a critter behind, or all of 'em, if the leavin' ain't no skin off you," Evans answered. "Might work out, but it's a heap to ask of 'em, to take the whole thing on themselves." He had folded his knife and was turning it over and over in one hand.
   Mack spoke even before the thought had come clear in his mind. "I'll go."
   "You'll go?" Evans asked. "I'll go."
   "Ain't no more call for you to go than any of the rest of us."
   "I've got more cattle, and just one person to look after."
   "What o' her?"
   "That will depend. Isn't it possible a whole train will be going overland? I mean from this company and others?"
   "Not in wagons. Dick thinks it ain't for wagons."
   "On horseback then, and one of you can float my property down. Or, if there's not a party overland, maybe Amanda can go with you."
   "Course she could," Evans answered slowly while he picked a stem of grass.
   "What do you say then?" Mack found himself speaking with a kind of urgency, as if, for reasons lying back in mind, it was important that he get them to accept. Their faces were thoughtful,  tentative with the brain's trial of yes and no.
   "Wouldn't like to ask it of you," Evans said.
   "You didn't."
   "Right handsome of you," Shields put in, low-voiced, as if embarrassed at the need of comment.
Evans moved his head from face to face. "What you say?" They didn't speak at once, but, watching, Mack foresaw the answer. He thought without irritation, he thought with understanding that, while they wouldn't take his money, they would take his toil and sweat and time, for they had that to give. And it was right, right for them and right for him.
   "It's generous," Fairman said to Evans, "too generous, but -if he will?"
   Mack got to his feet, seeing others nod. "It's settled, then? I'll see them through. The single men and I will."
   Later, lying in bed, listening to the salmon in the river, he thought about his case. He didn't believe in God, at any rate the God that other people seemed to. He doubted the moralities. He wouldn't say what constituted sin, if sin existed. He knew in honesty that, with provocation, he might offend the rules again. As for the deed, it was committed. He couldn't wipe out the fact. Not all his offerings, not toil or time or sacrifice, could undo what was done. The part of good sense was to forget. Soon enough, he thought wryly, a man made new regrets that crowded out the old. Was there some hidden purpose in his treatment of the girl, some wish to overlay with fresh remorse the dismal recollection of the killing of the Kaw?
   No, he didn't believe there was. He had acted out of hunger, out of disappointment, out of anger, out of then insufferable fester. Out of them he had shot the Indian and seduced the girl. And was he to blame? Or was it circumstance? Or was it the God he couldn't credit? Pushed so far, a man knew strange compulsions. So forget! Just forged
   He hadn't succeeded in forgetting. No one so molded could, no man so haunted by the ghosts of faith, no mind so tied, beyond the touch of reason, to old admonishments. Be ye therefore perfect. Be ye perfect but ye can't, so be ye burdened with thy sins. Repent! Oh, sure, repent, and make atonement!
   Well, the unbeliever had. The unbeliever was going to. The unbeliever would trail the stock to destination for the sake of his nonexistent soul. Repentance? Atonement? Restitution? The churchy words. The pious words. The solemn words of Weatherby. To hell with them! It wasn't to God he made his offering, to Jesus, God or Holy Ghost. It wasn't to the train. It was to self. Its purpose was to square himself with self, to equalize accounts and so walk upright in the sight of Curtis Mack. That much remained, that stubborn much, of what was taught him as the way of heaven.
   He was ready for sleep, tired and ready for sleep, but it struck him before he slipped into it that now he could follow thoughts like these with less of his old soreness. The singular, fresh-milk fragrance of Amanda came to his nostrils. Her gentle breathing sounded in his ears. He would see the herd across the mountains. He didn't know when he had felt better.
 

HERE, from Boise to the Dalles, was the windup of the trail, the finish of the test, the yes or no to Oregon. Here by slow wheel tracks at last was being written the answer to a question raised years ago last spring, raised so long ago a man lost its beginning across the plain-peak, sage-tree, sandrock field of time. He lost it along with places, people and doings remembered from before, so that none of them came real to him and he asked himself if sure enough there was an Independence, a Missouri and a spot he once called home, or were they vapors in his mind.
   Asking, he would ask if there was a Dalles, an Oregon, a Columbia that, unseeing, he still had seen, streaming richly to the sea. Was anything behind him or before, anything but rolls of land, anything in all his life but distance to be covered so more distance could be covered? All he could swear to was this walking by his team.
   And yet the days of hardest doubt were gone. The days of any doubt were gone. Evans didn't need to tell himself that it was so. The truth of it was big in him. It filled his head and toned his muscles and gave cheer to his words. Not since boyhood had he felt this way, not since his home town of St. Charles had set itself for an illumination. He could hardly wait then, seeing in advance the great fires in the street, answering already to the pitch of celebration.
   He had to hold himself in. He had to keep from pushing, from asking of the teams and people more than they could give. He had to keep in mind that he was born with strength that others didn't have. Soon enough, if not soon enough for him, they'd reach the rimming hills and see the broad Columbia below. While he drove and double-yoked and watched the weak ones over, he saw it in imagination, rolling with the sun, and a shout swelled in his throat, to be choked down to easy, easy. Easy to the promised land.
   He counted each day's going against the miles ahead. The Malheur. Birch Creek. The leaving of the Snake, and no one sorry that it lay behind. Burnt River. The Powder. The rough ridge road he followed now to get to the Grande Ronde.
   Burnt River. There was a place. Burnt River -the Brule, as Summers called it- so shouldered in by mountains, so thick with brush and briers, that no one would have dared it, maybe, except for knowing someone had.
   Two days of it. Two days of such hard travel that man and brute arrived at camp with no wish but to rest. Unyoked, the oxen dragged off, waiting on the strength to feed. Men worked slow-motioned, tiredness pulling at their muscles as they pitched their tents and struck their fires and did the little chores while they waited for the food that droopy women fixed. The children quarreled, worn down to orneriness. Their whiny voices filled the air.
   But still the days of doubt were gone. Still Evans felt the climb of celebration. They'd whipped the trail. They'd whipped it all but for a few mean miles, whipped the Platte and Green and Snake, whipped the deserts and the mountains, and they would whip the rest.
   Sometimes he thought of cost, of Martin dead and Tod Fairman buried with his poisoned leg and Mrs. Byrd delivered of the too-soon child and old Rock rotting who used to trot at heel. He thought of other costs, of his fight with Tadlock, of oxen down and left to die, of losses from the Indians, of strength spent and juices sweated and courage whittled to a nub. Each reach of trail had taken toll -Platte, Sweetwater, Green, Bear, Snake. And yet -and yet- the thing was worth the cost. No prize came easy. Free land still had its price. A chance at better living had somehow to be earned. A nation couldn't grow unless somebody dared. The price was high, but who would say it was too high -except for those who'd paid so dear?
   Byrd might think it, though without much right. None could mourn deep at a stillborn child, seen but for a moment and as a stranger then, with no life in it to leave a memory. But Byrd might think it, being beaten down. Byrd, born timid and out of luck to boot.
   It would have to be his wagon, Evans thought, that wrecked along the Brule, his one-remaining wagon that broke a wheel the second day.
   The first day had been bad enough, on a narrow, crooked, stony trail that crossed the river only to cross back, that pushed through stubborn thickets, that crept sidelong on ridges shooting into mountains. They'd made twelve miles or more that day and pitched their camp and fallen into bed, each hoping that the worst was past.
   It wasn't, though. The worst was still ahead. Evans, in the lead, had stopped his team where the trail wormed through a tangle of cottonwood, alder, brush and briers. Beyond, the mountains squeezed the stream. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "I swear, Dick!"
   "Don't look possible," Summers said from his horse, meaning that it was.
   "Ain't room, hardly, for a pony cart to go through here. Bush looks liable to wipe off the wagon tops."
   Summers nodded. "Others has been through."
   "A teamster's got to get aboard, for there's no room for him by the side. Wisht whoever cut the trail had cut a road and not a mole run long as they were doin' it."
   Summers was silent, looking beyond to the high, straightrising mountains.
   "And when we get through, we got them tarnal hills. Be more broke wagon tongues today, or I'm a nigger."
   "Want to turn back?" Summers' mouth had twisted to a grin.
   "Not yet a while, I reckon."
   Behind Evans the other wagons were beginning to pull up. "This ain't makin' hay," he said to Summers and climbed up to his seat and spoke to his team while Summers led off.
   It was, Evans thought, like pushing a hole through the growth. Branches laced over the team and parted to the bulge of the wagon and ripped along the covered bows while the wheels jolted on the stumps. All he could see was the oxen stumbling and the thin trail and the brush coming at him and squeezing to the sides like water to the bow of a boat. The sound of it along the wagon top was like hard-driven rain.
   Beyond, the trail led down a wash and up the other side and lifted from the river bottom to teeter along the shoulder of a mountain.
   Up from the wash Evans stopped again. They called this slanted scar ahead a trail! The wagon wasn't built that wouldn't lose its balance on it and fall over on its side. While he looked at it, Summers turned his horse around. "What you thinkin', hoss?"
   "I ain't thinkin'. I'm just seein' wagons keel over."
   "She's sidelong, sure enough."
   "Wisht I had a wagon high-wheeled on the down side."
   "An' sidehill critters, too, built to stand even on a slant."
   "I'll pull forward a ways to where she starts so's to give the other wagons room behind, and then we'll take 'em over one or two at a time, with two-three men standin' on the up side. Reckon that'll work?"
   Summers said, "Sure. Must've worked afore or the trail wouldn't be there."
   Evans poked his team and stopped again and waited for the others to come out of the brush. He walked down the line then, telling how they'd try the slant. "Best all get out when your time comes. Don't want a woman or a young'un in a wagon that tips over. We'll try mine first, and if it works then we'll take two or maybe three at once. All right? Carpenter? Gorham? You feel like helpin'?"
They stepped up, their faces lined already from the morning's drive, their eyes narrowed on the trail against the hard glint of the sun.
   Evans said, "Whyn't you whack the team, Carpenter? I'm heftier'n you. Watch you stay ahead of the wagon. Don't want no one mashed."
   They got it over. They roosted on the side and got it over, though the up wheels tried to lift once and barely skimmed the ground.
   "Good enough," Evans said. "We'll know better how to go next time. You take the team on a ways, Carpenter, and tie it up somewheres, and we'll go back for more." Already he saw another wagon starting, with Patch walking by the side.
   It was slow and sweaty work, made the worse because ahead, where Evans had hoped to see the bottom widen, it still ran pinched. It was just a stream-cut through the mountains, a stream-cut choked by brush. Beyond the little resting place they brought the wagons to, the trail squirmed out of sight.
   Tramping back with Dick and Gorham to bring more outfits over, Evans wished that hard times, if they had to come, came early in the morning when men and teams were lively. Along toward noon the spirits started down and so made heavy travel heavier. Not that he felt whipped. Not that. Leave it to him and they'd roll longer than they ever thought. The Columbia was just beyond the Blues, or leastwise not so far.
   The air stirred lazily, and he took off his hat to get the good of it. "How much more of this kind of goin' would you say, Dick?"
   "Ought to be over the worst of it by night, barrin' trouble."
   "Hope so," Gorham said. He tilted his head upward. "Ain't it time to eat?"
   Some of the women and children were following behind a wagon that Daugherty drove, making a ragged line against the mountain slope. Evans and the two with him stepped out of the trail to let Daugherty go by. Daugherty had covered the worst of the slant. He spit over the wheel of his wagon. "And 'tis said the road to hell is steep!"
   Rebecca was among the women, along with Judith Fairman and Mercy and Mrs. Gorham. "We'll noon up when we get 'em over," Evans told them. The thought came to him and slid away that Becky was the natural leader of the women. It was as if she had strength enough for all, a quiet, long-enduring strength. Without it, he didn't know what Judith Fairman would have done. "Tuckered?" he asked, just to be saying something to her.
   Two of the young ones -Jeff Byrd and George Carpenter, it was- had stopped to tug a rock on edge. "Look out!" they shouted and gave it a turn. It started slow, as if half minded to lie down, and picked up speed and flew thudding down the mountainside and tore into the brush, flushing a flock of ducks off the hidden river.
   "Don't you wish you had time to roll a rock, Lije?" Summers asked as the three of them started on. "I knowed you when you did."
   "Reckon I do."
   The little smile went from Summers' face, leaving just the mark of thought. "No time to roll a rock," he said as if speaking to himself.
   Evans wasn't of a mind then to pry into what Dick meant. "Not till we git the rest across," he said.
Byrd was waiting for them. He stood faced up to the trail. It occurred to Evans that age had come on him, age without age's gumption, giving him the appearance of an old boy. "It ain't nothing'," Evans said to Mrs. Byrd, who had sat down to catch the shade a scrubby cedar made. She looked well enough, sitting there quiet with two of her children by her. She looked as she had at first, a milk-mild pigeon to the eye that hadn't seen beneath. "We'll put enough men on her so she can't tip over. How about it, Dick? You and Gorham and me?" They climbed up. "Push 'em across, Byrd."
Things would have gone well enough if the outfit had been sound. The team eased onto the sidelong trail, pulling slow but steady, and the wagon canted to the slope and the three of them held it down. They were maybe halfway across when the downhill front wheel hit a rock. From his place on the wagon Evans couldn't see it, but he felt the jolt and heard the splinter of overweighted spokes. The wagon dropped like a cow on one knee and hung for an instant and lifted and crashed over.
Perched on the upper side, holding to the wagon box underneath its cover. Evans couldn't think to jump until too late. He circled over with the wagon and cracked against a bow and skidded off and hit the ground sprawled out. He scrambled up. "Dick?"
   Gorham had gone over, too. He got his knees under him and stood up. "Goddam it!" he said.
"You hurt?"
   "No, goddam itl"
   Dick was coming around the wagon. "All right? Whyn't you hosses jump?"
   Evans said, "Sure."
   "Christ, what a mix-up!" It was Gorham, looking over the wagon.
   Evans hadn't thought of Byrd till then. Byrd stood silent by his halted team as if, of all the words, there wasn't one to say. He stood with a look of raw defeat that sharpened Evans' irritation. "Looks like trouble can't leave you alone, Byrd. Poor wagons you bought."
   "I'm sorry."
   The man was sorry. The unfit, pitiful damn man was sorry. Standing there with his wrecked wagon, with the wheel collapsed and the bows caved in and things messed up inside, what he was was sorry.
   Of a sudden Evans was, too. "Never mind," he said. "We'll get it fixed up."
   Mrs. Byrd was hurrying along the sidehill, carrying her youngest one. "Are you all right, Clarence? You're not hurt?"
   From the other side people were coming up, children running first and then the men and then Becky and Mrs. Gorham. They gathered round.
   Mrs. Byrd put the child down. Now that she'd asked if Byrd was all right, it was as if she didn't know words, either.
   To all of them Evans said, "Let's git the pots a-b'ilin'. Time to noon." He bobbed his head to Becky's silent question about himself. "Let's git goin'. You, too, Mrs. Byrd. Would one of you unhitch Byrd's team, and some help unload the wagon?"
   When they had it unloaded, he sent them on, staying himself to talk to Byrd a minute. "Didn't mean to sound like scoldin' you," he said. "I was just put out."
   "You don't need to say anything."
   "We'll git a saw."
   "Saw?"
   "To make a cart with. We'll saw your wagon in two."
   "Oh."
   "Other wagons has got room if you need some. Room for part of your plunder and your young'uns."
   Byrd didn't answer. His eyes turned from the wagon to the brush of the creek below, to the loose stock that were beginning to foot it across the sidehill, to the mountains rising, to the far curve of sky.