The Way West (33 page)

   "So you ain't in such bad case. Hig'll know how to make a first-rate cart."
   Byrd's gaze was still lost in distance. "It's a long way back."
   "Sure is. We got time to do some sawin' before we eat."
 
 

   Weatherby walked off from camp, giving a last long stare at the little ring of card players. The train needed rest, he knew, but ways of resting could be wicked. Better to be toiling on the trail, better to be pushing the footloose stock, better to wear the body out than to corrupt the soul.
The deed seemed worse, the hearty slapping down of cards more evil, because the hand of God lay on this place. The Grande Ronde, people called it. It was such a spot as even Adam, after the beauty of the Garden, might still have thought was beautiful. The walking feet trod through rich grasses. The roving eye saw clover and wild flax and timber on the watercourses, and all around, as if to shield the place, the noble mountains lifting heavenward. Here were deer and elk and bear, and fish enough to feed the multitude without a miracle. .And still the men played cards!
   Meditation, he thought. This was a place for meditation, for giving self to God, for partaking of His strength and love. He let his spirit flow, let it flow humbly with its Maker's. A man had only to do this much to feel the healing grace. He had only to acknowledge God, he had only to accept His will in meekness to know the Holy Presence.
   Walking by himself, seeing the sun going to rest in a majesty of fire, Weatherby wondered at the perverse way of men and women. Card players. Sabbath-breakers. Swearers. Readers of romances. Wearers of finery. How could they choose the temporal, sinful pleasures when salvation was the price?
   Sometimes he felt that he had failed. In spite of all his exhortations the train still broke the Sabbath, condoning the sin, by saying it was necessary. Its people liked the fiddle's music. They danced. They swore. They played card games. Some talked like deists, as if God didn't care. Give me strength, Lord! he asked. Give me power!
   And yet his self-doubts seemed unworthy. God had given him work to do. God had given his old body an endurance equal to his task. God had seen him safe through all vicissitudes. God had called him west. All glory to His namel
   It wasn't within the right of man to question God. The righteous man accepted, and knew peace. The sinner scoffed or ranted and in the fire of soul got a foretaste of the hell to come. He had had his foretaste as a younger man. He had known the torments of the flesh, and yielded, and known the torments of the spirit. And then God had given him to see, and, lo, his passion was become a righteous passion and his lust the love of Jesus.
   Even now, he thought, the devil lurked. He wasn't always free of wickedness after all his years of fighting it. Sometimes, off guard, he'd think of women yet, of Mercy Evans and her husband and the young flesh and the warm bed, and he would push the devil back and cry to God to forgive and strengthen him. It seemed to him afterwards that his preaching had an extra force, a special urgency for sinners to repent; and the force and the urgency were wonderful and mysterious and spoke the love divine.
   Ahead of him an Indian came riding on a horse, a Cayuse Indian, doubtless, or perhaps a Nez Perce. Here again, he knew, was the living proof of faith, not in the single Indian but in all the Indians hereabouts. They were clean and clothed. They were good husbandmen and artisans, having wheat and corn and vegetables and dressed skins to trade for garments, calico and nankins, and good horses to exchange for cattle. Their squaws were modest and industrious, happy to make or mend moccasins for a simple gift. In these tribes had disappeared the savage heathenisms -and all because of Christianity. All because two consecrated men, Dr. Whitman and another -Spalding had established missions somewhere north to bring the truth to them.
   He said, "Good evening," to the Indian.
   The Indian smiled and said, "How do?" He brought his horse up. It had a homemade saddle on it, with skins tied on behind.
   "Cayuse?"
   "Christian, me."
   The answer struck Weatherby as the proper one, as the answer to the question that he should have asked. "I am a Christian. I am a preacher."
   The Indian nodded as if in halting understanding of the words. "Good man. Pray."
   "Let us have a prayer. Let us talk to the Holy Spirit."
   "Pray now?"
   "Pray now."
   The Indian slipped from his horse and knelt with Weatherby in the grass.
   Weatherby tried to make his prayer simple. "We thank Thee, God, for Thy blessings. We thank Thee for life and health and all Thy loving bounty. We thank Thee for Thy love of all of us, white man and red man and all the men of earth. Help us to be worthy. Help us to do Thy will. We pray Thee, help us not to swear or worship false gods or idols or to drink firewater or commit adultery. Let Thy mercy rest on us."
   While he spoke, he said an inward prayer, asking God for the strength and wisdom to do His will among the poor heathens of the Columbia as Whitman and Spalding were doing with their tribes.
   He said, "Amen," then, and the Indian said, "Amen."
   Weatherby felt refreshed when he got up. More than ever he felt chosen, and strong, adequate, sure that in this little meeting, in this little worship by a white man and a red, God had shown Himself.
   "Me go to camp," the Indian said, motioning toward the idled train. He led his horse along.
The men were still playing cards, so intent on the game that none but Summers appeared to notice their approach. They played with noise and violence, slapping down the cards as if force would rule the outcome.
   Weatherby tried to guide his guest around. He was angry and ashamed at this example of the white man's way, and fearful that a strange temptation would fascinate the Indian.
   The Indian wouldn't be herded. He stepped up to the circle, Weatherby trailing after him, and watched for a long moment. He caught Summers' questioning eye. Then, to Weatherby's surprise, to his satisfaction, to his immense delight, he said, "Bad! Bad!"
   Weatherby liked to think the game broke up as a consequence. Summers said, "Party's over, hoss," and the others began to get up. Summers went on, "If this here's the worst you ever do, you'll be a heap good Injun." His eyes went to Weatherby. They were gray, smiling, skeptical eyes, and Weatherby might have felt compelled to answer them but for the continuing wonder of the Indian's words.
   He moved away as the game stopped and Daugherty and the Cayuse began to dicker over a deer hide. But the "Bad! Bad!" stayed with him. Into the mouth of a simple savage God had put the truth. In His greatness, in His mysterious workings, God had put the truth there. It was too bad that Whitman and Spalding weren't Methodists.
 
 

For three days Evans let the train dawdle across the Grande Ronde, though he fretted to be really rolling. Man and beast could use a rest, and the two Byrds needed time to get their courage up. Here, too, Patch took sick, his bowels upset by something, and looked so peaked for a spell that Evans doubted he was fit to go. Other reasons, big and small, came in. The women had a pile of washing. The Cayuse Indians offered things for trade. Among a believing tribe, Brother Weatherby was as close to heaven as he'd get on earth. By idling here the train might make the miles ahead without another rest.
   The days were fair, with no hint of snowfall in the Blues. That made the waiting easier, that and the closeness of the Blues, rimmed around to westward. Seeing them against a cloudless sky, Evans knew he'd been too anxious. Snow was a long way off.
   But fall was here. He saw it in the crisping grass out from the watered bottoms, in leaves that, earlier than most, were turning waxy-yellow, in the shortened time of sun. The snow would snow all right, and rain would rain down on the lower river, and, after rest, they'd best be wheeling. The question wasn't if they'd get there. The question was how long it took to build a cabin, how long to raise a shelter against the cold rain blown in from the sea.
   While they waited, hunting, fishing, trading with the Indians down to their final pair of pants, a train of wagons straggled by, looking lank and battered, and sent a rider to their camping place a half mile off the trail. It had been Captain Welch's company, the rider said, or part of it, now long since broken from the starting train and subtracted from and added to along the way. They'd had their griefs, too. One burying. The goddam Indians on the Snake, stealing horses for the pay of finding them! How many following behind? God knew. A passel. This train was traveling light and fast. No. Couldn't stop. No time to gab. They aimed to get to Oregon, but thankee just the same, and had they heard about the party short-cutting up the Malheur?
   Evans watched the train string on. He didn't care that it had passed, not much. Ahead was likely grass enough. It didn't matter that he couldn't brag on being first. What mattered were the companies following behind, the passel of people, maybe running into thousands, the home hunters, the darers, the stouthearted, the long-suffering. If he closed his eyes he could see them ranked along the trail, gray with dust and leaned by hardship but with the light of purpose in their eyes. Men and women. Children. Sucking babies. Milk cows. Mules and horses. Oxen. Plows. Seeds to decorate a dooryard. Books for unbuilt schools. The little fixings for the home to be. Whose was Oregon? Here, England, came the answerl
   But though he wasn't jealous of the men ahead, nor anxious any more about snow in the Blues, he was eager to roll on. A thousand times, he bet, the Columbia flowed across his mind, a broad sheet streaming to Vancouver and the mouth of the Willamette. If he could just stand by it, he would count the trip as good as done. He'd be there now except for sickness, deaths and accidents and halts made for repairs and rest. Tadlock was right about one thing: a man ran into enough delays without excusing more.
   They pulled out on a balmy morning, rested now and full of go, and climbed up in the Blues, making light of a two-mile rise so stiff they sometimes had to use six yokes. Above was rolling country with groves of yellow pine. Over it the trail ran stony and dipped to cross the Grande Ronde River and led on to a bottom where they camped. Seven miles or eight, they'd made, as Evans counted it. Good enough, all things considered.
   The next day they did a little better over country just as hard-up a mountain, along a ridge, down and up a dozen sharp-pitched hollows, over craggy rocks and into plains and groves again where deadfall lay. All around was such grand scenery that a teamster had to prod himself to watch out where he went. Mountains reared around him and bare stone lifted and distance fell away below the edging wheels. Trees sprang up as if for thinning, and here and there a sweet park opened with highland flowers in bloom. It was as if here God had put the leavings of creation, the bits and masses of the stuff He'd worked with. Ten miles. They pitched camp in a park.
   The third day, though, was best of all, though no softer than the rest. Pulling up a slope, head raised to see what lay beyond, Evans whoaed his team, for yonder, yonder, blue and white and dizzy in the distance, rose the Cascade range and, like the queen of heights, Mount Hood, like the nippled queen, like a snowy cloud, like proof and promise. Hard by would be the river. Evans looked back and saw Rebecca looking and felt he couldn't speak for the crowding in his chest. They made nine miles that day, across the main ridge of the Blues.
   Evans didn't hold in now. He doubted that he could, even if the train had wanted to. It didn't. Its people felt like him. Here on the final stretch they had a long, hard, driving strength, with Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens like beacons in their eyes. The wagons jolted to the Umatilla, down the long drop from the Blues, coming onto prairie land again, to cottonwood and chokecherry and balm of Gilead along the stream and cultivated patches grown by Cayuse Indians who wished to trade for clothes.
   The train camped there and lost a strayed or stolen horse and rolled on down the Umatilla, crossing and recrossing it and climbing to the side, to rolling, open land bristly with dried-out grass. And now, besides the snowy peaks, Evans saw the valley opening, the valley of the Columbia with the shades of distance in it.
   It seemed he couldn't think but of the river. It flowed beneath and over and around his other thoughts -the Columbia and the Dalles and the mission buildings there, and afterwards each family for itself, finding ways to get downriver. Except that would his family be alone? Could he cut loose from the Byrds and Fairmans, who in their different ways leaned so much on him and Becky? The question slid off in the tide. Other questions too. Like why were Brownie and his girl still stiff like new acquaintances. Mercy was all right. He had to say that much and more, and Becky swore by her. A quiet, willing, pretty girl with more heft to her than on her father's fare.
   Ten miles. Good grass. Timber only on the stream. Walla Walla Indians with potatoes and venison to trade. Dirty Indians. Not like the Cayuses. Showed the lack of Christianity, if Weatherby was right. Byrd's cart rolling solid. Patch as good as new. Summers saying watch out for these measly Injuns; what ain't nailed down they'll steal. Sights, words, feelings, questions, all washing with the river, all sensed across the mind-heard murmur of it.
   He reached it when the sun was down and dusk lay thin among the hills. He reached it after heavy going through wild and sandy land where prickly pear and greasewood tried to grow. Out from it was barrenness, holding like a grudge the whee1 scar of their passage, out from it no water, wood or graze; and on the shore was just a strip of grass and cocklebur and sunflower blooming hardy.
   A lonely, empty land where thought itself might echo. A new, old, wide-flung, solitary country purpled by the coming night. A place to make a man feel small, to drive his thoughts to cozy memories, to barns and barnyards and a rooster crowing and victual-scented kitchens closed away from space.
   But here the river ran!
   Evans brought his gaze in close and saw the pebbly bottom and the water flowing clear. He let it stream on with the stream, across the silver flat of it and down its course to where it met the night. Beyond, he knew, the channel narrowed into falls and rapids, and so they'd have to wheel below. Still, here was the river road, the wide and sweeping road, the final road to Oregon. Here like a known thing on the way to home it was, like a recollected shore, like home itself.
   A shudder shook him, and he started at Dick's voice and looked to right and left and saw that he was not alone and remembered how they'd left the wagons to stand upon the bank.
   "'Bout four days to the Dalles," Dick said.