The Way West (5 page)

LIJE EVANS had been to some powerful stump speakings and to revivals where people got the shakes and hollered in the unknown tongue. He was reminded of them now, here at what was called rendezvous, where officers would be elected and outfits inspected and things made ready for the march. The racket of it filled the ear, women clacking, men yelling at mules and oxen and talking in little groups, young ones shouting, dogs barking, and every once in a while a mule braying or a cow bawling. The eye couldn't rest. People were taking down tents and driving cattle out to pasture and reloading wagons, having found, driving from Independence or Westport, that their plunder wasn't arranged right. Children ran among the white-topped wagons and tripped over tent pegs and sprawled in the dusty grass, and now and then a new wagon, splash-marked by the Missouri Blue, would jolt up from town, and women and young ones would blossom out of it, and the men would get busy unyoking the critters.
   Off a piece Brother Weatherby was moving among the people, stopping when he could get someone to listen, his shoulders stooped in their tow-linen shirt, his old face solemn with the weight of what he knew. Evans caught echoes of the rusty voice, which was likely setting things up for a preaching tonight, for Weatherby's Methodist argument on "One Lord, onefaith, one baptism."  Brother Weatherby loved to exhort, as he called it. A mule slowing the train while it stopped to lift its tail was almost enough to make him cut loose. After exhorting, he would get the hat passed. "Remember, the Lord loveth a cheerful giver." Evans imagined that was one of the reasons he preached so often; he didn't have anything. But if you put it up to him that he preached for money, just like a man farmed or traded or kept store, probably he would say he needed the money to do the work of the Lord. Maybe he did. You couldn't listen to him and doubt he believed God had singled him out to spread the Word.
   Evans stood with his foot on the wagon tongue and watched and listened. A bitch in heat went by, trailed by all the dogs in camp, including old Rock, and they all lifted their legs, one by one, at a little hazel bush and trotted on, each hoping, even the littlest, that the Lord had singled him out, too.
Like Brother Weaterby, Tadlock, the politician, was making the rounds, though no one stood for election against him. He was an important talker and he carried an Oregon guidebook with him to show he knew more than anybody, except maybe Dick Summers, about the way to get west.
   Somewhere off where Evans couldn't see, a man was cussing a mule or an ox. Evans saw Weatherby hold up and listen and knew he was thinking about the wickedness of swearing.
   While the sun sailed quiet in the sky and the little winds ran in whispers in the grass, thc voices of the camp rose harsh, like the voices of excited geese. Though they were only twenty miles or so west of Independence and hadn't seen an Indian except for some Shawnees and some scabby Kaws that a Missouri man might see any day, already a few people were afraid, as if they had cut loose from all safety and faced enemies the like of which no one of them had ever known. There was Mrs. Turley, who was all holler and no heart, who kept talking and looking around as if she expected the biggest Indian ever born to show up swinging a hatchet; and Mrs. McBee, a sharp-tongued snipe of a woman who wanted to go back to Ohio; and McBee himself, talking big to hide his littleness. And there were others Evans wouldn't know how many- with worry on their faces and fear in their stomachs while they thought ahead to the Platte and the Pawnees and the Black Hills and the Sioux.
   Rebecca sat in the shade of the wagon, fanning herself with a pie plate for lack of something better, for though April wasn't gone, the sun was hot. Brownie was out watching the cattle, along with the man, Hig that Fairman had hired, and a bunch of others, mostly young men without families. You couldn't tell when a Kaw would take it into his head to make off with a horse or a cow, though they were a chicken-gutted lot and not knee-high in any way, so Dick Summers said, to tribes like the Pawnees and Snakes and Blackfeet. Still, you didn't want them stealing your stock.
Evans watched Rebecca, and by and by, just to make conversation, he said, "I don't hardly feel like we've started yet. Way most of 'em act, you'd think we was bushed in the mountains some place." Rebecca kept on fanning herself. "I could light out now afoot and be to the old place almost in time to do the chores."
   It seemed strange to him, come to think of it, that he called the farm the old place. He had just left it, just shook the hand of the man who had paid him four hundred dollars cash money for his quarter section. He had just driven away, seeing the patch of flax greening and the leaves of the young tobacco fleshing out in their bed. He had taken a last look at the cornfield, where the first frail spears would soon push up, and at the cabin where he and Rebecca had come really to know each other and where Brownie was born. And now in his mind it was the old place, and he felt a little sad at leaving it, as if a part of him and Rebecca and Brownie had been left forever behind. Give him a little time, though, get him across the Kaw and up the Little Blue to the Platte, and he would be all right. Already, seeing the hills and woods opening, he could imagine how it would be along the great, free desert of the Platte. Oregon and the new way of things. Oregon for America, you damn bet! He and others would take Oregon by occupation, and what could the British do then? He felt almost like an old-time Oregon man himself.
   "Feelin' better, Becky?" he asked. "About goin'?"
   She let him have a little smile. Her face looked hot but not fearful now. She had cried for a minute when they left the old place, and then had set her face west and not looked back. Evans had an uneasy feeling that he couldn't realize, ever, what it was for a woman to give up her home. They were finer drawn than men, women were, mixed more in their thinking, so that you couldn't tell what went on in their heads. A woman might hate moving because of leaving her marigolds. Yet he understood Rebecca, too, in ways; she would make the trip, and no complaining, either, and her talk cheerful and her clever hands doing what was to be done.
   "I'm all right, Lije," she answered. "Hot, is all. Why you ask? Changed your mind?"
   "Not me. Anyone at all gets to Oregon, it'll be you and me."
   Her voice was soft. "You're the biggest fool, Lije."
   He knew what she meant. She meant it still struck her queer that he should bow his neck for Oregon and feel better all the time for doing it. Well, it was queer. An old plug didn't often
prance.
   She said, "Hello, there, Dick," and Evans saw that Dick Summers was strolling up. In the old buckskin breeches and redchecked shirt he had put on, Dick was something. Tall, silverhaired, strong-looking in arm and leg and body, he was a man to catch the eye, different from anyone Evans knew, different from those who traveled the Santa Fe trail, from the Mexicans who dressed to show off. There wasn't any show-off in Dick. He was just himself.
   "I'd think you'd melt to a grease spot," Rebecca said, looking at the buckskins.
   "I reckon I got ahead of myself, sure enough."
   She said, "It's the sun got ahead of itself, Dick."
   "Hell of a mess," Evans put in, making a wide sweep of his hand, to the wagons, tents, people, talk, horses, oxen, everything. "Some'll be turnin' back."
   Summers put tobacco in his pipe. "It'll straighten out, likely."
   "Tadlock's the big toad," Evans said.
   "Looks so. Got such a start nobody else'll stand."
   "Maybe he'll make a good-enough captain?"
   Summers nodded as if he didn't quite agree. "Have to keep a tight line on him." He pulled on his pipe while his keen gray eyes went over the layout.
   "Wants to kill all the dogs, down to my old Rock." Summers went on smoking.
   "That's what I hear on the quiet, anyhow. He won't come out for it open, I don't guess. Might cost him votes." Evans put his words so as to be questions. "They say dogs can't make it anyhow? Say they'd give us away to the Injuns?"
   Summers looked at Rebecca, the faint tracks of a smile on his face. "They make good meat if food runs out."
  "Ah-h!"
   "The Sioux eat pup, and I've chewed a few. Taste like hog meat."
   "Sure enough, Dick," Evans asked, "you think we ought to kill the dogs?"
   "Be hell to pay."
   "I know, but you think we ought?"
   "Dog can go where a cow can."
   "I hadn't thought of that."
   "And they won't give us away any more'n they'll put us on guard." Summers was silent for a minute. "Mighty hard thing to sneak into an Injun camp, on account of the dogs."
   "Tadlock wouldn't know about that. We got to ejicate him." Evans got out his own pipe. He was filling it when the horn sounded high and strong above the clatter, calling the men to the election.
Evans and Summers walked toward the center of the camp, where the men were gathering. On the way, Evans saw the file of dogs again. A little boy, cotton-topped and thin, was following them. Evans heard a voice call, "Toddie! Come here, Tod." The voice belonged to Mrs. Fairman, a long-legged, well-turned girl with light hair and eyes as pale as pond water. She walked out and got the boy by the hand.
   Nearly everybody in camp collected for the election, the men standing in front, chewing and spitting, and the women behind and the young ones open-eared on the fringes. Because he had been chosen temporary captain -or commandant captain, he called it- Tadlock brought the meeting to order. He stepped up on a wooden bucket and beat a spoon against a tin plate to gett silence. When the talk had toned down some, he pitched into his speech, standing square on the bucket. Everything about him was square, Evans thought -square face, square body, square way of standing. Evans wondered if he was square inside, too, while he admitted to himself that Tadlock made a figure, the teeth showing white, the face tanned on the cheekbones and blue-black at the jaw with the roots of beard, the eyes bold, the arms moving easy. He might be an all-right man. It bothered Evans to think maybe he wasn't. He didn't like to think bad of folks.
   Tadlock was saying, "Our company, I have reason to believe, will be the first out anywhere. The St. Joe trains, we hear, won't roll for several days. So it appears we'll be the trail blazers -and also escape the dust of the desert, find grass for our animals, and arrive first at the Willamette."
   Some of the men yelled at his words, and he closed his mouth, giving them time for their hurrahs. When they were finished, someone kept shouting, "Chairman! Mr. Chairman!"
   It was Brother Weatherby, crowding through toward the bucket. The old preacher had put on his rusty coat, though he must have been hot in it. The cracked voice rose: "We had no prayer. We didn't open with prayer."
   Back of Weatherby someone said, "Sit down! Christ sake!" and another voice answered, "I kin remember my pap braggin' Sunday'd never cross the Mississippi." Other men were muttering or just grinning, but the women, Evans noticed when he looked around, mostly were nodding their heads, thinking Weatherby was right.
   Tadlock wasn't fazed at all. He said, "I'm sorry, Brother Weatherby. It was an oversight. Will you lead us in prayer?" He bent his head.
   Weatherby bent his head, too, and by and by raised his arms. He asked God to be merciful to poor sinners. He said they knew the way was long and dangerous, but they put their trust in Him. . . . We pray Thee to protect us against the elements and against the heathen and the wild beasts, and against sickness and accidents, and to give us strength for the journey and to make our hearts stout, whatever may come to pass. ... And make us grateful, too, 0 Lord, for all Thy blessings and lead us to know Thy glory and make the sinner to repent and the swearer to see his wickedness and the man and woman in adultery to understand their sin and do it no more. ... We pray Thee to breathe the influence of Thy spirit on us and make us all Christians. . . . God bless the little children whom Jesus said let come unto Him. . . . And may the storm hold back its fury as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and may the earth give up its abundance. . . . Make us to fear Thee and to sing Thy eternal praise. . . . Amen. Amen.
   What with one thing and another, Weatherby took a long time talking to God, time enough for an ant to crawl from the toe of Dick Summers' moccasin a distance of two ax handles, not counting the backings up and the side trips along spears of grass. Evans sneaked a look at Summers while the preaching was going on and saw his head hardly bowed and his eyes empty with distance. He wondered whether Summers believed in God at all. Not that it made any difference. Any God worth praying to would know Dick Summers for a good man, even if he didn't bow and scrape and make little of himself and beg for blessings regardless. Evans didn't guess Summers ever would beg for anything, not even from God.
   When Weatherby was through, Tadlock said, "We have rules to adopt and a permanent organization to set up."
   Another voice was yelling at him. Tadlock tried to drown it out and then to hush it with his hand, but it kept piping up. Finally Tadlock asked, "What is it, Turley?"
   Evans moved around so as to see Turley. Turley had joined the company late, from the hill and pine country of the Meramec. The words came high-pitched from his thin mouth. "'Pears to me the first thing is to think again, do we want to go on or wait for some that ain't quite ready? This here's a small train. Ain't enough growed men in it, to my way o' thinkin'. Where we be, meetin' the Pawnees or Sioux? There's a passel of people comin', like we all know, hunderds of 'em. Doc Welch of Indiany said we could j'in him. Told me so hisself. I say let's wait. Be a hunderd wagons along directly."