The Way West (6 page)

   Hoots and hollers arose all around, more hoots than hollers.
   "Quiet! Orderl" Tadlock roared, beating on the plate. His voice sharpened as the noise died. "This has all been thrashed out. Anyone who joined this company knew we planned to start early to get there first. Our company's big enough. Twentytwo wagons, nearly thirty armed men." His arm came out, pointing. "Ask Dick Summers there. He knows. He'll tell you a company can be too big, so big that it's slow and hard to manage." He looked at Turley. "Anyone who's afraid can wait. We're going on. That's settled."
   Turley shuffled while more voices sounded out. Evans imagined it was Mrs. Turley who had egged him on. Tadlock was all business. "Is the committee ready to report?" he asked as if he didn't know.
   Mack answered, "It is," and stepped forward with the wrinkles of thinking on his face and said, "Your committee recommends that Irvine Tadlock be elected captain and Charles Fairman lieutenant, and Henry Shields captain of the livestock guard, each to serve to the end of the trail."
   An Illinois German named Brewer made a motion to accept the report, and Hank McBee, speaking loud out of his mangy beard, seconded the motion.
   Tadlock made as if to step down from the bucket, saying, "Will someone preside? It isn't right for me to," but the voices went up in yells of "Yes" and "Keep the stump" and "Whoa, there," and Tadlock put his foot back on the bucket and asked, "Well, if it's unanimous?" He got more yells for an answer.
   "Thank you. Thank you all. I'll do my very best. Is there a further report then?"
   There was. Mack read it off. Evans, listening with just half his mind, heard it in snatches. . . . Recommend the train be called the On-to-Oregon Outfit. . . . Recommend a governing council of six be elected.... Recommend tax to pay expenses, including two hundred dollars for the pilot. . . . Recommend no ardent spirits be taken, except for medical purposes. ... Require wagons be capable of carrying a quarter more than their load, teams of drawing a quarter more. . . . Death for murder. . . . Thirty-nine lashes for three days for rape. ... Thirty-nine lashes on the bare back for adultery and fornication (big-sounding words for something simple). . . . Council to fix penalty for indecent language. . . . Recommend train start at seven o'clock every morning and travel from ten to fifteen miles every day. . . .
A long list, that made Summers snort once. Evans' attention strayed off, to Mack, to Fairman, to McBee, to Brewer, and off to one side, beyond the men, to the girl, Mercy McBee, who wore a red poke bonnet and stood, her eyes fluid above the pale planes of her cheeks, like a young doe that had heard a noise. Sadness in the face, or maybe only emptiness. A look to squeeze a man inside. In animals you knew what you'd get, crossing scrubs. Question was, did the scrubs cross or a good stud get in the pasture? More likely she was scrub, too, underneath. Thirtynine lashes for fornication. That was a warning, aimed mostly by the married men at the single ones who'd been engaged to help out on the trip.
   Brother Weatherby was wanting to add to the list, asking that the company go "on the moral code written by God in the breast of every man."
   A little smile was on Tadlock's face. He knew better than to laugh, but he knew to smile, too, letting on it was best, if a little overdone, to give the preacher man some rope.
   The man back of Evans muttered, "Make the old fool shut up. Wants to make the rules, and him without a pot to piss in."
   Mack read some more. . . . Require provisions in the following amounts . . . two hundred pounds of flour per person, except for infants . . . seventy-five pounds of meal ... fifty pounds of bacon. . . . Name three inspectors, to look over wagons and supplies. ... Move report be adopted.... Aye....
   The voice at Evans' back said, "That'll fix the preacher."
   It occurred to Evans that the rules didn't go far enough yet. Nothing had been said about cattle and how many head to a driver. Some men, like Tadlock himself, had a big bunch of those cattle and some had no more than their teams and a milk cow or two. It wasn't fair, expecting each man to take turn about when some had more than others. He had a notion to speak up, when Tadlock said, "Many things will have to be worked out as we go along. If we have trouble, the council can settle it. The thing now is immediate organization, so that we can make a start."
   The words were fair, and Evans found himself feeling a little guilty. There wasn't any cause to doubt Tadlock, once you got used to his way. He was a man who liked to take things inhand -and there wasn't anything wrong with that. Like Tadlock had told Summers the night before the funeral, someone had to take responsibility. Tadlock was all right, except for his fool idea about dogs. Nobody had said anything about dogs yet.
   "Any more business?"
   It came then. McBee moved that the dogs be left behind or killed. Hearing him, seeing the words shaped by a mouth bushed around like a terrier's, Evans knew McBee had been put up to it. And he knew, too, of a sudden, that McBee always would side with the top dog. Let Tadlock be upset, and you'd find McBee honey-fuggling the upsetters.
   Was there a second?
   Again it was Brewer, the Illinois man, the German, who spoke. Dogs couldn't travel all dey vay to Oregon. Dogs vould be signal to Indians, yah. Second da motion.
   Tongues all around were wagging. Yes. No. No. Yes. By God, I'd like to see anyone kill my dog! Reckon the fool German never heard of a watchdog. Who in hell wants a dog?
   Tadlock beat on the pan. "Let's thrash this out."
   A half dozen people spoke, one after another, trying to lift their voices above the arguments that were going on all around -McBee, Fairman, Brewer again, a Yankee named Patch, Evans himself. McBee said, 'y God yes, shoot the dogs. They weren't no real good to nobody. Just made more mess to step in. Fairman said let each man do as he pleased, it wasn't a thing for company action.
   Evans shouted, "Ask Dick Summers! Ask Dick!He knows more'n anyone."
   More beating on the pan. "All right, Summers. Speak up!"
   Summers seemed a little uneasy, talking to a crowd. He hitched his leather breeches. "It don't make a heap of difference. Some dogs'll get through; some maybe won't. Anyhow, a dead dog's no loss but to the man that owns him."
   By grab, that was so, Evans thought. People argued a dog couldn't make the trip and everyone took that as a good reason, like they took other talk, until a man like Dick showed it didn't
hold water.
   Summers went on, "Dogs'll tell the camp about Injuns just as quick, and maybe quicker, than they'll give us away. Me, I don't look for Injun trouble anyhow, except for beggin' and a little stealin'. Injuns ain't likely to light into a party as big as this one, not the Injuns we'll come up against."
   Tadlock ran his hand along his jaw while the talk broke out again. After a little while he tapped on the plate. "I'm thinking more just of the bother of dogs," he said. "They're a nuisance. They'll slow up the train. They'll be underfoot in the mornings, and they'll get hurt and lost and cause delay, I'm afraid. At any rate, let's vote."
   You couldn't be sure, by voices, which side had won, but after Tadlock had called for a show of hands and counted them careful, he said the motion had carried. He didn't push it further, though. He didn't say who was to do the killing and when. Evans figured he would have some business with the man who came to shoot Rock. The prospect troubled him. He liked things peaceful.
   While he was thinking about it, Tadlock went on with the clection of a council and the naming of inspectors. It was a little to Evans' surprise that he found himself on both lists. The crowd elected him to the council, and Tadlock named him an inspector. When he had had time to reckon, though, it was natural enough. What Tadlock aimed at was to work everyone over to his side. By one thing and another, he figured to get the most of them in the same bed with him.
   Well, anyhow, the business was about done. Evans looked it ound and saw that Brownie had ridden up on his mule, and then he glanced back to the stretch of prairie where the animals grazed and saw the mules and horses hobbled or pinned out and the oxen resting safe, and he knew, as he knew all along, that Brownie could be depended on.
   His gaze came back to Brownie. The boy was sitting his mule quiet, his eyes fixed, on his young face an unhidden, troubled, hankering look, as if he stood alone and saw now and for the first time all it was a man might hope for. Before he turned his head, Evans knew what Brownie saw. It was the girl, Mercy McBee, with her sad, watching face and her red poke bonnet and the two little hills of her breasts showing against her linseywoolsey.
   For a long minute Evans stared at her, and then back at his boy. They were about of an age, the only two, as luck would have it, who looked like seventeen. The look on Brownie's face was like the look on the man Mack's, when first he'd seen the girl. It was like it, and still far different, being gentle and young and unknowing, not thinking of bed alone and maybe not at all, but of tenderness and beauty and happiness, so much of it the heart flowed over.
   Evans turned away. Damned if he wasn't building things in his mind, out of nothing, you might say, out of his own feelings of long ago. But good God! Scrub stock. Marry into scrub stock, and it was all right! Call Hank McBee pappy and Mrs. McBee ma and have 'em on your hands all your life and everything was fine. But they whipped you for fornication. Thirty-nine lashes.
 

DICK SUMMERS thought lazily that these were different from mountain men. These couldn't enjoy life as it rolled by; they wanted to make something out of it, as if they could take it and shape it to their way if only they worked and figured hard enough. They didn't talk beaver and whisky and squaws or let themselves soak in the weather; they talked crops and water power and business and maybe didn't even notice the sun or the pale green of new leaves except as something along the way to whatever it was they wanted to be and to have. Later they might look back, some of them might, and wonder how it happened that things had slid by them. They would remember, maybe, a morning and the camp smoke rising and the sun rolling up in the early mist and the air sharp and heady as a drink, and they would hanker back for the day and wish they had got the good out of it. But, hell, a man looking back felt the same, regardless. There wasn't any way to whip time.
   Off a piece from camp, where there wasn't so much racket, Summers sat cross-legged on the ground and fiddled in the dust with a stick. If he looked, he caught sight now and then of Evans and the other inspectors making their rounds, seeing everything was proper and according to rule. Some of the women already were getting supper. Those that didn't have stoves had made their fires too big and kept wiping smoke tears out their eyes while they tried to settle their cookalls in the flames. The heat had gone out of the sun now, and the critters had got up and were grazing on the slope. The camp was quieter, the young ones being hungry and played-out and the men busy for the morning start and the women separated at ther fires. Off toward the trees a whippoorwill cried.
   Somehow the whippoorwill brought Mattie to mind, Mattie lying cold under the dirt, the last goodbye said and nothing before her but the long sleep, though Brother Weatherby thought different. In his funeral sermon Weatherby had opened the gates of heaven and got the soul inside, safe in God's love, and it was pretty to think so, seeing rest ahead and the quiet heart forever. What was it Weatherby had read? "Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." Weatherby said the words came from Ephesians. He was a great one for Ephesians. For Mattie's sake Summers hoped Weatherby knew what he was talking about. She had a right to rest and to be shut of fevers and torments. But things dying jarred against prettiness. Things died ugly, seeping blood and matter, as gut-shot Indians died, or they shrank down to nothing but skull and ribs, as Mattie had. Let not your heart be troubled.
   Summers didn't guess his heart was as troubled as some. There wasn't any bur under his tail. He was a mountain man, or he had been, and traveled with hunters who never gave thought to soil and timber and tricks to pile up money but went along day by day taking what came, each morning being good in itself, and tomorrow was time enough to think about tomorrow. That was how Summers felt yet, but the movers were different. They traveled to get some place, as they lived life. Chances were they couldn't enjoy a woman and a bed for thinking what they had to do next. They argued. Would prairie grow a crop? Hell, land that won't grow a tree won't grow nothin'. Thing to do is to make deadenin's, like always, and cut your trees and plant among the stumps. In his mind's eye Summers could see them, ahead along the Bear or the Boise, pinching the soil, smelling it, tasting it, while the young ones played around them. They were family men, settled with their women and easy with their children, the hard edges worn smooth, the wildness in them broke to harness. They looked ahead to farms and schools and government, to an ordered round of living.
   Like Lije Evans, who was coming up to Summers now, his feet setting themselves sure in the dusty grass, a half-smile on his face, and Rock, his old dog, following at his heels. Like Lije talking about the country, the United States of America, spreading from one ocean to the other. The thought had grown big in Lije. No reason, he said, just to give Oregon to the British. His pappy had fought the British, while the damn Yankees were tucking their tails and making as if to pull off from the other states, and he would fight them himself if he had to.
   Not that Lije was such a fighting man, being too friendly, too self-littling, as big and powerful men sometimes were, as if feeling guilty because they had the best of it in size. What he aimed at was to get the country settled by Americans and so make it American. And not that Lije was like the others, either. He didn't fret or wish for time to pass so as to get him to a place that, after all, was just that much closer to the grave. As much as for anything, Summers imagined, as much even as for what they called patriotism, Lije was going west for the fun of it, as Summers was himself. The tameness in Lije had still proved wild enough to make him breach a fence and head for other pastures. That was the best reason of all. It was a slim chance that people would find themselves better off once they'd staked off land in Oregon.
   Evans was looking at Summers' little pile of plunder. There wasn't much there, not near enough by the rules -a blanket and an old buffalo robe that covered just a teensy keg of whisky, a little bit of meal, about a shirttail full of it, and salt meat and coffee and tobacco and a kettle and a couple of knives and two tifles, his Hawken and an over-and-under double barrel with the bore big enough for bird shot. He had a little of Indian gods, too, blue and white beads and fishhooks and tobacco and a roll of scarlet strouding and some vermilion. All of his plunder put together wasn't more than a couple of pack horses could carry easy. Even so, it was more than he needed. He could travel from hell to breakfast with no more than a gun and a horse, and would get there in time for dinner without the horse.
   "It ain't much, Lije," he said.
   "No?"
   ''Don't need much."
   "Not you, I reckon."
   Never saw folks with so much plunder. It ain't the way we used to travel."
   "Things are different."
   "I traveled many a mile, and nothin' to eat except what powder and ball would catch."
   Summers could see that Evans was bothered a little underneath, caught between friendliness and plain sense on one side and the rules he was supposed to see to on the other. That was a thing Summers liked about Evans -what he felt was worth doing he wanted to do right. He was a man to tie to. This was a fool thing now, though.
   Evans lifted the robe, bringing the keg of whisky to sight. Summers said, "Rules are all right, only I don't guess they fit me. Can't you just forget me, Lije?"
   Evans nodded, his mind of a sudden made up, and gave Summers a slow grin. "I ain't going to torment myself about you, Dick. You're plumb growed up. There's a sight of vinegar in that there keg, though. Here, Rock, damn you. Don't sneak off."
   "I'm a vinegar man. Might be you'll be needing some."
   "Might be. Good vinegar?"
   "Better'n apple. I always say corn's better'n apple."
   A rifle shot sounded from the other side of the camp, where they couldn't see.
   Evans looked down at Rock. "It's that damn McBee startin' out, likely," he said. "He's the dog killer. Feels big about it."
   "What you aim to do?"
   "All I know is, he ain't goin' to shoot Rock. Lie down, boy!" He rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. "Them McBees didn't have nigh enough food and such."
   "Then McBee ain't a proper one of the party."
   Evans shook his head. "Tadlock filled in, and Mack a little, so they wouldn't have to turn back. Didn't have any money, either, Dick. Couldn't pay the tax. That'll cost you, I reckon."
   "It don't matter. What for did Mack and Tadlock help out?" Evans shrugged. "McBee, I bet he's a sloper, and we got a rule against slopers. Bet he owes more'n you could count."
   "No way of findin' out, short of sending a man to Ohio."
   "No. He says he's all clear."
   "Smart-lookin' girl he's got."
   "Too damn smart."
   "Botherin' you?"
   "Naw. Women don't bother me."
   The rifle sounded again, and now they could see McBee, the smoking gun in his hand and out from him, away from camp, a black dog broken in the back. The dog began to howl, the hgh, steady howl of deadly hurt. He scrambled in the grass, trying to get up, trying to ease himself, while the howl thinned high like a whistle. McBee strode toward the dog, picking up a club as he went, and the dog turned, as if expecting help, and hot the butt of the club on his skull. A boy ran out, crying, and a woman after him. The woman cried out at McBee while the boy bent over his dog, and McBee said something and turned away, toward Evans and Summers, as if his business was too important for him to listen.
   Rock rose on his forelegs. "Lie down, boy!"
   McBee stopped to charge his rifle and saw them and walked over, his face solemn as an owl in its beard. "You got to get rid of that there dog," he said to Evans, "else I'll have to shoot 'im."
   "You ain't goin' to shoot my dog, McBee."
   "It's rules."
   "Rules be damned!"
   "I'm app'inted to carry 'em out. Get shet of the dog or I'll have to kill 'im."
   Evans was a slow man to act. He hadn't angered often enough, Summers thought, to know how to answer to anger. He hunted around for words. "You kill my dog, McBee, and you'll pay for it."
   McBee spit in the grass. "There ain't any gettin' around the rules."
   "I'll draw off from this here company and take them that have dogs with me. Tell Tadlock that."
   Give some men a rifle and a piece of power, Summers thought, and they got too studdish to put up with. "Tell him I told you. Not Rock."
   "I got a job to do."
   Evans stood big beside McBee, though he let himself sag a little, as if ashamed he had more height and heft. An oversized and troubled man, who feared he might do wrong.
   "Lije," Summers asked, "whyn't you cut him down to size?"
   "I ought to, I guess."
   What Evans didn't understand was that McBee might be dangerous now he had a rifle in his hand and importance in his chest.
   Summers got off the ground. "I swear, McBee," he said, "I don't know why someone ain't kilt you!"
   McBee hitched his rifle up, his eyes rounder than before. "It's rules. 'Y God, I got my duty to do."
   "Tell Tadlock," Evans said.
   Summers caught a twitch in McBee's face. He saw the muzzle of the rifle, not quite pointed at him, begin to make a little nervous circle. Scared, McBee was, but trapped in his pride, the mind whirling and the finger shaky on the trigger.
   Summers made his voice soft. "Lookit, now, McBee," he said. "We ain't huntin' trouble." He pointed to Rock. "Look at this old dog-"
   It was easy. As McBee's gaze turned, Summers jumped ahead and made a sweep with his hand and wrenched the rifle away. McBee half fell, trying to hold on to it, and then got his feet under him and backed up a step. Summers could see the inside of his mouth through the mat of whiskers.
   "You ain't gonna get away with this!" McBee's voice came out high and womanish.
   "Like Evans said, you go tell Tadlock."
   "I'll tell him all right." McBee shuffled off, toward the center of the camp, looking back at them once over his shoulder. "We'll have to watch him now," Evans said. "Yep."
   "There wasn't any reason for you to bust in," Evans said. "would've made out -but not so fast."
   "Sure. I just acted sudden. Rememberin' that black dog got me riled, I reckon."
   Evans fell silent, and Summers thought he didn't want to talk more about McBee, maybe figuring he had made a poor out of it. To change the subject Summers said, "What about old Ephesians?"
   "Who?" "Weatherby."
   "What about him?"
   "He make out all right, with his plunder?"
   Evans shook his big head. "He ain't got nothin', Dick. Couple of poor horses and maybe a thunder-mug o' meal. I got to report him."
   "You talk to him?"
   "Said he'd go it alone if he couldn't trail along. Just him and God. I got to report."
   "Leave McBee time to talk to Tadlock." Summers let his eyes travel over the spread-out camp. He saw a group of men and McBee making for it.
   "All right." Evans looked at the sun. "Time enough, I guess." They smoked a pipe and then got up and started for the group.
   "Becky says come take supper with us," Evans told Summers.
   "I can make out."
   "Not accordin' to Becky. She says you won't get the proper victuals. Says you're to come now and regular, from here on."
   "That's good of her, you and her both. I'll see there's meat in the pot."
   "Shot with McBee's gun?" Evans grinned, looking down at the two rifles Summers carried.
   "That preacher," Summers said while he thought back, "damn if he would take money for Mattie's funerall"
   "Here, Rock! I thought he always had his hat out."
   "He preached his head off and wouldn't take pay. Said preachin' was one thing and funeralizin' another."
   "I be damned!"
   They walked past the cook fires, among the tents, between the Wagons, Evans being careful to see his dog followed at his heels. Later, camp would be pitched according to plan, with one wagon close behind another and joined to it with ox chains and the whole of them forming a circle so people could fort up in case of Indians; but now all was sprawled out every which way.
   Tadlock was holding court, you might say, calling on the inspectors for reports and nodding or frowning to them and marking on a piece of paper as he heard the figures. Fairman and Mack were with him, and other men had gathered around -Brother Weatherby, Brewer, Higgins, and some whose names Summers was just learning -Gorham, Carpenter, Byrd, Daugherty, Patch, Holdridge, Martin. They were a good-enough looking lot, saving one or two like McBee. Summers stepped over to McBee and handed him his rifle and stepped back.