Fair Land, Fair Land (8 page)

That night they ate trout and deer liver, and Higgins
said, cleaning up the last of it, "I swear it's better'n fat
pork and mustard greens."

They scoured the pan, hung the carcass of the deer in
a tree beyond the reach of bears and sat down by the fire.

Night had come on, clear and cold, and the stars
glittered like mirrors touched by the sun. Coyotes and wolves were
making their usual racket. Over a pipe Higgins said, "Nothin'
like bein' footloose, pointed at nowhere in particular. Dick, was you
always this way?"

"
It's the way I'm aimin' to be, here on out."

Higgins took a pull on his pipe. It sucked in his
lips where no teeth were. "Footloose and fancy-free, that's the
sayin'. But I swear words is tricky things. What does it mean,
fancy-free? Free of fancy? Free to hitch on to whatever one comes
along? Free to follow what's already set in your mind?"

"
I never gave it much thought." Summers
drank from the jug and passed it. He put a stick on the fire,
thinking Higgins was talking just to be talking, talking because
there was somebody to talk to, talking against the great loneliness
that held and hurt a man.

"
I don't know as it makes any difference,"
Higgins went on, wiping his mouth. "But a body likes to
straighten things out in his mind. You wonder where the truth's at.
Live and learn they say but don't say that all the while you're
learnin' you're forgettin', too, until maybe at the last it"s
just a big forgettin'."

"
Christ sake, swaller some more of that joy
juice."

The fire glowed red, for now sending out heat enough.
Overhead the cold stars danced as they had danced at Jackson's Hole,
the Popo Agie and Horse Creek. That was a long time ago to a man but
not to the stars. Their calendars were different. One star fell,
making a quick streak in the sky, its seeing time ended.

"
Quit beatin' your brain," Summers said.
"Think on this. We been lucky. Lucky in the weather. Lucky in
not bein' tormented and slowed up by Indians. Another time of year,
and the Flatheads would be comin' or goin' on their hunts on the
plains."

"
It don't make much sense. They got all that
pretty Bitter Root country to bang away in."

"
But no buffalo."

"
I know. You told me."

"
A heap of fightin'. The Blackfeet didn't like
that poachin' in the country they claimed."

"
Still don't, I reckon."

"
No, but smallpox took the starch out of them a
few years back. Maybe half of them went under. I hear tell they're
still mean but their pride's mostly gone."

Higgins fell silent, maybe still thinking about words
and what they meant and all that. The whiskey wasn't doing what it
should to him.

Summers sipped at the jug and went on. "I fell
in with a party of Flatheads once, down there on the plains."

Higgins fed the fire.

"
It was the spring hunt, and they brought with
'em some camas root. Man, what fodder!"

Higgins stirred himself enough to ask, "A treat,
huh?"

"
It tasted somethin' like a plum, but there they
split up. It blowed you up fearful, more'n beans ever do, and when
you broke wind the coyotes took off for fresh air. Magpies, comin'
too close, fell dead out of the sky. The camp dogs puked, them as
didn't give up the ghost."

Higgins was grinning.

"
The Flatheads just laughed and kept fartin'."

"
They just let 'er rip, huh?"

"
Yup."

"
Squaws, too?"

"
These here was all men, but they wouldn't have
paid no" notice of squaws."

"
Eatin' or whatever, they just let go. Right?"

"
Feastin' and fartin'. They don't go together.
It ain't nice. It's downright uncivilized."

"
Natural, though." Summers took time to
think out how to say what he wished to say next. "But what do
you want, Hig, the fartin' few or the tight-assed many?"

Higgins jumped to his feet and saluted. "Yes,
sir, general. I'm with you all the way, but I got to make bold to say
we haven't the men or the arms to fight off what's comin'."

Summers had to laugh. "Sit down, soldier. We
don't aim to fight them. The idee is just to go where they ain't."

"
Just to get a taste of her, huh, before the
flood laps her up?"

"
Before she gets tamed."

"
Suits me." Higgins sampled the whiskey and
went silent again as if he had gone back to his earlier thoughts. A
night bird called from the aspens behind them, and he asked, "What
you reckon it is?"

"
Just some little old bird, I reckon."

"
Yeah, the bird in the bush, and that's another
thing," Higgins continued as if talking to himself. "Take,
now, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. That"s true of
the gut, but I got doubts for the spirit. The bush, it"s always
yonder and yonder. Right?"

"
You frazzle things, Hig. Me, I'm goin' to bed."

Once in his bedroll Summers couldn't sleep. He heard
coyotes and wolves, far off, and close at hand the voice of the night
bird. The bird in the bush. Had he held it once, not knowing? Did it
flutter there in his hand in those gone days, there along the upper
Missouri, there in Jackson's Hole, there at rendezvous, where men
drank and sang the old songs in young voices, and a squaw's eyes said
yes, after a while? Where beaver swam in every stream, and a trapper
knew his foot was first on the land and he walked with the gods of
the world, knowing himself to be small and big and blessed and,
ignorant, didn't give thanks, not full thanks, not until too late?
Was the bird once in his hand, full-plumed, bright-colored, and had
he let it slip from his grasp and fly on, calling him, its voice
soft, its flame alive in the bushes, and when he went after it, it
fluttered on, almost but not quite within reach?

That damn night bird
called again. That damn Higgins was snoring.

* * *

The frost lay silver on the grass when he woke up. It
silvered the willows and the branches of the quaking asps. Low in the
west a quarter moon was sinking. To the east the sky glowed red,
showing the sun was on its way up. He rose and built a fire. It would
be deer meat again, stabbed by sticks held over the coals.

Higgins lifted himself on an elbow and said, "Please
to bring me coffee, black, and a platter of bacon and half a dozen
fried eggs."

"No grits?"

"
Goes without sayin'."

Higgins rolled out of bed and went to bring in the
horses, his steps crunching the stiffened grass.

Packed up and mounted they followed the trail until
the last of the Big Blackfoot seeped out in a swamp. There was no
need to tell Higgins they were close to the big divide. Soon the
going would be mostly downhill. Soon they would come to water flowing
east. He whoaed up for a moment, long enough for Higgins to say,
"You'd play hell gettin' a wagon over this pass."

Summers nodded and spoke to his horse.

Half a mile further on, where the trail bent around a
rock ledge, Feather snorted and reared and wouldn't go on. Behind him
the string started acting up. Summers slid off, reins in one hand,
rifle in the other. He turned back, gave the reins to Higgins,
shaking his head for quiet, and turned again, walking soft, the
Hawken ready.

At first it was just a piece of fur, whitened at the
tips. A step further and it became the biggest bear he had ever seen.
It lay spraddled and quiet on the trail, dead maybe. Then he saw the
great body rise and fall to its breathing. He skirted around it,
ready to shoot. He hit it with a small rock. The bear didn't , move.
Then he saw that it lacked most of a foreleg. The stump oozed slow
blood.

He walked back to Higgins and said, "Come on.
Back a piece and tie up. Then follow along."

A little way off was a tree, and they wrapped reins
around a couple of branches. "Need my gun?" Higgins asked.

Summers patted the stock of the Hawken and led off.

Higgins sucked in his breath as they rounded the
turn. He wheezed out, "God! Good God!"

"
Lost a foreleg above the second joint."

"
Bled to death?"

"
Still breathing."

"
You goin' to put him out of his misery?"

Summers got down on one knee, resting his Hawken on
the other. "Ephraim. Old Ephraim," he said.

"
How's that?"

"
I call to mind- " He didn't go on. He
called to mind old days with the beaver traps, and young men, the
traps lifted, sitting around campfires, and they would speak of Old
Ephraim, the great white bear, and their tones held respect and awe
and a sort of love, as if Ephraim somehow was a part of tlhem, a
living marker of the wild life they lived. Old Ephraim.

"
He don't belong here," he said. "He
belongs out on the plains. Drove here, that's what."

"
But here he is. So what?"

Summers went on, "That Lewis and Clark party,
now, they kilt ten of them by the great falls of the Missouri. Why?
Why in hell?"

"
You goin' to pray over him, Dick, or get it
over with?"

"
It ain't right. Why don't they leave him
alone?"

"
I never heard you take on over a critter, and
him nigh onto dead."

"
It's not just the one I'm thinkin' on. It's the
whole breed, the whole goddamn family. What can you say later on?
‘Yep, there was grizzlies in them days? There was Ephraim. You
should have seen him."

"
That ain't helpin' this bear."

Summers rose and handed his rifle to Higgins. "Keep
a bead on him. You never can tell."

He walked back to the horses and took an old bucket
from a pack. At a seep of water he made a hole with the bucket and
filled it.

"Be damn ready to fire," he told Higgins on
his return. "This here"s a mite chancy."

He walked soft to the head of the bear and splashed
it with water. No action. He began to pour slowly. At last a tongue
came out and licked and licked again. He walked back to the hole he
had dug and refilled the bucket. He stopped by the horses and took a
haunch of the deer he had shot the night before. Higgins stood
silent, the rifle steady.

Summers put the full bucket down and with it the
haunch of deer. To Higgins he said, "We'Il go back to where we
was. Good day to do up the washin'."

He felt Higgins' eyes on him as they returned to the
horses.

He heard Higgins say as if to himself, "This
here is crazy. A rare sparrow, that's you, Dick Summers."

Yeah. Hig might be right.

11

SUMMERS kept his horse to a fast walk, feeling clean
for once and freshened by cleanliness. They had washed out some
clothes and greasy rags the afternoon before, flopping the things in
the river current and slapping them on rocks. At least the smell went
out of them.

Afterward they had bathed, in water cold enough to
curl a man's hair, not to mention other parts, and stood on the bank,
shivering, and let the weather dry them.

Higgins had asked, "How in hell did the mountain
men keep clean?"

"
Mostly, they wasn't too tidy. From fall freeze
to spring thaw they molded in their clothes, unless the weather was
good enough to set traps. Then they got wet leastwise."

"
I bet they stunk."

"
They had all outdoors to stink in."

Now they were nearing the spot where they'd seen the
big bear. "Watch sharp," Summers said. "I ain't
lookin' for a charge, but you never can tell."

"
I'm bettin' he's dead."

At the turn in the trail the horses began acting up,
though not so much as before. Summers spoke to Feather and kicked him
on. The bear was gone and so was the meat they had left. The bucket
lay in a bush.

"
You lose your bet," Summers said. "He
drank and et and got up, and like as not is layin' somewhere close.
Keep your eye peeled." He slid from his horse, handed the reins
to Higgins, took a forequarter of the doe he had shot and laid it in
the trail. Then he picked up the bucket and tied it on.

"
You takin' on another mouth to feed?"
Higgins asked. His face was squinched up, in disagreement or thought.

"
It won't hurt, for the time bein'."

They rode on and came, at about the middle of the
day, to a tiny stream where they let the horses drink.

"
Notice anything?" Summers asked.

"
Not what I ain't seen before."

"
The water's flowin' east. We're over the hump,
hoss."

"
What I taken notice of," Higgins told him,
"was them chokecherries. Leaves mostly dead, but there's them
berries, black, ripe and ready. What say we tie up and try a few?
Been a long time between fruits."

They filled their mouths, blowing out the seeds
through the tunnels they made with their tongues. After he had
satisfied himself, Summers took out his knife and cut a bundle of
loaded branches. He laid them on the trail, knowing that Higgins was
shaking his head.