Moontrap - Don Berry (17 page)

"
This ain't taxes, this is f'r that cap y'
lost."

"Two dollars and a half! For that goddamn little
blue cup? Marshal, damn, that ain't reasonable!"

" 'Reasonable' ain't my business," Meek
said, shrugging. "Two dollars and a half is what she says, 'n' I
come to make 'er straight."

"Listen, Meek, can't y' pretend I wasn't home 'r
something? That's a vast lot o' money."

"
Wagh!
"
the other said cheerfully. "Done and done. Meek's forgot about
the whole thing."

Monday relaxed.

"
The marshal ain't forgot nothin'," Meek
said. "Gimme two dollars and a half."

Monday turned to where Devaux and Webb were sitting.
They had gotten into a terrible argument of some kind and Webb had
his hand behind his belt on the hilt of his butcher knife. Devaux was
in the process of talking the old man out of whatever it was he had
in mind.

"Rainy," Monday said, 'You lost that cap.
You're the one ought to pay for it."

"What cap is that, friend of me?" Devaux
looked up from the conversation.

"
That military cap, you know."

Devaux shrugged. "I know nothing about a cap.
Me, I turn my cap in to that sergeant. You lose your cap? You should
have better luck."

He turned back to Webb, whose knife was still half
drawn. "No, friend of me. I say nothing about Absaroka in
general. I say only that in every hundred Absaroka, you find
ninety-nine sons of bitches."

"
What the hell c'n I do about it?" Monday
said to Meek.

"
Y'either got t' give me the money or give me a
note f'r it," Meek said.

"
If'n I give y' a note, I don't have to give y'
any money?"

"
Not right now, anyways."

"
Well, hell," Monday said. "That's
fair enough. I got some paper around. Mary—"

Mary had already gone to the cupboard and was getting
out the ink and pen, and a scrap of paper. It had once been a letter,
and had been bleached out for re-use. Traces of the previous message
still trailed faintly brown across the surface.

"
It's got somethin' on it, that don't matter,
does it?" Monday said.

"
No, that don't matter," Meek said. "Why
should that matter?"

"
I don't know," Monday said. "Well
this legal kind of stuff."

Webb stood suddenly and snatched the paper out of
Mondays hand.

"Here, y' damn dunghead, lemme do that. This
nigger c'n write out a note slick. He done it a hundred times or
better."

Webb crouched over the paper on the floor, slowly
tracing the letters.

"
This ain't no kind o' pen," he muttered.
He went over each letter twice, thickening the downstrokes carefully.

"
Enfant de garce!
"
Devaux whispered. "That is really writing!"

Webb wrote a beautiful, looped hand that cascaded
gracefully across the page, looking like the twisting of grasses in
the wind. Every once in a while he held the paper up to gauge his
work. "That goddamn 'h' ain't right," he grumbled. He
sniffed, and put the paper back on the floor. It took a long time,
and when he was finished Webb wrote tinily in the corner:
Webster
W Webster; M. T, scribebat
.

The others were all watching over his shoulder
curiously. "Damn, that's pretty, " Monday said. "What's
this here
scribebat
mean?"

"
Means I wrote it out," Webb said. "Don't
y' even know that?"

"
Where'd y' learn how to do that, hoss?"

Webb shrugged negligently. "Learnt it off'n one
o' Mackenzie's clerks one winter up to Fort Union. That there
scribebats
Egyptian,
or summat."

"No, I think she is Latine," Devaux said.

"Some furrin thing or other," Webb said.

"Well she's real pretty," Monday said,
holding the note up to the light. It read:

I the undersigned, do hereby bind myself
and promise to pay the sum of two dollars fifty cents (2.5o$) in good
merchantable beaver furr or the equivelent. Because I lost a hat.

"I figgered I better put that in about the hat,"
Webb said. "I don't usually."

"I ain't sure it ought to say about the beaver,
though," Monday said dubiously.

"
Y'iggerant dunghead! That's the way a note
reads!"

Monday shrugged and looked it over again. He shook
his head in admiration and handed the paper to Meek. "That's
some, now."

"You got t' sign it, now," Meek said.

"Sometimes I go back an' fill in all them little
holes, like in the o's," Webb said. "But I like t' do that
in red or somethin'. If you got any red around, I'll do 'er."

"
Sorry, hoss," Monday said apologetically.
"Don't think we have."

Webb looked a little disappointed but he didn't say
anything.

Monday signed the document and Meek put it in his
pocket, carefully buttoning down the flap. just as methodically he
unpinned the badge from his shirt and stuffed it back into his pants.

"
Hooraw, boys,"
he said, "this nigger's half froze f'r meat. Give us a bit,
there."

***

"Meek," Monday said, "y'ever hang a
man before?"

"No sir," Meek said definitely. "Never
did."

"
Wagh!
" Webb
growled. "Hangin' ain't no way t'die."

"
Friend of me," Devaux said, "is
because you think like Indian. All Indians afraid of hanging. Me, I
am a white man, I think hanging as good as anything else."

Webb shook his head. "Goes against nature t'
hang a man," he said. "All that chokin' and all."

Monday said thoughtfully, "Me, I don't think I'd
like t' be the man as pulls that trap. Y' don't figure it'll bother
you none, seein' 'em dancin' around there?"

Meek leaned back, looked at the fire. "Jaybird,"
he said absently, "y'recollect that Nez Percé woman I used
t'have, before Virginia?"

Monday shrugged. If Meek didn't want to talk about
the hanging, that was his business. "I recollect her," he
admitted. "Tell y' the plain truth, though, I never did think
too much of 'er."

Meek nodded. "Got 'er just after Mountain Lamb
went under from a Bannock arrow."

Webb began to chuckle, a dry, rasping sound. "Run
away from y' slick, that Nez Percé."

"
Wagh!
"
Meek said, grinning. "She did now. Rendezvous of 'thirty-seven,
it was. Powerful drunk them times. I woke up mebbe two, three days
after, m' woman was lit out. Went with Ermatinger from HBC 'n' some
missionaries. Took me a kettle o' alcohol an' took out after 'em."

"
Did you, now!"

"
Wagh!
Hard doin's it was, too, desert an' all that kind o' stuff. Anyways,
that bitch wouldn't lead nor foller, so I give 'er up. Next winter I
spent up to the Forks o' the Salmon, with old man Kowesote's village.
I says to him, 'Look here, Kowesote. That there woman I had run off
from me. Now, how about you give me another one.' "

"
Enfant de garce!
What he say, that one?"

"
He says, 'No,' flat out.
Wagh!
he did. He says to me, 'Meek, you already got one Nez Percé woman,
'n' the Bible says you can't have another one.' "

"
Wagh! " Webb snorted. "Here's wet
powder 'n' no fire t' dry it!"

"
Was
now," Meek
said. "Well, I says to him if a man's wife runs off, that was
like a divorce, an' he's got a right to get another one. Still the
nigger says no. Then I shows him in the Bible that lots of men got
plenty o' women all around. Took me 'bout two weeks, explainin' about
Solomon and David and all them kind o' doin's."

"
Wagh!
You did now!"

"
Well, finally the old man comes around t' my
way o' thinkin'. An' the Bibles. But that got his back up, right
enough. An' he says to me, 'Meek, if all that stuff's in the Bible,
how come the jesus-men say I got to give away all my wives except
one?' Oh, the nigger was mad, then. 'Well,' I says, 'you better ask
them about that.'
Wagh!
I don't reckon that Spalding, him as was missionaryin', thanked me
none."

"Hooraw, coon!" Webb stamped the butt of
his rifle on the floor. "How'd she come out?"

"
Got me the best o' the bargain," Meek
said. "Old Kowesote give me Virginia, an' that's the best woman
a man ever had."

"Them's doin's, right enough." Monday
laughed. "Say, don't I recollect you had a baby from that Nez
Percé woman?"

"
Wagh!
I did now," Meek said. "Prettiest little baby girl you ever
seen. Named 'er Helen Mar Meek, after that woman in
The
Scottish Chief's.
"

"Reg'lar fireball, that 'un! That Nez Percé
woman took off babe an' all. Hooraw."

"Not exactly," Meek said. "Had the
babe myself, little Helen Mar. Give her to Narcissa Whitman t' take
care of, when they was coming through the mountains."

Monday had suddenly frozen still, and the cabin was
silent.

"That's sort of what I was gettin' around to
say," Meek said. "Had m' little girl up to the Whitman
mission, learnin' t' read an' write an' cipher an' all."

He looked steadily into the fire, watching the flames
flicker and jump. Finally he said thoughtfully, "So I figure it
ain't going t' bother me none to pull that trap tomorrow. I expect
when Tamahas goes down, I'll just step up and put the heel o' my
moccasin on that knot, an'
tighten 'er up a
bit."
 

Chapter Eight

1

Before the visitors rode off up the trail, Meek had
said casually, "Say, Mary. Y' know, Virginia's gettin' one o'
her spells again."

"
Something I can do?" Mary said, turning
from the fire.

"Might could be," Meek said thoughtfully.
"Me out an' aroun' so much, Virginia gets mighty lonesome.
Homesick, like, for somebody to talk to."

Mary glanced at Monday.

"Hell," Monday said. "Have 'er stop
down any time. She's allus welcome here, y' know that."

"Well, that ain't exactly what Virginia had in
mind," Meek said. "She says she'd like t' have somebody
come stay with her awhile."

Monday frowned. "Well, damn, coon. I don'
know——"

"
Be a powerful favor t' me," Meek said.
"Anyways, you think about 'er."

"
It's just with the babe comin' and all,"
Monday explained.

"Well, if it comes t' that," Meek said
patiently, "y' know there ain't anybody better'n a Nez Percé
when it comes t' havin' babies. Ain't that right, Rainy?"

"Is so," Devaux said sadly. "They
having them all the time. My Nez Percé wife, sometimes she have
babies when I not even been around for a year. They are ver'
skillful."

"I wouldn't be surprised any if Virginia might
be quite a help with somethin' like that. Anyways, I thought I'd
say."

Then they had gone, riding up the trail toward the
pay ferry, where Meek intended to bluster his official way across
without paying. Devaux thought it would be interesting to watch,
though he was fairly confident he himself was going to have a long
swim, even if Meek had made him a temporary deputy Webb rode along,
thinking to look over the country a bit.

"Y' know," Monday said to his wife,
"writin's a very useful thing. Just write out that little note
and it saves me two dollars and a half."

"
Still," Mary said, "you have to pay
it sometime."

"Surely do," Monday agreed. "But I c'n
woriy about it then, can't I?"

"Yes," Mary said.

"
God damn government anyways," Monday
muttered. "You'd think bein' as big as they are they wouldn't
worry about somethin' like a little blue hat. Send the marshal after
me! I don't b'lieve I'll ever pay that."

"
Is better you pay it," Mary said
surprisingly.

"
If'n I start givin' in now, where's it goin' t'
end?" Monday complained. "What's it goin' t' be like when
Oregon's a honest-to-god State, if'n it's this bad just bein' a
territory?"

Mary shrugged. "You say you want to get along
here, is not the way to get along."

Monday sighed. "I know it. I'm just gettin' it
out o' my craw is all. I'll pay it sometime when I get some money.
But I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it," Mary said.
"Just do it."

Monday sniffed. "You sound like Thurston."

"It is like the buffalo hunt, " Mary said
absently. "The hunting chiefs make a council, and they say, 'No
man to run ahead of camp.' They say, 'No man to fire a gun until all
the men are around.' They say. 'All the women, you stay away.' They
say, 'No arguing about horses when you get near the buffalo.' Many
rules to the buffalo hunt."