Moontrap - Don Berry (2 page)

He had been interested in the Indian, because it was
the first tame Indian he had ever seen. It was a new thing for him,
and he had all his life been very curious about new things.

2

The sun was now above the eastern hills, and he
figured he had still another three hours to go. The land was clearly
in his mind; the river trended north and south for another ten miles
bove the falls. Then, abruptly, it shifted, making an arrowhead point
and running east-west. On that point Johnson Monday had his cabin;
had his farm.

The old man leaned over and spat on the ground. "Damn
dunghead dirt-clodder.
Wagh
!
That's some, now."

For all he had the country clearly mapped, it was
hard to make the picture in his mind of Johnson Monday behind a plow.
The Jaybird himself, scraping away at the ground like a mole looking
for a home. The old man shrugged, and the heavy locks of black hair
swung at his shoulders. No telling what a man would do if he got
scared enough; that was the dirty part of the whole human trick.

He grinned faintly. There'd been a time or two when
the Jaybird never thought to see his hair again, much less the
ass-end of a plowhorse. The old man closed his eyes, seeing how it
had been when he and the jaybird were running together.

"Was up to the Powder," he said
reflectively. "Ice just breakin' up,
wagh!
,
'n' colder'n Billy Sublette's heart. 'Here's wet powder 'n' no fire
t' dry it,' says I. '
Wagh
!'
says Jaybird, a—readin' sign. 'This here's Yellow Wolfs band or I'm
a nigger .... ' "

The way it was, the way it had always been, when the
world was real. The plodding of the horse turned steps to yards, and
slowly the miles disappeared behind him. The sun went up fast above
the horizon, then strangely slowed for its imperceptible journey
across the center of the day. It burned warm against his cheek, and
when he put the flat of his hand against the horse's neck, it was
heated from the sun.

"This nigger figures to cache," he told
himself. "Man's a damn idjit t' go bangin' about without he
looks over the land a bit." He nodded to himself in
confirmation. It'd work out, one way or another. He'd see the Jaybird
in good time, there was no real hurry. This was new country for him,
the Willamette Valley, and he always liked to have just a little time
to get used to new country. Get it in his belly.

Well before midday the trail he followed began to
rise, as a cliff formed on his bank of the river. Soon he came to the
river's turning and looked across at the point of land and the cabin
that belonged to Johnson Monday.

The old man was on the outside of the river's curve,
and the ground was much higher there. The cliff below him was studded
with brush and some small, scrubby trees. On the opposite bank there
was taller growth, firs and the like, but the old man could see over
the tops easily. The point of land was as he had heard; a sort of
arrowhead, almost a peninsula. The center had been roughly cleared,
and it was newly plowed. Stumps still dotted the field, half a dozen
of them smoldering and floating feathers of white smoke into the
still air. The raw patch of earth was scraped out in the midst of the
black-green and solid forest that stretched across the gentle hills
as far as he could see. Ugly, helpless. An open wound on the earth,
the festering sore of some mysterious wasting disease.

"
Wagh!
"
the old man grunted, pleased with himself. "That's it, sure god.
This child knows all about such." Mankind was a walking plague,
a sort of running gangrene getting into every little scratch on the
face of the earth and turning it rotten.

He looked across at Monday's field for a long time.
Set in the center was the cabin, a forlorn small animal crouched
miserably in the sun, hoping for warmth. There was no one about, but
the chimney trailed a little smoke. The walls kept the heat out, not
like an honest lodge. It would be dark inside, too, the sun never
coming in. He thought of his own lodge, with the sun streaming
through the skins and the bright designs making everything warm and
comfortable.

He shook his head slowly in bewilderment, tugging at
the long braid that hung beneath his hat. How the hell could a man
who'd known a real home ever live like that, hunkered under a heavy
roof? It was nothing to him, but he wondered just the same. One more
item in the account book against a man's name.

He shrugged. It was nothing to him. "
Wagh!
"
he muttered. "Dungheads all, 'n' there's no help f'r it."

There was a small island in the river, long and thin,
separated from Monday's farm by a narrow, swift-running channel. The
island was perhaps a quarter of a mile long, and not more than fifty
yards wide. A rocky beach stretched along the river side, and the
rest was wooded.

The old man could not see the channel side from where
he stood, but he guessed there would be no beach there; the channel
current was too swift.

"This nigger'll cache there a bit," he
muttered, and turned the old horse back away from the edge of the
rocky outcrop. He dismounted and began to backtrack along the trail,
looking for a route down to the water. He led the animal back more
than half a mile before the edge had gentled enough to get down, and
it brought them well below the lower point of the island. The old man
toyed with the black braid and looked at the current and the width of
the river and the nature of both banks. He shrugged and turned away.
If it came to that, they could swim upstream as well as down. It was
all equal to him, the horse had to do the work.

He turned back to the animal and surveyed him
speculatively. "Y' goddam boneyard. Nothin' but wolf meat, 'n'
the sooner the better. Y'are now."

The horse drew back her lips soundlessly, showing
great white teeth in a terrible grimace. Then she reached forward and
tried to nibble one of the old man's black braids. The old man
slapped her across the nose, and the horse grimaced wildly again,
still without sound.

"Wuthless 'n' iggerant," the old man
muttered, swinging up into the saddle. "Hya! Move! "

Carefully the horse picked her way to the edge and
stopped with her forefeet planted in the water, looking across the
river. The old man snorted. "That's right," he said
angrily. "Drown me. This child knows y'r mind. Y' thinkin' he
don't know?
Wagh!
"

He jerked on the reins, pointed the horse's head
upriver. The animal stepped carefully into the water, feeling the
bottom tentatively with each step. When it was deep enough she began
to swim methodically, parallel to the bank, directly upstream. Near
the bank the current was not too swift, and they gradually made up
the distance they had been forced to backtrack. Twice on the upstream
journey the horse swung in to the edge of land again, at flat shelves
just wide enough to give her feet purchase. There she stood and
rested, her breath coming heavy and fast.

After entering the water the old man had let the
reins hang loose in his hands, letting the animal work as it saw fit,
trusting perfectly in its judgment. When they returned to the bank to
rest, the old man dismounted in the tiny space and squatted silently
on his haunches, waiting until the horse was ready to move again.

It took nearly an hour to make up the lost distance,
and the old man was content; they were once again nearly opposite the
upper end of the island, two hundred feet below the cliff where he
had stood before. All that remained was to cross the river. The horse
was tired now and rested a long time before starting across; long
enough for the old man to tell himself two stories of things that had
happened long ago. He sat with his back against a stone, eyes closed,
leaning back without tension. The horse was motionless, head down and
silent. Both were passive, without will or desire, waiting, because
at that time it was necessary to wait.

At last the horse raised her head and snuffled. The
old man opened his eyes slightly and looked at her. For a long moment
they remained that way. Then the old man stood and mounted and they
crossed the river.

3

He explored the island briefly, not so much for
defense as to satisfy his curiosity about the way things were. Then
he returned to the spot he had selected near the upper end and
picketed the horse. The animal immediately pulled up the picket pin
and wandered off, grazing. "iggerant as a man," the old man
muttered, watching the horse meandering away into the woods.

He sat against a tree, wriggling against it to
scratch his back. From the voluminous flap of the leather hunting
shirt he extracted a redstone pipe bowl, a stem, and a small packet
of tobacco. Carefully, pinch by slow pinch, he stuffed the thin
shreds into the bowl, not wasting any. He fitted the stem and bowl
together, rubbing the stone gently with his thumb and forefmger,
turning it around and enjoying the feel and sight of it. Sioux, it
was. Only one place on the face of the earth that particular red
stone came from. Supposed to be the same stone as the first medicine
pipe Wakantanka gave to the People. That was the way he heard it. You
couldn't believe anything the lying bastards told you, but that was
the way he heard it, and he occasionally let himself believe it for a
while.

"This nigger's a long way from home," he
said to the pipe.

He smoked in silence until it was finished. Then he
stretched himself out full length at the base of the tree and went to
sleep. In time the horse wandered back and nuzzled the old man's
head. She walked to the place she had been picketed and awkwardly
lowered herself to the ground.

They slept for nearly two hours, while the sun passed
noon and swung into the west. It was a quiet time, with no sound but
the rustlings of small animals in the brush, and no movement but the
slow shifting of dappled patches of sunlight through the trees and
across the ground.

The old man woke as suddenly as he had fallen asleep.
He walked over to the channel side of the island, kicking the horse
in the rump as he passed. He waded in up to his waist, wetting the
buckskin trousers and moccasins again. During his nap they had begun
to dry, stiffening and shrinking painfully. This time they would dry
while he was moving, and it would not be bad.

He stood there in the water, looking across at the
mainland, no more than fifty feet away.

"This nigger c'd swim
that slick," he said contemptuously. For a moment he waited. If
he swam he'd just have to walk when he got there, so he decided to
take the horse. He had never tried swimming before, but he thought he
could probably do it, if it came to that. He knew men that could
swim, brown and white both, that weren't half the man he was, so he
didn't expect there was any great problem to it. The horse was
standing again, waiting patiently, when the old man returned. "Hya!
Y' damn boneyard. Us'll see how the Jaybird's stick's a—floatin'."

***

The mainland point that faced the island was a sandy
beach, the only one the old man had seen along the river. To reach it
they had to swim directly from the upper point of the little island
across the mouth of the channel, going diagonally upstream again. The
channel mouth was shallow, and the horse's hoofs scraped bottom
often; sometimes more walking than swimming. But the same shallowness
had its disadvantages, for the swift-running water was clogged with
deadfalls and debris that had come sweeping down the Willamette in
flood season. Some were visible and easily avoided, but others were
submerged, waterlogged and heavy, with networks of hidden branches
making traps below the surface. Several times the animal lost its
balance, nearly throwing them both into the current.

But the distance was short, and quickly made. They
plodded up the sandy beach a little, and found a well-defined trail
leading up through the screen of trees that separated Monday's field
from the river. Reaching the top of the trail and emerging from the
trees, the old man reined up and looked again at the Jaybird's
handiwork. The black-earthed furrows stretched away from him toward
the little cabin, and the slow twists of smoke from the moldering
stumps were like candles just extinguished. There was still no sign
of activity around the cabin itself, and he could see no animals.

A bright reflection glinted from something metallic
near the wall of the building, but he was still too far to make it
out. Maybe a plow. He started the horse moving again, skirting the
field on the south side and riding parallel to the river. He was past
the point now, and the river was running east and west. In a few
minutes he reached a point directly between the river and cabin, and
stopped again as a flash of color by the house caught his eye. He was
only a few hundred feet from the building and he sat the horse very
still.

It was a woman, just come out of the cabin, and the
color he had seen was her brightly patterned dress. Calico, gingham,
some such. He didn't know about such things. When he was trading
everything was silk, and that was good enough.

He gripped the reins more tightly, as a sudden flash
of anger and contempt surged up in him. " 'Pears the Jaybird got
hisself a white woman," he muttered to the horse.