Moontrap - Don Berry (5 page)

Through clenched teeth Monday said, "Move on,
sojer. just move on is all." His eyes were still closed.

The sergeant looked at the sharp ridges of muscle
standing out on Monday's jaw, and the white-knuckled fists clutching
the reins. He frowned, puzzled by the violence. "Mister, you're
going to pay for that cap, I'll guarantee you," he said, but he
turned his horse and rode down the line.

Slowly Monday relaxed, letting out his breath in a
long ragged sigh.

"
I'm goin' home, Rainy," he said finally.
"I got a bellyful o' this shit. I can't take any more."

Devaux shrugged. "Is ver' late, you arrive,"
he said.

"I want to see Mary."

He yanked viciously on the reins, turning the animal
back down the street. The horse had been broken Indian-style and had
only two gaits, walk and full gallop. Monday kicked him up into a
thundering gallop, tearing past the last of the slow-moving line and
maintaining the frantic pace until he had passed out of the end of
town and was once again on the moonlit road.

Devaux watched him go, then turned back to follow the
procession up to the jail, where he was interested in watching the
prisoners come down.

"
Is all equal to me,"
he said absently.

3

Late afternoon, the eastern sky slowly dulling down
to blackness. The forests of the Willamette Valley lying still and
vast, touched with warmth from the lowering western sun.

The old man glided swiftly and silently along the
trail, his moccasins skimming the surface of packed, spongy needles.
The long buckskin hunting shirt reached halfway to his knees, belted
tightly about his thin waist, and the skirt of it slid stiffly around
his thighs as he ran. An ancient, heavy flintlock swung easily in his
hand, the barrel darting forward and back with his pace.

He whispered softly to himself as his moccasins
whispered on the trail, fighting over a battle long since lost.
"Antoine Godin, him as was Thierry's boy,
wagh!
—half
froze f'r hair, him, and his pa kilt the fall before up to the Salmon
. . ."

The old man's eyes flickered quickly right and left,
drifting like a soft wind over the brush and the trees and the little
valley that fell off to his left. He ran smoothly and without effort,
watching everything, understanding everything, never seeming to look
at anything. His eyes glided across a light patch on the bark of a
giant fir by the trail. "
Wagh!
'
Big 'un, him," he whispered as he ran, mentally gauging the
weight of the buck whose spikes had rubbed the bark. But the sign was
days old. He did not slow, slipping tirelessly through the forest.
"Big Bellies they was, but the same as Bug's Boys t'my thinkin'.
Out goes Antoine t'meet the headman, wagh! . . ."

He stopped; suddenly, silently, as the wind stops. He
dropped to squat on his haunches in the middle of the trail, peering
at the faint marks where several tiny patches of needles showed their
dark moistness against the lighter color of the dry surface. Silent
now, he glanced around him. The light was beginning to dim quickly,
and he nodded to himself with satisfaction. "This child make 'em
come. He will, now," he muttered softly.

He found the cross trail weaving behind a clump of
brush. The hill slope above him, to his right, was webbed with an
intricate pattern of dark against dark, meandering lines that began
and disappeared and started anew a hundred yards away almost
invisible. The old man traced the cross trail among these, following
it with his eyes surely and without doubt.

Satisfied that what he sought was not above him, he
turned and slipped into the solid wall of brush on the downhill side,
disappearing from the main trail with only the whisper of a moving
branch. The almost-trail he followed wound randomly down the side of
the hill, and he followed it more by feel than by vision. The brush
was well above his head on either side, dimming off what little light
was left of the day. A few minutes later the trail was cut by
another, equally faint, and the old man unhesitatingly switched off
to his right, following an instinct that made conscious decision
unnecessary.

Before the light had completely gone he found what he
expected: a dark room, carved out of the forest itself. Overhead the
twining, tangled branches of firs made a lacy canopy, a finely
fretted net that was almost solid. The lowest branches were all bare
of needles. There was no brush here; beneath the netted roof was a
broad. clear floor of matted needles, perhaps twenty feet long and
ten wide.

The old man spread his nostrils, taking in the wind,
then moved quickly across the tiny clearing to the opposite side. He
squatted by the trunk of a giant fir, pulling the plug from his
powder horn with his teeth. He did not measure the load, but poured
with perfect accuracy, and rammed the ball and patch home with sharp,
quick strokes. He turned the flint in its vise to a new edge and
snapped it once. Then he primed the pan and laid the gun across his
lap on full-cock.

Now he fell into a still somnolence, motionless,
silent, breathing soundlessly through his open mouth. He closed his
eyes and waited. His mind rested, placid and calm as a still lake in
summer. The old battles and old dreams did not intrude. There was
only the sense of waiting calm, the functions of life suspended in
the sweet and perfect gentleness of waiting. Around him the clear
space was still and darkening.

He could not have said how long he waited. He was
still, hovering somewhere between two worlds where there was no time,
but only the eternal contentment of suspension. A fir bough creaked
in the dark whisper of wind, but he did not open his eyes. An animal
snuffed suddenly nearby, but he knew it was not his, and did not
break the tenuous web of passive calm in which he existed. At last
she came, silently down the trail as he had come, pausing sometimes
along the way to browse in the brush, nibbling off the soft new
growth, but always
moving steadily toward the
clearing.

The old man perceived her coming with tenderness, and
tenderly raised the long rifle, resting the muzzle across the Y of
the wiping stick. In his mind there ran a soft and sibilant chant, a
charm to insure good hunting and the forgiveness of that which was
killed so he might live.

She stood at the edge of the clearing, her light buff
body faintly luminous against the black-green of night-darkened
foliage. She paused, hesitant, snuffling at the air, and the old man
let her breathe for the two of them. She looked across the clearing
at him and he remained still. At last she turned her fathomless dark
eyes from him and took a short, hesitant step into the clearing. The
web of branches overhead shook in the sudden thunder that filled the
forest opening. The broad puffball of white smoke rolled up, picking
a devious, tendriled way through the branches above.

She shuddered with the impact and turned at last to
see the old man who sat calm behind the forked stick. Her falling
shook the clearing faintly, like the distant vibration of thunder.

The old man stood, stretching his stiff joints,
cramped from the waiting without time. He drew the heavy butcher
knife from its sheath at the back of his belt. Arterial blood pulsed
sluggishly over his hand as he slit the hide over the breastbone and
peeled it back. Quickly he made the deep incision through sheath and
muscle, plunging his arm deep into the cavity of the chest, groping
with his bony lingers for the warm heart.

He stood back from the fallen doe, breathing heavily
with the effort of it. He slit the heart, opening the chambers, and
drank the rich blood with a strong sense of gratitude. He made his
meal of the raw dark meat, and it was enough. When he was finished he
drew the blade of the butcher knife across the front of his shirt to
clean it. With a grunting sigh of fatigue and content he settled
himself down, lying close against the dead doe and drawing into his
own body the heat that so quickly drained from hers.

He fell immediately into sleep, though all the time
he had intended to tell himself the part where Godin shot the Gros
Ventre chief and came galloping back to camp waving his red blanket
and swearing.
 

Chapter Three

1

It was past midnight when Monday turned off on the
trail that led down to his point of land. Unable to take the ferry
across at Oregon City—they had stopped extending him credit six
months ago—he had to ride down the east bank of the river a mile
past his cabin, wake up Peter Swensen and talk him into ferrying him
across.

Peter grumbled, but he didn't really mind. Monday
thought. Nothing ever seemed particularly serious to Peter Swensen;
no inconvenience could weigh heavily on a man who anticipated the end
of the world daily.

Monday sighed, shifting his position in the saddle.
It was all so simple, if you could only see it right.

Back in the States, Peter had belonged to a sect
which, through careful analysis of the Scriptures, had determined
that the world was to end in '41. Peter didn't know exactly how they
did it, but he believed it. He had paid eight dollars for a white
robe and gone to stand on the nearest hill at the designated time,
and nothing had happened except that two of the faithful had sneaked
off into the brush after a time, and the girl later became pregnant.
It didn't seem a very auspicious sign to Peter Swensen. The truth
was, he rather fancied the girl himself, but hadn't felt entirely
comfortable about meeting Judgment Day with his pants down. Having
lost the opportunity by reason of faith, Peter's attitude toward both
women and religion became ambiguous.

After a couple of years he emigrated to Oregon,
depressed but still hopeful. It stood to reason that the world was
bound to end sometime; it had been promised him, and he expected it.
He had lost faith in the promisers, but the promise itself remained
clear in his mind.

Monday shook his head. It was strange how little it
took to make a man happy. Something solid to build his life around,
even if it was the end of the world. He could see how it might be a
great comfort.

Soon he came out into the clear, and his field lay
black in the moonlight ahead of him. The cabin roof was silvery gray;
the moon seemed to spread a thin, metallic sheen over the land, like
a daguerreo type he had once seen.

The only movement was the slow drifting of ghostly
white wisps of smoke from tl1e smoldering stumps, and Monday smiled
to himself Mary had doubtless been out every day making sure of the
burning. It was a slow process, an eternal process, burning out the
stumps. Letting the relentless fire creep down through the root
system, clearing his land for him. And what did he have in the end? A
bare space, an absence of trees. And still, each year, more clearing,
more stumps, more burning.

Moonlight was flooding through the little window in
the south wall when Monday closed the cabin door gently behind him.
He stood for a moment at the door. The pale light slanted off to the
left wall, lighting in silver and blue shadows the bed and the still
form of the woman there. Her head was turned to the side, facing him.
The moonlight washed gently across the firm contours of her face and
was lost in the deep blackness of her hair.

Monday let his eyes trace the rounded swell of her
belly beneath the blanket, faintly outlined now in the luminous glow
of the moon. He suddenly realized her eyes were open, watching him.
Silently he went to kneel beside the bed, putting his hand softly on
the rounded hill of pregnancy. "Mary," he said quietly,
"I'm not going away any more."

The woman looked silently up at him, her deep eyes
highlighted by the reflection of the moon. For a long time they
remained that way, still, looking at each other and finding again the
lost features. Finally she stirred.

"
You are gone a long time," she said.

Monday bent and kissed her softly, tasting again the
warmth and freshness of her lips. "I'm back now, " he said.

"
You have not eaten." She struggled up to a
sitting position, the blanket falling away from her breasts, now
growing full and heavy.

"It doesn't matter, Mary. Please."

"I fix something," she said. Awkwardly she
put her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the shapeless
nightdress she never wore. Monday reached to help her. "No,"
she said. "The fire."

The blond man stood and went to the fireplace, knelt
down to find a glowing coal. He built a tiny cone of kindling and
with the wooden tongs carefully put the black-red coal beneath. In a
moment the yellow flame had spurted, and he began to lay the larger
wood.

Mary had gone to the cooler deep beneath the floor at
the back, and brought back a deer steak. "You sit down,"
she said, bringing the meat to the fire.

Monday went to the table against the opposite wall
and pulled it out into the center of the room to be closer. He sat on
a bench, facing the fire, with elbows back against the table. As his
wife worked to make the meat ready, he watched her move. following
every twist of the hand, the arch of her back, the swinging black
hair.