The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 (27 page)

“Fast?” Webb asked disparagingly. “An Indian can ride in one day the distance we'd travel in four.”

That started the wrangling again and Ma continued with her cooking. Sitting there watching her I figured I never did see anybody so graceful or quick on her feet as Ma, and when we used to walk in the woods back home I never knew her to stumble or step on a fallen twig or branch.

The group broke up and returned to their own fires with nothing settled, only there at the end Mr. Buchanan looked to Burt. “Do you know the Sioux?”

“Only the Utes and Shoshonis, and I spent a winter on the Snake with the Nez Percés one time. But I've had no truck with the Sioux. Only they tell me they're bad medicine. Fightin' men from way back and they don't cotton to white folks in their country. If we run into Sioux, we're in trouble.”

After Mr. Buchanan had gone Tryon Burt accepted a plate and cup from Ma and settled down to eating. After a while he looked up at her and said, “Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but it struck me you knew a sight about trackin' for an eastern woman. You'd spotted those Sioux your own self, an' you figured it right that they'd pick up our trail on the way back.”

She smiled at him. “It was simply an observation, Mr. Burt. I would believe anyone would notice it. I simply put it into words.”

Burt went on eating, but he was mighty thoughtful, and it didn't seem to me he was satisfied with Ma's answer. Ma said finally, “It seems to be raining west of here. Isn't it likely to be snowing in the mountains?”

Burt looked up uneasily. “Not necessarily so, ma'am. It could be raining here and not snowing there, but I'd say there was a chance of snow.” He got up and came around the fire to the coffeepot. “What are you gettin' at, ma'am?”

“Some of them are ready to turn back or change their plans. What will you do then?”

He frowned, placing his cup on the grass and starting to fill his pipe. “No idea—might head south for Santa Fe. Why do you ask?”

“Because we're going on,” Ma said. “We're going to the mountains, and I am hoping some of the others decide to come with us.”

“You'd go alone?” He was amazed.

“If necessary.”

We started on at daybreak, but folks were more scary than before, and they kept looking at the great distances stretching away on either side, and muttering. There was an autumn coolness in the air, and we were still short of South Pass by several days with the memory of the Donner party being talked up around us.

There was another kind of talk in the wagons, and some of it I heard. The nightly gatherings around Ma's fire had started talk, and some of it pointed to Tryon Burt, and some were saying other things.

We made seventeen miles that day, and at night Mr. Buchanan didn't come to our fire; and when White stopped by, his wife came and got him. Ma looked at her and smiled, and Mrs. White sniffed and went away beside her husband.

“Mr. Burt”—Ma wasn't one to beat around a bush—“is there talk about me?”

Try Burt got red around the ears and he opened his mouth, but couldn't find the words he wanted. “Maybe—well, maybe I shouldn't eat here all the time. Only—well, ma'am, you're the best cook in camp.”

Ma smiled at him. “I hope that isn't the only reason you come to see us, Mr. Burt.”

He got redder than ever then and gulped his coffee and took off in a hurry.

Time to time the men had stopped by to help a little, but next morning nobody came by. We got lined out about as soon as ever, and Ma said to me as we sat on the wagon seat, “Pay no attention, Bud. You've no call to take up anything if you don't notice it. There will always be folks who will talk, and the better you do in the world the more bad things they will say of you. Back there in the settlement you remember how the dogs used to run out and bark at our wagons?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“Did the wagons stop?”

“No, Ma.”

“Remember that, son. The dogs bark, but the wagons go on their way, and if you're going someplace you haven't time to bother with barking dogs.”

We made eighteen miles that day, and the grass was better, but there was a rumble of distant thunder, whimpering and muttering off in the canyons, promising rain.

Webb stopped by, dropped an armful of wood beside the fire, then started off.

“Thank you, Mr. Webb,” Ma said, “but aren't you afraid you'll be talked about?”

He looked angry and started to reply something angry, and then he grinned and said, “I reckon I'd be flattered, Mrs. Miles.”

Ma said, “No matter what is decided by the rest of them, Mr. Webb, we are going on, but there is no need to go to California for what we want.”

Webb took out his pipe and tamped it. He had a dark, devil's face on him with eyebrows like you see on pictures of the devil. I was afraid of Mr. Webb.

“We want land,” Ma said, “and there is land around us. In the mountains ahead there will be streams and forests, there will be fish and game, logs for houses and meadows for grazing.”

Mr. Buchanan had joined us. “That's fool talk,” he declared. “What could anyone do in these hills? You'd be cut off from the world. Left out of it.”

“A man wouldn't be so crowded as in California,” John Sampson remarked. “I've seen so many go that I've been wondering what they all do there.”

“For a woman,” Webb replied, ignoring the others, “you've a head on you, ma'am.”

“What about the Sioux?” Mr. Buchanan asked dryly.

“We'd not be encroaching on their land. They live to the north,” Ma said. She gestured toward the mountains. “There is land to be had just a few days farther on, and that is where our wagon will stop.”

A few days! Everybody looked at everybody else. Not months, but days only. Those who stopped then would have enough of their supplies left to help them through the winter, and with what game they could kill—and time for cutting wood and even building cabins before the cold set in.

Oh, there was an argument, such argument as you've never heard, and the upshot of it was that all agreed it was fool talk and the thing to do was keep going. And there was talk I overheard about Ma being no better than she should be, and why was that guide always hanging around her? And all those men? No decent woman—I hurried away.

At break of day our wagons rolled down a long valley with a small stream alongside the trail, and the Indians came over the ridge to the south of us and started our way—tall, fine-looking men with feathers in their hair.

There was barely time for a circle, but I was riding off in front with Tryon Burt, and he said, “A man can always try to talk first, and Injuns like a palaver. You get back to the wagons.”

Only I rode along beside him, my rifle over my saddle and ready to hand. My mouth was dry and my heart was beating so's I thought Try could hear it, I was that scared. But behind us the wagons were making their circle, and every second was important.

Their chief was a big man with splendid muscles, and there was a scalp not many days old hanging from his lance. It looked like Ryerson's hair, but Ryerson's wagons should have been miles away to the east by now.

Burt tried them in Shoshoni, but it was the language of their enemies and they merely stared at him, understanding well enough, but of no mind to talk. One young buck kept staring at Burt with a taunt in his eye, daring Burt to make a move; then suddenly the chief spoke, and they all turned their eyes toward the wagons.

There was a rider coming, and it was a woman. It was Ma.

She rode right up beside us, and when she drew up she started to talk, and she was speaking their language. She was talking Sioux. We both knew what it was because those Indians sat up and paid attention. Suddenly she directed a question at the chief.

“Red Horse,” he said, in English.

Ma shifted to English. “My husband was blood brother to Gall, the greatest warrior of the Sioux nation. It was my husband who found Gall dying in the brush with a bayonet wound in his chest, who took Gall to his home and treated the wound until it was well.”

“Your husband was a medicine man?” Red Horse asked.

“My husband was a warrior,” Ma replied proudly, “but he made war only against strong men, not women or children or the wounded.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “This is my son. As my husband was blood brother to Gall, his son is by blood brotherhood the son of Gall, also.”

Red Horse stared at Ma for a long time, and I was getting even more scared. I could feel a drop of sweat start at my collar and crawl slowly down my spine. Red Horse looked at me. “Is this one a fit son for Gall?”

“He is a fit son. He has killed his first buffalo.”

Red Horse turned his mount and spoke to the others. One of the young braves shouted angrily at him, and Red Horse replied sharply. Reluctantly, the warrior trailed off after their chief.

“Ma'am,” Burt said, “you just about saved our bacon. They were just spoilin' for a fight.”

“We should be moving,” Ma said.

Mr. Buchanan was waiting for us. “What happened out there? I tried to keep her back, but she's a difficult woman.”

“She's worth any three men in the outfit,” Burt replied.

That day we made eighteen miles, and by the time the wagons circled there was talk. The fact that Ma had saved them was less important now than other things. It didn't seem right that a decent woman could talk Sioux or mix in the affairs of men.

Nobody came to our fire, but while picking the saddle horses I heard someone say, “Must be part Injun. Else why would they pay attention to a woman?”

“Maybe she's part Injun and leadin' us into a trap.”

“Hadn't been for her,” Burt said, “you'd all be dead now.”

“How do you know what she said to 'em? Who savvies that lingo?”

“I never did trust that woman,” Mrs. White said; “too high and mighty. Nor that husband of hers, either, comes to that. Kept to himself too much.”

The air was cool after a brief shower when we started in the morning, and no Indians in sight. All day long we moved over grass made fresh by new rain, and all the ridges were pine-clad now, and the growth along the streams heavier. Short of sundown I killed an antelope with a running shot, dropped him mighty neat—and looked up to see an Indian watching from a hill. At the distance I couldn't tell, but it could have been Red Horse.

Time to time I'd passed along the train, but nobody waved or said anything. Webb watched me go by, his face stolid as one of the Sioux, yet I could see there was a deal of talk going on.

“Why are they mad at us?” I asked Burt.

“Folks hate something they don't understand, or anything seems different. Your ma goes her own way, speaks her mind, and of an evening she doesn't set by and gossip.”

He topped out on a rise and drew up to study the country, and me beside him. “You got to figure most of these folks come from small towns where they never knew much aside from their families, their gossip, and their church. It doesn't seem right to them that a decent woman would find time to learn Sioux.”

Burt studied the country. “Time was, any stranger was an enemy, and if anybody came around who wasn't one of yours, you killed him. I've seen wolves jump on a wolf that was white or different somehow—seems like folks and animals fear anything that's unusual.”

We circled, and I staked out my horses and took the oxen to the herd. By the time Ma had her grub-box lid down, I was fixing at a fire when here come Mr. Buchanan, Mr. and Mrs. White, and some other folks, including that Webb.

“Ma'am”—Mr. Buchanan was mighty abrupt—“we figure we ought to know what you said to those Sioux. We want to know why they turned off just because you went out there.”

“Does it matter?”

Mr. Buchanan's face stiffened up. “We think it does. There's some think you might be an Indian your own self.”

“And if I am?” Ma was amused. “Just what is it you have in mind, Mr. Buchanan?”

“We don't want no Injuns in this outfit!” Mr. White shouted.

“How does it come you can talk that language?” Mrs. White demanded. “Even Tryon Burt can't talk it.”

“I figure maybe you want us to keep goin' because there's a trap up ahead!” White declared.

I never realized folks could be so mean, but there they were facing Ma like they hated her, like those witch-hunters Ma told me about back in Salem. It didn't seem right that Ma, who they didn't like, had saved them from an Indian attack, and the fact that she talked Sioux like any Indian bothered them.

“As it happens,” Ma said, “I am not an Indian, athough I should not be ashamed of it if I were. They have many admirable qualities. However, you need worry yourselves no longer, as we part company in the morning. I have no desire to travel further with you—
gentlemen
.”

Mr. Buchanan's face got all angry, and he started up to say something mean. Nobody was about to speak rough to Ma with me standing by, so I just picked up that ol' rifle and jacked a shell into the chamber. “Mr. Buchanan, this here's my ma, and she's a lady, so you just be careful what words you use.”

“Put down that rifle, you young fool!” he shouted at me.

“Mr. Buchanan, I may be little and may be a fool, but this here rifle doesn't care who pulls its trigger.”

He looked like he was going to have a stroke, but he just turned sharp around and walked away, all stiff in the back.

“Ma'am,” Webb said, “you've no cause to like me much, but you've shown more brains than that passel o' fools. If you'll be so kind, me and my boy would like to trail along with you.”

“I like a man who speaks his mind, Mr. Webb. I would consider it an honor to have your company.”

Tryon Burt looked quizzically at Ma. “Why, now, seems to me this is a time for a man to make up his mind, and I'd like to be included along with Webb.”