The Way West (22 page)

   The sentinel's rifle brought him out of bed. "Time to shine," he said as Rebecca stirred. In the lightening dark of the tent he pulled on his breeches and shirt, and then a jacket against the chill that night brought to this high country. Brownie already was up, about to go out, along with others, to round up tlie animals. "Mornin'," Evans said. "You dream b'ars last night, boy?"
   Brownie grinned. "Injuns."
   Evans collected a few sticks and whittled shavings and got a fire started. When Rebecca came out, he rolled up the beds and struck the tent and began packing the wagons. It took time to get started in the morning -critters to drive up, oxen to hitch, a horse to saddle, beds to roll, tents to stow away, breakfast to rook and eat and clean up after. Around him while he worked he heard and saw and felt the bustle of the other wagons. Later a man would just wish for miles to pass.
   The sun was bulging up like a punkin. He could see where the Indians had camped downriver, but he couldn't see any Indians. Already they had lit out. And good riddance, he thought.
   While he was thinking it, Tadlock walked up. "Those red devils stole two of my horses."
   "No!"
   "The horses were down to skin and bones. I hobbled them and picketed them close, outside the corral, so they could get some grass."
   "An' they stole 'em?"
   "I'd have sworn I'd hear them. Why, the mare had a bell on her.
   "I be damned! Hello, Dick."
   Dick had come up so quiet that Evans didn't know he was there until his eye caught him.
   "Tadlock here's lost two horses to the Injuns." Dick asked of Tadlock, "Them two?"
   "Of course."
   "I 'lowed it was risky."
   "I couldn't starve them to death."
   "Bones is better'n tracks."
   "What do you propose to do?" Tadlock asked Evans.
   "Eat and roll."
   "You won't help me get them back?"
   "It ain't worth the gamble, Tadlock."
   "Particularly when the horses weren't yours."
   Evans said, "Damn it, man! You was for rollin' when Martin was dyin'."
   "That was different. We couldn't help him. We can teach these red devils a lesson."
   "Be out of Sioux country in a shake," Dick put in.
   "You wouldn't stop to think, Evans, that your boy caused the loss!"
   "How's that?"
   "He got us in the mess."
   The words brought Evans up. He hadn't figured things that way, and no one would but Tadlock and maybe lawyers. Still it troubled him that he might be partly in the wrong. "I don't go along with you on that," he said, "but I'm willin' to leave it to the council. If they decide against me, I'll make the loss up to you."
   Tadlock snorted.
   Dick said, "To hell with him then, Lije."
   "I aim to do what's right."
   "Right!" Tadlock's voice had a sudden fury in it, as if all that had happened against him was brought to point now. "But you won't track those Indians down?"
   "No."
   "I'll kill an Indian or two before this trip's over."
   "No sense in killin' one that didn't do you wrong," Evans told him.
   "One's like another."
   "You faulted Mack for killin' that Kaw."
   "I wouldn't expect you to acknowledge that the circumstances are different."
   "Tadlock," Evans said, "I'm peaceable, but, by God, it's hard to keep from twistin' your neck!"
   "It's the truth that roils you."
   "That's as may be, but we ain't chasin' Injuns today, an' if you want to roll with us you best be gettin' ready."
   Tadlock spit out, "You're the captain."
   "That's what they tell me."
   Tadlock ground around on his heel and walked away. Evans saw Rebecca watching him from the fire she had fed some sticks to, and he wondered how much she had heard. Not much, likely, at this distance.
   "That was the way, Lije," Dick said. "Stand up to that mouthy nigger -but still it takes a heap to set you off."
  "Does it?"
   "A heap."
   "I kep' thinkin' maybe Brownie's part to blame."
   "So you held in. Christ, it weren't the horses! Not them alone. That staggy stud horse can't get over bein' set down. One day you'll have to geld him, Lije."
   "I keep sayin' I won't."
 

THE HIGH SWEETWATER, flowered along its banks. The Southern Pass. The buttes now named for Oregon. The Sandys, Big and Little. The Green that trappers knew as the Prairie Hen or Seeds-kee-dee and, before that, as the Spanish River, winding wooded in the tableland of sage. High country, chill by night with the snow that patched the Winds, lonesome and good as when Dick Summers first had seen it but with the scar of wear on it, the scar of wheels that later wheels would deepen. The Winds rising, naked and bright in the sun, broody in the dusk, hiding the high valleys where he had set his traps, hiding the shame of no beaver where beaver once were plenty.
   If he sniffed, he smelled the smoke of quaking asp, and, looking, saw the little fire and him and Jim Deakins and Boone Caudill seated around it while meat cooked on roasting sticks. If he listened, he heard the old voices raised at rendezvous, the hearty, young, old voices that laughed at age and change, the voices rich with strength and whisky, shouting over horse races or the Indian game of hand, the full and easy voices goodtempered by the squaws. Smoke of campfires lifting slow, hi-ya, Bill, and hi-ya, Buck, tepees white against the green, horse herds frisky in the mornings, coyotes singing in the nights, bright blankets on soft shoulders, held around young breasts, and young country all about, high valleys, beavered streams, good hunting, youth on the land, youth in the loins, and youth and youth and youth to youth, and who'd have thought then it would pass?
   Deakins was dead and Caudill disappeared, and of the mountain men who had hunted and spreed and squawed with him, was there a handful left? He didn't want much to see them, with years in their faces and aches in their bones and the past in their heads so that all they could talk about, while whisky stirred dead fires, was this and that of long ago. Like with Joe Walker, a mountain man if ever one lived, whom the train had met on the pass, and he so changed that Summers hardly knew him, strong yet and able but with a half-sore sadness because his world was gone. Like with Tom Fitzpatrick, whom they'd met still earlier, guiding Colonel Kearny's Dragoons back from the divide. Tom wasn't one to hang his feelings out, but in his face were old rememberings. It would be the same with Jim Bridger and Old Vaskiss at their fort down on the fork.
   He had given the fort the go-by, taking a short cut, hard as it was, to the Green and on toward the Bear, for the train had food enough and the oxen were harder-footed than before and the wagons mostly in fair shape, though shrunk and shaken some by the long, dry, sandy miles between Pacific Springs and the Little Sandy.
   Still, he had been uneasy, for the desert of the Green was rough going even for hard-case hunters and horses lightly packed. Could wagons and oxen make it, and farmers and townlivers and women and their young? He had dragged the short cut back to memory, had hoofed again the forty-odd dry miles of it, over thirsty sagebrush and rifted gravel and down the harsh fall to the Green, the wind fierce in his face, the day sunstroke-hot or snow-cold, for desert weather seemed always one or other. But it was water that mattered most, or the want of it. Not any place was there a drink for man or brute.
   "I do' know," he said to the council that Evans had called together. "I'm thinkin' we can come it, but it's hard and chancey."
   Mack asked, "And if we do?"
   "Save two days, at the least."
   "And if we don't?"
   "No don't to it. There can't be any don't."
   "It's worse, I reckon, than anything before?" Evans said.
   "A heap."
   "Worse'n what we're bound to meet?"
   "There's a lot of hell ahead, Lije, beyond Fort Hall."
   "'Bout time we were gettin' a taste of hell then."
   Tadlock agreed to that, saying, "We're not traveling for pleasure. Maybe we can cut ahead of that company that passed us."
   "If'n it's hot, we'll have to roll by night."
   "We ain't scared of the dark, Dick," Evans said.
   And so they had decided on the short cut, partly maybe because it was a dare, partly, Summers thought a little uneasily, because they didn't know how fierce the trip could be.
   They had cut right at the Little Sandy and headed across the divide and rolled down to the Big and filled buckets there and kegs and barrels eaten empty and had waited until the day cooled, for the sun was hot as a blister. At four o'clock by the watch that Evans carried, Summers had led them out.
They traveled all night, bumping over the sagebrush, grinding by the beds of old lakes, crunching in the rifts of gravel, dusting through the sand, while the moon came up and watched and tired of watching and went to bed, leaving the land so black Summers wondered if his sense of direction would guide him right.
   As the desert lightened with the coming of the sun, they stopped and doled out water for the critters and turned them loose for what little bait that grew and breakfasted on dried meat and bread baked day before and yoked up again and went on, the venturesomeness of the night worn off, strain in the faces now, droop in the bodies, lag in the legs that pushed feet through the sand. And this was just the easier part of it! Behind them the sun fired up, making distance dance ahead. There never was such a day in his remembering, Summers thought as noon scorched close, none so hot or breathless, none that made a reach of miles appear so far. He rode ahead and back and back and ahead, hunting in old memories for the way, seeing could he help with team or teamster when the course was set. There never was such a day. None in which a trust had weighed so heavy on him.
   Roll! he urged from inside. Roll, goddam it, roll! Roll, you graybacks! Roll or die, while heat smothers you and your hearts pound in your headsl Roll for the Green! Roll coughing in the dust! Poke the goddam oxen! Rol!
   Think, Summers! Think hard! Left or right or straight ahead? How was it long ago? You can't be wrong. How was it now? Left, it's left it was, left by the bulge of hill. Point the party left!
   The McBee girl looking sick, sweating pale beside the wagon. Up, young'un, and ride. You want to catch a stroke? Sand and heard cobwebbed on the face of Hank McBee. Sand rivered on the sweating other faces. The beat of blood in the cheeks. Emptiness in the women's eyes, the look of seeking for a piece of shade. One ox down, and it unanswering to goad or whip, its eyes big and sad. Kill it! Kill it out of kindness while the ravens wait and bring up another and go on. One ox don't count, Brewer. Not in this fix. Roll for the Green!
   Fairman done in and laid out in his wagon and his woman crying, and the sick heat-flush in the fair-skinned faces of Daugherty and Byrd, and what's a cracked lip now? Go it, you hosses! Poke up the oxen that walk low-headed, bawling hoarse for water. Come on, you women with your crosspatch pups! You wanted Oregon, didn't you? Pray, Weatherby, pray but plod, and no knucklin' under to the will of God!
   By Jesus, Summers thought, these folks were strong, strong in purpose even when weak in body. Rebecca Evans walking stout, mettled like a good mare; Lije helping those he could, encouraging all, his broad cheeks grayed by sand; Patch, Mack, Brewer, Shields, and Tadlock -damn him!- and their women, and the herders clouded by the dust. Judith Fairman driving while a tear washed down her face, Mack's woman stepping squinch-eyed, her chin hard to the west, and Daugherty unheeding the thumping sickness in him.
   Strong folks, and strong for what? For Oregon and fish and farms, for wheat and sheep and nation. And now it came to him, while his own skull tapped to the heat, that that was what had ailed the mountain man -he didn't hanker after things; he had all that he wanted.
   It was push now, pull and push and strain at spokes, for some teams couldn't climb a rise alone. Push or double-team. Push to the whistle of breath and the shower of sweat and the hammer in the skull. Push, Lije! You're a bull for work, I'm thinkin'. Push, Mack and Tadlock, Brewer and Patch and Shields! Stout hosses, you all. Push! It ain't so far now. Less'n I thought. Lead team needs some pushin', Lije. By God, there she is!
   There it was, the Green and shade and rest for all and pasture for the ganted stock. It was still half a dozen miles away, down a long pitch too steep to drive and then across a humpy bottom, but the sight of it was like a double drink of whisky, and flushed faces broke into smiles and grainy voices joked, saying, "What was it you said, Summers? Chancey? The word ain't knee-high to it. We made it, though, good as ary mountain man." Women and children came from the line of wagons and stood chattering, the strain gone and the fret.
   The men unyoked the teams and let the wagons down with ropes, made serious again by work under the punishing sun, grunting to the pull of lines against arm sockets while the sweat ran out of them.
   When they were down and the teams brought up and hitched, Summers said to Evans, "Lije, these critters'll be a handful when they smell water. Run away, that's what they'll do, and dive in, wagons an' all."
   "What you tellin' me, Dick?"
   "I'm thinkin' we best drive on a piece and turn 'em loose and herd 'em forwards till they smell it. Plenty of time to get the wagons later."
   "Thanks, Dick. Wasn't for you, I'd be a prize captain now, wouldn't I?"
   "I don't see no flies on you."
   "Cold water on hot stummicks ain't so good."
   "No helpin' it."
   "I'll get the oxen and horses and loose cattle scattered out some, so's they don't run over each other. What about Injuns?"
   "No need to worry much."
   It came out as Summers knew it would. Once they winded water, the critters wouldn't be held. They galloped crazy for it and plunged in. One ox he saw had just his snoot above the surface. Afterwards, with some of the sizzle gone out of the day, the men with strength left in them brought the wagons up. The cutoff hadn't been too bad but only close to bad. One ox dead of  thirst and one of water and quite a few thrown off their feed. No wagons lost. No people dead. Of the sick ones all recovered quick, even Charlie Fairman.