The Way West (26 page)

She waited in the dark. She made herself a shadow in the dark so that people, looking, would take her for a bush or for a cloud across a star. The stars were out, cold and distant before the moon that would come later. A breeze ran on the ground and touched her legs and went on, whispering the night's secrets, and she trembled to it, not from cold.
   The sounds of a camp about to go to bed came to her -the late close of a lid over a cleaned kettle, the tired voice of Mrs. Byrd with her young, the rumble that was the quiet, man-towoman talk of men before they gave themselves to night. They mixed with other sounds, with the sh-h-h of the spring, with the thin sky-crying of coyotes far off, with the moo of a milch cow over a lately-born calf that the Gorhams had carried in their wagon.
   She was alone with sound. She was nothing but the ear for sound, and sound wouldn't be except for her, or she be but for sound. She could lose herself, if the ear would close to it, and be nothing at all except a stray remembering in people's minds.
   She pulled her coat around her neck and told herself to wait. Wait for the last look around. Wait for the last chore before people took themselves to bed.
   Once she thought the stars were wishful. Once she asked the stars to watch, the close, warm, happy stars that drew off now to shame her. Music had sounded then, and feet skipped in a dance, and it had sounded tonight and other feet had skipped, making of the fiddle's wail the opposite of sorrow, and Hig had sung a song of love and death that smiling people said was mighty pretty.
   Lost echo of music and sh-h-h of the spring and cold eyes of the stars. I declare, Mercy, you're off your feed and what upset you so and it was that fizz water likely. Cry of coyotes and the moo of the calved cow and the springs giving birth and sh-h-h. Tan and freckles and I'd do anything. Black lock against a wrinkled brow and say no, Mercy. Nothing but the sounds of night and nothing but the night around and fear and the lunge of fear. I'm scared I'm in a fambly way, Mr. Mack. Sh-h-h. And wait and wait.
   A dog came up, unseen, and nosed her hand, and she started and calmed and felt him to be Rock and held him with her while she waited.
   She knew him when he stepped out, knew him by the thin, clean shadow that he was against the shadowed night, and boldness died in her and her legs trembled to run; and then she thought he'd go about his business before he knew that she was there and she would have to hold still or creep off in the dark and so not shame him with her knowing. She said, "Mr. Mack," and heard her voice as no more than a whisper, drowned by the sh-h-h of the spring. "Mr. Mack."
   "What's that? Who is it?" Then, lower-voiced, "Oh, hello."
   "It's Mercy McBee."
   "I see now. How are you?"
   "Mr. Mack?"
   He came up to her, not answering. In the cover of the night she let herself search his face, seeing the peaks of his cheeks and the pockets of his eyes in the starshine.
   "Mr. Mack?"
   "You're up late."
   "Don't reckon I could sleep."
   "Good night for sleeping."
   "Mr. Mack?"
   "Yes."
   "Could we get away a piece, so's to talk?"
   He took her arm without answering and led her out from camp, down toward the steamboat spring. "It has seemed best not to try to see you, Mercy."
   "I wouldn't try to see you but-but-"
   "What is it?"
   "I'm afeard, Mr. Mack. I'm so afeard." His voice sharpened. "Afraid?"
   She only could nod, feeling from his tone the blame lay all on her.
   "Of what?"
   "You know."
   "For God's sake!" he said. Then, "It's probably just your imagination."
   "I been tryin' to tell myself that."
   "Well?"
   "Tellin' don't make it so."
   "I can't believe it, Mercy."
   "What if worst is worst?"
   "It won't be. I'm sure it won't be."
   "But if it is?"
   "If it is, it is."
   "What kin I do? Must be you know somethin' I kin do."
   "What do you think I can do?"
   "Nothin', I reckon, except go back to camp."
   "Don't you see I can't do anything?"
   "I didn't aim to cause you trouble."
   "Cause me trouble?"
   "I didn't mean I was holdin' it over you."
   Of a sudden his voice softened. "I'm sorry, Mercy. It's just that I don't know what to do. I just don't know."
   "Nothin' at all?"
   "Nothing but wait and see."
   "I've done done that," she answered, and it seemed strange to her that her voice was steady. It came thin but steady, from some lean, raw, lonely strength that wouldn't bow to tears.
   While she wondered at it, he asked, "Have you thought about marriage, Mercy?"
   "To who?"
   "Well -to anyone?"
   "An' never let on?"
   "I don't know."
   The voice in her said, "Talk don't seem to be no use. Must be your wife's expectin' you."
   He cried out then, cried fierce but soft so that she felt the misery in him. "Mercy! I'm sorry. All I can say is I'm sorry."
   He left without patting her, without touching her, without the kiss that she had thought would give her comfort; and she knew, while the knowing tore her to the lonely strength beneath, that he had wanted her only for the time, only for what his body found in her, and never again would come to her even to get more of the same.
   Sound came back, the river complaining along the shore, the steamboat hissing, the coyotes crying louder as the moon flushed up, and, listening, she asked herself if she could wrong a boy like Brownie.
 
 

   Curtis Mack didn't go immediately to his tent. He walked away from Mercy, toward it, and thought Amanda wouldn't be asleep as yet, and turned and wandered down the valley, his mind aware but motionless before the fact.
   Ahead of him the hills bulked huge, lined against the sky by the rising moon, and, nearer, the waters of the river ran troubled under the long moon-slant that took them from the dark.
   There was nothing to do, nothing he could do, nothing but wait, nothing but return to his tent as the girl had said when anxiety had edged his words. "Nothin', I reckon, except go back to camp," she had answered with a bleak, offended courage that wrenched him more in recollection than event. She hadn't wept. She hadn't blamed him. She hadn't threatened. She had asked, humbly, and been answered in a way, and had dismissed him with her young, brave, hopeless dignity.
   Thinking of her, he hated himself, hated his shabby answering to her need, hated the cheap suggestion that she marry. He could have given her of his strength. He could have tried to reassure her. He could, at least, have shown her tenderness. But to what end? To continue and compound a situation already made impossible? To give her false hope? Asking, he knew he argued late to justify himself. The reasons might be good enough, but at the time they hadn't been defined. What had moved him was a male's annoyed alarm, the wish to wiggle out, the half-aversion bred by disagreeable responsibility. It was a wonder he hadn't asked how she could be sure he was the one.
   He stumbled and said, "Goddam it!" and caught himself and went on. He was a fool and a villain, or a man made villainish by circumstance, by the crazy, contrary, mindless unorder of life. There was yeast in him, not willed there by himself, and yeast would out, in the murder of a Kaw or the ruin of a girl. Preachers could talk about morals, as if all men were born and situated similarly, but morals were particular to every man, dependent on his stuff and state.
   And yet a man felt guilt. He couldn't master self and circumstance, but still the fool felt guilt. It was senseless, senseless as the self-reproach of an idiot for being born that way, but it existed, wrought by hymns and texts and fierce mouthings About rewards and punishments. Long after reason came, the feeling stayed. Forever after. A man could deny God, knowing if the afflictions that were a contradiction of Him, but still he felt accountable beyond the facts. Sinning sins that the Great Sinner forced upon him, he wanted to atone, to humble and flagellate himself, to promise to do better. That way he found comfort, as he, Curtis Mack, had found comfort in hard work and unaccustomed patience with Amanda after the killing of the Kaw.
   It was in the nature of things, he thought, that now, with a better understanding reached between his wife and him, the consequences of misunderstanding should arise. Too late, if ever, one fell upon the answer to his plight.
   It had been simple, so simple, if so wise, that he wondered at his blindness. Hot and swollen with his need there near the Southern Pass, he still had kept his voice in check, saying to Amanda while they lay in bed, "I wish you would. I wish you could, Amanda."
   "I wish so, too."
   "I understand the fear, but it isn't fear alone, not just of pregnancy."
   "No," she said and waited for his words.
   "Part must be resentment, and I understand that, too, I guess. No one likes to answer to demand."
   "No."
   "Do you know what it is?"
   "Only that something gets in the way. Only that I feel I can't."
   "Always?"
   "Not always. You know that."
   "Don't you feel desire? Ever?"
   She didn't answer, and he thought he felt her stiffen in the bed and knew the line of inquiry was wrong. The old, hot words came to his mouth, and he shut them off, making himself think about the Kaw and himself and the chastening regrets, about Amanda and the strangeness that she couldn't alter. It was no less inviolable because it tortured him. He said, "We can wait. Maybe, if we just wait-" and turned over in bed.
   "I wish I could, Curt."
   "I've been wrong," he said, knowing suddenly it was true. "I've fixed the idea of demand in your head. If I had it to do over again, it would be different."
   "How, Curt?"
   "Maybe, if we had another try, I could make you see I need you, not your spirit alone or your body alone but all of you. And I wouldn't demand. I would try just to let you know that I stood in need of your help and that you could help me, and that I couldn't help it that I needed help. I guess that's what I mean. Good night, Amanda."
   For a long time she lay still, and then her arm slipped around him, almost shyly, and her hand found his and asked him to turn over.
   He wasn't fool enough, he reminded himself now, to think their troubles entirely at an end. The difference in their appetites was too great to allow of miracles. But they had made a start, and more than just a start. They were coming to adjustment, each trying to keep in mind the other. And he felt fulfilled and knew he loved his wife beyond all women.
   So it would have to be in this, God's world, he thought, that an accident should come between. It wasn't in the scheme of things for happiness to last.
   He stopped and faced about and started back. Too long an absence might call for explanations if Amanda kept herself awake for him. It was fear, he knew, that underlay his other feelings. Not fear of the lash. To hell with it and the shame of it! And not fear of Amanda, quite, but of the loss of her, and not of the loss of her, for he felt she wouldn't leave him, but of the loss of love which was the loss of her. He hadn't known till recently, till now, how much it meant to him.
   And so, he thought, walking heavy-footed under the big Moon, his worries were for self and not for Mercy. She was a girl-child and pregnant and alone, and he worried for himself. That was the scheme of things, too-self-preservation -but it was ugly just the same. And repentance and remorse and pleadings for forgiveness, what were they if not concern for self? Would he regret his act but for the consequences?
   He tried to see the question honestly and didn't know the answer. Then he thought no, he wouldn't regret, if no harm at all had come to Mercy, no harm beyond the act if that was harm, no pregnancy, no disclosure, no shame, no heartache, no making of a trollop of her. He wouldn't have regretted even his own faithlessness, for there were reasons for it then.
   There was the hitch, there was the kernel, existing whether there was God or not -had a man been right with man? He saw the girl again, standing small, standing brave, standing with that piteous dignity in her ruins, and he knew what his reply must be.
He said, "0 Christ!" and shook himself and quickened his step, as if a man could outpace thought, and came to his tent and went in.
   Amanda's voice said in the darkness, "I almost went to sleep, Curt."
   "It's such a grand night out." He sat down and started taking off his shoes.
   It was also in the nature of things, he thought as he crawled into bed, that she should be waiting for him tonight. Far off, the wry manipulators of affairs must be grinning to themselves.
   Long after Amanda was asleep, he lay sleepless, hearing the murmur of the river and the singing of coyotes. He wondered if Mercy McBee, age fifteen or sixteen, also lay awake, kept from her young girl's dreams by the beat of fear. He wondered if the Kaw he'd killed was happy in the happy hunting grounds.
   One thing he knew. Whatever happened, wherever he was, as long as he lived, he would bear the wound-stripe of his guilt.
 

"YOU'LL HAVE YOURSELVES a spree, I'm thinkin'," the old mountaineer said. "This nigger's been that way, and it's some, that's what it is."
   He was, Lije Evans thought, about the age of a hill -allow a hundred years one way or the other- and he sat on the ground with the solid ease of a hill, as if he never needed a chair or backrest for his carcass. Greenwood, his name was, Caleb Greenwood, and he was green like an old, gray tree that still put out leaves.
   "Ain't I right, Cap'n?"
   There were eight or ten of them squatted around in the Fort Hall yard, outside the dried-mud building that Captain Grant used for office and home. The yard was in shadow, for the sun had fallen below the walls of the fort, and the beginning feel of night was in the air.
   Captain Grant was the only one who stood. Seen from the ground, he looked even bigger than he was. He had England written all over him. He brushed his beard with his hand. "The Hudson's Bay Company never has tried to get a wagon train through," he answered.
   "Why not?" Gorham asked.
   Captain Grant shrugged, putting into the movement more than tongue could say.
   Evans asked himself whether he was ready to dislike the man just because he was British. He had been good enough to the train, good enough to be better than you might expect from a damn Britisher. He had welcomed the company and traded with it -and made himself some money, which, still, was what he was in business for. You could buy flour from him, brought by boat and horse from the Oregon settlements, at twenty dollars a hundred, or horses at from fifteen to twenty-five each. If   you didn't have money, he would take your sore-footed oxen and allow five up to twelve dollars for them. Good man or bad, though, he was British and so didn't want Americans taking over Oregon. That stood to reason. What he had to say about the trail ahead had to be taken with salt.
   "Some of you'll git through, and maybe some wagons," the old man said and took the pipe from his mouth and looked around. "Ain't likely the whole kit and b'ilm' of you will, but some will, an' have a heap of fun."
   "How?" Tadlock asked.
   "Why, to look back on. Starvin' an' thirstin' and nigh drownin' makes rich rememberin', if so be it you live to remember."
   "We done all right so far," Evans put in.
   "Shore you did, boy. Done smart, this nigger says. Ain't quite the whisker of August, and here ye be."
   "Well?"
   "More this nigger thinks to it," Greenwood said, and stopped while his old lips kept his pipe alive, "more he almost wishes he was trailin' along. Californy way is too by-jesus tame. Nothin' the whole length of her to test a man. Nothin' to remember 'cept easy goin'."
   He had smoked his pipe down, and now he tilted the ash from it and packed in more tobacco so's to smoke it back up without having to relight. "Shorter, too, to Californy, but this nigger's got to point that way. Said I would an' I by-jesus will."
   Summers had been sitting quiet, the lines of inside smiling at the corners of his mouth. He said, "This child's been yan side of the Big Salt Sea, with the Diggers. Seems like it sticks in mind."
   "Sure enough?" Greenwood answered as if he didn't understand.
   The look of thinking ahead was on Patch's sharp face. "What did you say they raised in California?"
   "Nothin'. Nothin' 'cept what's sot in the ground and whatever chews on grass. She's a soft country, she is, and so goddam sunny a man wonders ain't there ever no weather there. It ain't like Oregon thataway."
   "Let's talk straight," Tadlock said, hitching forward on the ground. "Why do you think we can't make it to the Willamette?"
   Old Greenwood spread his hands. "Did this nigger say that, now? Said some of you would. Shore. There's the Snake to ford twice, 'less you cross it here at Hall an' run into hell's trouble like Wyeth done, Dick, in 'thirty-four or sometime, an' the Snake ain't no piss-piddle of a river even if you might think so, seein' it from here, but you'll git over, most o' you, and maybe some wagons. An', oh, man, but it'll be fun. Do' know as I would try the wagons, though. There's plenty wagons for sale at Oregon City, I reckon. What you say, Cap'n?"
   "I'd leave the wagons here."
   "Ain't wagons gone through before?" Gorham asked.
   Greenwood answered, "Some."
   "Tell us some more of your fun," Tadlock said.
   "Ain't so much more, but damn me fer a liar if fer days you don't roll along her rim and no drink for man or brute, and there she flows, so goddam far and steep below you couldn't leg it down and back from sunup to sundown."
   In the thinking quiet Evans smelled the smoke of dying cook fires inside the buildings flanked around. The fires would he dying at camp, too, which was pitched south and west of the fort about a mile, and Rebecca would have the plates and kettles cleaned, for the camp had eaten early, and Brownie would he watching out against the friendly, thieving Snakes. There were other smells here, the smells of smoked meat and fish and hides and tobacco, the sour aftersmell of Indians, the smell of bucket of milk that a half-breed carried by. The milk put him in mind of Independence and home and the cowshed and the Missouri flowing not so far away. He said, "We know somep'n about rivers."
   "Shore, boy," old Greenwood answered. "The Missouri or the Mississippi, I'm thinkin'. Nice water. Come to think on it, what you aim to do with your cattle?"
   "Take 'em along."
   "Oh! An' then after the Snake, or Lewis River like sometimes we call it, you come to its pappy, an' there's more fun. You kin say you seen the chutes and falls of her and the black, by-jesus rocks smotherin' in foam. It's a sight, I tells you. Wuth seein'."
   Evans let his gaze go from man to man, wondering if they felt like him, wary of this grandpa of the mountains but still fazed by the word of trials ahead. The company just yesterday had finished a toilsome stretch, through the black rocks and black dust this side the Bear, and had come down into the valley and seen water and woods and grass and bobolinks and killdeers, and he didn't guess anyone wanted to move again, much less tackle what Greenwood was putting into words.
   "I reckon you all know Meek," Evans said. "He swears he's learnt a better way to Oregon. Up the Malheur River. Said it 'ud save a hundred and fifty miles and more."
   Captain Grant nodded. "Steve Meek. He broke with the train he was piloting and hurried here to talk himself into another. I wonder that you didn't see him when he passed you. What did you tell him?"
   "Told him we had Summers."
   Captain Grant said, "Right. I wouldn't care to try that trail, would you, Summers?"
   Dick just shook his head.
   Greenwood started up his song again. "You got such a smart start, maybe you'll git to the Willamette afore snow flies. Could be you will. Course, you'll have rain, one day on another, fer the rainy season's nigh here. What was it you said you aimed to do with the cattle?"
   "Take 'em."
   "Oh! They's a passel o' Injuns 'twixt here and there, an' I hear they've blacked their faces agin white parties, but fisheatin' Injuns ain't much, like Summers'll tell you. They ain't likely to cause much harm."
   Mack raised his eyes from the ground, which he had been worrying with one finger. "We got by the Pawnees and Sioux."
   "Shore. Shore."
   Evans was glad when Summers spoke. It was only Summer who knew Oregon and so could speak against the man, an when he didn't it was as if he couldn't because the said words were truer and wiser than he could say himself. Summers asked, "Who's payin' you, Caleb?"
   "Now as fer fevers," Greenwood said, giving Summers just the corner of his eye, "there's some as hold there's fever on the lower river, an' this nigger 'lows there's some but not as much as claimed. There ain't that much, or I don't know white from Injun. You say you aimed to take your cattle along, Evans?"
   Captain Grant had gone inside. He came out with a jug and cups. It was good whisky, better than old Hitchcock sold at his store back in Independence. The captain passed it with a manner. You had to say the British had manners, if you liked manners.
   Evans didn't know how McBee had kept quiet so long, unless i t was because of Tadlock. He rolled a swallow of whisky uround in his mouth and gulped it down and spoke up. "'Y God," he said with the bright look of a man expecting a second to his motion, "I didn't set out for the West hopin' to live hard. I done lived hard enough already."
   "Aw, don't let this nigger scare you off," Greenwood told him. "You ain't got more'n eight hundred miles or so to go. Could be you'll do smart." He emptied his cup with a throwhack of his head. "An' then you can say you seen all them dead Injuns down from the Dalles, too. Man, it's a sight to see! Dead'uns floatin' on rafts an' laid in pens an' all, along with little scare-devils. You'll never set your eye on more good Injiins than right there."
   Tadlock asked, "Was there a fight?"
   "Not as fur as this nigger knows. They just up and die, reckon. Eh, Cap'n?"
   Grant had seated himself with the rest. He nodded his big, British head. "Starvation and fevers, I suppose. I never stopped to think. At any rate it wasn't a fight."
   "As fer cattle," Greenwood went on, "you can dicker fer 'em when you git there. There's a heap of cattle bein' drove from Californy to Oregon."
   There was sorrow on Brother Weatherby's face, sorrow, Evans guessed, from the cursing that he heard. He guessed, too, that it was more to get God into the open than to argue with Greenwood that he said, "We're in the Lord's hands, remember."
   "Now that's good," Greenwood answered. "That there is smart. There's places you need prayer. Ain't nothin' like a good prayer-sayer from here to Oregon City, I allus say."
   "Are there markets in California?" Tadlock asked.
   "Well, if you want to talk Californy, there's no trouble about markets, stiddy markets, wheat a dollar and corn fifty cents and sheep a dollar or two."
   "Who buys?"
   "Hudson Bay Company, H. B. C., ol' Here Before Christ, that's who. Git to the ports, like Saint Francisco, and you'll see ships aplenty, makin' up cargoes to go with what they found in Oregon."
   "Whose beaver you earnin', Caleb?" Summers asked again.
   Tadlock had another question. He put it before Greenwood got around to Dick's. "I suppose they need men in California?"
   Greenwood studied Tadlock with eyes the years had crowded around. Watching him, Evans thought he was a wise and tricky old varmint who would know how to play to Tadlock. He felt suddenly glad that Greenwood hadn't been on hand when the train pulled in yesterday but had just showed up today from a hunting trip or someplace. Give him time, and he would talk everyone into California, especially the women.
   "Now as to that," Greenwood answered Tadlock, "she needs good men all right, and no denyin' it, but not just anybody. There's too many by-jesus anybodies everywhere to this coon's way of thinkin'. Needs 'em, I reckon, more'n Oregon does. Oregon's spillin' over with good men."
   "What about the Mexicans?"
   "Them Spaniards? They're all right. Leave 'em their blackrobes and the Pope, and they're right as Irish. Same time, I look fer to see Californy white men's country."
   "And that's why you're eggin' us on?" Evans put in.
   The old man spread his hands as if to show the all of him, heart and gizzard and mind and all. "You're readin' the sign wrong, son. Ain't I said Oregon's all right? But if so be it you point Californy-way, that's all right, too. An' it ain't no harm to think it belongs with the States. This nigger don't reckon you're goin' to Oregon just so's to be British?"
   It was a good question, Evans thought, honest-seeming and with a point to it.
   Captain Grant stirred at the words. "There are worse things than being a British subject."
   "No offense, o' course," Greenwood said. "Every man to his mind, Cap'n. Every nigger to his nation."
   "And whativer is wrong with the Irish?" Daugherty asked, pricked out of his silence by the old man's words.
   "Niver a thing," Greenwood said back. "Niver a by-jesus thing."
   "And you'll lead a train to the Sacramento?" Tadlock asked. Already, Evans knew, his mind was making up -and it was all right. Let Tadlock go, for he couldn't stand the Oregon train now he wasn't captain and had been whipped to boot. And let McBee go. Let him and his family go, and Mercy that Brownie had started to shine around. Let Brewer and his thick head go. The train didn't need numbers for safety any more.
   Old Greenwood rubbed his hands and said, "Well, I don' know as you could call it a train. This nigger's got a busted wagon or so, and his stick points that way. Reckon I'll hang around a day or a dozen and see does any of the companies fullerin' in your dust want to jine with me. There's a few early birds already has said yes?"
   "I still say Oregon," Evans told him, and looked around to see what answer the words brought to the faces.
   "Shore. Don't blame you a mite. You're big and stout. I bet you git there. An' prob'ly you'll like it. I know folks as does. Course, for the weak and ailin', I got to say maybe Californy's hotter, for the way's short and easy and 'pears like no one ever dies there."
   "Damn if I can't believe that," Summers said. "What was it you heerd Lewis and Clark say to their mammies?"
   Greenwood laughed an easy laugh. "You ain't so far wrong, Wung'un, but don't git it into your head I'm done fer. Whisky's stouter the longer she sets. You ain't sayin' the Snake ain't a by-jesus river, Dick, ner the Columbia, ner that a man don't go froze for meat and water?"