The Way West (28 page)

LIJE EVANS kicked his horse out ahead of the train, which was readying to roll. The wagons were supplied and repaired. The gab was gabbed. The marriage was done. So come on! Get started! Time to move. Can't spend the livelong day on a wedding and a lost dog. Snow'll be flying in Oregon before you know it. Follow along, Mr. and Mrs. George Brown Evans!
   He set himself in the saddle and kicked Nellie again. The day was gray, and the wind blew cold, and it might rain before ri ight, the driving, small-dropped rain that was different from a shower. Good day for a wedding. Good day for one wedding, anyhow. Good day to hook up with a McBee.
But there wasn't any point in stewing, or any point in thinking more. The milk was spilt. He would think about the trail and about the life ahead and the house he would build or about California and the folks who'd stayed behind to follow Greenwood -Tadlock and Brewer and Davisworth, and here was McBee in his thoughts again, in-law Hank McBee and his inlaw brood. There was one thing, anyhow: he wouldn't have to put up but with one McBee. The picture wasn't all black. There was a little lining on the cloud, like on the blown rain cloud ahead.
   He had cut McBee off when, just before the wedding, McBee had shown he might change his mind about going to California. "Never can tell what'll happen," McBee had said. There was a flicker in his muddy eye that Evans took for an invitation to be asked to trail along. "Pret' near wisht I hadn't quit the train."
  "Prob'ly you'll like it in California."
   "Oh, sure, sure. That's a good girl your boy's gettin'. Like I was sayin"' -the eye flickered again, this time, Evans thought, with a return of the old dislike- "you never can tell what'll happen."
   "Can't tell." Evans moved away and figured he'd done right. It wasn't that he shied off from the help that McBee would Always need; he wasn't a chinchy man, he hoped. It was just that McBee was McBee and his woman his woman, and no worth to either of them. Fine thing to have them around! Meet my in-law, Hank McBee. There's a face, I reckon, behind them whiskers, and what passes for a man inside them clothes.
   Evans looked back of him and saw the train lining out at last and Dick Summers riding by the lead team, understanding, Evans knew, that sometimes a man wanted to be alone and wear himself in to a hurtful fact.
   He didn't guess the McBees felt hurt. Like as not they welcomed the sudden news about Brownie and the girl, for it meant one less mouth to feed, though he had to say that Mercy carned her keep. She helped with the meals and managed the younger ones and often drove the team and never grumbled that he had heard about. Likely her ma and pa were tickled, though, to join up with a family that kept their noses wiped.
   Evans yanked his hat tight and cocked a shoulder against the wind, telling himself that what he couldn't help he couldn't help. So forget it. And forget Brownie and last night and his own arguments that came to nothing. Spent wind, that's all they were.
   "Marry!" he had said, unbelieving.
   Brownie had been waiting in the darkness at the gate, after the talk with Greenwood, and had drawn him off to tell him.
   "That's what I aim to do, Pa."
   "Marry! When?"
   "Mornin'."
   "To who?"
   "You know. To Mercy."
   "Well, now, wait -look, boy- it ain't a thing to be decided all at once."
   "It's decided."
   Brownie never had talked to him like this, never had taken a stand and stated it so thin and stubborn- voiced as if no words could budge him. Evans found himself wishing for light, so he could see the boy's face and the boy could see his. In the dark they were just two voices. He grabbed at what came to mind. "Them McBees -old Hank, now-"
   "It ain't him I'm marryin'."
   "That's what you think!"
   "It don't matter, anyhow."
   "You talked to him?"
   "Not yit."
   "Or the girl?"
   "She's waitin'."
   "She know her ma and pa's goin' to California?"
   "That don't matter, either. But I won't be marryin' ol' Hank then, like you said I would."
   "You ain't but a long seventeen."
   "I'm older'n you was, and it worked out good."
   "Can't get a license here. Can't do it proper."
   "We kin sign a paper, I reckon, and there's Brother Weatherby."
   Everything he said, it seemed to Evans, was made to turn against him. He tried to fight down the anger that grew out of his helplessness. "Just wait'll we git to Oregon, and if you feel the same then, we'll do it up right."
   "Unless I marry her, she won't be goin' to Oregon, for you said her fambly wasn't. Anyhow, I ain't willin' to wait. Neither of us."
   "You been talkin' to Dick. I seen you go out with him."
   "Don't hold it agin him, Pa. It was bound to come."
   "How you know this girl is what you want? Don't hardly know her but to pass the time of day."
   "Don't say nothin' bad about her, please, Pa. I just know. She's all right, an' more'n that. It's just you can't see her fo her fambly."
   "Cats breeds cats."
   "Please, Pa!"
   "That's the way it is."
   "Don't say nothin' to come between me and you!"
   Evans asked what he wouldn't have asked if he had had time to think. "You mean it's her over me? And over your ma?"
   The answer was a long time coming, but it came solid. "If I got to choose."
   Evans made himself hold silent. Out of the thoughts that ran inside his head, he tried to catch a good one, one good enough to make the boy consider. While he tried, anger died in him, leaving just its ashes. "You owe it to your ma to talk to her, Brownie."
   "I got to see Mercy."
   "Not meanin' you won't talk to Ma?"
   "Not about if I do or don't -but I'll talk to her."
   "There's no changin' you, I reckon?"
   "I'm sorry, Pa, and sorrier it riles you."
   "It's you I'm tryin' to think of."
   "Then don't be upset. I'm doin' what I want."
   "I can't feel you're sure of that."
   "I'm sure."
   "You fixed things up with Weatherby?"
   "Not yet."
   "And got no tent or anything?"
   "We kin sleep out, or under a wagon."
   "Just married and sleep under a wagon!"
   "Well-"
   Evans found himself hurrying to say, "Never mind," knowing by the boy's voice that he was mortified and being somehow mortified himself.
   "We'll make out somehow."
   "If nothin'll hold you, I'll trade for a tent."
   "Pa!"
   "You're a man now, I reckon, and I ain't got the eye to see it, rememberin' baby days. An' I'll see Weatherby if you're still sett come mornin'."
   Evans turned away, feeling heavy-footed. "Where's Rock?"
   "He went off somewheres."
   Thinking back, Evans couldn't make up better words than those he'd said. There wasn't a word that would have stopped the wedding, no word or way or reason, unless it was the outright no he couldn't bring himself to use. The boy wouldn't be drawn back from where his will had taken him. He wouldn't corne to call any more than Rock would. Where in tarnation was the dog?
   Evans glanced behind him, half expecting to see Rock loping up, but all he saw between him and the train was the grass running patterns before the wind. He wasn't anxious, though, not very, for Rock would show up in course of time. Probably he had come on a bitch in heat, which was about the only thing that would keep him gone so long, from night before to going on to noon.
   Maybe, Evans thought, he should have hunted more, but the morning already was halfway gone, thanks to the wedding, and the company had to roll out miles. And he hated to own up to it, but he had felt a little foolish and exposed, whistling around the fort and by the outside of Indian lodges while Tadlock looked on, smiling wise, as if to say I told you, way back at the start, that dogs would hold you up. It wasn't Tadlock that forced him on, though. It was time and time a-passing and last night's talk of snow, and he already sore inside at what his boy had done. The dog would turn up. That's what he had told Brownie, who wasn't so carried off by marriage as to forget about old Rock, and that was what he looked to happen. Rock would just turn up, his mouth open in what went for a grin, his eyes remembering from the night. Meantime the train must move. You couldn't ask the folks to keep on waiting just for a misplaced dog, no matter if the dog was Rock.
   Evans slid over in the saddle and cocked the other shoulder to the wind. Except for the weather coming at him, a man wouldn't think that hard miles lay ahead. The road looked pretty open, as if swift crossings and rough mountains were just dreamed up in Greenwood's head. Three hundred miles to Boise, or something close to that. More by way of Walla Walla, which way they wouldn't go since Summers said it wasn't needful. Eight hundred miles to the home they hadn't seen. Eight hundred to the new life. Giddap, horse.
   Take away the gray sky, take away the wind, and things looked gentle-cattle grazing, horses grazing, a bunch of Indians bound for Hall, their horses dragging poles on which their goods were loaded, green grass growing, tall grass growing, trees fringed along the Snake. But the gray sky was here, and the wind, and they put a man in mind of winter. Winter would be along soon. The smell of it was in the air, like the smell of a thing out of sight, beyond the bend. It made a man feel half like saying enough, half like staying the season out in the grassy Fort Hall bottoms and maybe staying longer. Cattle could be grown here, and horses, and probably crops, though not a spade of earth had been turned; and the Indians would get over being meddlesome and pecky. Just what pushed people on? Evans asked, and didn't bother thinking why, for reasons seemed no good today. It was enough to answer that Oregon had put a spell on them.
   It had put a spell on all of them except for Tadlock and Davisworth and Brewer and McBee except for one McBee, and he would try to act like real kinfolks to that one McBee like Rebecca told him to. Rebecca had taken the news quiet, as if she'd seen it coming, and hadn't argued that he knew of, or scolded, or asked Brownie to wait. She had talked with him a long time, while Evans kept himself away, not trusting himself to speak more about it. He had gone to bed finally and had heard their voices a piece off from the tent just as a murmur. Rebecca didn't speak when she first came back but undressed quietly and came to bed and by and by put her hand on his shoulder, knowing somehow that he didn't sleep. "Maybe it ain't the way I might hope, Lije," she whispered so that Brownie wouldn't hear.
   "It ain't the way I'd hoped."
   "But still it might turn out to be. You hold yourself in, Lije."
   "I told him if he was sot, all right."
   "I recollect when you was young. Think on it, Lije."
   "I got me a real woman."
   "Might be he has. She's a good young'un. Don't judge too quick."
   "Seems like you think it's just fine."
   Her hand patted him. "We got to take what comes and make the best of it and not the worst. You be nice to her."
   What chafed him was he knew that she was right. He said, "I'd just as leave not talk tonight. I'm tired, and cranky too, I reckon."
   But in the morning -it was just this morning, come to think of it- what worried her was what the girl would wear. Women were queer sometimes, even Becky. It turned out the girl was dressed all right. Had shoes on and a dress with a frilly collar. And she had twisted her hair up in a way that made her face look frail. And pretty. Prettier than ever. There was no denying the girl was pretty.
   Weatherby had done the trick quick, knowing the train must move, but still the knot was likely tight enough -too tight, it might turn out. Weatherby had been pleased at a marrying, maybe because it was the opposite of the funerals he had had to preach, promising life instead of marking the end of it. How did it go? What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder?
   The picture of the wedding stood in Evans' mind as he hunched into the wind that got inside his clothes and felt around his ribs -the men and women gathered in the Fort Hall yard, so's to be in shelter, and a few favorite Indians with them, wondering at the white man's medicine, and Brownie standing stiff and the girl indrawn and pale, and Weatherby asking in his preacher's voice if one took the other, come hell or heaven, and Ma McBee crying and her eyes red and her nose sharpstanding between, and McBee acting important, as if, 'y God, except for him there wouldn't be any such big doings as now.
   It was a friendly train, except for one or two, and good-wishing for the man and wife. Just wait'll we get to Oregon, they had promised, and we'll have a housewarmin' as is a housewarmin'. Mack had even tried to give a yoke of oxen as a wedding present, and Brownie had refused it, acting not polite enough, as if the gift would show he couldn't come it by himself.
   So it was done, and there was winter in the air, or the foretaste of it. By the time it came, God willing, he would be in Oregon and have a cabin building. He could imagine himself in it. He was sitting in it, and a fire was burning in the new fireplace, and outside the rain pattered or the snow flurried or the wind whined, and he was safe and snug, planning what to do when the storm let up. There he was, and Becky with him, and Brownie. And Mrs. George Brown Evans, who had been Mercy McBee. You remember the McBees? Hanks of homespun hung from the walls, and gourds sat on a shelf, holding seeds for the spring planting. There was the smell of roasting meat in the cabin, making Rock look hungry, and the sweetness of cookies, or was it bread a-baking. Right smart house we built, eh, boy? It'll do to keep the weather out. 'Member that wind leavin' Fort Hall? 'Member how chill we was? Makes this time real cozy, eh?