The Way West (29 page)

   He sat in the cabin while he rode his horse, and he saw a thing far off, toward the touch of land and sky. A dead buffalo, he thought it was from the size of it, or more likely an elk or a cow or ox, and maybe not dead but only sick or resting. He studied it while his mind sat rocking in the new house on the Willamette. There were some skins on the wall, a bear that Brownie had brought down and a deer hide with the red of the fall woods in it. Come decent weather and we'll build you a Cabin, Brownie, and put a floor in this one. Can't hardly wait on weather to start all the work that nudges to be done.
   The thing wouldn't be as big as a cow, he saw now. Even on a gray day you couldn't trust your sight in country where a lark loomed hefty as a hen. Lying on the open flat where the wind would tear at it, the thing seemed lonesome. It made the world seem lonesome.
   The could-be of it pinched him suddenly, and he pulled his horse up, not ready to believe, while his eyes said no and yes. I hey found the legs, the trunk, the head, the white-sprigged hair and put them all together. "Rock!" he said into the wind. Hey, you, Rock!" He heeled his horse into a walk.
He sat still in the saddle when he had come to him, seeing, and numbed by seeing, the big head knocked in and one eye pushing from its socket and the old muzzle stained by blood. A bug crawled on the mouth, fighting the wind.
   He took the sights in, one by one, but what he saw was Rock, the sprawly pup, Rock back at home and Brownie just a pup himself and the two growing up together, making the place cheerful with barks and cries and playful fracases. What he saw was Rock with age coming on him and wisdom in him and the graying muzzle resting on his knee.
   He climbed down from the saddle and stooped and lifted a paw and knew by the stiffness of the lift that this was not a fresh-done thing.
   Feeling ran far off from him, as if at something old in memory, while his mind worked at the how and why and who. He remembered Tadlock and his smile and looked back toward the fort and saw the ox train winding slow, a mile or so away. But it wasn't Tadlock. For all his faults Tadlock was too much a man for this.
   Who, then? He didn't need to ask again. He knew as well as a man could know. "Never can tell what'll happen." The flicker in the muddy eye. They were McBee's way of letting him know, of making sure he wouldn't miss the knowing. They were the last laugh. They were the getting even for all the wounds to little pride. And he had taken them for something else, disremembering that he had warned himself to look out for sneaky tricks.
   He brushed the bug off the mouth, feeling the blood hard and crusted against his knuckles. He closed the fist afterwards and studied it, recalling what it did to Tadlock, and he looked back again and saw the train still winding. He couldn't see the fort from so low on the ground, but it would be there, it and Hank McBee. In-law Hank McBee.
   But anger wasn't in him yet, but just the far-off sorrow, and he waited for a what-to-do while his mind worked on to put the case together. McBee had thought it safe to do the deed, since he was parting from the train. Maybe he had walked from the fort last night, his mind made up for California, and seen the old dog dozing by his wagon, waiting for Mercy to come back from somewhere, and the scheme had broken on him like a sudden light, and he had used a hammer or an ax heel or a club and had put the dead dog on a horse and packed him out and dumped him down where any eye would see. And then he had ridden back, smiling in his whiskers, thinking likely Evans wouldn't turn around, once started with the train, to push a point there at the fort that he had no proof about.
   "Never can tell what'll happen"? What did that add up to? McBee was too sly to catch himself on words. It could even be, Evans thought without believing, that McBee was trying to excuse himself this morning, trying to say he'd've acted different if he'd known about the marriage at the time.
So what to do? Go back and fight? Beat the last laugh from the bushy mouth? Revenge old Rock, who'd been done in through no offense of his? Fight, and let the thing be known? Then what about Brownie and his new-wed wife and the damage possible to them? Brownie wouldn't blame her for a deed done by her pa, but still they'd know the shadow of it, both of them, and feel poor-mated, maybe, if their fathers fought.
   Evans straightened up. The train had crawled closer, and there was just one thing to do. A poor thing but the best. Brownie mustn't ever know, or Mercy or even Becky or anyone but him and Hank.
   He brought the horse around between him and the train and picked up Rock's stiff body and placed it across the saddle and got on behind, shielding it from any gaze that was sharp enough to see.
   Down toward the river there was a thick patch of woods. He rode to the far side of it and got off and carried the body deep inside and laid it down. "I reckon you understand, Rock?" he said out loud, not caring if the words were foolish. He looked back afterwards and saw Rock didn't look quite comfortable and turned around and straightened out a leg.
Outside the woods the wind was blowing rain.
 

 
IT SEEMED to Evans now that one day was like another and that all were bad. They were all work and worry and weariness, and dust and sun and wind and night and sun again and work again. He tried to whistle up the old, bold hope, but it had disappeared. It had ground out under the grind of wheels. It had lost itself in crazy heights and depths. It had thinned away in distance. Trying for it, the eye misted. Listening, the ear filled with the dry complainings of wheels and wagon boxes. Eight miles, fifteen, eight, twenty-three. It didn't matter. This sorry land was endless.
   Day on day, dust on dust, pitch and climb and circle while the sand rasped under the worn tires and the rocks clattered and the wounded sage oozed out its smell. Where's grass? Where's water? Critters gant and hard to keep together overnight. Faces lank and eyes empty, or pointed suddenly, thinking forward to the ford across the Snake. Women cross, and young ones too, and men sharp-worded through their dusted lips, quick with whip and goad on teams too tired to care.
Violent country. Land of fracture and of fire, boiled up and broken when God first made the world. Range of rattlesnake and jackass rabbit and cactus hot as any hornet. Homeland of the poor and poisonous, and did Oregon really lie beyond? Mountains near and others far, sliding in and out of sight, plaguing people for their brashness. The great gorge of the Snake, the very gut of earth, the churning gut so steep below a horseman couldn't ride to it, so far a walker wore out climbing down and back. Eight miles, twenty, twelve. And still it didn't matter.
   Evans knew this time would pass. He was right to try for Oregon. He had been all along. It was just that the country overpowered the mind. It was just that a man spent his hope in sweat. It was just that he couldn't think ahead for watching out against the here. It was partly that old Rock was dead and the place empty where he would have trotted. And partly it was Brownie's marriage, though not so much as once, and the manner of the man and wife, as if they had to take their state dead serious. Why, Evans thought, when he had first hooked on to Becky he was all laugh and prank and couldn't always keep his hands off her no matter if they weren't alone. No cause to take the thing so solemn even though the dog was gone. This was a time for frolic. For frolic, but for work for all.
   He couldn't believe, back there at the fort, that the road would be so hard. For two days afterwards he couldn't believe it yet, while the train rolled to the Portneuf crossing and on to American Falls. There were springs above the falls and a river island that gave good grazing to the stock. But already, he remembered, the grassy bottoms of the fort had grown to sandy, sagy plains, and the Snake was scouring deep. The next day and the days that followed showed him what his mind's eye couldn't see.
   No one day tired the outfit out, and no one thing. Day on day did it, and sand on rock on sage on drought. The sense of getting nowhere did it, the feeling that the train stood still in spite of straining wheels. The stingy treats of green and water, although welcome, served to make the gray miles worse. A man's mind turned back to them afterwards, as Evans' mind had turned back to the Raft. Here the California trail veered left, up a shallow valley toward a ragged peak a million miles away. Here Greenwood and Tadlock and their men would start the journey south. But it wasn't the thought of them that kept coming to him later, while grasshoppers clattered off on Justy wings. It was the thought of water and of grass. It was the remembered munching of the stock. It was the fresh wetness on the tongue.
   He put the Raft with the marsh they'd bedded by one night, when he had heard the tear of grass to hungry mouths, far into dreams. He put it with a campsite that the Snake made, rising from its cut. He put it with Rock Creek and with Salmon Falls. They put a cheerless hunger in him while the sunkensided teams dragged on to the crossing of the Snake.
   A river out of hell, the Snake, or a river still in hell! A river making hell for burning souls who couldn't get down to it. Summers had called him off one day, and they had teetered on the great lip of its gorge and peered below and seen it like a frothy ribbon, so lessened by its depth away that Evans had to tell himself that here was such tormented water as he had never seen. A fair-sized falls and fair-sized water running white, sending up a fair-sized rumble -and what it was was sweep and plunge and thunder like nothing that he quite could believe.
   He had pulled back, dizzy, and the question inside him must have shown, for Dick had said, "We'll ford her just the same."
   Evans had asked, "We could go round the loop, like some one said at Hall, and so dodge both the crossings?"
   "Could," Dick said while his eyes answered no. "Just as well drown as starve, though, I'm thinkin'. You want to lose your last damn head of stock?" He smiled. "The river calms down some. We'll make it, hoss."
   It was hard to think so, though, remembering how they'd had to bed above. Once they'd pushed the stock away from camp a mile or more and found a way down to the river more fit for goats than cattle. But here was water and a little grass, and they'd left the livestock there, just lightly guarded, and had packed back water for the camp. And once, late starting after hunting wandered cows, they had camped entirely dry and found the stock more scattered in the morning.
   That was a thing that bothered a man- the thirst and growing weakness and most of all the hunger of cattle and horses and teams. Driving, a teamster saw the sagging pockets beyond the hipbones of his oxen and the chained knuckles of their backs. When he unyoked, they looked at him softly, their eyes reproachful, as if to ask how he could treat them so. And sometimes under yoke they just lay down, and no goad or whip or fork could get them up again, and a man trying felt more brutish than his brutes. They left them where they lay, with what life remained in them, thinking they had earned the slim chance of a miracle, and sometimes put plunder from the wagons with them-a chest or favorite chair or grinding stone -for every pound now counted. Leaving such, Daugherty had scratched a sign and posted it close by for travelers coming later. It said, "Help yourself." It also said weariness and the sour humor growing out of it. It said help yourself, only you can't, you poor devil like me, and so the joke's on you.
   Coming on to good campsites, on to grass and easy water, men and women always tried to believe the hardest miles were rolled. For a little while -until they pulled again into the waste of sand and stone- their spirits lifted and their voices rang out full. That was the way of them at Salmon Falls Creek, where everything was plenty, and at Salmon Falls. Though grass and fuel were scanty at the falls, the Indians had fresh salmon and cakes of pounded berries to trade for clothing, powder, knives and fishhooks. Most of all for fishhooks, which Dick had thought to bring aplenty of. Fresh meat tasted good, even salmon, after days of chewing on dried stuff, eaten stiff or mushed up in a pot, though Evans came to feel he'd just as soon not see a fish again if he could have red meat. And the berry cakes were better yet.
   Seeing the Salmon Falls Indians, Evans knew why Summers spoke so low of the fish-eating tribes. They were friendly and talkative and sometimes funny, but childish-minded and dirty and naked except maybe for a lousy rabbit skin, and they ate anything -lizards and grasshoppers and pursy crickets that would gag a man. They lived in huts of grass and willow that were just half-circles, open to the south. The huts reminded him of swallows' nests, niched around the way they were, except that birds were better builders.
   The camp had been a good camp anyhow, or not so bad as some, no matter if grass and wood were scarce and the Indians pretty sorry. A change of victuals helped the train, as did the proof that human life of sorts could live in such a country. And the great springs that burst out of the solid north wall of the Snake gave the people something new to talk about. Spring After spring, there was, like sunken rivers pouring out, which Summers called the Chutes.
   More sand came afterwards, more sage, more rocks, more nograss, more no-water, more worn-out stock, more of the hell of the Snake though they had borne out from it to cut across a bend it made.
   Now when they were about to come to it again, to lower down the bluff and try the ford, Evans told himself that if any train could get to Oregon, this one could. It had the best pilot that he knew of, best man and pilot both. Its stock was poor but no poorer than would come behind. Its wagons were as good as others would be by the time they reached the ford. But it was the men he counted on, the men and women and spirit of the company. They had their faults, he knew. They had their differences and sometimes spoke severe, what with sand in their teeth and worries in their heads, but they wished well for one another and they hung together. Here where sometimes he'd heard the trains split up, old On-to-Oregon stayed one. Looking down the line from head to tail after the long drop to the Snake came into sight, he felt a kind of wrathy pride. Damn the Snake and all its sorry kin of sage and sand! Damn the crossing! They'd make it -he and Summers and Patch and Mack and Daugherty and Shields and Gorham and all the rest, clear down to Byrd. They'd make it or go down trying and still damn the Snake to do its damnedest.
   Once he'd wondered if they'd keep him captain. That was when he'd outfought Tadlock and dared the other men to try to hang the Indian, but nothing came of it except they showed in little ways they didn't hold a grievance, maybe knowing without saying that they had been wrong. Only Daugherty had spoken open, saying, "I'm hopin' you'll forgit it, Captain. It was the divil in us, temptin' us to mortal sin." He had grinned and added, as if to give warning that he was his own man yet, "An' let us hope them Injuns quit their thievin' ways, or else to hell I'll maybe travel still."
   They were for him, Evans told himself while he watched Dick coming into sight from below the brow of the bluff. They were for him and he was for them and each was for each other, and they'd get across the Snake and pull up safe in Oregon.
   Summers rode alongside to say, "We can make it, I'm think in', without hold-back ropes or anything. Steep but not to bad."
"Hold up!" Evans called to Patch, whose two wagons were in the lead ahead of him. He lifted his hand for a stop behind. The rearward wagons closed up slow and came to rest, the oxen dragging to a halt without command and sagging afterwards as if from the little weight of yoke. He said to Summers, "Maybe we better hitch a rope to the first wagon and some of us walk along, just in case."
   Summers gave a nod.
   Evans faced down the line and yelled through his hands, "All out!" though nearly everybody was. The call was relayed to the rear by other voices. He waited, watching, until the last of them was down. The last was Mrs. Byrd, moving heavy with the child in her, and it occurred to Evans, seeing her, that he might as well have let the people sit until their turns came up. He stepped down the line, motioning to the nearest men. "Mack! Fairman! Carpenter!" Brother Weatherby came up with them, gray as a desert grasshopper from marching in the dust to save his horse. "Summers thinks we can drive down all right, but let's the bunch of us walk down with the lead wagon and see how it goes. We can stop her if she wants to run."
   They followed him back to the head of the column, where Patch stood with his lead team and Summers waited to show the way. One of them had tied a rope to the rear axle. Mrs. Patch stood back with the second team, quiet as always and as always somehow noticeable. Evans thought while he spoke that you couldn't throw off on these two Yankees. They were cool and heady customers. He said, "All right, Dick. You ne'en to help, Brother Weatherby."
   Weatherby said, "Why not?" as if there wasn't any answer, not even his sixty-four years.
Patch popped his whip and the oxen leaned into the yoke and the wheels turned and the front ones headed down.
   The way was long and steep, but not so steep by Dick's meandering that two or three men, depending on the load and team, couldn't manage trouble if it came. Patch's outfit reached the bottom without real need of help. Still, it seemed wise to send men with each wagon.
   The plan took time and wind but worked out safe. The loose stock came behind, footing careful down the pitch and breaking to a heavy, stumbling run for water. Evans saw, before he went to look across the ford, that grass was scant here too. It added to his maybe-foolish load of worry to think that poor teams would make a poor out at getting through the Snake.
   The crossing didn't look so risky, though, being broken by two islands that sat like low rafts in the stream.
   "It's far across and swift," he said to Summers and the other men who'd lined up along the bank, "but it don't look so deep."
   "Deeper'n you'd think," Summers answered. "Water's so clear it makes the bed look close."
   "How deep?" Evans glanced up at Summers, sitting thoughtful on his horse.
Summers shrugged. "Not too deep. Way to look at it is, it ain't easy, but it ain't beyond doin', either. We'll make it." Evans tilted his head and saw the white sun veering down.
   "Dick," he said, "there's grass aplenty on them islands."
   "Plenty."
   Evans spoke to the others as well as to Summers. "Let's push the livestock to 'em and let 'em get their bellies full and then line out in the morning. They'll be rested and fed both."
   It was Byrd who answered first, saying, "Amen to that." In his fair, ungrown-up face Evans caught the shadow of alarm, and he wondered, as before, how the man had raised the spunk to start out in the first place. He belonged in town.
   Summers was saying, "Good idee," and the rest were nodding.
  "Let's circle up, though maybe there's no need of it, and git the work stock over."