The Lost Wagon Part 15

Pete Domley glanced down at the pile of fish and sniffed hungrily. "They look downright good. It's a long while since I've had time to get any for myself."

"Maybe you'll stay and help us eat these?" Joe invited. "There's plenty."

Pete grinned. "I might just do that. Sorry about the cow. She stepped in a chuck hole and broke a front leg. There just wasn't anything else to do."

"I know. Thanks for taking care of it, Pete."

"Emma said to sell the beef to Les."

"Yeah, and I reckon she's right. n.o.body here would eat it."

"Les gave me twenty-three dollars and seventy cents, cash money. I gave it all to Emma."

"You should have kept something for your trouble."

"It wasn't any trouble. Emma says you're going to Oregon?"

"That's right, Pete. We are."

Pete said seriously, "I don't know but what it would be a good move for anybody. Yes, I'm sure it would be."

"Why don't you come along?"

"I probably would, if I was fifteen years younger. But I'm pushing fifty, and I've chased a lot of will-o'-the-wisps in my day. Guess I'm getting chicken-hearted."

"Oregon's no will-o'-the-wisp."

"I know, but by the time a man gets to be my age he thinks everything is. I stick to what I know, and I can't make out any place unless I think so. I don't think I'd make out in Oregon. Want to sell me your standing hay?"

"I'll give it to you."

"Don't be so open-hearted; you're going to Oregon and you'll need money.

Besides, I winter a lot of stock and hay's worth money to me. Would twenty-five dollars be right?"

"Right enough with me."

"Good. I'll cut the hay when it's ready for cutting. I swear, Joe, you look like a kid again."

"I almost feel like one, Pete. Doggone, it's not that I don't like Missouri. It's just that I sort of felt myself batting my head against a brick wall here, and now we're going to Oregon."

Pete nodded wisely. "The world would be just as well off if all men hit down a new road when the old one ends blind. Only most of us lack the courage to get off paths we know. Especially when we're older. I envy you."

"Don't be so darn philosophical, Pete. Come on. Let's go in and wait for something to eat."

Pete Domley finished his meal and rode away. A great restlessness gnawed at Joe, and he felt his usual imperative urge to be doing something.

Only now it was a happy antic.i.p.ation, and not a frustrating tenseness.

Joe glanced at the lowering sun, decided that at least an hour of daylight remained, and a moment later Tad joined him.

"Hey, Pa, let's be doin' somethin'. Huh?"

"Sure. Let's bring some of that oak and hickory in from the wood lot."

Joe was amazed. Ordinarily Tad could be forced to work only under threat of immediate punishment. Even then, unless he liked it, he would not keep at whatever task was a.s.signed him unless he were watched every second. That he should offer of his own free will to help was itself a minor revolution, and proof that he was infected with what Joe was beginning to think of as Oregon fever.

They caught and harnessed the mules. Joe shouldered a peavey--a logger's hook--and let Tad drive the mules to the wood lot. Joe used his peavey to roll half a dozen of the seasoned oak and hickory logs over a long chain, bound the chain around them, and hitched the mules to it. In the gathering twilight, Joe and his son walked side by side while the mules dragged the logs back to the house. They unharnessed the mules and let them frolic in their pasture.

The logs lay ready to be taken to John Geragty's saw mill. Joe gave them one final glance. When they were sawed into boards he would use part of them himself. Part John Geragty would take as pay for his labor, and the rest would be sold or traded for all the things they needed and did not have for their trip to Oregon. It was the first short step.

Joe felt a surging, happy restlessness, but he had no wish to go to the store. It seemed as though, somehow, his family had become a unique group that had nothing to do with anybody else and were no part of anyone else. They were going to Oregon while all the rest were staying here, and that set them apart. Joe wanted to stay with them because of this new-found and delightful kinship with each other.

He watched Barbara and Emma folding Emma's wedding dress, a long white, frilly thing, between clean curtains. Obviously the dress was destined to be part of the contents of a trunk that yawned on the kitchen floor.

Joe got up to lend a hand; the dress could be folded much more compactly and thus occupy less s.p.a.ce.

"Now you just sit down," Emma ordered. "This is not a mule or an ax."

"I was just trying to help."

"Not with this." The glance she gave him was one of mingled tenderness and amus.e.m.e.nt.

Tad sat at the table, working expertly with a whetstone as he put a razor edge back on his knife. Carlyle, still so young that the use of his legs was new to him, wobbled precariously across the floor and grasped Joe's knee. He paused, his fascinated eyes riveted on something, and when Joe looked he saw a fish scale that clung to his trousers and reflected rainbow tints in the lamp light. Joe lifted the youngster into his lap, and Carlyle bent over so he could continue to watch the fish scale.

"Come on," Joe invited the other. "I know a story."

His little fist closed, Alfred came to stand before Joe. The youngster's eyes danced, a grin parted his lips.

"Present for you," he said, extending his closed fist.

Joe reached to take it, but when Alfred opened his fist there was nothing at all there and the child howled with glee. Joe looked intently at his hand, and he pretended to slip the gift into his pocket.

"Thanks," he said seriously, "that's just about the nicest present I ever had!"

Alfred looked puzzled. Dainty little Emma and sober Joe came to him, and Joe gathered all of them into his lap.

"Went fishing today," he said, "and the first thing you know there was an old man with long white whiskers standing right on the bottom of the creek...."

He improvised as his story unfolded, telling how the old man's white whiskers hid an enormous mouth into which fish swam. Every now and again, probably because he was angry, he spit a fish at Joe or Tad. Baby Emma looked suspiciously at him and Tad turned with a knowing grin, but all remained interested. Finally the biggest fish of all came along and had trouble getting into the old man's mouth. There, and at once, he grew half again as big. When the old man tried to spit that fish he couldn't; he could get only half of it out of his mouth. Neither could he take it all the way in. The last Joe saw of him he was walking up the bottom of the creek with the fish still half in and half out of his mouth.

Carlyle went to sleep in his arms and little Emma rested contentedly against his shoulder. Little Joe frowned while he considered this new problem, a fish stuck in an old man's mouth, and Alfred yawned. Emma came to clasp baby Emma gently to her and she put the child to bed. One by one, Barbara took the rest.

Joe sat nervously in his chair, too tense to sleep and not knowing what to do. The night-to-be seemed an interminable time, and morning would never come. Joe thought of a hundred things he must do and he ached to be doing them so they could start for Oregon.

"You better go to bed," Emma told him.

"I couldn't sleep."

"Neither can you stay awake until we start for Oregon." She came to his side and ran her hand through his hair, thinking, _He is part boy, part man. Like a boy, he can't wait to start. Like a man--like Joe_, she corrected herself, _he wants to make everything double-safe for his young ones. Only, can he make things safe? Is there any safety in the wilderness?_

Her hand stilled, then resolutely took up its stroking again.