The Way West Part 28

"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 d.i.c.k. 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 b.i.t.c.h 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-pa.s.sing 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 c.o.c.ked 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 gra.s.s growing, tall gra.s.s 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 gra.s.sy 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l or heaven, and Ma McBee crying and her eyes red and her nose sharpstanding between, and McBee acting important, as if, 'y G.o.d, 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, G.o.d 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?

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.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

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 gra.s.s? 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 G.o.d first made the world. Range of rattlesnake and jacka.s.s 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 pa.s.s. 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 gra.s.sy 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 gra.s.shoppers clattered off on Justy wings. It was the thought of water and of gra.s.s. 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 gra.s.s 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 h.e.l.l, the Snake, or a river still in h.e.l.l! A river making h.e.l.l 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 d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k said while his eyes answered no. "Just as well drown as starve, though, I'm thinkin'. You want to lose your last d.a.m.n 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 gra.s.s, 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.