The Way West Part 34

"What?"

"The Fairmans and Byrds?"

"That's why d.i.c.k went on. To trade for enough canoes. Come mornin' you'll see a fleet come in."

"Will it work, Lije?"

"Slick as grease, but no one would think of it but d.i.c.k. We'll have one carry, at what they call the Cascades, but like as not we can trade some Injuns into helpin' us. You seen Mack to talk to?"

"There's talk of goin' overland, south of Mount Hood. Someone -I forget his name- is takin' a look. Mrs. Mack says they'll go that way, with wagons if they can."

Now that the news had been exchanged, Lije and Brownie went to work on supper. Rebecca got up to get more bread, for once ahead of Mercy. It did her good to see her menfolks eat. Almost before she and Mercy could make a start, they were mopping up their plates. They wiped their mouths and sat silent while Lije puffed at the pipe he'd lighted with a coal.

Other folks were through with supper, and men were drifting off from fires to join with other men while the women tidied up and bedded down the children.

Lije grinned at Mercy. "Cat got your tongue? Yours and Brownie's?"

Mercy only gave a half-smile back. Brownie said, "Watchin' cows don't give you much to say."

Lije lifted himself from the ground. "Well, boy, I reckon you can work if, you can't talk. There's light enough for us to make a start on them wagons."

They kept busy until after dark. Then, saying they'd be back directly, they walked off toward the noise of voices.

With the day's work done, Rebecca sat again. Sometimes, tired, she wanted more to sit and let her thoughts slide on than to fall thoughtless into sleep. She could make out from here the dark streak of the river, carrying the dim rememberings of the day, and the darker flow of hills beyond. A pale star winked above the rim of them.

After a while Mercy came and lowered by her. What she had been doing Rebecca didn't know, maybe making neat the bed that she and Brownie slept in. Neither spoke. It struck Rebecca that both were letting rest seep in, drawing on' it with their breath, fetching it with eyes that found it in the softened dark.

She felt the presence by her. Mercy McBee. Mercy McBee Evans. Daughter-in-law. Coming mother -which, unless somebody told him, Lije wouldn't know until the blind could see. Men had no eye for that.

Knowing, Lije would holler, for he loved children. Knowing more, he'd raise a ruckus. He'd say no son of his would raise a wood's colt. Men got mighty righteous when girls were caught because of doing things the men had begged them to.

Beyond her soreness, beyond the roily tenderness she felt for Mercy, she saw Lije pawing up the dust, saw him with understanding, with another tenderness. Men were men, and he couldn't help that he was one, nor would she change him if she could. He was a better man than most, the best to her of any, and, barring trifles, she had never kept a secret from him.

A baby was crying out somewhere in the darkness, its voice a thin wail over other voices. "Sight of young'uns," Rebecca said to Mercy. "Don't look like it'll take long to settle Oregon."

"Ma," Mercy said. It was the first time she had used the name.

"Yes, Mercy," Rebecca answered, touched that she had done so.

"I-I think I'm going to have a baby."

"Whoever would have guessed it! Now, ain't that fine?"

"I'm pretty sure I am."

Rebecca turned and in the darkness saw Mercy's head bent and her shoulders drooping and such an air of young sadness there that her arm seemed to go out of itself to bring her in. She said, "Don't you fret. It's just fine." She clucked the little things that came to tongue and felt the girl's breath on her throat and heard the whispered, "I was afraid to tell you."

A sudden fear came on her, the fear of knowing without a doubt, the fear that Mercy, out of misery and the decent need of owning up, would tell her how it was. She walled the chance away. She sealed it off, forever beyond Lije, beyond herself, and with it sealed for good and all, she hoped, the painful wondering. She said, "A baby born to you and Brownie is bound to be a good one."

Mercy was in bed when Brownie came back. She heard him say good night to his father and listened for the soft press of the moccasins he wore. She heard him brush against the tent pole and slide inside, to the rustle of the flap, and begin to take his things off, working quietly so as not to rouse her.

She might as well be watching him, she thought. With her eyes closed in the dark she still saw, saw him walk the s.p.a.ce between the tents and stoop to enter and loosen up his breeches and let them fall. She saw his gangly figure, the lightish hair unruly on his head, the look of seriousness out of place on so young a face.

A greeting started in her and died somewhere inside. "I'm here," she felt like saying. "I'm awake." If she could say that much, she thought, she could say more. She could tell him that Rebecca knew, though not the whole of it. If she could make a start, maybe they could talk the thing out, maybe talk it clear away, and come to easy footing.

But she couldn't, and, listening to the little sounds of his undressing, she thought she never could. Always in between would rise the past, always the life that she was being mother to, always Mr. Mack, seen by both of them, her seeing seen by him and his by her, so that they couldn't speak.

She felt the covers lift, felt the movements of his coming into bed and straightening out and drawing the covers back and putting a hand beneath his face. But there was no company in him, no help for loneliness. They might as well be strangers.

The night was quiet, but still she heard, as if in loneliness the ear reached out for lonely sounds -the bare breathing of the air, the pulse of night, the careful stir of some small animal, the tired heart-echo on the pillow.

She knew that Brownie was awake, maybe lying wide-eyed in the dark, his mind like hers fixed on their trouble. He was good, too good for her, and Rebecca was good and Lije was good, and why, then, did she have to stand apart, with even grat.i.tude locked in? Why must she feel unwifely?

It wasn't Brownie's fault and, since the marriage, not her own, she hoped. It was what she'd done before. It was the shadow falling in between. It was the baby that she carried, the small and fearful stranger. And all of it was too much for them. Not since she'd gone to him and said she'd marry if he'd have her had either spoken of it, as if agreeing silently it was too sore for words. They'd hardly talked of anything or known a minute's happiness except once when the fun of danger drove the cloud away.

Not her fault? Not since the marriage? Didn't Mr. Mack return to mind? The nights beside the Laramie? The quick and clever way of him? The lock that needed pushing back? Sometimes the dream slipped up of being with him again, of easing on his chest the silent loneliness, of whispering how it was with her to him who ought to understand.

She had wanted the man and had to take the boy, she thought, and wondered if that was the everlasting way of things; and it struck her, wondering, that she was being unworthy. Brownie was a man, a good and even gentle man for all the stiffness of his manner toward her. She ought to thank G.o.d for him, thank G.o.d and him and Lije and Rebecca and the luck that made them meet. She wasn't deserving of so much. What she deserved was nothing.

If only she could talk to him, if only he would let her, if only she could know the hand-touch of forgiveness! She couldn't swear he really cared for her, not any more, not since she'd told him and he had answered that they'd marry anyway. The doubt of him was like the loss of something not prized until too late.

It was then, it was right then that Brownie turned in bed and, having turned, made sure the cover still lay snug about her neck. His hand came out and smoothed it back and brushed her throat and went down by his side.

In believed-in secret he had done it. While he thought she slept he'd shown himself and answered her.

The act and meaning of it wrenched her. She held the knowledge tight, along with uncried tears, and tried to breathe as if she were asleep. She felt come alive in her a sympathy for Brownie, a pity that, earlier, she'd had to tell herself she ought to feel. It swelled in her, truer than the promptings of the mind, better than her self-concern, and choked up to words that must be said. Brownie, in his way, had had to take the boy, too.

Without thinking more, without letting herself hesitate, she said, "Brownie?"

"You awake?"

"I just this minute woke up. Brownie?"

"Uh-huh."

She came out with it. "I'm -I'm learnin' to care for you." He didn't answer right away. Waiting, she came to know he couldn't.

"I hoped you'd want to know," she said.

Chapter Thirty.

FIFTY MILES maybe from the Dalles. Maybe forty still to go to reach Vancouver. Six miles then to the Willamette.

Evans wiped the sweat out of his eyes. Nothing to it now, he told himself, unless a spell of weather came; nothing but to rig the flatboats up again and climb aboard and wait on wind and river. Behind them lay the final hindrance, the Cascade Falls that from the portage looked like a field of snow. Ahead the water gentled, lazing on its final hitch.

He breathed deep and raised his elbows to let the air come in. The portage had been long and hard, but it was over. The last loose wheel had been rolled, the last board carried, the last pot and pan and dab of food lugged along, the last canoe brought over. Everyone was here and in good fettle -Byrds, Fairmans, Mercy, Becky, Brownie, d.i.c.k, not to mention the Indians hired to help out with the carry. Here where the path led back to water the Indians stood around, looking simple and pleasant, curious about the white man's doings. One of them had a blanket pinned at his neck with a stick. A squaw had trailed along with them, a young one who wore a skirt of beaten cedar bark. It covered part of her.

"Might as well make camp," Evans said, looking to the sun now swimming misty in the west. "Reckon we can get the boats back together before dark."

He didn't go to work, though, so that others would. He loaded his pipe and hunted up his tinder box and sat against a tree and smoked, content to rest a while and let the others rest. It had been a portage sure enough -four miles almost of heavy carrying and part of it across an Indian cemetery where bodies had been dumped in cedar pens or laid on rafts that floated in a pond. Rough statues sat around, of birds and brutes and little devils. Weatherby would have called them idols and preached a scolding to the Indians. . . . It looked like Weatherby had cut himself a piece of work.

Evans drew deep on his pipe to get the remembered stink out of his nose. Byrd was fiddling with a fire. Mercy and Becky were talking by the water's edge where Fairman stood, his eyes set on the river's roll. Byrd had traded an old shirt to an Indian. It was the only thing the Indian wore, but he wore it as if it was enough, as if it was an outfit in itself. Every time young Jeff Byrd looked at him he had to giggle, but the Indian didn't care, being like a child himself. d.i.c.k was making talk to a couple of other Indians, maybe telling them to run along. The smell of Indians didn't help a meal.

Weatherby had cut himself a piece of work all right. He had known it, too. In looks and speech he'd owned up to the size of it when he'd said goodbye to d.i.c.k back at the Dalles.

"Better come along," d.i.c.k had said. "We'll make a place for you."

Brother Weatherby wagged his old head in a no. Looking at him while he and Summers talked, Evans thought he had shrunk to bone and string. He stood more stooped than ever, as if from the weight of sin and duty.

"There's heathen a plenty lower down," d.i.c.k said. "It ain't like you'd run out of work."

"I'll come later. I want to spend some time here at the mission. It needs help."

d.i.c.k said, "Yep. Don't look like religion has struck these Injuns very deep."

Weatherby nodded sadly. "I have talked to the Methodist brothers here. Brother Perkins is discouraged."

"Can't say I blame him. Ain't you?"

"I do the Lord's work. I thank Him for it."

"And so you're stayin'?"

"For the present." Weatherby looked up from the ground he had been studying. "Brother Summers?"

d.i.c.k waited for what came next.

"You have seen all along that I had the bread of the body."

"That's all right."

"I wish I could give you the bread of the spirit."

d.i.c.k held out his hand. Evans saw friendliness in his face, a liking for this man so different from himself, and at the same time the hint of ticklement. "I'll look you up if I get hungry," he said.

With all the goodbyes spoken, the little fleet had cut loose, one boat for the Evanses, one for the Byrds, one for the Fairmans. They were odd but slick contraptions, cabined by the wagon boxes, light-riding on the underneath canoes, pushed by sc.r.a.ps of sail when the wind was right, urged on by makeshift sweeps when it was not. They sailed on a river of little current, among tall stumps sheared off as if by giants, through mountains crowding high. Evans saw pine trees growing great and felt the sea wind in his face and told himself that here was Oregon. Here at last it came, strange to him yet and awesome, but dear for all of that.

Of those who stayed behind him at the Dalles, some, like Mack, would try their wagons overland. Some, like Patch, would wait their turns at hired boats. Daugherty had started working on a raft.

Evans had said goodbye to all of them and felt no wrench in saying it, for he would see them later. It was the goodbye coming up that bothered him, the goodbye that would come up unless a final talk would stop it. He'd argued Oregon with d.i.c.k. He'd told him he'd best come and settle like the rest. d.i.c.k had only smiled or said small things that added up to no. And now they didn't need him. Now his work was done and more than done. He'd just as good as said he'd leave them here.

Evans got up, uneasy with the sense of loss, and pocketed his pipe and went to help set the canoes in the water and fix the boards across. The Indians had straggled away, bought off with fishhooks or tobacco, he imagined. The women were doing around the fire that Byrd had built. They'd have just one or maybe two fires tonight. No need of more. Two of Byrd's young ones had climbed a tree. Judith Fairman was watching out for Bethany.

They had red meat this night -a deer that Summers had hunted the day before, saying salmon gagged him- and with it bread without b.u.t.ter and coffee without sugar or cream.

The night drew on softly, hazed a little from the sea, filled with the steady whispering of water. Now that the trip was almost done no one seemed to have very much to say. Even the children were quieter than usual and not balky about going to bed. Mercy and Brownie sat off a little from the rest, in some new-won closeness that Evans thought was good. He was silent himself, with only half his mind upon the here and now. The other half was hunting arguments to use on d.i.c.k.

He waited until d.i.c.k got up, then trailed off after him. "d.i.c.k!"

"What's up, hoss?"

"Nice night, ain't it?"

"If you like sea country."

"What's wrong with the sea?"

"Nothin'. I just like my country high."

"You'll git used to it here. You'll come to like it."

"Not me."

"You'll give it a try, though, d.i.c.k?"

"I reckon not."

"What you aim to do?"

"Hit back."

"To Independence?"

"Not that, Lije."

"When?"

"Tomorrow's as good a time as any."

"How you goin' to hit back with no horse or anything?"

"I got my rifle and flint and steel. I'll pick up a horse somewheres."

"d.a.m.n it, d.i.c.k, I wish you wasn't that way! A man can't just traipse on forever."

d.i.c.k took a minute answering, and when the words came they seemed to Evans not an answer but a fling at some thought d.i.c.k held in a far corner of his mind. "After a while he meets the ocean, Lije."

"Why don't you come with us, sure enough?"

"It ain't a thing for me, Lije."

"There's free land for you like everybody else." Evans waited, and then added what he knew. "You could be an important man in Oregon." In the half-darkness he thought he saw a little smile twist Summers' mouth.