The Way West Part 5

Her voice was soft. "You're the biggest fool, Lije."

He knew what she meant. She meant it still struck her queer that he should bow his neck for Oregon and feel better all the time for doing it. Well, it was queer. An old plug didn't often prance.

She said, "h.e.l.lo, there, d.i.c.k," and Evans saw that d.i.c.k Summers was strolling up. In the old buckskin breeches and redchecked shirt he had put on, d.i.c.k was something. Tall, silverhaired, strong-looking in arm and leg and body, he was a man to catch the eye, different from anyone Evans knew, different from those who traveled the Santa Fe trail, from the Mexicans who dressed to show off. There wasn't any show-off in d.i.c.k. He was just himself.

"I'd think you'd melt to a grease spot," Rebecca said, looking at the buckskins.

"I reckon I got ahead of myself, sure enough."

She said, "It's the sun got ahead of itself, d.i.c.k."

"h.e.l.l of a mess," Evans put in, making a wide sweep of his hand, to the wagons, tents, people, talk, horses, oxen, everything. "Some'll be turnin' back."

Summers put tobacco in his pipe. "It'll straighten out, likely."

"Tadlock's the big toad," Evans said.

"Looks so. Got such a start n.o.body else'll stand."

"Maybe he'll make a good-enough captain?"

Summers nodded as if he didn't quite agree. "Have to keep a tight line on him." He pulled on his pipe while his keen gray eyes went over the layout.

"Wants to kill all the dogs, down to my old Rock." Summers went on smoking.

"That's what I hear on the quiet, anyhow. He won't come out for it open, I don't guess. Might cost him votes." Evans put his words so as to be questions. "They say dogs can't make it anyhow? Say they'd give us away to the Injuns?"

Summers looked at Rebecca, the faint tracks of a smile on his face. "They make good meat if food runs out."

"Ah-h!"

"The Sioux eat pup, and I've chewed a few. Taste like hog meat."

"Sure enough, d.i.c.k," Evans asked, "you think we ought to kill the dogs?"

"Be h.e.l.l to pay."

"I know, but you think we ought?"

"Dog can go where a cow can."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"And they won't give us away any more'n they'll put us on guard." Summers was silent for a minute. "Mighty hard thing to sneak into an Injun camp, on account of the dogs."

"Tadlock wouldn't know about that. We got to ejicate him." Evans got out his own pipe. He was filling it when the horn sounded high and strong above the clatter, calling the men to the election.

Evans and Summers walked toward the center of the camp, where the men were gathering. On the way, Evans saw the file of dogs again. A little boy, cotton-topped and thin, was following them. Evans heard a voice call, "Toddie! Come here, Tod." The voice belonged to Mrs. Fairman, a long-legged, well-turned girl with light hair and eyes as pale as pond water. She walked out and got the boy by the hand.

Nearly everybody in camp collected for the election, the men standing in front, chewing and spitting, and the women behind and the young ones open-eared on the fringes. Because he had been chosen temporary captain -or commandant captain, he called it- Tadlock brought the meeting to order. He stepped up on a wooden bucket and beat a spoon against a tin plate to gett silence. When the talk had toned down some, he pitched into his speech, standing square on the bucket. Everything about him was square, Evans thought -square face, square body, square way of standing. Evans wondered if he was square inside, too, while he admitted to himself that Tadlock made a figure, the teeth showing white, the face tanned on the cheekbones and blue-black at the jaw with the roots of beard, the eyes bold, the arms moving easy. He might be an all-right man. It bothered Evans to think maybe he wasn't. He didn't like to think bad of folks.

Tadlock was saying, "Our company, I have reason to believe, will be the first out anywhere. The St. Joe trains, we hear, won't roll for several days. So it appears we'll be the trail blazers -and also escape the dust of the desert, find gra.s.s for our animals, and arrive first at the Willamette."

Some of the men yelled at his words, and he closed his mouth, giving them time for their hurrahs. When they were finished, someone kept shouting, "Chairman! Mr. Chairman!"

It was Brother Weatherby, crowding through toward the bucket. The old preacher had put on his rusty coat, though he must have been hot in it. The cracked voice rose: "We had no prayer. We didn't open with prayer."

Back of Weatherby someone said, "Sit down! Christ sake!" and another voice answered, "I kin remember my pap braggin' Sunday'd never cross the Mississippi." Other men were muttering or just grinning, but the women, Evans noticed when he looked around, mostly were nodding their heads, thinking Weatherby was right.

Tadlock wasn't fazed at all. He said, "I'm sorry, Brother Weatherby. It was an oversight. Will you lead us in prayer?" He bent his head.

Weatherby bent his head, too, and by and by raised his arms. He asked G.o.d to be merciful to poor sinners. He said they knew the way was long and dangerous, but they put their trust in Him. . . . We pray Thee to protect us against the elements and against the heathen and the wild beasts, and against sickness and accidents, and to give us strength for the journey and to make our hearts stout, whatever may come to pa.s.s. ... And make us grateful, too, 0 Lord, for all Thy blessings and lead us to know Thy glory and make the sinner to repent and the swearer to see his wickedness and the man and woman in adultery to understand their sin and do it no more. ... We pray Thee to breathe the influence of Thy spirit on us and make us all Christians. . . . G.o.d bless the little children whom Jesus said let come unto Him. . . . And may the storm hold back its fury as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and may the earth give up its abundance. . . . Make us to fear Thee and to sing Thy eternal praise. . . . Amen. Amen.

What with one thing and another, Weatherby took a long time talking to G.o.d, time enough for an ant to crawl from the toe of d.i.c.k Summers' moccasin a distance of two ax handles, not counting the backings up and the side trips along spears of gra.s.s. Evans sneaked a look at Summers while the preaching was going on and saw his head hardly bowed and his eyes empty with distance. He wondered whether Summers believed in G.o.d at all. Not that it made any difference. Any G.o.d worth praying to would know d.i.c.k Summers for a good man, even if he didn't bow and sc.r.a.pe and make little of himself and beg for blessings regardless. Evans didn't guess Summers ever would beg for anything, not even from G.o.d.

When Weatherby was through, Tadlock said, "We have rules to adopt and a permanent organization to set up."

Another voice was yelling at him. Tadlock tried to drown it out and then to hush it with his hand, but it kept piping up. Finally Tadlock asked, "What is it, Turley?"

Evans moved around so as to see Turley. Turley had joined the company late, from the hill and pine country of the Meramec. The words came high-pitched from his thin mouth. "'Pears to me the first thing is to think again, do we want to go on or wait for some that ain't quite ready? This here's a small train. Ain't enough growed men in it, to my way o' thinkin'. Where we be, meetin' the p.a.w.nees or Sioux? There's a pa.s.sel of people comin', like we all know, hunderds of 'em. Doc Welch of Indiany said we could j'in him. Told me so hisself. I say let's wait. Be a hunderd wagons along directly."

Hoots and hollers arose all around, more hoots than hollers.

"Quiet! Orderl" Tadlock roared, beating on the plate. His voice sharpened as the noise died. "This has all been thrashed out. Anyone who joined this company knew we planned to start early to get there first. Our company's big enough. Twentytwo wagons, nearly thirty armed men." His arm came out, pointing. "Ask d.i.c.k Summers there. He knows. He'll tell you a company can be too big, so big that it's slow and hard to manage." He looked at Turley. "Anyone who's afraid can wait. We're going on. That's settled."

Turley shuffled while more voices sounded out. Evans imagined it was Mrs. Turley who had egged him on. Tadlock was all business. "Is the committee ready to report?" he asked as if he didn't know.

Mack answered, "It is," and stepped forward with the wrinkles of thinking on his face and said, "Your committee recommends that Irvine Tadlock be elected captain and Charles Fairman lieutenant, and Henry Shields captain of the livestock guard, each to serve to the end of the trail."

An Illinois German named Brewer made a motion to accept the report, and Hank McBee, speaking loud out of his mangy beard, seconded the motion.

Tadlock made as if to step down from the bucket, saying, "Will someone preside? It isn't right for me to," but the voices went up in yells of "Yes" and "Keep the stump" and "Whoa, there," and Tadlock put his foot back on the bucket and asked, "Well, if it's unanimous?" He got more yells for an answer.

"Thank you. Thank you all. I'll do my very best. Is there a further report then?"

There was. Mack read it off. Evans, listening with just half his mind, heard it in s.n.a.t.c.hes. . . . Recommend the train be called the On-to-Oregon Outfit. . . . Recommend a governing council of six be elected.... Recommend tax to pay expenses, including two hundred dollars for the pilot. . . . Recommend no ardent spirits be taken, except for medical purposes. ... Require wagons be capable of carrying a quarter more than their load, teams of drawing a quarter more. . . . Death for murder. . . . Thirty-nine lashes for three days for rape. ... Thirty-nine lashes on the bare back for adultery and fornication (big-sounding words for something simple). . . . Council to fix penalty for indecent language. . . . Recommend train start at seven o'clock every morning and travel from ten to fifteen miles every day. . . .

A long list, that made Summers snort once. Evans' attention strayed off, to Mack, to Fairman, to McBee, to Brewer, and off to one side, beyond the men, to the girl, Mercy McBee, who wore a red poke bonnet and stood, her eyes fluid above the pale planes of her cheeks, like a young doe that had heard a noise. Sadness in the face, or maybe only emptiness. A look to squeeze a man inside. In animals you knew what you'd get, crossing scrubs. Question was, did the scrubs cross or a good stud get in the pasture? More likely she was scrub, too, underneath. Thirtynine lashes for fornication. That was a warning, aimed mostly by the married men at the single ones who'd been engaged to help out on the trip.

Brother Weatherby was wanting to add to the list, asking that the company go "on the moral code written by G.o.d in the breast of every man."

A little smile was on Tadlock's face. He knew better than to laugh, but he knew to smile, too, letting on it was best, if a little overdone, to give the preacher man some rope.

The man back of Evans muttered, "Make the old fool shut up. Wants to make the rules, and him without a pot to p.i.s.s in."

Mack read some more. . . . Require provisions in the following amounts . . . two hundred pounds of flour per person, except for infants . . . seventy-five pounds of meal ... fifty pounds of bacon. . . . Name three inspectors, to look over wagons and supplies. ... Move report be adopted.... Aye....

The voice at Evans' back said, "That'll fix the preacher."

It occurred to Evans that the rules didn't go far enough yet. Nothing had been said about cattle and how many head to a driver. Some men, like Tadlock himself, had a big bunch of those cattle and some had no more than their teams and a milk cow or two. It wasn't fair, expecting each man to take turn about when some had more than others. He had a notion to speak up, when Tadlock said, "Many things will have to be worked out as we go along. If we have trouble, the council can settle it. The thing now is immediate organization, so that we can make a start."

The words were fair, and Evans found himself feeling a little guilty. There wasn't any cause to doubt Tadlock, once you got used to his way. He was a man who liked to take things inhand -and there wasn't anything wrong with that. Like Tadlock had told Summers the night before the funeral, someone had to take responsibility. Tadlock was all right, except for his fool idea about dogs. n.o.body had said anything about dogs yet.

"Any more business?"

It came then. McBee moved that the dogs be left behind or killed. Hearing him, seeing the words shaped by a mouth bushed around like a terrier's, Evans knew McBee had been put up to it. And he knew, too, of a sudden, that McBee always would side with the top dog. Let Tadlock be upset, and you'd find McBee honey-fuggling the upsetters.

Was there a second?

Again it was Brewer, the Illinois man, the German, who spoke. Dogs couldn't travel all dey vay to Oregon. Dogs vould be signal to Indians, yah. Second da motion.

Tongues all around were wagging. Yes. No. No. Yes. By G.o.d, I'd like to see anyone kill my dog! Reckon the fool German never heard of a watchdog. Who in h.e.l.l wants a dog?

Tadlock beat on the pan. "Let's thrash this out."

A half dozen people spoke, one after another, trying to lift their voices above the arguments that were going on all around -McBee, Fairman, Brewer again, a Yankee named Patch, Evans himself. McBee said, 'y G.o.d yes, shoot the dogs. They weren't no real good to n.o.body. Just made more mess to step in. Fairman said let each man do as he pleased, it wasn't a thing for company action.

Evans shouted, "Ask d.i.c.k Summers! Ask d.i.c.k!He knows more'n anyone."

More beating on the pan. "All right, Summers. Speak up!"

Summers seemed a little uneasy, talking to a crowd. He hitched his leather breeches. "It don't make a heap of difference. Some dogs'll get through; some maybe won't. Anyhow, a dead dog's no loss but to the man that owns him."

By grab, that was so, Evans thought. People argued a dog couldn't make the trip and everyone took that as a good reason, like they took other talk, until a man like d.i.c.k showed it didn't hold water.

Summers went on, "Dogs'll tell the camp about Injuns just as quick, and maybe quicker, than they'll give us away. Me, I don't look for Injun trouble anyhow, except for beggin' and a little stealin'. Injuns ain't likely to light into a party as big as this one, not the Injuns we'll come up against."

Tadlock ran his hand along his jaw while the talk broke out again. After a little while he tapped on the plate. "I'm thinking more just of the bother of dogs," he said. "They're a nuisance. They'll slow up the train. They'll be underfoot in the mornings, and they'll get hurt and lost and cause delay, I'm afraid. At any rate, let's vote."

You couldn't be sure, by voices, which side had won, but after Tadlock had called for a show of hands and counted them careful, he said the motion had carried. He didn't push it further, though. He didn't say who was to do the killing and when. Evans figured he would have some business with the man who came to shoot Rock. The prospect troubled him. He liked things peaceful.

While he was thinking about it, Tadlock went on with the clection of a council and the naming of inspectors. It was a little to Evans' surprise that he found himself on both lists. The crowd elected him to the council, and Tadlock named him an inspector. When he had had time to reckon, though, it was natural enough. What Tadlock aimed at was to work everyone over to his side. By one thing and another, he figured to get the most of them in the same bed with him.

Well, anyhow, the business was about done. Evans looked it ound and saw that Brownie had ridden up on his mule, and then he glanced back to the stretch of prairie where the animals grazed and saw the mules and horses hobbled or pinned out and the oxen resting safe, and he knew, as he knew all along, that Brownie could be depended on.

His gaze came back to Brownie. The boy was sitting his mule quiet, his eyes fixed, on his young face an unhidden, troubled, hankering look, as if he stood alone and saw now and for the first time all it was a man might hope for. Before he turned his head, Evans knew what Brownie saw. It was the girl, Mercy McBee, with her sad, watching face and her red poke bonnet and the two little hills of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s showing against her linseywoolsey.

For a long minute Evans stared at her, and then back at his boy. They were about of an age, the only two, as luck would have it, who looked like seventeen. The look on Brownie's face was like the look on the man Mack's, when first he'd seen the girl. It was like it, and still far different, being gentle and young and unknowing, not thinking of bed alone and maybe not at all, but of tenderness and beauty and happiness, so much of it the heart flowed over.

Evans turned away. d.a.m.ned if he wasn't building things in his mind, out of nothing, you might say, out of his own feelings of long ago. But good G.o.d! Scrub stock. Marry into scrub stock, and it was all right! Call Hank McBee pappy and Mrs. McBee ma and have 'em on your hands all your life and everything was fine. But they whipped you for fornication. Thirty-nine lashes.

Chapter Six.

d.i.c.k SUMMERS thought lazily that these were different from mountain men. These couldn't enjoy life as it rolled by; they wanted to make something out of it, as if they could take it and shape it to their way if only they worked and figured hard enough. They didn't talk beaver and whisky and squaws or let themselves soak in the weather; they talked crops and water power and business and maybe didn't even notice the sun or the pale green of new leaves except as something along the way to whatever it was they wanted to be and to have. Later they might look back, some of them might, and wonder how it happened that things had slid by them. They would remember, maybe, a morning and the camp smoke rising and the sun rolling up in the early mist and the air sharp and heady as a drink, and they would hanker back for the day and wish they had got the good out of it. But, h.e.l.l, a man looking back felt the same, regardless. There wasn't any way to whip time.

Off a piece from camp, where there wasn't so much racket, Summers sat cross-legged on the ground and fiddled in the dust with a stick. If he looked, he caught sight now and then of Evans and the other inspectors making their rounds, seeing everything was proper and according to rule. Some of the women already were getting supper. Those that didn't have stoves had made their fires too big and kept wiping smoke tears out their eyes while they tried to settle their cookalls in the flames. The heat had gone out of the sun now, and the critters had got up and were grazing on the slope. The camp was quieter, the young ones being hungry and played-out and the men busy for the morning start and the women separated at ther fires. Off toward the trees a whippoorwill cried.

Somehow the whippoorwill brought Mattie to mind, Mattie lying cold under the dirt, the last goodbye said and nothing before her but the long sleep, though Brother Weatherby thought different. In his funeral sermon Weatherby had opened the gates of heaven and got the soul inside, safe in G.o.d's love, and it was pretty to think so, seeing rest ahead and the quiet heart forever. What was it Weatherby had read? "Grace be to you, and peace, from G.o.d our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." Weatherby said the words came from Ephesians. He was a great one for Ephesians. For Mattie's sake Summers hoped Weatherby knew what he was talking about. She had a right to rest and to be shut of fevers and torments. But things dying jarred against prettiness. Things died ugly, seeping blood and matter, as gut-shot Indians died, or they shrank down to nothing but skull and ribs, as Mattie had. Let not your heart be troubled.

Summers didn't guess his heart was as troubled as some. There wasn't any bur under his tail. He was a mountain man, or he had been, and traveled with hunters who never gave thought to soil and timber and tricks to pile up money but went along day by day taking what came, each morning being good in itself, and tomorrow was time enough to think about tomorrow. That was how Summers felt yet, but the movers were different. They traveled to get some place, as they lived life. Chances were they couldn't enjoy a woman and a bed for thinking what they had to do next. They argued. Would prairie grow a crop? h.e.l.l, land that won't grow a tree won't grow nothin'. Thing to do is to make deadenin's, like always, and cut your trees and plant among the stumps. In his mind's eye Summers could see them, ahead along the Bear or the Boise, pinching the soil, smelling it, tasting it, while the young ones played around them. They were family men, settled with their women and easy with their children, the hard edges worn smooth, the wildness in them broke to harness. They looked ahead to farms and schools and government, to an ordered round of living.

Like Lije Evans, who was coming up to Summers now, his feet setting themselves sure in the dusty gra.s.s, a half-smile on his face, and Rock, his old dog, following at his heels. Like Lije talking about the country, the United States of America, spreading from one ocean to the other. The thought had grown big in Lije. No reason, he said, just to give Oregon to the British. His pappy had fought the British, while the d.a.m.n Yankees were tucking their tails and making as if to pull off from the other states, and he would fight them himself if he had to.

Not that Lije was such a fighting man, being too friendly, too self-littling, as big and powerful men sometimes were, as if feeling guilty because they had the best of it in size. What he aimed at was to get the country settled by Americans and so make it American. And not that Lije was like the others, either. He didn't fret or wish for time to pa.s.s so as to get him to a place that, after all, was just that much closer to the grave. As much as for anything, Summers imagined, as much even as for what they called patriotism, Lije was going west for the fun of it, as Summers was himself. The tameness in Lije had still proved wild enough to make him breach a fence and head for other pastures. That was the best reason of all. It was a slim chance that people would find themselves better off once they'd staked off land in Oregon.

Evans was looking at Summers' little pile of plunder. There wasn't much there, not near enough by the rules -a blanket and an old buffalo robe that covered just a teensy keg of whisky, a little bit of meal, about a shirttail full of it, and salt meat and coffee and tobacco and a kettle and a couple of knives and two tifles, his Hawken and an over-and-under double barrel with the bore big enough for bird shot. He had a little of Indian G.o.ds, too, blue and white beads and fishhooks and tobacco and a roll of scarlet strouding and some vermilion. All of his plunder put together wasn't more than a couple of pack horses could carry easy. Even so, it was more than he needed. He could travel from h.e.l.l to breakfast with no more than a gun and a horse, and would get there in time for dinner without the horse.

"It ain't much, Lije," he said.

"No?"

''Don't need much."

"Not you, I reckon."

Never saw folks with so much plunder. It ain't the way we used to travel."

"Things are different."

"I traveled many a mile, and nothin' to eat except what powder and ball would catch."

Summers could see that Evans was bothered a little underneath, caught between friendliness and plain sense on one side and the rules he was supposed to see to on the other. That was a thing Summers liked about Evans -what he felt was worth doing he wanted to do right. He was a man to tie to. This was a fool thing now, though.

Evans lifted the robe, bringing the keg of whisky to sight. Summers said, "Rules are all right, only I don't guess they fit me. Can't you just forget me, Lije?"

Evans nodded, his mind of a sudden made up, and gave Summers a slow grin. "I ain't going to torment myself about you, d.i.c.k. You're plumb growed up. There's a sight of vinegar in that there keg, though. Here, Rock, d.a.m.n you. Don't sneak off."

"I'm a vinegar man. Might be you'll be needing some."

"Might be. Good vinegar?"

"Better'n apple. I always say corn's better'n apple."

A rifle shot sounded from the other side of the camp, where they couldn't see.

Evans looked down at Rock. "It's that d.a.m.n McBee startin' out, likely," he said. "He's the dog killer. Feels big about it."

"What you aim to do?"

"All I know is, he ain't goin' to shoot Rock. Lie down, boy!" He rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. "Them McBees didn't have nigh enough food and such."

"Then McBee ain't a proper one of the party."