The Way West Part 6

Evans shook his head. "Tadlock filled in, and Mack a little, so they wouldn't have to turn back. Didn't have any money, either, d.i.c.k. Couldn't pay the tax. That'll cost you, I reckon."

"It don't matter. What for did Mack and Tadlock help out?" Evans shrugged. "McBee, I bet he's a sloper, and we got a rule against slopers. Bet he owes more'n you could count."

"No way of findin' out, short of sending a man to Ohio."

"No. He says he's all clear."

"Smart-lookin' girl he's got."

"Too d.a.m.n smart."

"Botherin' you?"

"Naw. Women don't bother me."

The rifle sounded again, and now they could see McBee, the smoking gun in his hand and out from him, away from camp, a black dog broken in the back. The dog began to howl, the hgh, steady howl of deadly hurt. He scrambled in the gra.s.s, trying to get up, trying to ease himself, while the howl thinned high like a whistle. McBee strode toward the dog, picking up a club as he went, and the dog turned, as if expecting help, and hot the b.u.t.t of the club on his skull. A boy ran out, crying, and a woman after him. The woman cried out at McBee while the boy bent over his dog, and McBee said something and turned away, toward Evans and Summers, as if his business was too important for him to listen.

Rock rose on his forelegs. "Lie down, boy!"

McBee stopped to charge his rifle and saw them and walked over, his face solemn as an owl in its beard. "You got to get rid of that there dog," he said to Evans, "else I'll have to shoot 'im."

"You ain't goin' to shoot my dog, McBee."

"It's rules."

"Rules be d.a.m.ned!"

"I'm app'inted to carry 'em out. Get shet of the dog or I'll have to kill 'im."

Evans was a slow man to act. He hadn't angered often enough, Summers thought, to know how to answer to anger. He hunted around for words. "You kill my dog, McBee, and you'll pay for it."

McBee spit in the gra.s.s. "There ain't any gettin' around the rules."

"I'll draw off from this here company and take them that have dogs with me. Tell Tadlock that."

Give some men a rifle and a piece of power, Summers thought, and they got too studdish to put up with. "Tell him I told you. Not Rock."

"I got a job to do."

Evans stood big beside McBee, though he let himself sag a little, as if ashamed he had more height and heft. An oversized and troubled man, who feared he might do wrong.

"Lije," Summers asked, "whyn't you cut him down to size?"

"I ought to, I guess."

What Evans didn't understand was that McBee might be dangerous now he had a rifle in his hand and importance in his chest.

Summers got off the ground. "I swear, McBee," he said, "I don't know why someone ain't kilt you!"

McBee hitched his rifle up, his eyes rounder than before. "It's rules. 'Y G.o.d, I got my duty to do."

"Tell Tadlock," Evans said.

Summers caught a twitch in McBee's face. He saw the muzzle of the rifle, not quite pointed at him, begin to make a little nervous circle. Scared, McBee was, but trapped in his pride, the mind whirling and the finger shaky on the trigger.

Summers made his voice soft. "Lookit, now, McBee," he said. "We ain't huntin' trouble." He pointed to Rock. "Look at this old dog-"

It was easy. As McBee's gaze turned, Summers jumped ahead and made a sweep with his hand and wrenched the rifle away. McBee half fell, trying to hold on to it, and then got his feet under him and backed up a step. Summers could see the inside of his mouth through the mat of whiskers.

"You ain't gonna get away with this!" McBee's voice came out high and womanish.

"Like Evans said, you go tell Tadlock."

"I'll tell him all right." McBee shuffled off, toward the center of the camp, looking back at them once over his shoulder. "We'll have to watch him now," Evans said. "Yep."

"There wasn't any reason for you to bust in," Evans said. "would've made out -but not so fast."

"Sure. I just acted sudden. Rememberin' that black dog got me riled, I reckon."

Evans fell silent, and Summers thought he didn't want to talk more about McBee, maybe figuring he had made a poor out of it. To change the subject Summers said, "What about old Ephesians?"

"Who?" "Weatherby."

"What about him?"

"He make out all right, with his plunder?"

Evans shook his big head. "He ain't got nothin', d.i.c.k. Couple of poor horses and maybe a thunder-mug o' meal. I got to report him."

"You talk to him?"

"Said he'd go it alone if he couldn't trail along. Just him and G.o.d. I got to report."

"Leave McBee time to talk to Tadlock." Summers let his eyes travel over the spread-out camp. He saw a group of men and McBee making for it.

"All right." Evans looked at the sun. "Time enough, I guess." They smoked a pipe and then got up and started for the group.

"Becky says come take supper with us," Evans told Summers.

"I can make out."

"Not accordin' to Becky. She says you won't get the proper victuals. Says you're to come now and regular, from here on."

"That's good of her, you and her both. I'll see there's meat in the pot."

"Shot with McBee's gun?" Evans grinned, looking down at the two rifles Summers carried.

"That preacher," Summers said while he thought back, "d.a.m.n if he would take money for Mattie's funerall"

"Here, Rock! I thought he always had his hat out."

"He preached his head off and wouldn't take pay. Said preachin' was one thing and funeralizin' another."

"I be d.a.m.ned!"

They walked past the cook fires, among the tents, between the Wagons, Evans being careful to see his dog followed at his heels. Later, camp would be pitched according to plan, with one wagon close behind another and joined to it with ox chains and the whole of them forming a circle so people could fort up in case of Indians; but now all was sprawled out every which way.

Tadlock was holding court, you might say, calling on the inspectors for reports and nodding or frowning to them and marking on a piece of paper as he heard the figures. Fairman and Mack were with him, and other men had gathered around -Brother Weatherby, Brewer, Higgins, and some whose names Summers was just learning -Gorham, Carpenter, Byrd, Daugherty, Patch, Holdridge, Martin. They were a good-enough looking lot, saving one or two like McBee. Summers stepped over to McBee and handed him his rifle and stepped back.

The sun had grown to a red ball in the sky-line haze. With its setting a wind came out of the west, fanning the fires that Summers saw as he looked around and making the women circle about to get out of the smoke. He could hear the first sounds of bugs, not the steady chirp and whir of crickets and katydids and gra.s.shoppers that would come later, but just now and then the buzz of a new pair of wings. The tree frogs, though; sang a steady song, sounding thin and far off, and the whippoorwill called again.

Tadlock looked up from his paper and saw Evans and Summers and said, "I'm glad you came. We didn't mean to have trouble over the dogs."

Summers said, "Wasn't no real trouble."

"With the consent of everyone here, I'm going to suspend the rule against dogs until we can have another general meeting, along the trail some place. Is that satisfactory?"

"It will be," Evans answered, "if you change the rule."

"That will be up to the company." Tadlock paused a minute. "But I think we will. No one wants the train to split up over such a little matter."

The men were nodding or agreeing with words to what Tadlock said.

McBee spoke loud, "That'ud suit me. I don't prize the job nohow."

What Tadlock was saying, Summers thought, was that dogs would be allowed after all. It wasn't likely the subject ever would come up again.

Tadlock said to Evans, "Have you finished your inspection?"

"All done."

"Well?"

"Everything's all right, I reckon. I got the figures. Except well-it's this way, Brother Weatherby's short. Beggin' your pardon, Brother Weatherby, but you know you're way short."

Weatherby turned his seamed face to Tadlock. Tadlock asked, "That right, Weatherby?"

"Materially, yes."

"You know the rules."

"I'm going, short or not, with you or alone."

"I wouldn't be stiff-necked."

"The Lord will provide."

Fairman's man, Hig, interrupted. "While you're gettin' stuff from Him, get me a new pair of pants, will you?" He hitched the worn pair he wore.

Tadlock frowned, as if this was no time for fun. "It's all right to put your trust in the Lord, but trust alone won't pa.s.s, not with this company." Tadlock's voice was sharp, as if he was tired of figures and reports and wanted to get the ch.o.r.e finished and be on the way and no arguments about it.

Weatherby's faded eyes argued with Tadlock's black ones. At last he said, "I haven't lived to my sixty-fourth year without learning that the Lord will provide."

The other men were quiet. Summers thought most of them felt kindly toward the preacher but knew at the same time how foolish was his talk.

"Don't you see, Brother Weatherby-" Tadlock spoke now as if to a child, trying to show him reason-"we can't allow you to take that chance, for your sake or for ours? I believe in the Lord, too, but I don't believe He approves of recklessness. He wants men to help themselves."

The men nodded to this, they spit and nodded and let their glances run from Weatherby to Tadlock and back.

"I wouldn't be any kind of captain," Tadlock went on, "if permitted you to go. I would just be inviting trouble."

Weatherby's gaze still was steady on Tadlock's face. "The Lord Jesus said, 'O ye of little faith.' "

The edge came back into Tadlock's words. "It isn't a matter of faith. It's a matter of common sense."

"I'll be running the risk, not you."

"We can't travel every man for himself. We couldn't let you starve. We'd have to divide, no matter how slender our stores.

And if you got weak or sick, we couldn't desert you." Tadlock held up, giving time for words to form in his mind. "We'd have to be our brother's keeper."

Weatherby said, "I'm going."

"G.o.ddam it. Not with us. You won't listen to reason, so I'll just have to tell you. Not with us. You understand!"

Weatherby looked around, searching the faces of the other men, his own troubled but hard with purpose, the shadow of Tadlock's G.o.ddam on it. As if he had got his answer, he bowed his head and said quietly, "I feel the Lord is calling me. I'll go alone."

"We can't keep you from doing that. But, understand, we refuse to take any responsibility."

Off in the shadow of the woods the whippoorwill cried. Summers heard himself saying, "Hold on, Tadlock! I'll take him on."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll see he's all right. You ne'en to worry."

Tadlock looked at Evans. "You're the inspector for that section. Has Summers enough for two?"

"If d.i.c.k says he'll take him, he'll take him, and no skin off anybody's tail."

"That wasn't the question."

"I said I'd take him on," Summers broke in. "Ain't that enough?"

"It's enough for me," Fairman said.

Weatherby turned on Summers, the trouble on his face gone, as if he had just seen the hand of the Lord. "G.o.d bless you, Brother Summers." His voice rose. "I said the Lord would provide."

Hig was grinning his close-lipped grin. "Where's my pants?"