Fair Land, Fair Land (21 page)

They looked surprised. Dan asked, "What's your
hurry?"

"
No hurry. It's just that time slips up on a
man."

"
You going to ride in the dark?" Walt
asked.

"
Moon's comin' up." He walked to his horse,
untied it, tightened the cinch and got on.."Bye, men."

The moon had edged up, big as a platter, red as war
paint, before he had gone far. He hummed to while away time and
forget the miles ahead.

Step and step and step, old hoss,
We
got a ways to go.
Grass and grass for you,
old hoss,
We got a ways to go.
Little
Wing for me, old hoss,
We got a ways to go.
Step and —

He had been measuring his time to the pace of the
horse. Now it struck him that he was making up words to a nowadays
song.
It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer
. No special
quarrel there. It stood to reason that everybody was in need of
prayer, if so be it there were answers.

When the night was half gone, he watered the horse
and let it graze for an hour. Then he swung back in the saddle. He
rode out the night and the next day and came to camp along about
sunset. Kettles were boiling. Little Wing ran out to welcome him. She
said, looking at him, "You tired. You so tired. I take your
horse." He let her, he was fagged, fagged and hungry, too.

They shared the fire and the food with Summers and
his three. He talked talk for talk's sake until the meal was eaten
and the women started cleaning up. He drew Summers aside then. They
sat where the women wouldn't hear them.

"
They found gold in Californy, Dick, a heap of
it so I heerd, and a passel of people are movin' that way."

"
Let 'em move. Let 'em stay. It don't hurt us."

"
I d0n't reckon so unless they branch out. All
kinds of people on the move. All kinds."

"
Gold would draw "em."

"
I reckon there won't be much hide-huntin' for a
while."

"
So?" Summers' keen gray eyes fastened on
him. A man could feel them in the dusk. "What you tryin' to tell
me, Hig?"

"
Nothin' much." But Higgins knew it was no
use. Trying to fool Summers, trying to lead him on by talking
roundabout, was no use. He asked, "Anything eatin' on you,
anything like before?"

"
That's the drift, huh? I been tryin' to forget
it. Co on. Somethin's eatin' on you."

"
Secrets got a place in the world, I reckon."

"
Depends."

"
You won't do nothin' rash. Promise me that."

"Out with it, damn it. You know I ain't a
headlong man."

"
I located Boone Caudill, him you wanted to
see."

"
Where at?" Summers' voice had a snap in
it.

"
Him and three men are takin' the shortcut,
bound for California."

"
There now?"

"
Be there in three or four days. Four most
likely. But I used up a night and a day gettin' back."

Summers was silent for a long minute. Then he said,
"It was meant all along. It was like it was writ in some book."

"
What?"

"That him and me would meet up. I gave up
lookin' for him. Put him almost out of my head. It ain't no accident,
Hig. It's on purpose."

"
Whose?"

"
How do I know? It's just there."

"
Shit. Be sensible. It's make-believe."

"
Nope, Hig. Not when you hear the all of it.
Comin' away from Oregon, before I teamed up with you, a man name of
Birdwhistle sat by my fire. He had trapped and hunted with Caudill.
No mistakin' that. Call our meetin' just a stray happenin' if you
want to. But then I come onto Teal Eye. She was Caudill's woman onct
and had the boy by him. Then, like you know, there was the talk at
Fort Benton. Then come a blank, but now you're tellin' me Caudill's
comin' our way, just when I was thinkin' no use dwel1in' on him. So
it ain't an accident. Some things, seems like, was just meant to be,
and no man can whoa 'em."

"
You aim to see him, then?"

"
Got to." Summers rose. "Sunup."

26

SUMMERS set out at the first streaks of dawn,
carrying what he might need in his saddle bags. His Hawken he held
crosswise before him. He had some powder and ball. He always had
that.

In his ears was Teal Eye's voice, speaking last night
after he'd told her about Caudill. She had grasped his arm hard and
said, "He kill you. He kill you."

"
It ain't a killin' matter, little duck,"
he told her. "And it ain't so much I want to rub his nose in
what he done. I just aim to set things straight. I been named to do
it."

She shook him and cried out, "You have to, you
kill him then. You are my man. Kill him."

"
Like I said, it ain't a killin' matter. I talk
straight, I leave."

But he wondered now how much truth he had told her.
There was no counting on Caudill to take things mild. He was a
flare-up man, or had been in the old days. In the old days, and
Caudill and Jim Deakins on board the keelboat, both untried pups, and
he had taken to them, no telling why, and tried to teach them what he
knew. Later he had trapped with them and seen danger and gone with
them to rendezvous, where Caudill with his strength had killed a man
over nothing much. Caudill, brave and violent both, touchy as a
sleeping dog, and Jim Deakins, a sunny boy who used his head, as
unlike Caudill as a man could think. But seasons softened old hard
edges, and the days remembered swam before him, days of danger, fun
and fight, all floating in a dream.

It struck him that he had become like Caudill in one
way. He didn't like people messing around. He wanted what was leaving
him, a world open and free, and his foot the first foot ever planted
on a game trail, the first dipped in mountain water. A man walked
with God then, or could think he did. There was a difference, though.
Caudill hated people, hated settlements and laws. There was no flex
in him. A man could like people but dislike crowds. He could like
people but swear at what they did. He could accept law if not cotton
to it. That, he thought, was him, Dick Summers, who felt bad at what
was bound to happen and was happening to his world.

When night fell, he watered his horse and staked it
out and, out of habit, built a small fire. A fire was good for more
than heat and kettle. Sleep w0uldn't be easy, not this night.

He ate and lit his pipe and saw the moon lifting and
heard the footsteps of a horse. "Damn you, Hig," he said
without turning, "I asked you to stay put. I told you never
mind."

"
Expectin' me, huh?"

"
Expectin' but hopin' not." Higgins had
reined in his horse. Its eyes caught a flicker from the fire. "Wisht
you would foller orders."

"Orders? You know, I come twenty-one quite a
while back, and it's a free country, I been told. There's a bottle I
been savin'. Might cure you of the sours. Got two grouse, too. Hold
on while I mind my horse."

When he returned, he carried a bottle and two plucked
grouse and said, "It ain't a jug but it's full. Might I please
sit by the fire and offer you a drink?"

"You damn fool."

"
You sure it's me?"

They drank and listened to the silence, broken only
by moving water and a far-off coyote cry.

Into the silence Higgins said, "He's got men
with him. Didn't seem a good fix, you against the four of them."

"
Like I told Teal Eye, it won't come to that. I
aim to tell him straight. It ain't right, Hig, for a man to carry
wrong notions and maybe use them hurtful. Once he knows, he might
feel sorry."

"
That's your idea, to make him sorry?"

"
Part of it, I reckon. A man who can't say he's
sorry ain't fit company for anyone. But that's a side trail."

"
What's really wormin' at you is Deakins got
rubbed out and no good reason for it. You can't change that."

"
I don't know what I can do, but I got to do
it."

"
You're a mule-minded man, Dick."

"
Not my reputation."

"
You're winnin' it."

For a while they sat quiet. Summers looked from the
fire to the rising moon. The creek and the shore were silver, and
shadows lay among the trees. Summers reached for a twig to light his
pipe with. He pulled and said, "I"d like to set things
straight."

"You and God, only God ain't so damn
persnickety."

"
I wouldn't be goin' except things came and came
again. Somethin' out of sight and mind, some push I don't know the
name of or the why for. Call it some big medicine, like the Indians.
It keeps movin' me along. I speak out, then rest easy."

"
If you get the chance."

"
You can't say I'm wrong."

"
I could but what's the use? Fate is what you're
speakin' of, I reckon. I learned that word from a preacher, sayin'
the fate of sinners was to go to hell."

"
Fate it is, then. Please to pass the bottle."

They slept and woke up early and ate toasted grouse
for breakfast and rode on. They reached the end of the cutoff before
dark. Nothing moved along that trail, no horses, men or prairie
schooners. There were hoof prints on the shore and wagon tracks up
higher, and the char of dead fires.

"
Too late, you reckon?" Summers asked.

"Them wagon tracks was here before. I figure
we're on time."

Higgins went to picket the horses and came back
saying, "No fool hens for our supper."

They built a fire and had a drink and ate jerky. Then
they slept.

Not until the sun was high was there movement on the
cut-off. Then three men and a pack train came angling down the slope.
The horses whinnied and began lunging at the smell of water. The pack
train broke loose and came on, followed by the riders. The horses
plunged their noses in the river. The men fell from their saddles and
bellied down.

Summers yelled out, "Easy on the water! Small
doses else you'll puke."

One man lifted up, his chin dribbling. "Christ,
it's good."

"
A little at a time."

The man got to his feet and shook the others, saying,
"Stop it now. You know better."

The other two men drew back from the shore. One of
them said, "Lucky to be alive." His eyes went to Summers.
"We started late and in the dark strayed off the trail and made
the driest damn camp ever known."

"
Moon up and all?" Summers asked, letting
his voice be dry.

"
Strangers in a strange land," the first
man said. "Easier from here on, or do you know?"

"
Better'n what you just come over," Summers
told him. "Take my word."

The men drank again. One of them belched. Another
walked out to keep the horses close. The third one said, "We're
pushin' on directly. First come, first served in California." He
said to Summers, "Could I ask what's keeping you, mister?"

"
Waitin' for friends. You pass anybody?"

"
It's way early for the most of them, and those
we saw were going Bridger way."

"
No one on the cutoff?"

"
Just one outfit. A wagon, open, and four men."

"
Might be our friends. How far behind you?"

"
The way they were going, I"d say three or
four hours."

The men got back in their saddles and reined north,
along the trail proper. They waved as they went, and Summers called,
"Good luck."

Higgins left him, and he heard two shots, and Higgins
came back with one rabbit and one grouse. They weren't much for two
hungry stomachs.

They sat through the blazing afternoon in what shade
they could find, their eyes fixed on the cutoff. Little heat waves
danced there to the sun's tune. A breeze stirred and died.

At last Summers said, "Someone's comin', Hig."

"
Wisht I had your eyes."

They waited.

A wagon came lurching down the hill, held back with
ropes that three men pulled while the fourth yanked at the team.
Summers said, "Light load, else they couldn't hold 'er. There's
Caudill."

Horses, wagon, men picked up their pace with water
just ahead. They made a line along the shore. The men got up, wiping
their mouths. From twenty feet away Summers called, "How,
Boone?"

Caudill came forward, scowling. The years had
coarsened him, and time laid on some fat, but muscles played beneath
it. The scowl disappeared. "Hang me if it ain't Dick Summers.
How?" He held out his hand. Summers let himself shake.

"
What goes with you? Where's your stick float?"
Caudill asked.

"
It's a long story."

"
Come with us, along to Californy, you and your
ganted-up friend."