Fair Land, Fair Land (9 page)

"
I figure," he said, coming back, "that
Old Ephraim would have a hard time, strippin' branches with only one
paw."

"
That damn bear ha'nts you."

Perhaps it did, Summers thought. Perhaps he was
playing the fool. But there was that other time, there were those
other times, those other Ephraims, those other nights under the moon,
and a man, looking sharp, might see the bear standing at the far edge
of light, a curious onlooker at the doings of men.

"
I want he should build up his strength,"
he told Higgins.

"
He's bound to follow the grub trail, and I
don't like the idee, him on my ass forever."

"
Now, not forever, Hig. Pret" soon, he'll
hole up for the winter, and he needs meat on his bones and food in
his belly for the long sleep. And he ain't goin' to hurt you nor me.
I'm thinkin' he knows his friends, that I am."

Higgins grunted but managed a smile before he mounted
his horse. "You're a damn notionable man. Some would say soft."

"
Some have."

"
And learned better?"

"Maybe a few."

Before too long, Summers thought, they would ride out
of the mountains, and the eye would ramble while the west wind blew
soft, and the lungs would fill with air that was better than liquor
in the belly. Yet he felt a little like holding back, like waiting,
like wanting certainty.

He straightened in the saddle, knowing that muzzling
over what might be had dulled his senses. Approaching them, a rifle
in his hand, was a man on horseback.

The man rode slow, squinting for better sight, one
hand fast on the rifle. At last he raised a hand and called out,
"How-de-do there, gents."

Summers lifted an arm and said, "How."

"
I couldn't tell was you Injuns or not,"
the man told them as he approached. "It's them ring-tailed caps.
Look like braids."

Summers sat silent. So did Higgins behind him.

The man had a red face and a belly that hated a belt.
He had gear on his saddle — a bedroll tied behind the cantle and
stuff in the saddle pockets.

"
My name's Brewer. People call me Hank,"
the man went on.

"
I'm tryin' to search out the biggest goddamn
bear a man ever see. You spot any blood on the trail?"

"
Blood?" Summers said, turning toward
Higgins. "I don't recollect any blood. How about you?"

"
Nary a drop."

"
It was like this," Brewer said. "I
was huntin' buffalo, two or three days down the line, and I seen this
here monster and fired. Hit him, too. He made off into the bushes
with a foreleg floppin'."

Summers asked, "When?"

"
Four, five days ago. I figured it best to let
him stiffen up or bleed himself weak and not tackle him
fresh-wounded. But I had a time, then, findin' enough buffalo to keep
my skinners busy. That's what held me up. Mainly, that is." The
man's smile had a hungry and remembering look. "I wasted time
yesterday tryin' to make up to a squaw. Damndest thing. There she
was, alone except for a young'n, camped in a coulee and kind of
hidden away. You know how a man gets away from women. Hard up, that"s
what I was. So I begged like and, bein' a fair man, offered a blanket
and even some money, and all the time she held an old musket pointed
straight at my gut. Crazy, I call it."

Brewer looked at Summers for approval. "But that
ain't here or there. It's the bear I"m after."

"
Judgin' by the bore of that rifle, you could
shoot a horse turd through it and not grease the barrel,"
Summers said.

Brewer patted the rifle's stock. "I had it made
to order, my order, and, by God, you shoot a critter with it any old
place and down it goes."

"
Too bad it don't shoot straight."

"Now how come you say that?"

"
It was a big target, that bear, sayin' he was
as big as you make out, but the shot got him just in the leg."

"
The bear was movin', and the size of him gave
me the fidgets. Not the fault of the rifle."

"
So you aim to finish him off?"

"Course."

"
So I can say I kilt him, the biggest grizzly
any man ever seen."

"
You could say that regardless, I'm thinkin'."

"
Sure, but no proof."

"
You'll need another horse to carry the hide."

The man looked into the distance, then back at
Summers. "I hadn't give thought to that," he said. "But
likely I could butcher his head off or hack out some teeth to back me
up."

After a silence Higgins joined the talk. "You
say huntin's poor, buffalo huntin'?"

"
Puny. Buffaloes mostly has drifted south with
the season. No big herds. With a big bunch a man can shoot ten or
maybe forty from one stand."

Summers said, "That's mighty interestin'. I
never heerd the like of it." He made his tone mild against the
dislike that was in him.

"
It takes a good eye, but about that bear. I
found blood on the trail yesterday and maybe a spot or two today."

"
If it was him for a fact," Summers said,
keeping his voice soft, "I figure he circled around you and went
on out, likely makin' for a swamp. You take a grizzly and wound him,
and if he don't charge he'll make for a swamp every time. He can cool
his hurt there and feed on cattails and such. There's cool and cure
in swamp water."

Brewer straightened in his saddle. "Maybe so,
but I figure I'll go on a piece anyhow."

Summers shook his head. "It's up to you. What
say, Hig?"

"
Every man's got his rights, right or wrong."

"
What are you sayin'?"

"
Don't mind us, mister."

"
What in hell is it?"

"
Injuns." Summers spoke to Higgins. "How
many was there, hoss?"

Higgins was quick to catch on. "Ten by my count.
Young bucks."

"
Damn Blackfeet."

"
Oh, now, Dick," Higgins put in. "They
wasn't too bad. They let us through, didn't they?"

"
On account of I know some Blackfoot talk. On
account of the tobacco they took off"n us."

"
And the jug. I was forgettin' the jug."

"
That firewater will set 'em off."

"Maybe not. What you tryin' to do? Just faze the
man?"

The man, Summers could see, looked fazed. "Me, I
wouldn't keer to meet 'em again."

"
If they're there," Brewer said, saving his
pride, "the bear won't be nowhere near. Where were they bound?"

"This way when they finish the jug."

"
I ain't a coward, but no man alone wants to
meet up with a war party. Right?"

"Right."

"
How about just trailin' along with you?"

"Three of us might set 'em off," Summers
said. "Best you go ahead. We'll laze along, kind of a rear
guard. Worst comes to worst, we got another jug."

Brewer nodded, turned his horse around and kicked it
to a brisk walk. Turning back for an instant, he called, "If you
do any good with that squaw, hump her one for me."

When he was out of earshot, Summers told Higgins,
"Our play-actin' sure shot him down." He grinned into
Higgins" grinning face.

"
Take a bow, man."

"
Take one yourself."

"No fools, no fun. That's what I say."

"
What I say is, let's find a nice place to
camp."
 
 

12

SUMMERS was in no hurry. They had made it over the
Bitter Roots and over the Rockies, and a day or two more would see
them out on the plains. He stretched in his bed, hearing Higgins
fussing around camp. It was good just to lie thinking, to hope to see
the trapping grounds again and the clean streams that joined the
Missouri, to see space without limit or people to claim it and dwarf
it.

Like he told Hig, it wasn't that he disliked people.
Taken singly or in limited bunches, they were all right. He wasn't by
nature like some he could name, men who distrusted strangers and
hated settlements, who shied away from all law, who took up with
squaws and abused and deserted them and went on, ready with knife or
gun at the hint of an insult. Yet he wondered.

No. He was on the wrong trail. It wasn't crowds so
much that disturbed him. It was what crowds meant, what settlement
meant.

For now he just rested, and a small fear was in him,
the fear of what he might find. Things changed, himself included.
Would the plains look as they once had? Seeing, would his chest swell
again? Memories could play a man false. Could he see through the eyes
that were young once?

Well, enjoy the now time. It wouldn't come again,
though likely he would wish it to. Think of Higgins and his fiddle
and the song he'd made up on the trail. He heard it again, heard the
music of the fiddle and Higgins' clear voice, sometimes singing,
sometimes just reciting to the bare touch of the strings. He had
asked Higgins to run through it again, so's he'd remember. He heard
it now, tone by tone, word by word, and saw Higgins, sawing and
singing in the light of the campfire.

I met up with the Bitter Root
On
a warm and sunny day.
It met me with a
friendly hand
And said, "Please,
stranger, stay."

Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?

Then came another pretty place.
Clark's Fork it was by name.
I
said, "I'm pleased to meet you."
It
said, "To you the same."

Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?

My pardner says keep goin'
Beyond
the mountain range.
"
No tellin' what
we'll find there,
But it will be a change."

Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?

My pardner says, "Make tracks, hoss.
From country that's too mild.
It'll
draw the white man sure, hoss.
He'll have it
quick with child."

Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?

Now I'll tell you why and which,
And
there we'll let it be.
I'm pardnered with a
son of a bitch
Who has the itch,
The
self-same itch as me.

** *

Summers laid another chunk of meat on the trail.
There was enough left for supper and breakfast. Next day he'd shoot
more for the pot. The way was mostly downhill now, falling away
through the mountains to open country. The sun was halfway down from
its high point when Higgins called ahead. "I got a feelin' we're
bein' follered. I got a hunch, Dick."

"Likely so," Summers answered, speaking
what he thought was maybe true.

"
And here I am at the tail of the string. Bait,
that's what I am."

"
Act pretty, then. Swell up. Ephraim don't go
for stringy meat."

"
Good. He'll pass me up and go for you, you puss
gut."

"
Just send him on."

The trail fell away and climbed, and there, beyond
the tumble of foothills, soft in the sun, spread the plains. Summers
pulled up. It was a flung land, he thought, a land broadcast by the
first hand from the raw beginnings of earth. There were the buttes,
standing ragged in the light, and the levels that led to the end of
the world. There was a stream with its border of growth, bound down
to meet the big river. There against the far skyline were shapes that
were buffalo. Here Boone Caudill had roamed.

A wind came up from behind him. It blew his hair
before his eyes and went on to ruffle the yellowed grass.

He pushed the hair from his eyes and said, "Blackfoot
counuy, Hig. Crow country south and east."

Hig answered, "Your country, Dick."
 

13

THEY MADE CAMP that night in the foothills by the
side of a creek that Summers felt sure was a fork of the Dearborn. It
was strange country to him, strange in the sense that he had never
been right here before, but familiar because it was of a piece with
country he knew.

Lying awake, he saw Old Charlie again, tracing water
courses in the sand with a forefinger as they sat by the night fire.
"It was purty country, that Dearborn stretch was, purty as this
nigger ever saw, that's what it was, and beaver in every bend of her,
but here, along nigh to sundown, come the Blackfeet, a party of 'em,
and this child come close to losin' his hair. Would have wasn't it
for a fast horse. Arrers singin' past me like birds and one took me
in the arm. We was just two, my pardner and me, and we lit out,
sayin' one day we'd traipse back and git our traps, but we never did,
that we didn't."