Snow Mountain Passage (6 page)

“Well, George ain’t here,” says Uncle Billy, “and something’s got to be done.”

“The main thing that has got to be done,” says Eddy, “is getting through the mountains. We’ll need every hand we have. Let’s wait till we make it to Sutter’s, and we can settle it there.”

“It ain’t enough,” says Uncle Billy.

“Why don’t each one of us write down what we saw today,” says Eddy, “and as soon as we get to Sutter’s, we’ll bring it before the magistrate.”

“It’s the wagon party’s business,” says Patrick Breen, glancing at his wife. “We’re like a fort, or a town, or any other collection of humankind.”

Breen has an apostolic face. His thick hair is wild and unruly beneath the dusty hat brim. He is a fiddler, and his eyes beside the bow have often flashed with merriment. But that look has not been seen in weeks. His eyes are hard, as if he has been recently betrayed. His wife’s are the same, and he expects her now to agree with him.

“It needs settling,” says Peggy Breen. “It needs settling today. But we don’t want another killin’.”

Breen looks at his wife with suspicion, ready to be betrayed again. Then he sees what she is getting at.

“Yes,” he says, “I’m not at all sure we want Jim Reed’s blood upon our hands.”

“We’ll take a vote,” says Graves.

“On what?” says Eddy.

“On hanging the man who killed Johnny.”

Eddy tips his head back and laughs a long, mocking laugh. “Where you gonna hang him? There ain’t nothing out here higher than a coyote. Anybody thought about that?”

“Yes,” says a voice from beyond the circle, “I have thought about that.”

In front of his wagon, Keseberg has hastily cleared a space and moved his lines around and now lifts the long wooden tongue so that it makes a post twelve feet high. In this world of cinder cones and starving river grass, it is the straightest thing in sight. He hauls out some baggage and a wooden crate to prop up the tongue and hold it steady. As hanging becomes possible, a hush falls over the crowd. They regard him with horrified wonder, and Keseberg swells.

“This will suit him fine,” he says.

Graves is pleased. He surveys the gathering. One third of these people are relatives. His clan alone could decide the outcome.

“We will mark on pieces of paper,” he says. “Everyone eighteen and over has a vote.”

William Eddy shouts, “Listen to me! You can’t hang a man for defending himself!”

“He ran Johnny through!” cries Elizabeth Graves.

“You weren’t there,” says Eddy. “How could you see what happened?”

“We saw enough!” says Uncle Billy.

“Those were my animals Johnny was beating on,” Eddy says. “Milt and me had hitched ‘em together so he could pull the hill. Johnny was beating on ‘em so bad Jim tried to put a stop to it. That’s when Johnny turned on him and knocked Margaret down, and Jim had to pull his knife to hold him off …”

“Ain’t the way I saw it!” Uncle Billy shouts.

“Well, hell, you were clear up on top!” says Eddy. “All Jim was aiming to do was hold him off. But Johnny, he was like a mad dog, and Jim never stabbed him …”

“Ain’t the way I saw it, neither,” says Elizabeth Graves.

“Johnny ran right up against the blade,” Eddy says.

Now a rise of many voices fills the air.

Eddy shouts, “I was right behind ‘em in the next wagon!” But he is drowned out as all the grievances against Jim Reed come pouring forth, some real, some imagined, some public, some private—from the men who have argued with him about which route to take and from others who have resented his excesses, his money, his clothing, and his hired help; from the women who wish their men had long ago turned around and gone back home and from the younger women now deprived of the graceful young teamster they could secretly adore.

F
ROM WHERE HE
sits between his daughters, Jim can hear the tumult, can’t make out many words, but he gets the drift. He stands up and tells the girls to go stay close to their mother. He tells Milt to get the weapons out of the wagon. Between them they have two rifles, a shotgun, three six-shooters, and four double-barreled pistols. Once everything is loaded, each man shoves two pistols behind his belt. They place the backup pistols within easy reach and prop the rifles where they can be seen, then they lean against the siding and wait.

After a while he says, “It was a terrible, terrible thing. But I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“No, sir.”

“You know that, don’t you, Milt?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we don’t mean to kill anybody else today.”

“No, we don’t,” says Milt. “I ain’t never killed a person in my life, or even shot one, or wanted to.”

“We just intend to let them know certain preparations have been made.”

“Yes, sir.”

At last the heads and hats appear above the sandy slope, the beards and the shoulders and the sweat-stained shirts, a row of men Jim knows too well, after days and nights together for all these weeks and months. Uncle Billy and his oldest son, a son-in-law who never speaks, whose opaque eyes seem bleached out by the constant sun. And Patrick Breen. And Lewis Keseberg. And William Eddy. They all come armed, and Jim has to wonder what Eddy is doing in such a bunch. Surely he’s not one of them, packing his rifle and walking next to Keseberg as if they are trail-mates now. This isn’t right. Ever since Salt Lake, the Reeds and Eddys have been traveling together, sharing animals and wagons. But as for Keseberg—ah, the German—Jim is not at all surprised to see him in the lead, with a coil of rope around his shoulder and a triumphant little smirk across his face. This is the day Keseberg has been waiting for, storing up resentment and biding his time.

They move down the slope, with some of the drivers behind them, and the women, and the older children. So many children, Jim thinks, as he watches them descend. He hasn’t thought of it before. And until this moment he has not felt so distant from the others. They are a band of nomads who have come upon him in the desert, half of them wild children, ragged and dusty and thin.

They slide and lunge and kick up plumes, and he finds himself remembering the evening he passed by Keseberg’s wagon just as a cooking pot fell into the fire with a clanging hiss. He saw the German’s three-year-old cringe and draw back at the noise, and saw Keseberg strike his wife across the face, a powerful, open-handed blow that sent her staggering.

This was after Keseberg had rejoined the caravan. Jim was near his wagon by design, not by accident. At Margaret’s urging he had become a spy. Other women were reporting sounds that woke them in the night, muffled cries. Now he saw Phillipine cowering, and next to her the wary youngster.

He called out, “Leave her be!”

Keseberg’s eyes were very round, as he turned, surprised to be observed. Did he imagine that four walls screened off their kitchen from the world?

“It’s no concern of yours,” he said.

“It is now.”

“You don’t know this woman as I know her.”

Phillipine was frantically waving one hand, as if to say,
Don’t bother, don’t bother, he doesn’t mean it.

“I know a brutal beating when I see one,” Reed said.

“Are you calling me a brute?”

“I’m telling you this has to stop.”

“Are you calling me a brute?”

At the nearest wagons, others turned from their cooking fires. Jim raised his voice, making it an address for all to hear, and as he spoke, he watched the redness rise to Keseberg’s ears. “Is a woman no different from a mule? Do you beat her whenever she displeases you?”

Keseberg shouted, “This is no one’s business but my own!”

“Every woman in this party is upset!”

“Then let them come and speak to me, not you.”

“This will stop tonight,” Jim said. “That is an order. Or you will answer to me personally. Do you understand?”

“I am not beholden to you,” said Keseberg, “or to anyone else in this wagon train.”

He took a menacing step toward Jim and tried to stare him down, but they both knew it was over, for the time being. The German backed off, as if he’d been waiting for someone to rein him in. There were fourteen years between them, and Jim felt then like a father disciplining a wayward son.

Now he watches Keseberg swaggering toward him like the son who finally has his father where he wants him. Jim almost smiles. He has expected this. He sees Keseberg as a dangerous child, who must be treated like a child. But why do these others allow him to take the lead? Who has listened to him? And why? It makes no sense. There is a kind of madness about it, thickening like a vapor in the desert air.

The men stop at the bottom of the slope, all but William Eddy, who keeps walking, with his rifle held across his belly like a soldier on patrol. He is the best shot in the company. Jim has seen him bring down deer and antelope. He has seen him pick off a moving jackrabbit at fifty yards. It occurs to him that Eddy has been appointed to be his executioner. For a moment his dread runs so cold he cannot draw a pistol to defend himself. In the next moment there is no need to, for Eddy walks right up to him and turns and aims his rifle in the other direction, toward the accusers, who do not seem to react. Jim understands it now. Something in them wants a show, some reckless desperation on the other side of weariness and thirst.

Uncle Billy says, “Step away from the wagon, Reed.”

“We like it in the shade.”

Keseberg has cocked his hip like an athlete. He says, “A vote was taken.”

“You can’t take a vote,” Jim says, “without all council members present.”

“Well,” says Uncle Billy, “this ain’t something we ever had to vote about before.”

“What kind of vote, then?”

After a silence Patrick Breen says, “You’ve cast a shadow over the wagon party, Reed.”

“You don’t think there’s a shadow over my heart, too? I had no desire to kill Johnny.”

“But you did!” Uncle Billy’s voice is shrill. “By God, you killed him in cold blood, and we aim to hang you for it!”

“He struck me first. You know that. Patrick, you saw what happened!”

As if spying a sudden movement on the nearest ridge, Breen’s narrow eyes waver, glance away, then move back to meet Jim’s. “Indeed I did.”

“And your Bowie knife did the killing,” says Uncle Billy.

“A death for a death,” says Keseberg. “That was the vote.”

In the German’s eyes Jim sees a glitter of high anticipation. He looks at the son of Graves, and at the son-in-law who nods each time the old man speaks, and Graves himself, and Patrick Breen. Once workaday farmers, they are now unraveling, as their bodies shrink and their minds run wild, men with large families that must be fed, who put kin first, as any man would, hoard their provisions and hide their water, looking right through you most of the time, their jaws tight, their eyes screened over, drawn inward above the jaws, and so deranged that they call him a murderer. How dare they accuse him? Are they that far gone? Or is he himself so far gone he can’t see what he has done? We will soon know who is deluded here.

He pulls his shirt open at the collar, ripping loose a button, exposing his neck and his white chest.

“Come on ahead, then, Mr. Keseberg. Place your noose around my throat. You and you alone.”

With a glance at his colleagues, Keseberg lets the coil of rope slide down his arm until he holds it in one hand. Jim draws a pistol from behind his belt and pulls the hammer back. In the silence by the river, the click is like a lightning crack. Jim too is known to be a marksman, famous for his performance among the buffalo herds, firing from horseback like a legendary frontiersman.

Now Milt Elliott mimics his employer, draws a double-barreled pistol. Another click. Another crack. All the weapons rise an inch or two, not yet aimed for firing, but brandished. There is a readiness to fire. They are all like John Snyder as he started up the slope, and there is no thought for what the aftermath might be if one or two more should die and others fall wounded. The haggard face of Uncle Billy looks to be beyond despair, as if pulling a trigger would be some kind of blessing.

William Eddy breaks the spell, Eddy the survivor. “Damn you all!” he says. “Put down these weapons and listen to me. If we start shooting here, ain’t nobody gonna make it across.”

“Go damn yourself, Bill Eddy,” says Graves. “Jim Reed has to pay.”

“Then let him ride off alone,” says Eddy.

“He has to hang,” says Keseberg.

From the dusty crowd behind the leaders, voices rise in echo.

“Reed has to pay—”

“He ought to hang—”

Eddy cries, “He ain’t gonna hang, and you know that! But what if he could ride ahead and just be …”

Jim looks at him. “What are you saying?”

Patrick Breen says, “You mean banished from the party?”

“I didn’t say ‘banished,’” Eddy says.

Jim shouts, “What is this, Bill?”

“I mean, separate yourself,” says Eddy.

Breen is eager to pursue this. “Banishment now! That too might be a fitting price to pay.”

“Damn it,” says Eddy. “Banishment is not what I mean at all! I’m talking about a few days …”

Graves and Keseberg look at each other, they look at Eddy’s rifle and Jim’s six-shooter.

“How many days are we talking about?” says Graves.

“You’d better hang me, gentlemen, because I’m not going anywhere.”

Breen says to the others, “I’ve told you before, I don’t want his blood on my hands.”

“Ay,” says Breen’s wife, “we’ve seen enough blood for one day.”

Jim feels a touch upon his elbow and almost pulls the trigger in alarm. It is Margaret, suddenly next to him, gazing hard into his eyes. She reaches up to tuck an edge of the blood-wet kerchief wrapped around his head. When did she awaken? How much has she heard? And what is he seeing in her face? Anguish and fatigue and stern resolve. Her dark eyes looked bruised. Perhaps she did not sleep at all. Perhaps she has not slept in weeks.

She wears the hat she has worn every day, a straw bonnet tied below her chin with ribbons. Underneath its brim her forehead gathers against some chronic pain. With prim hat and bunched brow has she come to judge this mad display? When she turns toward the accusers, her gaze cuts through the rank of weapons, tells them all to hold their fire and hold their tongues.