Moontrap - Don Berry Read online

  Moontrap

  Don Berry

  1962

  To Wyn with love

  for a certain patience

  with the old man on

  other mountains, other trails

  Introduction by Jeff Baker

  Chapter One

  1

  The old man traveled alone. He came riding from the north, a skeleton rider on a bony horse, plodding methodically along the riverbank. He sat humped in the saddle with the posture of a man who has ridden many miles, and knows there is no speed in haste.

  Two locks of hair—long, thick, heavily greased—dangled in front of his ears, set into gentle swaying by the jarring steps of the horse and the endless watchful movement of the man's head. A great limp-brimmed felt hat dwarfed his features. The old man's buckskin hunting shirt folded from the points of his shoulders as from pegs in a wall, and it was a mottled black of grease and dirt and dried blood. His breeches were buckskin to the knees (bony pinnacles, threatening to tear through the leather), but the bottoms of the legs were of blanket cloth. It had shrunk in wetting so that eight inches of grimed and bony leg showed between trouser bottoms and moccasins.

  It was not yet dawn. The eastern sky was beginning to be light, a heavy grayness like a pool of dull Galena lead suspended overhead; but it was not yet tme dawn. In the cool and neutral light he came to a river crossing his path, and stopped. He dismounted, letting the reins drop to the ground, and his horse began to browse contentedly among the ferns at the river's edge, nosing them gently aside to find the rich grass beneath.

  The old man walked to the very bank of the river, cautiously. He scanned both banks with care, watching for movement, listening. alert to any sign that he was not alone. A few hundred yards to his right the fast-moving stream emptied into the larger river along which he had been riding. The large stream, he knew, was called the Willamette. He grunted deep in his throat, and the sound was like the coughing snort of a bear.

  "Wagh!"

  He looked at the meeting of waters, watching the ripples of the fast-running tributary lose themselves in the wider flood. It was vaguely annoying that the Willamette should run north. Sensible river'd run south, he figured. All of them did.

  Except the Yellowstone. And the Bighorn. And the Powder and the Rosebud . . . he remembered. He snorted. "Don't make no difference," he said aloud. "Goes against nature anyways."

  He was not happy about the river he had to cross. The banks were heavily wooded, timbered almost to the edge, with the thick growth of brush he'd found everywhere in this rain-soaked country matted below the trees. It was good cover. Put a whole damned Piegan encampment in there, and you'd never see it.

  He squatted on his haunches and pushed back the brim of the huge felt. Finally he spat down into the river and grunted. He told himself it didn't matter—he was in civilization now, just an hour or so from Oregon City. But suspicion of good cover was a habit of his life, and there was neither way nor reason, now, to change the habits of his life.

  He shrugged and stood again, absently fingering the ends of one long braid of hair. He'd cross, because there was nothing else to do.

  He remounted, swinging easily into the saddle, and let the old horse slide down the bank and into the water. The river itself was little different from any other; so viciously cold it seemed solid, so swift the horse's feet were swept out from under her in the first five seconds.

  The water closed around the old man's legs with the painful pressure of drying rawhide. As the horse lost her footing and plunged deep, the vise of cold clamped suddenly around the old man's groin, making him gasp with the shock of it. Together, as one animal, they floundered across the stream and scrambled up the opposite bank, many yards downstream toward the confluence. At the top the horse stopped and shook her head like a dog, stretching her neck to relieve the cramp of cold. The old man kicked her furiously in the ribs.

  "Wagh! C'mon, y' wuthless hunk o' meat. Hya!"

  In her own time, the horse resumed her steady pace, unconcerned. The freezing chill of the water had seeped into the old man's bones, and his testicles ached as though he had been kicked. He put it away from his mind; he had crossed many cold rivers and he was no longer interested in the pain they gave him.

  "Damn poor doin's," he muttered vaguely, meaning not the river but things in general. He was mildly disappointed that he had not been attacked; the place was perfect. It was a kind of waste.

  He laughed, a short, yelping bark that made the horses ears twitch. It reminded him of another time, reminded him of a story he'd been meaning to tell himself. "It was some, now," he muttered under his breath. "It was. Was Doc and Gabe and this child as was just down from the Roche Jaune with three inches o' iron in the hump ribs . . ."

  The horse's hoofs thumped dully along the trail. With a habit so old he was no longer aware of it, the old man scanned the forest on either side of the trail, watching. To his left the eastern sky soaked up light from the coming dawn, and on the right the broad sweeping flood of the Willamette reflected the silver grayness of the sky in its current, silent in the early morning, glimpsed between the endless ranks of firs.

  "Had a hair o' the black bear to him, now. Well, he did," the old man muttered. It was a long time ago, but it was very clear in his mind. He traveled along, telling himself a story of men long dead and what they had to say and where they went and what they did there. From time to time he gently eased the horse out to the bank of the Willamette, so he could see more clearly upriver. He could see the great horseshoe of the falls ahead, and the distant, steady murmur of white water came to him. Just below the cascade that stretched across the river was a small island, and there was a faint plume of white smoke rising from it into the still morning air. He watched it.

  "Major says, 'Gabe, sorry as hell about the man, but no damned rascal of a 'Rapaho going t' insult my wife, hear?' " His monologue was endless, as life itself was endless. In the telling he became a sort of god, for he restored warmth to flesh long since cold and gave living bodies back to bones picked white and clean in the mountain valleys.

  "Gabe says, 'Meek, you know the rules about firin' offa gun in camp.' 'Hell's full o' such rules,' says the Major, cleanin' his gun just as ca'm as ca'm .... "

  The plume of smoke was from a building built near the edge of the island. A mill, near as the old man could make out, and no threat to him. He tugged gently on the reins and the bony horse moved obediently back inland to the trail. In half an hour he had come into sight of the first of the buildings of Oregon City, perched high on a cliff overlooking the falls of the Willamette.

  ***

  The old man did not go into the main settlement. He stayed low, on the bench of land bordering the river. From below he could see a few houses of the cliff-perched settlement, one of them large, white, and freshly painted. Though he had never before been within a thousand miles of the place, he recognized the house as being that of John McLoughlin. He recognized most of the buildings he saw, except for the very new ones. In winter camp, sitting half frozen around a lodge fire, a man had a chance to pick up a good bit of information. Oregon City had been described to him once, and as a matter of habit each detail had remained fresh in his mind, waiting for the time it would be needed. He was a mountain man; it was his way.

  The old man reined up, surveying the buildings of the upper town, the few frame structures now beginning to be built lower down, on the bench. There was a ferry landing, and he figured it was the ferry McLoughlin had started when he left Hudson's Bay. On the opposite side of the river was another settlement—a few buildings, rather, straggling among the timbered hills. Went by the name of Linn, he recalled.

  The sky was now full light, and the old man felt exposed. He had no
curiosity about Oregon City at all. He was only regretful he had to pass by now that it was light. It was fully six o'clock, but he could see no signs of activity except the plume of white smoke from the island mill, now directly opposite him.

  He thought about it. His lingers moved in the long black lock of hair, plaiting it into a tight braid, then shaking it out again. He felt unsafe among the wooden structures.

  "Goes against nature," he muttered, scanning the signs of human settlement. It wasn't like a real village. A real village you could pick up and move and a week later there would be nothing but a few traces of fires and the packed surface where the lodges had been. These wooden shacks were ugly; they didn't belong, they were badly made and offended the land. Permanent. You could never give the world back to itself when you built like that. He leaned over the saddle horn and spat contemptuously.

  "Bunch o' wuthless dungheads," he said. Wagh!"' But that was the way it was, and there was no help for it. There was no doubt in his mind that the human race was some kind of hideous error on the part of a god intending something more sensible. It made a man mad just to think about it.

  He kicked the horse up again, anxious now to get past. The trail changed abruptly into something resembling a street, lined on one side with a few frame buildings. Ugly as the rest of them, with painted signs on the front. He could have read them if he'd been interested, but he wasn't.

  Names. Always names. It was a dirty habit they'd got into of naming everything. He supposed the river he'd crossed near dawn had a name of some kind or other. People always put names to the world, the dungheads. Not enough sense to leave things be . . .

  Suddenly he stopped, his reverie broken. just ahead of him a still figure was lying curled tightly against the wall of a building, a shapeless lump rolled in a blanket. The old man eased the horse ahead until he drew even with the silent form. The sleeper clutched the neck of a bottle in one hand, but it was overturned and empty. A stale and foul pool of vomit stained the earth around his head.

  The old man sat still, watching. The blanket bundle stirred, vague wakefulness brought by the sound of the old man's horse. A black, disheveled head poked out, and two puffy eyes turned up hopefully. It was an Indian, but one of the coast peoples the old man did not know. The face was flat and broad, with almost oriental folds around the eyes. The man's lips were slack and wet as he stared humbly up at the mounted white man. Blankly the Indian's eyes roved over the towering figure, trying to understand.

  "Wiskey?" he said tentatively, and tried to smile. "Wiskey, no?"

  The old man said nothing. His face impassive, he leaned forward across the saddle, watching.

  The Indian put his head back down and turned to the wall. He let his black head rest still for a long time, but the old man did not go away. Finally he turned back, lifting himself shakily on one elbow, and tried to clear his vision.

  The old man watched without expression, peering at him from behind the leathery mask of his face; a mask that showed no feeling. The Indian blinked uncertainly and for a moment the two were still, watching each other. The Indian levered himself up to a sitting position against the wall, beginning to be afraid. A terrible sharp pain coursed through his skull, but he dared not close his eyes while the other watched so steadily.

  "Klahowya, " the Indian said apprehensively. There was no answer.

  Slowly the brown man pushed himself up, supporting his back against the wall, drawing the blanket around him. The blue of his denim jeans was a dirty gray and the once brightly checked shirt he wore was stained with vomit and the accumulated dirt of months. He began to inch along the wall away from the old man, clutching the blanket with one hand and feeling his way along the building with the flat palm of the other. He felt the corner of the building with his fingertips, and a soft, deer-like whimper sounded in his throat. He turned away from the old man and began to run down the street, the loose end of the blanket trailing behind him in the dew-dark earth. He ran shuffling, not in control of his legs, stumbling and lurching. Reaching a corner he turned, with one panic-born glance back, and disappeared.

  For a long moment the old man remained, sitting his horse quietly, leaning over the horn and watching the corner where the Indian had vanished. Then he sat up straight and jerked the horse into movement. When they passed the corner he did not look to see where the Indian had gone.

  "So Major cleaned his gun 'n' there wasn't a thing in hell old Gabe c'd do about it. Fined 'm five dollars, wagh! But if I recollect me, we never had trouble like that with Meek again."

  He had been interested in the Indian, because it was the first tame Indian he had ever seen. It was a new thing for him, and he had all his life been very curious about new things.

  2

  The sun was now above the eastern hills, and he figured he had still another three hours to go. The land was clearly in his mind; the river trended north and south for another ten miles bove the falls. Then, abruptly, it shifted, making an arrowhead point and running east-west. On that point Johnson Monday had his cabin; had his farm.

  The old man leaned over and spat on the ground. "Damn dunghead dirt-clodder. Wagh! That's some, now."

  For all he had the country clearly mapped, it was hard to make the picture in his mind of Johnson Monday behind a plow. The Jaybird himself, scraping away at the ground like a mole looking for a home. The old man shrugged, and the heavy locks of black hair swung at his shoulders. No telling what a man would do if he got scared enough; that was the dirty part of the whole human trick.

  He grinned faintly. There'd been a time or two when the Jaybird never thought to see his hair again, much less the ass-end of a plowhorse. The old man closed his eyes, seeing how it had been when he and the jaybird were running together.

  "Was up to the Powder," he said reflectively. "Ice just breakin' up, wagh!, 'n' colder'n Billy Sublette's heart. 'Here's wet powder 'n' no fire t' dry it,' says I. 'Wagh!' says Jaybird, a—readin' sign. 'This here's Yellow Wolfs band or I'm a nigger .... ' "

  The way it was, the way it had always been, when the world was real. The plodding of the horse turned steps to yards, and slowly the miles disappeared behind him. The sun went up fast above the horizon, then strangely slowed for its imperceptible journey across the center of the day. It burned warm against his cheek, and when he put the flat of his hand against the horse's neck, it was heated from the sun.

  "This nigger figures to cache," he told himself. "Man's a damn idjit t' go bangin' about without he looks over the land a bit." He nodded to himself in confirmation. It'd work out, one way or another. He'd see the Jaybird in good time, there was no real hurry. This was new country for him, the Willamette Valley, and he always liked to have just a little time to get used to new country. Get it in his belly.

  Well before midday the trail he followed began to rise, as a cliff formed on his bank of the river. Soon he came to the river's turning and looked across at the point of land and the cabin that belonged to Johnson Monday.

  The old man was on the outside of the river's curve, and the ground was much higher there. The cliff below him was studded with brush and some small, scrubby trees. On the opposite bank there was taller growth, firs and the like, but the old man could see over the tops easily. The point of land was as he had heard; a sort of arrowhead, almost a peninsula. The center had been roughly cleared, and it was newly plowed. Stumps still dotted the field, half a dozen of them smoldering and floating feathers of white smoke into the still air. The raw patch of earth was scraped out in the midst of the black-green and solid forest that stretched across the gentle hills as far as he could see. Ugly, helpless. An open wound on the earth, the festering sore of some mysterious wasting disease.

  "Wagh!" the old man grunted, pleased with himself. "That's it, sure god. This child knows all about such." Mankind was a walking plague, a sort of running gangrene getting into every little scratch on the face of the earth and turning it rotten.

  He looked across at Monday's field for a long time. Set i
n the center was the cabin, a forlorn small animal crouched miserably in the sun, hoping for warmth. There was no one about, but the chimney trailed a little smoke. The walls kept the heat out, not like an honest lodge. It would be dark inside, too, the sun never coming in. He thought of his own lodge, with the sun streaming through the skins and the bright designs making everything warm and comfortable.

  He shook his head slowly in bewilderment, tugging at the long braid that hung beneath his hat. How the hell could a man who'd known a real home ever live like that, hunkered under a heavy roof? It was nothing to him, but he wondered just the same. One more item in the account book against a man's name.

  He shrugged. It was nothing to him. "Wagh!" he muttered. "Dungheads all, 'n' there's no help f'r it."

  There was a small island in the river, long and thin, separated from Monday's farm by a narrow, swift-running channel. The island was perhaps a quarter of a mile long, and not more than fifty yards wide. A rocky beach stretched along the river side, and the rest was wooded.

  The old man could not see the channel side from where he stood, but he guessed there would be no beach there; the channel current was too swift.

  "This nigger'll cache there a bit," he muttered, and turned the old horse back away from the edge of the rocky outcrop. He dismounted and began to backtrack along the trail, looking for a route down to the water. He led the animal back more than half a mile before the edge had gentled enough to get down, and it brought them well below the lower point of the island. The old man toyed with the black braid and looked at the current and the width of the river and the nature of both banks. He shrugged and turned away. If it came to that, they could swim upstream as well as down. It was all equal to him, the horse had to do the work.

  He turned back to the animal and surveyed him speculatively. "Y' goddam boneyard. Nothin' but wolf meat, 'n' the sooner the better. Y'are now."

  The horse drew back her lips soundlessly, showing great white teeth in a terrible grimace. Then she reached forward and tried to nibble one of the old man's black braids. The old man slapped her across the nose, and the horse grimaced wildly again, still without sound.