Moontrap - Don Berry Page 14

  Monday tiptoed away from the door and down the hall. When they reached the outside, Webb was frowning.

  "Y' don't mean t'tell me them niggers know ever' trapper that was ever in the mountains?"

  "Damn near," Monday said, depressed.

  "Wagh! That's some, now. Imagine! Rememberin' me." It was an enormously flattering thought for Webb that somebody he'd never seen knew about him. He was obscurely pleased.

  "They made it their business t' know what we was all doin'," Monday said. "An' they never forgot nothin', either. If they ain't got it in their heads they got it someplace in their books. HBC allus knew a hell of a lot more about th' American companies than we knew about ourselves."

  "Di'n't seem like we never thought much about what they was doin'. Less'n we run into 'em in the mountains. Then she was Hannah-Bar-the-Door, for sure!"

  Monday loosened the reins from the rail and turned to look at Webb.

  "Might could be that's why they're still around, an' all the American companies gone under."

  "Poor feller," Webb said with unaccustomed sympathy. "Skeered o' rats." But it was a kind of fear he could understand. He'd known a man oncet as was scared t' death o' bumblebees. Good man, too.

  "Hya!" Monday grunted, pulling his horse's head around. "There ain't any rats around this country, coon. Not that kind."

  "But that nigger said—"

  "I know what he said, god damn y'r eyes," Monday snapped.

  Chapter Nine

  1

  That night Monday played an ancient game with the world, and lost again. The great disk of the moon swung up above the river cliffs, threading them with silver, flowing silently across the thickly textured hills of the valley. The river caught the brilliance and carried it in long slow swells toward the sea. At the point of the river's turning there were stately wide whirlpools twisting slowly in the night, carrying the soot-dark shadows of drifting branches and deadfalls.

  Monday lay on the bed in the cabin, watching the soft and ghostly light pour in through the little window at the end of the building, making a clean shape of silver blue against the floor's rough planking. With the rapid rising of the moon, the shape shortened and swung across the floor slowly, its angles shifting imperceptibly into new patterns.

  He watched the patch of light for a long time before sleep came. He tried to slow down his life, somehow, slow down his eyes, so he could see the actual movement of the light, but he could not do it. Between one second and the next, he could see no change; but in a full minute the sharp edge of light had crept across another crack.

  He remembered a watch he had seen once, whose hands, instead of clicking sharply from minute to minute, moved in a smooth slow arc. He had watched that carefully too, and had never caught it moving; the minute hand was suddenly between the lines of the face, and he could not say when it had happened.

  He sighed, and shifted his position in the bed uncomfortably. There were so many things a man wanted to see that were just beyond him, a little too fast or slow for the way he lived. He had never been able to see exactly what the fluttering gulls did with their wings, either. And once he had watched a half-drowned wasp walking—for hours, it seemed—trying to figure out the pattern in which its legs moved; what kind of order there was in this complicated thing. But he couldn't keep track of them all at once.

  He wondered if it were some defect in his seeing, or if nobody else could see these things either. Perhaps a man was meant to see clearly only those movements that were approximate to the pace of his own life—the moon too slow, the movement of an insect's legs too fast. There were whole worlds he could not understand, because he could not change his own nature to a new rhythm.

  People were the same. You were never aware of the changing; but some time later you could look back and say that things had been different before. Webb, Meek, Bill Williams, Trask, himself—all scattered to hell and gone now. A few years ago they had all been sitting around the same fire, lying to one another, cursing, happy. It was almost as though some monstrously slow explosion had burst in the fire itself, blowing them all off so slowly they didn't know what was happening.

  He tried to picture it all in his mind, where each of them was now, and see if there was some kind of meaning in it, some kind of pattern. But he could not do it. There were too many of the old mountain men, and the space they covered was too large; he could not think like that, could not perceive correctly.

  He remembered hanging over the shoulder of that artist fellow that was in the mountains, Miller, his name was, watching him draw, trying to discover the mystery in it. The harder he kept his eyes on the blobs that rolled from the end of the pen, the less he saw; just little black marks distributed at random. He had shaken his head and turned away in puzzlement and then, turning back—there it was: a whole Absaroka encampment, and it took his breath away it was so clear. None of the blots and squiggles meant anything by itself, but when you could see them from a distance, all at once, they made a sort of reality.

  It was like that now. He had a terrible conviction that if he could stand back and see everything whole, he would understand it. He would be able to see the picture that was being made of meaningless and isolated events of his life, like strokes of a pen.

  Well, there was no time for it now. That was the hell of it, there was never any time. In the mountains if you wanted to take a day and sit around and think about something stupid, that was your business.

  Monday grinned drowsily to himself, remembering the time old Trask had sat and watched one of the spoutholes up to Colter's Hell for twenty-four hours running, watch in hand, just to see if it went off regular. It seemed that in the mountains there'd been time for just about anything a man took it in his head to do. Here, it was different. Here, there was always something pressing. Always the sensation of something strong and invisible behind you, never giving you a chance to get things straight before it pushed you relentlessly on again.

  The moon had swung until it reached his bed, and the moon-square cocked one corner up. After while it would disappear entirely behind the wall of the house. Monday sighed, discontented, and rolled over, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders in the pleasant coolness of the summer night.

  ***

  For a moment he was not sure what had wakened him. Then he realized that Webb, who had remained behind in Oregon City in the afternoon, had come in. He was squatted before the fire, his long rifle upright between his knees. Occasionally he poked up the fire, muttering to

  himself.

  "So Markhead says, 'Well boys, we ain't goin' nowhere on foot, an' that's truth. Well, now. Ever'body was real low in the mind . . ."

  Monday hoisted himself up on his elbows, blinking with sleepiness.

  ". . . figurin' as how we'd been come over right smart. Well, up jumps Godin, sayin', 'Hooraw, boys! This child feels like liftin' ha'r . . .' "

  Monday swung the blanket back and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing the back of his neck as Webb continued the recital of a horse raid on the Powder River, that Monday heard a dozen times before.

  "What're y' feelin' like, hoss?" Monday said finally.

  "Wagh! Half froze for meat, this child. Us'ns clean out that deer?"

  "Damn near it," Monday said. "We was eatin' all day yesterday."

  Webb grunted. "Damn greedy bastards, Meek 'n' that Rainy."

  Monday was on his knees at the back, the lid of the cooler raised, poking around inside. "Here's somethin'," he said. "Hell, coon, you wasn't keepin' y'r knife dry neither, I noticed." He unwrapped the chunks of meat and threw them in the pot to boil.

  "Man got t' have a little meat," Webb said querulously.

  "So," Monday admitted. "Where the hell y' been, hoss?"

  "Sneakin' around," Webb said.

  Monday stirred the pot with the poker. "What's that mean, 'sneakin' around'?"

  "Sneakin' aroumd, y'iggerant dunghead! Di'n't I say it? Sneakin' around, politickin', spyin' on people an' such."

&nb
sp; The idea of Webb sneakin' around and politickin' struck Monday funny, and he couldn't suppress a laugh. "Damn, Webb. I swear you do get crazy idees."

  "Wagh! Hell's full o' crazy idees," Webb grumbled. "This child knows all about such, politickin' an' all. He's been politicked by better men than you ever seen."

  "Prob'ly," Monday admitted. "But you been in the trade longer'n most, too."

  "I been politicked by Ashley, and Billy Sublette, and Fontenelle an' got skun ever' time, too." Webb reminisced. "This child knows all about such. Even saw Pierre Chouteau hisself oncet, in St. Looey. But I turn around and run off slick afore he could smell I had a dollar in my possibles. He'd of got it, sure god. Thats politickin'." He nodded sharply to himself with the satisfaction of having fooled even Chouteau, long years ago.

  "Well, hoss, y' make any money with y'r politickin'? Y'owe me a dollar, I recollect."

  "Hell no!" Webb said disdainfully. "This nigger was just practicin', like."

  Monday shrugged. Seemed like a hell of a way to waste a nice evening, but if Webb wanted to practice his politickin' it was his own business. The old man stared absently into the fire.

  "Listenin' about what people got to say, 'n' all."

  Monday turned to look at him, then back to the pot. "Y' learn anythin' sneakin' around?"

  "Not a whole hell of a lot, " Webb admitted. "Them city people ain't got one brain between 'em, or just about. Run to a pack, like buffler. Goes against nature."

  "Might could be it does," Monday said, waiting.

  "Seems like one of 'em gets a idee, they all think like that."

  Monday sat back on his haunches, facing the old man. Webb continued to look into the fire.

  "A11 right, hoss," Monday said quietly.

  "Roll it on out."

  After a long moment Webb said thoughtfully, "I'm thinkin' it ain't too good a idee for you to go watch that there hangin'."

  "So? Account of?"

  "Account of y'r woman bein' Shoshone," Webb said.

  "They some talk runnin'?"

  "Some."

  "Brown or white?"

  "White."

  "Sayin'?"

  Webb leaned back against the bench of the table. "Not myin' much o' anythin'. More like a smell in the air. Wagh! Bad meat, like."

  " 'Bout me an' Mary," Monday said, poking at the meat with his knife.

  "Not exackly," Webb said. "But me, now, if this child was brownskin, he wouldn't get nowheres near them gallows."

  "That bad."

  "I'm thinkin' it could get that bad," Webb said. "Seems like ever'body's a wee mite nervy."

  "Wasn't figurin' to take Mary anyways," Monday said thoughtfully.

  "Best like that, t' my thinkin'."

  "But I figure t'go myself," Monday said.

  Webb shrugged. "Don't see it makes much difference."

  "Might could be it does," Monday said. Absently he jabbed a piece of meat with his knife and handed it across to Webb. "This here's about done. No, I helped bring them boys down, and I expect I best see 'er through to the end."

  "Stay with the pack all the way." Webb snorted.

  "Y'know damn well Tamahas an' them deserve t' swing a bit," Monday said. "This childs all for it. Y'ain't gettin' a rise out o' me like that."

  "Ain't trying t' get nothin' out of y'. Y' figure t' prove somethin', go on ahead. It ain't nothing t' me."

  "Might could be it's somethin' to me, though. Me an' the territory"

  "Well now, " Webb said, standing up. "We raised sign 'bout a quarter mile from camp, an' sure god it was Absaroka. Good thing, too, it was, else we'd of like t' lost our ha'r besides them horses .... "

  He turned toward the door and went out. "We trailed after that bunch nigh onto a week. Was Godin as first raised fresh sign, on the Rosebud south o' where she turns . . ."

  Monday listened to him mount his bony old horse and ride off into the moonlit night. He rubbed his forehead, staring into the fire. Then he swung the long pothook back away from the flames and went back to bed.

  2

  Just after dawn on the day of the hanging René Devaux came riding up from Champoeg. The sun had barely cleared the screen of trees to the east of Monday's cabin when Devaux dismounted, throwing the reins over the rail of the porch carelessly.

  "Hey, friend of me!" he hollered. "Come out from the cave and look!"

  Monday came out, still belting his shirt around him. "What're y'feelin' like, Rainy? "

  "Regard! Regard!" Devaux pointed at the rising sun.

  The air was supernaturally clear, and the sun rose in an almost tangible aura of power. The light was a physical thing, smashing against the side of the cabin as though to force it into the river. The tops of the trees glowed with sudden incandescence, and seemed to sway away from the relentless pressure of the light itself. The whole world swelled with a sudden access of energy as the light streamed across it, birthing the new day.

  "Mon Dieu, he is very strong today," Devaux said wonderingly.

  Monday stretched himself, feeling the sharp heat penetrate his shirt and chest, enjoying the pressure of the light on his face. It was almost like one of the brilliant mountain days, when a man had the sensation he'd never have to eat or sleep again, the conviction that he could steal some of the power ofthe sun itself and live by that great flood of energy alone.

  "By christ!" he said. "Y'know, Rainy, there's some days in this country make you think it's worth the whole winter."

  "He going to be ver' hot, this day."

  "Be like this forever, f'r all o' me," Monday said contentedly. He looked around at the country, wondering at the terrible distinctness of each leaf, each limb of fir, every furrow of the field. The brilliance of the sun infused every object with a life of its own, an internal glow that illuminated something from the core of creation itself.

  "Where he is, that crazy old man?" Devaux asked.

  "Got his camp over by them trees," Monday said. "Expect he'll drag ass over directly. C'mon in an' have some coffee."

  Devaux hesitated. "No, I stay here. Is not many mornings in the world like this."

  "Bastard," Monday muttered. He went back into the cabin, feeling the sudden chill of the shadow, acutely aware of the cutting off of the energy of the great flaming sky. He quickly shoveled a few grounds of coffee and parched barley into the pot, set it to boil and returned to the dooryard.

  Devaux was lighting his pipe contentedly, leaning back against the wall.

  "By god, Rainy, y're no better'n a lizard lyin' on a rock in the sun."

  Devaux gestured absently with his pipe. "Go back in the cave, then, son of a toad. Crapaud, toi."

  Monday grinned and stretched his shoulders again, restless with a sudden surplus of energy. At the edge of the field he saw the tiny, infinitely sharp figure of Webb mounting his horse, and the faint tendril of his dying fire. "Here comes the coon now," he said.

  "Old Swensen, I saw him," Devaux said. "He is not coming. Says it is a waste of time, to watch Indians hang."

  "Even Swensen don't believe in the end o' the world on a morning like this," Monday said.

  "You think so?" Rainy said curiously, taking the pipe out of his mouth and looking at Monday. "Strange thing, maybe. Me I wonder who is stronger, Swensen or the sun. I wish I had ask him, now."

  "Ask him t'morrow."

  "Tomorrow, he will forget what he feel like today." Devaux shrugged, but he was interested to know what Swensen thought on a day like this. Webb rode up, muttering happily to himself and grinning.

  "Some morning, coon," Monday said.

  "It is, now, " Webb said. "Them Sioux ain't so damn crazy with their Sun Dance. They know."

  He came to lean against the wall too, chuckling to himself.

  "What the hell're you so happy about?" Monday asked.

  Webb put his hand level with his heart, sweeping it out to the right, then made the spiral sign for "medicine" from his forehead.

  "Wagh!" Monday agreed. "Damn good medicine, t'my thi
nkin'."

  "Not the sun, y'iggerant nigger," Webb said. "Had me a medicine dream las' night. Woke m'self up laughin'."

  "There's some, now," Monday said. "I only woke up laughin' once in my whole life."

  "That's cause y're just a boy, " Webb said. "Me, I woke up laughin' a dozen times, maybe."

  "Sometimes I wake up hollerin'," Monday said. "Hollerin' an' cryin'."

  "Hell, that ain't nothin'. It don't take nothin' to wake up hollerin' an' cryin'."

  "I'm just sayin', is all," Monday said defensively. "Sometimes I do that."

  "Any ol' nigger c'n scare hisself 'thout no trouble," Webb said. "But t' wake up laughin', that's somethin' else. T' my thinkin', y' got t' be four different people t' wake y'rself up laughin'."

  "Me," Devaux said, "I see only two. One to laugh and one to wake up."

  "Four y' dunghead," Webb snapped. "T' make y'rself laugh, y' got t' be surprised, ain't that right? So y' got t' have one different coon t' do the surprisin', an' another t' be surprised."

  "Still only two," Monday said, frowning.

  "Hold y'r goddam mouth," Webb said. "Then y' got t' have another one t' laugh, an' the last one t' wake up 'cause he hears the laughin'."

  "No, friend of me," Devaux said seriously. " The one that laughs is the same one that was surprised, no? And the one that wakes up is the same one who made the surprise."

  "Hell, he ain't going to wake up," Webb said. "That 'un already knows the surprise. Why would he wake up?"

  "Because he hear all that laughing going on."

  Monday rubbed the back of his neck. "Might could be three," he said.

  Webb narrowed his eyes viciously. "You got a damn bad habit o' conterdictin' y'r betters, boy. This nigger'll have y'r ass f'r breakfast yet, one o' these times."

  "Ain't no reason t' get y'r back up, hoss. But honest t' god, I only see—"

  Webb leaned back against the wall. "Don't give a damn what y' see. This nigger's figured all that out a long time ago, when I had rn' very first laughin'-dream. An' there's four."

  Devaux shrugged. "Is very curious, about that."

  "Anyways," Webb said contentedly, "this child woke laughin' this morning, an' he ain't goin' t' let any sad-ass niggers like you spoil it f'r him."