Moontrap - Don Berry Read online

  into the box of memory.

  He sat for a moment, guarding the first sight he had of this new range, storing it away carefully with the others. Then he nudged the horse into motion again and moved off slowly toward the peaks that swam in the heat of the afternoon.

  2

  Monday was wakened by the sound of voices outside the cabin. He sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes, and kicked the twisted blanket away from his legs. From the closed door that led to Meek's bedroom he heard a lower murmur. Meek opened the door and leaned out.

  "Made y'r mind up, hoss?" he said.

  Monday nodded. "Ain't much choosin' t' do, when y' get right down to 'er."

  Meek looked at him for a moment. "All right," he said finally. "Go on out an' make the boys t' home." He came into the main room and lifted his rifle down from the pegs over the fireplace. "I got t' check this here gun," he said. In a louder voice he called, "Virginia! You 'bout ready?"

  Virginia's gentle voice from the bedroom said, "A minute, Joe."

  "Virginia's takin' the kids over t' Doc Newell's."

  Monday nodded. He stood up and went to the door, opened it in the bright morning sun. There were fifteen or so men clustered outside talking, and he could see another half-dozen coming, among them Thurston.

  The conversation stopped when he came out on the porch, and several of the men looked at him curiously. For a moment they were silent. Then one of them, with whom he'd talked often at the mill, said in a jocular tone, "What the hell are you doin' loose, Monday? I heard they was a warrant out f 'r you."

  Monday rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. "That's fact," he admitted. Thurston and the other five men had drawn near now, and Monday added in a voice loud enough for them to hear, "Except it must o' been some kind o' mistake, though. Y'know, there's some around here gets awful excited when things ain't organized just right."

  There was some laughter, and the men near the porch turned to grin at Thurston. "Truth sure god truth," somebody said, snickering.

  Still mounted, Thurston rode up to the porch and looked coldly at Monday, who leaned casually against a post.

  "Well, Monday? " he said, unsmiling.

  "Well, Thurston," Monday said affably.

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and one of the farmers turned away, stifling a laugh. Thurston glanced angrily at him, then turned back to Monday.

  "Are you decided?"

  Monday looked up in surprise. "Why, surely," he said. "Are you?"

  "What does that mean?" Thurston snapped.

  "No harm intended," Monday said. "Just didn't seem reasonable a man'd set himself for a few days' hard ridin' dressed like that."

  Thurston was neat in his dark coat and vest, as usual, and made an odd contrast with the other members of the posse, farmers dressed in their worn denims and heavy, dust-gray shoes.

  "I thought maybe there was a church service or somethin'," Monday said. "Say, any o' you fellows got a little tobacco?" The man who had spoken to Monday first grinned and stretched out his tobacco pouch. The rest of them were watching Thurston with unconcealed amusement. Monday slowly unfolded the pouch and got out his pipe. He let himself slide down the post until he was sitting on the porch.

  "The way I dress is certainly no concern of yours, Monday," Thurston said sharply.

  "No sir," Monday said, a little humble. "Just seems like it sort of—spoils the organization, like."

  "What kind of game are you—" Thurston broke off as Virginia came out of the cabin, followed by the three half-breed children. They walked quickly off the porch past Monday, not looking at anyone.

  "Wheres MeekP" Thurston demanded as the woman passed. Virginia did not answer, but moved through the crowd with her children, not even turning to acknowledge that she had heard.

  "Try pretty please," Monday said absently He tamped the tobacco down in the pipe bowl and handed the pouch back. He looked calmly up at Thurston. "Do we get t' wear them little blue hats again?" he said.

  This time the laughter was general, and the farmers made no attempt to suppress it. It was obvious they were thoroughly enjoying Thurston's discomfiture. The amusement stopped suddenly cut off by the echoing roar of a discharging gun inside the house.

  For a moment the crowd stood frozen with shock. Then Monday leaped up and slammed through the door. Just in time to see the bedroom door open and Meek appear. supporting himself with both hands, his face white and twisted with pain.

  "Meek! What hap—"

  "She went off." Meek grunted.

  Monday grabbed him under the arms and supported him. The right leg of Meek's denim trousers was blackened and there was a dark, wet stain spreading through the lower part. Monday helped him back into the bedroom and put him on the bed. The long rifle was lying on the floor, the barrel still smoking, and the room was full of blue smoke and the acrid smell of burned powder.

  A dozen men had piled into the house after Monday and clustered around the bed. Monday snatched out his knife and ripped the trouser leg down from the knee.

  "Checkin' the flint," Meek said, with effort. "She—went off." The bedclothes were absorbing a spreading brown stain. The hole was clean, through the fleshy part of the calf, and the blood that drained from it was very dark.

  "Somebody go for Doctor Beth," Monday snapped. There was the sound of running feet across the main room, and in a second the loud "Hya!" as the man mounted and set off at a full gallop.

  "It ain't bad," Monday said, sponging away the blood with the corner of a muslin sheet. "Didn't get the bone. Y're damn lucky, Meek."

  Meek grunted.

  "Any dunghead that'd check his flint with a full charge in—" Monday broke off suddenly and glanced up at the set face of Meek. The wounded man opened his eyes slightly and met Monday's regard steadily. Thurston had shouldered his way through the crowd and was

  standing at Meek's head. "Meek," he said evenly. "You did this deliberately."

  There was a vaguely discontented murmur from the crowd behind Thurston, and Monday straightened up to stare at the smaller man.

  "Thurston," he said, "you go too far. "

  "By god, you do," one of the farmers said angrily "I know you set your cap against these boys, but you got no call t' say somethin' like that!"

  Thurston whirled to look at the speaker, but the other did not turn away. The balance had suddenly shifted. Meek was too well liked. Another farmer pushed forward and said, "No man goin' t' shoot hisself just t'spite you, Thurston. Now you leave off, hear?"

  There was a general mutter of agreement.

  Monday bent back down to Meek. "How y' feelin', hoss?"

  Meek clenched his teeth and moved his leg slightly. The brownish stain was now nearly eight inches across on the bedclothes, but the heavy flow of blood seemed to have lessened. Meek looked up and tried to grin. "Smarts some," he said.

  "Take it easy, Joe," somebody said sympathetically.

  "Ain't got much choice," Meek said.

  Thurston wheeled and left the room, passing through the crowd of men who stared at him without expression.

  A few minutes later Dr. Beth came striding up the porch with her instrument case, panting a little from the hard ride. She plowed into the crowd without a word and leaned over the bed, examining the wound.

  After a moment she straightened up. "Get out of here, you men," she said. "Get, now!"

  Slowly the group filed back out into the main room, muttering in an undertone.

  Thurston came over to him. "Monday, if you're leading us astray to give him time—that's a hundred-mile trip . . ."

  Monday shrugged. "Frankly I don't give a damn. You got any better ideas?"

  Thurston was silent, then turned away. The carpenter named Bill said, "Look's like we got t' take Monday's word or forget it. It's a big country."

  "Yeah, but what I want t' know is, who's t' pay passage on the boat," one of the others said.

  Monday spread his hands. "This here's more or less official, ain't it? T' kee
p law and order in the territory? I expect the territorial government'll pay."

  "That'll take months, the way them boys work. "

  Monday looked at Thurston. "Well, them as has money might pay now, an' the territorial government'll pay 'em back when they get around to it."

  "Hell, I got no money," somebody muttered. "I didn't figure it was going t' cost a man any money t' be on this here posse."

  "Lessn y' lost y'r taste for huntin'," Monday said to Thurston.

  "All right," Thurston said finally. "It can be arranged. But I'm warning you, Monday, if this is a ruse of some sort, you will regret it."

  "Maybe we best settle that out right now," Monday said, rubbing his neck. "Seems t' me you ain't so eager t' get Webb as you appeared yesterday. You want him or not?"

  "I'll have hirn," Thurston said. "A vicious murder like this can't be overlooked, Monday, even if one of your friends committed it."

  "Well, now," Monday said. "You're making a big thing out o' that. But it ain't me draggin' my feet an' makin' speeches. I'm ready t' go."

  "If you two are going t' stand around making faces at each other we ain't none of us going any place," somebody muttered.

  "Take y'r choice, Thurston," Monday said. "I'm trying t' get along. If you don't want me on this hunt, you just say so in front of ever'body an' we'll know where we stand."

  Thurston looked at Monday, then at the twenty or so men who stood waiting, their faces impatient. He turned and walked back to the sleek bay mare and mounted. "Come along, then," he said. He turned the horse and started off toward the center of town and the boat landings at the edge of the river. Monday watched him go silently. Gradually the others mounted and set off behind the small man.

  It was surprising, Monday thought. But not really, in the end. He watched the train of horses form behind Thurston. They followed whoever moved first or talked loudest. It was just damn near that simple. He shook his head in wonder and mounted. They ought to make Young's Bay at the mouth of the Columbia by nightfall, with luck. Then, in the morning, it would start.

  3

  The sun was already beginning to lower steadily when the old man reached the steep hills that were the first ramparts of the Coast Range. They began abruptly, sweeping up from the plain without transition, and he was pleased. It was clear and distinct; here the plain ends, here the mountain begins. There was a cleanness that satisfied something in him.

  A stream ran along the foot, and the old man briefly considered making camp there, then decided against it. He was certain he had a good twenty-four hours, but if somebody should come up behind, it was too exposed.

  He dismounted and walked down to the edge of the stream, knelt beside it to drink. He had only a few hours of daylight left, a few miles into the hills, and the chances were he'd have to make dry camp. Beside him his horse dipped into the water, the reins dragging beneath the hoofs. The old man straightened up and looked around him, stretching his neck and letting the water settle. Then he bent down again, wanting to fill his belly. There was nothing so reacherous on the trail as the sudden appearance of thirst, which took a man's mind off everything else and made him careless. He didn't want that to happen.

  After a few minutes he mounted again and started up the trail that wound across the range. He rode slowly into the sun, not hurrying, letting the animal find the pace that suited her. His first day or two in mountains he did not know was always a great pleasure for him. He liked to go without haste, letting the structure and appearance of the land soak into his bones, looking everywhere, listening, watching, feeling.

  It was a constant miracle, and he had never lost his sensation of wonder at the variety of the world. Everything different, everything unique, each stone and tree and blade of grass different from every other. Behind each apparent likeness there was a thin, bright core of difference, and in the end, no two things were really like. It was a thing he had always loved to feel, the basic solitude of each thing that existed in the world. Without possible number, and his brain whirled when he tried to think how many things there might be, if you could count them.

  The sun disappeared behind the hills ahead just after he crossed the first ridge. He rode a little farther on, just to understand the feeling of dusk in these hills. Finally he moved off the trail a few yards into the brush and made camp. It was perfectly arbitrary; he would sleep where the night had caught him, and he knew he would not remember the camp. He liked to have at least an hour to look around and pick a campsite, so he would remember it, be able to bring it back to his mind at some other time. But he did not feel he had the time, and that hour was better used this day in going farther on. Tomorrow might be different.

  He picketed the horse and settled down, permitting himself to realize for the first time just how tired he was. There was a tension across the back of his shoulders and his neck was stiff. The muscles in his forehead were strained from squinting ahead into the sun all afternoon, and he rubbed the back of his hand across them, trying to work out some of the strain.

  Finally he sighed and went over to the saddlebags. He had filched some jerky from Monday's larder, and he took out a handful of the leathery black strips and went back to sit under a fir, resting his back against the rough bark. Absently he chewed on the strips, staring unseeing at the brush ahead of him. The jerky had been overdried and was brittle. He decided tomorrow night he would have to have a camp with water so as to soften it up a bit.

  The pearl gray of the sky, dimly glimpsed through the mat of limbs above him, was darkening rapidly when he finished. In the deep forest of Oregon night came too quickly and the old man was jealous of light. He got out his blanket and rolled himself up, fidgeting around to locate a position where the stones and fallen sticks on the ground did not dig into his old frame too deeply.

  He let his mind wander, enjoying the unnameable period that was neither waking nor sleeping. Before he had left the mountains, the real mountains, he had made himself out a sort of list. It was in the way of a promissory note to himself, things he granted himself for the pleasure of it. Sitting around his lodge fire at night. he had carefully constructed in his mind the shape of events that might occur, and had chosen between them.

  He was nearly at the end of his promises now. having seen the sun rise and set on the Columbia River, having ridden through the Wallowas, having observed the habits of the high plateau people he had passed in the east, having seen his first tame Indians.

  There were three things left, and as he drowsed he regretfully realized that he would not be able to do them all; there was not time enough left. He wanted to see the ocean, he wanted to climb to the top of Saddle Mountain, which he had been told was the highest peak of this range, and he wanted to see some of the men he had known, who were now settled down on the coast: Ebberts and Trask and Solomon Smith, all of them on the strip south of the Columbia they called Clatsop Plains.

  He would not have time for all that now. One of his promises to himself would have to be broken, and it made him uncomfortable. When he settled his mind to do something, it ate at him if he could not do it. But he would have to give up the idea of seeing the men. The land was more important, in the end.

  He was beginning to feel the pressure of time. Twenty-four hours was not really much, when you thought about it. When you had to pick your spot, and make whatever preparations the site seemed to require.

  Though he remembered how much the Gros Ventres had been able to do in Pierre's Hole, in just one night. After Godin shot the headman they'd holed up in a cottonwood grove, the whole damned village. He chuckled a little to himself, thinking about it. Some, now, he thought sleepily. They must have worked like beavers all night, because by the next morning they'd made a regular little fort inside that cottonwood grove. And wa'n't Billy Sublette surprised when he sneaked in there to look!

  "Him an' Sinclair an' that crazy Boston nigger a-crawlin' on their bellies. Billy parts some bushes an' wagh! Ball catches ol' Sinclair right atween his eyes an' Billy hissel
f takes one in the leg. Wéll, they come a-slidin' back with big eyes. Nobody never did figure out how them niggers got such a fort built up in one night."

  Of course, there had been a whole village of Gros Venutes to work that night in Pierre's Hole, eighteen years ago. And he was alone. That made the whole difference right there; he was alone.

  ***

  He woke with the false dawn and was on the trail again fifteen minutes later. By the time the first direct rays of the rising sun touched him he was several miles from where he had slept.

  He was now coming into country that suited him better. With the ending of the flat land the ugly traces of man ended. Here there were no scars on the face of the land where man had cut and burned and ripped the earth with his filthy metal plows. It was something he could not understand, this mindless violation of what existed and was good; the insensate drive to make the world conform to man's size and comprehension, the violent rape of the earth by which he spread his ugly and diseased seed. It was a futile thing, a witless viciousness, and there were times when the thought of it made the old man sick. He did not understand any of it, and yet he had seen that, for some, there was a meaning and importance that escaped him, and that was frightening.

  They gained something from all this ugliness and destruction, something he did not know. They broke their lives against the stones of the earth, and killed joy and freedom with their grimness, and seemed to think their lives were good in proportion as they suffered in destroying what was natural.

  He shook his head, and the long black locks swung beneath his hat. "Pack o' dunghead bastards, ever' one of 'em." It made no sense, and it infuriated him that the insistent plague of humankind should spread so quickly through this senseless massacre of the earth. But here there was only the trail to mark man's passing, a fragile thread that twisted through the hills that had existed since the world began. They were all around him now. the timeless hills, matted thick and black with forest, ahead, behind, on all sides. They stretched away in endless marching ranks, and in the vastness of the hills the trail was no more than the silken thread of a fallen spider web. It served, briefly, and would be gone again with the new morning; gone in the lifetime of a man. There would be other trails to other destinations, as the whimsy of the spreading disease determined. And they too would disappear, swallowed in the brush that swelled in one season to fill up the scratches man had made. They would all be gone. And man would be gone. And the hills would remain.