Moontrap - Don Berry Read online

  moving steadily toward the clearing.

  The old man perceived her coming with tenderness, and tenderly raised the long rifle, resting the muzzle across the Y of the wiping stick. In his mind there ran a soft and sibilant chant, a charm to insure good hunting and the forgiveness of that which was killed so he might live.

  She stood at the edge of the clearing, her light buff body faintly luminous against the black-green of night-darkened foliage. She paused, hesitant, snuffling at the air, and the old man let her breathe for the two of them. She looked across the clearing at him and he remained still. At last she turned her fathomless dark eyes from him and took a short, hesitant step into the clearing. The web of branches overhead shook in the sudden thunder that filled the forest opening. The broad puffball of white smoke rolled up, picking a devious, tendriled way through the branches above.

  She shuddered with the impact and turned at last to see the old man who sat calm behind the forked stick. Her falling shook the clearing faintly, like the distant vibration of thunder.

  The old man stood, stretching his stiff joints, cramped from the waiting without time. He drew the heavy butcher knife from its sheath at the back of his belt. Arterial blood pulsed sluggishly over his hand as he slit the hide over the breastbone and peeled it back. Quickly he made the deep incision through sheath and muscle, plunging his arm deep into the cavity of the chest, groping with his bony lingers for the warm heart.

  He stood back from the fallen doe, breathing heavily with the effort of it. He slit the heart, opening the chambers, and drank the rich blood with a strong sense of gratitude. He made his meal of the raw dark meat, and it was enough. When he was finished he drew the blade of the butcher knife across the front of his shirt to clean it. With a grunting sigh of fatigue and content he settled himself down, lying close against the dead doe and drawing into his own body the heat that so quickly drained from hers.

  He fell immediately into sleep, though all the time he had intended to tell himself the part where Godin shot the Gros Ventre chief and came galloping back to camp waving his red blanket and swearing.

  Chapter Three

  1

  It was past midnight when Monday turned off on the trail that led down to his point of land. Unable to take the ferry across at Oregon City—they had stopped extending him credit six months ago—he had to ride down the east bank of the river a mile past his cabin, wake up Peter Swensen and talk him into ferrying him across.

  Peter grumbled, but he didn't really mind. Monday thought. Nothing ever seemed particularly serious to Peter Swensen; no inconvenience could weigh heavily on a man who anticipated the end of the world daily.

  Monday sighed, shifting his position in the saddle. It was all so simple, if you could only see it right.

  Back in the States, Peter had belonged to a sect which, through careful analysis of the Scriptures, had determined that the world was to end in '41. Peter didn't know exactly how they did it, but he believed it. He had paid eight dollars for a white robe and gone to stand on the nearest hill at the designated time, and nothing had happened except that two of the faithful had sneaked off into the brush after a time, and the girl later became pregnant. It didn't seem a very auspicious sign to Peter Swensen. The truth was, he rather fancied the girl himself, but hadn't felt entirely comfortable about meeting Judgment Day with his pants down. Having lost the opportunity by reason of faith, Peter's attitude toward both women and religion became ambiguous.

  After a couple of years he emigrated to Oregon, depressed but still hopeful. It stood to reason that the world was bound to end sometime; it had been promised him, and he expected it. He had lost faith in the promisers, but the promise itself remained clear in his mind.

  Monday shook his head. It was strange how little it took to make a man happy. Something solid to build his life around, even if it was the end of the world. He could see how it might be a great comfort.

  Soon he came out into the clear, and his field lay black in the moonlight ahead of him. The cabin roof was silvery gray; the moon seemed to spread a thin, metallic sheen over the land, like a daguerreo type he had once seen.

  The only movement was the slow drifting of ghostly white wisps of smoke from tl1e smoldering stumps, and Monday smiled to himself Mary had doubtless been out every day making sure of the burning. It was a slow process, an eternal process, burning out the stumps. Letting the relentless fire creep down through the root system, clearing his land for him. And what did he have in the end? A bare space, an absence of trees. And still, each year, more clearing, more stumps, more burning.

  Moonlight was flooding through the little window in the south wall when Monday closed the cabin door gently behind him. He stood for a moment at the door. The pale light slanted off to the left wall, lighting in silver and blue shadows the bed and the still form of the woman there. Her head was turned to the side, facing him. The moonlight washed gently across the firm contours of her face and was lost in the deep blackness of her hair.

  Monday let his eyes trace the rounded swell of her belly beneath the blanket, faintly outlined now in the luminous glow of the moon. He suddenly realized her eyes were open, watching him. Silently he went to kneel beside the bed, putting his hand softly on the rounded hill of pregnancy. "Mary," he said quietly, "I'm not going away any more."

  The woman looked silently up at him, her deep eyes highlighted by the reflection of the moon. For a long time they remained that way, still, looking at each other and finding again the lost features. Finally she stirred.

  "You are gone a long time," she said.

  Monday bent and kissed her softly, tasting again the warmth and freshness of her lips. "I'm back now, " he said.

  "You have not eaten." She struggled up to a sitting position, the blanket falling away from her breasts, now growing full and heavy.

  "It doesn't matter, Mary. Please."

  "I fix something," she said. Awkwardly she put her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the shapeless nightdress she never wore. Monday reached to help her. "No," she said. "The fire."

  The blond man stood and went to the fireplace, knelt down to find a glowing coal. He built a tiny cone of kindling and with the wooden tongs carefully put the black-red coal beneath. In a moment the yellow flame had spurted, and he began to lay the larger wood.

  Mary had gone to the cooler deep beneath the floor at the back, and brought back a deer steak. "You sit down," she said, bringing the meat to the fire.

  Monday went to the table against the opposite wall and pulled it out into the center of the room to be closer. He sat on a bench, facing the fire, with elbows back against the table. As his wife worked to make the meat ready, he watched her move. following every twist of the hand, the arch of her back, the swinging black hair.

  The woman impaled the steak on two sharp sticks leaning toward the fire, and in a moment there was a sizzling as the first drops of fat melted and fell.

  "Mary, come here," Monday said.

  The woman came to the table and sat beside him. He put his arm around her shoulder and she leaned her head against him, watching the fire. They sat with the warmth of each other and the fire, without speaking. After a while Mary gently moved his arm, and returned to the fire to turn the steak.

  "Who was it?" she asked, not turning.

  "Tamahas and the rest of them. Everybody at the mission was mixed up in it. About two hundred Cayuse and a few Nez Percé."

  "Who did you bring back?"

  "Tamahas and four other headmen. Old man Kiami says he didn't do anything, but he isn't afraid to die."

  "Five men," Mary said.

  "Better'n nothin', ain't it?" He shrugged. "Anyways, the massacre at Waiilatpu was better'n two years ago. This puts an end to it."

  "Nothing new, then? About why they did it?"

  Monday shook his head. After a moment he said, "How—how have things been here, Mary? You get along all right?"

  "Yes. It was all right."

  "You didn't g
et too lonesome? Or anything?"

  Mary turned from the fire and smiled slightly. "Peter Swensen, that one came every day." She gestured toward the wall. "He plow your field, you will see it in the morning."

  "I'll be damned," Monday said. "What'd he do that for?"

  "He said his horses were forgetting how to do it. Keep it in their minds."

  Monday laughed. "He's got land of his own he could plow, up on that mountain of his." Swensen had staked out his 64o-acre land claim on the rough hill north of Monday's farm, and it was generally known as Peter's Mountain. But he refused to live there until he could build the right kind of place. What with the end of the world coming and all, it hardly seemed worth the trouble, so he simply squatted on the ownerless land on the river, and waited.

  "He says is all a waste of time," Mary explained. "But he don't want his horses to forget. So he plow your land, because it is closer."

  "I just saw him and he didn't say he came by so often," Monday said absently.

  "I know all about the end of the world now," Mary said. "You ask me anything, I tell you." She was silent for a moment. Then she said,

  "Is it true, what he says about the end of the world?"

  "No," Monday said. "I don't think so, anyway."

  Mary nodded. She went to the cupboard and got down a wooden platter, deftly forked the steak on to it. She put the fork by the platter and sat down beside her husband. Monday reached the butcher knife out of its sheath, wiped it off on his shirt front.

  "Much business down here now," Mary said. "Joe Meek coming down maybe two, three times a week. See if anybody making whisky or hiding niggers, he say."

  "Fat lot Meek cares, even if he is marshal," Monday said. Suddenly he stopped, a forkful of meat halfway to his mouth. He put the fork on the platter and turned to Mary. "Who else was here? Just passing by, I mean."

  "Virginia came down to talk, you know Virginia."

  "Sure, I know Virginia," Monday said. Meek's Nez Percé wife, who never left home any more than Mary did, and for the same reason.

  "Who else?"

  Mary looked at him, smiling. "Maybe I don't need to tell you more."

  "No, maybe not, " Monday said. He could probably count them off himself: Meek and Doc Newell and Ebberts and their wives. Smith and Trask, maybe, all the way from the coast. Russel from down in the valley. Just passing by on sudden, unexpected errands that took them on the long and inconvenient detour past Monday's place. Stopping at Swensen's for a little chat, cursing one another and telling lies. Men that hadn't seen each other, some of them, since they left the mountains, suddenly meeting by accident where the river turned and a woman waited alone for her husband. Monday picked up his fork, turned it between his fingers, looking down at the piece of steak.

  "Tell you something, Mary," he said. "You meet a—funny kind of people in the mountains."

  Mary smiled very faintly. "The Shoshone are mountain people," she said softly. She put her head against her husband's shoulder, feeling the cords of muscle roll as he drew the knife through the steak again and lifted it to his mouth.

  2

  Early morning, the forests and hills of the valley emerging slowly from the bottomless dark to stand against the graying eastern sky, flat, without depth. The old man woke clear-eyed and instantly, moving cleanly from sleep to waking, without transition.

  The body of the doe was cold now, making skinning difficult. The fleshy surface of the hide was cold—congealed, clinging stubbornly to the muscles below. The old man worked patiently, holding the hide taut away from the body and drawing the edge of the knife gently along the joining line to separate the membrane. He took only enough of the hide to make a carrying bag for the meat. He butchered out the rear quarters, regretfully taking only the best cuts and piling them on the square of skin that lay beside the stiffening body of the animal.

  Two corners of the hide square ended in the long projections that had been hind legs, and these he tied across the top of the meat pile. Holding the other corners together over the top, he slipped a cherrywood awl from the pouch at his belt and perforated the skin. Deftly he incised out the tendon at the rear of the leg, passed it through the perforation, and tied the bundle up securely.

  He staggered at first, hoisting it to his shoulder, but quickly caught his balance and shrugged the bulk of the pack into a comfortable position. As he left the glade he glanced back at the dismembered doe, regretful and disturbed that he was able to take so little of her. He knew he was betraying her and his promises to her. But there was no help for it.

  "Wagh!" he grunted. "Bad doin's when it comes to that."

  He put the bag down on the ground and went back to the carcass of the animal. "Nothin' for it, " he muttered. He grabbed the forelegs and dragged the doe over under the tree near which he had shot her. The next half-hour he spent laboriously hoisting the carcass up into the branches, where it dangled suspended by the tied front legs. He was panting when he was finished, but he felt a little better about it. She wouldn't get flyblown anyway. He tried to put the guilt away from his mind as he hoisted the bag again and began to climb back along the twisted skein of trails to the man-trail above him on the slope.

  The light of morning was full when he reached the trail and turned back the way he had come the evening before, back to his new camp. He quickened his pace with the easier going, moving along the needle-pack with the quick glide of moccasins that was more like floating than walking. The weight of the meat was heavy for him, and once he had to stop to rest, conscious of the stiffness in his joints. For a few moments he squatted motionless in the middle of the trail, his bony wrists thrust out of the too short buckskin sleeves and dangling limp across his knees. He stared straight ahead, breathing evenly, resting. Then he shouldered his meat again and moved on, taking up his story where it had been ended the night before by the need for silence.

  "Th' Gros Ventre headman rides out, wavin' some kind of flag, might could've been Union jack or other. Didn't shine with Godin though, wagh! 'n' him half-froze for a little Blackfoot hair on account his pa. That nigger rides out to meet'm with a Flathead riding flank 'n' Betsy

  on full—cock . . ."

  The trail followed the contours of the hill, gradually dropping lower on the slope. He was heading south now, down off the mountain toward the river. Before the trail joined that road that led toward Monday's place, the old man left it, cutting off to the right toward the valley of a tiny stream. He entered a thick stand of spruce, the light within it gloomy and cold. It was a trifle less brushy, and a little easier going.

  The spruce extended nearly to the bottom of the tiny ravine, and as the old man listened he could hear the faint trickling sounds of the stream. Near the edge of the spruce island, where the forest suddenly turned back to firs, he stopped. Grunting, he heaved the bag of meat off his shoulder and rested it on the ground. For a long moment he stood silent, mouth open, listening. He was within twenty yards of his camp, though he could not see it through the trees. He picked out a faint rustle that he took to be the sounds of his horse browsing, dragging its rawhide rope in a broad circle around the picket. His mind separated and evaluated the sounds of tiny animals in the brush, the swaying and creaking of limbs together, the trickling conversation of the stream.

  The pattern was full and rich and safe; the sounds of the world went on as they should, except in a small circle of which he was the center. He waited, still, until the birds near him began to chirp again without the raucous excitement of their alarm call; until the brush near him rustled again with the sound of small creatures returning to life after their moment of paralyzed fear of the giant intruder in the world.

  He was satisfied. But still he lashed the meat bag to the highest branch he could reach and set out again, making a wide circle around his camp. He moved with difficulty through the tangled brush, unable to follow even the animal trails. He watched carefully as he circled, his eyes flirting over the undergrowth, caressing the tree trunks. He lay on his belly
near the edge of the stream itself, peering upstream and down before he crossed quickly and disappeared into the brush on the other side. Nowhere along his course was there any sign that a creature of man size—or man clumsiness—had crossed that circle.

  The entire circuit took more than half an hour, but when he reached the hanging bag of meat again he was content. He had known to start with that he was perfectly safe, here in the middle of civilization. But he also knew the names of men found dead in places where they were perfectly safe. He did not regard the half-hour scrutiny as wasted; it was how he had learned to live.

  His camp was a small grassy patch, a tiny glade on the outside of a bend of the stream, where he could see up and down with comparative ease but would himself be hidden by the clump of brush at either end of the clearing. The stream itself was tiny, not more than six feet across and ankle deep.

  He approached camp from upwind, giving the bony old horse his smell so she would not whicker in alarm. She stiffened as she heard his approach through the brush, snuffed at the air and dropped her head back to the grazing, taking no notice of the old man when he finally appeared in the tiny clearing with the skin bag over his shoulder. It had now been over four hours since he had wakened, and he was hungry. Regretfully he set the skin of meat to one side until he could tend to the matter of food.

  He stripped off the greasy buckskins and stood naked by the edge of the water. The old man's body was thin and hard, and very white. Sun marks began abruptly at the middle of his forearms, extending down his hands as though he had plunged his arms into a vat of dye only so far. His face and neck, too, were dark, and a deep V of brown pointed down his bony chest; the rest was white.