Moontrap - Don Berry Page 5

  He walked into the middle of the stream and sat down in the swirling shallow water. Even when he sat, it barely covered his hips, piling up at his back in a tiny cold wave that bumped and rolled around his spine. He scrubbed hard in the icy water, purifying himself and wondering how he was going to go about it. The problem was one he had come across only lately—too often, lately—and he was not settled in his mind how to deal with it; no ritual he knew was adequate. In normal life it didn't happen. He had to devise something of his own, and was uneasy about it because he was not gifted in that way.

  The deer spirit was angry at him, he knew. He had sung the song before starting to hunt, and then again in his mind when he first saw her. The doe had listened, had understood his need and accepted his promise that the flesh would die, only to live again. Understanding and accepting, she had permitted herself to be killed; the bargain was immortality. But now the old man, through his loneness, was unable to bring her back to life again, and the guilt of it was strong. He could, perhaps, plead his weakness; he was old, and could carry only part of the meat. The organs he had taken, but much of the muscle and all of the intestines had been left behind. They were wasted; they would never live again in the body of a man. No arrow points would be made from her bones, no pestles, no medicine sticks, no needles. Her tendons would never be used to make clothing, to bind up new moccasins, to seam the edges of a lodge. Her brains would never be used to tan skins. Her hide would never make shirts to keep a man warm when the snows came.

  So much wasted, so much dead that would never return to life. A betrayal of the compact that had existed between man and animals since the Beginning. But it was hard for a man alone to make good. Vi/ithout a tribe, without even a family, he couldn't use everything.

  There was in the old man's mind a faint suspicion that perhaps he ought not to sing the promising-song before a hunt. But then he would die, violating the laws of the world. What animal would permit itself to be killed, unless promised new life?

  The old man sighed, sitting in the cold stream, and began to scrub himself again. He would simply have to go through with the inadequate ritual he had devised, and hope the deer spirit could understand how strong his need had been. Perhaps it was enough; he didn't know. A man had to walk softly in the world if he would walk there long. Shivering, he stood out of the stream and returned to the bank.

  With handfuls of fern he rubbed his body partly dry, but the chill remained. He squatted on his heels beside the water, smoothing a space with his hand at the edge. With a stick he drew the crude outline of a deer. He had no color, no medicine sticks, nothing with which to contact the spirit in the drawing, nothing to make it vital. He went over to his pile of clothing and got the butcher knife. Holding his arm over the scratched image in the dirt, he slit a line across the top of his wrist. Bright blood beaded the edges of the incision. pooled. and began to drop slowly off his arm. He tried to make some sort of pattern, but the blood soaked so quickly into the earth and diffused that he had to be content with merely staining the ground.

  It did not seem enough to him. As he had only himself to make it holy, he urinated on the image in addition to the blood. Still dissatisfied, but knowing it would never be exactly right, he began to address the deer spirit.

  The old man did not have the medicine in him to make a song, or he would have done that. It would have been more acceptable, but the words did not come to him properly. The spirits detested bad singing, and the old man was unwilling to take the chance of offending them further with a bad song.

  In the end, he simply explained how it was with him. About the pain in his belly if he went without food too long. About his age and infirmity, which he exaggerated. He told the deer the names of men who had starved to death, and where it happened, and the terrible agonies they had endured. He described in careful detail all the torments of hunger, hoping to make the one thing stand for all human need.

  It took a long time, and at last he ran out of words. He remained squatting there, trying to think if there was anything else he should have said. At last he shrugged and stood up. He had done what he could. It was out of his hands now. He brought his fists together in front of his body, then separated them, in the sign for "It is finished." He dressed, rubbed out the deer image with the toe of his moccasin, and began to untie the bag of meat.

  3

  Monday woke when the false dawn was beginning to lighten the southern window. He was motionless, looking at the rough plank ceiling above and feeling the hot length of his wife's body along his own. For a long time he did not move, letting his mind wander absently from sleep into waking, savoring the peace and comfort of it. It seemed a long time since he had wakened without a knot of tension in his belly, and even longer that he had not felt the electric touch of naked skin brushing his thighs and shoulder. He turned his head to look at Mary. She lay on her back beside him, her face turned up, peaceful and helpless with sleep. The blanket had been drawn back in the warmth of the early summer night, and he reached over to stroke her full breast, his hand softly pressing the warm flesh. He bent to kiss her soft and yielding mouth, still partly open in sleep, and her eyes opened. She moved beside him, brushing her hips and thighs against his body gently. He wanted to make love to her, but felt he dared not because of the child. She reached up and drew his head down, pillowing it against the softness of her breast while his hands caressed the smoothness of her arms and thighs, and moved tenderly over the swell of her belly. For a long moment they lay close together, conscious of nothing but the closeness of each other. Then, suddenly beneath his hand he felt a sudden jerk, as the unborn child kicked. It startled him, and he lifted his head in surprise. Mary laughed and put her hand against his cheek.

  "He does that all the time, you know."

  "My god," Monday said. "Don't it wake you up?"

  Mary lifted her shoulder slightly. "Sometimes," she said. She drew herself up to a sitting position, and Monday laid his head back on the pallet.

  "It is how he knows where he is," Mary explained. She moved slowly off the bed and reached down the long nightdress from its peg.

  "You think he knows where he is?" Monday asked curiously.

  "Yes, I think," Mary said. "He kicks, he turns, he move around all the time now. Now he know exactly how big is the place he is in. He know how far away is the outside. This is why he kicks, to try himself against his world."

  "Like all the rest of us."

  "And you know," Mary continued seriously, "when he comes out, he will think is him who does it." She leaned over to kiss her husband, buttoning the last buttons of the nightdress. "All men born like that. Is why men are the way they are. First thing they do in life. they make a woman to open her legs for them."

  Monday laughed. "But you know, baby girls do the same thing."

  "That is true. But only the men so stupid they think is them who do

  it. Because is the woman. Always."

  Monday reached for her again, but Mary twisted away with something of her old, doe-like grace. She moved over to the fireplace and swung the coffee pot in on its long hook, blowing at the still fresh coals from the night. Monday lay back, looking again at the ceiling.

  "Now," Mary said, "the little man in me is angry. All the time now he figures how to kick himself loose."

  "It ain't such a hell of a bad way to start living," Monday said comfortably.

  "No, but all the time I wait, because for me is the work, you know. And I smile to myself, because when it is ready, it is ready. He change his mind, I change mine—it makes no difference. He will be free. It is how the world is, only men like to think they make it that way." Mary shrugged. "It is a weakness in the head, that women understand better. "

  "You're pretty high and mighty," Monday said. "You keep on talkin' like that, I'm like t'give you a good lodge-poling."

  "When it is ready it is ready," she said indifferently. "He comes. And he is so angry because he has no choice. So he holler. And then all his life he pretend
he is strong and free, because he is ashamed of how weak he was at the beginning. Is the way men are."

  She went about the business of preparing breakfast, and there was silence in the cabin. At last she said, "How many men you lose?"

  "Gettin' Tamahas? None. There was no fighting. Hell, if they'd decided to take out, we'd never of caught 'em."

  "They give themselves up, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Why would they do that?" Mary said, puzzled.

  Monday laughed shortly. "Hell, Mary. You know there's only one thing on god's green earth could make them do that. Hudson's Bay sent Ogden up to talk 'em down."

  Mary grimaced slightly. "He is a very hard man, that Ogden. The Shoshone know Ogden."

  "Wagh! They do, now," Monday said. "Before you were born the Shoshone knew Ogden. Anyhow, he talked Tamahas and the others into giving up."

  Mary frowned and turned away from the fire. "You tell me something."

  Monday grunted.

  "When Americans come here first, they go to Hudson's Bay at Vancouver. Because they all of them starving to death when they come."

  "Mm."

  "And they get food, and they get clothes and seed and cattle and tools and plows and all. And they never pay any money for all that."

  "That's about right."

  "Ten, twelve years now that happens. And if there is trouble, is always the Hudson's Bay men who settle it. Like the trouble at Waiilatpu. Was them who buy back the prisoners at the start, because the Americans got no money. Was them who chase down Tamahas, really, and say, 'You better come in here."

  "Sure, but hell, Mary you know they're the only people in this country that can do anything."

  "Yes, but this thing I cannot understand. I/Vhy do the Americans then all hate Hudson's Bay? This is what I cannot understand."

  Monday squirmed uncomfortably on the bed. Finally he said, "Well, you know, the Mission Party—I mean, this country is American by rights, anyhow—"

  "You talk crossways, like the Absaroka," Mary said calmly.

  Monday thought about it some more, and finally shrugged. It's just the way people are, I expect. The one thing they never forgive you for is if you do 'em a favor. Without McLoughlin and HBC there wouldn't be any settlement here at all.—Just a pile o' bones. So now the settlers hate his guts. Just the way people are."

  "White people, maybe," Mary said, turning back to the fire. Monday said nothing for a long time. Finally he raised himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and reached for his pants. "It's what they call politics, Mary," he said, frowning. "It's sort of hard to understand."

  Mary smiled faintly at the fire. "Yes," she said. "Is hard to understand."

  Behind her Monday dragged his pants on. It wasn't something he thought much about. You just lived with the way things were and tried to get along, that was all. And since the people he had to get along with were the Americans, Mission Party and all, there were some things it just didn't pay to get upset about, else you were in trouble all the time.

  "Hell," he muttered. "Hudson's Bay c'n take care of its ownself. I got problems o' my own I ain't solved yet."

  ***

  The main trail south into the Willamette Valley from Oregon City was on the opposite side of the river from the settlement itself. It did not border the river, but ran inland perhaps a mile. From the ferry landing across from Oregon City it wound south over the heavily wooded prominence of Peter's Mountain, finally coming to the river again across from Swensen's shack.

  In this spring of 185o there were three major settlements along the river; for, whatever other trails existed, the river was the road, the bloodstream of the colony. Oregon City was at the falls, and some forty miles upstream the Methodist Mission settlement lay in the fertile heart of the Willamette Valley. Between these, perhaps fifteen miles upstream from the falls, was the Champoeg settlement of retired Hudson's Bay Company men; most of them French-Canadian freemen like René Devaux, who had chosen to forgo their free transport back to Montreal and remain in the Oregon Country.

  From the main road, a dead-end trail cut in toward. Monday's farm, running down the center of the arrowhead point and ending at Mondays cabin. It was down this trail a visitor came riding in the late afternoon, a beautiful bay mare pacing slowly from the north.

  The man that sat her was small and trim, the cuffs of his pinstripe trousers tucked neatly into riding boots. Across the stomach of his tightly buttoned waistcoat was a conservative golden chain, from which swung a small nugget. He rode easily and confidently, his hands lightly grasping the reins.

  Monday sat at the door of the cabin, the long, slim head of a double-bitted ax cradled on his knees while he stroked the cutting edge with a file. Hearing the horse, he looked up. To Monday, the small man perched atop the great horse appeared slightly absurd; he was accustomed to the sight of large men straddling the tiny Indian horses, their legs dangling until they almost seemed to reach the ground.

  He put the file aside and said without turning, "Mary, come here."

  Mary came silently to stand in the doorway behind him and look over the top of his head at the approaching rider.

  "It's Thurston," Monday said.

  Mary went back into the house for a moment, and returned with a bucket.

  "I go find some blackberries," she said. She left the porch and moved slowly down toward the thickly clustered vines near the river. Monday stood up, leaning the ax against the doorframe, and watched him come.

  Chapter Four

  1

  The small man reined in his horse, looking down at Monday with a sudden ingratiating smile, as though he had just remembered. He was cleanshaven, his hard, thin face as smooth as though it had been scraped with glass.

  "Afternoon, Mr. Thurston," Monday said.

  "Afternoon, Monday. Fine day."

  "It is, now. Got a pot of coffee on."

  "Well, now, " Thurston said, dismounting. "That's very hospitable."

  He looped the reins loosely around the tiny rail and came up to the porch, extending his hand. It was small and delicate, but he gripped with deliberate strength, as though there were a contest in progress.

  "C'mon in the house," Monday said. He felt embarrassed, as always when Thurston gripped his hand so hard and stared up, reproving him for his undisciplined size.

  Monday fumbled at the fireplace, pouring the coffee, while Thurston sat relaxed at the table, watching him carefully, his face drawn and expressionless. Monday put the cups on the table, and a few drops spilled over the rim. Thurston drew slightly away, and Monday muttered something about his own clumsiness and went to get a rag from the back to wipe up the small puddle on the table. When Thurston was around his fingers were always numb and awkward, as if half frozen; spilling things and knocking things over like a schoolboy. When he had wiped up the coffee he was rewarded with another of the sudden, flashing smiles from the small man, showing his perfectly even white teeth.

  "Well, Monday. Fine day," Thurston repeated.

  Monday nodded and sat down across the table. Thurston leaned forward, cupping his hands around the mug.

  "You wouldn't have any sugar about, would you?" Thurston asked.

  "I can't abide coffee without sugar."

  Monday shook his head, looking at the table. They hadn't had any sugar for six months.

  "Sorry, Mr. Thurston," he said. "They—up to Oregon City, you know. I been late every time a ship come in—"

  "Well, no matter," Thurston said in a friendly way. "It makes no difference, does it?" He carefully took his hands from around the cup and sat back, leaving the steaming coffee in the center of the table as a silent reproach. Monday looked at it helplessly.

  "Well, now, Monday," Thurston said. "I didn't see you in Oregon City last night. When the regiment came in."

  "Regiment?"

  "With the Cayuse prisoners," Thurston said, faintly annoyed.

  "Oh. No. Well, we got 'em in. I thought I better come home then."

 
; "Most of the men stayed with the job until the Indians were safely in the hands of the marshal."

  Monday cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. Thurston, I didn't think I was—needed any more. You know, it was all over, we had 'em in and all."

  Thurston leaned forward again, never taking his eyes from Monday's face. "Monday," he said seriously, "that's your problem. That's your big trouble."

  "Trouble? "

  Thurston sat back again, regarding the blond giant across the scarred planks of the table. With one finger he flipped the gold nugget on his watch chain.

  "Your modesty," he said finally. "Your modesty." The smile flashed, and was gone. "Thought you weren't needed! Indeed! Monday, don't you realize that a man of your caliber is always needed? Why, you could be the very backbone of our society here. Now you know that, don't you?"

  "We1l, I never thought very much—you know, Mr. Thurston, I try to get along, but as far as backbone and all that—"

  "Modesty again, Monday," Thurston said, amused. "Admirable, but, you understand, misplaced. You must recognize your own worth, you must take your proper place."

  Monday coughed.

  "Well, no matter, eh? I came to congratulate you on your part in the campaign, Monday. It was well conceived and well carried out; a complete success, I dare say, and something the community may well regard with pride."

  "There wasn't a hell of a lot to—"

  Thurston held up his hand in protest. "Modesty, my friend? I know what these things are like, believe me. Hunger, thirst, constant danger. And doubly difficult, I dare say, what with the damned conniving and plotting of the Jesuitical underlings of Hudson's Bay. Twice the danger, with them inciting the Indians against us at every opportunity."

  The only thing Monday had been particularly aware of on the expedition was being bored and saddle-sore. But, as always with Thurston, he thought he was beginning to lose the thread of the conversation. He frowned. "You know, though, without Ogden and HBC them Indians wouldn't ever of come down. We'd maybe have a honest-to-christ war on our hands."

  Thurston threw his head back and laughed heartily. "Monday, surely you aren't allowing yourself to be taken in by that story? Naturally, the Jesuitical plotters attempt to turn everything to their own advantage."