Moontrap - Don Berry Page 9

"Hell," Monday said, "nothin' I c'n do about what Thurston likes or not."

  "But it hurts you just the same."

  "Mary—listen, Mary. You worry too much about things you don't understand. If Thurston don't like my friends—it don't make any difference. I'm doin' the best I can here."

  "No," Mary said quietly turning to look at him. "You smell mountain. Now, the old man here, you start to talk mountain again. And you will never be one of them here, you smell mountain. You have mountain ways, mountain friends"—she hesitated briefly—"mountain wife."

  "Enough, woman." Monday stood, resting his lists on the table. He had spoken in Shoshone, and Mary became silent. She closed the trapdoor over the cooler and stood, brushing the dust from her gingham skirt. She went to the fireplace and hefted the pot, shaking it to hear the liquid.

  "There is coffee," she said.

  Monday looked down at the table, leaning on his knuckles. "I'm going to take a walk down to the river."

  "I heat it again when you come back," Mary said.

  Chapter Six

  1

  The moon was risen. It cast sharp shadows in front of him as Monday walked down to the river bank and sat himself. Below the bluff the Willamette rolled silvery and silent. Across the river the trees were cut-out silhouettes against the lightness of the sky, motionless and seeming very far away in the black and silver dimness of the night.

  She was there all the time, he thought. Listening to Thurston talk about "that Indian servant" and "biological needs." Though, at the root of it, Monday supposed it didn't matter. lt wasn't new. Times enough in the past seven years, scraps of conversation, sidelong glances, wrinkled noses as she passed in the streets of Oregon City before Monday had gotten enough sense to keep her home. It was nothing new to Mary, or to him.

  Meek and Newell both had Indian women, Nez Percé sisters. How the hell did they stand it? Wrginia Meek just stayed home; there was no way to tell what she felt, if she felt anything. But then, Joe had a "position"; being marshal probably made quite a bit of difference.

  Monday shook his head. There was no answer. Except the one some had found, getting rid of their women and getting white girls. But it was no way out for men like Meek and Newell and himself, who had their women not as a convenience, but because they wanted them and loved them. Until he'd bought Mary he'd never had any notion of having a woman permanent, and in fact it wasn't in his mind then. Like the two that had come before her, somebody to keep a lodge for him and mend his moccasins and warm his body in the cold winter nights. But, over the years . . .

  Well, the hell with it. It was just the way it was. It was hard and you had to put up with it and try to get along as best you could. He stood up, stretching his shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension out of them. What frustrated him most was the way things kept becoming problems; things that didn't have any right to be problems. What the hell difference did it make to Thurston and the rest of them if he did have an Indian woman? That was what he couldn't understand. Their lives were not changed by it, not even affected. In the end he supposed it was the same as Thurston wanting to hunt down an unknown solitary, just because he was solitary. And the new talk about sending an expedition into the up-country tribes that never hurt anybody and wanted nothing from the whites except to be left alone. It was just that they were there.

  There was something they couldn't stand about having Indians around. Something that got inside their minds and ate away at them like maggots in rotten meat, and they couldn't rest until they'd wiped out the "threat." A dozen times or better Monday had tried to figure out what the "threat" was, that they were always talking about. Only thing he could ever puzzle out was that the Indians lived a different kind of life, and the settlers couldn't tolerate it. They had to try to change them to farmer-thinking; make Christians out of them, and when that didn't work—hell, there was always the military. It didn't seem enough to produce the kind of reasonless, blind hate but—it seemed to be the way it was. They just couldn't stand to know that somebody was around that didn't live the way they did.

  Monday started walking back up to the cabin. Every time he got to thinking about it, it made him low. It was so damned unfair. And to have Mary thinking he'd be better off without her—it was just too goddamn much. An Indian woman who could not be a wife to her man was—in her own mind, at least—nothing. In the moment she had no use, she ceased to exist. And it was what Mary was feeling.

  "God damn them," he muttered.

  Well past the cabin to the north he saw the small flame of Webb's campfire, just at the edge of the trees that walled in the field. There was no use muddling over it all again. He'd reached the old wall, where his thinking butted up hard and stopped. Each time he thought he might somehow plow on through, but he never did. He'd go listen to the old man lie a while, and maybe it would cheer him up.

  Webb's blankets were empty when Monday got there. He threw another chunk of wood on the fire, standing close as the yellow flames licked up, so his face was lit.

  "Come on out o' there, y' damned ol' squaw," he said loudly.

  A few yards from him the brush at the edge of the trees rustled. Monday would have sworn the little patch wouldn't hide a rabbit, but the old man's angular shape slowly unfolded from the ground, as though appearing from a pit. He shuffled over to the fire, lowering the hammer of his gun and sniffing contemptuotisly.

  "Y' damn leadfoot dunghead," he muttered. "This nigger like t' filled y'r guts with Galena, wagh!"

  "Look here, hoss," Monday told him. "You got no call to be so skittery around here. We got all tame Injuns."

  Webb snorted, squatting by the fire. "Y'allus was a iggerant nigger, an' pokin' holes in the ground ain't made you any smarter. One time right quick I'm fixin' to put a ball atween y'r eyes. Learn y' not to come knockin' around a man's camp 'thout so much as a good holler."

  "Won't learn me much if'n I'm dead," Monday observed.

  "Wagh! That's truth! Y'allus did learn real hard. But leastways I wouldn't be bothered with y' no more."

  Monday leaned back on his elbows, beginning to feel more easy, his mind sloughing off the turbulence and tension. "How'd she come out?" he said, meaning the poem.

  "Hell of a damn thing," Webb muttered. "Dunghead fish gets caught by a fisherman an' gets loose. Otter grabs 'er, she gets loose. Eagle gets holt of 'er, an' another eagle whomps him, an' she falls back to the river. All kinds o' goddamn things happen! Then she gets to the falls that she's got t' jump over. Wagh! Well, now. She doubles up an' gives a try—then you know what the damn fish done?"

  "No, hoss. I didn't read it."

  "Dies.' She goes under slick. After all them awful things, that dunghead fish tries t' make a leetle jump, 'n' dies/" He held his hands up in bewilderment. "It wa'n't no kind o' poem t' end like that, now was it?"

  "Don't seem like it," Monday admitted.

  "Hell, no. No kind o' poem at all. Fish ought t' have more guts than that, is what I say. This nigger could've jumped them falls slick, 'n' got that damned fry out o' the ova or whatever. Even the fish around this country got no more guts than the people."

  "Well, that's literary, like I tol' you," Monday said reasonably.

  "All bullshit, anyways," Webb muttered. "Puttin' in things a man can't understand."

  Monday shrugged. After a moment he said, "Where's y'r stick floatin', coon?"

  Webb stared into the fire, then glanced up at Monday. He turned back to the fire and blinked. "Was down to the Bighorn," he started absently. "Met up with a old Crow shaman down there. Says to me, 'O1d man, you going to die pretty soon. You best go see y'r family first.' Approximately what he tol' me, except it took three days f'r the dancin' and all."

  "Hell, hoss. You oughtn't to take that kind of medicine too serious. You going to outlive us all, just out o' pure mean."

  Webb spat in the fire. "It ain't I b'lieve the dunghead. They's all a pack of lyin' sonsabitches, them shamans."

  "They are, now."

  "Still,
I expect the lyin' nigger's right, f'r oncet. This child went around t' all his Crow people, 'n' it still didn't feel right. Figgered I had to come round an' see what's left of the old mountain men, bein' as how they was sort o' family oncet. The bastards."

  Monday rubbed his forehead, leaning up on one elbow. "What about y'r own children?"

  Webb snorted. "Pack o' Wuthless no-'count breeds, they are. Man oughtn't to be allowed t' see his children after they c'n walk, else he's like t' kill them or hisself out o' pure mean disappointment. But they's good boys, all of 'em. Give them an' their mother what I had, lodge, some horses 'n' foofaraw like that, 'n' come off."

  "You takin' that shaman too serious, t' my way o' thinkin'."

  Webb looked at him again, then back to the fire. "This nigger's old, Jaybird. Little bit older'n God, I expect. I been here since the Beginning, I have, now."

  "How old are y', hoss?" Monday asked curiously.

  "Hundred and twelve," Webb said promptly. "I come out when the trade first started. I was seventeen an' with Ashley's first party up to the Roche Jaune."

  "That was 'twenty-two," Monday said. He figured in his head. 'That makes you forty-five years old."

  Webb nodded. "Thought it was somep'n like that. Forty-five or a hundred 'n' twelve. Round in there. I been here since the Beginning."

  Monday suddenly realized that Webb was, in his own mind, being perfectly accurate. He meant the beginning of the mountain trade; the only universe whose creation meant a damn anyway.

  "Forty-five ain't old, hoss. You got good years ahead."

  Webb looked up at him, and Monday was shocked by the raw grief in the old man's face. A second later he thought it was a trick of the flickering firelight, for Webb's face had not changed visibly, yet there was no sign of emotion. "Good years behind." Webb said flatly. "This nigger's fixin' to die."

  "Bill Williams is older'n you."

  "He's fixin' to die, too, if'n he ain't dead."

  "Well, damn it, Webb! Everbody's got t'die sometime!"

  "Wagh! That's the idee, y'iggerant dunghead! Ever'body's got to die sometime. An' my time's now."

  Monday grimaced in disgust. "Webb, you ain't talkin' sense. "

  Webb poked viciously at the fire. "Ain't nothin' wrong with my talkin'," he muttered. "You just ain't understandin', is all."

  "What the hell is there t'understand?"

  "I reckon a man c'n die if he says so."

  "Hell yes! You c'd fill y'r ears with powder and light it off, if y' wanted to. Nobody stoppin' you."

  "Ain't going t' die like that," Webb said calmly. "This child's fixin' to die like a man."

  "Dead's dead," Monday said sharply, angry at the old man for talking this way.

  Webb looked up at him quizzically, still toying with the smoking stick. "You been away from people too long," he said finally. "Made you weak in the head." He poked at the fire again.

  Monday was dumfounded. Crazy old Webb, solitary as an owl, claiming he had been away from people too long.

  "All right," he said finally. "Roll it out, then. What's a good way t' die?"

  "Way the old war-chiefs used to do 'er," Webb said speculatively, without hesitation. "Man gets old, gets ready to die. He paints hisself up for war, an' tells the people what he's after. He's a good old man, an' ever'body loves 'im. Takes his gun an' runs off to the woods. "Then the young men paint up, too, them as wants to go after 'im. Paint up like Blackfoot, maybe, or some other. His sons get first crack at goin'. They hunt 'im down, makin' like Blackfoot, an' the old man goes under fightin', the way he's a mind to. Who kills 'im gets scalp an' all. Naturally, the sons go after 'im good, not wantin' anybody else t' have his scalp an' horses an' such."

  "Why make a game out of it? Why not just shoot the old man and have done with it? No cause t' go play—actin'."

  "Ain't no game," Webb snapped angrily. Then he leaned back and said, more quietly. "No game. I mind me of old Walking Bird, him as took four o' the young men afore they got 'im. Three days, an' they had to call out the Dog Society f'r help." Webb chuckled raspingly. "Oh, he come round 'em smart, he did, now. Kilt four. No game to it, she's war right enough. Them as hunt got to watch out. Man feels inclined t' lift a leetle hair, he c'n show what he's worth, an' pick up a few horses besides. If'n he's good. If'n he ain? good—" Webb swept his right hand under the left.

  Monday shook his head. It all seemed a long way from him now. Things had changed so much. Seed wheat and missionaries . . . He suddenly noticed that the old man was watching his face intently

  "Now, look, hoss," he said slowly. "If you're thinkin'—"

  "Ain't thinkin' nothin'," Webb said sharply. "Weakens the brain. You ast me an' I tol' you."

  "Webb, listen, coon, I couldn't—" Monday scrambled to his feet.

  "I ain't ast if you could or couldn't any damn thing!" Webb's voice was harsh and cold, almost a shout. "Shut y'r pan an' get the hell out o' my camp!"

  "Webb—"

  "Git! y' damn dunghead!" The old man snatched up his rifle, throwing the hammer back to full cock. The two black scalp locks swayed violently

  Slowly, Monday turned away from the fire. He started to move into the empty field, then looked back and said quietly, "Y' didn't prime y'r pan, hoss."

  Webb looked down at the open pan of his gun and began to curse slowly and steadily.

  Monday walked away toward the cabin, listening to Webb's low voice behind him until it was no more than the wind that slipped and rustled through the trees.

  2

  Monday woke late again in the morning, feeling unrested. As Mary heard him stir she poured a mug of coffee from the pot and put it on the table. From the smell of it Monday could tell it was not real coffee, but parched-barley coffee. Glumly he swung himself to the edge of the bed and sat with his hands resting on the edge, staring down at the plank floor. At the edges of the boards there were still dark stains where the winter's wetness had seeped up. By the end of summer they would be nearly dry, and then the insidious damp would begin again. He shook his head and stood up, grabbing his shirt from the wall, trying to gather himself together sufficiently to do what he knew had to be done, sooner or later.

  He moved stiffly to the table and sat down before the coffee, cupping it in his hands.

  "You are going to Oregon City today?" Mary said.

  Monday grunted and took a swallow of the scalding coffee. "Expect I got to."

  Mary began to broil the deer steak. In a moment she turned to Monday and smiled gently. "The old man, he holler at you last night."

  "Mm." This time there was no pleasure to be evoked in the remembrance of their conversation. Mary turned back to the fire. "Every year," Monday said absently. "Every year I say to myself, This year McLoughlin's goin' to get tired o' puttin' me down in his little book. This year he's goin' to say no."

  "Someday, maybe," Mary said. "But you worry about it then."

  "Seems like I used to live without having to beg ever'thing I needed."

  "Is easier to live by the gun."

  Monday frowned. "Yes, but why? What I mean, why is ever'thing so damn mixed up, why is ever'thing so hard down here?"

  Mary looked up from the fire and met her husband's eyes. He looked at her, half-silhouetted against the fire. Her eyes are like a scared doe's, he thought absently. Big and bright.

  "I don 't know," she said finally She looked at the floor for a moment, started to say something, and stopped herself. "I don't know," she repeated, turning back to the fire.

  "There's so many twists to ever'thing," he mused. "Man's got t' walk so soft all the time, worry about what he says, worry about what he does, there's always a thousand things to worry about, an' I plain can't keep track of 'em all."

  "They are not important, maybe, what you worry about."

  "That's just the hell of it, Mary. They ain' important, an' I know it. But down here you got to worry about it anyways. What people are going to say, what they're going to think. Y' know, by christ, I got so bad ther
e for a while that if somebody said good morning I'd think, but what's he mean? "

  Mary nodded silently.

  "It's like a rip-tide down to the ocean. There's a hundred little currents underneath you can't see, ever'body mad at ever'body else, or jealous, or somethin'. It's too complicated for me. I'm a simple man, I just try to get along, an' do what I'm supposed t' do."

  "It will get better," Mary said. "Is hard to learn the new ways."

  Monday sighed. "I expect," he said. "Webb says I allus did learn hard." He drained the last of the coffee and went to the door. As he opened it the sun streamed in yellow and warm across the floor, and suddenly there was light and warmth reflected all through the cabin.

  "What do we live with the goddamn door shut for?" he demanded angrily of no one in particular. Outside the clarity and sharpness of the early summer morning were clean and fresh.

  "Like a bunch of goddamn animals hiding in a cave," he muttered.

  "Is a very beautiful morning," Mary said, coming to stand at the door and feel the warmth of the sun on her face.

  "Nothin' to hide from," Monday said. Even as he spoke a part of him stood off and realized he was working himself up into anger because of what he had to do in Oregon City. Even realizing, he was unable to control his rising temper. "In a Shoshone lodge we'd of had the sun two hours ago. Act like we was mired of it, or something." Angrily he grabbed the epishemore and saddle from the rail and went off the porch to saddle the waiting horse.

  Mary stood with her eyes closed in the doorway, letting the light breeze rustle in her hair and the sun bring warmth to her skin. She thought of mountain mornings, when the sun brought joy, and the red rising of it streamed into the camp circle and the lodges glowed inside from its brilliance and the women chattered as they went about their work, happy and free. She remembered it very clearly, though it was a long time, now.

  "Is just the way they make houses here." she said absently.

  "Bunch o' slaves, we are," Monday said, throwing the saddle on.

  "You forgetting your breakfast," she said.

  "I'll get it when I come back. I ain't hungry right now."