Moontrap - Don Berry (7 page)

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."