The Way West (30 page)

   While he and Brownie freed their teams, Evans thought again of Byrd, thought of him with a little of embarrassment, as if Byrd's weaknesses rested on him. Like some other unmanly men he'd known, Byrd must be a clever man in bed, judging by the flock he'd fathered. It was vexatious to feel responsible for him, and yet he did and more so maybe than with most, remembering the words that Mack had overheard and told him. Back there at Fort Hall Tadlock was working on Byrd, arguing for California. Byrd had answered, "I'll stay with Evans and Summers. If any can, those two will see the train through."
   To Evans there was a kind of womanish faith in that answer that, right or wrong, seemed to put an extra burden on him.
   He laid the yoke down and let the team step out and saw his in-law daughter looking at him. "Wore out?" he asked, making himself smile.
   She gave him just the ghost of an answering smile. "I'm all right."
   Evans was up early. The dark still hung here in the bottom though overhead the sky was lightening. He stopped outside his tent and looked off to the water, seeing it as just a fluid dullness, without the shine of sun or moon or stars. The voice of it came to him, the whishing mutter of its strength. All night he'd heard it, even through his dreams.
   He shook himself against the chill, against the inward funkiness of early morning, wishing with a sudden impatience that all the camp was up, ready for a try that weighed heavier with waiting. Right now, with the blood flowing weak in him after sleep and the dark cast of dawn lying on his spirit, damn if he wasn't as bad as Byrd, empty-chested before a danger built up in the mind. They'd get across, down to the last setting hen and chick. It was his being head rooster that put the foolish fidgets in him.
   He walked down toward the water, flushing up a ground bird that rustled out of sight. Close up, the river still ran black. lie couldn't see the bottom of it. Out in the stream the islands floated like clouds made out at night. The shapeless movement that he saw might be the livestock, getting up to graze.
   They'd got the stock out there all right and afterwards, after food and coffee, had made light of the crossing, saying shoo, it wasn't anything. Critters now and then had had to swim and the current sure enough was swift, but still it wasn't anything. And, with grass and rest, the teams would be still stronger.
   They'd soon see how it was, Evans thought, while there slipped into his mind the way the river reared against the horse he'd used to drive the loose stock over. The eastward sky was showing red. An hour or so, and they would see. There was just breakfast to get and eat and clean up after, and tents to strike and loads to load and the stock to push back and hitch. Then they'd see.
Except for being unloaded, the wagons were ready, or as ready as the place allowed. By Dick's advice the men had gone wood hunting yesterday and had found a little, mostly smallishsized. Evans had thought it next to nothing, not much more than good enough for fires, and had said to Summers, "Them poles wouldn't float a cart."
   "Don't aim to float the wagons, Lije. Not here."
   "Don't?"
   "Tide's too stiff. A floatin' wagon might draw the teams along with it."
   "So what?"
"What we want is for the wheels to set solid on the bottom. We'll lay the wood on top the wagon boxes -that'll give us extry weight- and h'ist the flour and such on top of it, so's to keep it dry."
There wasn't wood enough to help out much. Here and there the men had found a small and lonesome tree and here and there a piece of punky drift. They laid their pickings over the wagon beds and, to piece them out and get the spoilables above the waterline, used plows and pack saddles and boxes emptied into others.
   Evans turned away from the river, hearing sounds in camp, and saw Summers riding up. Behind him the arches of the wagons had divided from the dark.
   "Got 'er figgered out, Lije?" Summers asked.
   "Sure. All we have to do is cross and then think about the second crossing."
   "Second ain't so bad. Close to Boise, too, where there's help if need be." Summers smiled while his eyes studied Evans' face. "You sleep any?"
   "Sure."
   "Ain't no sartain-sure way against accidents, Lije. If'n one happens, no one'll fault you 'less you do yourself."
   "I know that."
  "Know it but can't feel it," Summers answered, gazing off beyond the river. "That's what makes you a good captain, I reckon, but it's hard on the gizzard." His eyes came back to Evans. "I swear, Lije, back in Missouri I never thought to see you playin' mother hen."
   "Me neither."
   "Best put four yoke, anyhow, to a wagon, an' up to six to some."
   "That'll mean usin' some teams twicet."
   Summers bobbed his head. "With a long string of critters, enough will have footin' if others has to swim."
   "I see."
   "An', Lije, I'm thinkin' we need a rider at each side, upstream and down. Up man could have a hold-rope on the lead ox nearest him."
   "Down man would have a poke, I reckon. Which side is dangerest?"
   "Down, I figger. Yonder there's a ripple it would be bad to sag below. Let swimmers do the ridin', Lije."
   "That's a job for me then."
   "You're a fish," Summers answered, nodding. "Hig's hard to beat, I seen down on the Bear."
   "I'll ask him."
   Summers clucked to his horse. "Thought I'd scout acrost and find out how to go."
   Evans watched the horse take to the river. He saw it splash in, unwilling but helpless under Dick's strong hand, and brace against the sweep and feel ahead for footholds while the water Mse. At one place it had to swim, and Dick lifted himself to keep from getting any wetter than he had to. They came out, streaming, on the nearer island.
   Evans faced around and made for camp. There was other work to do while Dick did his.
   The sun was above the hills by the time the train was ready. Evans had put his own wagons first in line, six yoke to the big one, four to the small, thinking it his duty to try the danger first. The other wagons curled behind his, some prepared to go, some waiting for ox teams to come back. People stood by them or perched inside or watched from on the bank, their talk littled by the thought of things to come.
   Sitting his horse by the lead yoke, Evans squirmed around. His eyes met those of Brownie, who sat in the big wagon with Mercy by his side. He rode back toward them and pulled up and said, "I still don't like it. Let's have a try at her, with me up there, before you young'uns launch."
   "We argued that out once, Pa," Brownie answered. "Lemme take the first team over. Me and Mercy ain't afraid. We got to go over sometime."
   "Later's better, after we see."
   "If all was to wait, you'd have to bring the wagons back to carry 'em across. Three crossings, that'ud make."
   Evans flicked the end of the bridle reins against his opened palm, weighing one thing against another though he knew the choice was made. Young ones were hard to scare, believing they would live forever. Danger was a tonic to them. Why, right now, this minute ahead of risk, there was a lookingforward in their faces, a keen excitement more fit for newjoined man and wife than the sober manner that he'd wondered at. His gaze traveled back to the second wagon, where Becky sat, anxious but contained, as if she told herself here was a thing they had to meet.
   "Never won an argument in my life," he said to the couple while he grinned at them. "Keep on Dick's tail now."
   He remembered then he had put aside his goad. He rode to the second wagon and picked it from the wheel it slanted against. "Goin' to make it, Becky," he said. "Goin' to get to Oregon."
   Her eyes were solemn. "You be careful, Lije. I'm as scared for you as anybody."
   He raised the goad, saying with it that he would, and reined around.
   They were waiting for him, Hig mounted yon side of the string, the rope from the near leader's horns dangling in his hand, and Dick ready to lead away.
   "Reckon we're set," he said to Dick and saw that Dick's gaze was fixed behind. Turning, he saw Byrd hurrying up. "Evans," Byrd said, "I'm nervous -about the children."
   "They'll be all right."
   "I know, but do you suppose you could take them?"
   "First trip?"
   "Your wagons are better and your teams stronger."
   "You kin use my oxen."
   "I just have the one wagon, too."
   "Makes a big load all right," Evans answered, remembering how Byrd's light and flimsy second wagon had gone to pieces on the Green.
   "And I'm not much of a teamster." Byrd spoke as if he'd like to think there were other things he was pretty much of. "Don't take a teamster. Just takes a setter."
   "Still-"
   "Whyn't you wait until we try her out?"
   "I'd like for the children to go in your wagons," Byrd said simply.
   There it was again, Evans thought, the womanish faith in him, the clinging confidence that made him feel half sheepish but somehow answerable. "Bring 'em up if you're bound to," he said.
   There were nine Byrd children, not counting the one unborn. Byrd herded them up. The oldest in the bunch was Jeff, who was maybe twelve and fair and open-faced like his father. He climbed into Brownie's wagon and took the toddler that Byrd lifted up. Three others climbed in after him. The rest would wait for Becky's wagon.
   "Ready," Evans said.
   "Here we go, hoss," Summers said to Brownie. He kicked his horse and reined around. Brownie hollered at the team.
   The oxen took to the water slowly, staring out across it as if to calculate their chances. Already the current was bucking against Dick's horse.
   Here was the deepest part, from shore to nearer island, the deepest but not the swiftest or the riskiest. The water climbed List, up the legs of the leaders, to their bellies, up their bellies, streaming around the little dams that their bodies made. Evans wrenched his horse close, so as to be able to use the poke.
   The lead yoke sank into a hole and lined out, swimming, giving to the current, their chins flattened on the surface. Evans punched at them, shouting, "Gee! Gee!" above the washing of the water. He felt the cold climb up his legs and felt his horse change gait, from jolt to fluid action, and knew that it was swimming. He held it short-reined, angled against the stream, while he worked the goad. Across the swimming backs he saw Hig's rope tighten like a fiddle string.
   The leaders caught a foothold and staggered on and drew the next yoke over, and Evans looked behind him and saw the wagon lurching and Brownie grinning wide and Mercy holding the Byrd baby like the mother of it.
   The island neared. In the wide and busy water it was as if the island swam to them. The oxen pulled up on it and drew the wagon after.
   "How's that?" Evans yelled to Brownie while the team held up to blow.
   The answer had the tone of spirit in it. "Ought to be hitched to a duck."
   "Watch them wheelers do their part."
   Summers led them across the island and angled upstream, and the water bore on them again and the oxen leaned into it, pitching on the tricky bottom, fighting upward step by step while the wagon balked behind. The second island was close at hand before Dick made a leftward turn and led them out where wheel tracks scarred the banks.
   They stopped again to let the oxen catch their wind. Summers said to Hig and Evans, "Next one's hardest, you kin see." He raised his voice to reach to Brownie. "We head well up for two rod or so and then quarter a little down for six or eight and then turn up again for fifteen or twenty. Then point for where the tracks come out. Heavy water, but not so deep as some we've crossed. Watch out for that there ripple. We got to keep above her." The lined face grinned at Brownie. "What skeers me is your pa will git hisself washed off. Can't swim no better'n a salmon."
   Fighting the current, seeing the lunge and sway of the wagon and the oxen half falling in the holes, Evans thought that only mountain men would have called this place a crossing. Only they would have found it and, finding, thought it possible to get a wagon through. This wasn't a ford, this wild, deep, uneven-bottomed water. It was an invitation to drown. Let a team be pulled over the muscled ripple to his left, let even a saddle horse pass over! Go it, critters! Again it was as if the solid land swam to them while the current banked against teams and wheels and wagon boxes and boiled off white at front and back. It swam to them, and the oxen lifted to it, and wheels ground in the gravel of the shore.
   "We done it!" Evans yelled across at Hig as the leaders found the bank. "By godalmighty, yes!"
Hig didn't answer. He didn't need to. His thin grin answered for him.
   "Dick, we done it!"
   "'Lowed we would."
   "Fun," Brownie put in from the wagon seat. "Man, it was fun."
   "Take the outfit up a ways, Brownie, and you and Mercy mind the young'uns. Don't want 'em underfoot."
   "Want to take the team back?" Brownie asked.
   "Unhitch and leave 'em rest awhile. We'll git some more across, I reckon, before usin' 'em again."
   Later, with Becky across, and Mack and Shields and Carpenter, Evans told himself the talk last night was right: there wasn't anything to it. The crossing had the looks of danger; it sure enough was danger, close-sweeping in the stout and angry tide; but with Dick to lead and him and Hig to ride, there wasn't anything to it, not if a man took care. They'd be across, the whole set of them, by noon or maybe sooner.