Fair Land Fair Land - A B Guthrie

by A B Guthrie

  Like a fool, he had forgotten the ax. He went back and got it and set to work. While he was working, he heard one shot. One was all Summers ever needed. He was bringing in the last load just as Summers showed up.

  "Horses all sassy," Summers said. He swung out a hand that held a rabbit. "One lousy snowshoe."

  The sun was up now. It had no heat in it, only light, and a man could go blind from the glare on the snow.

  Summers skinned and cleaned the rabbit and tossed it in a pot, ready for boiling. The tent had become fairly warm, warm close to the fire but chilly at the edges, so that a body felt half hot and half cold and kept squirming to thaw out the chilled parts.

  "That sun might take on some meanin' later," Summers said, "but what we need now is more air."

  Higgins took a deep breath and blew it out in a white plume. "I was just hopin' you could rustle up some."

  "Air in the shape of more wind."

  "Sure. I miss it."

  "To scour out the trail. To lift up the snow. Sure, it will leave some drifts, but we can bull through."

  "I'd as lief stay safe for a while as risk my neck."

  "Risk is the name of it all, Hig. You can break a leg any time, get kicked by a horse, fall off"n a cliff, get lost and give up. But how'd you like to live without it, like a milk cow, say, or a prize stud horse? You want pamperin'?"

  "Yeah. Like a woman to take the fret out."

  "It's weather and chances we're talkin' about. The first snow goes away fast. You can bet on that."

  Higgins put a stick on the fire. He looked through the open end of the canvas. "It's not meltin' now by a long shot."

  "It's goin' away. Shrunk already by two inches or I'm a nigger."

  "It's just settled, is all."

  "That's not the half of it. This high up the air's pretty dry, and it sucks up the snow."

  "I don't see any goin' back up."

  "It evaporates. That's what it does. Goes up in a mist you can't see."

  "Like the soul, huh?"

  It was good to hear Summers laugh. Through the laugh he said, "Quit play-actin' the muttonhead."

  With nothing else to do, they sat by the fire, lay down and snoozed, fed the fire and snoozed some more. Half-drowsing, Higgins heard the wind again. The soul that went up in it would get one hell of a ride.

  * * *

  Empty-bellied, they set out in the gray of morning. Summers had been right. The snow had shrunk, been blown away or gone up in mist. Or some of it had. Where it hadn't, the horses shuffled through, knee-deep in places. The wind had turned into a cold breeze. The red ball of the sun came up, cold-firing the snow. Higgins squinted and moved his cold butt in the saddle.

  His life hadn't been worth a damn, he knew and didn't care. A man took things as they came and, if he had gumption, went out to meet what was coming. So he had thrown in with Summers and wasn't sorry. He wondered about the sadness he saw sometimes in Summers' face, a sadness that never poked through to sour his manner. He wondered if, like Summers, he had distance in his eyes, of long trails traveled and others that lay ahead. Summers had said risk was the all of it, but in his face, off-guard, was the look of search, of long wanting.

  Anyhow, it was plod, plod, on and on, while the cold tried for a man's vitals and the breath of his horse came out frost. Times like these, it seemed a long way to yonder, but who

  wanted it underfoot?

  Ahead of him Summers dismounted, his rifle in one hand. It was always with him, like a part of himself. He let the reins drop and went ahead, tramping a trail in a drift. Now Higgins saw why. The drifted snow slanted down to a drop-off, a cliff face with a base a hundred, two hundred feet down. A misstep or slip would shoot a man over the edge.

  Higgins forgot he was cold. He raised his eyes from the drop. He tried to shut it out of his mind. Let him fall, he thought, looking up, and the mountains, dressed in starched white, would be his uncaring tombstones.

  Returning, Summers said, "Better get off and lead your horse, Hig. Stay on the upside. It ain't so far."

  Summers took Feather's reins and led away, walking careful. There was nothing for it but to follow his tracks. He kept his eyes on them. He hoped his horses were sure-footed. They ought to be, having four feet, if that didn't double the trouble. The horses followed readily enough, the dumb brutes.

  Once past the drift, Summers held up and waited, his face smiling. "I was a mite scared we would roll the string," he said.

  "I was scared we would roll me."

  "You were, huh?"

  "You ought to see what I got in my pants."

  "I figure it's downhill and easier goin', here on out. Sun's warmin' up some, to boot."

  "I hadn't took notice till now."

  They pushed on, by and by leaving most of the snow. Summers' head was alert. He would be looking for meat. High time, too, Higgins' guts told him. But there wasn't any game, not even a track. And there weren't any birds in the trees. Of a sudden Summers checked his horse and shot. He dismounted and walked off a piece and came back carrying some kind of animal.

  "Bobcat," he said, "but it's meat. Don't usually see 'em in daylight."

  He tied the cat to his saddle, mounted and rode on.

  So it was on again the next morning with the pukey taste of cat meat in his mouth, and the sun turned kind and the snow went away and the breeze let up, and there was spring in the steps of the horses. Down, down, the trail turned, and now ahead lay a valley where the sun buttered the turned grass of meadow and slope. A river ran through it, fringed by cottonwoods and aspens and willows that hadn't yet lost their leaves.

  "There's the Bitter Root," Summers said.

  Higgins just looked, looked at the gentle valley and the leafed trees, feeling the sun as soft ,as a woman's touch. He called ahead, "And to think them people went clear to Oregon! Where's all the Indians?"

  "Upstream by the mission, I reckon."

  "Man, this is cozy. Just pitch a tent alongside the water and let time run by. It's a hellish temptation, Dick."

  "Won't be that way for long. Someone will find it, and them that follers will ruin it. That's the way of things."

  "The Flatheads haven't."

  "Injuns don't. Got more sense."

  "Right now, all I want is to go down to the river, get my tail out of the saddle and eat. I'm bound to say I ain't strong for what we been puttin' into our stummicks."

  "Grouse tonight. Change of victuals. Let's get along."

  Higgins brought in the grouse that afternoon, four of them, plump as fed chickens. Summers had unpacked the horses and now sat by the makings of a fire. He said, "Look off to your left, Hig."

  A black bear stood there, its nose working. There was rust on its muzzle and paws.

  "No harm in it," Summers said.

  "Be a shame to shoot. Everythin's so tame, like friends. The grouse was more like tame hens. Tame fish in the river, too, I bet."

  "Catch us a mess, then. I'll ready the grouse."

  There was no trick to catching these fish. A man didn't even need bait. Just tie a bit of grouse feather to a hook and start casting.

  Higgins gutted his catch and brought it in. Summers had a couple of grouse spitted over the fire.

  "Fish, too?" Higgins asked.

  "Sure thing."

  "We got no grease for fryin'."

  "Put water in the skillet, not too much. Poach 'em."

  "If you ain't one smart son of a bitch!"

  They followed the river down the next day and the next. It joined what Summers said had to be Clark's Fork of the Columbia. There Summers turned the string upstream. By and by they came to a great hole in the mountains, a giant deep saucer with peaks and high tumbles of hills for its rim. Mountains on all sides, some of them snow-capped, some of them thick with forest, but down here the weather was warm and the trees scattered more, and the river sang by, merry with its travels, and all a man wanted to do was to eat and sleep and let the sun shine on him. Someone would find this place, as Su
mmers said, and others would be on his heels, but now this cupped world was all theirs, and the only tame sounds were the far-off barking of dogs in an Indian camp that Summers had sighted and sneaked them around, saying only, "I don't hanker for pipe-smoking and palaver, not now, though the Flatheads is peaceable."

  Lying down in his bed that night, hearing the busy river, thinking of this valley in the high hills, Higgins told Summers,

  "Wake me up when the last trumpet toots."

  10

  THEY WERE OVER the Bitter Boot, over Clark's Fork and well up the Big Blackfoot, the River of the Road to the Buffalo. Give them two more days, maybe three, Summers thought, and they'd spill out on the plains. Winter was holding off, and now he knew for a fact just where he was, though not once on the long trail from Oregon had he had to backtrack or correct course.

  It was no more than the middle of the day, but Summers pulled up his horse and the string halted behind him. Here was a long, level open space, grassed, shrub-clumped and not thick with trees, and at its side flowed the Big Blackfoot, reduced now to stream size as the trail approached the divide.

  "Hig," he said over his shoulder, "I'm thinkin' it would be smart to make camp and let the horses rest and fill up."

  The horses were pretty gaunt, but, thanks to Higgins, there wasn't a sore foot in the bunch or a saddle sore. The claw marks on Feather's rump were healing up good.

  "Suits me," Higgins said, "and will suit the nags even better, that's if they remember what full bellies feel like." His thin face screwed up as he studied the lay of the land. "We'll be needin' fodder our own selves."

  "Name it. Deer. Elk. Maybe moose. I reckon you could catch us a mess of trout, if'n you feel like it."

  Some aspen trees, still carrying a good half of their leaves, fingered down from a coulee, and they rode around them so as to have cover if the night wind blew. They unpacked and unsaddled the horses. The horses rolled, got up, sneezed and stepped off, feeding.

  Higgins took a piece of rank meat from a pack and started cutting it in pieces for bait. His nose twitching, he said, "Fur as I know fish can't smell." Bait, fish line and hooks in his hand, he went on, "I'll cut me a pole down by the river."

  Summers watched him as he made off. A man wouldn't think there was any strength in that long, scrawny body or any push. He wouldn't think so, and he'd be surprised. Like as not, Higgins would catch some fish. He usually did what he set out to do.

  Summers gathered wood for the night fire and set rocks around so's to nest it. Then he sat down and allowed himself a pipe of tobacco, taking note to tell Higgins, for what they had they shared, much or little. They'd gone mighty easy on the whiskey, too, though they might drink some tonight.

  He felt ease in him, the ease of almost arrival, and with it a sort of unease. Would the high plains be as remembered? Would buffalo graze there and antelope bucket away and halt, curious, and the sun shine long, morning and evening, and the buttes rise clear against the painted sky? And if they did, would it be as it was once? Too often, things weren't what they were cracked up to be. He let himself nap.

  Higgins woke him up, Higgins coming into camp with a nice string of trout on a willow stick. "Nothin' to it," he said. "Gave up when my bait ran out. Ain't they pretty, though?"

  Summers got to his feet. "They shine for a fact. My turn now. What'l1 it be?"

  "Quail on toast, if it be so's to please you."

  He didn't have to go far. With dusk closing in the deer were coming down to feed and water in this natural pasture. He lay behind a clump of brush and waited. A doe came first, her growing fawn behind her. They hadn't learned to be hunter shy. They had only to watch for the big cats, wolves, and sometimes a bear. Then came a plump doe — no fawn. She was a pretty thing, as delicate as, well as delicate as a she deer. She would be good to eat. He killed her with one shot from the Kentucky.

  " He went up to her, made his cuts and rolled out the guts, saving the liver. He was ready for Higgins when Higgins showed up with a pack horse.

  That night they ate trout and deer liver, and Higgins said, cleaning up the last of it, "I swear it's better'n fat pork and mustard greens."

  They scoured the pan, hung the carcass of the deer in a tree beyond the reach of bears and sat down by the fire.

  Night had come on, clear and cold, and the stars glittered like mirrors touched by the sun. Coyotes and wolves were making their usual racket. Over a pipe Higgins said, "Nothin' like bein' footloose, pointed at nowhere in particular. Dick, was you always this way?"

  "It's the way I'm aimin' to be, here on out."

  Higgins took a pull on his pipe. It sucked in his lips where no teeth were. "Footloose and fancy-free, that's the sayin'. But I swear words is tricky things. What does it mean, fancy-free? Free of fancy? Free to hitch on to whatever one comes along? Free to follow what's already set in your mind?"

  "I never gave it much thought." Summers drank from the jug and passed it. He put a stick on the fire, thinking Higgins was talking just to be talking, talking because there was somebody to talk to, talking against the great loneliness that held and hurt a man.

  "I don't know as it makes any difference," Higgins went on, wiping his mouth. "But a body likes to straighten things out in his mind. You wonder where the truth's at. Live and learn they say but don't say that all the while you're learnin' you're forgettin', too, until maybe at the last it"s just a big forgettin'."

  "Christ sake, swaller some more of that joy juice."

  The fire glowed red, for now sending out heat enough. Overhead the cold stars danced as they had danced at Jackson's Hole, the Popo Agie and Horse Creek. That was a long time ago to a man but not to the stars. Their calendars were different. One star fell, making a quick streak in the sky, its seeing time ended.

  "Quit beatin' your brain," Summers said. "Think on this. We been lucky. Lucky in the weather. Lucky in not bein' tormented and slowed up by Indians. Another time of year, and the Flatheads would be comin' or goin' on their hunts on the plains."

  "It don't make much sense. They got all that pretty Bitter Root country to bang away in."

  "But no buffalo."

  "I know. You told me."

  "A heap of fightin'. The Blackfeet didn't like that poachin' in the country they claimed."

  "Still don't, I reckon."

  "No, but smallpox took the starch out of them a few years back. Maybe half of them went under. I hear tell they're still mean but their pride's mostly gone."

  Higgins fell silent, maybe still thinking about words and what they meant and all that. The whiskey wasn't doing what it should to him.

  Summers sipped at the jug and went on. "I fell in with a party of Flatheads once, down there on the plains."

  Higgins fed the fire.

  "It was the spring hunt, and they brought with 'em some camas root. Man, what fodder!"

  Higgins stirred himself enough to ask, "A treat, huh?"

  "It tasted somethin' like a plum, but there they split up. It blowed you up fearful, more'n beans ever do, and when you broke wind the coyotes took off for fresh air. Magpies, comin' too close, fell dead out of the sky. The camp dogs puked, them as didn't give up the ghost."

  Higgins was grinning.

  "The Flatheads just laughed and kept fartin'."

  "They just let 'er rip, huh?"

  "Yup."

  "Squaws, too?"

  "These here was all men, but they wouldn't have paid no" notice of squaws."

  "Eatin' or whatever, they just let go. Right?"

  "Feastin' and fartin'. They don't go together. It ain't nice. It's downright uncivilized."

  "Natural, though." Summers took time to think out how to say what he wished to say next. "But what do you want, Hig, the fartin' few or the tight-assed many?"

  Higgins jumped to his feet and saluted. "Yes, sir, general. I'm with you all the way, but I got to make bold to say we haven't the men or the arms to fight off what's comin'."

  Summers had to laugh. "Sit down, soldier. W
e don't aim to fight them. The idee is just to go where they ain't."

  "Just to get a taste of her, huh, before the flood laps her up?"

  "Before she gets tamed."

  "Suits me." Higgins sampled the whiskey and went silent again as if he had gone back to his earlier thoughts. A night bird called from the aspens behind them, and he asked, "What you reckon it is?"

  "Just some little old bird, I reckon."

  "Yeah, the bird in the bush, and that's another thing," Higgins continued as if talking to himself. "Take, now, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. That"s true of the gut, but I got doubts for the spirit. The bush, it"s always yonder and yonder. Right?"

  "You frazzle things, Hig. Me, I'm goin' to bed."

  Once in his bedroll Summers couldn't sleep. He heard coyotes and wolves, far off, and close at hand the voice of the night bird. The bird in the bush. Had he held it once, not knowing? Did it flutter there in his hand in those gone days, there along the upper Missouri, there in Jackson's Hole, there at rendezvous, where men drank and sang the old songs in young voices, and a squaw's eyes said yes, after a while? Where beaver swam in every stream, and a trapper knew his foot was first on the land and he walked with the gods of the world, knowing himself to be small and big and blessed and, ignorant, didn't give thanks, not full thanks, not until too late? Was the bird once in his hand, full-plumed, bright-colored, and had he let it slip from his grasp and fly on, calling him, its voice soft, its flame alive in the bushes, and when he went after it, it fluttered on, almost but not quite within reach?

  That damn night bird called again. That damn Higgins was snoring.

  * * *

  The frost lay silver on the grass when he woke up. It silvered the willows and the branches of the quaking asps. Low in the west a quarter moon was sinking. To the east the sky glowed red, showing the sun was on its way up. He rose and built a fire. It would be deer meat again, stabbed by sticks held over the coals.

  Higgins lifted himself on an elbow and said, "Please to bring me coffee, black, and a platter of bacon and half a dozen fried eggs."