Some folks couldn’t stand it. They’d cringe into themselves and start hunting excuses to go back where they came from. This was a big country needing big men and women to live in it, and there was no place out here for the frightened or the mean.
The prairie and sky had a way of trimming folks down to size, or changing them to giants to whom nothing seemed impossible. Men who had cut a wide swath back in the States found themselves nothing out here. They were folks who were used to doing a lot of talking who suddenly found that no one was listening anymore, and things that seemed mighty important back home, like family and money, they amounted to nothing alongside character and courage.
There was John Sampson from our town. He was a man used to being told to do things, used to looking up to wealth and power, but when he crossed the Mississippi he began to lift his head and look around. He squared his shoulders, put more crack to his whip, and began to make his own tracks in the land.
Pa was always strong, an independent man given to reading at night from one of the four or five books we had, to speaking up on matters of principle and to straight shooting with a rifle. Pa had fought the Comanche and lived with the Sioux, but he wasn’t strong enough to last more than two days with a Kiowa arrow through his lung. But he died knowing Ma had stood by the rear wheel and shot the Kiowa whose arrow it was.
Right then I knew that neither Indians nor country was going to get the better of Ma. Shooting that Kiowa was the first time Ma had shot anything but some chicken-killing varmint—which she’d done time to time when Pa was away from home.
Only Ma wouldn’t let Jeanie and me call it home. “We came here from Illinois,” she said, “but we’re going home now.”
“But, Ma,” I protested, “I thought home was where we came from?”
“Home is where we’re going now,” Ma said, “and we’ll know it when we find it. Now that Pa is gone we’ll have to build that home ourselves.”
She had a way of saying “home” so it sounded like a rare and wonderful place and kept Jeanie and me looking always at the horizon, just knowing it was over there, waiting for us to see it. She had given us the dream, and even Jeanie, who was only six, she had it too.
She might tell us that home was where we were going, but I knew home was where Ma was, a warm and friendly place with biscuits on the table and fresh-made butter. We wouldn’t have a real home until Ma was there and we had a fire going. Only I’d build the fire.
Mr. Buchanan, who was captain of the wagon train, came to us with Tryon Burt, who was guide. “We’ll help you,” Mr. Buchanan said. “I know you’ll be wanting to go back, and—”
“But we are not going back.” Ma smiled at them. “And don’t be afraid we’ll be a burden. I know you have troubles of your own, and we will manage very well.”
Mr. Buchanan looked uncomfortable, like he was trying to think of the right thing to say. “Now, see here,” he protested, “we started this trip with a rule. There has to be a man with every wagon.”
Ma put her hand on my shoulder. “I have my man. Bud is almost thirteen and accepts responsibility. I could ask for no better man.”
Ryerson came up. He was thin, stooped in the shoulder, and whenever he looked at Ma there was a greasy look to his eyes that I didn’t like. He was a man who looked dirty even when he’d just washed in the creek. “You come along with me, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll take good care of you.”
“Mr. Ryerson”—Ma looked him right in the eye—“you have a wife who can use better care than she’s getting, and I have my son.”
“He’s nothin’ but a boy.”
“You are turning back, are you not? My son is going on. I believe that should indicate who is more the man. It is neither size nor age that makes a man, Mr. Ryerson, but something he has inside. My son has it.”
Ryerson might have said something unpleasant only Tryon Burt was standing there wishing he would, so he just looked ugly and hustled off.
“I’d like to say you could come,” Mr. Buchanan said, “but the boy couldn’t stand up to a man’s work.”
Ma smiled at him, chin up, the way she had. “I do not believe in gambling, Mr. Buchanan, but I’ll wager a good Ballard rifle there isn’t a man in camp who could follow a child all day, running when it runs, squatting when it squats, bending when it bends, and wrestling when it wrestles and not be played out long before the child is.”
“You may be right, ma’am, but a rule is a rule.”
“We are in Indian country, Mr. Buchanan. If you are killed a week from now, I suppose your wife must return to the States?”
“That’s different! Nobody could turn back from there!”
“Then,” Ma said sweetly, “it seems a rule is only a rule within certain limits, and if I recall correctly no such limit was designated in the articles of travel. Whatever limits there were, Mr. Buchanan, must have been passed sometime before the Indian attack that killed my husband.”
“I can drive the wagon, and so can Ma,” I said. “For the past two days I’ve been driving, and nobody said anything until Pa died.”
Mr. Buchanan didn’t know what to say, but a body could see he didn’t like it. Nor did he like a woman who talked up to him the way Ma did.
Tryon Burt spoke up. “Let the boy drive. I’ve watched this youngster, and he’ll do. He has better judgment than most men in the outfit, and he stands up to his work. If need be, I’ll help.”
Mr. Buchanan turned around and walked off with his back stiff the way it is when he’s mad. Ma looked at Burt, and she said, “Thank you, Mr. Burt. That was nice of you.”
Try Burt, he got all red around the gills and took off like somebody had put a bur under his saddle.
Come morning our wagon was the second one ready to take its place in line, with both horses saddled and tied behind the wagon, and me standing beside the off ox.
Any direction a man wanted to look there was nothing but grass and sky, only sometimes there’d be a buffalo wallow or a gopher hole. We made eleven miles the first day after Pa was buried, sixteen the next, then nineteen, thirteen and twenty-one. At no time did the country change. On the sixth day after Pa died I killed a buffalo.
It was a young bull, but a big one, and I spotted him coming up out of a draw and was off my horse and bellied down in the grass before Try Burt realized there was game in sight. That bull came up from the draw and stopped there, staring at the wagon train, which was a half-mile off. Setting a sight behind his left shoulder I took a long breath, took in the trigger slack, then squeezed off my shot so gentle-like the gun jumped in my hands before I was ready for it.
The bull took a step back like something had surprised him, and I jacked another shell into the chamber and was sighting on him again when he went down on his knees and rolled over on his side.
“You got him, Bud!” Burt was more excited than me. “That was shootin’!”
Try got down and showed me how to skin the bull, and lent me a hand. Then we cut out a lot of fresh meat and toted it back to the wagons.
Ma was at the fire when we came up, a wisp of brown hair alongside her cheek and her face flushed from the heat of the fire, looking as pretty as a bay pony.
“Bud killed his first buffalo,” Burt told her, looking at Ma like he could eat her with a spoon.
“Why, Bud! That’s wonderful!” Her eyes started to dance with a kind of mischief in them, and she said, “Bud, why don’t you take a piece of that meat along to Mr. Buchanan and the others?”
With Burt to help, we cut the meat into eighteen pieces and distributed it around the wagons. It wasn’t much, but it was the first fresh meat in a couple of weeks.
John Sampson squeezed my shoulder and said, “Seems to me you and your ma are folks to travel with. This outfit needs some hunters.”
Each night I staked out that buffalo hide, and each day I worked at curing it before rolling it up to pack on the wagon. Believe you me, I was some proud of that buffalo hide. Biggest thing I’d shot until then was a
cottontail rabbit back in Illinois, where we lived when I was born. Try Burt told folks about that shot. “Two hundred yards,” he’d say, “right through the heart.”
Only it wasn’t more than a hundred and fifty yards the way I figured, and Pa used to make me pace off distances, so I’d learn to judge right. But I was nobody to argue with Try Burt telling a story—besides, two hundred yards makes an awful lot better sound than one hundred and fifty.
After supper the menfolks would gather to talk plans. The season was late, and we weren’t making the time we ought if we hoped to beat the snow through the passes of the Sierras. When they talked I was there because I was the man of my wagon, but nobody paid me no mind. Mr. Buchanan, he acted like he didn’t see me, but John Sampson would not, and Try Burt always smiled at me.
Several spoke up for turning back, but Mr. Buchanan said he knew of an outfit that made it through later than this. One thing was sure. Our wagon wasn’t turning back. Like Ma said, home was somewhere ahead of us, and back in the States we’d have no money and nobody to turn to, nor any relatives, anywhere. It was the three of us.
“We’re going on,” I said at one of these talks. “We don’t figure to turn back for anything.”
Webb gave me a glance full of contempt. “You’ll go where the rest of us go. You an’ your ma would play hob gettin’ by on your own.”
Next day it rained, dawn to dark it fairly poured, and we were lucky to make six miles. Day after that, with the wagon wheels sinking into the prairie and the rain still falling, we camped just two miles from where we started in the morning.
Nobody talked much around the fires, and what was said was apt to be short and irritable. Most of these folks had put all they owned into the outfits they had, and if they turned back now they’d have nothing to live on and nothing left to make a fresh start. Except a few like Mr. Buchanan, who was well off.
“It doesn’t have to be California,” Ma said once. “What most of us want is land, not gold.”
“This here is Indian country,” John Sampson said, “and a sight too open for me. I’d like a valley in the hills, with running water close by.”
“There will be valleys and meadows,” Ma replied, stirring the stew she was making, “and tall trees near running streams, and tall grass growing in the meadows, and there will be game in the forest and on the grassy plains, and places for homes.”
“And where will we find all that?” Webb’s tone was slighting.
“West,” Ma said, “over against the mountains.”
“I suppose you’ve been there?” Webb scoffed.
“No, Mr. Webb, I haven’t been there, but I’ve been told of it. The land is there, and we will have some of it, my children and I, and we will stay through the winter, and in the spring we will plant our crops.”
“Easy to say.”
“This is Sioux country to the north,” Burt said. “We’ll be lucky to get through without a fight. There was a war party of thirty or thirty-five passed this way a couple of days ago.”
“Sioux?”
“Uh-huh—no women or children along, and I found where some war paint rubbed off on the brush.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Buchanan suggested, “we’d better turn south a mite.”
“It is late in the season,” Ma replied, “and the straightest way is the best way now.”
“No use to worry,” White interrupted; “those Indians went on by. They won’t likely know we’re around.”
“They were riding southeast,” Ma said, “and their home is in the north, so when they return they’ll be riding northwest. There is no way they can miss our trail.”
“Then we’d best turn back,” White said.
“Don’t look like we’d make it this year, anyway,” a woman said; “the season is late.”
That started the argument, and some were for turning back and some wanted to push on, and finally White said they should push on, but travel fast.
“Fast?” Webb asked disparagingly. “An Indian can ride in one day the distance we’d travel in four.”
That started the wrangling again and Ma continued with her cooking. Sitting there watching her I figured I never did see anybody so graceful or quick on her feet as Ma, and when we used to walk in the woods back home I never knew her to stumble or step on a fallen twig or branch.
The group broke up and returned to their own fires with nothing settled, only there at the end Mr. Buchanan looked to Burt. “Do you know the Sioux?”
“Only the Utes and Shoshonis, and I spent a winter on the Snake with the Nez Percés one time. But I’ve had no truck with the Sioux. Only they tell me they’re bad medicine. Fightin’ men from way back and they don’t cotton to white folks in their country. If we run into Sioux, we’re in trouble.”
After Mr. Buchanan had gone Tryon Burt accepted a plate and cup from Ma and settled down to eating. After a while he looked up at her and said, “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but it struck me you knew a sight about trackin’ for an eastern woman. You’d spotted those Sioux your own self, an’ you figured it right that they’d pick up our trail on the way back.”
She smiled at him. “It was simply an observation, Mr. Burt. I would believe anyone would notice it. I simply put it into words.”
Burt went on eating, but he was mighty thoughtful, and it didn’t seem to me he was satisfied with Ma’s answer. Ma said finally, “It seems to be raining west of here. Isn’t it likely to be snowing in the mountains?”
Burt looked up uneasily. “Not necessarily so, ma’am. It could be raining here and not snowing there, but I’d say there was a chance of snow.” He got up and came around the fire to the coffeepot. “What are you gettin’ at, ma’am?”
“Some of them are ready to turn back or change their plans. What will you do then?”
He frowned, placing his cup on the grass and starting to fill his pipe. “No idea—might head south for Santa Fe. Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re going on,” Ma said. “We’re going to the mountains, and I am hoping some of the others decide to come with us.”
“You’d go alone?” He was amazed.
“If necessary.”
We started on at daybreak, but folks were more scary than before, and they kept looking at the great distances stretching away on either side, and muttering. There was an autumn coolness in the air, and we were still short of South Pass by several days with the memory of the Donner party being talked up around us.
There was another kind of talk in the wagons, and some of it I heard. The nightly gatherings around Ma’s fire had started talk, and some of it pointed to Tryon Burt, and some were saying other things.
We made seventeen miles that day, and at night Mr. Buchanan didn’t come to our fire; and when White stopped by, his wife came and got him. Ma looked at her and smiled, and Mrs. White sniffed and went away beside her husband.
“Mr. Burt”—Ma wasn’t one to beat around a bush—“is there talk about me?”
Try Burt got red around the ears and he opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the words he wanted. “Maybe—well, maybe I shouldn’t eat here all the time. Only—well, ma’am, you’re the best cook in camp.”
Ma smiled at him. “I hope that isn’t the only reason you come to see us, Mr. Burt.”
He got redder than ever then and gulped his coffee and took off in a hurry.
Time to time the men had stopped by to help a little, but next morning nobody came by. We got lined out about as soon as ever, and Ma said to me as we sat on the wagon seat, “Pay no attention, Bud. You’ve no call to take up anything if you don’t notice it. There will always be folks who will talk, and the better you do in the world the more bad things they will say of you. Back there in the settlement you remember how the dogs used to run out and bark at our wagons?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“Did the wagons stop?”
“No, Ma.”
“Remember that, son. The dogs bark, but the wagons go on their way, and if you’re go
ing someplace you haven’t time to bother with barking dogs.”
We made eighteen miles that day, and the grass was better, but there was a rumble of distant thunder, whimpering and muttering off in the canyons, promising rain.
Webb stopped by, dropped an armful of wood beside the fire, then started off.
“Thank you, Mr. Webb,” Ma said, “but aren’t you afraid you’ll be talked about?”
He looked angry and started to reply something angry, and then he grinned and said, “I reckon I’d be flattered, Mrs. Miles.”
Ma said, “No matter what is decided by the rest of them, Mr. Webb, we are going on, but there is no need to go to California for what we want.”
Webb took out his pipe and tamped it. He had a dark, devil’s face on him with eyebrows like you see on pictures of the devil. I was afraid of Mr. Webb.
“We want land,” Ma said, “and there is land around us. In the mountains ahead there will be streams and forests, there will be fish and game, logs for houses and meadows for grazing.”
Mr. Buchanan had joined us. “That’s fool talk,” he declared. “What could anyone do in these hills? You’d be cut off from the world. Left out of it.”
“A man wouldn’t be so crowded as in California,” John Sampson remarked. “I’ve seen so many go that I’ve been wondering what they all do there.”
“For a woman,” Webb replied, ignoring the others, “you’ve a head on you, ma’am.”
“What about the Sioux?” Mr. Buchanan asked dryly.
“We’d not be encroaching on their land. They live to the north,” Ma said. She gestured toward the mountains. “There is land to be had just a few days farther on, and that is where our wagon will stop.”
A few days! Everybody looked at everybody else. Not months, but days only. Those who stopped then would have enough of their supplies left to help them through the winter, and with what game they could kill—and time for cutting wood and even building cabins before the cold set in.
Oh, there was an argument, such argument as you’ve never heard, and the upshot of it was that all agreed it was fool talk and the thing to do was keep going. And there was talk I overheard about Ma being no better than she should be, and why was that guide always hanging around her? And all those men? No decent woman—I hurried away.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 Page 27
