Читать книгу Canyon Passage - Ernest Haycox - Страница 5

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THEY left Portland at six o'clock of a rain- drowned morning, crossed the ferry and moved through the fir timber's dense twilight all the way to the Clackamas. Beyond Oregon City they came out upon the flat Willamette Valley, bordered eastward by the Cascades and on the west by the Coast Range. Ranch houses stood at lonely distance, low and dark in the rain fog, and now and then the pure mud road skirted the porch of a store or a rough frame cabin serving as a tavern for passers- by. At dusk of a weeping day they reached Salem, whose few houses were the outgrowth of a Methodist mission, and there slept.

The rain held on, turning the valley greener before their eyes as they pushed south. They ferried the Santiam at Syracuse City and spent the second night at the Harris Claim. The third day took them through Skinner's and on down to the valley's narrowing foot; and the fourth day saw them through the Calapooyia's rough and timbered ridges—by way of the military road—and on to Jesse Applegate's house. The dark fir timber began to give way before oak and madrona and pine, and the rain ceased and the land grew warm and brown. They traveled fast, passing wagons loaded deep with settlers' household freight; they came upon mule trains and single travelers on horseback. On the fifth day they crossed the Umpqua at Aaron Roses's store and in the late afternoon they reached a little settlement built at the narrow mouth of a canyon whose sides rose up in increasing sharpness, heavy-clad with trees. All the country before them was massive and broken.

Cliff Anslem came out of his cabin while Stuart unsaddled.

"One miner killed on upper Graves Creek two nights ago," Anslem said. "It was Limpy's Indians, I think. There's a cavalry outfit somewhere in the canyon now, under that young fellow Bristow. Pack outfits have been going through doubled up for safety. Tomorrow morn-in' you'll have plenty of company."

"Too slow," said Stuart. He turned to the girl. "We'll make a night ride of it and reach Dance's by daylight, if you can stand it."

Lucy nodded and walked into the cabin while Anslem drove the horses into his compound.

Four or five cabins lay scattered in the little meadow at the base of these rough hills and a steady current of wind came out of the canyon, cool and wild. A last sunlight streamed over the meadow, strengthening the pungency of its natural hay. Stuart sat down on the edge of the dusty road; he leaned back and lighted his pipe and he heard the tinkling approach of a pack outfit's bell mare. Twilight began to flow off the mountain as the pack outfit, out of Scottsburg's settlement for the mines, arrived and halted to make camp. It was a Howison string, loaded with sugar, coffee and salt. A campfire blossomed in the shadows as Anslem called Stuart to supper.

The cabin was a single room with a bed, a table and a fireplace. Lucy lay on the bed, half awakened from her short sleep. She had her glance on the ceiling directly above her and the yellow lamplight of the room danced in her eyes. Stuart paused by the bed, his head dropped as he looked upon her. She lifted a hand to him; he took it, swinging her upright, and suddenly she laughed at him and made a quick turn away to the supper table. Mrs. Anslem gave these two a quick and slyly warm glance and afterwards served supper—venison and beans and biscuits. Horsemen fell out of the canyon at a whirling run and a sharp voice gave a command. Anslem rose and walked to the door.

"Supper's ready, Lieutenant."

The lieutenant, when he entered, was stained by a hard day's riding; he had a full beard to cover a youthful face and his eyes were dancing bright. He said: "Hello, Logan—Miss Over-mire, how do?" and he took his place and made no ceremony about his meal.

"What's up there in the canyon?"

"A lot of tracks across the Cow Creek meadows."

Anslem said: "I'll saddle for you, Logan," and left the house.

"You're going now?" asked the lieutenant. "Limpy and his bucks are somewhere, but I don't know where. Maybe we'll have a quiet year."

Mrs. Anslem, standing before the fireplace's crane to watch the coffeepot, looked around at him. "There's never a quiet year."

Anslem had the horses waiting outside. Stuart rose with Lucy and as the two of them walked toward the door, Mrs. Anslem murmured: "Give my hello to the Dances and say I'm lonesome for talk."

Full dark was a cape loosely thrown over the mountains and upon the meadow and the baying of Anslem's dogs woke echoes far through the furrowed hills. Lucy's smile came down to Stuart as he handed her up to the saddle. He adjusted his saddlebags, he slid his rifle tentatively in and out of its boot and he passed a hand across the butt of his revolver. He said "So long" to Anslem and moved away with Lucy beside him. The canyon's breath was damp and cold upon them. The trail tilted up and the soft dust absorbed the sound of the horses' pacing. A creek ran hard beside the trail, musically brawling over its stones, and a night- prowling animal crossed fugitively before them and slipped into the timber. The sky was a steel-blue alley edged by the ragged shadow of timber. An hour from Anslem's they paused and rested and were still; and went on. A rising quarter moon painted dull silver patches on the canyon walls, and glinted against the creek and glowed dully on the bleached trunks of fire-killed firs. Another hour brought them to the head of the canyon and dropped them out upon a mountain meadow lying as a dark and half-hidden lake against the bulky shores of the mountains round about. A keener wind blew against them. Paused to rest, Stuart listened for whatever the wind might bring. He was sharp and he was wholly roused, but when he looked at Lucy he was smiling. Her voice came to him in careful smallness. "You are never happy except when in motion."

He said, "Hark," and thought he heard a running rumor in the night. Far over the meadow—a mile away—there seemed to be a party traveling. The horses were still, their heads alertly pointed; they were breathing deeper, they were scenting for something which interested them. Then the sound ceased.

They forded a shallow creek and turned into the meadow, crossing over. The creek's willows idly danced in the light wind and the creek was a pale and crooked streak. The massive blackness of the mountains closed presently down upon them again and they began to climb steadily along a sightless lane between huge, still fir columns. Here he stopped once more to rest the horses.

She said: "A house, an office, or a woman you've known more than a week—these things grow old to you. You ride into Jacksonville, spend a night, and you are gone."

"My business needs a lot of riding."

"You ride for business—and you ride just to be riding."

"How is it you know that much about me?"

"No woman can look at a man two years without knowing something of him."

"You know more about me," he said, "than I know about you."

"Women are always more observant—and more interested."

He swung his horse around, caught the rein of Lucy's mount and moved off the trail. A sound grew greater above them and became the rush of a single rider flinging himself through this blind corridor without caution. He passed them at arm's length; he was making a small singing sound as he rode, as though breaking his loneliness. They heard him run downgrade and long afterward they made out the tattoo of his horse in the meadow below. Stuart and Lucy returned to the trail. He still remembered her question; he thought of it a long while as he rode.

"I want my business to grow," he said at last. "I want to see a Stuart & Company pack outfit stringing along every road. When stages come, I want them to be Stuart & Company stages. I guess I am ambitious."

"Even ambition would not push you so hard. You are not quite happy. Something bothers you. It may be something you look for, or something that dissatisfies you."

He rode on without comment, his mind half on her talk, half on the sounds and sensations around him. He heard her voice, so low and seriously soft, come through the blackness. "Is it a woman?"

"Damn George Camrose for giving me a bad reputation," he murmured. "Must it always be a woman who makes a man lie awake at night?"

"When the time comes, don't let it be an ordinary woman. Don't let it be a calm woman."

"Why not?" he said.

"You'd come to hate her," she said. They rode in silence, through midnight and the pit-black hours while the trail carried them higher into the mountains and a canyon deepened below them on the left, felt rather than seen. Once they caught a moment's view of a light burning far down at the canyon's bottom. "Ed Blackerby," he murmured. The air was thin and cold and the odor of the mountain was stronger and stronger; it was a wildness flowing from unknown reaches, out of places never seen since time began. Somewhere half between midnight and first dawn, he stopped for a longer rest and lifted Lucy from her saddle; her weight came down against him and she stood passive in his arms for a moment, and her face tilted upward, so near to him that he saw the weariness on it. He dropped his arms and took a backward step to his saddle, unlashing an overcoat tied behind the cantle. He laid the coat on the trail and watched her sink down and curl upon it. He crouched near her and pulled the edges of the coat around her, meanwhile searching a coat pocket for his pipe. He held the pipe cold between his teeth while he listened to the forest, to the fugitive murmurings all about, the sibilance of disturbed brush, the faint abrasions of padded feet, the velvet whirring of wings, to all the undertones of this massive earth.

She was sound asleep when he bent down, half an hour later, and placed his hand on her cheek. He said, "Lucy," and heard her answer from her sleep. Her name was a pleasant echo, it was soft on his tongue and he said it again, "Lucy," and watched her sit up and turn her head in the darkness.

He helped her to the saddle and rolled his overcoat and lashed it fast. Resuming the march, they moved steadily through the low hours, through the world's ebb time, bending with the trail and dipping with it, into glen and up sharp slope and down sudden grades. The moon, pale and futile during the night, now vanished behind the massive western ridges and the blackness was greater than before. This was the time before dawn, when the vitality of all things burned fitful and uncertain. By degrees he began to feel the nearness of open country. The weight of the timber mass pressed less heavily against him and the color of the foreground grew paler, until finally the trail came out of the timber and descended in long, turning loops to a lower country. Just before daylight he saw a single light shining in the distance.

Morning twilight was breaking when he came before the cabin of Ben Dance and helped Lucy to the ground. Dance's dogs were shouting around him and the smell of woodsmoke and coffee laced the thin air. The cabin door opened and a flood of yellow light gushed out and a man took a quick step through the door and moved aside from it. He had a rifle across his arm, ready for use; when he identified these two people he let his robust voice fall upon them. "Come in—come in. Breakfast's waitin'. Asa, come out and get these horses."

Lucy went directly into the cabin. Stuart stood a moment with the saddlebags over a shoulder, watching morning spread over the eastern ridge tops; it moved in formless waves, spreading like mist, water-colored, trickling over the high summits and spreading downslope through the black hill creases. The sky began to grow blue, the stars slowly to fade. Young Asa took the horses away.

"The young lieutenant passed here yesterday," said Dance.

"One miner dead."

"Peaceful for this time of year," said Dance.

Stuart ducked through Dance's door and faced a bright fire on the open hearth. There was a table at which Lucy now sat; two more Dance boys sat by it, eating without lifting their heads. Mrs. Dance, scarcely forty, turned a pan of cornbread onto a platter and gave Logan a brisk smile. "How's Portland, Logan?"

"A thousand people, and raining."

"Ah," said Mrs. Dance and shook her head. Her skin was dark and her features were practical and pretty. "How can anyone live in such a crowd?"

Dance came in with a question. "You want me to change horses for you now?"

"We'll sleep till noon."

"Caroline," shouted Dance, "fix the beds."

A girl came out of the cabin's adjoining room and gave Lucy a nod and Stuart a longer glance.

Her even "Hello" covered both people. She was near twenty with her mother's blue eyes and her mother's mass of light-brown hair. Her round arms were bare to her elbows, and her mouth was calm and full.

"I've got something for you," said Stuart. "What?" said the girl.

"If you've got on your brown dress at noon I'll give it to you."

Caroline Dance tipped her head aside as she studied Stuart, and her lips showed a warming interest. "Perhaps," she said in a skeptical tone, and left the room.

Lucy rose from her breakfast and walked into the other room. Stuart loitered over his coffee and his pipe; the Dance boys rose and silently departed, like young hounds bound for a fresh scent. Dance sat at the table awhile to supply the week's gossip and then Stuart tapped out his pipe and stepped into the extra room. There were three beds in it and a rag rug on the dirt floor. Lucy lay already asleep, her hands doubled in front of her face. He watched her a moment, and then lay down on the adjoining bed.

At noon there were three horses waiting in the yard instead of two. Caroline Dance sat in the saddle of the third one when Stuart and Lucy came out of the cabin. Dance explained this in his vigorous voice: "Ma's sending Caroline down to Megarry's place. Missis Megarry's come to her time." Mrs. Dance stepped from the cabin with a plump package and handed it up to Caroline. "Now that's everything you need."

Stuart said: "You want me to send Dr. Balance back from Jacksonville?"

Caroline shook her head. She was in her brown dress and she had her hair done neatly up. "I can do everything necessary," she said. "For sure," added Mrs. Dance, surprised there should be any question. "It's only a baby. You stay at Megarry's tonight, Caroline, and come home tomorrow."

The day was hot and still and the trail ran southward up and down a series of rounded knolls and ridges which were the ragged extension of the heavier mountains to the east. They slid into a short valley half surrounded by hills and passed a small settlement sitting beside Rogue River; they crossed the ferry and went briskly along the river. A few miles beyond the ferry, Caroline Dance drew in her horse before a cabin which was scarcely more than a lean-to. This was Megarry's. A woman came to the door and tipped her hand across her eyes against the sun. She said: "Caroline, you ain't much time."

Caroline sat still in the saddle, facing Stuart. She wasn't smiling but anticipation made her mouth quietly expressive. He had teased her with his delay, and she knew it, but it didn't trouble her.

He drew a small package from his pocket and he took his time unwrapping it. He held it concealed in his hand and rode his horse near her and bent to put his hands around her head. He swayed back on the saddle and watched her as she looked down to the cameo brooch hanging from its thin gold chain around her neck.

"Why," said Caroline with pleasure in her voice, "it's like my Missouri grandmother's heirloom brooch."

The woman at the Megarry cabin called in sharper tone: "There's no time, Caroline."

Excitement brightened Caroline's face and although she was not an impulsive girl impulse nevertheless stirred her toward Stuart. Then she remembered Lucy's presence, gave her an oblique glance and swung down from her horse, at once going into the cabin.

Stuart and Lucy went on, pointing toward the opening bay of a valley ahead. The river was beside them but the ridges slowly receded to form a valley; the trail rose gradually from the valley and began to cut its way southwestward along the bench. Fort Lane showed in the distance, its log houses squatted under a full bright sun on the north side of the river.

"You would have had your kiss, if I'd not been present to interfere," Lucy commented. "Yes," said Stuart, amiable.

"I'm sorry I caused you to miss it." She gave him a veiled inspection. "She's twenty you're twenty-eight."

"What would you have me do?"

She met his eyes and she saw his smile; suddenly she began to laugh. "Oh, Logan."

The trail took them around the breast of a hill and, at sundown, brought them to a creek with its miners' brush lean-to shelters, its canvas tents and flimsy log structures. They crossed the creek and moved through a grove of pine and oak and at last came out into the irregular lane which was Jacksonville's main street.

It was a settlement of perhaps sixty houses built of logs and riven cedar shakes, all scattered along the creek and up the side of the surrounding hills. Supper time's smoke drifted out of tin chimneys and men strolled the street, stained by the yellow-green clay of the diggings. Riders drifted in and a pack train wound down the slope of the hills from the west.

Stuart and Lucy passed a pair of saloons and Howison's big hay shed; they skirted Stuart's own store and moved up toward a large log-and-shake cabin on the hill slope. Jonas Over-mire stood waiting for them with his hands in his front pockets and his stovepipe tipped well forward to give his daughter a hand down and he raked back his beard before he kissed her. Mrs. Overmire came out to embrace her daughter, and then a shout reached them and they saw George Camrose leave his cabin and walk rapidly upgrade.

Stuart leaned his arms on the saddle horn to watch this scene. Lucy had turned about to meet Camrose as he approached. He was a high and handsome man, light of complexion and carefully dressed. There was no mining-camp roughness on him at all, none of the exaggerated mining-camp temper in him. He was cool and held himself on tight rein, so that even now, approaching Lucy, he carried himself with negligent restraint, as though he had seen her but an hour before.

Lucy, Stuart noticed, seemed to match that temper and that composure. She was unruffled and as certain of herself. She had a smile for Camrose and she looked at him directly; yet Stuart saw no great fire of impatience in either of them, no impetuous wanting. He said to himself, "Is this the way a woman looks at a man she loves?" He pushed his hands heavily against the saddle and wondered what went on inside the girl. She murmured, "Hello, George. Are you glad to see me?" Camrose put his arms around her, smiling down. "You are always good to see," he murmured, and lowered his face to kiss her.

She did a strange thing. She turned her head and she looked at Stuart for a short moment with the gravest kind of an expression on her face and for that instant he saw some kind of shadow in her eyes. It was a thing quickly happening and soon passing, so that he was not certain of what he saw. She looked back to Camrose and took his kiss and stepped away.

Stuart said: "Is that the best you can do, George?"

Camrose stared at Stuart with a controlled grin. "Could you do better?"

"A hell of a lot better," answered Stuart and rode away. A gust of irritation unaccountably moved through him.

He cooked supper in the small room behind the store; he cleaned his dishes and strolled through the store's long main room, around the boxes and kegs and bales of merchandise stacked on the floor, past harness and lanterns hanging from the log beams. He gave a glance to the well-stocked shelves and he stopped a moment to watch his head clerk, Henry Clenchfield, weigh out gold for a miner. A breeze came through the store to stir up the sweet and musty and pungent odors of all this merchandise.

He paused at the doorway and lighted a cigar. Voices softly traveled through the night's bland warm air and the lamps of Jacksonville winked tawny in the dark. A guitar somewhere sent forth its lively tune and men drifted in from the dark creases of the hills to break a long week's loneliness in the town's deadfalls; and families arrived from their donation claims along the Rogue.

He walked back into the store and sat down on a box. "Where's John Trent?"

"He'll be in from Crescent City day after tomorrow," said Clenchfield. "I sent forty mules on the trip. Burl McGiven left two days ago for Yreka. Twenty mules. Jack Card left this morning on the Applegate trip. Murrow and Vane Blazier will take the Scottsburg string in the morning."

"Put this on the book," said Stuart. "Thirty mules to be at Salem on the twentieth for Henry McLane's freight, off the boat Canemah."

"Where will you get the mules?" asked Clenchfield. "You have got too much business now."

"Maybe it is time to buy a few more."

Clenchfield was an old country man, stiffened by years of clerking. He was angular and bald and precise; and he had a good head clerk's feeling of owning his job. Steel-rimmed glasses rode low on a sharp nose and a high turkey neck rose through a collar considerably too large.

"It is time to take some money out of the business instead of putting it all back in. You have got a hundred thousand dollars of equipment."

"Why, Clenchfield, we must be rich."

"This firm," said Clenchfield, "is too big a boat for the water it floats in. If you had a bank to borrow on, it would not matter, Since there is no bank around here, you should be your own bank. You ought to have thirty thousand in gold coin laid by for trouble. You have not got it."

"What trouble?" said Stuart.

Clenchfield shook his head. "For the trouble that always comes. But you are a young man and trouble must beat you over the head before you understand. How did I get here, six thousand miles from Liverpool?"

"How did you get here, Clenchfield?"

"Once I was young and had a business, good as this. But I was like you and I went broke."

"Henry," said Stuart, "there is a difference. Liverpool was an old town, finished growing. This is a young town in a young country. It will never stop growing for a hundred years. We sail with the tide. It is a long tide. There will be no ebb in my time."

"All Americans think that," said Clenchfield. "They think the tide flows forever for them. But mark me: gold veins run out and crops fail and men starve and wars come and businesses fail, and towns die, and the hopes of men always run too fast and too far."

"If everything fails," said Stuart, "everything will start again."

"Well, you will buy the mules," said Clench-field.

"So I will. The fun is in growing. Not in having thirty thousand in the safe."

"Wait till you're old."

"Never wait, Henry. Never wait for anything."

Young Vane Blazier, who was one of Stuart's packers, came slowly through the doorway, all legs and neck and wild black hair bushing down his head. He looked back of him into the night with an air of worry. He reached into his pocket for his tobacco plug; his long white teeth flashed as he bit into it. He replaced the plug in his pocket and tilted his frame against the doorsill, undecided.

"I'll take the Scottsburg ride with you, Vane," said Stuart. "We'd better be on the road by six."

"All right," said Blazier. Hard thoughts drew his eyelids half together and cut a notch in his forehead. Suddenly he seemed to resolve the problem, straightened his shoulders and returned into the night, passing Camrose and Lucy Overmire as they stepped into the store.

Both of them smiled when they saw Stuart, as though the sight of him sitting inactive were a humorous thing. Lucy sat down on a drygoods box, facing him. "You were supposed to eat supper with us."

"It occurred to me you and George might like to eat without me," he said.

"A tender sentiment," said Camrose in a softly jeering voice.

"George," said Stuart, "when is this woman marrying you?"

"I doubt if she has decided," said Camrose and turned to Lucy, looking at her with his half-serious, half-smiling negligence. It was a kind of mask, this negligence, covering the man's real feelings. Whatever his real feelings were, they seldom broke through the screen he placed over him. "When are you taking me, Lucy?"

"Do you like poetry, George?" she asked.

"Must I like poetry to be your husband?"

"We shall be married when the leaves fall," she said. These people, Stuart observed, were again matching moods—her lightly indefinite manner against his smiling indifference.

"You string me up and let me swing," murmured George Camrose. "The leaves of the maple which fall early, or the pine needles which never fall?"

Stuart rose and jammed his hands in his front pockets; and the expression on his face drew Camrose's chuckle. "Our friend disapproves of us, Lucy."

"I have known both of you a long while," said Stuart, "but these are times when you puzzle me. You are both acting like a pair of people at the edge of a river, afraid to cross."

"Why damn you," said Camrose, still smiling yet slightly stung. "You're a bit too blunt."

Lucy watched Stuart with closest attention, as though at this minute she had observed something new in him. Camrose was meanwhile embarrassed by the unfriendly strain of the scene and gave out a quick laugh to bring things back in better humor. "If you so highly approve of the state of matrimony, why not try it yourself?"

"The idea has occurred to me," said Stuart, and began to grin.

"Here, now," put in Lucy. "I should like to know about that beforehand."

"To help choose the girl? George, tell this woman she can't run both of us."

"Your judgment isn't very good," said Lucy. "You're impressionable. It would be like you to marry a widow with seven children, out of pity."

George Camrose found this extremely funny. He began to laugh and kept on laughing until tears got into his eyes. Out on the street a voice shouted and men began to run by the door toward Howison's hay barn; and a little miner paused at the door to say, "It is Honey Bragg and Vane Blazier." Logan Stuart walked to the doorway and had his look down the street; then he cut back, moving fast to the rear room. When he returned he had his revolver tucked in his waistband and, thus armed, he left the store. Camrose moved after him immediately; and Lucy Overmire said, "Wait," and caught Cam-rose's arm and walked with him.