Читать книгу The Earthbreakers - Ernest Haycox - Страница 7

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THE light of half a dozen lanterns, shining through the wind-crazed snow, threw a speckled glow into the grave pit. Harris Eby came from it wet to his knees and stained yellow by the mud, and Lorenzo Buck crawled down to take his turn with the shovel, flinging the clay around the foot of the other men standing by. The shovel gritted steadily against the rocks, the scoops of dirt grew smaller. Buck called for a pick and tried it on the pit's bottom a little while and quit. "Pure rock. Four feet's the best we can do."

"Poor grave for a man," said Collingwood.

Cal Lockyear stood slightly back from the group, so indifferent that Burnett wondered why he shared this dismal chore. Lockyear said, "What difference does it make?"

Water crept through the underlying gravel and rose in the pit; it dripped from Lorenzo Buck's feet when he climbed out. John Gay moved a finger around the circle, choosing his men—Collingwood and Lattimore and Old Daniel Rinearson—"You come with me."

As they moved back through the trees toward the Howard wagon, Billy Lord stepped nearer Lot White. "Now for God's sakes, make the sermon short."

The Gay fire fifty feet away was a ragged yellow hole in the curdled black. Burnett turned to it and got a bucket from Gay's wagon and returned to bail out the grave; water spurted through the gravel as he bailed.

"Dead man entitled to be warmer than a live man?" said Lockyear.

"Might make Mrs. Howard feel easier," said Burnett. But the water continued to flow in as fast as he could take it out, and in a moment he heard people moving through the trees and he climbed from the grave and set the bucket aside. Gay and the other three men came forward, awkwardly stepping with the burden of the dead Howard between them; they skirted the grave and got on their knees to lower Howard, he covered by a faded patchwork quilt sewed fast about him. The rest of the camp walked through the trees to make a semicircle at the grave's foot. Katherine and Mrs. Irish stood to either side of Harper Howard's widow; the two Howard boys, edging forward, stared strangely at the black hole in the ground and Mrs. Howard looked at the quilt cocoon which was her husband, and put one hand across her eyes. Lot White moved to the head of the grave, waiting while the four men tried to place Howard gently into the pit. They were on their knees, each with one hand supporting themselves and one hand under Harper; they lowered him to the end of their reach and still were short of the pit's bottom. John Gay, uncertainly supported by the slick pile of clay dirt, began to slide head-forward into the pit and he let go and made a rough grab at Burnett's legs. The other three released their grasp on the quilt. Howard fell the last foot into the grave.

Lot White, removing his hat, began at once.

"God sent us to suffer, and we've done so accordin' to the plan, and God calls us back to a just reward. O you falterin' who doubt, you men that reason too much and trust too little, you people who listen to wise fools who tell you this is not so—I tell you it's so. I tell you there's a road leadin' to the gate, and the road is real as the one we traveled from Westport to Independence; and it's summer on that road, and the birds sing and there's shade for the weary and water for the thirsty, and there's a gate and a man at the gate, and inside the gate there's a stairway to the throne, and you can touch that stairway and you can feel it, and on the throne there's a body and face and a Voice—and the Voice will come upon you, and you'll hear it as plain as you hear me; and a hand will touch friend Howard and make him easy, and the Voice will come upon him with the secret of life and of death, which is one and the same secret, and he will turn to his everlastin' peace, and wait there for his wife and his children and his friends to pass through this little misery and come to him again."

Billy Lord bent and murmured to him. Lot White looked upon the roundabout people, dim-shaped in the flickering lantern light, in the relentless rush of snows.

"It makes no difference when a man dies, May or December, young or old. We die, and that's the end of it. This snow came yesterday; it'll be gone tomorrow, no trace left. We were born yesterday and tomorrow we're gone, no more trace than the snow. For the grace of man is not here; it is in heaven—and to heaven I commit this man, and I envy him the glory of his life eternal, and I yearn for the day when that glory shall be mine. O Lord, let his wife weep—for the Bible says women shall weep; and then, O Lord, let her cease to weep, for we've got work to do so long as we're here. Let her smile again, let her find a man, let her be useful till her call comes. Let her raise her children, and have more children; let her make butter and spin and weave, let her tend her garden and be a neighbor in distress, let her sing the good old songs with a full heart; and when her call comes, let her lie down with an eager heart. And we ask no questions, but only pray. Be with us, God, for there's nothin' else."

John Gay spoke a strong "Amen." Most of the women were crying but Mrs. Howard, chilled and spent, had no tears left; open-eyed throughout the sermon, she strained forward to see her husband lying awash in the shadows at the bottom of the pit and, placing her arms about her two small boys, she moved away with Katherine and Mrs. Irish. As soon as the women were gone John Gay took up the shovel to fill the grave, the first few scoops of dirt splashing in the water which now covered Harper Howard. He worked fast as though the sight displeased him, and Burnett presently spelled him, and later Ben Provost finished the job, rounding the dirt about the grave.

George Collingwood said: "This is a hell of a thing. The wolves will be down here tonight. We ought to put some rocks over it."

"Wolves or worms," said Cal Lockyear. "It makes no difference."

George Collingwood turned about and went into the shadows beyond the lantern light. He soon returned. "The rocks are too big to move, or frozen fast."

"No matter," said Lockyear. "You've satisfied your conscience and that's all you meant to do." He walked away.

The group moved toward John Gay's fire, Collingwood coming beside Burnett. "Damn the man," he murmured, "can't he be civil?" Wind crashed through the trees, dredging down the last weak boughs, and the passing lantern light touched white snow mounds drifted high against the roundabout boulders. People crowded Gay's fire. Beyond it, at the water's edge, Gay's wagon sat lashed on the raft, pitching to the shore breakers; the mooring ropes groaned quietly against the snubbing trees. Burnett halted beside Edna Lattimore.

"Bad trip down the river?"

"No—just cold."

George Collingwood walked around the circle with his covert desire to attract attention. He had an actor's streak in him, and he made quite a ceremony of cleansing the grave's mud from his hands. He glanced at his wife, who crouched near Katherine and soaked in the fire's warmth with her fatigued disinterest; then his attention darted to Dr. Whitcomb on the other side of the circle, and fell aside. It was, to the observant Burnett, a sudden revelation.

"Now," said Collingwood, "we've got two widows, Mrs. Irish and Mrs. Howard. We've got to do something about helpin' them. They can't make it down this river alone. We're all neighbors and we'll see no neighbor suffering distress alone."

"That's taken care of, George," said John Gay. "Joe will ride on Mrs. Irish's raft, and Lorenzo's going to lash Mrs. Howard's raft to his."

The fire flushed Collingwood's face and gave to it a round, well-fed cast. "That's fine. We're all together and we'll stick together. We're neighbors. We can't let anything happen to each other."

Lucy Collingwood got up. "I want to go back to the wagon, George."

He said, "Have you got warm enough?" He buttoned his overcoat and thrust his hands into his pockets; he seemed in no hurry until Lucy Collingwood walked into the night without him. He showed a trace of fretfulness as he followed her.

Burnett turned his hands to the fire and looked about and, in one of those unexpected moments of perception which change the world so that it is never quite the same world again, he noted the abrasion of this trip on the silent people around him. It was to be seen in the bony droop of John Gay's idle hands, in the recesses of Mose Crabtree's eye sockets, in Mrs. Millard's drawn-together body; its small signs were everywhere.

The five months' crossing had taken its levy in faith and in flesh. Lucy Collingwood's baby was dead. Mrs. Irish and Mrs. Howard, married women at the trip's beginning, were widows. Summer's heat had boiled the confidence from the group, and this wintry weather had sapped their vitality so that they moved with the carefulness of the very old; and the strength with which they had started the trip—the almost insolent confidence they had in themselves as individuals—was less than it was; in this final wringing-out of their endurance, they had an intimation of what weakness was, and they sat here together with the need of closeness very real in them, and came upon fraternity.

Burnett's moving glance touched Edna and caught the signal she had for him, and he joined her and moved through the shouting night. She stumbled and seized his arm and swayed laughing against him. The hard-driven snow struck like sand against his face until the repeated attack became an ache. Through the blackness other fires bloomed out their orange stains, and the beating of a maul against metal came forward from some part of the camp with clocklike strokes. A cow blocked the trail before them, its eyes shining as separate bits of opal flame. They waded through the knee-deep drifts and reached the dying coals of Lattimore's fire.

"Long day," he said. "Awful long day."

"Well, go to bed." Then Edna searched him with her lively eyes and her smile came on with its suggestions. "And sleep cold." She waited for him to lift; she laughed at his half-roused expression and she laid a hand on his arm, closing her fingers about it. But he was still slow and presently she stepped back with a display of indifference. "When I first saw you come to the wagon train this spring I thought, 'There's somebody who could be bold.'" She looked into the fire, but curiosity brought her glance back to him. "You ought to know what you see, but sometimes I don't think you do."

"At this minute a gallon of whisky couldn't make me bold."

"Ah, you're not that old, and it wouldn't take that much whisky or that much of anything." She turned to the fire. "When you came out of the mountains after a trapping season what's the first thing you did?"

"Haircut and something to eat."

"Then what?"

"Then I started to look for another job."

"But before that you hunted up a woman." The polar night rushed about, the fire flame leaped high. "What did those women talk about?"

"I couldn't say."

"Why not—why not?" Her eyes pried at him, her fleshy smile was warm. "I say things other girls think, but don't say. I trouble you, don't I?"

"No."

"Yes, I do. You're funny." She stared into the fire. "Boys don't know anything. You're older, you should know, but women still fool you." Her hands were square-shaped against the fire's light; beneath her bulky coat the separate roundnesses of her body were uneasy; she was aggressive and ready, she was uncertain. Her lips suggested their adeptness, their experience; they struck restlessly across her otherwise tranquil face. "I wish you'd talk more. I love to talk to you. Lately I don't see as much of you, and now you'll be gone in the morning and we'll not be together for three or four days."

"See you in Oregon City."

"Then what?"

"Then we'll all look for land."

"Ah," she said, "you never answer what I want you to answer." Then she said confidently, "What's wrong with you is something any girl could fix up quick. You know that, don't you?"

He smiled at her and said, "Good night," and moved away.

She crouched beside the dull coals to catch a last bit of heat before turning into the wagon, her face meanwhile settling into an expression of light-humored confidence; and her thoughts claimed her so fully that the coldness, the furious sounds and the wild motions of the night seemed to make no impressions upon her; but after a moment she rose and turned toward the wagon and discovered Cal Lockyear watching her from the shadows, scarcely fifteen feet away, and then her light expression gave way to a certain discontent.

"You been watching me all this time?"

"No," he said, "only a moment." He came to the fire and stood across from her. "You're cold."

"No, I'm not," she said.

"Will be if you stay out here."

"No, I won't."

There was more often than not a threatening air about this man—a combination of black brows, gray eyes and general unrest within him; at the moment, however, he seemed to wish to please her, for he made a brief gesture and permitted himself a trace of a smile. "Been a bad day. Tired?"

"Things don't bother me."

"Want me to build up that fire for you?"

"Not worth the trouble." She watched him with both wariness and curiosity, not quite at ease with him, yet not ready to quit him. All across the plains she had felt the effect of his eyes, though seldom had she caught him directly watching her; and this interest had piqued her attention so that her treatment of him was a deliberate indifference softened by an occasional smile.

"It's a mean country," he said.

"I hear it's better out in the valley."

"Wet," he said. "Sort of stuff that takes the curl out of your hair and the hell out of your disposition."

She let herself be amused. "Well, that wouldn't hurt you."

"Like a man tied to a rope, like him tame?"

She returned to her indifference. "Be what you please, it's none of my business."

He flung up his head, deviltry bright in his eyes; he laughed, he grew sober and stared at her a long interval, half respectful and half scheming; and suddenly he swung and vanished in the night. Edna turned to be sure he had gone, and settled again at the fire. Nov her expression was lively, for the meeting had challenged her, and she looked a long while into the fire and at last, with reluctance, she rose and went into the wagon.