Читать книгу The Earthbreakers - Ernest Haycox - Страница 9

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HALF the morning was gone by the time Burnett got his stock across the river—towing them behind the raft—and it was noon by the time he had his pack outfit loaded. Thereafter he set forth upon a trail broken by Indians and Hudson's Bay people and by the emigrants of the two previous years. The way quartered upward into the hills, the animals had hard going; night halted him on a windy little meadow hanging to a promontory a thousand feet above the river, while to his right—northward—the mountains rolled on with their black tangle of timber.

From this high place, the following morning, he sighted the scattered rafts in the river below, and he then began a difficult passage downward through mud and rock and windfalls, the weather meanwhile changing on this western face of the mountains, the snow turning to a fat rain driven in by intermittent gusts of southwest wind. That night he camped in half-drowned lowlands beside the water, and another morning brought him to the river's narrow plain, mists rolling over him like thin cloud-banks, and the far shore receding until he judged the river was a full mile wide. Late that afternoon he sighted the log palisades of Fort Vancouver sitting hard by the water; skirting the farmed fields and the outer cabins of the place, he entered a main gate of this Hudson's Bay post—whose factor, John McLoughlin, had ruled a northwest empire for a quarter-century in the name of the company and the British.

It was a compound large enough for military drill, with the shops and houses made of milled lumber built against the inner wall of the stockade; a larger house stood not quite centered in the compound, a pole flew the British colors—the sight of the flag offending Burnett's acute sense of patriotism—and a good many men moved about the parade on various kinds of business. He was approached by a French-Canadian employee who spoke to him in bad English and moved away to the big house; within a few minutes a tall man came from the big house.

He was a physically powerful figure of about sixty now beginning to show the effects of shrinkage and infirmity; he walked with a degree of care, but with the air of authority, for there was an austere benevolence about him—in the firm mouth, in the strikingly cold blue eyes, in the direct sizing-up he gave Burnett; he wore a mane of poorly barbered gray-white hair. "Some of your people touched here yesterday," he said, "in bad circumstances. I understand the gorge has been severe and I've sent a bateau up there with supplies. What is your name?"

"Burnett."

McLoughlin gave him a hand and identified himself. "How was the trail?"

"Choked in."

"It's an early storm and won't last. You may put your animals in the pastures east of the wall and you will find quarters with the bachelors. Mr. Curry..." Mr. Curry came over, was introduced, and was instructed by the chief factor. "Show him where he may stay."

"I had thought," said Burnett, "to cross tonight."

"You'll save no time this late in the day," said McLoughlin. "As soon as you got across you'd find it necessary to camp in the rain. I shall have the ferry take you over in the morning. It will put you directly on the trail to Oregon City."

Burnett said: "What's the ferry charge?"

"Could you pay?" asked McLoughlin pointedly.

"I could, but I am a frugal man, and it's a fine point with me between paying and swimming."

"There's no charge. I should like you to know, Mr. Burnett, that this is a trading company and you someday may be a customer, either at this place or at our store in Oregon City, which Mr. Ermatinger runs. If you could look at our books you'd find a good many of your people carried on credit. Some of them would have gone hungry if the credit had not been extended. You will find much animosity toward the company on the part of certain of your people, rising out of nationality. It is to be regretted—but you might find that those who are most bitter toward us are also the ones who have not seen fit to repay the obligations incurred of me at a time when they were much less independent than they are now." He turned away, and turned back a moment to point toward the feet of Burnett's horse. "You need a shoeing there. Tell my blacksmith that I have said for him to do it."

"I am obliged," said Burnett.

"There are only two years of migration before you; so much good land's left in the valley. Let me caution you: Take care with the bottoms—for in winter some of them are very wet. If you must settle there, make your place by the Willamette, which is the only sure road you'll have for many years. My people, when they have served their time with the company, go down there to make farms. You'll find forty or fifty families twenty miles above the fall at Champoeg...If the river's not to your liking, then find a claim on the first break of the prairie near Bear Creek. The land's not quite so good, but you can build roads there."

He moved off with the abruptness of one not accustomed to terminal pleasantries. Burnett had been prepared to dislike him, for McLoughlin had been a British king out here until the American immigration of the previous two years had challenged and set aside his authority; but, watching him go, Burnett found himself impressed by a crusty courtesy which had imbedded in it a very real sense of fairness. He turned off with Curry to the bachelor quarters; he was introduced to the clerks at suppertime, and found his bed. In another gray and rainy morning the fort ferry crossed him with his outfit to the brushy south shore of the river.

The trail was clear, since it was a main thoroughfare between the fort and Oregon City, twenty-five miles to the south. Before the existence of that new town, the trail had been the well-traveled route of the company's brigades trapping as far down as the Sacramento Valley. A few miles of willow-tangled swampland ended at higher ground as he passed into the dark fir timber which covered this country wherever he looked; he saw the Willamette nearby—the river which, beginning a hundred miles or more southward, washed through the heart valley of this Oregon country and at last dumped itself into the Columbia not far from the Fort. There had been recent travel on the trail, and somewhere beyond noon of an increasingly gloomy day he discovered a figure on a horse waiting ahead of him.

He was a redhead, a lathe-shaped young man dressed in dirty buckskins, moccasins and trapper's hat. Wind and rain humped him on the saddle. Across the horn he carried a rifle, both hands resting upon it. As Burnett came up, the man gave him a searching inspection, friendliness waiting on certainty.

He said, "Oregon City?" and when Burnett nodded, the redhead fell in beside him, riding with his knees drawn up on short stirrups. "My name's Bob Hawn. Been here six years and saw the first of you people come."

"Burnett—Rice Burnett."

"I see the fringe of your buckskin coat. You been trappin'?"

"Three seasons on the Missouri headwaters."

"Know it well." He pointed to his moccasins. "Blackfoot woman made those. Who made your coat?"

"A Crow squaw."

"Your squaw?"

"No."

Hawn fell silent for as much as a hundred yards, then said, "I've got a squaw," and searched Burnett's face for a reaction. "Not a Blackfoot squaw, though. She's Calapooia—one of the tribes down the valley. I've got a claim that direction. Here to settle?"

"That's right."

"Come down and I'll show you a good place. In '43 and '44 your first people went out in the Tualatin—that's good, but the best's taken there. Some of 'em have squatted around Oregon City. Few went on farther. Not half a dozen around me. It's all open. What's news East?"

"Beaver's no good now."

"Well, she was fine while she lasted," said Hawn. "At the time—shiverin' like a dog, wet all day, cold all night, listenin' all the time for Indians—it seemed like a hell of a thing. Now it remembers good. First years out here were the same: the squaw and me and a pretty fine life. Now you people are crowdin' in and things have changed. I don't know—I don't know..."

They stopped at noon, Hawn making up a little fire to boil tea and fry a chunk of smoked fish which he produced from his possible sack. The timber grew thicker, giant trunks running upward in a manner to astonish Burnett, their tops making a canopy so high overhead that the wind seemed at great distance; and a kind of odd quietness lay all around. In late afternoon they reached a small river near its junction with the Willamette, crossed on a gravel ford and came upon an open piece of land at the edge of Oregon City, the new buildings of this town making two or three short rows between a high bluff and the river. Directly beyond town, a wall of black rock rose in the shape of a semicircular dam across the river, over which the current broke in steam spray and fell thunderously to its new level. The wagons of the train—such as had arrived—were parked in the clearing, fires were burning, and people wandered idly around from town to camp and from fire to fire.

Burnett turned to a space between the Lattimore and Gay wagons and chose the shelter of a cedar tree for himself. Hawn, folding himself comfortably over on his saddle, lingered to talk and to rummage the camp with his inquisitive glances which stopped nowhere long.

He said, "Don't stay around this place. There's nothin'." He ceased to talk and Burnett, looking about, saw the man's eyes pinned to Katherine Gay moving forward from her fire.

Katherine smiled at Hawn but he, making the briefest nod, said to Burnett "I'll be around town tonight if you want to talk about settlin'," and moved away.

"It's an awfully small place to be called a town," said Katherine.

"Except Fort Vancouver, it's the only town we've got," said Burnett. "Two stores here."

"We won't need them much," said Katherine. "There's not money enough in this camp to buy a whetstone." She looked through the scattered crowd and her attention rested a short time on a small, round and painfully plain girl who stood alone at a fire with a blanket wrapped about her shoulders. "Poor Roxy. The Kitchens have nothing, and I know they're out of food."

"So are a lot of others." He drove his ax deep into a fallen log and dragged it near the tree to make a backstop for his fire; he knocked down the overhanging cedar limbs and, with a few pitch shavings from his pack, made a quick blaze and dragged a pack forward to supply a seat. "Come out of the rain."

"The natives say not to think about it, for it'll rain all winter." She settled on the pack and laid her hands together and stared into the uncertain twining of the flames. She was graver than he had seen her. "How will they get along?"

"It's not your nature to worry," he said.

"You don't know much about my nature. But—land to find cabins to build, and getting something in the ground, and fences, and everything to do and so little to do it with! And waiting for harvest on an empty stomach...everything—just everything. How will the Kitchens make it, or Mrs. Howard, or Mrs. Irish with only poor little Watt who's half sick with working too much now?" She sat still, permitting these things to trouble her. He said nothing; he fed the fire and walked away to split a log and to bring in its sections.

"You're no help," she said.

"I'll save my help for those that require it. You don't need any."

She was smiling, she was a little bit wistful. "Thought I did."

"All right," he said, and crouched beside her, "we'll grieve together."

"Don't make fun of me."

"I guess," he said, "it's time for the big drunk."

"You've had a few, too."

"Had some. Missed some I ought to've had."

"Well, there's no doubt a saloon in this town."

"What would I be doing, drunk alone?"

She reached for a stick to poke at the fire's heart. "We'll be settling in all sorts of places. Where will you go?"

"Don't know. It'll take some talk and a lot of questions."

"Anyhow, here's where the train breaks up. I don't like it. I don't like things to change. Wish we'd all settle the same place."

"Four hundred people thrown together for six months is pretty close business. We're a lodge—a very particular lodge."

She said: "I don't really make out why you came."

"I'm the sort of man that always thinks there's something beyond the next mountain. I've sure crossed a lot of mountains to find out there's nothing on the far side that wasn't on the near one. In fact, I've run out of mountains. That's why I came here. I'm thirty and it's high time I settled."

"You sure?"

"Oh," he said, "I expect the wind's going to blow some mighty nice smells at me smells of things over there, not here. Tomorrow—not today. You know—what we've not got but what we might get. Same old thing: over the next hill...I expect my feet will itch." He made a flat motion with his two hands against the ground. "But I'm on the blanket."

"What's that mean?" she asked.

"It's what an Indian says when he's through fighting, running around, raising hell."

She watched him. "You sure?"

"Sure."

She made half a turn and laid her hand flat over his chest, over his heart.

"There's your mountain you're all the time crossing." She rose and turned her attention to Roxy at the nearby fire, and her light manner was overshadowed by thoughtfulness. "They have got to be helped," she said. "You think about that. And Mrs. Irish—you think about how she can be helped."

"Why me?"

"Because," she said—"Because you should. Because I said so." She gave him a moment's austere attention; then the sudden smiling arrived. "I think I'll go look at a store—not to buy anything—just to enjoy looking." She went away.

It was then midafternoon with a light and lazy rain falling from low clouds. Burnett pulled a canvas over his packs and took his ax to walk through the scattered trees for fuel, meanwhile noting the letdown air of people standing at their fires or aimlessly traveling from one place to another. The long trip was done, yet it was not done; they were neither in motion nor settled; and indecision was plainly on them, as though they were waiting for their energy to renew itself. He heard Gay's voice call to him and he went to Gay's fire and joined a dozen men gathered there.

Some of the townspeople had come along to offer their advice. Gay turned to Burnett.

"This man"—pointing to one of the townsmen—"said it's not been settled much on the other side of the river, thirty miles down."

"What about the Tualatin Prairie?"

"Best is taken," said the townsman. "And it's low. From now till May you can row a boat from one swale to another."

"I saw a man this morning," said Burnett, "who spoke of the country off French Prairie."

"What's his name?"

"Hawn."

"Oh," said the townsman, "the squaw man. He's back of where the Howells settled, first rise off the prairie. That country rolls. Some buttes and some ridges. Timber patches and meadows between. The meadows are fine. Indians used to burn 'em every year to keep the underbrush clear for huntin'. Good game country—you're just elbow-close to the mountains. Bear Creek and a valley. Plenty of water."

"By God," said Rinearson, passing a hand through the sifting rain, "you don't have to tell us that."

"You'll get accustomed to it," said the townsman carelessly. "First year's the worst. The wetness around here is the saturatin' kind. When you get close to a stove you'll stand around in your own private cloud of steam. You won't get entirely dry until spring and you may get to feelin' like a book with the glue about ready to let go. Your cabins won't be tight and even if they were the dampness would get through. Your bedclothes will always be sort of clammy and your iron will rust, so keep your guns oiled." He was enjoying himself; he smiled at the growing and attentive audience.

"How many rivers we got to cross to get to that place?" asked Billy Lord.

The townsman shut his eyes a moment. "Molally and the Pudding not big. And some creeks. Your first business, after cabins, is to break land enough to get your wheat in. You'll have a hell of a time turnin' over the sod. Then you got to split out rails for when your crops start comin' on. The deer will eat you lean if they ain't fenced out."

Ben Provost said: "Can't break land or seed in this weather."

"No, you wait for a spell of sun."

"Suppose it don't come?"

"Then you plow and seed anyhow," said the townsman. "You got to eat next year, don't you?" He was smiling again.

"Well," said John Gay, "to be honest about it, I'm troubled about eating this year."

"So say we all," murmured Lot Whitc.

"Oh, you can borrow a little wheat from them that's been here a year or two. You can boil it, you can parch it, you can fry it. However you fix the stuff, you'll get awful tired of it. There's fish—and there's venison. The deer are meager little creatures towards spring and you'll get sick of 'em...You'll make out. Don't know how, but you will. It's astonishin' how people manage to live when it don't look reasonable. Now I'll give you a tip. Look at my clothes."

He had seemed to Burnett to be a comfortably dressed man until he drew attention to himself. He let his shirt cuffs come to view, ragged as French lace; he pointed to the patching in his broadcloth suit and, turning about, he drew aside the coat skirt to display a trouser's seat of some foreign gray material sewed over the original blue cloth. He had a fine set of whiskers which came well down to his chest but when he lifted the whiskers he presented for their inspection a hole in the shirt as large as an apple. His shoes had scarcely any soles. "You see how it is. We've got food, but our clothes are worn out and there's nothing in that line to buy here yet. You've got no food but you've got a lot of clothes. The answer is, swap." Then, the cheerful smile showing again, he said: "If there's a spare shirt in this crowd of you my size, I'll give ten bushel of wheat for it."

Lorenzo Buck, standing in the foremost rank of the large circle, made a gesture to himself as though remembering something and turned away. Burnett saw him cross the camp to Mrs. Howard's wagon. Meanwhile Rinearson had another question for the townsman. "Next year, where do we sell our wheat and cattle?"

"Sell?" said the townsman, and seemed surprised. "Why bless you, brother, there's no market for anything. Hudson's Bay will buy your wheat at some sort of a price, but you'll have to wait till the country grows before you think about makin' any money. There's no money here. We don't use money. We use script, or orders on the stores, or we swap." He saw the disappointment on some of their faces and he went quickly on. "What would you make money from? Land? There's too much of it. Cattle? You can swap good stock around among yourselves, but the country's full of wild Spanish cattle brought up here years back, and roamin' now like deer. You want to watch out when you meet 'em too. No, there's no chance yet to make a fortune, but that's not what you need anyhow. What you want is to settle, make a place, fill your root cellars and your wheat bins, and get your orchards goin' and build roads and set up schools. You'll live like kings, for this is the finest country on earth, spring and summer and fall. What do you want to be rich for? Why bring that maggot out here, gentlemen, to make life wormy? Let your earth yield and let your cream pantry be full, and rest on your porch and rock in your chair. My God, men, have you got to buy and sell things to be happy?"

The audience viewed him skeptically and John Gay expressed the crowd's reaction by a pointed question. "Well, friend, wouldn't you like to be rich enough to buy a new shirt?"

"That," said the man, "is only to please the morals of my neighbors. I'd do as well with a blanket as a shirt."

Ryal McIver said bluntly: "What in hell do you do for a living?"

"My name's Sydney Moss and I run the hotel yonder—the one with its petticoats hoisted above the river."

"And do you run it for love or for money?" asked Ryal.

"I can tell you something about that," said Sydney Moss. "If every man who ate at my table had paid for his meal, I'd be rich and the country would be broke. Gentlemen, I shall not make a commercial announcement. I shall only say that if you wish to use the facilities of a hotel while in this city, you will have to use mine—for it's the only hotel we've got." With that good-humored advertisement, he tipped his hat to the crowd and sauntered toward town.

John Gay said, "Just where did the gentleman stand in the matter of money?"

"I think," said Rinearson, "he likes it but ain't makin' any."

"Same as the ten commandments," said Gay. "They're fine things when there's no sin to confuse the situation...I still have got no notion where to look for land."

"The country Hawn spoke of sounds likely," said Billy Lord.

John Gay squatted and scooped his big farmer's hand across the spongy soil before him. "Rolling country," he said. "Well, that's not apt to be deep loam and what's the point of moving two thousand miles for second-grade stuff? That Tualatin Prairie interests me."

"You'll recall he said it was rowboat country in the winter," pointed out Ryal McIver. "It could be swamp-sour, and maybe wouldn't dry fit for plowin' till late in spring, and might bake during summer."

"It will bear more talking about," said Burnett, and moved toward town. He noticed Lorenzo Buck and Mrs. Howard in close conversation. Lorenzo was a short man, his head level with the woman's; he had removed his hat and the slow rain plastered his hair to his skull.

Mrs. Howard said: "I can't be leaning on you all the time. You have got your own work—and it looks to me like one man's work out here is from daylight till way after dark."

"Then what will you do?" asked Lorenzo Buck.

"I don't know. Something. I've got to do something." Her complexion was of the dark Missouri kind, her eyes gray and unlighted. There was on her face the visible remnant of what once must have been a high-strung temper and a love of gaiety; but at thirty-five these things had been quenched. Her body was thin, her mouth pressed at the corners; facing Buck she seemed on guard against an undue generosity from him and yet perhaps was hopeful of it, for she was in the cruel position of a woman who, having nothing left but pride, knew that pride was too expensive for her. "I think I can stand anything. I've told myself that more than once. But I need time to meet these things. It's not decent the world should change so fast and make me change with scarce three days to put away the things I've lived with fifteen years."

He was sympathetic, but insistent. "Maybe time, next month or next year...There's none now. The help that's here will be gone tomorrow. Have you got any notions?"

"No," she said, "except maybe to sell the oxen and the wagon and look for something to do around this place."

"There's nothing to do. You can't go back and you've got no relatives in the party. There some other family you can throw in with—live with for a while?"

She answered quickly, "I'd never live under another woman's shoes."

Buck swung his stocky shape to look beyond her. Rain ran down his hair and across his face. He made a gesture of dashing it away. "Well," he said, "it amounts to this, don't it? You have got two young boys and no husband, and I have got a girl and a boy, and no wife. Coming down the river it occurred to me it would be a good thing if we joined the families."

She said nothing. He continued to look beyond her, his expression fixed somewhere between kindness and embarrassment and he shifted his feet and, hearing nothing from her, gave her a direct glance. "Wouldn't it?"

"I expect it would," she said.

"It had better be done today," he said.

"All right."

"I'll speak to Lot White." Buck let his glance fall to the ground and stood in long thought, and raised his eyes to her. She made a small motion with her shoulders and he continued to watch her for a moment, and then turned away.