The Way West Read Online Free PDF Page B

was built more for movers than mountain men.
   A man moved away from the cabin and Summers saw it was his neighbor, Lije Evans, who finally had made up his mind to go to Oregon and now wanted everybody else to go. Evans asked, "Mind company?" and eased his big body to the ground and got out a green bottle and handed it to Summers. He had bought it, Summers knew, for him. They drank from it and went back to their pipes, and by and by Evans said, "She makes a real purty corpse, Dick."
   Summers nodded, not speaking, letting the alcohol warm his stomach while he thought about beaver country. He had said goodbye to it once, feeling old and done in. How long ago?
   Eighteen thirty-seven to eighteen forty-five. Eight years, but it seemed like forever, so sometimes he wondered if the Seeds-keedee ran like always and the mountains lifted blue out of the plain and buffalo bulls made thunder in their rutting time.
   He had said goodbye to it and had come back to Missouri to farm, and so had bought himself a team of mules and built a cabin and married a white woman and set out to grow corn and pigs and tobacco and garden stuff, and had counted the old life as something done with except as his mind remembered it -except sometimes as his inside eye saw the sun push up over the edge of the world and make its great sweep and slide in fire behind the mountains. Under the sun he would see maybe a beaver pond and hear the smack of a tail on water, and then the riffles running and dying out and the pond lying so quiet you would think nothing lived there.
   Or he would see an Indian village, and squaws with red blankets, and a young one with full breasts looking his way as much as to say yes, tonight, while he told the chief the white hrother's heart was good and he spoke with one voice, and the pipe made the rounds. Or he would see friends like Jed Smith or Dave Jackson or Jim Deakins, and all of them dead now and the Grand Tetons rising lonely by Jackson Lake. And then the smell of pig manure would come to his nose, or Jack, the old mule, would bray, and he would know he was nothing any more but a grayback farmer who'd better be tending to his chores.
   Evans said, "You made up your mind what to do yet, Dick?"
   Summers shook his head.
   "Reckon I oughtn't to ask you that. It ain't a time when you'd want to figure."
   "It's all right."
   "I wouldn't ask, except time is pushing. We got to know before long now."
   "Uh-huh." Summers took the bottle that Evans offered and drank from it again. Up the Sweetwater and over the Southern Pass and down the Sandys to the Green he was seeing the wild goats or antelopes as people were calling them now, and the young ones running with them, light and skittery as thistle
   And it came on toward night, and the sun was down and the fire of its setting dead, and the coyotes were beginning to yip on the hills and the stars to light up, and there was the good smell of aspen smoke in his nose. He ought to milk the cow.
   Evans drew in a breath, as if he took notice of the smoke, too, but what he said was, "Them crab trees smell nice."
   A man lost one thing and thought about others lost before. Like he thought about Jackson's Hole and the Wind Mountains and the squaws he had known, a long time ago when the blood was hot in him. Like he thought about the buffalo on the Laramie plains. Jesus Christ, so many that he had fuddled himself trying to put a figure on them! Like he thought about his old friend, White Hawk. a chief of the Shoshones. Like he thought about streams running quick and clear and the stands of white-trunked quaking asp.
   "Tadlock is bound and bedarnned on an answer," Evans said. "Can't say I blame him too much now, Dick."
   "Why you goin', Lije? You didn't leave nothin' there."
   "I told you. We got to take Oregon, Dick. I feel I got to help."
   "That ain't all."
   "No. I ain't been there, but I been here. I ain't satisfied