Butcher's Crossing (16 page)

Schneider spat on the ground. “Then we still don’t know where we are?”

“I didn’t say that.” Miller’s eyes continued to range the line of the river. “I been here before. I been all over this country before. I just can’t seem to get things straight.”

“If this ain’t the damndest chase I ever been on,” Schneider said. “I feel like we’re looking for a pin in a stack of hay.” He walked angrily away from the little group. He sat down at the wagon, his back against the spokes of a rear wheel, and looked sullenly out over the flat valley across which they had traveled.

Miller walked to the bank of the river where Andrews had sat during his absence. For several minutes he stared across the river into the forest of pines that thrust up through the side of the mountain. His legs were slightly spread, and his large shoulders slumped forward; his head drooped, and his arms hung loosely at his sides. Every now and then one of his fingers twitched, and the slight movements turned his hands this way and that. At last he sighed, and straightened.

“Might as well get started,” he said, turning to the men. “We ain’t going to find nothing as long as we sit here.”

Schneider protested that there was no use for them all to join in the search, since only Miller would know the spot he wanted (if even Miller would know it) when he came upon it. Miller did not answer him. He directed Charley Hoge to yoke the oxen; soon the party was making its way in a southwesterly direction, opposite to the way that Miller had taken alone earlier in the afternoon.

All afternoon they made their way upriver. Miller went near the riverbank; sometimes, when the bank became too brushy, he rode his horse into the river itself, where the horse stumbled over the stones that littered the bed nearly to the edge of either bank. Once a thick grove of pines, which grew up to the very bank of the river, deflected the course of the wagon; the men in the main party skirted the grove, while Miller kept to the river bed. Andrews, with Schneider and Charley Hoge, did not see Miller for more than an hour; when finally the wedge-shaped grove was skirted, he saw Miller far ahead of them, upriver, leaning out from his saddle to inspect the far bank.

They made camp early that night, only an hour or so after the sun went down behind the mountains. With darkness, a chill came in the air; Charley Hoge threw more branches on the fire and dragged upon the branches a sizable log, which Schneider, in an excess of energy and anger, had cut from a pine tree whose top had been snapped the winter before by the weight of snow and wind. The fire roared violently in the quiet, driving the men back from it and lighting their faces a deep red. But after the fire died down to large embers the chill came again; Andrews got an extra blanket from the wagon and added it to his thin bedroll.

In the morning, silently, they broke camp. Andrews and Charley Hoge worked together; Schneider and Miller, apart from each other, stood apart from the two who worked. Schneider whittled savagely on a slender bough of pine; the shavings piled up on the ground where he was sitting, between his upraised knees. Miller stood again at the bank of the river, his back to the others, and gazed into the shallow flow of clear water that came from the direction in which they were to travel.

The morning’s journey began lethargically. Schneider slumped in his saddle; when he looked up from the ground, his eyes came to rest sullenly upon Miller’s back. Charley Hoge snapped the long whip perfunctorily over the ears of the lead oxen, and drank frequently from one of the bottles he kept in the box under his spring seat. Only Miller, who seemed to Andrews to become less and less a part of the group, kept restlessly ahead, now on the bank, now on the edge of the river bed, now in the water itself, which flowed whitely around the fetlocks of his horse. Miller’s restlessness began to affect Andrews, and he found himself gazing with an increasing intensity at the anonymous green forest that edged the river and defined the course of their passage.

In the middle of the morning, ahead of them, Miller halted his horse. The horse stood near the center of the river bed; as the others came up close to him, Andrews could see that Miller was gazing thoughtfully, but without real interest, at a spot on the bank opposite them. When the wagon halted, Miller turned to the group and said quietly:

“This is the place. Charley, turn your wagon down here and come straight across.”

For a moment, none of them moved. Where Miller pointed was no different from any of the places along the unchanging stretch of mountainside that they had passed that morning or the previous afternoon. Miller said again:

“Come on. Turn your wagon straight across.”

Charley Hoge shrugged. He cracked his whip above the left ear of the off-ox, and set the hand brake for the descent down the heavily sloping riverbank. Schneider and Andrews went ahead, following closely behind Miller, who turned his horse straight into the thick forest of pines.

For a moment, as he and Schneider and Miller pressed their horses directly into the face of the forest, Andrews had a sensation of sinking, as if he were being absorbed downward into a softness without boundary or mark. The sound of their horses’ breathing, the clop of their hooves, and even the few words the men spoke, all were absorbed in the quiet of the forest, so that all sound came muted and distant and calm, one sound much the same as another, whether it was the snort of a horse or a spoken word; all was reduced to soft thuds which seemed to come, not from themselves, but from the forest, as if there beat within it a giant heart, for anyone to hear.

Schneider’s voice, made soft and dull and unconcerned by the forest, came from beside Andrews: “Where the hell are we going? I don’t see no sign of buffalo here.”

Miller pointed downward. “Look what we’re on.”

The horses’ hooves, Andrews saw, were sliding the smallest bit upon what he had thought was the grayish-green bed of the forest; a closer look showed him that they were riding over a series of long flat stones that grew up from the base of the mountain and wound among the trees.

“They don’t leave no track here that a man would notice,” Miller said. Then he leaned forward in the saddle. “But look up there.”

The stone trail ended abruptly ahead of them, and a natural clearing widened among the trees and wound gradually up the side of the mountain. The bed of this clearing held a broad, regular swath of earth worn bare of grass; raw earth and stones showed the boundaries of the path. Miller kicked his horse up to the point where it began, and dismounted; he squatted in the middle of the path and inspected it carefully.

“This is their road.” His hand caressed the hard-packed contours of the earth. “There’s been a herd over it not too long ago. Looks like a big one.”

“By God!” Schneider said. “By God!”

Miller rose. “It’s going to be hard climbing from now on. Better tie your horses to the tail of the wagon; Charley’ll be needing our help.”

The buffalo trail went up the mountainside at an irregular angle. The wagon made its way up the steeply pitched incline; it went slowly upward, and then dipped sharply down in a hollow, and then went upward again. Andrews, after he had hitched his horse to the tailgate, strode beside the wagon with long, strong steps. The fresh high air filled his lungs, and gave him a strength he was not aware of having felt before. Beside the wagon, he turned to the two men, who were lagging some distance behind.

“Come on,” he called in an excess of exuberance and strength; he laughed a little, excitedly. “We’ll leave you behind.”

Miller shook his head; Schneider grinned at him. Neither man spoke. They shuffled awkwardly over the rough trail; their movements were slow and resigned and deliberate, as if made by old men walking to no purpose and with great reluctance.

Andrews shrugged and turned away from them. He looked ahead at the trail, eagerly, as if each turn would bring him a new surprise. He went in front of the wagon, striding along easily and swiftly; he loped down the small hollows, and climbed the rises with long, heavy thrusts of his legs. At a high rise, he paused; for a moment the wagon was out of his sight; he stood on a large stone that jutted up between two pines, and looked down; the mountain fell off sharply from the trail, and he could see for miles in either direction the river they had crossed only a few minutes before, and the land stretching level to the foothills that lay behind them. The land looked calm and undisturbed; he wondered idly at the half-submerged fear he had had of it during their crossing. Now that they were over it, it had the appearance of a friend known for a long while—it offered him a sense of security, a sense of comfort, and a knowledge that he could return to it and have that security and comfort whenever he wished. He turned. Above him, before him, the land was shrouded and unknown; he could not see it or know where they went. But his view of the other country, the level country behind him, touched upon what he was to see; and he felt a sense of peace.

He heard his name called. The sound came to him faintly from the trail below where the wagon was making its way upward. He leaped down from the rock, and trotted back to the wagon, which had halted before a sharp rise of the trail. Miller and Schneider were standing at the rear wheels; Charley Hoge sat on the clip seat, holding the hand brake against the backward roll of the wagon.

“Give us a hand here,” Miller said. “This pull’s a little steep for the oxen.”

“All right,” Andrews said. He noticed that his breath was coming rapidly, and that there was a slight ringing in his ears. He set his shoulder to the lower rear wheel, as Schneider had to the one pitched at a higher level on the other side of the trail. Miller faced him, and pulled at a large round wheel spoke, as Andrews pushed. Charley Hoge’s whip whistled behind them, and then cracked ahead of them, over the oxen’s heads, as his voice raised in a long, loud “Harrup!” The oxen inched forward, straining; Charley Hoge released the hand brake, and for an instant the men at the wheels felt a heavy, sickening, backward roll; then the weight of the oxen took hold; and as the men strained at the wheels, the wagon slowly began to move forward and upward on the trail.

The blood pounded in Andrews’s head. Dimly, he saw muscles like large ropes coil around Miller’s forearms, and saw the veins stand out heavily on his forehead. As the wheel turned, he found another spoke and put his shoulder to it; his breath came in gasps that sent sharp pains in his throat and chest. Bright points lighted the dimness in his eyes, and the points whirled; he closed his eyes. Suddenly he felt air in front of his hands, and then the sharp stones of the trail were digging in his back.

As from a great distance, he heard voices.

Schneider said: “He looks kind of blue, don’t he?”

He opened his eyes; the brightness danced before him, and the dark green needles of the pines were very close, then very far away, and a patch of blue sky was revealed above the needles. He heard the rasping sound of his own breath; his arms lay helplessly at his sides, and the heaving of his chest pushed the back of his head against a rock; otherwise he did not move.

“He’ll be all right.” Miller’s voice was slow and measured and easy.

Andrews turned his head. Schneider and Miller were squatting to his left; the wagon was some distance away, atop the rise which had momentarily halted it.

“What happened?” Andrews’s voice was thin and weak.

“You passed out,” Miller told him. Schneider chuckled. “In these mountains, you got to take it easy,” Miller continued. “Air’s thinner than what a body’s used to.”

Schneider shook his head, still chuckling. “Boy, you was sure going great there for a while. Thought you’d get clean over the mountain before it hit you.”

Andrews smiled weakly, and raised himself on one elbow; the movement caused his breath, which had quieted somewhat, again to come rapidly and heavily. “Why didn’t you slow me down?”

Miller shrugged. “This is something a body’s got to find out for his self. It don’t do no good to tell him.”

Andrews got to his feet, and swayed dizzily for a moment; he caught at Miller’s shoulder, and then straightened and stood on his own strength. “I’m all right. Let’s get going.”

They walked up the rise to the wagon. Andrews was breathing heavily again and his hands were shaking by the time they had gone the short distance.

Miller said: “I’d tell you to ride your horse for a while till you get your strength back, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. Once you get your wind broke, it’s better to keep on going afoot. If you rode your horse now, you’d just have it all to do over again.”

“I’m all right,” Andrews said.

They started off again. This time, Andrews kept behind Miller and Schneider and tried to imitate their awkward, stumbling gait. After a while he discovered that the secret was to keep his limbs loose and let his body fall forward, and to use his legs only to keep his body from the ground. Though his breath still came in shallow gasps, and though after a slightly steep ascent the lights still whirled before his eyes, he found that the peculiar shambling rhythm of the climb prevented him from becoming too tired. Every forty-five minutes Miller called for a halt and the men rested. Andrews noticed that neither Miller nor Schneider sat when they rested. They stood upright, their chests heaving regularly; at the instant the heaving subsided they started off again. After discovering the agony of getting up from a sitting or lying position, Andrews began standing with them; it was much easier and much less tiring to resume the climb from a standing position than from a sitting one.

Throughout the afternoon the men walked beside the wagon; and when the trail narrowed they walked behind it, putting their shoulders to the wheels when a slope caused the hooves of the oxen to slip and slide on the hard trail.

By midafternoon, they had pushed and tugged halfway up the side of the mountain. Andrews’s legs were numb, and his shoulder burned from repeated pushings against the wagon wheel. Even when he rested, the sharp thin air, cool and dry, pricked against his throat and caused sharp pains in his chest. He longed to rest, to sit on the ground, or to lie on the soft pine needles just off the trail; but he knew what the pain of rising would be; so he stood with the others when they rested, and looked up the trail to where it disappeared among the thick pines.