Moontrap - Don Berry (10 page)

Reaching the base of the valley, he stepped into the
little stream, feeling the chill water grip his ankles. He began to
plod upstream, the gurgle and sputter of the water covering the sound
of his approach. As he rounded a bend he caught sight of the fire,
and of a bony old horse picketed on the point of the next curve. He
moved slowly to the side ofthe stream and studied what he could see
before going on. The camp seemed to be deserted. He thought he could
see nearly the whole extent of the clear area, and no one was in
sight.

He moved back into the stream carefully, glad he was
downwind from the strange horse. As it was, the animal did not catch
his scent until the last minute, then whickered nervously and
crab-sidled away from him as far as the picket rope would permit.

"Just take it easy, easy now," he said. The
clearing was deserted. A bloody skin, tied up into a bag, lay not far
from the fire. He suddenly realized the fire was far too fresh, and a
piece of meat lay beside it as though dropped. He jerked his head up.
knowing it was too late.

A muffled, animal snort in the brush made him swing
around, just in time to see the flash of an igniting powder pan. A
ball whirred past him, ripping into the brush behind, to the sound of
thunder.

Monday fell flat, lifting his own gun as the old man
came stooping out of the underbrush, his hat flopping limply around
his ears, two long plaits of hair swinging. He carried his long
rifle, still smoking, loosely in one hand. He muttered angrily as he
crossed the clearing toward the prone Monday.

"Took y' f'r a Injun, I did.
Wagh!
Come near t' throwing down on y', god damn y'r eyes."

"
Webb! Jesus god, Webb!" Monday stared up
from the ground in astonishment, his rifle barrel falling to the
ground. The old man walked past him to the fire, grabbing the hunk of
dropped meat and drawing his butcher knife, still grumbling.

"
Y'almost kilt me, Webb," Monday said,
sitting up and staring at the old man.

Webb snorted and cut himselfa piece of meat. "Learn
y' somethin', y' damned pork-eater. Come a plunderin' into a man's
camp thataway. Y'allus was a turrible dunghead. How be y'anyway,
hoss?"
 

Chapter Five

1

Damn me, Webb! I plain can't get over it, seein' you
here. What do y' feel like, y'old coon?"

"Wagh! Half froze f'r 'baccy, this child is. Got
any about y'?"

"Wel, I have."

Monday fumbled out his tobacco pouch and handed it to
the old man. From the recesses of his voluminous hunting shirt Webb
produced the red sandstone pipe bowl and the long wooden stem,
fitting them carefully together. He lit up and closed his eyes
luxuriously letting puffs of white smoke curl out of his nostrils.

Monday watched him curiously, full of an obscure
restlessness. He felt just as he had when he sat around a mountain
fire for the first time, at the age of nineteen, and watched this
same man smoke and talk and drink and curse and lie. Webb had looked
then exactly as he did now, except for the long plaits of black hair
that now dangled beneath the limp felt hat. To the young
mangeur-de-lard
on his
first trip, Webb had been the personification of mountain wisdom;
infinitely old, infinitely experienced, infinitely wise.

Thirteen goddam years, Monday thought, the spring of
'37. He suddenly realized he had been down here in civilization
longer than he had spent in the mountains, a full year longer. It was
a depressing thought. Nothing had happened here worth mentioning,
except anger and humiliation and failure. But the mountain years had
been full, as a man's life should be full.

Even the winters, holed up with the Crows on Wind
River with the snow packed around the lodges—there'd always been
something going on, and Webb was always in the middle of it. The old
hoss could read and write, for one thing. Had, in fact, taught Monday
himself to read, sitting around the Absaroka fires through the long,
cold nights, whiling away their time until the spring thaw allowed
them out for the hunt. The Rocky Mountain College they called it, and
more than one grizzled mountain man had cut his literary teeth there,
puzzling over the strange printed sign with the same intensity he
gave Indian sign or beaver sign.

Monday grinned to himself, thinking about it.
Shakespeare, the Bible, and above all, The Scottish Chief. The
Shakespeare and the Bible were carried about with the camp goods, but
Webb had his own private copy of the long novel, four tiny
leather-bound volumes no bigger than the palm of your hand. He could
remember the old man's utter rage when Monday, the green student,
couldn't follow the sense of Miss Porter's long, periodic sentences.
(
Y' goddamned danghead, wagh! Fit f'r nothin'
but wolfmeat. that is a fact.' Well, this niggers had a craw full
o'y' ....
—snatching the book out of
Monday's hand and stalking off.)

For some reason he'd taken Monday under his wing
those first years, easing him through the intricacies of mountain
life with a sure, if occasionally rough, hand. Not once, Monday
thought, but a dozen times, he owed his life to the old man. Though
at times he wasn't sure his life was worth the price; there was
always the cussing out later. (
If'n this child
had as much money as you got stupids, why, he'd ae a-puff'in' on a
big cigar an 'struttin' in Saint Looy alongside Chouteau ....
)

He looked just the same, smoking his pipe with all
his attention and ignoring a friend he hadn't seen in seven years.
Webster W Webster, M.T That was how he signed himself, the M.T
standing for the only education he admitted to straight out: Master
Trapper. And it was no more than truth.

"
Well, coon," Monday said. "How's it
come for your stick t' be floatin' out this direction?"

"
Damn
y'r eyes,"
Webb snapped. "Ain't you learned yet t' leave a man in peace
when he's a—smokin'?
Wagh!
"
But at the same time he spoke he made a V with two lingers and moved
it upward from his forehead in a spiral, sign-talk for "medicine."

Monday nodded. If Webb's being here had something to
do with his medicine, Monday would just have to wait until the old
man said what he had to say; or perhaps he would never know. It
wasn't something you asked about.

"Roll out y'r doin's, Jaybird," Webb said
contemptuously. "Seems like y' got y'r mouth all set f'r
talkin'."

Monday looked down at the ground for a moment. "Not
much to tell, hoss," he said at last. "Left the mountains
same year as Bridger built his fort down to the Green, 'forty-three
it was—"

"
Wagh!
"
Webb deliberately leaned over and spat into the fire. "That's
what killed the trade, Bridger 'n' his goddamn fort."

"—come down here to the valley to settle.
That's it." And little enough, Monday thought. Try to put the
mountain years into one sentence.

Webb nodded, his eyes roving absently over the
opposite slope.

"Well," he said at last, "leastways
y'ain't gone to percussion guns like ever'body else."

"
Nor you neither," Monday said, grinning.

"
Wagh!
'
Hell's full o' percussion guns all rilled inside. This child never
saw a nigger could charge a percussion gun on horseback runnin'
bufiler. Nor make a fire with a percussion cap 'stead of a flint. Y'
ever try t' ram a ball down a barrel with all them little grooves
inside?"

"They say she shoots straighter like that,"
Monday said reasonably.

Webb snorted. "This child make 'em come without
no goddamn little grooves in his gun. Goes against nature t' have
them little grooves in there."

Monday shrugged. There was no use saying anything;
Webb could easily prove that if God meant guns to be rifled He'd of
made wiping sticks with ridges to fit. "Where the hell's
ever'body got to, coon? Where's Bill Williams?"

"See that child in hell,
wagh!
He's cached up snug down to Taos."

"Taos! Never thought I'd see old Bill in a
town!"

"Got to. Took hisself a Ute wife or three, 'n'
living with a pack o' the dirty red bastards up to Bayou Salade.
Well, now! Come a couple o' summers ago, 'forty-seven I think it was,
he takes the whole year's catch o' the band down to Taos to sell."

"
Nothin' wrong with that," Monday said.

"Shut y'r damn mouth," Webb said. "The
nigger sells the furs, goes on a spree. He did now. Two, mebbe so
three weeks. Had a turrible dry, I expect. Wakes up still dry, 'n'
all his people's money gone. Hires out f'r a guide to the Army, 'n'
takes a party o' them pretty Blue Boys right plumb back t' his own
lodge. Well, wa'nt there whoopin'! Seven Utes from his band went
under that spree. They ain't forgettin' he led them sojers, nor the
furs neither. Old Bill don't want to get nowheres near the mountains
if'n he feels like keepin' his ha'r."

Monday looked at the ground. He picked up a twig and
drew a circle in the dirt. "Hard times when it comes t' that,"
he said quietly.

"
Must've been a real turrible dry he had,"
Webb agreed. "But them Utes'll raise him one day, wagh!' they
will. They'll make him come, then. He may of lost his topknot
already, f'r all this nigger knows."

The old man spat contemptuously in the fire. "I
ain't been followin' Bill's doin's lately."

"What's beaver in Taos?"

"Dollar."

"
Saint Louis?"

"Same."

Monday cleared his throat. ".—Ain't gettin'
any better."

Webb turned on him angrily. "Beaver's bound t'
rise," he snapped.

"
Goes against nature t' sell beaver a dollar a
plew. She'll rise."

Monday looked at the old man in surprise, then turned
away. He wondered if Webb could really believe it. The refrain had
been going around since '37, and it hadn't risen yet.

"Hard t' live," he said. "Dollar a
plew."

"Wagh!"

After a moment Monday said absently, "Trask and
Tibbets and Solomon Smith're settled down to the coast. Meek and Doc
Newell and me and a few others here in the valley."

Webb spat into the fire again. "Farmers."

"Approximately. "

Webb turned to squint suspiciously at him, one eye
closed. "That dirt-cloddin' shine with y', boy?"

Monday looked at the twig in his hand. He put it down
on the ground where he had found it. "Not so much," he
said.

Webb nodded. "Goes against nature, rip up the
ground with a plow. It does, now."

"
No help for it," Monday said.

"Wagh!" Webb spat again. "Man was made
t' run buffler, not poke around makin' holes in the ground."

"Webb," Monday said hesitantly, "listen,
coon. That's all over. The hunters are dyin' out and the farmers
takin' over. That's how it is."

"
Y' goddamn dunghead!"

Monday shrugged, frowning. "How it is," he
repeated. "Sometimes you got to swim with the current, hoss.
She's too strong."

"This nigger'll swim how he pleases," Webb
said angrily. "Current,
wagh!
Y're a farmer right enough. Current!"

"
Ain't no need to get y'r back up, hoss. I'm
just sayin' is all."

"Never thought t' hear the old Jaybird a-talkin'
like that. You sure god turned out bad, boy, y' hear?"

Monday shrugged. "Times change, coon. A man goes
along or goes under."

Webb thought about it for a long time. "This
nigger's out o' baccy," he said sharply.

Monday handed him the pouch again and watched while
the old man filled up. Webb tamped the tobacco carefully into the
bowl, watching it suspiciously all the time. "How d'the
honest-to-jesus farmers take on t' old mountain men," Webb said
uninterestedly.

"Well—different, I expect. Meek gets along
good enough," Monday said.

"
Heerd he was marshal or summat," Webb
said.

"So."

Webb snorted. "Some marshal, that 'un."

"
He ain't too bad," Monday said. "Anyways,
what the hell they going t' do with a man like Meek? It's make him
marshal 'r have half a dozen marshals t' handle him."

"Leastways he ain't diggin' up the ground."

"
He tried it for a couple years, but it didn't
work out too good."

"Good enough f'r you, though," Webb said,
looking at him through a plume of smoke.

"Good as a man c'n expect, " Monday said.
"It ain 't easy. There's more t' this kind of doin's than you'd
think. A man's got—responsibilities."

He wished for a moment he could tell Webb how hard it
was, find some way to make the old man understand. But there was
nothing he could say but what Webb would just call him dunghead
again. He raised his hands and let them fall. "It ain't so easy,
" he repeated.