The Way West Read Free

others said they would, too, all except Tadlock.
   Fairman raised his glass and said, "Here's to a place where there's no fever."
   "'Y God, yes," answered McBee. "And to soil rich as anything. Plant a nail and it'll come up a spike. I heerd you don't never have to put up hay, the grass is that good, winter and all. And lambs come twice a year. Just set by and let the grass grow and the critters birth and get fat. That's my idee of farmin'."
   "Seems to me," said Evans, "that you all are ahead of yourselves. Be a month and more before you can start."
   The man, Mack, nodded. "First come, best served. Best land, best damsites, best business locations." He fell silent and stood looking off, his forehead wrinkled, as if he saw Oregon and the land and the sites and the locations he had spoken of. The thumb of the hand at his side kept playing along the fingers.
   "We've got plenty of work to do before we can start," Tadlock said.
   The young Fairman bobbed his head. "The more I think of it, the more I think I'm doing right. No fever. New land. New chances."
   "A new way of things," Evans said, reading what was in Fairman's mind and putting it all together, and Fairman gave him a little smile and nodded again.
   "Of course you're doing right," Tadlock spoke up. "You ought to join, Evans, right now."
   "What's the matter with Missouri?" It was Hitchcock asking, as he wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. The red eyeballs went from one to another of them for an answer.
Then his gaze slid over to the door, and Evans, following it, .aw the door opening and a girl coming in. She stepped in and held the door half shut behind her and stood uncertain, like a bird about to fly, and it grew on Evans that she was such a girl as a man wouldn't see every day. The curves of her gave shape to the shapeless linsey-woolsey she wore. The face above the dress was so quick and aware it almost hurt to look. The face was pale, and the planes of the cheeks long and smooth, and the mouth full as a knowing man wanted a mouth to be. The eyes were big and dark and darkly shining, except that shining wasn't exactly the word for them. Glowing, maybe, was more like it.
   "Pa," she said, standing there in bare feet, the lines of her young breasts showing through her sack of a dress. McBee looked up then. "Well?"
   "Ma wants you should come to the wagon."
   McBee's mouth worked in the scrubby beard. "You tell your ma I'm busy."
   "She said, please, to come."
   One small foot came tip and slid down the instep of the other, and Evans guessed her ma had said not to come back without her pa.
   "You tell her I'll come when I can, and not before. Hear?"
   Evans brought. his gaze away from her and looked at McBee and then at the rest and caught Mack unguarded, his eyes busy, his face marked with what might be hunger, as if for a minute, and maybe for no more than that, he had let his thoughts run away with him. The others made out not to notice anything much, maybe feeling small and out of place as Evans did himself.
   "You git on!" McBee said.
   The girl turned then, slowly, and went through the door and closed it and was lost to sight.
   "The damn women!" McBee said. "Always wantin' you for something. That's my girl, Mercy." He reached in his pocket for a twist of tobacco.
   They drank quietly for a minute, and then Tadlock changed the subject that was in their minds. "We haven't decided on a pilot. We have to find a good pilot."
   "There are some who say they are," Mack said, taking his eyes from the door. "Adams for one. Or Meek."
   McBee tongued his chew to one side. "Goddam it, I bet they couldn't follow a turnpike."
   Tadlock spoke again. "Adams hasn't been beyond Fort Laramie. Any fool can get to Laramie. It's the country beyond that counts."
   "What about Meek?" Mack asked.
   "I understand he's already dickering, he and Adams both."