The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Read Free Book Online Page A

up at rendezvous."
   It was like men, she thought, to be excited and not to feel with their excitement such a sadness as a woman did at saying goodbye to home. To a woman a house long-lived-in remembered the touch of hands and the tread of feet and the sound of voices speaking low at night. It remembered deaths and bornings and the young, gay talk of people newly married.
   "You can take the walnut chest," she said and watched Lije and Brownie heave it up and saw the torn emptiness it left.
   Each stick and splinter of this place was built by Lije, each little touch of prettiness put there by her or him. Everything had something of them in it. They had come here young and sure and seen the years pass and known trouble and happiness.
   It was, she thought again as she worked her broom, as if the house had shared their times and feelings, as if, quiet in the walls, sad in the empty rooms, was the memory of their doings, was the dread of strangers coming.
   Outside, her menfolks talked, thinking out loud how to place things in the wagon. Lije's voice came to her strong, full of a sort of forward feeling she hadn't heard in years. And so it was all right, she told herself. The moving was all right, hard as it was. Oregon was all right. What Lije needed -and what Brownie would need later- was a better chance than in Missouri. What he needed was a dare. What he needed was to find out what he amounted to. A slow-going, extra-easy-tempered man, said people, not understanding it was his self -belittlement that made him so, not knowing that, without it, there wasn't much he couldn't do. That was one thing she was sure of. Except for giving up the house she could be almost glad that Lije had got one of his rare and sudden notions and signed up for Oregon.
   She swept the dirt out the door and took off her dustcloth. Everything was in the wagon. Everything. Nothing in the house but space, space and the broom and the flecks of dust she'd raised and the unspoken loneliness.
   "Old Rock's ready, Ma. How about you?" Brownie's voice cchoed in the dead rooms, in the room where he'd been born, where he'd lain as a baby in the cherry cradle Lije had built.
   Lije walked from the wagon and came in and had a look around. "Seems you got everything, 'less you want to load up the house, too."
   "Wish I could."
   "Me, too, Becky," he said and patted her shoulder and went back out, asking, "Ready?" on the way.
   "Soon's I get this poke bonnet on." She stepped outside, into the unbearable bright cheeriness of the early sun.
   "Pa says I can herd the loose critters along, and him and you'll poke the teams," Brownie told her.
   She said, "All right," and added, "Wait a shake," and turned back in, for it occurred to her, as if she had been slighting and forgetful of one who's served them well, that she hadn't taken the last long look that would be her goodbye. For a long minute or two she breathed the deserted air and in imagination put back into their places the fittings that had been torn away.
   "Hurry up, Mal"
   She lifted her head and walked out, making sure the latch they'd used so many times was closed behind her.
 

    Chapter Five
    LIJE EVANS had been to some powerful stump speakings and to revivals where people got the shakes and hollered in the unknown tongue. He was reminded of them now, here at what was called rendezvous, where officers would be elected and outfits inspected and things made ready for the march. The racket of it filled the ear, women clacking, men yelling at mules and oxen and talking in little groups, young ones shouting, dogs barking, and every once in a while a mule braying or a cow bawling. The eye couldn't rest. People were taking down tents and driving cattle out to pasture and reloading wagons, having found, driving from Independence or Westport, that their plunder wasn't arranged right. Children ran among the white-topped wagons and tripped over tent pegs and