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

sprawled in the dusty grass, and now and then a new wagon, splash-marked by the Missouri Blue, would jolt up from town, and women and young ones would blossom out of it, and the men would get busy unyoking the critters.
   Off a piece Brother Weatherby was moving among the people, stopping when he could get someone to listen, his shoulders stooped in their tow-linen shirt, his old face solemn with the weight of what he knew. Evans caught echoes of the rusty voice, which was likely setting things up for a preaching tonight, for Weatherby's Methodist argument on "One Lord, onefaith, one baptism."  Brother Weatherby loved to exhort, as he called it. A mule slowing the train while it stopped to lift its tail was almost enough to make him cut loose. After exhorting, he would get the hat passed. "Remember, the Lord loveth a cheerful giver." Evans imagined that was one of the reasons he preached so often; he didn't have anything. But if you put it up to him that he preached for money, just like a man farmed or traded or kept store, probably he would say he needed the money to do the work of the Lord. Maybe he did. You couldn't listen to him and doubt he believed God had singled him out to spread the Word.
   Evans stood with his foot on the wagon tongue and watched and listened. A bitch in heat went by, trailed by all the dogs in camp, including old Rock, and they all lifted their legs, one by one, at a little hazel bush and trotted on, each hoping, even the littlest, that the Lord had singled him out, too.
Like Brother Weaterby, Tadlock, the politician, was making the rounds, though no one stood for election against him. He was an important talker and he carried an Oregon guidebook with him to show he knew more than anybody, except maybe Dick Summers, about the way to get west.
   Somewhere off where Evans couldn't see, a man was cussing a mule or an ox. Evans saw Weatherby hold up and listen and knew he was thinking about the wickedness of swearing.
   While the sun sailed quiet in the sky and the little winds ran in whispers in the grass, thc voices of the camp rose harsh, like the voices of excited geese. Though they were only twenty miles or so west of Independence and hadn't seen an Indian except for some Shawnees and some scabby Kaws that a Missouri man might see any day, already a few people were afraid, as if they had cut loose from all safety and faced enemies the like of which no one of them had ever known. There was Mrs. Turley, who was all holler and no heart, who kept talking and looking around as if she expected the biggest Indian ever born to show up swinging a hatchet; and Mrs. McBee, a sharp-tongued snipe of a woman who wanted to go back to Ohio; and McBee himself, talking big to hide his littleness. And there were others Evans wouldn't know how many- with worry on their faces and fear in their stomachs while they thought ahead to the Platte and the Pawnees and the Black Hills and the Sioux.
   Rebecca sat in the shade of the wagon, fanning herself with a pie plate for lack of something better, for though April wasn't gone, the sun was hot. Brownie was out watching the cattle, along with the man, Hig that Fairman had hired, and a bunch of others, mostly young men without families. You couldn't tell when a Kaw would take it into his head to make off with a horse or a cow, though they were a chicken-gutted lot and not knee-high in any way, so Dick Summers said, to tribes like the Pawnees and Snakes and Blackfeet. Still, you didn't want them stealing your stock.
Evans watched Rebecca, and by and by, just to make conversation, he said, "I don't hardly feel like we've started yet. Way most of 'em act, you'd think we was bushed in the mountains some place." Rebecca kept on fanning herself. "I could light out now afoot and be to the old place almost in time to do the chores."
   It seemed strange to him, come to think of it, that he called the farm the old place. He had just left it, just shook the