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The Lost Wagon

by Jim Kjelgaard · English · Gutenberg #34697 · 587,674 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lost Wagon

Author: Jim Kjelgaard

Illustrator: Gerald McCann
        Albert Orbaan


        
Release date: December 19, 2010 [eBook #34697]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34697

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST WAGON ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                         THE LOST WAGON

                        by JIM KJELGAARD

                      _Jacket by Al Orbaan_

                   _Endpapers by Gerald McCann_

                     _Lithographed in U.S.A._

[Transcriber Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


    Dodd, Mead & Company, New York

    Copyright, 1955 by Jim Kjelgaard

    All rights reserved

    No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
    without permission in writing from the publisher

    Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-7136

    Printed in the United States of America

    For Alma and Rob Zaun


_The characters, incidents and situations in this book are imaginary and
have no relation to any person or actual happening_




Contents


I Pondering

II The Discussion

III The Destroyers

IV Mountain Man

V The Start

VI The Party

VII Independence

VIII The River

IX Storm

X Snedeker's

XI Winter

XII Barbara and Ellis

XIII Spring

XIV The Mule

XV The Meadows

XVI The Farm

XVII Besieged




The Lost Wagon




CHAPTER ONE

Pondering


When he had guided his plow halfway down the furrow, a bar-winged fly
alighted just above Joe Tower's right ear. He felt it crawling, its
presence irritating through the sweat that beaded his forehead and
dampened his temples, and he knew that he should swat it away. When it
was ready to do so the fly would bite him, and bar-winged flies drew
blood when they bit.

He did not raise his hand because once again the devils which, at
sporadic intervals, tormented him, were having a field day. The fly was
a counter-irritant. He wanted it to bite. It was a time to be hurt
because, after the fly bit him, there would be that much more
satisfaction in smashing it.

At the same time he kept a wary eye on the mules. Though he was
sometimes confused by the facts and affairs of his personal world, at
the moment he had no doubt whatever about one thing. He hated all mules
in general and these two in particular. They were big, sleek roan brutes
with an air of innocence that was somehow imparted by their wagging ears
and doleful expressions, but was entirely belied by the devil in their
eyes. Twice within the past fifteen minutes they had balked, stepped
over their traces, snarled their harnesses and kicked at him when he
sought to untangle them. He had escaped injury because he knew mules.
All his life he had handled animals, and most of the time he knew what
they were going to do before they did it.

He felt the fly crawling around, and gloated silently as he awaited its
bite. He mustn't harm the mules because a man simply never hurt his
animals. But he could swat the fly, and so doing he could relieve all
his pent-up anger at the mules and, this afternoon, at the world in
general.

Not for a second did he take his eyes from the mules, and they seemed to
know that he was watching them. Muscles rippled beneath taut hides as
they strained into their collars and pulled as though they had never had
any thought except getting the plowing done. Joe Tower's already tense
nerves began to scream. The fly didn't bite and the mules didn't balk,
and unless something happened very soon, he felt that he would be
reduced to babbling idiocy.

Nothing happened except that the already hot sun seemed to become a
little hotter on his sweat-drenched shirt and his perspiring head and
arms. But he had been scorched by so much sun and had sweated so many
gallons that he never thought about it any more. Sun and sweat were a
part of things, like snow and ice. Nobody escaped them and nobody could
do anything about them, and Joe wasn't sure that anybody should want to.
If the sun didn't shine the crops wouldn't grow. Or if the sun did
shine, and there was no snow to melt and fill subterranean reservoirs,
the crops wouldn't grow anyhow. This basic reasoning should be obvious
to anyone at all.

The rich brown earth turned cleanly as the plow wounded it, and the
scorching sun burned a healing scab over the wound. Keeping intent eyes
on both mules and waiting for the fly to bite, Joe was not one man but
two.

One of them felt a soul-filling peace. It was good to plow and to have
the nostril-filling scent of the newly turned earth, for these things
were symbolic. The earth was a vast treasure house, but the treasure was
not yielded freely. It was only for the strong, for him who could sweat
and strain and guide a plow. Such a person was blessed beyond any
others. But the other man who walked with Joe was angry and resentful.
He did not doubt his own strength for he could plow as long a furrow as
was necessary. He did dislike the forces, the petty forces that had
nothing at all to do with plowing, which kept him from doing it.

Joe's lean, six-foot body adjusted itself perfectly to the rhythm of the
plow. Hairy, sun-browned arms gripped the handles with exactly the right
pressure, and there was something almost lyrically smooth in the way he
could, without using his hands at all, control the reins that were
looped over the small of his back. Gray-streaked hair that needed
cutting and black beard shadowed a face that might have been thirty
years old or fifty, and was thirty-four.

To himself and his work he gave little conscious thought. He had plowed
so many furrows that plowing came almost as naturally as breathing, and
he had long since ceased even to think about his own physical
proportions. What sometimes seemed an age ago and sometimes only
yesterday, he had fancied himself as a dashing figure and very handsome.
He had been nineteen then and courting Emma, and it was a foregone
conclusion that the world was not only to be their oyster, but that it
would be filled with the purest of pearls.

That had been yesterday, and yesterday was lost somewhere in the haze
that every morning hung like a blue shroud over the low mountains that
marched into the distance. This was today, and today meant work. But
somehow, yesterday's dreams had not passed with passing time.

Yesterday's dream had become today's dream, and it was made up of things
that a man might hope to possess--no unreasonable things, but ordinary
things, like a sizable piece of good land, owned free and clear; an
extra team of mules; a flower garden for Emma to fool around with, and
maybe a small orchard down the side of a hill; some pretty clothes for
Emma and for blossoming Barbara, and some toys for the younger ones; and
most of all, freedom from the never-ending uncertainty about meeting the
next payment. It seemed as though that shouldn't be too much for a man
to want, yet most of it was still a dream.

Joe blew his breath upward to see if he could make the fly leave him
and, when it did not, he became angrier. He was almost always a creature
of the moment, and always the moments were filled with things demanding
immediate attention. To the exclusion of all else, this one centered in
a team of fractious mules, a fly that must bite soon and a strong sense
of restlessness.

He came almost to the end of the furrow and still the fly contented
itself with crawling around his temple and stopping now and again to
buzz its wings or clean its fragile feet. Joe's tension increased and,
had it not been for the anticipated senses of achievement that swatting
the fly would give him after it bit, he would have swatted it anyhow.

They reached the furrow's end, he prepared to swing the team around, and
that was the second the fly chose to bite him. It was a sharp and sudden
pain, somewhat like the prick of a needle, but the pain did not ebb as a
needle wound would have. The fly had pierced a blood vessel and would
now bloat itself with blood. Joe Tower's hot anger passed the boiling
point but, where another man might have cursed, he said nothing.

He let go of the right plow handle so that he could raise his hand and
swat the fly. A surge of purest pleasure shimmered through him, for this
was the second he had been awaiting. Just at that moment the mules
rebelled.

Expertly, choosing precisely the right time, knowing not only exactly
what to do but exactly how to do it, they stepped over their traces and
swung away from each other. They plunged forward, dragging the plow on
top of the ground. Instead of swatting the fly, Joe grabbed the reins
with his right hand and pulled back hard.

The steel bits took hold, and the mule's jaws gaped open. But they were
hard-mouthed, and Joe brought his left hand to the aid of his right
while he fought back as stubbornly as the mules were fighting him. When
he finally brought the team under control, the fly was gone and only a
dull ache remained to prove that it had ever been.

For a moment Joe felt weak and spiritless, as though he had conceived
some master plan which should have worked well but which instead had
gone completely astray. Then, still eying the mules warily, he
straightened them out and swung the plow around.

The silliness of what he had intended to do and the way he had intended
to do it, struck him forcibly. He had actually made serious plans to
relieve his own pent-up feelings by swatting a fly. He grinned and for a
moment he rested.

His eyes strayed past the boundaries of his own farm to a green-clad
hill where a little herd of cattle grazed. Joe looked wistfully at them.
The cattle belonged to Pete Domley, and Joe had a sudden overwhelming
conviction that Pete was the smartest man in Missouri. Instead of
worrying about a farm, Pete had merely acquired a judicious assortment
of bulls and cows and let nature work on his side. Beyond the slightest
doubt, cattlemen had all the best of everything. It would be nice if all
one had to do was cull his herds every season and sell the increase.

Joe could not let himself rest for long because the sun was shining, the
ground was ready for working, and he had problems. He had bought his
eighty-five acres for $600, of which he still owed Elias Dorrance, the
banker, $400. This fall Elias would expect another payment. If Joe did
not get the field plowed and planted he would have no crops to sell and
therefore no money, and Elias was not noted for his willingness to wait.
It was strange how things never worked out the way a man thought they
would.

Joe had understood before they were married that Emma had not wanted to
leave her father. Old Caleb Winthrop was a widower of uncertain
temperament, gentle one hour and abusive the next. Emma had been devoted
to him since her mother's death, and she had been able to forgive his
harshness and his tyrannies because she deeply pitied his loneliness.
She was even able to persuade Joe that old Caleb "didn't mean anything"
and that "things would surely work themselves out" once they were all
living together.

Joe had had his doubts, but he laid them aside, and after the wedding he
gave up his small interest in a near-by farm and came to work for his
father-in-law.

Things didn't "work themselves out." Joe stuck to his job for five long
years, chafing all the time under the old man's constant criticism.
Caleb had let it be understood that some day the farm would belong to
Joe and Emma, but meanwhile it seemed as though there was nothing Joe
could do right--or if he did anything right then sure as fate he'd done
it at the wrong time. Emma, who'd been able to tolerate the old man's
venom easily enough when it was directed against herself, suffered
agonies when Caleb would start to mutter and then to shout over
something Joe had done.

There had come a day when Caleb shouted at Joe a little too loud and a
little too long. Emma asked Joe to step outside with her, there was
something she wanted to say to him.

They walked away together toward the big tree over by the barn, and when
they got there Emma turned to Joe and looked into his tired and angry
eyes, and she put her hands on his arms and felt there the rapid tensing
of his muscles as he clenched and unclenched his fists that were dug
deep into his pockets.

"Joe," she said, "I was wrong. I should never have asked you to come
here to work for Pa." The color rose up into her face. "I can't stand it
when he yells at you. Something terrible happens inside of me. I--I
_hate_ him when he yells at you, Joe."

He took his hands out of his pockets and drew her close to him, and she
put her head down on his shoulder and wept bitter tears. He moved his
work-roughened hand tenderly over her soft hair, and he held her gently
and rocked her a little because he felt she was trying to make a
decision, a hard and painful decision, and he didn't want to influence
her one way or the other.

When she quieted she talked again, blurting the words as though she had
to get them out quickly--while she dared. "We can't stay," she said.
"It's not right the way he treats you. And he won't change, Joe. He
hates the thought of you getting his land, and he means to make you
pay--not in money or work, but in other ways. Mean ways. It's not worth
it, Joe."

A smile came over his face, and he held her away from him so she could
see him and how good he felt. "I prayed to hear you say this, Emma. I've
been wanting to leave for a long, long time, but I waited for you to
come to it by yourself." He looked at her with all the love he felt and
could never quite put into words. "I couldn't go without you, Emma, and
I wouldn't force you to come--more especially because I can't offer you
anything away from this farm. I'll have to work as a hired man till we
can get together enough to buy us some land of our own."

Emma put her face down against his shoulder, and the words that came up
were muffled. "I've got a confession to make, Joe. I knew you wanted to
leave. I knew it a long time ago. But I was afraid to speak out against
Pa. I guess I've always been afraid of Pa, not knowing it, thinking all
the time I just respected him the way a daughter should. But hearing him
yell at you, I found out something I never knew. I can get mad at Pa. I
can get so mad at him that I'm not frightened at all any more. I could
walk right up to Pa this minute and tell him we've had just about
enough!"

She lifted her face then, startled by her own audacity, and said, "Want
to see me do it?" And then, before he could say yes or no, she ran away
from him back to the house, quick as a deer. Joe chased her, and when he
came in panting through the door there she was standing in front of
Caleb with her eyes blazing, and saying, loud and clear, "Pa, we've had
just about enough!"

       *       *       *       *       *

For eight years Joe had worked as a hired hand for other farmers. Being
a menial did not trouble him at all, but he worried greatly over the
fact that he was seldom able to offer his family more than the basic
necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. Within his inner soul was a
deep conviction that they deserved more. A great oak could not flourish
in a flower pot, and human beings could not grow as humans should if
they must always be restricted.

Last year Emma had overwhelmed him by producing $600 which, almost penny
by penny, she had saved over the years. Two hundred had gone into the
land and $400 into things needed for the land: mules, cows, harness,
the plow, the harrow and a host of other things which never seemed very
expensive when one bought them singly but which ate up money when
purchased together. Now this wasn't working out. Though a part of Joe
could be perfectly in tune with what he was doing, another part resented
it fiercely. Good land was for good crops, and good crops were a joy to
the heart and soul. But Joe looked over what he had already plowed and
seemed to see there a row of dollar bills for Elias Dorrance. He thought
uneasily of the way he lived, and wondered if his sons and daughters
would have to live that way too. Then this feeling faded until it was
only a vague irritation, and Joe became the complete farmer.

He guided the plow down another furrow and another. It was hard and hot
work, but Joe licked his lips in anticipation as he forced himself to
plow one more furrow. It pleased him to work as hard as he could, and
sweat as much as he could, before he indulged himself because then the
indulgence was appreciated all the more. Swinging back on still another
furrow, he halted the mules in their tracks and walked to a leafy
sycamore that spread its green branches where the plowed field ended. He
pulled a handful of wilting grass aside and revealed a brown stone jug.

For two seconds, wanting to cheat himself of no part of this, he looked
at the jug. Its earthen sides were beaded with little globules of water,
and as it lay in the sycamore's shade it looked inviting. Joe knelt to
pick it up, and the jug was cool to his hand. He pulled the corn cob
stopper and held the jug to his lips while he took great gulps of cold
water. It was part of the ritual, a measure of things as they must be. A
man who had never been sweat-stained from hard labor could not know the
true goodness of cold water. His thirst satisfied, Joe put the jug back
and covered it with grass.

The day had been hard and somewhat frustrating, but it was with a sense
of loss and resentment that he noted the long shadows of early evening
draping themselves over the fields. The day couldn't possibly be ended,
but as soon as he knew that it was ending he felt a rising pleasure. No
man had a right to rest while there was daylight in which he might work,
but anybody with half a lick of common sense knew that you couldn't work
at night. When it was impossible to work, the whole time might be given
to dreams, and dreams were a very important part of life, too.

Knowing very well that their day was over too, and that they were going
to pasture, the mules stood meekly and made no attempt to kick as he
unhitched them. Free from the plow, they stepped along as briskly as
though they hadn't just finished pulling it for more than ten hours, and
there was something akin to friendliness in their eyes when Joe drove
them into the pasture, stripped their harness off, hung it on the upper
railing, and shut the pasture gate behind him.

He turned to watch the mules frisk like a couple of colts across the
green grass, then lie down and roll luxuriously in it. Not until
tomorrow morning would he have to fight them into harness again, and
that made him forget, in part, the trouble he had had with them today.
He grinned at the mules.

There was a soft footstep beside him and Joe's oldest daughter was
there. She was slim and tall, and almost startlingly beautiful. There
was little resemblance to either Joe or Emma; Barbara was the
re-creation of some ethereal being who had been in the family of one or
the other perhaps 100 and perhaps 500 years ago. She had been one of the
really awe-inspiring events in Joe's life. He was not naive and he knew
the ways of nature. But when he had courted Emma he had known only that
he was desperately in love with her and that he wanted her always at his
side. It had simply never occurred to him that they, too, should produce
children; he hadn't thought that far. When Emma told him she was
pregnant he had walked around in a half daze for weeks. He hadn't really
believed it until Barbara's arrival.

Joe said, "Hello, Bobby."

She said, "Hello, Dad," and she added, as though it were an
afterthought, "The chores are done."

Joe frowned. At the same time, since he was tired, he knew some relief.
Half the families around put their children to work in the fields as
soon as they were big enough to pull weeds, but Joe had never liked the
idea and he didn't hold with his womenfolk doing field work at all. Men
were supposed to work the fields, but almost as soon as she was big
enough to do so, Barbara had taken a hand. She liked to do things, and
for all her seeming slightness she was very strong. Just the same, even
though he was relieved because he would not have to milk the cows, swill
the pigs, and do all the other things that forever needed doing, Joe
didn't like it. But he spoke with the gentleness that Barbara inspired
in him.

"You shouldn't be doing such chores."

She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and Joe thought of Emma.
"I like to do them and it won't hurt me."

Because he did not know what to say, for a moment Joe said nothing. It
was unreasonable because a man always had the right to tell his children
what to do, but secretly he was still more than a little overawed by
Barbara. Then the silence became awkward and he asked,

"Where's Tad?"

"He--He's about."

Joe frowned. It was a foregone conclusion that Tad was about because
Tad, his eldest son, was always somewhere. Joe thought of his children.

After Barbara they'd waited seven years for Tad. Then Emma, Joe, Alfred,
and Carlyle, had arrived in rapid succession. If Joe understood any of
them he understood Tad, for the eight-year-old thought and acted a great
deal like the father. A wild and restless youngster, Tad was
wholeheartedly for anything he didn't have. As long as there was
something he really wanted he was entirely willing to work like a horse
for it.

Where the field joined the forest, a white and black dog of mixed
ancestry panted into sight and stopped to look expectantly back over his
shoulder. Joe stiffened, waiting for what he knew he would see now, and
a moment later Tad appeared with Joe's long-barreled rifle over his
shoulder and a cluster of squirrels in his hand.

Joe's anger flared. Tad loved to hunt, which was not unusual because all
normal boys did. But nobody eight years old had any business running
around the woods with a rifle and more than once Joe had forbidden Tad
to use his. Joe's face became stormy as the youngster drew near.

"What you been doing?"

Tad stopped, every freckle on his multifreckled face registering total
innocence and his eyes big with surprise. Joe fumed. The boy was like
him and yet they were not alike. Never in his life had Joe faced
anything in any except a direct way. He did not know how to pretend, as
Tad was pretending now.

"Huntin', Pa," the youngster said.

"Haven't I told you to leave that rifle alone?"

"You didn't tell me today."

"I don't have to tell you every day!"

"I didn't use but six shots."

Joe roared so loudly that the pastured mules looked curiously at him,
"It's no matter if you used only one!"

"I got six squirrels," Tad explained. "Mike, he put 'em up a tree and
kept 'em there. I just shot. Smacked every one of 'em plumb through the
head."

"Give me that rifle," Joe snatched the weapon, "and get in the house
before I tan your hide!"

"Yes, Pa."

The squirrels in his hand, the dog beside him, Tad trotted toward the
house. There was nothing meek or subdued in his squared shoulders and
upturned head, and for a moment Joe had an uncomfortable feeling that he
had been tested by an eight-year-old. He scowled and shrugged the
thought away while he felt a rising pride. Six squirrels with six shots
was good shooting anywhere, and young ones wouldn't be all they should
be if they didn't have a bit of the devil in them. He must keep the
rifle where Tad couldn't reach it, though. Maybe this fall, or as soon
as he could spare a day from the fields, it would be a good idea if he
took Tad hunting with him. He really wouldn't mind Tad's using the rifle
if he could be sure that it was safely used.

Barbara went to close the chicken coop. The rifle in his hand, Joe
walked to the spring house, leaned the rifle against it, and dipped a
pail full of water. He spilled some into a wooden bowl that stood on a
wooden bench and sighed deliciously as he washed his face and hands.
This, the final act of his working day, was one to which he always
looked forward. It was as though, in washing away accumulated sweat and
grime, he also washed away the troubles that plagued him. The end of the
day was almost like being born again.

There was a new spring in his step and a fresh tilt to his head as he
walked toward the house. He remembered Emma, not too clearly, as a
lovely young girl. Now her figure was mature. Hard work, childbirth and
worry had traced their own lines on her face. But to Joe there was
something completely fitting and even refreshing about that. A tree
could not forever remain a graceful young sapling. It had to grow, and
became strong with growth, in order to withstand winter blasts, summer
storms, fire, and other hazards that menaced it. Joe found in the mature
Emma a solid strength and assurance that he could not remember knowing
in the girl, and with it had come a deepening love. He met his wife and
kissed her. Emma stepped back and smiled.

"Did you have a good day?"

"It was a good one."

Her eyes dwelt on the rifle, and her brows arched in question. "Did Tad
have it again?"

Joe grinned. "Yup."

He took the rifle into his and Emma's bedroom, and hung it high on two
wooden pegs driven close to the ceiling. For a moment he looked at it,
frowning, and then he was satisfied. He could reach the rifle but Tad
couldn't unless he had something to stand on. If he tried that, Emma
would hear and stop him. Still, the boy was devilishly clever when it
came to sneaking the gun out.

Tad was outside dressing his squirrels, and Barbara had gone down to the
creek to gather a little knob of wild flowers for the table. As soon as
Joe had settled himself in the chair, the four youngest children were
upon him. Joe reached down to lift baby Carlyle into his lap with the
other three, and they cuddled there like soft kittens.

"When I was out in the fields today," Joe began, "I met a big grizzly
bear. He had a mouth this wide...."

He spread his hands to show the width of the grizzly bear's mouth and
his fingers to demonstrate the length of its teeth. Gently, to their
squealing delight, he tickled the four little ones and nibbled their
hands and feet to show how the grizzly bear had mauled and bitten him.

Behind him, Emma stood at the window enjoying, as she did each night,
the pure pleasure that Joe took in his children. She had loved Joe
almost from the day she first set eyes on him, in the store where they
had come together at the counter, she to buy calico for an apron, Joe to
buy some nails for the repair of a fence. Something about the set of his
shoulders and the powerful but easy way he moved caught her attention.
Here was a man slow and sure and strong--slow of speech, slow to smile,
but with an imp of mischief that could dart out unexpectedly from his
eyes. When the storekeeper had held up for his attention a small jug of
maple syrup from a shipment newly arrived, and had inquired, "Like one
of these?" Joe's eyes had strayed to Emma and he'd replied, unblinking,
"Sure would." Joe took the jug of syrup in his hand, hefted it for
weight and again, looking into Emma's startled eyes, said "Sweet, no
doubt of it." Then, absolutely over-come by his own impudence, he had
slapped his money on the counter and run from the store, jug in hand,
nearly falling over a box that stood in his path.

She smiled now, thinking of that casual beginning. Their marriage had
not been easy, but it had been rich in tenderness and in sharing. The
five years that they had lived with her father had been troubled and
barren. Barbara's arrival had given them a center of relief away from
Caleb. Barbara had been like an oasis in a parched land. Their feelings,
that withered and died in Caleb's presence, could grow and flower when
they were alone with their baby girl.

Joe had been bewitched by Barbara from the beginning. And each of his
children had seemed miraculous to him in birth. He was a good man, a
good father. True, there was a restlessness in Joe that sometimes
frightened her. He liked to work, but to work for himself, for his own
family. He had endured Caleb's domination with an inner rage that had
seemed like a bottled-up tornado to Emma. Though he managed to conceal
most of it, the fury of it had at times been revealed in his bloodshot
eyes and white, set lips, in the way he strode out to the plow or pulled
open the barn door--and it had caused a tight little knot of worry to
harden inside of her. He wanted then, and he wanted now, to be on his
own, his own man. The obligation of his debt to Elias Dorrance sat
heavily upon him, more heavily than it did on Emma, because the furious
independence that burned within him raged against the naked fact that
the land was _not_ his own, would not be his own until he had paid back
every last dollar he owed on it.

Emma sighed a little, wishing that Joe did not chafe so under his debt.
If Joe were less restless, she would be able to enjoy even more fully
the home that in this one year had become so precious to her. Her eyes
strayed now from the little mass of squirming and giggling humanity
gathered about Joe's knees, and she re-examined lovingly, for the
thousandth time, every bit of furniture in the room. Most of it had been
made by Joe, and they had talked about it and planned it for where it
would stand and how it would serve them. The little cupboard that held
their best dishes had been polished with such energy that it gleamed as
brightly as a copper pot. The curtains blowing in the soft breeze had
been stitched by Barbara and herself after the young ones were tucked
away for the night. The lamps were polished, their chimneys spotless.
Everywhere in the room there was evidence of labor and tender care. Emma
loved the room and everything in it. Her whole life was here in this
room, with Joe, with her children. Life was hard, but it was rich and
full, and if Joe did not have these flashes of restlessness, it would be
well-nigh perfect.

Barbara came in and put her handful of flowers into a cup on the table
and then, with quiet efficiency, she and Emma put the meal on the table
and the four youngsters slid from Joe's lap to crowd hungrily around.
Tad came in, his face and hands clean and his black hair slicked back
with water. He carried the dressed squirrels on a piece of bark. Laying
them on a wooden bench, he almost leaped into his chair. Emma smiled
with her eyes and Joe smiled back, and the words they had whispered a
thousand times to each other were heard, unsaid but understood.

Emma asked, "Did you get a lot done?"

"Quite a lot. But those darn mules--."

He told her of the trouble he'd had with the mules, but even while he
spoke it seemed to be someone else talking. He could not understand it
because it was past his understanding. To plow the earth and grow new
crops was always good. By such deeds people lived and had lived since
the beginning. But....

His every nerve and instinct, and his heart, told him that good land had
magic in it. It had been maddening, as a hired hand, to be able to feel
and touch this magic, and not to have it for his own. He had thought
that having his own land would change all this, but it hadn't.
Previously he had worked for wages while his employer reaped the benefit
of his labor. Now he was merely working for Elias Dorrance. As before,
all he could offer his family were the basic necessities. Joe looked
down at his empty plate.

Emma's understanding eyes were upon him. She said, "Why don't you take a
walk, Joe?"

"Now say! I might just do that! I might go down to Tenney's!"

"Why don't you?"

"I think I will."

Joe sought the star-lighted path leading to Tenney's general store,
which was the center of half a dozen houses at Tenney's Crossing and the
unofficial clubhouse for every man from miles around. Except for the
church, which most men would think of visiting only on Sunday if they
visited it at all, Tenney's store was the only meeting house. Joe looked
at the star-dappled sky, and he was struck by what seemed the odd
thought that he had never seen stars crowd each other aside.

Out in the shadows a bird twittered, and Joe stopped in his tracks. He
knew all the local birds by their songs, and he could give a fair
imitation of nearly all, but this one he could not identify and it
mystified him. He decided to his own satisfaction that it was a vagrant
mocking bird that had uttered a few off-key notes.

He was so absorbed in thinking about the bird that he reached Tenney's
Crossing almost before he realized it. By the thin light of an
early-rising moon he saw a man leaning at a slight angle against Frawley
Thompson's house. Without too much interest he recognized a local Indian
known as Lard Head, a nickname he had acquired from a passion for
slicking his black hair down with lard. Lard Head's other consuming
ambition in life was to get as drunk as possible as often as possible,
and obviously he was drunk again. He was fast asleep standing up, and
doubtless he would go looking for something else to drink as soon as he
awakened.

Yellow oil lamps glowed behind the store windows, and Joe set his course
straight. He saw Elias Dorrance come out of the store and linger in the
shadows, waiting for him, and he felt a rising irritation. He disliked
nobody simply because they had more than he, but he wouldn't have liked
Elias Dorrance under any conditions. Elias, who lived by the sweat and
toil of others, was an alien here in this place where most men lived by
their own labor. The banker spoke,

"Hi, Joe."

"Hi."

"Got your seeding done?" Dorrance asked casually.

"Why don't you come see for yourself. Elias?"

He brushed past and into the store, not thinking about the fact that he
had rebuffed the man to whom he owed money--and not caring. Elias
Dorrance was not being neighborly; he was just checking in advance to
find whether he'd get a payment this fall or whether he'd have to
foreclose on Joe's farm. Either way it made no difference; no amount of
sweet talk would keep Elias from getting his due and no other kind would
insult him if he saw money in the offing. Elias was a sponge. He
absorbed everything but had an amazing facility for disgorging whatever
would not benefit him.

Joe put Elias from his mind and went into the store. A kerosene lamp
burned in front and another in back, and in between was all the amazing
variety of goods that a store such as this must stock. Lester Tenney
sold everything from pins to farm wagons, and he always had exactly the
right amount of goods. This was no coincidence, and anywhere except here
Lester Tenney might have been a great merchant. He had an amazing
insight into his customers' exact needs. Nobody had ever had to wait for
him to put in a special offer or to bring goods from St. Louis.

A tall man whose gaunt frame made him seem even taller, Tenney was
rearranging goods on a shelf when Joe entered. Wispy brown hair fought
desperately for a hold on his balding head, but after the first
wondering glance few people noticed anything except Lester Tenney's
eyes. They were clear and blue, and very deep, and oddly similar to two
pieces of clear blue sky. The storekeeper gave Joe a friendly nod and a
cheery greeting.

"Good evening, Joe."

"Hi, Les. What's new?"

The storekeeper inclined his head toward a little knot of men gathered
under the second lamp at the rear of the store.

"Bibbers Townley came back. For the past hour he has been enchanting we
peasants with his adventures in the west."

"So?"

"Go back and listen," Lester Tenney advised. "It's worth it. The way
Bibbers tells it, compared to him Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus and
Daniel Boone were strict amateurs."

Joe looked with interest toward the men in the rear. Pete Domley, five
feet two and taciturn, stood against the pot-bellied stove which, at
this season, needed no fire. There were Yancey and Lew Garrow, lean and
sun-scorched. Joe saw old Tom Abend, wild Percy Pearl, John Geragty,
Fellers Compton, Joab Ferris and Lance Trevelyan. All these men he had
known for years, and the years had brought them closer together. Side by
side they had fought forest fires, battled to keep rain-swollen creeks
within their banks, built a new house or barn for some unfortunate whose
building had been destroyed by fire, hunted and fished together. Not one
of them was the enemy of any other.

Joe saw them almost as he would have seen his family, and he felt
pleased because they were present. His eyes strayed to the young man who
sat on the counter, with his right leg cocked nonchalantly over his left
knee, and he reflected that Bibbers Townley had changed very little.

Three years ago, then in his late teens, Bibbers had left Tenney's
Crossing. But there had been some preliminaries attending his departure.

For days preceding his final farewell he had absented himself. He
returned riding a fancy thoroughbred with a new saddle and he had also
got hold of two new Colt revolvers and an apparently endless supply of
ammunition. For two weeks, the guns prominent on his hips, he had
swaggered around announcing to anyone who would listen that no hick town
was big enough to hold him. He was, he said, a man of parts and he was
going into the west where there was room for men. At the slightest
provocation, and sometimes at none, he had drawn either or both of the
revolvers and shot at any convenient target.

Joe edged unobtrusively up beside the Garrow brothers and looked with
interest at Bibbers Townley. Before Joe was born, settlers had started
going west. Four families from Tenney's Crossing had gone, and Joe
himself had considered going. But a man didn't pull up stakes and move
that easily. At least, he didn't when he had six young ones to think
about.

"And how do you think," Bibbers was saying when Joe joined the group, "I
got this?"

He held up his right hand so the assembled men could see a white scar
running diagonally from the base of his little finger across the palm to
the base of his thumb. There was an uncertain silence, and Joe sensed a
rising scorn among his friends. He chuckled silently. Tenney had told
him that Bibbers had been talking for an hour, and evidently he had also
been lying for an hour. But he could still hold his audience partly
because he interested them and partly because, never having been west,
they could not completely distinguish Bibbers' fact from his fiction.
Then,

"You stuck your hand in the church poor box," Percy Pearl said smoothly,
"and the parson had left his knife in it. You grabbed the knife instead
of the money you thought you'd get."

Hot rage flashed the other's cheeks, and he braced his hands on the
counter as though he were about to jump down. Percy Pearl stood cool,
unflinching, and Bibbers settled back. Nobody knew how Percy Pearl
earned his living. He never worked and he never farmed and he was often
gone for long periods. But he always had a good horse and everything
else he needed. However, since he never did anything questionable around
Tenney's Crossing, it was just as well not to ask questions. Rumors were
current that Percy was good with a knife and equally good with a gun,
and nobody had any reason to doubt it.

"Do you want," Bibbers blustered, "to make something of it?"

Percy's shrug was cold as ice. "You asked me."

"Shut up, Percy," Lew Garrow urged. "Let him talk."

"Yeah," Fellers Compton seconded. "Let him talk."

"All right," Percy agreed. "Go ahead and talk, Bibbers."

"I got this cut," Bibbers said, sure that he had won an encounter which
he had not won at all, "in a fight with Apaches. It was in Arizona
territory...."

For a couple of moments Joe listened with great interest to a lurid tale
of a battle which Bibbers had had with eight Apaches. He shot six of
them, and with the last two it was knife to knife. At that point the
story became so absurd that Joe lost himself in his own thoughts.

Bibbers was a liar, had always been one. However, select ten groups of
men from ten parts of the country and they would average out about the
same. The fact that any part of the country could produce its quota of
asinine braggarts was not necessarily a reflection on the country. Joe
unleashed himself completely.

Suppose a man owned everything on his land and the land too? He'd still
have to work, but he wouldn't have to work until his whole insides
tightened into a hard knot, and inner forces built up so tensely that he
seemed ready to explode! When things got that bad, if it were not for
Elias Dorrance, a man could take an hour and go hunting or fishing or
just walking. Would it ever be that bad if land was something between a
man and his God, and not between a man and his banker? Would it be bad
at all if he knew that his children were going to find opportunities
which they could never have here?

Then there was the rest of it; the eternal wondering about the unknown!
Wouldn't a man rid himself of that burden if he went to see for himself?

"One time in Sonora," Bibbers Townley was saying, and Joe listened with
little interest while Bibbers regaled his audience with another
improbable adventure. Joe stared beyond the stove, and saw only the
vision that arose in his own mind. He broke into Bibbers' account of
what he had done one time in Sonora.

"What about land," he called.

"Land? Land, my friend? Do you want to know how they measure land in the
west? I'll tell you."

Immediately he started telling, all about how he had staked out land by
riding for three days straight west, then three south, three east, and
three north. Finally he came back to the starting point and all the land
he'd ridden around was his. Joe spat disgustedly.

"You thinkin' of goin'?" John Geragty asked Joe.

"I've been pondering on it."

"So have I."

Joe slipped away from the group and his feet were light on the starry
path. The curtains had parted, at least for the time being, and he had
seen the bright promise. He must hurry home at once so he could tell
Emma about it too.




CHAPTER TWO

The Discussion


For a Moment after Joe had gone, Emma sat silently at the table. She was
lonely and a little depressed, as she always was when Joe left her. Even
when he went to work his fields in the morning, she looked forward to
the noon hour when he would be home for lunch. If he did not care to
stop working long enough to come home but wished to eat in the fields
instead, Emma carried him a meal whenever she could think of a plausible
excuse for so doing. It was not always possible because Barbara insisted
on doing it. Emma smiled wistfully. Barbara thought she was saving her
mother work when in reality she was robbing her of a privilege.

"What are you smiling about, Mother?" Barbara asked.

"I was thinking of your father."

Barbara looked curiously at her and Emma made no comment. For all her
lovely girlhood Barbara was still a child. She must live a few years
before she could even hope to understand some things, and it would be
futile to try to explain them now. Love was always a fine and beautiful
thing, but the quick, fierce passions of youth were only the first
flames. The smoldering fires that were fed by years of working and
struggling together really welded it so that two, in actuality, did
become one. But no young person would ever understand that. Only
experience could teach it.

Emma glanced with studied casualness at her lovely daughter. Approaching
her fifteenth birthday, for more than a year Barbara had had a large
contingent of suitors. All were gawky youths who stumbled over their
own feet, never knew what to do with their elbows, and were apt to
stutter or stammer when disconcerted. Barbara accepted them with an
almost regal poise the while she interested herself seriously in none,
and that pleased Emma. She herself had married at sixteen, which was
early enough. Emma thought with mingled pity and amusement of Lucy
Trevelyan, whose fifteen-year-old Mary had been urged upon every
eligible man in the neighborhood and who was now going around a second
time. It was more than a question of just getting a man. It had to be
the right man and, for Barbara, Emma wanted as much happiness as she had
found with Joe.

Emma looked again at her daughter, who was staring dreamily across the
table. After a moment, the youngster spoke,

"Why didn't you go to the store with Dad?"

"With all those men!" Emma was half horrified.

Barbara said thoughtfully, "I suppose it would be awkward. But you work
very hard, too. If it relaxes Dad to go to the store, it should relax
you."

Emma laughed. "I'd be as out of place there as your father would at a
sewing bee!"

"When I get married," Barbara said firmly, "I'm going everywhere my
husband goes. Everywhere!"

Tad snorted derisively, and left his chair to hone his beloved knife.

"Don't make fun of your sister, Tad."

"I didn't say nothin'," Tad protested.

"'I didn't say anything,'" Emma corrected.

"Yes, Ma."

"Let me hear you say it."

"I didn't say anything," Tad mumbled.

Emma turned from him and the incident had come, passed and was
forgotten. She had about her a quality that demanded respect and
attention, but which never left a sting.

In passing, Emma sometimes wondered at how much she herself had changed
during the years of her marriage. From a gentle girl, much in awe of
her father, admiring Joe from a distance and struck quite speechless
when he asked her to marry him, she had acquired over the years both
firmness and authority in her dealings with the children. Joe loved to
play with his children when they were little, and he admired them as
they grew older, but when it came to discipline he didn't appear to know
how to go about it. With Tad he sometimes exploded, sometimes cuffed his
ears and sometimes turned his back in despair. With the others he
somehow subtracted himself, so that Emma was left in charge of
discipline. Perhaps the trouble was that an ordinary reprimand would
have seemed unsuitable to the wonderful creatures he thought them to be.
Whatever the reason, over the years Emma had found that while all
decisions regarding the children were discussed between Joe and herself,
with Joe often playing a larger part than she did in the actual
deciding, it was usually Emma alone who had to put the decisions into
effect. She smiled ruefully. Nobody, not even Joe--_especially_ not
Joe--realized that Emma still had safely hidden away, some of the
timidity of her younger years. Within the home, in relation to the
children, she was undoubtedly a tower of strength.

Baby Emma slid from her chair to climb upon her mother's lap and lay her
head on Emma's shoulder. Emma encircled her with a gentle arm.

She knew that Joe was in awe of Barbara, stood on just about an even
footing with Tad, and regarded the other four as lovable, cuddly beings
who were still too young to have any real identities of their own. But
it was Emma who understood their hearts and, much of the time, their
minds.

Proud of Barbara's grace and beauty, she still saw beyond it. Barbara
was not, as Joe thought, fragile of body. She did have a generous nature
and a delicate, sensitive mind that must either encompass all or reject
all. There were times when Emma trembled for her and what the future
might do to her. To Emma she was an opening bud, almost ready to bloom,
and if blossoms were not tenderly nurtured they faced certain
destruction. Emma hoped and prayed that the common sense and almost
mature judgment which Barbara was already displaying would come to her
aid when she most needed it.

Tad was a reflection of Joe, and yet he was not Joe. Behind Tad's wild
impulses and rash acts, Emma saw the man to be. Tad would be a good man,
like his father, and Emma knew that she was guilty of no heresy when she
hoped that he might be even more capable and talented. Joe himself hoped
that. He wanted everything for his children.

Baby Joe was a child of infinite patience. Given a problem, such as a
knotted piece of string, he kept doggedly at it until every knot was
untied and the string straight. Emma was grateful and happy for him, for
she knew that the world never had enough people who were not afraid of
problems. One day Joe would be outstanding.

Alfred was the soul of mischief. Quick and alert, he missed no
opportunity for fun or pranks. Once, in all innocence, he had offered a
present to Barbara and put in her outstretched hand a large black
beetle. He had gone into gales of laughter when Barbara, who shrank from
all insects, flung the beetle from her. Imaginative, Alfred was forever
inventing games that he could play alone or in which all might share.

Carlyle had been born to laughter and an appreciation of the beautiful.
From the very first, a bright butterfly, a stray sunbeam, a bit of
colored ribbon, a colored leaf, had caught and held his fascinated
attention. The first word he'd ever spoken had not been the traditional
"mama," but "pretty." Emma treasured him greatly, and there was a
tradition in her family that one of her ancestors had painted some of
the world's outstanding masterpieces. Though she knew that she would
never attempt to dictate the lives of her children, Emma had more than a
faint hope that artistic talent would live again in Carlyle.

But it was the raven-haired child in her lap whom Emma cherished just a
bit more than the rest. It was not because Emma saw her own image there,
but because baby Emma was the sickly one. She was subject to sudden,
raging fevers that left her pale and weak. More than once they had
despaired of her life. But she had always come through and no night
passed that Emma did not offer up a prayer that she would always
continue to do so. The child turned to smile sleepily at her mother.

"Time for bed, darling?" Emma coaxed.

"Yes, Mama."

Emma carried her into the living room, put her on a chair and returned
to the kitchen to dip a pan of water from a kettle warming on the stove.
Tenderly she removed the clothing from baby Emma's fragile little body,
washed her daughter, put her night dress on and carried her into bed.
She leaned over to kiss the child twice on each cheek and watched her
snuggle happily beneath the quilts. This was a ritual that Emma herself
must always perform. Barbara could put the other young children to bed,
but Emma always had to take care of baby Emma.

Barbara had the giggling Carlyle in her arms when Emma went back into
the kitchen. In passing, she patted the child's curly head and started
to wash her dishes. Her china was carefully stored in the new cupboard
and there it would remain until the children were big enough to respect
it. Emma remembered poignantly one of her minor heartbreaks of years
ago. The Casper family, departing for the west, had decided that their
china was too frail to stand the trip so they'd given it to Emma. It was
lovely, delicate ware that had come across an ocean, been used by the
Caspers in New York, and brought by them to Missouri.

Emma delighted in its feel, and her heart lifted when she merely looked
at it. Often she speculated about its history. It was ancient and
expensive, the sort of china wealthy people of good taste would buy. Had
it come from some castle in England, or perhaps Spain? Who were the
people, now probably long dead, who had made merry over it? Delighted
and thrilled, Emma had set the table with it. But Barbara, at the time
their only child, was a baby then and she had pushed her cup and plate
onto the floor where they shattered.

Emma put the rest away and used her old dishes until they, too, were
broken. Joe, always handy with tools, had made her wooden plates, bowls,
and cups. He had used hard, seasoned maple, and had worked endlessly
with it until it was polished almost to the consistency of china. As
each new baby arrived, Joe had made more table ware. They were almost
alike, but not exactly so, and Emma had handled and washed them so often
that every line in every piece was familiar. She knew by touch which
plate, cup, or bowl, belonged to whom, and that gave her a good feeling.
Just as it was part of Joe's life to respond intimately to the goodness
in new-turned earth, it was part of hers to care for the various things
that meant security for her family. Security, to Emma, meant no one big
thing but a host of little ones.

She soaked her hands in the warm water, liking the feel of that too,
while she washed the dishes with a soapy cloth. Rinsing them in clean
water, she stacked them on the table beside her. She did it carefully,
meticulously. Wooden dishes could not break, but it was part of her
nature to be meticulous and nothing at all was so easy to get that one
could afford to be careless with it. Besides, the dishes were precious.
Joe had spent long hours, night hours when he could not work in the
fields, making and polishing them. Where a less particular man would
have called them good enough, Joe had worked on. He did not, he said,
want to take the chance of any slivers finding their way into baby
mouths.

Barbara brought the pajamaed Carlyle out for his good-night kiss and
took him in to bed. She stooped for Alfred. Quick as a deer, he darted
behind a chair and made faces at his sister. When Barbara went to the
chair, Alfred, howling with glee, ran to his mother and clasped both
arms about her. Emma turned to him. She herself was tired, and a bit out
of patience, and she spoke more sharply than she ordinarily talked to
any of the children.

"Go to bed now, Ally."

"Do' wanna."

"Alfred, go with Barbara!"

Meekly Alfred surrendered himself to Barbara's arms, and was carried
into the other room for his bath. Emma shook her head to dislodge a wisp
of hair that had fallen over her eye. There were rare occasions when she
worried about Alfred too. She imagined that Percy Pearl must have been a
great deal like him when he was a baby, and though she liked Percy, she
would not want any of her children to imitate his way of life. Like
everyone else, she really did not know how Percy lived. But there were
rumors, and Emma suspected more. She comforted herself with the thought
that there was really nothing to worry about. Thousands of children were
mischievous. If all of them turned out badly, the world would be made up
largely of bad people.

Emma dried her dishes as carefully as she had washed them and stacked
them in the cupboard. She poured her dish water down the drain, an
ingenious wooden spout that Joe had also constructed and which led into
a cesspool beside the house. Vigorously she began to scrub her table and
the wooden sink. In all their years together, except to praise her
cooking, Joe had never once commented on the way she kept house. That
had been a cause of minor dissension at first. Emma had worked for
hours, hand-stitching the new curtains. Proudly she draped the windows,
and when Joe came in he didn't even appear to notice. But the years had
taught her much.

Joe regarded the house as exclusively her domain and the fields as his,
though he always wanted to know what she cared to have in the family
vegetable garden and sometimes asked her advice as to what crops he
should plant. She warmed to him because he did, for it proved that he
respected her. Concerning the house, his very lack of comment was
approval. Emma poured clean water into her dish pans and scrubbed them
while Barbara brought Alfred in for his kiss and took Joe. Carefully,
Emma swept the floor and emptied the trash into the kitchen wastebasket,
a hollow stump that Joe had further hollowed and so arranged that it had
both a dust-tight bottom and a hinged cover.

Barbara came in with baby Joe, and after Emma kissed him, the girl took
him to bed. Barbara re-entered the kitchen.

"Aren't you about finished, Mother?"

"Almost. Tad, take yourself off to bed now."

"Already?" Tad was testing the razor-keen blade of his newly honed
knife.

"It's time. Take your bath and go to bed."

"Do I have to take a bath? I swam in the crick today."

"The 'creek,'" Emma corrected firmly. "If you swam you needn't bathe.
But go to bed."

"It's too early," he complained.

"Tad!"

"Yes, Ma."

Tad took himself toward the bedroom and emerged, yawning, for his
good-night kiss. After he had gone, Emma smiled covertly. Tad, at eight,
resented his own childhood fiercely. He was in an almost ferocious rush
to grow up so he could avail himself of what, in his own mind, were all
the privileges of adulthood. But he still would not go to bed without
his mother's kiss.

Emma seated herself at the table for the moment contented to rest. This,
for her, was a time of contentment and soul-satisfying joy. She arose to
each new day as though it were a complete new challenge that was sure to
present its opportunities but might offer hazards, too. But the night
always meant peace, and to know that her younger children were safe in
bed brought happiness to Emma's heart. Now she knew only a little
uneasiness because Joe was still absent. Barbara washed her hands and
face, and let her satiny, tawny hair cascade down her shoulders.

"Are we going to the Trevelyans' barn dance Saturday night, Mother?"

"I think so."

"Would you mind very much if I did not go with you?"

Emma glanced curiously at her. "Why not?"

"Well, Johnny Abend asked if he could take me. So did Billy Trevelyan
and Allan Geragty. It would be fun if you let me go with one of them."

Emma's eyes sparkled with humor. "And which of the three are you going
to honor?"

Barbara wrinkled her nose. "Allan Geragty is a smart aleck. I don't like
him."

Emma murmured, "Dear, a choice of only two escorts! Yes, you may go."

"Thank you. I believe I'll set outside for a little while, Mother."

"All right."

Barbara opened the door and closed it quietly behind her. Emma knew that
she was going only to look at the stars, and that was good because all
young people should have trysts with stars. They might never pull one
out of the sky and have it for their own, but they could always try.
Emma fell into a mood of sober reflection.

The years had brought her a fair measure of wisdom, and at thirty-two
she knew a great deal which she had not known when, at sixteen, she
became Joe's wife. Among other things, she knew now that her father had
been a martinet. He knew, he thought, the only true way, and all about
him must follow or risk his wrath. If Emma regretted any years of her
married life, it was the first five when she had insisted that she must
not leave her father. But she had honestly known of nothing else that
she might do.

Since babyhood she had been under her father's influence, and in his
opinion women must always take a secondary place. One by one, as her six
older brothers attained their majority, they had quarreled with their
father and left home. Then the old man had suffered a series of spasms,
and now Emma wondered if they were not simulated spasms designed to keep
his last remaining child at his side. But she had loved him and pitied
him and remained under his influence. She had brought upon her husband
five painful and unproductive years. But those five years had taught
Emma the true measure of Joe's worth. In spite of old Caleb's abuse, Joe
had given him the fullest help of which a man is capable. He had been in
the fields from the first light of morning until the last lingering glow
of twilight. And he had waited without a word of complaint until Emma
herself was willing to leave. With a fresh surge of love and gratitude
she thought about his patient waiting, more difficult for him than for
many another. Because he had waited until she was fully ready, she had
felt obliged to conceal from him the real anguish she felt when, looking
back from the wagon that was carrying them away, she saw Caleb, a
strangely shrunken, isolated figure, standing in the doorway of his
empty home.

But it was not only pity for Caleb that tore at her. It was that her own
roots ran deep, that Caleb's home had been her home for all of her life,
that now she and Joe and Barbara had no home at all other than the
quarters that would be given to them on the farm where Joe would be
working. To be without her own home was a personal agony that she had
shared with no one, but it was an agony that had enabled her to save and
scrimp and put aside every penny until she could hold out her hands to
Joe with enough money in them to buy a place of their own.

Now she held the spare copper lamp base in her hands, and with a soft
piece of cloth she rubbed it and rubbed it until she could see mirrored
in it the smiling, contented outlines of her own face. For a few
precious minutes she dared to hope that, in spite of the troublesome
debt, their most difficult years were behind them.

Barbara came in, stifling a yawn with her hand. "I think I'll go to bed
too, Mother."

"Are you tired, darling?"

"Lazy, I suppose."

Barbara stooped to pick up a toy wagon--another of Joe's products--that
Alfred and Carlyle had left on the floor. She put it in its proper place
on a shelf, dipped a pan of water, and bathed herself. Night-dressed,
she kissed her mother good night. Emma sat alone.

For eight years she had gone with Joe from farm to farm, where he worked
for a house, food, and small wages. But he had always fed and clothed
his family, and where other men had given up in despair, taken to
drink, or even abandoned their families, Joe had still plodded on.
Still, he was more than a plodder. Plodding was his way of making a good
from what otherwise would have been a bad situation.

Just as she herself had wanted a home, Joe had wanted his own land, and
to be his own master. Together they had worked and saved and sacrificed,
until the day came when they were able to realize their ambition. For
her it was the end of the journey. She had come home. The foundation of
their life was laid. From here on all the work they did would be toward
making their home and their land completely their own, forever. Yet she
had seen as the year passed that Joe was somehow not content, and
thinking about him now, a familiar fear began to tug at her again. She
knew the wild fires that flared beneath Joe's placid exterior, and she
was at a loss to explain them. The debt against which he fretted so
angrily was to her bothersome but surely not intolerable. Bit by bit
they would pay it off, and meanwhile they could live comfortably, each
year expanding their little home to meet their expanding needs.

She started when she thought she heard his footstep, then sank back in
her chair. Five minutes later the door opened quietly and Joe tiptoed
in. Emma looked at his flushed cheeks and excited eyes, and for a moment
she was startled. Men looked like that when they drank too much, but Joe
didn't drink. However, he had surely partaken of some heady draught.
Emma asked,

"Are you all right, Joe?"

"Oh sure. I'm all right. I was down at the store. Bibbers Townley's
there. He just came back from the west."

He sat beside her, his eyes glowing, and Emma looked wonderingly at him.
She had never seen him just this way before.

"Tell me, Joe," she urged.

He blurted, "How would you like to go west?"

A great fist seemed to have closed about her throat, and for a moment
she could not breathe. After a time her breath came back, and her
voice. But Joe was already going on, leaning forward tensely in his
chair, his face eager and alive.

"There's land in the west, Emma! Land for us! For Tad, Joe, Alfred and
Carlyle! Land for whoever Barbara and baby Emma might marry! It's for
the _taking_!"

"There's land right here, Joe," she managed to say. "Our own land."

There was quick impatience in his voice as he repeated her words, "Our
own land? I'll be able to pay Elias Dorrance $50 this fall, and out of
that $40 goes for interest, and $10 off on what we owe."

"Still, it's something," she said hastily. "Ten off is something! Little
by little, Joe, we'll make the land our own."

"How many years?" he demanded almost angrily. "How many more years will
it take?"

She could not answer him, not only because she did not know the answer
but because the question wasn't really a question. It was an accusation.
He seemed to be accusing her of unwillingness to see something that was
plain enough to Joe, that was right out there in front of them.

He was looking at her now, his whole face full of questioning.

She avoided his eyes. "Let's think about it," she said. "The plowing and
seeding's already done for this year. Let's think about it this year,
and come next spring we'll talk about it again."

"Come next spring?" he asked vaguely. All of the glow faded from his
face. Even his lips grew pale, and in the sudden quiet she could hear
his breathing, quick and shallow and weary. He seemed spent, as though
all the weariness of many weeks of work had been piled upon him all at
once in this moment.

He rose and shuffled to the window. Directly overhead a lone star
glittered, cold and unyielding, and he watched it silently.

Emma's heart ached for him, but what could she do? How could he ask her
to do this terrible thing, to pull up her roots again and turn her back
on all that they had so painfully, so hopefully gathered together into
this little house? She couldn't do it, not even for Joe, even though
she loved him as dearly as she loved life itself.

She went to him and stood beside him at the window. Soon he put his arm
about her. She dropped her head on his shoulder and a shudder went
through her, so that she held to him convulsively.

"Forgive me, Joe," she whispered. "I'm not brave and strong the way you
think. I'm afraid, Joe. I love this house, and I'm frightened to leave
it."

He held her close, and could find no words. A door had been closed
between them, somehow, and he could not get through to her, to explain
to her about the west. Maybe another year. Maybe....




CHAPTER THREE

The Destroyers


Joe was so weary of body and brain that the things he saw shimmered
behind a haze that was born of no weather, but in his own mind. He was
detached from almost everything, a lone being in a lone world, and the
only thread that connected him with anything else was the smooth handle
of the ax which he carried in his hand. The ax was real as it could be
real only to one who had just spent eleven hours using it. At the same
time, and while he reeled with fatigue, Joe counted his blessings.

Now the oats were high and the young corn in tassel. The family
vegetable garden was thriving, the hay was not yet ripe enough for the
scythe, and there were many more trees to cut on Joe's sixteen acres of
timber. Clearing all sixteen acres was a major task and one that Joe
didn't even hope to complete for several years because he could work in
the timber only when there was nothing else to do. However, he intended
to chop and trim many more trees.

He was exhausted, but the restlessness that had possessed him a month
earlier was now gone, and for the present he was contented. Preparing
the land to grow crops and planting them had been hard work. But now it
was finished and when the crops were harvested he would be able to feed
his family and livestock through the winter. All the surplus must be
sold to satisfy Elias Dorrance. Yet, for the moment Joe harbored no
special resentment against him. Bankers were necessary, and Elias had
helped Joe when he needed help.

Carefully, as a man who loves good tools will, Joe hung the ax on its
wooden pegs in the tool shed, and then took it down again to test both
bits with his thumb. An ax had to be razor-sharp, actually capable of
shaving, if a man was to do good work with it, and whoever put a tool
away in good shape would find it in the same shape when he needed it
again. Joe found the ax so sharp that he must have honed it after
felling the last tree. He grinned; he was more tired than he'd thought
because he couldn't remember sharpening the ax.

He leaned against the tool shed's wall, giving himself to the luxury of
doing nothing at all. He watched Barbara, serene and lovely, going
toward the pig pen with a pail of swill and he knew a moment's sheer
pleasure. He gave no thought to the incongruity of the scene, that
anyone should be able to look graceful while feeding pigs, but felt only
delight because he saw something lithe and beautiful.

Joe yawned. He had been very wakeful last night. Lying beside Emma, he
had watched the moon wane and the first faint streaks of dawn creep like
stealthy thieves out of the sky. Only then had he gone to sleep, and
soon afterward it had been time to get up and go to work again.

He went to the well, drew a bucket of water, and washed his face and
hands. Instead of going to the store tonight he would go to bed after
the evening meal. The empty swill pail in hand, Barbara came to stand
beside him and her slim figure was bent slightly backward, as though by
a mysterious wind created by her own spirit.

She said, "You look tired."

"Now don't you fret your head about me!"

She smiled. "I will if I want to. How did it go today?"

"Good enough. How are the pigs?"

"Eleanor," Barbara said seriously, "keeps shoving Horace out of the
trough. She won't let him eat."

Joe said dryly, "Eleanor has the manners of a pig, huh?"

She laughed, and Joe looked at her red-stained fingers. He knew without
being told that Barbara, and probably all the rest except the babies,
Alfred and Carlyle, had spent at least a part of their day gathering
wild berries. Plucking and preserving wild fruit was a job the women
folk and youngsters could do, and it was inevitable as summer itself.
Joe fell back on a stock question,

"Where's Tad?"

"He went off in the woods by himself."

"Didn't he help you?"

"Oh yes. Mother made him."

Joe grinned inwardly. Emma seldom raised her voice to any of the
youngsters and she never struck any of them. But somehow she managed
prompt and unquestioning obedience to any order she issued, and that was
more than Joe could do. There was about his wife a mysterious force
which was always recognizable, but which Joe could not explain. It was
strange, he reflected in passing, that this force did not carry over
into anything outside the immediate family. It was strange that the
thought of leaving the house should be so fearsome when in other
respects Emma was so sure of herself. But he brushed the thought aside,
as he had brushed it aside each time it came to plague him.

Joe entered the house and kissed Emma, and for the moment his weariness
lifted. He wrinkled his nose.

"Something smells good!"

"Raspberry preserves. We'll try some tomorrow, but we can't now because
it isn't done. We found good picking; some of those berries were as big
as my thumb."

A black kettle in which simmered the fruits gathered that day was pushed
toward the back of the stove. Spicy odors filled the room, and Joe knew
that, when snow lay deep on the ground, Emma would bring her jams,
jellies and preserves from the shelves where she kept them and they
would be a little bit of the summer back again. Joe remembered the
delights of winter morning feasts when all had spread pancakes a quarter
inch thick with jam, and he smacked his lips.

The four younger children, their hands stained like Barbara's, rushed
toward him and he braced himself to meet their charge. The youngsters
hadn't anyone except one another to play with and they always looked
forward to his arrival. He plumbed his brain for a story to tell them or
a little play to act out. Then Emma turned from the stove and spoke to
the children:

"Your horses are trampling everything in the house and I won't have it.
Tie them up again."

The happy youngsters returned to the game, obviously a game of horses
that they had been playing, and Joe felt a swelling gratitude. It would
be nice to rest, and Emma had known it. At the same time he felt a vast
admiration for his wife; she had relieved him of any more responsibility
without offending the children. It went to prove all over again what Joe
had always suspected; for all their supposed fragility, and despite the
fact that they were allegedly the weaker sex, women had strength and
power about which men knew nothing. Strength and power, that is, when it
came to dealing with their children. Regarding other things, though,
such as making a sensible move in a sensible direction--but again he
brushed the thought aside. He sank into a chair, and with a real effort
managed to keep from going to sleep.

"How was it today?" Emma asked.

"I had a good day."

All things considered, he had had a good day. There was much about ax
work that he enjoyed. An ax in the hands of a man who knew how to use it
ceased to be a mere tool and became a precision instrument. To an ax
man, an ax was much like a good rifle to a hunter.

"Are you going to cut more trees?" Emma asked.

"I'll work in the timber until the hay needs cutting."

That was all they said but that was all they had to say because the rest
fell into a precise pattern. When the trees were felled and trimmed some
would be split into rails for rail fences and the rest used for
firewood. As soon as snow eliminated the danger of forest fire the brush
would be burned. That was always a minor festival. The whole family
turned out for the brush burning. The children watched, fascinated,
while leaping flames climbed skyward through crackling branches. Then,
while Joe raked the unburned branches together and fired them, Tad and
baby Emma built a snow man or a snow fort for the delectation of the
rest. It usually ended with Emma and Barbara serving a lunch beside
still-glowing coals and Joe always saved enough branches so everyone
could have a dry seat.

Emma went to the door and called "Tad!" and as though the eight-year-old
were on some invisible leash that attached himself to his mother, he
appeared out of the lowering night. His seal-sleek hair proved that he
had already washed at the well, but no mere water could suffice for Tad
now. His face and arms were laced with deep gashes from which blood was
again beginning to ooze, and there were fang marks on his upper
forearms.

Joe said in astonishment, "What the dickens happened to you?"

"I caught a wildcat!" Tad said gleefully. "Caught him right in a snare I
set myself!"

"Don't you know better than to fool around with wildcats?"

"It's only a little one," Tad said, as though that explained everything.
"Not hardly big enough to chew anything yet. Got him in the barn, I
have. I'm goin' to tame him."

"Get rid of him," Joe ordered.

"Aw, Pa!"

Joe was inflexible, "Get rid of him now! One thing we don't need around
here, it's a wildcat!"

He caught up a lantern, lighted it, and with Tad trotting protesting at
his heels, stamped out to the barn. The wildcat had already seen to its
own liberation. Tad had put him in one of the mules' feed boxes, covered
it with a board, and weighted the board with a rock. The imprisoned cat
had worked the board free and slipped away.

"Blast his ornery hide!" Tad ejaculated.

Joe said sternly, "What's that you said?"

"You say it."

"So you can too, huh? Get this, don't let me ever again hear you say
anything that even sounds like a cuss word. And no more wildcats."

"It was only a little one."

"You heard me!"

Tad's face was stubborn, a little sullen. For a moment he said nothing
and Joe repeated,

"You heard me!"

"Yes, Pa."

Joe lighted their way back to the house, blew the lantern out before he
entered and hung it on a wooden peg. The gesture was automatic, and
brought about by a lifetime of necessarily frugal living. One never
stinted his family, himself, or his animals, in that order, on food. But
one never wasted anything at all that cost money. Though the
circuit-riding Reverend Haines often thundered to those of his flock who
lived in Tenney's Crossing that money was the root of all evil, Joe had
never believed that. Money was simply the hardest of all things to come
by.

For once hardly savoring the food--and Emma had an almost magic touch
with the plainest of viands--Joe ate because it was necessary to eat.
Only vaguely was he aware of Barbara's keeping a watchful eye on the
chattering younger children; of Tad, sullenly disappointed and still
rebellious but not letting that interfere with his always prodigious
appetite. He seemed closest to Emma, in whom everything else always
seemed to center, and he knew that she was watching him while she
worried about him. Before very long he would be asleep.

The youngsters slid from their chairs and went back to the bits of
string they had been playing with. Obviously, for the time being, Emma's
sadirons were horses because they were all tied at different places
around the room. They wouldn't need him tonight, and Joe excused
himself.

"Reckon I'll go see if the sky's still in place."

He rose from the table and stepped outside into the pleasant summer
night. There was only blackness, unrelieved by any hint of moon or star
light. Tad's dog came to wag a welcoming tail and sniff, and even while
Joe petted the dog he thought that Mike wouldn't herd stock and he
wouldn't hunt except with Tad. Therefore, in a land where everything had
to earn its keep, he was useless. But young ones had to have something
and Tad liked his pet largely, Joe suspected, because Mike could whip
any other dog, or any other two dogs, in the whole country.

Joe breathed his fill of the night air, went back into the house, and
for a few moments idly watched his four younger children at their play.
Emma and Barbara were doing the dishes and, with a trace of sullenness
still lingering about him, Tad sat at the table cutting a new sheath for
his knife. Joe leaned against the door jamb and drowsed for a second. He
seemed to be back in Tenney's store, listening to tales of unlimited
land and unlimited opportunity in the west, and he saw his children with
those opportunities before them. Joe shook himself awake.

He felt numb with fatigue as he took off his clothes and methodically
hung them up. Though there were nights when he liked to stay late with
the men at Tenney's store, tonight sleep was more inviting. But for a
few minutes he lay wide awake and he knitted his brows because he was
troubled about something. However, it was nothing he could clearly
define and after a while Joe forced it from his mind. As soon as he did,
he fell into a sound slumber. When he awakened, gray dawn again lingered
behind the curtains with which Emma had draped the windows. Not for
another three quarters of an hour would the rising sun change the gray
to gold, and for a few moments Joe knew sheer contentment. Restful
slumber had driven away the exhaustion and physical aches of the night
before. Beside him, Emma still slept soundly.

Then, out in the lightening morning, Tad's dog barked. Emma came slowly
awake, and turned to smile at him.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, darling."

He moved a little nearer, feeling the warmth of her body against his.
Joe remembered his youth and bachelor days as a somewhat fruitless
period, and he had not reached fulfillment until his marriage. Their
life had never been easy. But it had always been good and this was one
of the best parts of every day. For a little while they could be
together in complete idleness, each happy because the other was near.
They were rested and refreshed, ready to cope with the problems, big and
small, that the day might bring. But in the morning, just before they
arose, the big problems seemed small, and the small ones trifling.

"What's the dog barking at?" Emma asked drowsily.

"He's probably found a varmint out in the field. I'll go see. You rest a
while yet."

Joe slipped out of bed, stretched luxuriously, stripped off his night
shirt and put on his clothes. He went to the door, swung it open and
stared stupidly at what he saw.

A rangy black steer stood in the center of the trampled corn patch,
chewing placidly on a stalk of corn that projected like a green stick
from its mouth. A herd of varicolored cows and steers were foraging
listlessly or switching tails in what remained of the oat field. The
vegetable garden lay in ruins. Though most of the cattle had filled
their stomachs and were now contented to digest the rich fare they had
eaten, a few calves and yearlings were still cropping eagerly at
anything green that remained.

Joe's immediate reaction was a vast weakness, as though his body were no
longer a solid thing but a liquid mass. He wilted like a melting candle,
everything that had gone to make him suddenly dissolved, and only the
feeble flame of a sputtering wick remained to prove that there ever had
been anything else. Then he braced himself and fought back.

His whole life had been a struggle, with the odds tremendously against
him. He'd been close to the breaking point only a month ago, when the
desire to go west had swept around him like a flame, and he'd been
forced to blot it out and forget it. Forgetting it had left him
curiously empty and deflated. But he'd pulled himself together and
knuckled down to the job of making this crop a good one. Now the crop
lay before him, destroyed. A seething anger began slowly to gather in
Joe's chest, and he held on to the doorframe to steady himself.

Emma appeared at his shoulder, and when he looked at her Joe saw that
her face was pale. She said nothing but her comforting arm slipped about
him. Joe said inanely,

"They're Pete Domley's cattle."

"I know."

Joe exploded, "I'll--!"

He wheeled, went back into the bedroom, and took the rifle from the pegs
where he had hung it. His brain was on fire, so that priming and loading
the weapon were mechanical functions which he knew nothing about but
which he did well because he had done them so often. Not seeing anything
else, aware only that destroyers had come to take that which rightly
belonged to Joe's family, he leaned against the door jamb and took
careful aim at the black steer. His finger tightened on the trigger when
Emma's voice cut through the red mists that seethed in his brain.

"No, Joe!"

She looked almost ill, but there was desperation in her words that was
far more effective than any physical barrier. She spoke again.

"It is not the way."

The red rage that flamed in his brain burned less hotly. He lowered the
gun so that its stock rested on the floor, and looked from her to the
destroying cattle. Then sanity reasserted itself. He put the rifle back
on its pegs and said dully,

"I'll drive them away."

Joe strode toward the cattle with Tad's dog at his heels. He was well
aware that it was futile to drive the raiders away for there was no more
damage to be done. Yet he knew that the cattle did not belong where they
were, and since there was no one else to chase them, he must.

The rangy black steer in the corn patch looked at him with mildly
surprised eyes as Joe approached. He caught up a fallen corn stalk,
slashed viciously at the animal's rump, and the steer galloped off to
join those in the oat field. A blocky white and black cow with a calf at
her heels bolted toward the end of the field and the rest followed. They
crowded clumsily through the hedge that marked the boundary of Joe's
land and went back into their pasture. There they all stopped to look,
as though telling him that they knew they'd done wrong but informing him
that they had a right to be where they were. When Joe did not pursue
them any farther, the cattle wandered toward their water hole and Joe
noted mechanically that there were many more than there had been. Pete
had several herds which he kept in different pastures. Probably, guided
by the mysterious senses which animals possess and which no man can
explain, one or more of the other herds had come to join the cattle Pete
kept here and together they had organized the raid.

Joe tossed his head furiously, and the veins in his head and neck were
so taut that they stood out and throbbed visibly. The old restlessness
returned with a force so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to
resist it. He felt himself grow huge, and it seemed that if he took a
step in one direction he would be right among the marauding cattle. A
step in the other direction would be sure to bring him face to face with
Elias Dorrance. There was no place to take his family where they would
not be hemmed in and preyed upon by something. Unaccountably he thought
of that night when he had walked to Tenney's store and looked at the
stars that never shouldered each other aside. Joe voiced his explosive
thoughts to the startled dog:

"This place is just too blasted small!"

The dog at his heels, Joe walked back to the house. Crushing
disappointment was a luxury, and he had never been able to afford
luxuries. And the past was forever lost, and now this belonged to the
past. The fields could be plowed and planted again, and with luck the
crops would mature before frost killed them.

Joe looked at Emma, still standing mutely in the doorway, and a hot
knife turned in his heart. She seemed, with her eyes, to be asking him
for forgiveness. If they'd gone west when he wanted to go, they
wouldn't be faced now with the destruction of the whole summer's work.
He could see in Emma's eyes the fear that things would get even worse
than they were, that the new crop that Joe would start to plant now
might be lost just as the present crop was already lost, and that they
would go into the winter with no money, no feed for the animals, no
provisions for the family.

He groped for words to comfort her, and could think of only,

"I chased them. Everything's all right now."

"I--I'm terribly sorry, Joe." Her voice trembled.

"Now don't you go fretting your head! I'll get new crops in!"

She said uncertainly, "It's very late for new crops."

He forced what he hoped was a careless laugh, and wished he hadn't done
so because she knew it was forced. Joe berated himself silently. Above
all he wanted to soothe, to spare her, and there was no way. Their
crops, their livelihood, was gone. It was more than a serious situation.
It was a desperate one and she knew it as well as he did, but he tried.

"Now just don't you fret. Everything's all right."

She said, "Don't tell me that, Joe."

Though it was morning, with the day scarcely started, she turned tiredly
to the stove. Joe sat down to await the meal she would give him. This
was summer. Their ham, bacon, sausage, and other smoked meats, had long
since been exhausted. Not until the advancing season brought weather
cold enough to keep meat would they have any except the wild things they
shot. Expertly, Emma mixed milk with eggs and scrambled them in a
skillet. She laid slices of homemade bread on the stove until they
toasted, and lathered the toast thickly with home-churned butter.

Flushed with sleep, Barbara emerged from the room where she slept with
her sister and went outside to the well. When she came back, freshly
washed, she had seen the havoc wrought by the cows. She looked at her
mother's face, and at her father's, and was tactfully silent. She was
young and healthy, and, in spite of the disaster, she looked radiant,
and for some reason that he could not explain, Joe felt better.
Elemental himself, he thought of elemental things. Though he could not
have explained it, part of the awe Barbara inspired in him sprang from
the fact that she was a lovely young woman in whom, symbolically, all
the hope of the future lay. Certainly, without her, there could be no
future. Joe started eating the heaping plate of scrambled eggs and toast
that Emma gave him, and he was half through his meal when there was a
timid knock at the door.

Joe said, "Come in."

The door opened and Pete Domley stood framed within it. Somehow he
seemed to have shrunk to half his small stature, as though he were a
dwarf that had come begging. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, and
blue bags were pendant beneath them. Through the open door, Joe caught a
glimpse of the white horse Pete had ridden here. For a second Joe's
anger flared anew; if Pete had watched his cattle the crops would not be
ruined. Pity for this small man who was usually as aggressive as a
bantam rooster, but who now was so abject, stole Joe's anger. He said,

"Have some breakfast, Pete."

Pete came through the door, a slow and tired man. He said, "Lance
Trevelyan told me last night they'd gone, Joe. They left their pasture
on Twoaday Crick and just went. You can't always figure what critters
will do."

Joe said, "I know."

"I thought sure," Pete said, "that they'd head for the high pastures
above Twoaday. I looked there until almost sun-up."

"So?"

"So I'll pay you, Joe. You or Elias Dorrance, whichever way you want
it."

Joe repeated, "Have some breakfast, Pete."

Pete sat down and Emma served him. Joe ate without speaking, and he
watched Pete devour his breakfast listlessly. Beef in St. Louis brought
fantastic prices, and probably in eastern cities it brought prices even
more fabulous. Joe didn't know. He did know that the man who raised that
beef on the hoof, and who was the primary provider of the markets,
didn't get the most money. Pete, with seven young ones of his own,
worked hard. Often he worked much for very little return.

Besides, Pete had ridden all night to find his missing cattle. Finally
realizing the truth, he must have looked for them at other farms before
he came to see Joe. No man could possibly ask more than that from any
other man, and who knew what a fool steer would decide to do? The most a
person looking for cattle in the black of night could do was guess, and
if the guess went wrong, what then? Pete Domley hadn't eaten or trampled
Joe's oats, corn, and vegetables. Pete's cattle had. There was, Joe
felt, no more sense in crucifying Pete than there had been in nailing
Christ to the Cross. Pete finished his breakfast, and after a moment's
silence he said,

"Who'll I pay, Joe? You or Elias?"

"Neither, Pete."

Pete said stubbornly, "What's right is right."

"Look, you buy me some more seed and let it go at that."

Pete opened surprised eyes. "You going to plant again?"

"What else?"

"Well--You know where I live and the money will be there when you go to
plant."

Pete mounted his tired horse and rode homeward. Moodily, with mingled
pity and sadness, Joe watched him go. Pete wasn't really to blame. But
he felt that he was. He had, however unwittingly, dealt mortal injury to
his very good friend and that thought would forever haunt him.

Joe wandered out to his own ravaged fields, and as soon as he was in
them he confirmed what he had known anyway. In the oat patch, a few
bruised stalks strove valiantly to raise battered heads toward the sun.
The corn was ruined and the vegetable garden was gone. What remained was
not one twentieth of what was needed.

Joe caught the mules and evaded their striking feet and slicing teeth as
he fought them into harness. Having run free for four days, the mules
were not inclined to work again. But they had to work, for the man who
commanded them was stronger than they. They plunged and reared when the
harness was buckled about them, and kicked and squealed when they were
once fastened to the plow. That was all they could do.

Joe guided the plow down the first long, straight furrow, and even as he
did he assured himself that the second crop of oats would be better than
the first for the second would feed on the bodies of the first. Joe
reversed his mutinous team to start the second furrow, and when he came
to the end it seemed, quite unaccountably, that the day should also be
ended. Then he looked at the scarcely risen sun and knew that it had not
yet started.

He steered the mules down another furrow, and angered more at himself
than at them, jerked hard on the reins. The plow had gone a bit to one
side, so that instead of being in rhythm with all the rest, the furrow
curved away from them. Joe stopped and passed a hand over his sweating
forehead. Twenty years or more ago his father had whipped him
unmercifully for plowing a crooked furrow. From then until now he had
never plowed one.

Joe turned the mules and straightened the furrow so that it matched the
rest. From that time on, in order not to repeat the error, he had to
watch himself and that made plowing twice the work. With an exhaustion
equal to--maybe greater than--last night's, Joe saw the first long
shadows of evening.

For the first time, rather than providing a refuge from problems, his
house seemed to admit them with him. There was no peace and none of the
calm that paid for a day's work. When dinner was over, the almost
electric restlessness that tormented him mounted to supercharged
heights.

"Do you know what?" he said fiercely, "I wish we could go to a good
hoedown tonight! A real rip-snorter with everything in it!"

"Go down to the store and find out when the next one is and where," Emma
urged. "I wouldn't mind going to a party myself."

Joe walked down the path toward the store, and in his mind, as he
walked, he tried to create some of the camaraderie he would know when he
reached it. He could not.

The sky might as well have been nonexistent, and he was scarcely
conscious of the cool night air fanning his cheek. _It was not Elias
alone. It was not his ruined crops alone. It was more that he couldn't
stretch without bumping someone else's ribs._ Unless a person had enough
money to start with, or was exceptionally lucky, he was lost here. It
was not the way to live and certainly it was not the way for his family
to live. Mechanically Joe strode toward the store and he was on the
point of entering when a man moved toward him.

"Hi, Joe," Elias Dorrance said.

"Hi."

"I heard," said the other, "that you lost your crops."

Joe waited an interminable moment, until it occurred to him that, by
now, everyone must have heard it. Then he said, "That's right."

Elias Dorrance asked, "What will you do now?"

"Plant more crops."

"The frost will get them."

"That's a chance I take."

"I'm sorry," Elias said. "I'm really sorry, and I know you're worried
about me. You don't have to worry. You're a good farmer and a man of
your word, and you're honest. I'll take another note until next fall."

"On what?" Joe asked.

Elias Dorrance's shrug was half seen in the night. "Your mules, your
harness, your wagon, your livestock, your household goods. You can cover
it."

For a moment Joe stood blankly, the offer not even registering. Then a
slow anger that mounted by leaps and bounds grew within him.

He'd been overwhelmed when Emma gave him the $600 and told him that, at
last, he could have his farm. He still could not understand how she had
saved such a vast sum; Joe had never earned $600 in any one year. But
every penny of it, everything they had, represented the combined sweat
and toil, and almost the life's blood, of Emma and himself. Joe thought
of Nick Johnson.

He, too, had had a farm financed by Elias and he'd lost a crop. The next
year he lost another, and Elias had taken everything except the clothes
the Johnsons wore on their backs. Now hopeless and defeated, Nick
Johnson was again a hired man and his courage was so broken that he
never would be anything else. Joe thought of Emma's cherished household
goods, the few things his children owned, of the mules, the cows,
everything upon which Elias had no claim. For a moment he had a savage
urge to smash his fist into the banker's face, and Elias must have
sensed it for he took a backward step. Joe bit his words off and spat
them out,

"Elias, you can take a long running jump into the nearest duck pond."

Without looking back and without entering the store, he turned and
strode through the darkness toward his house. A man who turned his back
on the land almost turned his back on God too. But one who risked
everything his family had was not a man at all. Joe entered the house.
Emma was sewing at the table and she looked up, and concern flooded her
eyes.

"Was there nobody at the store?"

"I didn't go. I met Elias."

Emma waited expectantly. For a short space Joe strode up and down the
floor. Then he turned to face her.

"Elias offered to carry us another year. All he wants is a mortgage on
everything that isn't already mortgaged to him."

Emma gaped, and Joe said quickly, "I told him to--I told him no."

She half rose out of her chair. "Joe, maybe you should have--"

"No!" he interrupted almost fiercely. "I won't do it! We're in debt as
far as we're ever going to be! Some things will remain ours!"

There was a short silence while both pursued their own thoughts. Emma
turned a worried face to him.

"Do you think you can make another crop?"

Joe looked at Emma and then he looked beyond her. Outside the night was
black, but in his mind's eye he could clearly see the ravaged fields. In
his muscles he could feel the ache of the plowing and the planting of
the new crop. In the pit of his stomach he could already feel the pain
and rage that he would feel if the new crop should be destroyed by
frost.

Emma waited, and then she got to her feet with an anxious haste. "Pete
Domley will pay for the seed, Joe. Barbara and I can help with the
planting."

Now suddenly he didn't want to comfort her any more, nor to bolster up
her hopes about the new crop. This was a time for facing facts.

"Emma," he said, and his lips felt dry and tight with the effort to
control himself. "Emma, there's free land for the taking in the west."

She drew back as though she had been slapped. "That's a dream, Joe. A
bright dream."

"It's not a dream," he said. "It's real land, and real people are going
out there to live on it."

She clasped her hands in front of her, and he saw that they were
trembling. Yet he made no move to go to her.

"We can't do it," she said. "Don't you see we can't do it? We've got six
children to think about."

"Other people are doing it with children," he said doggedly.

"You can't make me do it!" she said wildly. "I'm not going to leave this
house--not ever. We'll make out somehow. If need be, Pete Domley will
take you on for a year--he owes you that after what happened."

The mighty storm that had been brewing in him broke now, and he lashed
out at her. "I'm not going to be a hired man again, do you hear! I
finished with that, and I'm not going back to it!"

His voice, harsh and loud, shattered Emma's self-control. She had always
known that Joe could be angry, but never before had his anger been
directed against herself. She went white, swayed for a moment, and then
went unsteadily to the window. She stood clinging to the sill, staring
out into the blackness.

He watched her in silence. Then he went to her, turned her around and
made her look at him.

"Emma," he said through the pain in his throat. "You don't want me to be
a hired man again, do you, Emma?"

Her eyes filled with tears and she tried to speak. No sound came, but
she shook her head, No.

His voice grew humble now. He was deeply puzzled, and he begged her for
an answer that he could understand. "Why are you so much against the
west? Tell me truly. Tell me."

She found her voice. "I'm not against the west. I'm against leaving our
home. I want to stay here. I--I hoped we could live here forever. I--I'm
afraid, Joe."

He scowled, torn and uncertain.

"You've never been afraid before, Emma. We've been through a lot
together, a lot of struggle and a lot of worry. We worried when baby
Emma was sick, and when Tad fell out of the tree. It's always come out
all right."

"That was different," she stammered. "We--we were here among our own
people. If we needed help, we could get help."

"Emma," he whispered. "Emma--I can take care of you. I can take care of
the children."

She clutched him, buried her face in his neck.

"Emma," he said, "when we left your father, you were worried then, but
you faced up to it, and life was much better afterward."

"We were younger then," she said. "Oh, Joe--we were much younger, and we
had only Barbara. Now we've got six! Think of it, Joe! Six children, out
in the wilderness!"

He forced her away from him. With his hand under her chin he forced her
to look at him again. From the depths of his restless soul, from the
center of his self, his yearning for an independent life poured out
through his eyes and entreated her to understand him. His voice was
hoarse with the intensity of his longing.

"Emma," he said. "I can take care of you. Trust me, dearest."

Something dissolved inside of her. She could not deny him any longer. He
was begging her for his freedom to be his own man. He was begging her
for space to grow in, and for their children to grow in. He was begging
her to be brave for his sake, so that he could fulfill his deepest
needs. Whatever her misgivings, whatever her terror, she must go with
him into the unknown.

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked squarely into his eyes. "I
do trust you, Joe," she said quietly. "We'll go west. We'll go just as
soon as we can get ready."




CHAPTER FOUR

Mountain Man


Morning light was dim behind the windows when Joe slipped out of bed. He
moved carefully, making no noise, and after he had dressed he kept his
shoes in his hand. A worried frown creased his brow, for last night had
been a bad one.

It had started as soon as Joe came home from Tenney's store, where he
had gone in the early afternoon to see Lester Tenney. He had counted on
Les, a wise and good man, to advise him correctly and to give him
information which he needed badly. Joe wanted to find out more about the
west and, though he might have asked Bibbers Townley, he wanted the
truth and nobody could count on Bibbers to tell the truth about
anything.

Joe wanted to find somebody who had been west and who would give a
reasonably accurate account of what it was like, and just as he
expected, Les had known someone to whom he might go. At Hammerstown,
fifteen miles from Tenney's Crossing, there lived a man named John
Seeley. He was a farmer like Joe, and with him lived his ancient father.
Grandpa Seeley could do little nowadays except sit in the sun in summer
and nod before the stove in winter, but his mind had not decayed when
his body weakened, and he knew as much as anyone else about the west.
The famed Mountain Men, Jim Bridger, Jim Clyman, Kit Carson, had been
his close friends. More than a dozen years ago, though he had not been a
young man even then, he had helped guide the Mormon wagon trains on
their incredible, desperate journey between Nauvoo, Illinois, and the
valley of the Great Salt Lake.

Grandpa Seeley had lived in the west until just a few years ago, and
probably he'd be there yet if his body had been equal to the task of
keeping him there. Now he had no choice except living with his son. If
Joe wanted to know about the west, Grandpa Seeley was the man who could
tell him.

Joe went home, satisfied. But as soon as he arrived, his satisfaction
turned to worry.

Young Emma, his second daughter, had always been subject to some
mysterious ailment. The attacks came suddenly and without any warning at
all. One moment the five-year-old would be playing with her brothers and
sisters and the next she'd be gasping for breath while red fever spots
flared in her cheeks and she was hot to the touch. Joe got home to find
his daughter sick again.

It was a worrisome thing, and all the more so because there was nothing
that could be done about it. The doctor whom Joe had once ridden all
night to fetch had been no more helpful than the herbs which Granny
Trevelyan gathered by the thin light of the moon's first quarter. The
fever just had to run its course.

Emma was sitting in the cushioned chair, with young Emma clasped to her
bosom, when Joe came in. He looked at them and knew. Emma had a love and
devotion big enough to enfold everyone around her, except when one of
her family was ill. Then whoever that might be got all she could offer.
Joe grieved. He was burdened by an overwhelming sense of clumsy
inadequateness, and though he knew he could do nothing he asked anyway,

"Can I do anything for you?"

Emma did not speak, but her lips formed the word No. For a moment Joe
lingered helplessly near, still wanting to help but unable to do so. He
knew that the words he said were not the right ones, but he said them
anyway.

"The man I have to see is in Hammerstown. Shall I go tomorrow morning or
would you rather I stayed here?"

Emma whispered, "Go ahead, Joe."

Joe tiptoed away from them. He could help a sick cow or mule, but he did
not know what to do for his daughter, and he left his wife alone because
it seemed that, by so doing, in some way maybe he was helping at least a
little bit. A woman with an ailing child needed all her energies just to
take care of it, and if she could be relieved of taking care of anything
else, that was good.

Barbara took over, as Joe had known she would, and prepared the evening
meal. It was as though Emma were still somehow in charge, for the
children looked to Barbara as they did to their mother, and they obeyed
her as they did Emma. Even Tad made no noise, and Joe felt a great
humility. He was worried for the baby and her mother, but beyond feeling
sorrow he did not know what else to do. He was glad that he was not
called upon to run the household, for he would not have known how to go
about it. He understood, as he had known since his marriage, that there
are some things which only a woman can do.

That night he was lost. It was hard to remember when he and Emma had not
shared the same bed. It was very lonely without her and very dreary, and
because she wasn't beside him, sleep could not be good. At the same
time, he reproached himself. He was a man, not a child, and men took
care of themselves. They shouldn't need anything except themselves, but
Joe knew that they had great need. His bed had been an empty one, and
even though he had slept, it was not sound slumber.

Now, while shattered shreds of night battled with approaching day, he
paused to look tenderly at his wife and child. They were still in the
cushioned chair, and both slept. But even though she was not awake,
Emma's possessive arms still wrapped her daughter securely. It was as
though she were a high wall over which the peril that stalked the baby
would have to climb before it could work real harm.

His shoes still in his hand, Joe took a long while to open the door in
order to open it silently. He was hungry. But a man didn't think of his
own needs if forgetting them meant that a feverish child and her mother
could have another few moments of blessed rest. Besides, the hunger that
tormented him was as nothing compared to the fever that burned baby
Emma.

Joe closed the door as softly as he had opened it, easing it back on
its hinges and letting the latch fall slowly. His shoes still in his
hand, he walked a little way onto the dew-wet grass before he sat down
to pull the shoes on and lace them. For a moment he sat still,
undecided, while the dew seeped through the bottom of his trousers and
against his warm seat. He could always go to Hammerstown when baby Emma
was well again, and if he stayed home today there might be some little
things he could do to help Emma. He might bring cold water for her, or
perhaps she'd need something from the store. Joe made up his mind.
Barbara and Tad could do whatever needed the doing, and every day that
passed was one day closer to the frosts of autumn. There was no time to
lose. Besides, only Emma knew how to help the sick youngster.

He did not cease to worry as he took a bridle from its peg in the barn
and went toward the mules' pasture, but he was not so desperately
troubled as he had been.

Joe hid the bridle behind his back as he approached the pasture. The
mules looked at him from the corners of their eyes, then turned their
backs and drifted toward the other side of the corral. Joe muttered
under his breath. When they thought they would have to work, the mules
were always hard to catch. Joe dropped the bridle beside the fence and
returned to the barn. He stuck a rope in his belt and took a couple of
handfuls of corn out of the grain barrel. The corn in a wooden scoop, he
went back to the mule pasture, entered the gate, and lolled near it.

He thought again of the night in Tenney's store, and of Bibbers Townley
telling about the west. In spite of the fact that Bibbers had been
lying, the spirit of something bright and wonderful had been present.
Joe thought of land, as much as a man wanted, free for the taking. He
saw his sons planting grain for themselves, and not rows of dollar bills
for some banker. He thought of his daughters happily married to strong
men who needed, and had, space in which to grow.

The mules came, switching their tails and bobbing their heads, and the
rising excitement that mounted in Joe kept him from feeling any
resentment toward them. All his life he had looked for something which
he had never found, but he had never despaired of finding it and he was
still looking. If he had not been worried about baby Emma, this would
have been the best day he had known in a long while.

The advancing mules stopped three feet away, and tried to stretch their
heads far enough to reach the grain scoop. Joe still lolled idly against
the fence, and seemed obviously uninterested in the mules. They knew him
almost as well as he did them, and he mustn't act as though he wanted to
catch them. Joe turned away, rattling the corn as he did so.

They were upon him in a quick little rush, thrusting their enormous
heads into the grain scoop. Sometimes when they were not to be harnessed
they were given a handful of grain, and Joe knew how to allay their
suspicions. They began to lick the corn with wet tongues. Neither raised
its head, for there was only a little grain and each had to eat as
quickly as possible lest the other get more than a just share.

Joe worked his hand down to the rope in his belt, and when his fingers
closed around it, he brought the grain scoop closer. The mules blew
through their nostrils and followed. Then, seeing too late that they had
fallen into a trap, both tried to wheel and pound away. Joe slipped the
rope over the mare mule's head, took a half hitch around a fence post,
and stepped out of reach when the mule slashed at him with her yellowed
teeth.

Joe laughed. The mare mule was not less cunning and scheming than her
teammate, but the horse had a pounding, hard gait that was difficult for
a rider going only a short way and spine-shattering for a long ride. The
mare had a gentle, rocking pace, and she was the faster of the two.

The mare pulled to the end of her rope, but not far enough to tighten it
around her neck and choke herself, and she was looking fixedly at Joe
when he came with the bridle. She stepped suddenly forward, slackening
the rope, and scuttled sidewise to pin him between the fence and
herself.

Joe laughed again, and brought the blunt end of his shoe hard into her
soft belly. Her ears sagged reproachfully as she retreated and stood
still. The mules always fought with their master, but it never did them
any good because Joe remained master. She was docile enough as he
slipped the bit into her mouth, strapped the bridle on, and led her
through the gate.

The horse mule watched the whole procedure suspiciously. Then, as soon
as the gate was closed and latched, and he knew that Joe wanted only the
mare, he shattered the morning stillness with a far-carrying bray before
trotting over to lick up the few grains of corn that had spilled on the
ground.

Joe vaulted astride the mare and set himself for the lunge that he knew
was coming now. He tried to make her keep her head up, but she got it
down and bucked. Joe gripped her sides with his knees, and for a moment
she pitched and twisted. Then she reared, trying to make him slide back
over her tail, and when she did Joe shortened the rein so she couldn't
get her head down again. She panted angrily, then obeyed the tug of the
rein and started down the path toward Tenney's. Joe knew another moment
of tormenting uncertainty.

He was a realist, and experience had taught him that nothing worth
having came easily. Though he knew nothing about the west, he did know
what wagon travel involved. At the best, it was not easy. Though he
never doubted Emma's moral fiber, though he knew that once having
decided to go she would spare herself nothing to make the trip possible
and successful, was her physical strength equal to the hardships that
they would almost certainly endure before they reached the land they
wanted? Suppose baby Emma became desperately ill along the way and had
only a wagon for shelter? Alfred, Carlyle and Joe were very young. Was
Barbara equal to such a trip? Joe half turned the mule around, then
turned her back and went on. He had taken upon himself the duty of
digging out all possible information in advance. He had promised Emma to
take care of her--and that meant he must prepare for every situation in
which they were likely to find themselves. The sources of reliable
information were few, but Seeley was one, and he meant to get to Seeley
as early in the day as he humanly could.

The morning was lighter. But it was still too early for most people to
be up and, save for Lard Head, who lay sleeping in front of the store,
there was nobody around Tenney's Crossing. From the last house a little
white dog ran out, yapped ineffectively at the mule, and scuttled back
into the shadows when she lunged at him.

The mule broke into a fast canter and Joe let her run. Then, of her own
accord, she slowed to an easy trot and walked on the upgrades. This was
a wagon road, and sometimes wagons made the trip between Tenney's
Crossing and Hammerstown when they were heavily loaded and in wet
weather. The ruts on either side of the road were deep and uneven, and
here and there they had been filled in with rocks. The bleached bones of
an ox that had died on this road and been dragged aside were scattered
about a grassy little dell.

The sky brightened, and Joe forgot his doubts. He felt light-hearted,
almost gay, as he rode through forest broken by an occasional clearing.
Little Emma, he assured himself, would be all right because she was
always all right when her mother took care of her. And about the lost
crops there need be no worry. If a man couldn't do one thing he could
always do another, and the only really unfortunate men were those who
wept, but did nothing else, when trouble came.

The mule had stopped cantering and trotting and was walking now. But she
had a very fast walk, she covered ground much more swiftly than a
walking man, and she was not fighting him any more. But Joe continued to
watch her closely and to feel with his knees for any change in her.
Mules were expert pretenders. They struck when it was least expected.
However, if a man knew mules, they always gave some warning.

A mighty hunger mounted within Joe as he thought of the breakfast
Barbara would prepare for her mother and brothers and sisters. But if
he'd stopped for breakfast he would have risked awakening Emma and the
youngster. And he'd had to leave early because time was important. He
must find out about the west, then take back to Emma everything he
discovered.

They came to a long, gently slanting downgrade, and the mule trotted
again. A white-tailed deer with twin fawns at her heels floated like a
shadow across the road in front of him and stood on the forested
hillside. A singing pleasure rose in Joe, and he slowed the mule as he
passed because he wanted to look more closely at the doe and her dappled
babies. He wished that Emma might be along, for she always enjoyed such
sights, too.

Not until they were well past did Joe think that venison was good
eating, some of the best, and he was very hungry now. Well, no doubt he
would get something to eat at the Seeleys'. Joe had never met them, but
any stranger who came to your door should be offered food because that
was only common politeness. It was unthinkable to send even an enemy
away hungry.

A little more than two hours after he left his farm, Joe rode into
Hammerstown.

Save that the store was smaller and much more run down than Tenney's,
Hammerstown might have been Tenney's Crossing. There were half a dozen
houses, a church, and a log building that served as a school and for any
other public business that might have to be transacted. The timber had
been cleared away to make fields, and beyond Hammerstown there were more
farms. Two men were just coming out of the store, and as soon as he was
abreast of them, Joe swung his mule around and stopped her.

"Can you tell me where John Seeley lives?" he called.

They regarded him with candid interest. "Straight down the road. John's
place is on top of the first hill. Somethin' we can do for you?"

"You can tell me if the Seeleys will be home."

"They'll be home. Think you can find the place?"

"I reckon. Thank you."

"You're welcome, stranger."

Joe swung the mule back down the road and out of Hammerstown. A man with
a yoke of oxen looked curiously at him as he passed and two children
stopped to stare. Joe resented no part of it. People who lived in such
places, and who seldom saw anyone except their near neighbors, were
always frankly curious about anyone whom they did not know. The mule
walked up the first hill and Joe guided her into the farmyard on top of
it. It was more substantial than most farms, with a good, solid log
house covered by a shingled roof. Obviously John Seeley enjoyed more
than average prosperity, for there were glass windows on all sides of
the house. Behind the house were a barn and sheds, and fields and forest
beyond them.

A man with two teams of oxen was skidding a heavy drag of logs across a
field toward the barn, and a boy about fifteen years old accompanied
him. A bevy of small children crowded into the house's open door, and a
shaggy dog that barked desultorily as it came, wagged toward Joe. The
mule backed warily, and Joe kept a sharp eye on her. He had come to seek
something from the people who lived here, and letting his mule kick
their dog around was not the way to cement friendly relations.

A woman who, Joe thought, looked somewhat like Emma, came to stand in
the doorway behind the children and at once Joe felt a little easier.
Though he was usually ill at ease with strange women, he felt that he
could talk to this one. He slid from the mule, holding the reins, and
Joe said politely,

"I'm looking for John Seeley's place, ma'am. My name's Joe Tower. I come
from over Tenney's Crossing way."

She smiled a warm welcome. "This is the Seeley place, Mr. Tower. My
man's in the wood lot right now."

"There's a man and boy coming in. They have a drag of logs."

"That's my man and boy. Have you had breakfast, Mr. Tower?"

"No, ma'am."

"And you rode from Tenney's! I'll get you something right away! Just put
your mule in back."

She hurried into the house and Joe led the mule toward the outbuildings.
He'd brought a tie rope because, no matter how hospitable a host might
be, one didn't just ask for corn to help catch his mule. Joe looped the
rope around the mule's neck and tied her to a fence post before he
slipped the bridle off. He turned to meet the man and boy who, by this
time, were very near the barn.

John Seeley was a stocky, square-built man, and apparently he never made
a fast move if a slow one would serve. But there was about him that
which was as solid and dependable as the land he worked, and Joe warmed
to him. He had an approving glance for the youngster who, Joe suspected,
was a mirror of what the father had been twenty years ago.

"Are you John Seeley?" Joe asked.

"That's me," the other's voice was as deep as he was stocky. "What can I
do for you?"

"My name's Tower," Joe introduced himself. "Joe Tower. I didn't exactly
come to talk with you, but with your father. Les Tenney told me he's
been west."

"And you," the other guessed, "aim to go?"

"I've been pondering on it. First I wanted to talk with somebody who's
been there."

"I've been there."

"You have?"

"That's right, and I'll take Missouri."

"You didn't like it?"

"I like this better. Man, the west's no land of milk and honey. The
rain's as wet there, the snow's as cold, the bugs bite as hard, and it's
to heck and gone from any other place."

"How about free land?"

"There's that if a man has to have it."

"Depends on how you look at things, don't it?"

The other gave him a searching glance. "That's right. When do you aim to
leave?"

"Don't know yet that I will leave. I just wanted to find out."

"Tell you what," John Seeley suggested, "I've been only once over the
California Road or, as some call it, the Oregon Trail. But my father
spent most of his life in the west. Talk to him; he'll be up soon.
Reckon you saw Sophie?"

"That I did. She's kind enough to get me some breakfast and I can't say
I'm sorry. Left before sun-up."

"Goshamighty! Fifteen miles with nothing to eat! Come in fast!"

Joe followed the other into his house, and sniffed hungrily at the good
smell of pancakes baking and sausage sizzling. He knew a moment's envy.
John Seeley must be very prosperous if he could afford sausage in July.
To most people, by that time good meat was only a luscious memory or
something to look forward to when the weather should again make it
possible to keep meat. The children trooped out to play and the dog
frolicked with them. Sophie Seeley filled Joe's plate with golden-brown
pancakes and sausage patties, and his cup with coffee. Joe ate, and
nobody spoke while he was eating because it was impolite to talk under
such circumstances. When a man was hungry, it was most important that
his hunger be satisfied.

Joe finished and pushed his plate back. He heard the lifting of a wooden
latch, and his eyes strayed toward the door that was opening. Joe sat
forward in his chair.

The man who came into the room was old as a rock and big as a hill.
Taller than his tall son, Grandpa Seeley was stocky like John and
straight. Snow-white hair tumbled down his massive head and rippled
about his shoulders. A white beard strayed down his chest. His movements
were firm and graceful. He came straight to the table and sat down, and
not until he was seated, staring straight at Joe without seeing him, did
Joe understand that his clear blue eyes saw nothing. Grandpa Seeley was
blind and probably he found his way around the house because nobody ever
moved anything.

His son got up and stood by the old man's shoulder. He did not raise his
voice when he spoke,

"There's a man come to see you, Grandpa."

"Yes," the old man's voice had within it the blending of gentle winds,
and stormy ones, and rippling streams, and strange bird songs. "Who is
it?"

"My name's Tower," Joe spoke for himself while he reached across the
table to grasp the old man's hand, "Joe Tower. I rode from Tenney's
Crossing to ask you about the west."

"Glad to know you, Joe."

"I'd best get back to my work," John Seeley said.

He left, and Grandpa asked Joe, "What do you want to know about?"

"I--" Joe fumbled. He had come to ask about the west, and only now did
it occur to him that he hadn't the slightest notion of what to ask. "I'm
thinking of going there," he said lamely.

"You don't aim just to point your nose west and follow it?"

"No. That's why I came to see you. I want to find out how to do it."

"The west is a big place. What are your wishes?"

"A fellow named Townley told me he staked out land by riding three days
in each direction and finally coming back to his starting point."

"Townley's a liar," Grandpa assured him. "Though some of the ranches and
land grants in the southwest are most as big as the state of Missouri.
They need a lot of land; takes maybe eighty acres to feed one cow in
some of that country. You going in for cattle?"

"No. I'm a farmer."

"Oregon," Grandpa said. "Oregon's the place you want. Get yourself a
quarter section there. That's all the land any farmer needs in that
country."

"How do I get to Oregon?"

"Go out to Independence and get on the trail. Even if anybody in
Independence can't put you on it, which they can, you won't miss it.
Last time I was through, it was a few miles wide in some places and I
expect it's wider now. With all the wagons that have gone through,
people would have to branch out to find grass for their stock. Follow
the Trail after you get on it and you'll be all right. But May's the
time to start for Oregon. Unless you want to travel alone, you should
wait until next spring."

"Can a lone wagon get through?"

"Sure, but it can be almighty lonesome. The prairies are a right sizable
place to be in all by yourself. But you can do it alone. Some of the
Mormon companies pushed hand carts all the way from the Missouri, and
there were plenty of women pushing right along with the men. But,
starting this late, you won't get through to Oregon this summer."

"How far can I get?"

"How are you traveling?"

"What's the best way?"

"Mules," Grandpa said decisively. "Next to them, oxen. Oxen will get
along on skimpier grass, but they're slow. Horses are all right for
riding but they don't stand up under a long haul."

"Is one team of mules enough?"

"That's taking a chance. You should have two, or anyhow one spare
animal. Then, if you lose one, you can always get some place where
they'll sell you another."

"How far can I get this season?"

"To Laramie, anyhow. With luck, and if storms hold off, you might get to
Fort Bridger. But you can count on Laramie with time to spare."

"Can a man figure on finding something to do through the winter?"

"Any man who wants to work can find it. Tell you what, a little short of
one day west of Laramie there's a friend of mine with a trading post.
Name's Jim Snedeker. Tell him I sent you, and he'll give you and your
mules a job. That is, always supposing you want to work for him."

"How about Indian trouble?"

"That's up to you. Ninety-eight out of a hundred Indian scrapes are not
brought about by Indians, but by some mullethead of an emigrant who
started a ruckus with them. If you don't bother the Indians, and don't
let them bother you, you should have no trouble."

"What else will I need?"

"How many are going with you?"

"My wife and six young ones."

"Load your wagon heavy with eatables," Grandpa advised. "Carry plenty of
flour. Take eggs; pack them in a barrel of corn meal and use up the meal
as you use up the eggs. You should have coffee and whatever else you
fancy in the way of eating. Take tools, the ones you'll need are the
ones you need here. Go light on dishes and furniture. There's enough
household goods been pitched out of wagons between Independence and the
Wil'mette Valley to stock a city the size of St. Louis ten times over.
You got a milk cow?"

"Two."

"Take both. You'll get some milk all the time. Hang the morning's
milking in a pail behind the wagon. By night it'll be butter. Drink the
evening's milking. Can you shoot?"

"Tolerable good."

Grandpa said, "There's still buffalo and I think there always will be,
though they'll never be again like they were in '30 when we went into
Santa Fe. But you can count on enough for meat. You got any money?"

"Very little," Joe confessed.

"Keep what you have. Take all of it with you and get as much more as you
can. You'll need it."

Joe asked in some astonishment, "On the Oregon Trail?"

"On the Oregon Trail," Grandpa assured him. "Suppose a mule dies and you
have to buy another? What if you have to stock up on flour?" For a
moment Grandpa lost himself in the dreamy introspectiveness of the very
old. "It's not like it was in the old days. A man didn't need anything
but his horse and rifle then, and if he didn't have the horse he could
always get one if he had a rifle. The west has grown up. She's shed her
three-cornered pants and put on her long britches. Don't try it unless
you have some money."

"Is there anything else?"

"Watch the company you'll find. You'll run into soldiers, but no
constables or marshals, and you will find cutthroats. Take it easy.
Don't go too fast or too slow. Use the sense God gave you, and you'll do
all right."

"That's it, huh?"

"I've told you everything that's to be told," Grandpa assured him. "If
you can think of anything else, I'll try to answer your questions."

"Can't figure another question," Joe admitted. "I should outfit right,
go to Independence, get on the Oregon Trail, and use common sense."

"That's the way."

"Thank you for your time. Thank you kindly."

Grandpa muttered, "That's all my time's good for now."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing important," the old man told him. He said, more to himself than
to Joe, "I'd like to do it over again, the way I did it the first time."

Joe felt a sudden, warming kinship with this man whom he had seen for
the first time less than an hour ago. Grandpa Seeley was going nowhere,
not ever again in his entire life. But he had flung his gauntlet in the
face of a great challenge and he yearned to do it again. Joe gripped the
old man's hand again, and looked into his sightless eyes. He said,

"You've given me a lot," and to the woman, "Thank you, Mrs. Seeley, for
everything."

She said, "Oh, I do hope nothing happens!"

"Nothing will. That is, nothing bad."

Joe fought his mule to a standstill, bridled her, mounted, and let her
choose her own pace home. The sun was high when he rode into his yard.
Her face tear streaked and her eyes red, Barbara came to meet him.
Joe's heart leaped in sudden panic; little Emma had been sick when he
left. He said,

"What's wrong?"

"The cow!" Barbara choked back a sob. "Clover! She broke her leg while
you were away and Pete Domley shot her!"

Barbara threw herself into his arms, and for the first time in years she
sobbed like the little girl he had once known. Joe hugged her very
tightly and stroked her slim back with his rough hand. The day had been
a good one, and he had learned much that he needed to know. But he had
not learned, he now realized with a poignant uneasiness, how to prepare
a sensitive young girl for the hardships and dangers she must face in
the long journey ahead of them.




CHAPTER FIVE

The Start


The Mule pulled hard on the reins as she sought to reach a lush growth
of grass near by. With a rough jerk Joe brought her back, and she stood
meekly behind him. The mules could gauge his moods as exactly as he
could theirs; they always know just how far they might go and when
they'd better behave. The mule did not pull even hard enough to tighten
the reins as she waited.

Barbara buried her tear-stained face in his shirt front and Joe held her
fiercely close to him. Her body shook convulsively, and it seemed to Joe
that every racking sob tore out of his throat too. He knew a moment of
blank dismay because, though there were words that applied to the
situation, he could not think of them. He did think of a doe whose hip
had been shattered by a rifle ball, and he had a wild notion that there
was some comparison between the stricken doe and his stricken child.
Nobody had been able to do anything for the deer, either. Joe said,

"Don't cry, Bobby! Please don't cry!"

"It--it was awful!"

"I know, but would you want Clover to suffer? Pete did the right thing.
If I'd have been here, I'd have done it myself."

Panting hard, Tad's dog came around a corner of the house and threw
himself down in the shade. Tad followed, whittling on a stick with his
knife and kicking at the shavings as they fell. He looked at his sobbing
sister in her father's arms and scornfully expressed what he felt was a
distinct superiority of all male creatures over all female.

"Huh! Cryin' about an old cow!"

Joe felt an immediate relief. He did not know how to comfort a
broken-hearted girl, but at this moment he did know what to do about
this freckle-faced son of his. He was relieved because Tad had provided
him with an outlet for his pent-up feelings.

"Will you get out of here," he roared, "before I cut a hickory switch
and use it to tan your ornery hide!"

Tad said, "I ain't doin' anything."

"You're walking around with a knife in your hand for one thing! For
another you're getting too big for your britches! Now beat it, and if I
catch you using a knife that way again I'll take it away from you until
you show some sense!"

Head up, shoulders squared, Tad walked back around the house and Mike
rose to follow him. Joe gulped, penitent because he had spoken harshly
to Tad. But in some fashion that he did not understand the spell was
broken and Barbara's near hysteria was no more. She pushed herself away
from him, wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, and smiled tremulously.
Joe had a sudden inspiration.

"Look, honey, go tell your mother that I have some things to say to her
as soon as I've put the mule away. You might wait for me too. It's sort
of a family matter."

For a second she said nothing and Joe had a momentary little panic
because he thought she was going to start crying again. Instead, she
repeated her smile.

"I'll tell her, Daddy."

She walked away and Joe was happy again. His master coup had been
effective, and by sending Barbara to Emma he had at least taken her mind
from Clover's tragedy. Barbara made pets of all the farm animals, and
hers was a deep sensitivity. She could bear to see nothing she liked
hurt. At pig-killing time, which was always in the fall, she made an
excuse to visit her bosom friend, Marcia Geragty, and invariably she
stayed away until everything was over. Though she was a willing and hard
worker, nobody could count on her to help at the butchering--naturally
the men always did the slaughtering--and sometimes Joe worried about
her because obviously Barbara was destined to be a farmer's wife. As
such, she would have to know a farm wife's tasks and taking care of meat
was one of them. Joe knew another period of doubt and indecision.

Above all, he wanted for his children more and better opportunities than
he had ever known. But, though Tad would be wild with joy at the very
thought, was the west really a place for Barbara? She had grown up here;
all her friends were here. Was it right to uproot her, to tear her away
from everything she knew and loved? And--Joe still thought of her as
very fragile--could she bear up under the hardships of such a long
journey? Would the west offer her anything to compensate for what she
would lose by leaving Missouri? Joe comforted himself with the thought
that Barbara had a mind of her own. She could be counted on to express
her sincere convictions at the forthcoming family conference.

Joe wrinkled his brow. He'd had his setbacks, but none comparable to the
recent disasters. A whole crop ruined and a valuable cow lost. It seemed
that the land over which he had labored so hard had rejected him
completely. He knew a sudden wild urge to be away, to start immediately
for Oregon where a man was his own master. Joe led the mule around a
corner of the house and saw Tad leaning against the building.

Joe stopped and said gruffly, "Sorry I yelled, Tad."

Tad shrugged. "Clover's leg was broke. I saw it myself. What could you
do except shoot her?"

"Nothing," Joe admitted, "but womenfolk don't--"

"Don't what?" Tad asked.

"They don't understand some things."

It was a lame explanation and one which, Joe felt, did not suffice.
Women understood most things, and Joe knew of men who had died in agony
while other men stood uncaringly near. That being the way things were
sometimes, there was something mighty wholesome about anyone at all who
could shed genuine tears over a dead cow. But Joe could think of nothing
else to say.

Tad asked too casually, "What'd you find out this morning, Pa?"

Without answering immediately, Joe put the mule in the pasture, slipped
her bridle off, and closed the gate. As far as he knew, none of the
children even suspected that he and Emma were planning to go west. But
Tad had a way of finding out much that he was not supposed to know;
perhaps he had been lying awake, listening, the night Joe returned from
Tenney's and talked with Emma. He turned to Tad and said,

"You come along and see."

The youngest children met him at the door, and Joe's heart lightened.
The mysterious fevers attacked baby Emma without any warning at all. But
they left her just as quickly and obviously she was well again. Joe knew
that the youngsters wanted to play with him, but he felt that it was not
a moment for play. They were on the verge of a profound uprooting that
would affect the lives of all.

Barbara sat gracefully on a chair. Emma leaned against the sink, and Tad
slipped unobtrusively past to make himself small in one corner. Joe
glanced at the youngster and saw his eyes glowing and his face wild with
excitement. He cleared his throat and wished desperately that he was a
master of story-telling so that he might give his expectant family an
exact word picture.

"I saw Grandpa Seeley at Hammerstown," he began. "He's an old man who's
spent most of his life in the west and...."

In simple, unembellished language, he told them. He spoke of Oregon,
where any family could live and live well on a quarter section of land
that was free for the taking. He told of the Oregon Trail, which they
would reach at Independence. The chances were good that they'd be
traveling all alone, for most of the Oregon-bound emigrants started in
May, and they might be very lonely. Mules were the best wagon beasts,
but they really should have a spare team or at least a spare animal.
They should take as much food as possible and that meant that most of
their household goods must be left behind. However, selling whatever
they could not take along would provide necessary funds. Even though
they took much food, they would have to depend on hunting for their
meat. However, they would find buffalo and probably other game animals.
The chances were good that Indians would not be a menace.

Joe told it honestly, adding nothing and holding nothing back. He looked
at Emma, who stood white-faced and calm, her back against the wall; at
Barbara, sitting dreamily with her chin in her hand; at Tad, fairly
vibrating with excitement. The younger children, even Alfred who seldom
sat still, seemed to have partaken of the solemnity of the moment and
were listening intently. Joe ran a hand through his shaggy hair.

"Well, that's it. That's the story and it sounded to me like a straight
one. I've told you everything I know."

"O'gon," Carlyle piped in his baby treble. "We go O'gon."

A moment's silence reigned.

Emma clasped her hands nervously in front of her, and then disengaged
them with an effort. "Was Mr. Seeley sure that we can reach Laramie
before winter closes in?"

"He said that we could do it with time to spare. We might even make Fort
Bridger if we're lucky."

Again her hands came together and held, her knuckles white. "Did he say
anything about the quarters we'll find there? I--I should not like to
live in an Indian tent in winter."

Joe smiled. "You wouldn't have to. Laramie's an Army post, but we won't
stay there. Just west of Laramie there's a trading post run by a man
named Snedeker. I can get a job with him for the winter."

"We can't possibly carry enough of everything to see us through. Are
there places along the way where we might buy new provisions?"

Joe said soberly, "Not too many. But we will be able to stock up if we
have to."

"Was--was he sure there'll be no Indian trouble?"

There were frequent occasions when Joe and Emma had the same thought at
the same time, and Joe had a fleeting, terrible vision of his babies'
fluffy hair adorning the smoky lodge of some fierce warrior prince. He
hesitated before replying, then,

"He said we'd have no trouble if we don't bother the Indians and don't
let them bother us." A deepening silence filled the room at the mention
of Indians.

Then there was a knock at the door, and Joe opened it to face Elias
Dorrance. Elias' horse was rein-haltered near by, and the banker said
affably,

"Hi, Joe."

"Hi. Uh--come in."

The banker entered and bowed in turn to Emma and Barbara. "Mrs. Tower.
Miss Tower." His glance encompassed the children and he turned to Joe.
"I wondered if you've changed your mind?"

Joe squirmed inwardly, but at the same time he knew a small
gratification. It was part of etiquette to offer any visitor a meal, but
it was absolutely imperative to do so only if they came at meal time.
Because his family was present, Joe controlled his anger. He said,

"No. No, I haven't."

"I see." Elias remained gracious. "I was merely riding past and thought
this a good opportunity to see you. Well, I must be running along and
it's good to see your charming family. If you care to talk with me, you
have only to come to my office."

Elias bowed again and departed. Joe resisted an impulse to assist him
out of the door with the toe of his shoe. Elias was not simply passing
by. He had ridden out to see if there was any way he could get a
mortgage on everything the Towers had left. Joe felt a cold and clammy
thing that was not physical or born of any solid substance, brush his
heart. He turned to see Emma staring fixedly at the four youngest
children. Her glance roved to Barbara and Tad. Then her eyes met his
squarely. The color that had left her cheeks came back to them now in a
rush.

"Joe, I think it's time we told the children we're going to Oregon!"

"Hi-eee!" Tad shrieked.

Emma cast a reproving glance at him and Tad quieted. But his eyes danced
and a beatific smile lighted his whole face.

"O'gon," Carlyle said again. "We go O'gon."

"It's Oregon, isn't it, mama?" little Emma corrected.

Emma said, heaving a deep and tremulous sigh, "Yes, dear, it's Oregon."

"I think," Barbara said, "that it's going to be just wonderful!"

Joe turned to look at her, startled because there was a quality in her
voice that had never been present before. She spoke like an adult, but
her eyes were wide with excitement and her cheeks were flushed. Joe
shook his head. He had thought that, of all the family, Barbara might
shrink from such a trip and all it involved. Joe said,

"Bobby, you really want to go!"

But Barbara was already lost in a dream and Emma answered for her
daughter, "Of course she wants to go."

Joe glanced at his wife, sensing another feminine puzzle here which no
man would ever figure out. He understood Tad's bubbling excitement at
the prospect of new horizons and new adventure, but Tad was a boy and
such a reaction was natural. He did not completely grasp, as Emma did,
that Barbara was youth too. Youth was for daring, and exploring, and the
farthest point on the horizon would always be alluring. Joe grinned at
his youngest children.

"Any of you got anything to say?"

Little Joe asked, "How far is Oregon?"

"Quite a piece, Joe."

"Oh." The youngster devoted himself seriously to thinking about this new
problem that had arisen.

The relief that Joe felt at the way his children had taken the news
expressed itself in a minor outburst. Joe said, "Doggone it!"

Emma said, "Is something wrong?"

"I must have been in quite a fluster when I got here. Left the mare
mule's bridle lying on the ground. I'd better go pick it up."

Tad said happily, "I'll go with you, Pa."

They left the house together and Joe felt strangely light, almost giddy,
as he walked across the familiar yard. It was impossible to go to
Oregon, but they were going. Joe grinned. There had been a great
decision and a small one; they were going to Oregon and he must pick up
a mule bridle.

"When we startin', Pa?" Tad breathed.

"Soon's we can get ready."

"Can Mike go too?"

"He can if he wants to walk all the way."

Tad breathed, "I'm goin' to walk, too! Can I shoot a buffalo, Pa? Can
I?"

Joe said good humoredly, "For pete's sake, we're not out of Missouri
yet--we haven't even started--and you talk of buffalo! Can't you wait
until we see some?"

"Do you think we'll have Indian fights, Pa?" Tad asked breathlessly.

"We won't if I can help it." Joe was suddenly sober. "Tad, you and I
have to be the men on this trip. You know that?"

"I know it, Pa! I know it and I'll do everything I can to help! Honest!
Can I go tell Buster Trevelyan?"

"Sure."

With a wild whoop, Mike racing beside him, Tad was away. Joe picked up
the mule bridle and glanced at the mules. They were standing together,
nibbling each other with their lips. The mules usually quarreled over
which was going to get the most of the choicest food, but they were
genuinely fond of each other and Joe supposed that was a good thing too.
Mules, hybrids that had no future because they were incapable of
reproducing their own kind, must feel desperately frustrated at times.

A meadow lark sang from the top of the fence and Joe answered it,
imitating almost perfectly the bird's sweet call. The meadow lark called
again and Joe talked back to it. He wondered if there would be meadow
larks in Oregon and hoped wistfully that he would find them there for
they were a totem bird, a symbol of good luck. Nothing could be too bad
as long as there was a meadow lark about. Joe had always fought against
killing them for any reason, though now and again some of his neighbors
shot or snared some to eat.

Joe answered a bobwhite that called from a corner of brush, and a
red-winged blackbird that perched on a swaying reed down near the creek.
He had always cherished a secret desire to play a fiddle, or almost any
kind of musical instrument, but he'd never been able to do it. His one
talent, besides farming, was imitating bird calls and he enjoyed himself
with those. Yancey Garrow, who could play the fiddle, had even said he'd
trade that for Joe's ability.

A pang assailed Joe when he looked again at his raided fields, but it
was the ache any good farmer would feel when good crops are destroyed.
He no longer felt completely in tune with these fields; they'd lost
their power to hold him and make him do their bidding. Joe's thoughts
remained on Oregon, and the constant urge to be doing something must be
devoted to making that trip a success.

He took the bridle to the barn and carefully hung it on its proper peg.
When his eyes strayed over the harness, which was kept in the barn
except when the mules were working every day, he noted a frayed tug
strap and knew that he would have to replace or repair it before they
started. There'd be few leather shops on the Oregon Trail and they'd be
far apart. Because it was part of his nature to want everything the way
it should be, he cleaned accumulated litter out of the mules' stalls.
All summer long, night and day, the mules were in the pasture, and it
never occurred to Joe that he'd done a useless bit of work because the
mules wouldn't be in their stalls this winter.

The younger children were playing in the yard, and Joe entered the house
to find Emma alone. Lost in thought, she was standing at the stove,
touching it here and there as though to memorize the feeling of it. She
swung around guiltily when she heard Joe behind her.

"You gave me a start," she said.

"You won't like leaving the stove behind?"

"It's a good stove," she said defiantly. "But my grandmother didn't have
one, and she got along just fine. I guess I can, too."

Joe sighed, and his eyes moved around the room to other things that
would be left behind.

Seeing him Emma stamped her foot. "One thing I know, Joe Tower. I'm not
going to eat myself up regretting all the things we can't take with us.
Those are _things_, not people. The people we love best, our own
children, are going to be right with us. So let's not get all in a fuss
about any old stove."

He chuckled. Then, seeing the slight quiver of her lips, he spoke
softly. "But also let's not do too much pretending that things don't
bother us when they really do. It's a good stove, and you'll miss it."

Her throat worked for a moment, then hastily she changed the subject.
"About the cow, Joe--I'm grateful to you for making it easy for
Barbara."

He said with honest surprise, "_I_ made it easy for her?"

"She saved her tears for you, didn't she?"

"Yes. But--"

She said quietly, "One of the reasons I love you so much is because you
really don't know why a little girl would rather cry on your shoulder."
She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. "Pete butchered the cow
properly."

Joe said, "Well, it will be a lot of jerky and pickled beef to take
along."

She smiled tearfully at him. "Who in this family would eat Clover, Joe?
I asked Pete to take the beef down and sell it to Lester Tenney. We can
use more money, now that we're Oregon-bound."

Joe scratched his head. "Guess you're right. I couldn't enjoy the beef
myself and we do need money." Money. And provisions. A barrel of corn
meal, Seeley had said. All the eatables they could carry.

"There's a lot of planning to do," he said to Emma.

"A lot of planning," she echoed, nodding, with an effort at crisp
composure.

Go to Independence, Grandpa Seeley had told him. Get on the Oregon Trail
and use common sense. It had all seemed so simple, but there was more to
it than that. For instance, though they probably could camp beside the
wagon much of the time, suppose there were stormy nights and they had to
sleep inside? Provision would have to be made for it. The wagon itself
would have to receive a thorough checking, with faulty parts replaced.
The box would almost surely have to be built higher, and a canvas cover
fitted tightly. Every item that went along, from the smallest to the
largest, would have to have its own place. All of it had to be planned,
and Joe had planned none of it.

Barbara came out of the room she shared with little Emma and Joe's
spirits rose. At the same time, he was puzzled and slightly amused. Only
a short time ago he had held Barbara in his arms, completely crushed and
wilted. Now there was no trace of that, but only the sheer loveliness,
intensified by excitement, that almost always walked with this girl and
that imparted itself to whatever or whomever she encountered. She
smiled.

"Why don't you go fishing and do your pondering, Daddy? You won't be
working the fields this afternoon."

Joe looked gratefully at her. All women seemed to know all men better
than any man understood any one woman. Emma knew that he needed solitude
sometimes for thinking about his problems. Like her mother, Barbara
seemed to know it too.

"Now say," Joe said, "I might just do that."

Not for a long while had he taken the time to go fishing, though he had
often wished mightily that he could go. When he fished, he knew a
serenity of soul and peace of mind that he found in doing nothing else,
and it made no difference whether or not he caught anything. The mind of
a true fisherman is not on petty subjects, and suddenly Joe knew that he
must go.

"Hurry up, Pa!" Tad called in the door. "I've got the worms all dug and
the poles all ready."

"I thought you'd gone to see Buster Trevelyan?"

"I did see him. He helped me dig worms."

Joe felt that somehow he must be a very shallow and easily led person.
His daughter had suggested that he go fishing. His wife had told him the
same thing, though she had not needed to speak. Now his son appeared
with fishing tackle and bait. Joe hesitated, and Emma urged,

"Go ahead. You won't get any work done today anyhow and fishing will be
good for you."

"Well, we might get a mess of fish."

He left the house, followed by the jubilant Tad, who had two poles with
lines, floats, and hooks attached to them slung over his shoulder and a
hollow branch containing worms in his hand. Mike tagged amiably along,
bristled hopefully when a neighbor's dog crossed Pete Domley's pasture,
and relaxed sadly when the dog kept on going. Mike didn't care what he
fought, or where or when, as long as he could fight, and Joe looked at
his son's dog with a new eye. Mike had never been an asset on the farm,
but he might be one on the Oregon Trail.

Tad led the way to a long, still pool bordered by sycamores and willows.
Joe took his pole, baited, cast, and watched his bobber float with the
gentle current. He eyed a school of minnows that were swimming in the
shoals and looked again at his bobber. The minnows in the shallow edges
of the pool were quiet, therefore nothing had been chasing them for a
while and it was Joe's guess that the fish wouldn't bite well today. If
the bass were feeding, the minnows would be more nervous and alert. Joe
asked his son a question that had been on his mind.

"How'd you know I'd go fishing this afternoon?"

"If we're goin' to Oregon, you sure wouldn't be workin' the fields."

"Is that the only reason you knew?"

"Nope. I just kind of thought it was a day for you and me to go
fishin'."

"Did your mother or sister tell you to get the worms and tackle?"

Tad said indignantly, "Now, Pa, you know they wouldn't be tellin' me to
take you fishin'!"

Joe knew that he was not telling the truth, and that Emma must have told
him to dig worms and arrange fishing tackle, and for a moment he felt a
slight annoyance. Then he relented. If anyone told the strict truth all
the time, Joe felt, they'd be very hard to live with. Tad's was a
harmless deception. The worst the youngster had in him was a streak of
wildness, and he'd outgrow that. The Oregon Trail, Joe reflected, might
take some of it out of him.

Joe relaxed on the stream bank, giving himself completely to thoughts of
this new venture and at peace with himself and the world. In his wood
lot were both hickory and oak that he had felled last year and left to
season. For a share of the timber, John Geragty would work it into
proper sizes at his saw mill. Maybe it would be a good idea to carry a
spare reach for the wagon and spare axles. They could always be slung
underneath without adding too much to the load. Since they couldn't take
everything with them--or nearly everything--they would have a lot to
sell or trade. The kitchen stove for one thing. He swallowed a lump when
he thought of Emma standing at the stove, touching it lightly with her
fingertips. Then he made himself go on with his planning. The planning,
right now, was a whole lot more necessary than the stove. They would
have to sell the stove. Stoves were none too plentiful in this country
and lots of farm wives cooked over fireplaces. The stove should get them
a new wagon cover, which Les Tenney carried in stock, and something else
besides. Now--

Tad yelled, "Pa! Your line!"

Joe awakened with a start to see his bobber gone down and his line
moving slowly out into the stream. He yanked on the pole, lifted a
two-pound bass clear of the water, and brought it, flopping, to the
grass beside him. Mike, who had been asleep in the grass, awakened with
a throaty bark and came over to inspect the catch. Joe shoved him aside,
and Tad said approvingly,

"Gee! That's a nice one!"

"It's not too bad," Joe agreed. "Mike, get away!"

He slid the bass onto a willow stringer that Tad cut and put it back in
the water, weighting one end of the stringer with a rock. Then he gave
all his attention to fishing. While he had been thinking of Oregon, the
bass must have started feeding for the minnows were more alert now. Even
as Joe watched, a school of them darted this way and that while
something dark and sullen lunged among them.

Two minutes later Joe caught another bass, and before the sun started to
set, he and Tad had fourteen. Joe borrowed Tad's knife, which was always
razor-sharp, and knelt beside their catch.

"I'll show you a trick," he promised.

He scaled the fish, removed their heads and fins, and made a clean cut
down the back. Deftly, needing only a moment, he worked the flesh away
and left the bones. Tad knelt near by, watching and admiring every move,
and Joe said patiently,

"Move a little away, will you? I'd sure hate to slice you up along with
these fish."

Tad grinned and moved a couple of inches back. Joe worked on. When he
was done he had only boneless fish, with all the offal left behind, and
there had been no waste of anything. Joe smacked his lips.

"You cook something out of a fish when you cook the bones into it," he
said. "Wait'll you try these."

"Maybe Mom will fix them tonight, huh?"

"Could be. Let's go find out."

Pete Domley's white horse was tied outside the door, and Pete came from
the house to meet them. Joe handed the filleted fish, which he was
carrying on a slab of wood, to Tad.

"Take these to your mother, will you? She'll want them soon if we're
going to have them for supper."

Pete Domley glanced down at the pile of fish and sniffed hungrily. "They
look downright good. It's a long while since I've had time to get any
for myself."

"Maybe you'll stay and help us eat these?" Joe invited. "There's
plenty."

Pete grinned. "I might just do that. Sorry about the cow. She stepped in
a chuck hole and broke a front leg. There just wasn't anything else to
do."

"I know. Thanks for taking care of it, Pete."

"Emma said to sell the beef to Les."

"Yeah, and I reckon she's right. Nobody here would eat it."

"Les gave me twenty-three dollars and seventy cents, cash money. I gave
it all to Emma."

"You should have kept something for your trouble."

"It wasn't any trouble. Emma says you're going to Oregon?"

"That's right, Pete. We are."

Pete said seriously, "I don't know but what it would be a good move for
anybody. Yes, I'm sure it would be."

"Why don't you come along?"

"I probably would, if I was fifteen years younger. But I'm pushing
fifty, and I've chased a lot of will-o'-the-wisps in my day. Guess I'm
getting chicken-hearted."

"Oregon's no will-o'-the-wisp."

"I know, but by the time a man gets to be my age he thinks everything
is. I stick to what I know, and I can't make out any place unless I
think so. I don't think I'd make out in Oregon. Want to sell me your
standing hay?"

"I'll give it to you."

"Don't be so open-hearted; you're going to Oregon and you'll need money.
Besides, I winter a lot of stock and hay's worth money to me. Would
twenty-five dollars be right?"

"Right enough with me."

"Good. I'll cut the hay when it's ready for cutting. I swear, Joe, you
look like a kid again."

"I almost feel like one, Pete. Doggone, it's not that I don't like
Missouri. It's just that I sort of felt myself batting my head against a
brick wall here, and now we're going to Oregon."

Pete nodded wisely. "The world would be just as well off if all men hit
down a new road when the old one ends blind. Only most of us lack the
courage to get off paths we know. Especially when we're older. I envy
you."

"Don't be so darn philosophical, Pete. Come on. Let's go in and wait for
something to eat."

Pete Domley finished his meal and rode away. A great restlessness gnawed
at Joe, and he felt his usual imperative urge to be doing something.
Only now it was a happy anticipation, and not a frustrating tenseness.
Joe glanced at the lowering sun, decided that at least an hour of
daylight remained, and a moment later Tad joined him.

"Hey, Pa, let's be doin' somethin'. Huh?"

"Sure. Let's bring some of that oak and hickory in from the wood lot."

Joe was amazed. Ordinarily Tad could be forced to work only under threat
of immediate punishment. Even then, unless he liked it, he would not
keep at whatever task was assigned him unless he were watched every
second. That he should offer of his own free will to help was itself a
minor revolution, and proof that he was infected with what Joe was
beginning to think of as Oregon fever.

They caught and harnessed the mules. Joe shouldered a peavey--a logger's
hook--and let Tad drive the mules to the wood lot. Joe used his peavey
to roll half a dozen of the seasoned oak and hickory logs over a long
chain, bound the chain around them, and hitched the mules to it. In the
gathering twilight, Joe and his son walked side by side while the mules
dragged the logs back to the house. They unharnessed the mules and let
them frolic in their pasture.

The logs lay ready to be taken to John Geragty's saw mill. Joe gave them
one final glance. When they were sawed into boards he would use part of
them himself. Part John Geragty would take as pay for his labor, and the
rest would be sold or traded for all the things they needed and did not
have for their trip to Oregon. It was the first short step.

Joe felt a surging, happy restlessness, but he had no wish to go to the
store. It seemed as though, somehow, his family had become a unique
group that had nothing to do with anybody else and were no part of
anyone else. They were going to Oregon while all the rest were staying
here, and that set them apart. Joe wanted to stay with them because of
this new-found and delightful kinship with each other.

He watched Barbara and Emma folding Emma's wedding dress, a long white,
frilly thing, between clean curtains. Obviously the dress was destined
to be part of the contents of a trunk that yawned on the kitchen floor.
Joe got up to lend a hand; the dress could be folded much more compactly
and thus occupy less space.

"Now you just sit down," Emma ordered. "This is not a mule or an ax."

"I was just trying to help."

"Not with this." The glance she gave him was one of mingled tenderness
and amusement.

Tad sat at the table, working expertly with a whetstone as he put a
razor edge back on his knife. Carlyle, still so young that the use of
his legs was new to him, wobbled precariously across the floor and
grasped Joe's knee. He paused, his fascinated eyes riveted on something,
and when Joe looked he saw a fish scale that clung to his trousers and
reflected rainbow tints in the lamp light. Joe lifted the youngster into
his lap, and Carlyle bent over so he could continue to watch the fish
scale.

"Come on," Joe invited the other. "I know a story."

His little fist closed, Alfred came to stand before Joe. The youngster's
eyes danced, a grin parted his lips.

"Present for you," he said, extending his closed fist.

Joe reached to take it, but when Alfred opened his fist there was
nothing at all there and the child howled with glee. Joe looked intently
at his hand, and he pretended to slip the gift into his pocket.

"Thanks," he said seriously, "that's just about the nicest present I
ever had!"

Alfred looked puzzled. Dainty little Emma and sober Joe came to him, and
Joe gathered all of them into his lap.

"Went fishing today," he said, "and the first thing you know there was
an old man with long white whiskers standing right on the bottom of the
creek...."

He improvised as his story unfolded, telling how the old man's white
whiskers hid an enormous mouth into which fish swam. Every now and
again, probably because he was angry, he spit a fish at Joe or Tad. Baby
Emma looked suspiciously at him and Tad turned with a knowing grin, but
all remained interested. Finally the biggest fish of all came along and
had trouble getting into the old man's mouth. There, and at once, he
grew half again as big. When the old man tried to spit that fish he
couldn't; he could get only half of it out of his mouth. Neither could
he take it all the way in. The last Joe saw of him he was walking up the
bottom of the creek with the fish still half in and half out of his
mouth.

Carlyle went to sleep in his arms and little Emma rested contentedly
against his shoulder. Little Joe frowned while he considered this new
problem, a fish stuck in an old man's mouth, and Alfred yawned. Emma
came to clasp baby Emma gently to her and she put the child to bed. One
by one, Barbara took the rest.

Joe sat nervously in his chair, too tense to sleep and not knowing what
to do. The night-to-be seemed an interminable time, and morning would
never come. Joe thought of a hundred things he must do and he ached to
be doing them so they could start for Oregon.

"You better go to bed," Emma told him.

"I couldn't sleep."

"Neither can you stay awake until we start for Oregon." She came to his
side and ran her hand through his hair, thinking, _He is part boy, part
man. Like a boy, he can't wait to start. Like a man--like Joe_, she
corrected herself, _he wants to make everything double-safe for his
young ones. Only, can he make things safe? Is there any safety in the
wilderness?_

Her hand stilled, then resolutely took up its stroking again.
"Tomorrow's another day," she said.

Joe grinned. "Could be you're right. I'll turn in."

He was awake with earliest daylight, and lay staring at the thin dawn
that lurked behind curtain-draped windows. It was a happy awakening, and
the day held more true promise than any Joe could remember. He had, he
felt as he lay beside Emma, been born all over again. But he had hurdled
childhood and been born as a wholly new kind of man with nothing mean or
petty in his life. Emma stirred beside him and Joe's hand stole out to
clasp hers. For a moment they lay side by side, anticipating
events-to-be by living their greatest adventure in their minds.

After breakfast Joe and Tad skidded more seasoned oak and hickory logs
in from the wood lot. He took the box from his wagon and drove the
stripped-down wagon up beside the logs. Loading them was really a
two-man job, but one man could do it.

Joe slanted and braced two short logs against the wagon and used his
peavey to roll one of the heavier logs toward them. He rolled one end a
short way up one of the leaning logs and braced it with a chunk of wood.
Going to the other end, he rolled that up and blocked it. By alternating
ends, and rolling each a short way at a time, he finally loaded the log
onto the wagon. Tad stood impatiently near.

"I'll help you, Pa."

Joe shook his head. "Not with this."

"Aw, I can handle a peavey."

"Nope. If one of those logs rolled on you, there wouldn't be enough left
to scrape up."

"Let me help!"

Joe said patiently, "You watch and see how it's done. Maybe the next
time you can help."

Tad squatted on his heels and watched, sulking. Joe loaded the wagon,
chained the load, and climbed on top of it to drive through Tenney's
Crossing to John Geragty's saw mill. There was plenty of timber to be
had for the taking, but never a surplus of seasoned oak and hickory.
John would have no trouble selling it for a good price, and therefore he
would take his pay for sawing in lumber instead of money. Joe drove up
to the saw mill, and John Geragty came to meet him.

"Hear you're goin' to Oregon," he greeted.

"You hear right, John. Who told you?"

"Everybody knows it by this time. The Crossin' hasn't had this kind of
news to chew on since Casey McManus was lynched."

"Hope the chewing's good," Joe grinned. "Got some seasoned oak and
hickory. Want to work it up for me?"

"What do you need?"

"Boards for a wagon box and a new reach and axles. Wouldn't do any harm
to have an extra tongue, too."

"Cash deal?"

"Share."

"I don't know," the other said doubtfully. "You want to buy the metal
for your axles?"

"Sure."

"Then it's a deal. We'll split the timber half and half. If you don't
need all yours, I'll sell it for you. Bill Logan's buildin' a new barn
and he wants good lumber."

"Good enough."

Joe drove home with his empty wagon, and the mules pricked their long
ears forward when they came in sight of the pasture. Two saddle horses
were tied to the fence, and Joe recognized one of them as Percy Pearl's
fine thoroughbred. The other was a blocky paint owned by Watson
Charters, a quarrelsome man who was greatly impressed with his own
importance. Largely because nobody else would take the job, which meant
that they might have to embarrass their neighbors, Watson Charters was
the local constable and he did a great deal of work for Elias Dorrance.
Charters came forward to meet Joe, closely followed by Percy Pearl. Joe
jumped down from the wagon.

Charters produced a penciled document, obviously one he had written
himself, from his pocket and began to read it:

"I hereby restrict and enjoin you, under clause A, article 13, of the
laws of the State of Missouri, from removing from this property, or
causing anyone else to remove from this property, any grasses, crops, or
other article that takes root from the ground. I--"

"Wait a minute," Percy Pearl interrupted blandly. "I didn't understand.
Read it again, Watson."

The constable looked annoyed, but started reading, "I hereby restrict
and enjoin you, under clause A--"

"Now isn't that something?" Percy said admiringly. "He wrote it all by
himself, too. Reminds me of some of the literary masterpieces I myself
created when I was a student in the sixth form at Carrodale. Only
Watson's is sheer genius. 'Grasses, crops, or other article that takes
root from the ground.' Banishes immediately any lingering doubts one
might have that they're rooted in the air. Who besides Watson would have
thought of such a thing?"

Watson Charters said, "You'll have to be quiet, Percy."

"No, I won't have to be quiet. Article 1, Bill of Rights, the
Constitution of the United States. That's an interesting document, too,
in its own little way. Of course there's no comparison between that and
yours."

"I am here," Watson Charters said, "to--"

"Yes, Joe," Percy said piously. "We are both here to see that justice is
not made to grovel in the muck. Justice! May it ever be supreme! Watson
is here to inform you that you cannot sell your standing hay to Pete
Domley or take any more timber from your wood lot. The reason? Our
friend Elias wishes to sell it himself."

"It's not his!" Joe roared. "Darn his picture! I cut that wood myself
and Elias hasn't any right to the hay!"

"Sell that hay or take any more wood," Watson Charters said, "and I'll
jail you."

Percy Pearl's hand moved as smoothly as a bit of rustling silk.
Seemingly plucked from nowhere, a pistol appeared in it. The pistol
blasted. As though it were blown by the wind, Watson Charters' hat
lifted from his head and spiraled to the ground, a hole in its brim.
Percy Pearl remained unruffled.

"How clumsy," he murmured. "But I still don't understand you, Watson.
What are you going to do if Joe sells more wood or the hay?"

"Now look, Percy, I'm just--"

"I know," Percy soothed, "You are a selfless and devoted man who is just
doing his duty with no thought of personal compensation, except maybe a
third of whatever else Elias can steal from Joe. But what did you say
you're going to do to Joe?"

There was a silence while the muscles worked in Watson's jaws. "I'm not
goin' to do anything to him," he said gruffly. "Elias can handle this
himself."

He mounted his blocky horse and rode away. Percy Pearl looked at Joe,
and a delighted chuckle escaped him.




CHAPTER SIX

The Party


A huge sycamore with a massive, hollow trunk grew about twenty five
yards from Joe's barn. It was a very old tree and taller than most
sycamores. Because it was all alone, and received no shade or
interference from other trees, it had many branches and all of them were
alive. Full-leafed, the sycamore cast comfortable shade over a wide
area.

Joe had his forge and anvil set up beneath the tree. Barbara stood ready
to work the forge's bellows and the horse mule was tethered near by.
Putting new shoes on both mules was the last necessary job before they
could start for Oregon, but Joe was pensive as he prepared to go about
the task.

For a while after deciding to go to Oregon, heightening excitement and
enthusiasm of the older members of the family had communicated itself to
the younger. Carlyle still wanted to know, at least fifteen times a day,
when they were leaving and how soon they would arrive. Joe, Emma, and
Alfred, had come to accept the journey as a matter of course. But Tad
remained the only one whose spirits had not been even slightly dampened.

Leaving for Oregon remained a glorious adventure. But all except Tad had
discovered, when it came time to decide just what was going with them
and what would have to stay behind, that to break off an old life and
start a new one would cause even more wrenches than they had expected. A
house was big, and if another room were needed, one could always be
added. But a wagon box had definite limitations.

Joe had taken the wooden handles from his hoes, rakes, and peaveys. Of
his harrow, he was taking only the metal parts and he had even removed
the wooden handles from his beloved plow. There was little likelihood
that he'd be using some tools on the Trail and he could replace the
missing wood when they got to Oregon. Even so, his tool box was filled.
They had to have an ax or how would they chop wood? He might need his
screw drivers, awls, chisels, augers, wrenches, saws, any time at all.
They couldn't be made more compact than they already were. Naturally,
the rifle had to be in working order. Joe had limited himself strictly
to that which they could not do without on the Trail or would need for
starting a new life in Oregon, and he sold or traded everything he could
spare. It had cost him a pang to part with hammers, chisels, wrenches,
and other tools which he had used so many years that their handles were
worn to the shape of his hand. But he was more keenly aware of the
sacrifices made by Emma and Barbara.

With an eye to Barbara's future needs, Emma had packed the wedding dress
and a few other items which could not be classed as utilitarian. For
herself she had taken only her sturdiest dresses and had packed only
necessities for each of the children. As a final indulgence, and only
after a deep inner struggle as to whether or not she was doing the right
thing, she had packed the first pair of baby shoes each of the children
had worn.

Helping her mother, Barbara had quietly slipped two of Emma's prettier
dresses into the trunk and Emma had promptly removed them. Barbara had
packed a battered rag doll that was greatly treasured by little Emma, a
string ball that was Joe's play-thing, a set of fading wooden blocks
with animals pictured on them for Alfred, and a bright picture that
Carlyle adored. She had argued Emma into accepting these by reminding
her that, though the children would have toys in the wagon, they would
become tired of them. Then these could be brought out and they would
arouse complete new interest.

Those were some of the minor problems. But there had been major
heartbreaks too and Joe knew that only one of them centered around the
stove. Emma was equally proud of an exquisitely made chest of drawers
which probably had been brought to Missouri by a trading party sent out
by the migrating Mormons. They had left the Mormon Trail and had come
into Missouri for food, and because they hadn't any money they traded
the goods in their wagons for bacon or grain. Joe had traded a shoat for
the chest of drawers some six or eight years ago.

Emma said nothing about leaving it behind, but because Joe knew her he
knew what it cost her to do so. Then, with sudden inspiration, he had
pointed out that the chest of drawers could be lashed inside the wagon
and would be a convenient storage place for the clothes they would need
day by day. Emma had paid him with a grateful smile, but that was not
what Joe thought about right now.

He'd been repairing the wagon when he went to the house for a drink of
water. Chance had taken him past the kitchen window, and unseen by her,
he had observed Emma sitting at the kitchen table. Arranged on it was
all her lovely, delicate china. Joe spent an uncomfortable moment
watching her adore with her eyes and caress with her hands the most
exquisite and beautiful things she had ever owned. Then he had slipped
away as quietly as he came, and when he went to the house an hour later
the china was all back in the cupboard.

It had stayed there while the days passed, and Joe said nothing because
he could think of nothing to say. Emma was fighting day by day, wanting
to keep the china and yet knowing that she could not. Finally, and only
yesterday, she had asked Joe, all too casually, if he would take it over
and give it to Helen Domley.

Doggedly, Joe continued his preparations to shoe the mules. He hadn't
given the china to Helen Domley. He had carried it to John Geragty's saw
mill, nailed a box together, tenderly packed each piece of china in
sawdust, covered the box, and sneaked it into the wagon. Now he worried
because it seemed that, somehow, he had both deceived Emma and cheated
Helen Domley.

Barbara asked, "Is something the matter, Daddy?"

"Nope," Joe evaded. "Start the bellows will you, honey?"

Barbara hesitated a moment and Joe waited. The past days had wrought a
change in his daughter, making her all the more difficult to understand.
At times she seemed to have a new maturity, as though she were already a
woman, and at others she was a trembling child. But she had never
expressed anything except enthusiastic interest in the forthcoming trip.
She began to work the bellows steadily, neither too fast nor too slow,
and the smell of the hot charcoal in the forge was a good thing.

With a pair of iron tongs, Joe held the mule shoe he was fashioning in
the glowing charcoal until the shoe partook of the fire's color. Still
gripping it with the tongs, a blacksmith's maul in his right hand, Joe
shaped the shoe on the anvil.

Some people didn't care how they shoed their mules; they simply nailed
shoes on and let the hoofs grow out to fit them. Joe had never believed
in such slipshod methods. He gave painstaking consideration to the
temper and weight of the shoe, and the conformation of the hoof it was
to fit. Correctly shod draft animals did not go lame easily and they
worked harder because they were comfortable. Joe trusted no one else to
shoe his mules for him.

He looked critically at the shoe, then reheated it and gave it a
slightly wider curve. The mule's hoofs were nearly alike. But they were
not exactly alike and each shoe must be designed accordingly. Finally
satisfied, Joe plunged the shoe in a pail of tepid water and approached
the mule.

The mare mule, at shoeing time, literally went wild. She became so
terrified that she had to be dragged to the forge and roped and hog-tied
after she was there to keep her from injuring the blacksmith. But the
horse had a streak of vanity that took peculiar directions. He was proud
to wear new shoes, and after they were nailed on he spent hours walking
about to test them. Usually a full day passed before he no longer gave
his new-shod hoofs any attention.

When Joe approached, the mule lifted his rear hoof voluntarily and held
it. He did it gracefully, taking all his weight on his other three legs
and never at any time endangering Joe. Joe tried the shoe, and when he
saw that it was a perfect fit he nailed it on. The mule swung his head
to look approvingly at his hoof. Joe rose and wiped the sweat from his
forehead.

Everything except the mule shoeing was done. The wagon had a new box,
and all the parts that had seemed even slightly weak or worn had been
replaced. They knew exactly what they were going to take along, and
among other things they were going to take six of Emma's best hens plus
a rooster, and there was a place for everything. New, double-thick
canvas covered the wagon, and Joe had even arranged a canvas drop
curtain so that, if it were necessary to camp inside, the male and
female members of his family could have their own compartments. Joe had
ninety-eight dollars in cash, and an uneasy feeling that it would not be
nearly enough. But he did not know how to get any more.

As soon as Pete Domley came--and he should be here any minute--they
could rope and shoe the mare mule. There they could start, and the
sooner the better. Joe had dreamed of the Oregon Trail so many times
that, if he wasn't on it soon, he felt that he would begin braying like
a mule himself. He smiled at his daughter.

"I think we'll leave tomorrow morning, Bobby."

"Oh, Daddy! May I stay with Marcia tonight?"

Her lambent eyes glowed with pure delight, and Joe noted with approval
the fire in her voice. Though it was not an unmixed blessing, Barbara
felt all of everything that touched her. Her temperament, Joe felt, was
not unlike the glowing fire in the forge. He said,

"It's all right with me if it is with your mother."

"Are you happy, Daddy?"

"Sure am! I--What the dickens!"

Pete Domley's white horse had appeared on the path leading from Tenney's
Crossing, but Pete was not alone on the horse. Ahead of him, clutched
firmly in Pete's strong hands, was Tad. Pete was also packing a rifle,
something he seldom did unless he intended to go hunting. He reined his
horse to a halt beside Joe.

"I figure this is your business!"

"What's my business?"

Pete said firmly, "Tell him, Tad."

Tad's face was sullen and angry, with every freckle livid. He stared
almost haughtily at his father and Joe's eyes narrowed. He said,

"That's my rifle too, huh?"

"Right."

Tad snapped, "If a man's goin' west he'd better know how to fight
Indians. And I didn't hit him."

"That's right," Pete agreed, "but you couldn't have shoved a knife blade
between the place where that bullet hit the wall and his head."

Joe felt hot anger rise. "Who did he shoot at?"

"He came into the Crossing lugging your rifle," Pete asserted, "and
before anybody could stop him he took a shot at Lard Head."

"I didn't take a shot at him," Tad denied. "If I had, I'd of hit him."

Joe said grimly, "Bobby, you go help your mother. Pete will work the
bellows for me when we shoe the mare."

The girl left, not looking back, and Joe faced his son. "Get off that
horse."

Tad obeyed, but his chin was outthrust and his eyes flashed. Joe flexed
his right arm.

"Take down your britches."

Tad's pants slid around his ankles, and Joe grasped him with his left
arm and turned his bare buttocks upward. With carefully measured force
Joe brought the palm of his right hand down, and the mule turned to look
curiously on this strange scene while Pete's horse danced skittishly.
Tad's normally pink seat assumed a fiery hue, but he did not cry out.
Finished, Joe set the boy gently on his feet.

"If ever, except in your own self-defense, you shoot at another man, be
he red, white, yellow, or black, you're going to get this over again and
three times as hard."

Tears welled up in Tad's eyes, but his jaw was still outthrust and his
shoulders were squared as he walked away. Joe scratched his shaggy head
in wonder.

"I'll be doggoned! Can you tie that one?"

"Nope," Pete admitted. "I can't."

"What would you have done?"

"Same thing you did, Joe. I will say, though, that it's some of the
neatest shooting I ever saw. Lard Head was standing against Frawley
Thompson's fence, and that bullet whistled close enough to curl his
hair. I'll bet there's one Indian scared sober."

"Was he drunk?"

"He's always drunk."

"Makes no difference," Joe declared. "That kid of mine has to have some
respect for people, Indians included. And he's got to realize that
rifles are dangerous."

Pete said dryly, "I kind of think he's beginning to. Shall we bring your
mare mule in and shoe her?"

"Reckon."

They roped the mare mule, dragged her to the forge, threw her, and shoed
her. She struck viciously when they let her up, but Joe had expected the
attack and he dodged it. They put both mules back in their pasture and
Joe looked uneasily at the house. Emma never struck any of the children,
and Joe had just administered Tad's first spanking. If there were to be
repercussions, they might as well be faced right now. Joe said,

"Excuse me a minute, Pete."

"Sure."

Joe walked nervously toward the house. Beyond much doubt, they would
start for Oregon tomorrow and he had had few arguments with Emma. He
felt uneasily that beginning their trip with a quarrel would be a bad
omen, and sure to bring bad luck. Joe quailed when he looked in at the
door, for Emma bristled to meet him.

"What did you do to Tad?"

Joe braced himself, then became a little angry. "I paddled his hinder
for him, hard as I wanted to lay it on!"

"If you hadn't, Joe Tower, I'd have paddled yours! The idea! Shooting at
that poor, besotted Indian!"

Joe asked in astonishment, "You're not mad at me!"

"I would be, if you hadn't done a father's duty!"

He put his hand on her shoulder for a moment, and gave her a wry smile.
"Did Tad tell you?"

"Tad hasn't been near the house. Barbara told me." She wilted into his
arms. "Oh, Joe, do you suppose--?"

Because he knew her so well, Joe knew what she was thinking. At eight
years of age all youngsters were harmless, but at eighteen some might be
bad and some good. Joe crushed his wife to him.

He said, "We'll teach him. It's just that he has to learn some things
the hard way."

"Oh Joe! I'm glad we're going! Oregon will be good for him!"

Joe's heart skipped a beat with delight at hearing her say this. "It
will give him a chance to work his vinegar off. I'm not so sure he could
do that if he stayed here. He'd want a farm of his own, and Elias would
have to loan him some of the money to buy it, and the first time Elias
pressed him there'd be fur flying. It wouldn't be Tad's either."

They felt a tender intimacy, a closeness that made them cling together.
Joe cleared his throat. He had deceived her, and now he must undo that
deception.

He said, "I didn't give your dishes to Helen."

"But," her eyes puzzled, "I asked you to."

"I know. I made a box for them and put them in the wagon instead."

A little anguished shadow flitted across her face. "I couldn't bear to
have them broken."

"They won't be broken," he assured her. "The Casper's broke because they
just didn't know how to pack. We're taking eggs too, aren't we? Every
piece will get to Oregon with us."

The anguished shadow faded and she cast him a glance of purest love. But
doubts remained, and she was a bit ashamed.

"We have so much to carry and so little room."

"There's room for that little box. You'd like to have your dishes,
wouldn't you?"

"I'd love to!"

"Then they're going to Oregon with us. I'd better get the rifle. Left it
outside."

Joe walked out to get the rifle, which was still leaning against the
sycamore, and he returned to the house with it. He smiled whimsically.
The pegs in his and Emma's bedroom were no longer a safe place for the
rifle; they hadn't been in the first place or Tad never would have been
able to smuggle the weapon out of the house. Joe set his jaw. Tad would
have to use the rifle; it was an indispensable part of any man's
equipment on any frontier. But he would have to use it properly. If he
didn't, if there was any more irresponsible shooting, he'd feel the flat
of his father's hand again.

For the time being, Joe hung the rifle back on its pegs. He turned to
smile at his wife.

"The mules are shod, and there's not a darn thing to do except start for
Oregon."

Emma clasped her hands together, her one gesture of apprehension. "It
doesn't seem possible, does it?"

"Nope. Seems like there must be a hundred things to do yet. We'd best
remember to catch your hens and rooster while they're on the roost
tonight. Oh my golly!"

"What's the matter?"

"I left Pete standing outside!"

Joe went to the door to call Pete, and just as he did so Yancey Garrow
rode up on his gaunt brown horse. He held a package across the saddle in
front of him, and his fiddle case was over his shoulder. Grinning, he
dismounted.

"Lucy thought you might like to take this along. It's a ham and a side
of bacon."

"You butchering now?"

"We always," and Yancey voiced what Joe knew was a bald-faced lie, "kill
one hog in summer." Joe gulped. With the possible exception of John
Seeley, who could afford it, nobody butchered in the summer. But the
Garrows had wanted their departing friends to enjoy ham and bacon. Joe
said,

"That's right good of you, Yancey."

"It's nothing," the other said airily. He carried the package of meat
into the house.

Emma greeted him. "Hello, Yancey."

"Hi, Emma. I swear you get prettier every day. How you ever fell for an
old he-coon like Joe is something I'll never understand." He shifted the
fiddle to his other shoulder. Pete stood in the doorway, and seemed to
be waiting.

"Play something, Yancey," Emma pleaded. "Play some music for us."

"Sure. What do you want to hear?"

"Anything."

Yancey Garrow took his fiddle out of its case, tucked it under his chin,
and drew the bow across it a couple of times. He began a lively
rendition of "Yankee Doodle." Her face flushed with pleasure, Barbara
emerged from her room.

"Long while since I've danced with a girl as pretty as you are!" Pete
Domley declared. "Come on, Bobby."

He whirled her around the room while Yancey increased the tempo of his
music. Grinning, Joe took Emma in his arms. A shadow darkened the door
and Fellers Compton was there.

"Stretch my ears and call me a jackass!" he breathed. "You people get
the best ideas of anybody in Missouri!"

He had a wrapped parcel in his hands and he put it down on the table.
"Caroline put up too much strawberry preserves and she hopes to unload
some of it on you, now that you're going away. Keep playing, Yancey.
I'll be back."

While Joe danced with Barbara and Pete Domley with Emma, Yancey played
"Oh, Susannah," and then another of Foster's songs. Putting his fiddle
aside for a second, Yancey dipped himself a drink of water. Barbara's
and Emma's eyes were glistening, for the air was tense and expectant.
This was the way most parties started. Yancey put the gourd dipper
beside the bucket of water just as old Tom Abend drove up with his wife,
his three youngest children, his two married daughters, their husbands,
and their children.

"Fellers said we might come over here to see what's goin' on," he
greeted.

"Right good idea," Joe said.

Tom continued, "One of my boys shot a buck last week, and we made jerky.
Lot more'n we can use so I brought some for you to take along."

"Thanks, Tom."

Joe saw Tom's amiable wife and daughters chatting with Emma. In addition
to jerky, meant to go along with the departing wagon, they had brought
four pies, several pounds of butter, some fresh venison, and two
lanterns. Yancey swung into the plaintive melody of "Ben Bolt" and Joe
found himself dancing with one of Tom Abend's daughters while her
husband danced with Emma.

The neighbors came on horse- and muleback, in wagons and carts, and on
foot, with those who lived nearest arriving first. All bore gifts, and
all explained that they simply had too much at home. The Towers would
really be doing them a favor to take some of it off their hands. In
addition, all brought whatever had been ready for a hoedown in the
making. They overflowed the house and spilled out into the yard, but
somebody had stretched a rope between the house and the barn and hung
lighted lanterns on it. Tonight there would be no thought of saving
lantern oil. Tonight was for fun.

Yancey played until he was tired, and then Les Tenney spelled him. While
not as expert a fiddler as Yancey, Les knew a great many tunes,
variations on those tunes, and when he could think of nothing else he
improvised his own music. Joe saw Barbara dancing with Marcia Geragty,
but only for a second. Grinning, two of Tom Abend's big sons separated
the girls and danced them away. Dancing with eight-year-old Celia
Trevelyan, Tad was having a wonderful time and even the babies danced
with each other.

Inside the house, the table groaned under its weight of food and a huge
pot of coffee, and those who were hungry could help themselves to as
much as they wanted any time they wanted it. But nobody lingered inside
for very long. Old Tom Abend tapped Joe on the shoulder.

"My sons-in-law got a coon treed behind the barn. They want you to come
help shake it out."

"Sounds like fun."

"It will be."

Joe followed old Tom out of the light cast by the hanging lanterns and
into the dark shadows cast by the barn. Tom's two husky sons-in-law
stood beside the barrel of whisky that they had set up on blocks of wood
and tapped. The crowd around the barrel increased as more men slipped
away from the dance, and cups rattled as they were filled and passed
around. Old Tom said clearly.

"We'll drink to the Tower family and Oregon!"

"All right!" they chorused. "To all the Towers and Oregon!"

Joe stepped back into the shadows, raised the cup to his lips, and
managed, unseen, to spill it onto the grass. But he felt as though he
had drunk all of it. His feet were light and airy, and his head seemed
clearer than it had ever been before. He laughed unrestrainedly, and
rejoined the party just in time to choose Emma as his partner for a
square dance which Lance Trevelyan was calling;

    "Alamen left and you git around,
    Hand over hand like a merry-go-round."

As the dance gathered tempo, all the younger children were put to sleep
in either the beds or in whichever wagon was not already crowded with
sleeping youngsters. Joe danced on, and at intervals cups again rattled
behind the barn while the barrel became lighter.

Because it seemed to him that the dance had just started, Joe was amazed
when the sun rose.




CHAPTER SEVEN

Independence


The last hour the Towers spent at their old home was a time of bustling
confusion and great activity. Joe shook hands with all the men, and
stood awkwardly while all the women kissed his cheek and wished him
well. The women gathered about Emma, and tears flowed as they embraced.
Joe gulped, more than ever realizing the enormity of the task they had
undertaken and what it involved. The people gathered about were the
friends of a lifetime, and living together had cemented more than
superficial friendship. There was love too, and respect, and Joe had a
sudden wild desire to ask everybody to go with him. He tried not to look
at the weeping Emma, and knew a lighter moment when he saw Tad, knife at
his belt, swaggering before the younger set. Then he saw Helen Domley
with Carlyle in her arms and turned away so no man would see the tears
in his own eyes.

Under no circumstances could Joe have described exactly how they started
for Oregon; he saw the over-all picture but not the details. He did know
that the mattresses, the last articles to go into the wagon, were
carried there and placed exactly right by an army of willing workers.
The same army literally overwhelmed and hitched the mules, and tied the
placid cow to the wagon's rear. Joe's four younger children, still
sleepy, promptly went to sleep on the mattresses. Tad, who had already
asserted his determination to walk all the way to Oregon, refused to
ride and Mike stayed at his heels. Barbara walked hand in hand with
Marcia Geragty, and Emma was in John Geragty's wagon. Nobody else was
going to Oregon, but the Towers would have plenty of company for at
least the first part of their journey. Not everybody could see them off,
for some had to return to their work. But most went.

The mules, overawed at being caught and harnessed by so many expert
muleteers, were completely tractable. They strained willingly into their
harness when Joe gave the order. Ahead, behind, and one both sides, rode
or walked the people they were leaving. One by one they had to turn back
and start in the other direction, and the last to turn was Marcia
Geragty. Though Joe could not be positive about many other details of
their leave-taking, he was never to forget the parting of his daughter
and her best friend.

They were walking ahead of the wagon, still hand in hand but not
shoulder to shoulder. They were not looking at each other. Suddenly, and
Joe thought that no word passed between them, they stepped off the road
and embraced. Joe stopped the wagon so Barbara could climb in, and
because he did not want her to know that he saw tears in her eyes, he
stared straight ahead. Emma came from John Geragty's cart to climb up on
the wagon seat beside Joe and the last thing the Towers heard from any
of their Missouri friends were the Geragtys shouting,

"Good luck, and God bless you!"

Except for the stubborn Tad, who obviously intended to make good his
boast that he would walk all the way to Oregon, Joe's family was in the
wagon. The accustomed routine of the youngest children had been
interrupted sufficiently to keep them sleepy and subdued. The others
spoke little, for Joe, Emma, and Barbara, had stayed up until the dance
ended. In addition, for the first time each in his own way was beginning
fully to realize that they were definitely on the way. They thought of
all they had left behind, and wondered about what was to come. There
seemed so much to wonder about. Yet everything they might expect to find
had only a vague shape in their minds. Emma reflected, as she moved with
the jogging motion of the wagon, that to wonder vaguely about a vague
future is in itself a tiring thing, more tiring even than a hoedown.

At the first night's camp there was much to do, and all of them too
weary to do it. But Joe did cut wood for a fire, and chain the mules so
they couldn't break away and go home, and tether the cow in a place
where she could find good grazing, and feed Emma's poultry. He was glad
that he had to do no more. Emma spread out some of the remainders of
last night's feast, but no one had much interest in eating. At the same
time no one regretted any part of last night. A rousing hoedown was the
right way to take leave of your friends.

The little ones nodded over their food and then, with the familiar faces
of Emma and Barbara hovering over them and the familiar arms of Emma and
Barbara holding and hugging them, they snuggled down into their places
in the wagon as if nothing here were in any way new or different. Joe
made a pallet for Emma and one for Barbara, and then he and Tad rolled
up in their blankets and lay down a few feet away.

Tad fell asleep in an instant, and slept so deeply that he snored a
little, something he did only when he was completely exhausted. The
occasional snort, emerging at intervals from the bundle of blanket that
was Tad, brought a smile to Joe's face as he lay beside him. That young
one was going to live this trip to the hilt, every minute of it. For a
moment Joe felt good that Tad was to have this tremendous adventure
while he was still so young. But the good feeling gave way almost at
once to a medley of thoughts that shouldered each other out of the way
for his attention--thoughts of possible accidents, and plans to be
made--plans that would be revised from day to day according to the
hazards and needs of the moment. As the land beneath them changed, they
would all need to change, to make the best of whatever might come, to
adapt themselves to each day's demands on them. The older ones would
have to fend for the younger ones. He thought of Emma and Barbara and
Tad, and his heart warmed at the thought of their courage and their
loyalty. And then his heart froze at the thought of the dangers that
might overtake them. And so, with this turmoil of feelings in his
breast, Joe Tower slowly, reluctantly, unwilling to leave his problems
unsolved, dropped off into an uneasy sleep.

Barbara looked up at the stars and at the soft depth of the night sky.
She thought there was something eerie and yet wonderful about sleeping
in the open with her whole family around her. Tonight we are God's
children, she thought. We are closer to God here, with no roof between
us and Him. How fragrant was the night air! How mysterious and beautiful
was the soft rustling of grass and brush, stirring in the gentle summer
breeze! The scratching of a field mouse, the chirp of a
cricket--everything was full of life and promise for the future. She
stretched luxuriously, thinking of great mountains and wide, wild
rivers, and of vast western plains where they would meet strapping
farmers and ranchers, some of them, perhaps, with tall handsome sons,
sons with strong arms and laughing eyes. She grinned at herself 

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