Bendigo Shafter (1979) Read online

  He's here? I was surprised.

  In the book. She smiled at me. He'll tell you about himself. Sometimes I think if it were not for books I could not live, I'd be so lonely. But I can take a book out of that trunk, and it is just like talking to an old friend, and I imagine them as they were, bent over their desks or tables, trying to put what they thought into words.

  In that trunk I have some of the greatest minds in the world, ready to talk to me or teach me whenever I am prepared to listen.

  Is it enough? I asked.

  She turned her gray eyes on me and said quietly, Yes, Mr. Shafter, it is enough. Some might find this hard to believe, but I never wanted but one man. We had a wonderful life together before he was killed, and now I have Bud to think of.

  No, my life has been fulfilled in many ways. I don't want to marry again, although I would not have missed my marriage for anything. He was a good man, a strong man. We had love, and we had respect for each other, and that's a lot.

  The truth of the matter was that I'd never heard of Emerson, but I said nothing of that. It seemed likely that I'd hear more about him before long. In the meanwhile there was Walden, and I carried it with me when I went up the mountain in the morning. The weather had moderated. It was mild enough to work without a coat. The snow had melted in exposed places, but we all knew that was temporary. It was a fine day for woodcutting, and I went to work early.

  Everybody was talking about the party, but I could hardly wait until lunch time to open the new book. It was a quiet place up there on the ridge, but I was no such fool as to sit in the open reading. I'd found a hiding place behind three towering pines that stood before a hollow in the rock.

  It was not a cave, just a hollow that permitted nobody to approach me except from in front where my position was masked by the trees. I sat there and read, then put the book aside to think of our town, and of me.

  Christmas was only a few weeks away, and spring would follow after. When grass was green would our people remain? Would others come? We wanted others to come, and expected them, but we were a little jealous, too, for now the town was ours, our creation.

  What of me? What of this person I was? What of the man I might become? Most of all I needed what all men need, a destination. I wanted to become something, for in the last analysis it is not what people think of a man but what he thinks of himself.

  It was there, in Thoreau. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates his fate.

  What I was to do in the world, this I did not know; yet for all my years there had been within me a vague yearning to be something, to hold a responsible place in the world.

  Putting the book away where it would not become damp, I returned to my work and worked hard until almost sundown. Then it was that I saw the wagon.

  It was a large wagon, drawn by six fine, big horses, and there were two outriders, both with rifles. Taking up my rifle, I walked down the hill. Webb was outside, gathering an armful of firewood, and when he saw my gesture he went inside, emerging with his rifle.

  By the time I was standing before Cain's house I knew that all our men were in place and waiting. The wagon was coming into what we called our street.

  The first rider rode out ahead, a stocky, powerfully built man with cold gray-green eyes.

  He held out his hand. We come as friends, he said, to repay the help you offered our brethren. I am Porter Rockwell.

  We knew the name. Rockwell was said to be the leader of the Danites, Brigham's Destroying Angels. It was whispered that these were the men who eliminated those troublesome to the church, and back in Missouri his name had been legend. In Illinois, too, for that matter.

  It was good work, he told us, and we are obliged. I am to speak to Mrs. Macken, in particular.

  Cain came from his house, Ruth Macken and Helen following. Hie wagon pulled up as they emerged, and the driver and the others, for there had been three armed men hidden in the wagon, began to unload.

  There was flour, sugar, coffee, salt, a barrel of pickles, and much else. There were bales of blankets, robes, and clothing to repay Mrs. Macken for those she had so freely given.

  We're beholden, Rockwell said. We have found less of kindness and more of abuse, and had you not gone to the aid of our brethren they would surely have perished.

  The other outrider was Truman Trask. He looked better than before. He was lean, hard, and in fine shape. He was also better dressed.

  When they had unloaded a part of their cargo the rest was taken to Ruth Macken's. Truman and I went up the slope to help the unloading.

  The Prophet has told all his people to trade with you, Porter Rockwell said, if they are nearby and have need.

  Later, I stood beside Rockwell and watched the wagon begin its homeward journey. They had need to return at once, and no time was lost. Rockwell was watching Webb with narrow eyes. That one. I seem to know him.

  He came west with our train, as we all did, I said. He's a good man with a gun.

  Rockwell turned and looked straight at me. You will have need of him, he said bluntly, when spring comes.

  Porter Rockwell swung into the saddle. He had a magnificent horse, and was noted for the horses he owned and bred. He gathered the reins. There will be more of our people over this road. Do you help them if there is need.

  Of course, Cain said.

  Trask emerged from Stuart's house, and they rode off after the wagon. We watched them until they were out of sight. I never knew any Mormons before, I said. Cain shrugged. They are people, he said. Then he turned to me. Have you given thought to Christmas, Bendigo? The younger children will be wanting toys.

  I hadn't done anything about it, I confessed.

  I know. There was a shade of wistfulness in his voice. You've been reading Ruth Macken's books. I always wanted more of an education, and you can learn much. Read as many as you can.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. I am expecting great things of you, Bendigo.

  I blushed. Of me? Then I said, I will try, Cain. But I do not know what I wish to do.

  Give it thought. There is time. He hesitated a moment. Ethan Sackett told me about the Indian you hit. He said you were very quick. He had never seen anyone so quick with a gun. It is a thing to value, but it wants care, Bendigo. When one acts quickly, sometimes one acts too quickly.

  I will remember that.

  Neely and Tom had built a cabin together in order to build faster when snow began to tall, so now Tom Croft began to build his own. He was a good workman, and he worked swiftly and well. Twice he went to the forest with me and looked thoughtful when I told him how I cropped the trees.

  But there are plenty of them, he objected. The mountains are covered with forest.

  They are now, I agreed, but more people come west with each season. Also, the mountains need their trees. Without them the water runs off, and there is no game.

  Ethan Sackett rode up the hill to us. They're gone, he said, pulled out lock, stock, and barrel.

  You found their camp?

  It was east of here. Over on the Sweetwater, and there must have been thirty or forty, judging by the number of fires and what I could make of their sleeping places.

  They'll come back, Croft said.

  They've gone off on a big raid, I think, Ethan said.

  Mae Stuart was at the house when I returned, making paper decorations for the dance, helping Lorna. Lenny Sampson was there, too.

  Cain was sitting by the fire, making nails. He pushed a nail-rod and a header toward me, and I looked around for a steel wedge, trying not to look at Mae.

  Mae was wishful of being looked at, and a pretty girl is hard to ignore. On the wagon train there had been so many folks it was easy to fight shy of any particular one, and Mae had seemed flighty and man-crazy. Now being man-crazy can be a bad thing unless you're the man she's crazy about.

  Yet even as I thought that, a warning voice told me that Mae's
swishing skirts were a trap. She could be mighty pretty and enticing, but supposing something came of it?

  What Mae had in mind, I didn't know. Maybe she just wanted attention, and maybe she wanted a man, and maybe she was thinking of a wedding, but a wedding for me at eighteen would be no good thing.

  A wife and family don't go along with dreams. They hamper a man's movements, they restrict the risks he can afford to take to get ahead, and even the most helpful of women is usually more expense than a very young man can bear.

  No doubt Mae wasn't thinking of that. Seemed to me she was hearing the mating call and wasn't thinking of anything else. Well, I was. And besides, Mae was no girl for me. Yet no doubt she had her dreams, too. Trouble was, I don't think they had much to do with mine.

  So I kept my eyes away from her and tried to close my ears to her laughter.

  But it wasn't easy. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter 8

  We lived with hope, but we lived also with fear. Without hope and faith we could not have come west, nor could we have established our town, but fear was ever-present, not only of renegades or Indians, but of man's age-old enemies, hunger, thirst, and cold.

  Gathering fuel or hunting pleased me because they offered time for thinking, and now I thought of how close hunger and cold must ever be. Man's civilization is a flimsy thing, a thin barrier between man and his oldest enemy. Truly, man must be like the beaver, a building creature, only man must build cities as a beaver must build dams. There may be no reason in it whatever. Give a man a pile of sticks, and he will start to put something together, even as we had here.

  A town means order, and order means law, and without them there can be no civilization, no peace, and no leisure. Surely, the first towns came when men learned to domesticate animals and plant crops, but the first culture and good living began when man learned to share the work and so provide leisure for music, for painting, for writing, and for study. As long as a man is scrabbling in the dust for food and fuel, looking over his shoulder for enemies, he cannot think of other things.

  Yet I could see that the more involved a civilization became the more vulnerable it became, and any disaster, war, fire, flood, or earthquake can put man right back to the hunting and food-gathering level on which we now existed.

  No one of us is ever safe. There is no security this side of the grave. A shipwreck or a hurricane can put man back to the brink of savagery, both in the means he uses to get his food and the lengths he will go to get it. The more ill-prepared people are to face trouble, the more likely they are to revert to savagery against each other.

  Our town was an example of what could be. The leaders of our community were the hunter and the fighter. Ethan and I had done more than all the rest to bring meat to the people, and whenever we were gone they looked eagerly forward to our return. When spring came Cain and Ruth would be looked up to, but now it was us.

  Cain worked quietly, doing his share to gather and cut fuel, but always looking forward to spring, to building his smithy and his mill. Cain was not a hunter but an artisan, a sharer of labor, a builder of civilization.

  When spring comes there will be more people, Cain said to me, and we will need some law. If we are to be free to work we must have somebody to wear a badge.

  Can't we do without that? I asked.

  No. Until man can order his own affairs, until he ceases to prey on his brothers, he will need someone to maintain order. A lawman, he added, is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace.

  I had not thought of it that way.

  Twice, hunting beyond Limestone Mountain I came upon pony tracks. It was a distance to go for fuel, but I remembered bitter cold days and wanted to leave the closer fuel for days when we could not go so for afield.

  There was an old travois trail leading up the mountain through the trees, and I had followed it for a short distance. One day on that trail Ethan Sackett rode up to me. He got down and helped me to throw wood into the small cart I was using to collect it. Game's staying far out. I haven't seen a track today.

  Might be a good time to ride to Bridger. Lay in a few supplies while the weather is mild.

  Take you a week, if all went well.

  Worth it, I said. Are you going to fiddle for the party?

  Tom is. I'll help him, time to time. He gave me a sharp look. Watch yourself, Bendigo. Mae Stuart is settin' her cap for you.

  My ears grew hot. Aw, no such thing! Anyway, I ain't about to marry.

  I'd caution against it. Not to say a word against Mae, but she's flighty and marriage won't make a spell of difference. And then he added, Many a man who had no thought of marrying suddenly finds himself in a place when he's either got to marry or run.

  My eyes ranged the edge of the woods. I leaned against the wagon watching the steam rise from the horses. It was cool, but pleasant, and time to be starting for home. Have you ever been to San Francisco, Ethan?

  A time or two. You figuring to go there?

  Maybe ... I haven't decided yet. I want to make something of myself, and I don't want to live out my days here. Not that I don't like our town, but there's not many folks.

  He grinned at me. Not many girls, either.

  I got red around the ears. All right, there aren't. Girls are part of it, but a man needs room to swing an axe, and I want my axe to cut deep and true. Maybe I'm a damn' fool, I added.

  You're not. You've got good ideas. He looked over at me. Ruth Macken thinks you'll make a great man, someday.

  I flushed again, but I was pleased. She said that?

  Uh-huh ... if you don't get your foot caught in some girl's trap before you get started.

  He got up in the saddle. We could trap some beaver, you and me. There isn't the money in it that there used to be when everybody wore a beaver hat, but a body can still get a price for prime fur.

  I'll need money, but I'll need education. Mrs. Macken says the big cities have libraries, some of them free for the use of anybody.

  We started down the mountain. I'll never be the smith Cain is, and I'm not cut out for farming. With learning I might find my way to something.

  This country needs cattle. No town can depend on hunting, and all the stock you folks have got won't last. There's cattle in Oregon, Bendigo.

  Do you reckon a man could drive a herd from there?

  What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough. Following some rain, a body just might make it. He glanced at me. You figuring on that?

  It's in my mind. If you'd come along to keep the boogers off.

  He chuckled. Seems to me you'd do pretty good at that yourself.

  Trouble is, it takes money to buy cattle, and we don't have it.

  You might find gold. The first gold was found here back in 1842.

  Gold is a chancy thing. Still, a body might find enough to buy a few head and make a start.

  When we reached town he headed off for his dugout, and I stopped by Ruth Macken's to throw down some wood.

  She came out with Bud, and whilst Bud was stacking wood I told her about my idea of buying cattle in Oregon.

  She did not laugh as I half expected she would but asked me about the trail, and I told her what Ethan had said.

  Bendigo, she said, after a bit, when you've gotten rid of your wood, come back by and have supper with us. Well talk about it.

  Well, now. I won't say the idea hadn't been in the back of my head. Helen was a fine cook, but she cooked plain. Ruth Macken fussed over her meals. Helen's was straight, honest food with no nonsense about it, but Ruth did a little extra to everything she fixed, and it was tasty, mighty tasty.

  So while she cooked and fixed at supper, I sat astride a chair, my arms on the back, and told her my thinking. Most of it had just come to mind while I talked to Ethan, but once started it worried at my thoughts like a coyote over a fresh buflalo hide.

&nbs
p; Ethan would go along. We could scout for water and grass on the way out and plan each day's drive to end where there was water, even if the drives were short. We could hire a couple of men out there, bring back a small herd, and if it turned out well, go back for another.

  When I was fifteen I'd helped drive three hundred head from Illinois to New York state, and I told her of that. We ate, talked, and then Ruth Macken said, Bendigo, if you decide to go I will buy a share in your herd and take my money in cattle at the end.

  Well, I just looked at her. There'd been no such thought in my mind. All I'd been doing was hunting a good meal and a chance to tell my idea to a good listener. I wanted to hear it take shape in my mind as I talked. Now, all of a sudden it was no longer just talk, the chance was staring me right in the face.

  It would be a long drive, Mrs. Macken. I'd be wrong not to warn you we might lose all we started with.

  We need cattle here, and I believe you can do it.

  Cain was sitting by the fire when I came back down the hill, but the rest of them were all asleep. He was putting a long splice in a rope so I sat down, fed a stick or two in the fire, and explained my idea.

  You'd have to have an outfit, and grub for the trip, he said, and money to buy cattle.

  Ethan would go with me.

  Cain took a strand of rope and tucked it into place, working it tight and snug with his hands. The idea is a good one, but you'd best give it some thought. I doubt if we could spare both of you.

  Well, I should have thought of that. Ethan and me, both gone for months on end. It would be a danger to the town, and they'd have less meat.

  There's Webb, I said.

  Yes, there's Webb. His tone said a lot. Cain did not trust Webb in a time of violence. Webb was eager, far too eager. Such a man might bring trouble where there was none.

  Well, maybe next year, I agreed, reluctantly. Another year seemed far, far away, and I'd been building plans and thinking what to do with the money I'd make.

  You could go alone, Cain said. He turned the rope in his hands, studying the splice. It was so perfectly done as to scarcely increase the dimension of the rope. The risk would be great, but you've good judgment.