A. B. Guthrie Jr. - Fair Land, Fair Land

Fair Land, Fair Land

A B Guthrie
1982

To Robert F Cubbins
myfriend, promoter and goal

AUTHOR'S NOTE
I havesworn more than once to write no more about the early-day West andjust as often have broken the vow. I break it again for one reasonamong others. In my series of novels mostly about the interiornorthwest I left a time gap, roughly from 1845 to 1870. Here Ihave undertaken to fill it. Though the story is complete in itself,it belongs chronologically between The Way West and These ThousandHills. No writer escapes debts. My thanks then to Ruth K. Hapgood, myhelpful editor; to my wife, Carol, an acute and gentle critic, and tomy stepson, Bill "Herb" Luthin, no poor critic himself,both of whom have encouraged me and waited on my work almost page bypage; and to the Great Falls Public Library and the Center ofMilitary History, Department of the Army, for ready and abundantassistance.

PART ONE

DICK SUMMERS climbed the ridge from the channeledvalley, glad enough to be leaving Oregon behind him. He hadn't saidgoodbye to any of the wagon-train people who had hired him for aguide. Goodbyes were something like gravestones. Yeah, rest in peace,you sod-busters. May the Lord bless you, good men and weak. Here'shoping your plows pay off in berries or melons or apples or whatever.

" Hurrah for Oregon," they had called. Sure,plant a nail and reap tomatoes. Till the soil. Put up a house. Breedchickens, pigs, sheep, cattle or whatever. Live fat right there,today, tomorrow and tomorrow. The soil, for certain, was richer thanthat on the stingy acres he had farmed in Missouri, but farming wasstill farming. Let those do it who were farm-turned. For an instanthe was back, a gray-back in Missouri, the slow sod turning to theshare and the slow-poke mule farting in his face. The corn grew upspindly and the tobacco leached-looking. The hogs were growling intheir pens, wanting slops.

No more of that for him. Good for them as liked it.Boresome life if not. He ought to know. He had tried it while marriedto a good if sickly wife who got as tiresome as the chores. He couldcount as fun only the careful training of a good horse.

Even high on the ridge the breath of the Pacificreached him, wet enough and salt enough to pickle pork in. Going easthe was, going east to find the west, the west of wind and open skiesand buffalo. Hurrah for that.

He shifted his hold on his Hawken. It was all hecarried, it and his old Green River knife, some ammunition and asmall sack of possibles.

He veered off to the edge of the Columbia's gorge,lay down and peered over. Far below him, almost straight below, therushing river ran. Here was beaver country, too, though not much tohis liking. Or it had been beaver country, the whole scoop of it,north, south and east, when there were plenty beaver and the pricegood enough to attract men and companies. Hudson's Bay men hadtrapped clear into California and east of there in territory claimedby Americans who weren't too careful themselves, both sides beingplenty willing to poach.

He ought to be getting on, he thought, but for amoment let his mind play with the great cargoes and pack-trainharvests of furs that meant fame for Fort Vancouver and money forHudson's Bay. What would the fort do now, with beaver scarce andworth next to nothing? What would old Here Before Christ do?

He squirmed back from the cliff's edge and startedwalking again. Here had been beaver country all right, but give himthe Popo Agie and the Wind and the Seeds-kee-dee and throw in theupper Missouri in spite of the Blackfeet. Give him a far reach ofeye, the grasses rippling, the small streams talking, buttes swimmingclear a hundred miles away. Give him not Mount Hood but the clean,ungodly upthrust of the Tetons. They were some.

He was hankering for the young years, for the newland and the frolics he had been part of, and he shrugged to shakethe hankering out of his head. Like a tomfool he had spent too muchtime remembering and, remembering, had rushed toward old age, atleast in his mind. He was maybe sixteen when, with a scatter ofeducation, enough to read, write and cipher up to a point, he hadquit his no-account home in Missouri. Two years later he had gone upthe Platte and learned to trap beaver. No sooner was he in thesettlements again than he began to hark back, as if the best part ofhis life was behind him. That's the way it had been. Later he hadgone up the Missouri and into the country of the Roche Jaune and thenagain up the Platte and over South Pass to the Seeds-kee-dee and hadwintered in South Park and so become a hiveman or sure enoughmountain man. Next, up the Missouri in a keelboat, and most of theparty, all except three, rubbed out by the Blackfeet. And each tripwas a remembered trip, too much remembered. Afterward, feeling old,he had gone back to his farm and stayed there until the party boundfor Oregon had wanted him as a guide.

He plodded on, feeling the ocean mist closing in. Howthe hell old was he, anyhow? Christ maybe knew. Couldn't be much morethan forty-five, if that, but the western winds wrote time in a man'sface, and the sun and wind bleached what hair hadn't turned white,and anyone who had spent more than one season in the mountains waslikely to get "old" attached to his name.

But that wasn't the point. The point was he keptlooking back, like a grandpa returned in mind to his pup days.

He halted at a trickle of spring water and drank,belly down. Time, he thought, getting up and going on. There was nosuch thing as time, then, now or ever. Time was always. It was thechanges, the trappings along the way, that a man reckoned his lifeby. Rendezvous dead and gone, along with plenty of those who hadenjoyed it. Beaver nigh gone. Fur companies and some sometimemountain men making out with coarse furs. Before a man knew it thebuffalo might all be killed off. Another marking, another trapping toreckon by. That was the way of men and things. Find a good countryand spoil it.

Maybe only mountains lasted, like Mount Hood yonder,dimmed by the mist.

He came to a stream he didn't know the name of andshucked off his clothes and waded across with his plunder. As long ashe was at it, he might as well clean himself up where he didn't haveto watch for womenfolk.

Dressing, he thought he"d put on his oldbuckskins once he got to buffalo country. Homespun and peg boots wereall right for now. He bet his feet would be tender in moccasins.Mountains lasted and what else? The sky. The stars. Maybe the highplains and the riffling grasses, though like as not men would find ause for the land and gouge it up so's to raise turnips and cabbagesor some other truck not worth eating. Before that was done, he aimedto have a long, good look again.

But even a turnip would sit all right now. He hadbeen walking for eight hours or so by the look of the sun that wastrying to show through the mist, and he hadn't brought even a bite totide him over. No matter. A mountain man could make out. Make outthen, he told himself. Look sharp. Must be some kind of game in thisteary country, small game, anyhow, but the Hawken was too large for arabbit or bird. It would make mush of the meat.

To his right appeared a likely stand of evergreens,pines or spruces, he couldn't tell which. He walked to it, goingsoft, and after what seemed a long time heard little throatcluckings. In a small open space a few fool hens were pecking. Hecould kill one with a thrown rock, but the motion of his arm wouldprobably flush the others, and he had best get two if he could. Hewithdrew and found a dead limb and from his possible sack took ashort length of buckskin. He made a sliding loop of it and tied it tothe small end of the branch. By itself it would collapse, so he boundit around with long stems of green grass. He went back to theclearing and sat down, moving slow. It was movement and not unmovingpresence that spooked critters. The birds didn't scare. They lookedat him with their little snake eyes and went back to feeding. Hesnared one and drew it to him, the others just watching it flutter.He broke its neck with his fingers. He didn't need the noose for thesecond one. It came close, and he reversed his pole and tapped it onthe head with the butt end.

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