Moontrap - Don Berry (20 page)

"James, James," he said. "Good to see
you. Come in, come in. Monday, you know Mr. Douglas, do you not?"
James Douglas was the present factor of the Hudson's Bay Company,
having taken over when McLoughlin was forced to resign. There was
talk he was due to be knighted, which drove many of the Americans
almost mad. Bad enough without a "sir" around.

"
Yes," Monday said. "This is Webb—Mr.
Webster."

"Nice to see you gentlemen," Douglas said.
He gazed speculatively at Webb for a moment, then said, "Webster
. . . You were with——"

Webb nodded discouragedly. "Gardner in
'twenty-five, Smith in 'twenty-eight, know a pack o' your boys."

Douglas laughed and turned to McLoughlin. "Well,
John, we've settled the mission claim, I think."

"Good, good," McLoughlin said. "These
gentlemen were just leaving."

With a great bustle McLoughlin showed them to the
door, profuse with thanks and farewells. "And Mr. Webster,"
he said, shaking his finger at Webb, "I hope no more tricks like
that in the spring of 'twenty-six, eh? " He laughed, suddenly
frowned and rubbed his stomach rapidly. "Yes, yes, must tend to
other affairs."

As the door closed behind them Webb closed his eyes
and lifted his face to the ceiling. "Spring o' 'twenty—six,"
he muttered. "
Wagh!
There's the time I busted a bottle over one of them half-breed
Iroquois workin' for Nor'west."

"
Hush," Monday said. He was standing near
the door, trying to hear the conversation inside. There was a shuffle
of papers, and then McLoughlin's voice came strong. It was entirely
changed from the frantic anxiety of a moment before, calm and angry.

"James," he said, "this paper obliges
me to give Thurston five acres and five hundred dollars, and donate
fourteen lots to the Methodist Mission. In addition to which, I must
buy back portions of my own land at exorbitant prices. Is that not
what it amounts to?"

"
Yes, John," came Douglas's quiet voice.
"That is substantially correct."

"This is Thurston's doing, at the base."

"
No, John," Douglas said. "It is
mine."

"
You have bound me."

"John, I thought it better to give you one good
fever and have done with it," Douglas said quietly "You are
eating yourself to death with worry over these American claims. Let
us put an end to it."

After a moment McLoughlin said softly, his yoice
sounding suddenly tired, "James, the only thing that will put an
end to it is my death. But give me my pen."

Monday tiptoed away from the door and down the hall.
When they reached the outside, Webb was frowning.

"
Y' don't mean t'tell me them niggers know ever'
trapper that was ever in the mountains?"

"Damn near," Monday said, depressed.

"
Wagh!
That's some,
now. Imagine! Rememberin' me." It was an enormously flattering
thought for Webb that somebody he'd never seen knew about him. He was
obscurely pleased.

"
They made it their business t' know what we was
all doin'," Monday said. "An' they never forgot nothin',
either. If they ain't got it in their heads they got it someplace in
their books. HBC allus knew a hell of a lot more about th' American
companies than we knew about ourselves."

"Di'n't seem like we never thought much about
what they was doin'. Less'n we run into 'em in the mountains. Then
she was Hannah-Bar-the-Door, for sure!"

Monday loosened the reins from the rail and turned to
look at Webb.

"
Might could be that's why they're still around,
an' all the American companies gone under."

"
Poor feller," Webb said with unaccustomed
sympathy. "Skeered o' rats." But it was a kind of fear he
could understand. He'd known a man oncet as was scared t' death o'
bumblebees. Good man, too.

"Hya!" Monday grunted, pulling his horse's
head around. "There ain't any rats around this country, coon.
Not that kind."

"
But that nigger said—"

"
I know what he said, god damn y'r eyes,"
Monday snapped.
 

Chapter Nine

1

That night Monday played an ancient game with the
world, and lost again. The great disk of the moon swung up above the
river cliffs, threading them with silver, flowing silently across the
thickly textured hills of the valley. The river caught the brilliance
and carried it in long slow swells toward the sea. At the point of
the river's turning there were stately wide whirlpools twisting
slowly in the night, carrying the soot-dark shadows of drifting
branches and deadfalls.

Monday lay on the bed in the cabin, watching the soft
and ghostly light pour in through the little window at the end of the
building, making a clean shape of silver blue against the floor's
rough planking. With the rapid rising of the moon, the shape
shortened and swung across the floor slowly, its angles shifting
imperceptibly into new patterns.

He watched the patch of light for a long time before
sleep came. He tried to slow down his life, somehow, slow down his
eyes, so he could see the actual movement of the light, but he could
not do it. Between one second and the next, he could see no change;
but in a full minute the sharp edge of light had crept across another
crack.

He remembered a watch he had seen once, whose hands,
instead of clicking sharply from minute to minute, moved in a smooth
slow arc. He had watched that carefully too, and had never caught it
moving; the minute hand was suddenly between the lines of the face,
and he could not say when it had happened.

He sighed, and shifted his position in the bed
uncomfortably. There were so many things a man wanted to see that
were just beyond him, a little too fast or slow for the way he lived.
He had never been able to see exactly what the fluttering gulls did
with their wings, either. And once he had watched a half-drowned wasp
walking—for hours, it seemed—trying to figure out the pattern in
which its legs moved; what kind of order there was in this
complicated thing. But he couldn't keep track of them all at once.

He wondered if it were some defect in his seeing, or
if nobody else could see these things either. Perhaps a man was meant
to see clearly only those movements that were approximate to the pace
of his own life—the moon too slow, the movement of an insect's legs
too fast. There were whole worlds he could not understand, because he
could not change his own nature to a new rhythm.

People were the same. You were never aware of the
changing; but some time later you could look back and say that things
had been different before. Webb, Meek, Bill Williams, Trask,
himself—all scattered to hell and gone now. A few years ago they
had all been sitting around the same fire, lying to one another,
cursing, happy. It was almost as though some monstrously slow
explosion had burst in the fire itself, blowing them all off so
slowly they didn't know what was happening.

He tried to picture it all in his mind, where each of
them was now, and see if there was some kind of meaning in it, some
kind of pattern. But he could not do it. There were too many of the
old mountain men, and the space they covered was too large; he could
not think like that, could not perceive correctly.

He remembered hanging over the shoulder of that
artist fellow that was in the mountains, Miller, his name was,
watching him draw, trying to discover the mystery in it. The harder
he kept his eyes on the blobs that rolled from the end of the pen,
the less he saw; just little black marks distributed at random. He
had shaken his head and turned away in puzzlement and then, turning
back—there it was: a whole Absaroka encampment, and it took his
breath away it was so clear. None of the blots and squiggles meant
anything by itself, but when you could see them from a distance, all
at once, they made a sort of reality.

It was like that now. He had a terrible conviction
that if he could stand back and see everything whole, he would
understand it. He would be able to see the picture that was being
made of meaningless and isolated events of his life, like strokes of
a pen.

Well, there was no time for it now. That was the hell
of it, there was never any time. In the mountains if you wanted to
take a day and sit around and think about something stupid, that was
your business.

Monday grinned drowsily to himself, remembering the
time old Trask had sat and watched one of the spoutholes up to
Colter's Hell for twenty-four hours running, watch in hand, just to
see if it went off regular. It seemed that in the mountains there'd
been time for just about anything a man took it in his head to do.
Here, it was different. Here, there was always something pressing.
Always the sensation of something strong and invisible behind you,
never giving you a chance to get things straight before it pushed you
relentlessly on again.

The moon had swung until
it reached his bed, and the moon-square cocked one corner up. After
while it would disappear entirely behind the wall of the house.
Monday sighed, discontented, and rolled over, pulling the blanket up
around his shoulders in the pleasant coolness of the summer night.

***

 
For a moment he was not sure what had
wakened him. Then he realized that Webb, who had remained behind in
Oregon City in the afternoon, had come in. He was squatted before the
fire, his long rifle upright between his knees. Occasionally he poked
up the fire, muttering to
himself.

"So Markhead says, 'Well boys, we ain't goin'
nowhere on foot, an' that's truth. Well, now. Ever'body was real low
in the mind . . ."

Monday hoisted himself up on his elbows, blinking
with sleepiness.

". . . figurin' as how we'd been come over right
smart. Well, up jumps Godin, sayin', 'Hooraw, boys! This child feels
like liftin' ha'r . . .' "

Monday swung the blanket back and sat on the edge of
the bed, rubbing the back of his neck as Webb continued the recital
of a horse raid on the Powder River, that Monday heard a dozen times
before.

"What're y' feelin' like, hoss?" Monday
said finally.

"
Wagh!
Half froze for
meat, this child. Us'ns clean out that deer?"

"Damn near it," Monday said. "We was
eatin' all day yesterday."

Webb grunted. "Damn greedy bastards, Meek 'n'
that Rainy."

Monday was on his knees at the back, the lid of the
cooler raised, poking around inside. "Here's somethin'," he
said. "Hell, coon, you wasn't keepin' y'r knife dry neither, I
noticed." He unwrapped the chunks of meat and threw them in the
pot to boil.

"
Man got t' have a little meat," Webb said
querulously.

"
So," Monday admitted. "Where the hell
y' been, hoss?"

"
Sneakin' around," Webb said.

Monday stirred the pot with the poker. "What's
that mean, 'sneakin' around'?"

"Sneakin' aroumd, y'iggerant dunghead! Di'n't I
say it? Sneakin' around, politickin', spyin' on people an' such."

The idea of Webb sneakin' around and politickin'
struck Monday funny, and he couldn't suppress a laugh. "Damn,
Webb. I swear you do get crazy idees."

"
Wagh!
Hell's full o'
crazy idees," Webb grumbled. "This child knows all about
such, politickin' an' all. He's been politicked by better men than
you ever seen."

"Prob'ly," Monday admitted. "But you
been in the trade longer'n most, too."

"I been politicked by Ashley, and Billy
Sublette, and Fontenelle an' got skun ever' time, too." Webb
reminisced. "This child knows all about such. Even saw Pierre
Chouteau hisself oncet, in St. Looey. But I turn around and run off
slick afore he could smell I had a dollar in my possibles. He'd of
got it, sure god. Thats politickin'." He nodded sharply to
himself with the satisfaction of having fooled even Chouteau, long
years ago.

"Well, hoss, y' make any money with y'r
politickin'? Y'owe me a dollar, I recollect."

"
Hell no!" Webb said disdainfully. "This
nigger was just practicin', like."

Monday shrugged. Seemed like a hell of a way to waste
a nice evening, but if Webb wanted to practice his politickin' it was
his own business. The old man stared absently into the fire.

"
Listenin' about what people got to say, 'n'
all."

Monday turned to look at him, then back to the pot.
"Y' learn anythin' sneakin' around?"

"
Not a whole hell of a lot, " Webb
admitted. "Them city people ain't got one brain between 'em, or
just about. Run to a pack, like buffler. Goes against nature."

"Might could be it does," Monday said,
waiting.

"
Seems like one of 'em gets a idee, they all
think like that."

Monday sat back on his haunches, facing the old man.
Webb continued to look into the fire.
"A11
right, hoss," Monday said quietly.

"
Roll it on out."

After a long moment Webb said thoughtfully, "I'm
thinkin' it ain't too good a idee for you to go watch that there
hangin'."