Suddenly Cleve felt weak, and remembered his own wound. At the tune he had thought it was no more than a scratch; now he was not so sure. Yet it might be he was feeling only the reaction from battle, the sudden letdown after such explosive action, such great demands upon his body. He stopped when they came abreast of his horse and got into the saddle. His side felt wet and he knew he was bleeding.
He checked the loads in his pistol, although he had re-loaded it only a few minutes before. Minutes? It might only have been seconds. He glanced at the sun … it was scarcely noon.
Cleve van Valen walked his horse toward the wagons, and suddenly his whole body started to shake. He gripped the saddlehorn and clung with all his strength, fearful that he would topple to the ground. He drew rein and waited for the seizure to pass. It was not his wound, he realized now, but the nervous reaction to what he had been through.
Presently he felt better and he walked his horse around the circle, searching for the wagon. Suddenly, a slow finger of smoke mounted … someone had lighted a fire. With a surge of relief he stared at the smoke; there was something comforting, everlastingly normal and real about it. So simple a thing, a lighted fire, yet it was a symbol of man’s first great step toward civilization, and it was his instinctive return to reality when times of trouble came. It is his first reaction, to build a fire, to give himself the security and comfort that a fire symbolizes.
How many times had he seen women start a fire and begin to cook when the first shock of disaster was over, to offer warm food, coffee … how many times had it seemed as if a man, in offering fire and warm food, was saying, “See, I am a man, by these signs you shall know me, that I can make a fire, that I can cook my food.”
And then he saw her standing there, outside the circle of wagons, shading her eyes toward him, shading her eyes against the sun’s bright glare, standing alone and watching him come … not yet quite sure.
Chapter 10
Westward the bright land lay, westward the magic names, names they had heard in story and song, the names that spelled wild country, that spelled Indians, that spelled danger and promise and hope. The Platte was such a name, Ash Hollow another.
Chimney Rock … Horse Creek … Scott’s Bluffs … Fort Laramie … Bitter Creek … the Sweet Water, South Pass, Fort Bridger, the Humboldt River, Lawson’s Meadows, Forty-Mile House … Day after day, sunshine or rain or wind, the wagons rolled westward, their heavy wheels rocking out a strange music from wood and weight upon the uneven ground. Less often now did Cleve van Valen ride the wagon. Both women could drive and he was needed to scout trail, to scout water and grass and fuel, to watch for Indians, to hunt meat. More and more Morgan had come to depend on him, forgetting his animosity for the needs of the wagon people.
High on a windy hill where the grass waved in the sun, Cleve removed his hat and wiped the sweat from the band. His hair blew around his ears, for it had grown long in the passing time. Squinting his eyes against the distance, he considered the situation and his place in it.
Not only had Morgan’s attitude changed, but his own had altered; and not merely his attitude, but his appearance. He had tanned under the sun and wind of days of riding. He had cut wood, driven the mules, wrestled with wagon wheels stuck in the mud or sand, using his physical strength to a degree he had never used it before.
The values out here were different, too. It mattered not at all who a man might have been back in the East; here they only asked, “Can he do the job? Will he stand when trouble comes?”
Around the fire there had also been an almost imperceptible change. Now he was deferred to by Lilith as well as by Agatha. Between Cleve and the wagonmaster there was a truce, but no more. Morgan had not referred at all to the gambling episode. Cleve had no cause to pursue the matter, and Morgan apparently was willing to let well enough alone. But Cleve had refused all invitations to play, and avoided those who gambled.
As for Lilith, he made no further attempt to ingratiate himself, and except at mealtimes they saw little of each other. It was true that he worked for them, but the needs of a wagon train must be fulfilled by its personnel, and men did what they were best suited for.
With their passing of the Great Salt Lake Desert, fear of Indians dwindled. There were Indians about, but they were apt to indulge in petty theft rather than attack. Increasingly, as they moved westward, the problem became a matter of water, grass, and fuel.
The long, winding course of the Humboldt offered little wood or water. For miles its course was marked only by low brush. Off to the south of them there were mountains, and they occasionally saw them like low gray clouds along the horizon. Some of these were capped with snow; always they were off the trail, and almost out of sight. One and all, the travelers looked for the Sierras, for the Sierras meant California, and California was where the trail ended. Cleve still took care of the mules. He took them to water and to the corral, he harnessed and unharnessed them. And he provided the wagon with its fuel, and occasionally with fresh meat.
Naturally quick to observe and to learn, drawing upon his memories of conversations and books he had read, Cleve van Valen soon developed into a first-class plainsman. His eyesight was excellent, and with the revolving Colt rifle loaned him by Gabe French he was well armed. The gelding was strong, fast, and carried him far afield. Well-mounted and well-armed, he developed a liking for scouting far from their line of march, often riding on ahead to locate good camping grounds for the coming night.
Riding thus, far from the line of march, he often came upon game, and two or three times a week he returned from these forays with fresh meat. Aside from what he provided for his own wagon, he often had enough to distribute impartially among the other wagons.
“What you figurin’ on?” Gabe asked him one day. “You plannin’ to run for office?
You’re makin’ a lot of friends on this train.”
“All I want is to get through with a whole skin.” Cleve turned his attention from the hills to Gabe French. “Gabe, when I get to California I’m going into business.”
“Got any ideas?”
“No.”
“Well, you give it thought. It’s safer than minin’, which is a chancy game any way you size it up.” Gabe paused. “Might have some ideas myself.” They had camped on the Truckee, with the Sierras looming above them, when Cleve rode into camp and dropped off a quarter of elk meat at the wagon. Then he rode on, leaving a bit here, a bit there.
Agatha watched him go. “Lil,” she said emphatically, “you latch onto that man, d’you hear? Ain’t many men as good at providin’ as him.” “He’s changed,” Lilith admitted.
“Maybe … an’ maybe you just never knew him in the first place. Might be he didn’t even know himself.” Agatha gazed after him with a critical eye. “He’s changed, all right He’s taken on some color from the sun and some beef in the shoulders. That there’s quite a man.”
“He’s a gambler, and I never knew one really to change, did you?” “That one might. Comes of a good family, Gabe says, who knew his folks. Got rooked out of his due and killed the man who did it.” Mountains now blocked out the western sky, and the desert lay behind them. Snow crested the peaks and ridges, and pines covered the long, steep slopes. Other wagon trains had crossed these mountains, so there must be a way, but from where the wagons now were they seemed a towering and impenetrable wall. How had the first wagons found their way through?
Three times that morning they stopped to clear small slides of rock, snow, and other debris from the narrow trail, and at best it was slow, difficult traveling. The wagons simply inched along, and Cleve scouted ahead for a camping site. When he discovered what he wanted at approximately the distance they would be able to cover, it was a pleasant meadow surrounded by tall pines where a small spring started a cascade from off the mountain. There was good grass, plenty of fuel, and the clear, cold mountain water. After a last look around, he stripped the saddle from the gelding and rubbed it down with a handful of coarse grass.