“A man wants to build close to fuel,” Zebulon argued. “What’s he going to burn, come wintertime? You boys never rustled for wood like I done as a youngster. Not that I had far to go, but any distance is too far, come wintertime.” He listened to the ring of an axe from the Harvey camp. “Strong boys,” he said.
“I wish Eve would set her cap for one of them.” “Now, pa,” Sam protested mildly, “you don’t wish nothing of the kind. Those boys aren’t for Eve … nor for Lilith. They’re good enough men, I expect, and good men to work beside, but Eve and Lilith—they’re different. They weren’t cut out to marry with men like those.”
The two girls had moved away from the fire, and the men could hear water splashing as they bathed near the lean-to.
“Don’t see no reason why they should be so all-fired different. Your ma’s a sensible woman.”
“They get it from you,” Sam replied reasonably. “Those stories you’re always a-telling … how you went off to Albany to see those show-folk. I declare, pa, sometimes I think you don’t know your own mind. Take this trip, now. And don’t get me wrong—I was for it. So was ma, for that matter. But don’t you forget you cut loose from a good farm to go west. Now why d’you supose that was? You’ve got a feeling for different things. You like change, and color, and folks singing, and I see nothing wrong in it. But you marry one of our girls to a Harvey and you’ll break her heart.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Zebulon growled, but he was pleased despite himself. “Still … did I ever really tell you about those show-folk? Sam, there was a gal there in a red spangled dress—you never seen the like.” Suddenly they heard a man running, and turned as Zeke came up to them, his eyes wide and excited. “Pa … there’s something out on the river. Seemed like I heard a paddle splash.”
Brutus Harvey had started for the river with a bucket. Now he turned and walked out on the raft to get a better view of the river, away from the glare of the firelight.
“No honest man would travel the river at this hour of the night,” Zebulon said positively, and went to get his rifle.
“Can’t see but one man,” Brutus said, just loud enough for them to hear. Sam took his rifle and slipped away into the darkness. Already the wilderness had begun to weave its pattern around them, and the ancient instincts, so long dead, were coming back again—the instinct for darkness, to remain concealed until an enemy has revealed himself.
Harvey and his son Colin walked over from their fire, and there was an assuring competence about them that Sam was quick to appreciate. “They tell me it’s a trick of river pirates to lie out of sight in the bottom of a boat until close up,” Harvey said, “and then they jump you.” Brutus put down his bucket and crouched down beside the raft’s hut and drew a huge pistol from his belt.
The canoe came slowly from the darkness, a paddler seated in the stern. The rest of the canoe was covered with sewn deerskins, under it a bulky cargo. “Rides low,” Zebulon Prescott whispered to Harvey. “There could be men in her, all right.” Stepping out into the light from the fire, which was some distance behind him, Prescott said, “Just come in slow and easy, stranger, and keep your hands where we can see ‘em.”
Linus Rawlings let the canoe glide under the last impetus of the paddle. In the background he could see women standing, and from the shadows near the trunk of the nearest tree he caught the gleam of a rifle barrel. Another man crouched, scarcely visible, on the nearer raft. They were the only two who acted as a man should.
Farmers, he thought. If they go on west they’ll lose their hair. Excepting maybe for two of them.
“Hold your fire,” he said casually. “Name’s Linus Rawlings, hungrier’n sin and peaceful as your Aunt Alice.”
Harvey walked down to the bank and peered suspiciously at the bundles under the deerhide. “What you got there?”
“Beaver peltry.” As Harvey stepped closer for a better look, Linus Rawlings’ voice lowered and chilled. “I said beaver pelts.” Harvey hesitated, still suspicious, but aware of the implied threat in Rawlings’ tone. “You’re almighty touchy,” he said irritably. “Out west,” Linus replied, “you don’t question a man’s word.” Seeing the doubt in Harvey’s eyes, and realizing he was a tenderfoot, he added in a more friendly tone, “We run short on lawyers and notaries west of here, so when a man gives you his word, you believe it. And when a man’s word proves no good, he’s finished … he’ll be trusted by nobody, nor can he do business, anywhere. “Result is—“ Linus moved the canoe alongside the raft and stepped out of it as he talked—“you call a man a liar and it means shooting.” He tied up the canoe, and when he straightened up he saw the girl standing beside the other man. She was slender, but beautifully rounded, and she had a poised, proud way about her that he liked … like a young doe at the edge of a clearing.
“I never had a chance to look at a beaver pelt, Mr. Rawlings,” Eve said. “Would you show me one of yours?”
“Well, ma’am, in that case—“
He knelt on the edge of the raft and loosened the rawhide thongs which bound the deerhide in place, and from beneath it he drew a beaver pelt. The fur was thick, brown and lustrous. When he stood up to hand it to her she realized for the first time how tall he was.
There was a kind of quizzical good humor in his face that she immediately liked, yet there was coolness and a quiet strength such as she had never seen in anyone before.
“It’s soft,” Eve said, “real soft.”
“That’s a prime pelt.”
“We was afeared you might be a pirate,” Harvey said. “We’ve heard tell of them.” “Come up to supper,” Prescott added, “and get acquainted. We would admire to hear talk of the western lands.”
Eve handed the pelt to Linus, but gently he pushed it back. “It’s a present. You keep it, ma’am.”
Too surprised to thank him, she held the pelt close against her cheek, watching his lean back as he walked to the fire with her father. Lilith moved up beside Eve. “Well!” she whispered. “You wasted no time! Is that the backwoodsman you’ve set your cap for? Likely he’s got a wife and six kids waiting for him back east.”
Sam came from the shadows and walked to the fire, and Linus glanced at him.
“You’ll do. Pays to be careful.”
Sam flushed with embarrassed pride. “Mister, that’s a fine rifle you’ve got there. Have you been all the way to the shining mountains?” “Lived in ‘em. Been fourteen years from home.”
He seated himself cross-legged a little back from the firelight and accepted a plate from Rebecca Prescott. The Harveys trooped over, bringing their pots and kettles and placing them around the Prescott fire. “That land to the west,” Harvey asked, “is it good farm land?” “Hadn’t farming in mind, but some of it is, I reckon. Maybe most of it. Trouble is that folks back east spent two hundred years learning how to pioneer in timber country, and when they first see the plains they call it a desert. It ain’t nothing of the kind. Just a different way of living, that’s all.” He cleaned his plate and accepted a refill. Lilith had begun playing “I Wish I was Single” on the accordion, playing softly to keep from disturbing the conversation.
“You’re traveling late,” Harvey commented.
“Anxious to reach Pittsburgh. It’s been years since I’ve seen a city, and I aim to whoop it up a mite.”
“Are those mountains out there as high as they say?” Sam asked. “Now, about that—“Linus frowned thoughtfully, emptying his plate—“I can’t rightly say. Jim Bridger and me, we started out one time to climb one of those itty bitty foothills. That was early June. About mid-July we were gettin’ pretty well up toward the actual mountains when we seen a feller with nice white wings and a harp in his hands. ‘Jim,’ I says, ‘I don’t like the way that feller is lookin’ at us.’ Jim, he looked and he said, ‘Neither do I.’ So we skedaddled back down again, and to this day I can’t rightly say how high those mountains are.”
In the brief silence that followed, Zebulon cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, Rebecca spoke. “Now, Zebulon, you just stop. One liar’s enough.”
Linus passed his plate to Rebecca, who refilled it without comment, and Linus said, “Thanky, ma’am. That there’s right tasty.” “Don’t know how you could tell,” she said shortly. “You’ve already had two plates.”