Snow Mountain Passage

by James D Houston

  God’s Doing

  FROM WHERE HE sits between his daughters, Jim can hear the tumult, can’t make out many words, but he gets the drift. He stands up and tells the girls to go stay close to their mother. He tells Milt to get the weapons out of the wagon. Between them they have two rifles, a shotgun, three six-shooters, and four double-barreled pistols. Once everything is loaded, each man shoves two pistols behind his belt. They place the backup pistols within easy reach and prop the rifles where they can be seen, then they lean against the siding and wait.

  After a while he says, “It was a terrible, terrible thing. But I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You know that, don’t you, Milt?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And we don’t mean to kill anybody else today.”

  “No, we don’t,” says Milt. “I ain’t never killed a person in my life, or even shot one, or wanted to.”

  “We just intend to let them know certain preparations have been made.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  At last the heads and hats appear above the sandy slope, the beards and the shoulders and the sweat-stained shirts, a row of men Jim knows too well, after days and nights together for all these weeks and months. Uncle Billy and his oldest son, a son-in-law who never speaks, whose opaque eyes seem bleached out by the constant sun. And Patrick Breen. And Lewis Keseberg. And William Eddy. They all come armed, and Jim has to wonder what Eddy is doing in such a bunch. Surely he’s not one of them, packing his rifle and walking next to Keseberg as if they are trail-mates now. This isn’t right. Ever since Salt Lake, the Reeds and Eddys have been traveling together, sharing animals and wagons. But as for Keseberg—ah, the German—Jim is not at all surprised to see him in the lead, with a coil of rope around his shoulder and a triumphant little smirk across his face. This is the day Keseberg has been waiting for, storing up resentment and biding his time.

  They move down the slope, with some of the drivers behind them, and the women, and the older children. So many children, Jim thinks, as he watches them descend. He hasn’t thought of it before. And until this moment he has not felt so distant from the others. They are a band of nomads who have come upon him in the desert, half of them wild children, ragged and dusty and thin.

  They slide and lunge and kick up plumes, and he finds himself remembering the evening he passed by Keseberg’s wagon just as a cooking pot fell into the fire with a clanging hiss. He saw the German’s three-year-old cringe and draw back at the noise, and saw Keseberg strike his wife across the face, a powerful, open-handed blow that sent her staggering.

  This was after Keseberg had rejoined the caravan. Jim was near his wagon by design, not by accident. At Margaret’s urging he had become a spy. Other women were reporting sounds that woke them in the night, muffled cries. Now he saw Phillipine cowering, and next to her the wary youngster.

  He called out, “Leave her be!”

  Keseberg’s eyes were very round, as he turned, surprised to be observed. Did he imagine that four walls screened off their kitchen from the world?

  “It’s no concern of yours,” he said.

  “It is now.”

  “You don’t know this woman as I know her.”

  Phillipine was frantically waving one hand, as if to say, Don’t bother, don’t bother, he doesn’t mean it.

  “I know a brutal beating when I see one,” Reed said.

  “Are you calling me a brute?”

  “I’m telling you this has to stop.”

  “Are you calling me a brute?”

  At the nearest wagons, others turned from their cooking fires. Jim raised his voice, making it an address for all to hear, and as he spoke, he watched the redness rise to Keseberg’s ears. “Is a woman no different from a mule? Do you beat her whenever she displeases you?”

  Keseberg shouted, “This is no one’s business but my own!”

  “Every woman in this party is upset!”

  “Then let them come and speak to me, not you.”

  “This will stop tonight,” Jim said. “That is an order. Or you will answer to me personally. Do you understand?”

  “I am not beholden to you,” said Keseberg, “or to anyone else in this wagon train.”

  He took a menacing step toward Jim and tried to stare him down, but they both knew it was over, for the time being. The German backed off, as if he’d been waiting for someone to rein him in. There were fourteen years between them, and Jim felt then like a father disciplining a wayward son.

  Now he watches Keseberg swaggering toward him like the son who finally has his father where he wants him. Jim almost smiles. He has expected this. He sees Keseberg as a dangerous child, who must be treated like a child. But why do these others allow him to take the lead? Who has listened to him? And why? It makes no sense. There is a kind of madness about it, thickening like a vapor in the desert air.

  The men stop at the bottom of the slope, all but William Eddy, who keeps walking, with his rifle held across his belly like a soldier on patrol. He is the best shot in the company. Jim has seen him bring down deer and antelope. He has seen him pick off a moving jackrabbit at fifty yards. It occurs to him that Eddy has been appointed to be his executioner. For a moment his dread runs so cold he cannot draw a pistol to defend himself. In the next moment there is no need to, for Eddy walks right up to him and turns and aims his rifle in the other direction, toward the accusers, who do not seem to react. Jim understands it now. Something in them wants a show, some reckless desperation on the other side of weariness and thirst.

  Uncle Billy says, “Step away from the wagon, Reed.”

  “We like it in the shade.”

  Keseberg has cocked his hip like an athlete. He says, “A vote was taken.”

  “You can’t take a vote,” Jim says, “without all council members present.”

  “Well,” says Uncle Billy, “this ain’t something we ever had to vote about before.”

  “What kind of vote, then?”

  After a silence Patrick Breen says, “You’ve cast a shadow over the wagon party, Reed.”

  “You don’t think there’s a shadow over my heart, too? I had no desire to kill Johnny.”

  “But you did!” Uncle Billy’s voice is shrill. “By God, you killed him in cold blood, and we aim to hang you for it!”

  “He struck me first. You know that. Patrick, you saw what happened!”

  As if spying a sudden movement on the nearest ridge, Breen’s narrow eyes waver, glance away, then move back to meet Jim’s. “Indeed I did.”

  “And your Bowie knife did the killing,” says Uncle Billy.

  “A death for a death,” says Keseberg. “That was the vote.”

  In the German’s eyes Jim sees a glitter of high anticipation. He looks at the son of Graves, and at the son-in-law who nods each time the old man speaks, and Graves himself, and Patrick Breen. Once workaday farmers, they are now unraveling, as their bodies shrink and their minds run wild, men with large families that must be fed, who put kin first, as any man would, hoard their provisions and hide their water, looking right through you most of the time, their jaws tight, their eyes screened over, drawn inward above the jaws, and so deranged that they call him a murderer. How dare they accuse him? Are they that far gone? Or is he himself so far gone he can’t see what he has done? We will soon know who is deluded here.

  He pulls his shirt open at the collar, ripping loose a button, exposing his neck and his white chest.

  “Come on ahead, then, Mr. Keseberg. Place your noose around my throat. You and you alone.”

  With a glance at his colleagues, Keseberg lets the coil of rope slide down his arm until he holds it in one hand. Jim draws a pistol from behind his belt and pulls the hammer back. In the silence by the river, the click is like a lightning crack. Jim too is known to be a marksman, famous for his performance among the buffalo herds, firing from horseback like a legendary frontiersman.

  Now Milt Elliott mimics his employer, draws a
double-barreled pistol. Another click. Another crack. All the weapons rise an inch or two, not yet aimed for firing, but brandished. There is a readiness to fire. They are all like John Snyder as he started up the slope, and there is no thought for what the aftermath might be if one or two more should die and others fall wounded. The haggard face of Uncle Billy looks to be beyond despair, as if pulling a trigger would be some kind of blessing.

  William Eddy breaks the spell, Eddy the survivor. “Damn you all!” he says. “Put down these weapons and listen to me. If we start shooting here, ain’t nobody gonna make it across.”

  “Go damn yourself, Bill Eddy,” says Graves. “Jim Reed has to pay.”

  “Then let him ride off alone,” says Eddy.

  “He has to hang,” says Keseberg.

  From the dusty crowd behind the leaders, voices rise in echo.

  “Reed has to pay—”

  “He ought to hang—”

  Eddy cries, “He ain’t gonna hang, and you know that! But what if he could ride ahead and just be …”

  Jim looks at him. “What are you saying?”

  Patrick Breen says, “You mean banished from the party?”

  “I didn’t say ‘banished,’” Eddy says.

  Jim shouts, “What is this, Bill?”

  “I mean, separate yourself,” says Eddy.

  Breen is eager to pursue this. “Banishment now! That too might be a fitting price to pay.”

  “Damn it,” says Eddy. “Banishment is not what I mean at all! I’m talking about a few days …”

  Graves and Keseberg look at each other, they look at Eddy’s rifle and Jim’s six-shooter.

  “How many days are we talking about?” says Graves.

  “You’d better hang me, gentlemen, because I’m not going anywhere.”

  Breen says to the others, “I’ve told you before, I don’t want his blood on my hands.”

  “Ay,” says Breen’s wife, “we’ve seen enough blood for one day.”

  Jim feels a touch upon his elbow and almost pulls the trigger in alarm. It is Margaret, suddenly next to him, gazing hard into his eyes. She reaches up to tuck an edge of the blood-wet kerchief wrapped around his head. When did she awaken? How much has she heard? And what is he seeing in her face? Anguish and fatigue and stern resolve. Her dark eyes looked bruised. Perhaps she did not sleep at all. Perhaps she has not slept in weeks.

  She wears the hat she has worn every day, a straw bonnet tied below her chin with ribbons. Underneath its brim her forehead gathers against some chronic pain. With prim hat and bunched brow has she come to judge this mad display? When she turns toward the accusers, her gaze cuts through the rank of weapons, tells them all to hold their fire and hold their tongues.

  William Eddy says, “If you can see your way clear, we could watch over Margaret and the young ones, me and Milt could.”

  He is baffled now, cannot comprehend this. Has he traveled so far, simply to ride off and leave them in an empty and unforgiving place?

  With pressure on his elbow Margaret guides him, while they walk together across the sand, beyond the wagon, until they’re out of earshot, entering a little pocket that swallows voices, a patch of desert that is the quicksand of all sound.

  Her voice is soft. “Billy Eddy is right.”

  He looks at her, unable to speak. Is she as deranged as the rest of them?

  “You have to ride ahead,” she says.

  “I will not!”

  “It’s our best chance.”

  “Leave you here?”

  “They’re crazy, James.”

  “We’ll hold them off until this settles, then—”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll push on.”

  “The whole party?”

  “Come morning they’ll see the sense of it.”

  “Any one of them could kill you, James. Is that what you want? Keseberg would do it with his hands, you know he would.”

  “He wouldn’t live to brag about it.”

  “Look at him. Look at Graves. They resent us. There’s murder in their eyes. They would love to do you harm, and now they have their reason.”

  “We’ll push on alone.”

  “How can we?”

  “We’ll just hitch up.”

  “We lack the animals to go it alone. The first hill, we’d be stuck again.”

  “Dammit, Margaret. This is my wagon party. I have to see it through!”

  “Ride ahead, then.”

  “That leaves you at their mercy. It’s unthinkable.”

  “They won’t harm us, once you’re gone. I’m sure of that.”

  “It’s me, then. It’s me alone they despise.”

  She looks away.

  “It’s the trail, James. The trail has addled every one of us. Bill Eddy sees it. Please listen. Go. As quickly as you can.”

  “That’s running.”

  “Not if it’s the wisest way. You think I want you proud and bullheaded and lying in the sand like Johnny? You think the children want to remember you like that?”

  “I’ve never run.”

  “Milt is here. Bill and Eleanor Eddy are like family now. If you ride ahead, one man alone can make it through to the other side and find some help and send back more food, and horses. It could end up a blessing for us all. It has to be, James. You know I’m right. We want you alive.”

  He studies her face, her mouth, around her eyes the lines of wear. What has he done to this woman? The months of endless travel have added years of age. And how can he leave her here, and leave the children? They call her frail, but she is not, nor is she deluded like the others. Her eyes are clear. She is his anchor and his rock. His heart fills. His throat fills.

  She waits, giving him time.

  “I never wanted this for you,” he says. “I never imagined it.”

  “No one could have imagined it.” Her eyes brim. “Just tell them, James. Tell them that you’re riding ahead. Please. For my sake. Tell them now.”

  For a long minute he stares out across the sand, where heat currents wave and distort the view. In the far distance a low ridge of hazy violet quivers as if about to detach from Earth and take flight. He shakes his head and looks again, and still it quivers. He walks back toward the men who would expel him, his judges and his jury.

  “If I do this,” he calls out, “I will take a horse and a rifle and a supply of ammunition.”

  They too have been talking among themselves. Now they look at one another. They look at their wives, whose lips are pursed, the faces closed.

  “No weapons,” says Keseberg, with his scornful smile. “We need every weapon for the trail.”

  Margaret exclaims, “My Lord!”

  “And he can carry no food,” says Graves. The white-bearded elder’s face is burdened with the weight of such decisions. “There’s none to spare.”

  “With our children going hungry,” says Elizabeth Graves, “we can’t give food to murderers.”

  “No one can survive out here alone without a gun,” says Margaret, who finds herself a party to this monstrous proposal. “That’s certain death.”

  “It will be God’s doing, then,” says Patrick Breen piously, “not ours.”

  from The Trail Notes of Patty Reed

  Santa Cruz, California

  October 1920

  It rained all night the day I left.

  The weather it was dry.

  The sun so hot I froze to death.

  Suzannah, don’t you cry.

  —Stephen Foster

  FROM our front stairs it is only five minutes to the beach. This morning I went walking early. I walked along the hard-packed sand under a high fog, the kind that stills the wind. The sea was glossy, smooth as silk. Waves were rising up so smooth and sharp, they looked like silver cutouts. Offshore all along here there are beds of kelp, where whole forests of slick leaves and bulbs and limbs sway just below the surface. As a wave lifts, the kelp appears like the broad shadow of some great bird flying through the fog
. But you look up and there is no bird anywhere. There is just the shadow, the ghostly shape that seems to slide across the water as the wave moves on toward shore and rises and curls over and breaks and disappears.

  That’s what held me this morning, the way they disappear.

  I couldn’t tell you how long I stood there, watching the waves, each one its own thing and finely edged, moving through the silky water, shining, leaping into a noisy burst of spray, then all of a sudden, it was over. It was just … gone.

  You have to wonder at this, at the way it disappears. After so much buildup and clatter, it comes down to a slick of foam oozing toward your feet. And then not even that.

  What I mean is, you get to my age you have to ponder such things. When you’re younger, of course, looking at the Pacific Ocean, chances are you just dive in. You get past eighty you can stand on the beach till noon if you take a mind, or you can sit here on the porch and watch the water all day long.

  It has sent me back again to the time of the crossing and the day our world would change forever. I can see now that a big wave had been rolling and rising and gathering force. After papa killed John Snyder it all came clattering down around us, and something disappeared. I could not have said quite what. But before you knew what happened, something you imagined would always be there was simply gone, sucked right on down into the desert sand.

  I had never seen papa hurt the way Snyder hurt him. When we dressed his wounds he was close to weeping, but trying not to let us know. His head was bowed. I had to turn away from the gashes in his scalp. When I touched his neck I felt his whole body tremble. My sister finally broke down, crying for all three of us, since papa would not let us see him cry, and me, I couldn’t. I felt like running. I could see us running along the trail ahead of the wagon party and making our escape before whatever was coming next. I did not know what that would be, but I already felt it rolling toward us.

  That night after the opposing sides had backed off a ways, after we had fixed dinner and cleaned up the camp and made ready for bed, I saw papa walk out alone toward the riverbank. I was filled with the greatest fear I’d known up to that time. Grandma used to sing a song, a mournful ballad about a fellow who jumped into a river and drowned. I thought that’s what he was going to do. I didn’t know the Humboldt right along there was only two feet deep. I slid out of my bedroll and followed him down to the bank. At that hour, with everything as quiet as it only gets in the desert, you could hear the water slithering along like a snake on its belly, that slow, quiet hissing.