Page 280

The Way West (1955)

cause his world was old. Hell, he wasn't old now except in mind, except by mountain reckoning. Fortynine. And his limbs were strong and his eye keen yet, and he could answer to a woman. It was the way of thinking that made him old, the knowing that he had outlived his time. He could farm in Oregon and grow with the country, as Lije had put it, if only the thing seemed worth the try. If only he hadn't known the Popo Agie.
Day by day and night by night bits of the old years had come back to him, flashes out of the long-unremembered, out of the pushed-aside, out of the clutter of mind, brought to him by sight of hill and water, by doing what he'd done before. Drying meat-and he was with Jim and Boone again, fresh-crossed from the Powder to the Wind, eating old bull blue with winter while they talked about spring hunting. Topping the pass-and it was a soft day and the cactus was blooming red and yellow, and he had said, "Them's pretty now," and old Etienne Provot had spit and answered, "Pretty goddam prickly, I'm thinkin'." Seeing the Wind Mountains, harsh-rising on his right -and he green then, unbelieving he rode on top of the world, asking, "Is this it, sure enough?" The Green again-and his first sight of it, and beaver so thick you could shoot them in the eye, and everybody gay like in a child's dream of finding pretties.
He lived in the now time and in the then time, passing talk with people like old Weatherby, guiding, advising, hunting, joshing with Brownie or with Lije, while gone days and gone folks filled his mind. "Summersl Oh, Summersl You goddam old coonl Ain't seen you since we stood off the Rees. How be you?