Page 283

The Way West (1955)

he rode. Was there a scheme to things after all, and the present just a little part of it, and a man so small he couldn't see it whole? Indians. Fur hunters. Farm hunters. What next? Was it all a stream that went somewhere, that had a sense too big to understand? Aw, the hell with it. He was getting like Jim Deakins, who was dead now and maybe savvied how it was but, living, always wondered. If there was a scheme, it was messed up mighty sorry.
The bottoms were shank-deep in grass, and flowers waved, and chokecherries were ripening, and the women and children that weren't already down from the wagons got down, a sudden frolic in them, smiles on their faces and little cries on their lips, and the men studied the grass and kicked up the soil and followed the rimmed valley with their eyes and allowed this would be fine farming country if only it wasn't so far from things.
Far from things, from markets and stores and churches and soldiers and law and safety and all. Far from the way that was their way. Summers put himself in that time of first seeing again-the river and its branches swimming with beaver, and berries ripe, and Old Ephraim bloody-mouthed from the eating of them, and not a sound except the sounds of nature and no white face, and the sun great and the moon great, and the world his and no one to say him nay.
" There's trout in the river," he said to Brownie. "Trout big as rails."
He rode ahead and came to Evans. Evans raised his broad face, which was lighted as if by good news. "Now I can believe in Oregon, Dick."
" Good, ain't it?"