The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr.

hand of the man who had paid him four hundred dollars cash money for his quarter section. He had just driven away, seeing the patch of flax greening and the leaves of the young tobacco fleshing out in their bed. He had taken a last look at the cornfield, where the first frail spears would soon push up, and at the cabin where he and Rebecca had come really to know each other and where Brownie was born. And now in his mind it was the old place, and he felt a little sad at leaving it, as if a part of him and Rebecca and Brownie had been left forever behind. Give him a little time, though, get him across the Kaw and up the Little Blue to the Platte, and he would be all right. Already, seeing the hills and woods opening, he could imagine how it would be along the great, free desert of the Platte. Oregon and the new way of things. Oregon for America, you damn bet! He and others would take Oregon by occupation, and what could the British do then? He felt almost like an old-time Oregon man himself.
   "Feelin' better, Becky?" he asked. "About goin'?"
   She let him have a little smile. Her face looked hot but not fearful now. She had cried for a minute when they left the old place, and then had set her face west and not looked back. Evans had an uneasy feeling that he couldn't realize, ever, what it was for a woman to give up her home. They were finer drawn than men, women were, mixed more in their thinking, so that you couldn't tell what went on in their heads. A woman might hate moving because of leaving her marigolds. Yet he understood Rebecca, too, in ways; she would make the trip, and no complaining, either, and her talk cheerful and her clever hands doing what was to be done.
   "I'm all right, Lije," she answered. "Hot, is all. Why you ask? Changed your mind?"
   "Not me. Anyone at all gets to Oregon, it'll be you and me."
   Her voice was soft. "You're the biggest fool, Lije."
   He knew what she meant. She meant it still struck her queer that he should bow his neck for Oregon and feel better all the time for doing it. Well, it was queer. An old plug didn't often
prance.
   She said, "Hello, there, Dick," and Evans saw that Dick Summers was strolling up. In the old buckskin breeches and redchecked shirt he had put on, Dick was something. Tall, silverhaired, strong-looking in arm and leg and body, he was a man to catch the eye, different from anyone Evans knew, different from those who traveled the Santa Fe trail, from the Mexicans who dressed to show off. There wasn't any show-off in Dick. He was just himself.
   "I'd think you'd melt to a grease spot," Rebecca said, looking at the buckskins.
   "I reckon I got ahead of myself, sure enough."
   She said, "It's the sun got ahead of itself, Dick."
   "Hell of a mess," Evans put in, making a wide sweep of his hand, to the wagons, tents, people, talk, horses, oxen, everything. "Some'll be turnin' back."
   Summers put tobacco in his pipe. "It'll straighten out, likely."
   "Tadlock's the big toad," Evans said.
   "Looks so. Got such a start nobody else'll stand."
   "Maybe he'll make a good-enough captain?"
   Summers nodded as if he didn't quite agree. "Have to keep a tight line on him." He pulled on his pipe while his keen gray eyes went over the layout.
   "Wants to kill all the dogs, down to my old Rock." Summers went on smoking.
   "That's what I hear on the quiet, anyhow. He won't come out for it open, I don't guess. Might cost him votes." Evans put his words so as to be questions. "They say dogs can't make it anyhow? Say they'd give us away to the Injuns?"
   Summers looked at Rebecca, the faint tracks of a smile on his face. "They make good meat if food runs out."
  "Ah-h!"
   "The Sioux eat pup, and I've chewed a few. Taste like hog meat."
   "Sure enough, Dick," Evans asked, "you think we ought to kill the dogs?"
   "Be hell to pay."
   "I know, but you think we ought?"
   "Dog can go where a cow