Bendigo Shafter (1979) by Louis L'amour Page B

ears to her laughter.
    But it wasn't easy. Not by a long shot.

    Chapter 8
    We lived with hope, but we lived also with fear. Without hope and faith we could not have come west, nor could we have established our town, but fear was ever-present, not only of renegades or Indians, but of man's age-old enemies, hunger, thirst, and cold.
    Gathering fuel or hunting pleased me because they offered time for thinking, and now I thought of how close hunger and cold must ever be. Man's civilization is a flimsy thing, a thin barrier between man and his oldest enemy. Truly, man must be like the beaver, a building creature, only man must build cities as a beaver must build dams. There may be no reason in it whatever. Give a man a pile of sticks, and he will start to put something together, even as we had here.
    A town means order, and order means law, and without them there can be no civilization, no peace, and no leisure. Surely, the first towns came when men learned to domesticate animals and plant crops, but the first culture and good living began when man learned to share the work and so provide leisure for music, for painting, for writing, and for study. As long as a man is scrabbling in the dust for food and fuel, looking over his shoulder for enemies, he cannot think of other things.
    Yet I could see that the more involved a civilization became the more vulnerable it became, and any disaster, war, fire, flood, or earthquake can put man right back to the hunting and food-gathering level on which we now existed.
    No one of us is ever safe. There is no security this side of the grave. A shipwreck or a hurricane can put man back to the brink of savagery, both in the means he uses to get his food and the lengths he will go to get it. The more ill-prepared people are to face trouble, the more likely they are to revert to savagery against each other.
    Our town was an example of what could be. The leaders of our community were the hunter and the fighter. Ethan and I had done more than all the rest to bring meat to the people, and whenever we were gone they looked eagerly forward to our return. When spring came Cain and Ruth would be looked up to, but now it was us.
    Cain worked quietly, doing his share to gather and cut fuel, but always looking forward to spring, to building his smithy and his mill. Cain was not a hunter but an artisan, a sharer of labor, a builder of civilization.
    When spring comes there will be more people, Cain said to me, and we will need some law. If we are to be free to work we must have somebody to wear a badge.
    Can't we do without that? I asked.
    No. Until man can order his own affairs, until he ceases to prey on his brothers, he will need someone to maintain order. A lawman, he added, is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace.
    I had not thought of it that way.
    Twice, hunting beyond Limestone Mountain I came upon pony tracks. It was a distance to go for fuel, but I remembered bitter cold days and wanted to leave the closer fuel for days when we could not go so for afield.
    There was an old travois trail leading up the mountain through the trees, and I had followed it for a short distance. One day on that trail Ethan Sackett rode up to me. He got down and helped me to throw wood into the small cart I was using to collect it. Game's staying far out. I haven't seen a track today.
    Might be a good time to ride to Bridger. Lay in a few supplies while the weather is mild.
    Take you a week, if all went well.
    Worth it, I said. Are you going to fiddle for the party?
    Tom is. I'll help him, time to time. He gave me a sharp look. Watch yourself, Bendigo. Mae Stuart is settin' her cap for you.
    My ears grew hot. Aw, no such thing! Anyway, I ain't about to marry.
    I'd caution against it. Not to say a word against Mae, but she's flighty and marriage won't make a spell of difference. And