The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr.

be on the way and no arguments about it.
   Weatherby's faded eyes argued with Tadlock's black ones. At last he said, "I haven't lived to my sixty-fourth year without learning that the Lord will provide."
   The other men were quiet. Summers thought most of them felt kindly toward the preacher but knew at the same time how foolish was his talk.
   "Don't you see, Brother Weatherby-" Tadlock spoke now as if to a child, trying to show him reason-"we can't allow you to take that chance, for your sake or for ours? I believe in the Lord, too, but I don't believe He approves of recklessness. He wants men to help themselves."
   The men nodded to this, they spit and nodded and let their glances run from Weatherby to Tadlock and back.
   "I wouldn't be any kind of captain," Tadlock went on, "if permitted you to go. I would just be inviting trouble."
   Weatherby's gaze still was steady on Tadlock's face. "The Lord Jesus said, `O ye of little faith.' "
   The edge came back into Tadlock's words. "It isn't a matter of faith. It's a matter of common sense."
   "I'll be running the risk, not you."
   "We can't travel every man for himself. We couldn't let you starve. We'd have to divide, no matter how slender our stores.
   And if you got weak or sick, we couldn't desert you." Tadlock held up, giving time for words to form in his mind. "We'd have to be our brother's keeper."
   Weatherby said, "I'm going."
   "Goddam it. Not with us. You won't listen to reason, so I'll just have to tell you. Not with us. You understand!"
   Weatherby looked around, searching the faces of the other men, his own troubled but hard with purpose, the shadow of Tadlock's goddam on it. As if he had got his answer, he bowed his head and said quietly, "I feel the Lord is calling me. I'll go alone."
   "We can't keep you from doing that. But, understand, we refuse to take any responsibility."
   Off in the shadow of the woods the whippoorwill cried. Summers heard himself saying, "Hold on, Tadlock! I'll take him on."
   "What do you mean?"
   "I'll see he's all right. You ne'en to worry."
   Tadlock looked at Evans. "You're the inspector for that section. Has Summers enough for two?"
   "If Dick says he'll take him, he'll take him, and no skin off anybody's tail."
   "That wasn't the question."
   "I said I'd take him on," Summers broke in. "Ain't that enough?"
   "It's enough for me," Fairman said.
   Weatherby turned on Summers, the trouble on his face gone, as if he had just seen the hand of the Lord. "God bless you, Brother Summers." His voice rose. "I said the Lord would provide."
   Hig was grinning his close-lipped grin. "Where's my pants?"
   Afterwards, Summers wondered at himself. He sat quiet at the Evanses' board and wondered. Vouching for a preacher! A preacher who thought God was an old man with whiskers and rode the closest cloud, a thunderbolt in one hand and a sugar-tit in the other.
   "No tellin' what people'll do," he said out loud.
 

    Chapter Seven
    DRIVE, plod, push, tug, turn the wheels. Eat dust, damn you! Eat mud. Swim in sweat and freeze at night. Work the sun up. Work it down. Keep rolling.
   Watch the stock. Fix the wagons. Unload, load, unload. Sleep dead like a brute while the wheels keep turning in your head, and then get up and go. Drive, plod, push, tug. Damn the dorbugs. Damn distance. Damn gullies, streams, trees. Keep going. Three cheers for Oregon.
   Fall into bed at night and feel your wife's warmth and know her back is turned. Know it and not care, except deep in you where you keep your hates. Let the knotted muscles melt. Let your mind drift. Let women come into it, like the girl, Mercy McBee. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. All right, so is he. Let sleep flow over you, if you can.
 
 
       Curtis Mack didn't talk to Amanda, not as man to wife, or encourage her to talk to him. Not these days. Not, he hoped, ever again. They