The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Page B

"You ought to have married a steer."
   Lying there, hearing her soft weeping, feeling with a fierce pleasure the spasms of her body, he told himself he would find another woman. He wanted to be faithful, and she made it impossible, and so he would throw his restraints aside. He would get out of the mold he'd been cast in. People like his parents, lecturing him about sin! People like preachers, like old Brother Weatherby, preaching against evil! People like these emigrants, fixing lashes as punishment for fornication and adultery! All the men lustful and all fearful, one of another, wanting to save what they had for themselves but maybe to sneak a little on the side. But suppose a man had nothing, or next to nothing?
   He would find himself a woman, he would wrench loose from the morality that had been ground into him. He swore it to himself, resisting, while he swore, the doubt that he could, pushing aside the forethought of a conscience so guilty it might unman him.
   The night bird still called outside, and the breeze still played along the tent. He heard the sneeze of a horse and the distant mooing of a cow. And steady to his ears came the sweep and mutter of the Kaw.
   They had crossed the river that day and moved upstream to a piece of open prairie that lay along the bank. He made the scenes pass in his mind, like a gloss over his fury. They had decided against the ferry because so many of the train were poor, and had had Dick Summers lead them to a crossing. He saw Dick Summers now, riding boldly into the river, exploring it for the best passage. He saw the wagons rolling into it, the oxen blowing water, and the tight wagons like his own riding easy. Summers and a crew snaked up logs for some of the others, like McBee's, and lashed them to the boxes, making houseboats of a kind. A band of Kaw Indians, curious and intrusive as goats, ran on the bank and splashed in the water, their blankets and feathers and odds and ends of calico shirts showing vivid against the new green of the land. Others paddled back and forth in rough dugouts, ferrying women and children across and the supplies that had been unloaded to lighten the wagons. ' Their pay was tobacco and beads and pieces of old clothing and,   it developed later, whatever they could get their hands on and make away with.
   Now, as then, Mack let himself look at the women and speculate about them -at Judith Fairman, a pale, tall, pretty girl, long-legged and graceful but a little flat in the bosom; at the little New Englander, Mrs. Patch, who might hide something behind that matter-of-factness; at Mrs. Tadlock, who was quiet and, in a quiet way, comely; at Rebecca Evans, a sociable and good-humored woman with a front like a butt of hay; at Mrs. Brewer, who had borne ten children and looked it. He saved the best until last. Then he let Mercy McBee come to his sight. Dark hair and white skin. Young breasts. Mouth young. Eyes eloquent of something, of sadness like hunger, or hunger like sadness. She wouldn't know about things, but she could be taught.
   He couldn't look at Amanda as another man might. He could describe her. He could say she was fair and medium tall, that she had a good form, that her face was oval and her eyes wide apart and more green than brown when you looked close -but he couldn't see her as another man might. Would another man see her differently if he knew she was cold?
   Were the others cold? Did the other men have their troubles and go to sleep hungry and sore? Were women like Mrs. Brewer just more obliging or really more ardent? Thou shalt not covet -but he let himself play with the idea of having one of them, of having one who yielded eagerly and tenderly in a secret bed or along a green bank in a screen of willows. Tenderly. That was the word. Maybe what a man wanted, more than anything else, was just tenderness. Amanda couldn't be tender, not outwardly. It wasn't in her. You knew she loved you because of things