Boone's Lick

"Yes, but it's too small for Colonel Fetterman and me both," Ma said.

"Oh, that goddamn whippersnapper," Pa said, as if the mere mention of Colonel Fetterman explained everything.

Pa seemed friendly--so friendly I was hoping he would come over and camp with us. Being the oldest, I had spent more time with Pa than the other children--I suspect I missed him most. I would have liked to hear about some of his adventures, out in the west.

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But he didn't camp with us. When full dark came he went inside the fort, to his Indian wife Sweetbreads and his two button-eyed toddlers. One of the cooks had pressed some porridge on Ma, while we were in the fort, so we ate porridge, with a little molasses the cook had given her. I guess that molasses was the sweetest thing Marcy had ever tasted. I believe she would have drunk a quart of it, if we'd had it.

"What did you say to set the colonel off?" Uncle Seth inquired.

"I complained about the way the army caged that old Indian, back at the last fort," Ma said.

The only one missing was Neva, who probably danced all night with the soldiers. G.T. and his puppy had a tug-of-war with a sock. Ma and Uncle Seth sat up late, talking. It felt odd to be camping so close to Pa--I couldn't get him off my mind, couldn't sleep, and sat up and watched the bright moon until it was almost dawn.

10 THE next morning the smell of bacon brought me out of a deep drowse.

It had snowed a little during the night, not much--just enough that we had to be careful to shake out our blankets. While I was warming my hands around a coffee cup Pa came driving his wagon our way, with five or six wood wagons behind him. He stopped the team for a minute and came tramping over, through the light snow.

"Morning, travelers," he said. "What's your plans?"

"Why would you need to know?" Ma asked.

"I want to borrow our whelps, for a day, that's why," Pa said. "I'll take them out with the wood train and see how they perform with a saw and an axe. A good day's work won't hurt 'em--they

"You can come too, Seth, if you're a mind," Pa said.

"No, Dick--I prefer to avoid the saw and the axe," Uncle Seth said.

"Besides, it wouldn't do to leave Colonel Fetterman unguarded, while Mary Margaret is around. If he was to cross her I expect she'd tear his throat out."

"Just so it's his throat, not mine," Pa said.

Ma was watching Pa--I couldn't tell what her attitude was.

"I believe I done you a favor by quitting you, Dick," she said. "Now you won't have to drag yourself all the way down to Missouri, every year or two, to make me a baby. You can make a passel of them right here in Wyoming, without the expense of travel."

Pa had a pleasant expression on his face, and it didn't change. He just pretended Ma hadn't said anything. When he did speak it was only about the weather.

"The fort Indians say there's a blizzard coming," he said. "They know their business, when it comes to weather. It might be best if you stayed near the fort for a day or two, before you go traipsing back across the baldies."

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"Who mentioned going back?" Ma asked. "We might be pla

"I doubt you'll strike gold but you might strike the Cheye

"Hurry it up, Sherman."

Of course, G.T. and I were eager to go with Pa, and Ma didn't forbid it, though I don't think she was too keen on the prospect.

"You wouldn't be trying to steal my boys, would you, Dick?" she asked, when we were dragging our big gray coats over to the wood wagon. If the blizzard came we meant to be prepared.

"Just for the day, Mary Margaret," Pa said. "We've got a wood train to fill before that blizzard arrives. There's no reason to let two big strapping boys sit idle, that I can see."

Ma looked a little stiff, but she raised no objections.

"I hate to leave my puppy," G.T. said, as we were hurrying over to the wood wagons. But he didn't say it loud enough for Pa to hear.

11 You boys are lucky, that mother of yours has got snap!" Pa said, as he led JL the wood train northeast of the fort, toward the thick forests that covered the mountains. I thought the remark odd--after all, he was the man who had been married to Ma for sixteen years--it wasn't as if she were a distant cousin, or just some stranger he had met in passing. Why would Pa talk about Ma as if she were just someone he admired, in a distant way?

I didn't know--I still don't--because we arrived at our place of work and had to jump out and start unloading the saws and axes. It was plain from all the stumps and wood chips all over the place that the woodchoppers had been working on the clump of trees for several days.

After watching us try to use axes for a few minutes, Pa changed his mind and assigned us to the big crosscut saw.

"You're way off in your skills with the axe," Pa said. "Seth ought to be ashamed of himself, for not teaching you better. You're either going to cut your own foot off, or one of somebody else's, which won't do. Try the saw. It will spare the company a lost foot or two."

I was chastened, and so was G.T. We had fancied ourselves the equal of any man, when it came to chopping firewood, but watching the other woodcutters soon put an end to that illusion. All the other woodcutters were faster and more accurate-- of course, they used axes all day every day, while all we did was break up a little firewood for the camp-fire, when there was wood to be had.

Cold as it was, working with a crosscut saw on long lengths of pine log soon warmed both of us up. Before long we were down to our shirtsleeves, and were even thinking of taking off our shirts, as several of the woodchoppers had done. I don't know about G.T., but I was soon thinking thoughts that weren't entirely loyal to Ma, such as, why not live with Pa? The country was glorious--just being out in it was exciting, with the plains so vast and the mountains so high and adventure to be met with, every day.

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Nothing of the sort could be said about Boone's

Lick, or anywhere around it. There were no grizzly bears and no Indians--

it had been a while since

G.T. had even trapped a good mess of crawdads.

If we stayed and became woodcutters, like Pa, I

had no doubt we'd soon get the hang of the axes. And when there was no work to do, think of the hunting. We might find a place where there was still buffalo. We might slay a grizzly bear.

"Stay in rhythm, boys," Pa instructed. "Just be easy and stay in rhythm.

Don't pull against one another."

He grabbed my end of the crosscut saw and was just demonstrating the proper pull when we all heard a ti-yiing from the west and looked around to see about fifty Indians charging across the plain toward us.

"Whoa! Turn these wagons," Pa yelled--I have never seen men move quicker to obey an order. In two minutes the men had four of the wagons turned to form a square, with the other two outside it, to serve as bulwarks. There was already a fair amount of wood in the wagons, enough to provide some cover. I guess there were about twenty of us, all told, on the woodchopping detail--though the Indians had us outnumbered, we all had rifles. The situation didn't look hopeless.

Pa, though, seemed to take a cautious view. He was huddled down with a lanky old woodsman named Sam, the only man sawing who wore buckskin clothes.

"I expect they're just fu

"I hope so," Pa said. "It's too late to try and make for the fort."