Free Fair Land, Fair Land by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Page A

so
much that disturbed him. It was what crowds meant, what settlement
meant.
    For now he just rested, and a small fear was in him,
the fear of what he might find. Things changed, himself included.
Would the plains look as they once had? Seeing, would his chest swell
again? Memories could play a man false. Could he see through the eyes
that were young once?
    Well, enjoy the now time. It wouldn't come again,
though likely he would wish it to. Think of Higgins and his fiddle
and the song he'd made up on the trail. He heard it again, heard the
music of the fiddle and Higgins' clear voice, sometimes singing,
sometimes just reciting to the bare touch of the strings. He had
asked Higgins to run through it again, so's he'd remember. He heard
it now, tone by tone, word by word, and saw Higgins, sawing and
singing in the light of the campfire.
I met up with the Bitter Root
On
a warm and sunny day.
It met me with a
friendly hand
And said, "Please,
stranger, stay."
Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?
Then came another pretty place.
Clark's Fork it was by name.
I
said, "I'm pleased to meet you."
It
said, "To you the same."
Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?
My pardner says keep goin'
Beyond
the mountain range.
" No tellin' what
we'll find there,
But it will be a change."
Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?
My pardner says, "Make tracks, hoss.
From country that's too mild.
It'll
draw the white man sure, hoss.
He'll have it
quick with child."
Oh, my wanderin' soul.
Oh,
my wanderin' soul.
Why can't it settle down?
Now I'll tell you why and which,
And
there we'll let it be.
I'm pardnered with a
son of a bitch
Who has the itch,
The
self-same itch as me.
    ** *
    Summers laid another chunk of meat on the trail.
There was enough left for supper and breakfast. Next day he'd shoot
more for the pot. The way was mostly downhill now, falling away
through the mountains to open country. The sun was halfway down from
its high point when Higgins called ahead. "I got a feelin' we're
bein' follered. I got a hunch, Dick."
    "Likely so," Summers answered, speaking
what he thought was maybe true.
    " And here I am at the tail of the string. Bait,
that's what I am."
    " Act pretty, then. Swell up. Ephraim don't go
for stringy meat."
    " Good. He'll pass me up and go for you, you puss
gut."
    " Just send him on."
    The trail fell away and climbed, and there, beyond
the tumble of foothills, soft in the sun, spread the plains. Summers
pulled up. It was a flung land, he thought, a land broadcast by the
first hand from the raw beginnings of earth. There were the buttes,
standing ragged in the light, and the levels that led to the end of
the world. There was a stream with its border of growth, bound down
to meet the big river. There against the far skyline were shapes that
were buffalo. Here Boone Caudill had roamed.
    A wind came up from behind him. It blew his hair
before his eyes and went on to ruffle the yellowed grass.
    He pushed the hair from his eyes and said, "Blackfoot
counuy, Hig. Crow country south and east."
    Hig answered, "Your country, Dick."
 

    13
    THEY MADE CAMP that night in the foothills by the
side of a creek that Summers felt sure was a fork of the Dearborn. It
was strange country to him, strange in the sense that he had never
been right here before, but familiar because it was of a piece with
country he knew.
    Lying awake, he saw Old Charlie again, tracing water
courses in the sand with a forefinger as they sat by the night fire.
"It was purty country, that Dearborn stretch was, purty as this
nigger ever saw, that's what it was, and beaver in every bend of her,
but here, along nigh to sundown, come the Blackfeet, a party of 'em,
and this child come close to losin' his hair. Would have wasn't it
for a fast horse. Arrers singin' past me like birds and one took me
in the arm. We was just two, my pardner and me, and we lit