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Green River knife. Satisfied with its edge, he
fixed a piece of tin mirror in the loose bark of a tree.
    At last Higgins asked, "What in hell you aimin'
to do?"
    " Mow the crop down."
    " Shave? Jesus Christ! With that toad-stabber?"
    " Done it many's the time."
    "Why?"
    " Don't like to be called dog face. That's Indian
for whiskers."
    " You wasn't always so tidy."
    " Them west-coast Indians don't count."
    " They was mostly pretty smooth-faced, though."
    " Yup. Indian face skin can't grow much of a
crop. If a hair happens to come through, the Indians pluck it out."
    " Goin' to braid your hair, too?"
    " Maybe. When it gets long enough."
    " Well, let me borrow some of that hot water and
soap. I got my own razor."
    That night they let the campfire burn out, the air
being soft with a touch of breeze in it. The horses grazed close,
Feather's bell sounding clear to his step. Summers got the jug out
and passed it, and they drank while butted on the ground by the dead
fire.
    Higgins looked up at the sky, at what he told himself
was a glory of stars. "You ever see so many stars, Dick?"
    " Wait till we get out on the plains."
    " You ever tried to count 'em?"
    " Sure did. But when I got to a million, I kind
of dozed off. Take another swaller and pass the jug."
    The liquor eased the ache in the bones and brought
the mind to a sort of lazy life.
    " What men may be doin' seems no account here,"
Higgins said. "Don't amount to a damn. But back in Missouri they
was talkin' hot about war with Mexico so's to get Texas. What we want
with Texas, Dick?"
    " I never been there. Down south to Taos and
around, but Texas wasn't for trappers. Put it the other way round.
What does Texas want with us for a fact? Either way don't make sense,
I'm thinkin'. We take it, and what do we get? More people, and we got
a God's plenty of people. That's what spoils a country."
    " All of us guilty, I reckon. I humped a little
slave gal for a while. She was young, no older'n a yearling by animal
count, but I never hung around to see what come of it. When it come
to couplin', I can tell you, she was plumb human. That's what gets me
about slavery. Countin' niggers no good except for work, then havin'
a high old time with their heifers. You ever owned a slave, Dick?"
    "Never wanted to."
    " Me, neither. But if it ever got down to war,
what would you do?"
    " Cuss both sides probably. I don't know."
    Summers fell silent. When at last he spoke, his voice
sounded sad. "I seen this country in its prime, Hig. Beaver in
every stream. We found passes, we did, and followed trails only game
knew. But, hell, I jabbered about all this before."
    " Not so plain as now. Go on."
    "Where we set foot we might have been the first
man there, and we breathed new air into our lungs, and all the time
felt glad and free inside and never gave a thought about what was to
come. About farmers and plows and hide-hunters and all that. We
figured our life was forever. We screwed ourselves, me included,
finding trails and passes and kind of gentling the country. It makes
a man cuss himself."
    " And that's why we're goin' where we're goin'?"
    " One reason. To see what's left. To pleasure
ourselves while we can."
    A star fell down the sky, and the breeze stirred the
ash of the fire, and Summers said for good-night while he looked up,
    " More damn people than all the stars."
    They corked the jug and went to their beds. A bird, a
jay maybe, squawked from the dark trees. Higgins lay on his back and
let the stars and the night take him.
    8
    THAT HALF-BREED at the Dalles — yeah, Antoine was
his name — knew what he was doing when he traced the way to the
Bitter Root. Yet Summers figured he could have found it himself. A
mountain man learned by the stream flow, by the game trails, by the
lay of the land, by the hunch in his bones, how to get where he
wanted to be.
    Where he wanted to be was close to the mountains but
out on the plains, where a man could look west and see the jagged
wall that separated the