Far as the Eye Can See Read Online Free Page A

too. We crossed the Missouri River at Fort Leavenworth and started out on what they called the “Oregon Trail.” There was supposed to be more water that way, better rivers, and fewer Indians. We would go across Kansas, into Nebraska, and then on to the Wyoming Territory. We’d avoid, too, much of the Dakotas, travel north to Montana, on to Utah Territory, Oregon, and then down to California. That was the plan anyway.
    Theo was a big fellow, almost as tall as Big Tree. He had a great mane of hair on his head and his face, with only a little skin showing, a small red nose, and two black eyes peering out from all that hair like a bat from a cave. He had huge arms, a terrific boulder of a chest, and almost no waist at all. His legs was long and lean, so he looked like he ought to be a strong man in a circus. He had a wife and five little ones to contend with. He was short-tempered and had a stern disposition, but he took gentle care of them kids and his wife too. He known where he was going and you could follow along or not. I know he had a agreement with the others in that train—that he would get them there and they’d all stick together—but it really was like he decided he was going and the others tagged along, hoping he wouldn’t notice they was there. In the first weeks on the trail, he didn’t say much to me. I can’t say he was even friendly in the beginning. His kids didn’t say much, neither. Even the little ones only got to caterwauling when they was hungry. And he could shut them up with a look.
    His wife was hard boned and thin, with a kind of chiseled face—like she was carved from rock. She never smiled or frowned or had no expression on her face at all. But she governed the other women and they did most of the cooking for the train. Theo’s wife made the best biscuits I ever eaten in my life. Set them in a frying pan with a little salt pork and let them cook over a open fire until they was hot and crispy. It only took a few minutes per batch and she’d make several every morning—twenty biscuits in a big iron pan—and feed the whole camp with them.
    The other women made soups and stews with the squirrels and wild fowl we killed along the way. Sometimes we’d get a doe or a elk but they’d stew that too. It wasn’t like they was trying to please. Eating was what you had to do to keep alive and moving and that’s how folks looked at it. We eat ourselves a few potatoes and carrots we found along the way now and then, but mostly it was just the biscuits, and the stewed meats with lots and lots of beans.
     
    My first true introduction to the big West was a few days after we got into what folks said was Indian country. Theo kept us near water whenever he could. We followed a stream north for a while, then bent with it to the west until we found another one going straight west and we followed it until it turned north again. Theo took some time to find the best place to cross it so we could keep west. I didn’t know the territory we was in when this happened, but we had just crossed the river when we passed a place called Atherton’s Cut. Like I said, I was following along just a little to the side of the train, and we was riding along a slight rise of ground to the top of a green hill next to a small stuttering stream. At the top of that rise we’d been following, the terrain sloped gently down again and we come to a fork in two small rivers, and where the two rivers split we found a abandoned Indian village. I seen Theo jump from his wagon and walk down there. Big Tree rode over and got off his horse. The rest of the folks in the train had their rifles out and crouched by their wagons. I rode down to where Theo stood by a dying campfire. Big Tree was kicking the ground where lodgepoles had been. Fires still smoldered in several places. It stunk to high heaven.
    “Probably Blackfeet,” Theo said.
    I said, “Looks like they just left.”
    “They stay until they can’t stand the stink any