Questions
by Sevenstars
SUMMARY: Barney West, trying to figure out the grownups and not getting very far. An interlinear to "The Race Town Story."
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I can't understand it. Everybody says "chalk it up to experience," "don't stick your neck out," "mind your own business." Can't they see it the way I do?
I guess they can't, or they wouldn't be sayin' it.
Even Bill. Bill. And Mister Chris. I know it's not that they're afraid. Nobody can last as long as they have in this business and be... cowards. I'd never say they were.
Okay, maybe to Bill the money doesn't matter all that much. Four hundred is a lot, but all he really lost of his own was the twenty-five he drew against his pay. I guess I can sort of see his point there.
And I know Mister Chris has to think first, always, of the wagon train. So do I, when I'm out in front scoutin' with Coop.
But this isn't about scoutin'. It's about what was done to Bill and me.
I don't blame the miners and the rest; I know they'd been drinkin', and like Mister Chris said, they probably didn't even remember what they'd done, once they sobered up. I know people do dumb things when they drink—like Bill,when he started hittin' the jug after I broke my leg last trip. I blame Sam Race and the men who work for him. They hadn't been drinkin'. They knew just what they were doin'.
Just one word, and any of 'em could have stopped it, if they'd wanted to.
And there are a lot of them, and they're probably tough, and they don't much care what they have to do to win. Well, neither do Indians, and we fight them off pretty regular, don't we?
It's not even that I was shamed by the way they treated me. Not just, anyhow, because I was; I admit that. Here I am, seventeen, carryin' a gun, learnin' to scout, drawin' scoutin' pay, and they... they treat me like dirt. I'd like to do somethin' that would show them just what kind of dirt I can be. The kind, maybe, that blows up in a good wind and can blind you, choke you, even suffocate you.
Even dirt can strike back.
But in the end, it's not really about shame, or money. It's about... about doin' what you feel you have to, about standin' up for what's right.
How is what I want to do so different from—well, from the war? Mister Chris, Coop, Bill, Charlie, they all fought in it. They each did what they felt they had to. Each of them felt he was standin' up for the right—even Coop, though his side lost. Nobody made any of them go; they just decided this was somethin' that needed doin', and they went and did it. That's how I feel too, so why is it wrong?
I know the Bible says you should turn the other cheek. But if nobody ever fights back, won't evil just... take over? What kind of world would we have then? I know a lot of church people say this world doesn't matter, but I think it does for as long as we have to live in it. It's like a pond: you have to clear the scum off before you can drink. Scum doesn't belong standin' in decent folks' way.
You have to do whatever you can, to make the world—even just a little part of it—a little bit better. Like what Mr. Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, about how "any Christian soul, working patiently in its little sphere" would find life way too short for all the good things it could do.
So many times I've seen them—all four of them, and Duke too when he was with us—stand up for what they felt was right. They can't think that what Race did was anything but wrong, so why aren't they willing to teach him a good sharp lesson about the right way to treat other people?
We've got at least as many men and guns as he does. Why can't we just go in there and clean out his little... cesspool?
That place of his is mostly tents. Why couldn't we just burn him out? Wouldn't that strike at him where it would hurt? He has it so he can make money; if he didn't, he couldn't.
It wouldn't even take all of us. Just maybe a dozen or so. I'd lead 'em, if Mister Chris would let me. Put a couple high up with rifles for cover, drop a few shots into the middle of the place so Race would know what the score is, and then—just take it down.
I wish Coop was here. He's nearest my age; he can look at things from almost the same place in the road that I'm at, and he always seems to know just how to explain it all so I can understand. Havin' him around—when he's here—is like havin' a big brother, and I never knew how much I wanted it till I had one, kind of.
But he's not here, so it's all up to me.
I've got to go back.
A man has to be willing to fight for what he believes; that's one of the things that makes him a man. And he has to live with himself, all his life.
Killin' that hide hunter was different; he forced me into it, and in the end his brother decided he didn't want to take it any further, which was his choice and his privilege. This is my choice, and I have to go with it.
I know nobody blames me or thinks less of me. But I see that it doesn't matter what other people think. What matters is what you think—what you know.
And I know I can't live with myself if I don't, somehow, try to balance the books with Sam Race.
Even if they kill me, I have to try.
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