Rich looked at him, not knowing just how to take that.
“A pass,” Jim said. “Must be close to two thousand feet lower than any of the others. The Feather River goes through it. It wouldn’t take much work to make a wagon road. It’d be the quickest and easiest way there is through the mountains.”
“You don’t say.” Rich sat up straight, thinking of all the possibilities this discovery opened up.
“Found something else, too,” Jim said.
“Oh? What’s that?”
Jim said, “My settling place.”
TWENTY-THREE
Jim was out with some of the Indian vaqueros rounding up a bunch of colts for the breaking when Bartolomeo came galloping to find him.
“Rich is waiting for you,” he said. “He has a stranger with him.”
“A stranger?”
Bartolomeo shrugged. “He has not been here before, anyway, and I do not know him from Marysville.”
Jim left the colts to Bartolomeo and the vaqueros and rode back across the valley. Beckwourth Valley it was now, officially, signed and deeded. A wagon road led through it from Beckwourth Pass and on to Marysville and the American Valley. Jim rode like a hacendado over his broad lands, coming finally to the road and following it by the pastures and corrals to the settlement.
There was the trading post he had built, and a wide campground where the wagon trains could stop, and a long rambling structure that was partly home and partly hotel and tavern. There was nothing between here and Salt Lake, and the emigrants who had suffered through the killing heat and thirst of the long desert march were thankful to stop for a while. There were twenty-two wagons parked in the grounds, their bleached and cracking flanks still white with alkali dust. A little tributary ran close by, slipping noisily over flat stones. Children played in the water and a long line of weary-looking women with straggling hair and sun-blistered faces knelt at the stream’s edge washing clothes. Other women were at the trading post, buying flour and coffee, sugar and potatoes and greens and fresh meat, the first they had seen in weeks. At this time of day the men were either busy with repairs or hanging around the corrals looking mournfully at their worn-out and alkali-poisoned stock and figuring on some horse-dealing. Later, when the sun went down, they would do some hard-earned drinking. Jim regarded these people with a sort of cynical compassion. They and their kind had destroyed much that he loved, and they were destroying more every year. He could not stop them, but he could make them pay. On the other hand they were human beings, pretty wretched at this point in their journey and with more hardship than they knew still ahead of them. So he did not make them pay more than was fair. And more often than he would admit, when they could not pay at all, he gave. No one went hungry in Beckwourth Valley, or went out of it destitute.
Rich’s trap was at the hitching rack, the ewe-necked brown mare standing hip-sprung and drowsy in the shade of the trees. Rich had found that driving was easier on his bones. He hardly ever rode now. Jim left his fine bay gelding to talk things over with the mare and walked up to the house. He still moved with the same lithe ease. His back was still straight and his belly flat, and his hair was as black as ever. Only the lines of his face were cut deeper and the angled bones were sharper at cheek and jaw. His eyes had not changed at all. He was a landowner now, a houseowner. He had settled down. But his eyes were not those of a domesticated animal. Even when he was most content they still had the restless brilliance that belongs to wild things.
He was not content now, and he was not feeling peaceful. He crossed the porch and went inside, and in the dimmer light his eyes glittered, black and fierce.
This was his own room here, shut off from the tavern part, private. Rich was sitting by the window. Serafina had brought him whisky and tobacco and was making sure he was comfortable. Serafina was Bartolomeo’s sister, a widow and far too pretty to be going to waste in rusty black. Jim liked her in red, or yellow, sun-colors to go with her warm brown skin. Today it was yellow. She smiled at Jim and said in Spanish, “You need not look so like a wolf. You’ll frighten this nice young sheep.”
The nice young sheep had been sitting in a cowhide chair. He got up when Jim came in. He had light hair and an eager, pleasant face that probably looked younger than it was because of its smoothness and the extremely round blue eyes. He was dressed like a man who had not been in the country long. He stood hesitantly, looking at Jim, and Rich said, “Jim, this here’s Tom Bonner. He’s come all the way from Sonora to see you.”
“What for?” Jim asked, and looked narrowly at Rich, seeing on his face the same half-laughing, half-malicious slyness that had been there when he told the story of Jim’s Cheyenne captivity to the Crow.
“Mr. Beckwourth,” said Bonner. “Mr. Richards has explained to me why you don’t care much for outsiders, but I—”
“Depends on which way they come,” Jim said. “If they come across the desert from the east I don’t figure they’re going to make me any trouble. If they come from the other direction I figure they are. I came here in the spring of ’52. I found the pass, I found the valley, and whatever there is here I built it. It’s only the fall of ’54 now, and they’re already trying to get it away from me. I won’t sell and I won’t portion and that’s the end of it.”
Rich said, “You all finished, Jim? No, I’m sorry I asked that. Forget it. Just shut up and give the man a chance to say his say.”
Jim turned on Bonner. “All right, say it.”
“I want to write a book about you.”
Jim stared at him. Then he looked at Rich. Rich grinned and sipped his whisky, watching Jim’s face.
Jim turned back to Bonner. “Why?”
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Bonner said.
“I’ll bet you have.”
“Both good and bad,” Bonner said, “but I don’t care much what people say, I like to see for myself. Anyway, the important thing is what you saw of this country and the Indians and all before it changed. You know Kit Carson?”
“Sure,” said Jim. “Know him well.”
“Books about Carson are being read by everybody in the east, he’s famous, and most of the books are lies but nobody cares about that. Your book would be the truth—”
Rich laughed, insultingly.
“Why me?” Jim asked. “Why not Rich? He was a mountain man before I was. He’s gone as far and done as much.”
“No, sir,” Rich said. “I don’t like people. I went to the mountains to get away from ’em. I don’t want ’em pawing and chawing over every little thing I’ve done, believing the lies and sneering at the true things, and looking down their nose at me because I married a squaw and bred up half-breed kids, and didn’t go to church every Sunday. The hell with ’em.”
“It’s you I’m interested in, Mr. Beckwourth,” said Bonner.
Jim looked hard at him and asked again, “Why?”
“Maybe it’s because of the stories I’ve heard. A man doesn’t get talked about either for good or bad unless he’s led a pretty interesting life. Anyway, as I said—Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Carson, you—there aren’t too many of you left, and I think you’re worth writing about. I think you did great things, and people ought to know about them.”
He added candidly, “There’s also a chance for both of us to make some money. I don’t know about you, but I could use it. I’m a journalist, which is not the highest-paid profession in the world.”
“When you’re telling your story, Jim,” Rich said, “leave me out of it.”
“Have I said I was going to tell it?”
“Now, Jim, just listen to what I’m saying. First place, like I just told you, my doings are private—’cept the ones I choose to tell about myself when I get liquored up and most of those never happened anyway. Second place, I’m damned if I want to sit and read how you saved my life ninety-seven times ’stead of just once, and how—”
Jim laughed “That’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about doing.”
�
��All right,” said Rich with dignity. “But I could always get somebody to read it to me. And who’s going to read it to you?”
“Serafina,” Jim said, and then shook his head. “No, she only reads Spanish, and not much of that.” He looked at Bonner and then walked out on the porch and stood there thinking. He began to get very excited. Carson, Fitzpatrick, Bridger—they were all famous now, already in their lifetimes becoming as legendary as the heroes of folk tales. But who knew about Jim Beckwourth? His friends, his enemies, and the purveyors of prairie gossip, that was all. Yet he was as good a mountain man as any. He had not sinned more greatly than most. There was no reason why he should be forgotten, or remembered only, like the dark-skinned Edward Rose, for his villainies, whether he had committed them or not.
“Bonner!” he shouted. “Tom Bonner, come out here.”
Bonner came. Jim walked with him away from the house, out of earshot. He stood with him under the trees.
“Some people think I’m an Indian ’breed,” Jim said. “Maybe you heard that. I’m not. I’m black. Does that make any difference to you?”
“On the contrary,” Bonner said. “I think it does you more credit than if you were white. It was that much harder for you to break free.” He looked around almost sadly at the beautiful valley and the line of wagon tilts partially visible beyond the trading post. “That’s what I want to get into the book, the wonder of what I was born too late to see. Real freedom, before there were settlers and soldiers and all the regulations and troubles that go with them. I suppose there wasn’t any way to stop them coming, and I suppose in the long run its a good thing, the railroads are coming through and the country will be civilized and prosperous and that’s the way it ought to be—at least so they tell me. But I envy you, Mr. Beckwourth. I envy you with all my heart.”
There was a silence, while the wind blew gently through the trees.
“I’ll tell you my story,” Jim said, “on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“My color’s not to be mentioned.”
Bonner looked at him surprised.
“The people that read the book won’t know me,” Jim said. “Maybe if you don’t tell them I’m the wrong color and slave-born, they’ll take me just for what I did and for what kind of a man I am. I don’t care what they think of me,” he added, knowing that he did care and being angry with himself that it was so. “I don’t care if they think I’m the worst villain that ever lived, so long as they’ve got an honest reason for it.”
“People are always ready and willing to believe the worst about anybody,” Bonner said.
“Yes,” said Jim, “but if it’s about a white man there’s always some that at least give him the benefit of the doubt. A black man is different. They’ve cut a pattern for him and made him fit it, and as long as he does he’s a fine fellow and they’ll be friends with him. The minute he steps outside that pattern they’re through with him. He’s branded himself. He’s a bad one. They don’t have any doubt about him, no doubt at all.” Jim grinned, rather ferociously. “On top of that I’m a squaw man. I live with Indians. The whites don’t care for that. They figure if I’m with Indians I have to be against whites. That’s one reason they want me out of Beckwourth Valley. They look at all this land and they think it ought to belong to someone worthwhile, like themselves. No, they don’t think much of me at all.”
He took a deep breath and glared around at the green meadows, the pine-clad slopes, and the towering peaks with their eternal snowcaps. “We’ll write a book, Mr. Bonner. When do you want to start?”
“What’s the matter,” asked Bonner, “with right now?”
All that fall and winter, between the things that had to be done on the ranch and around the trading post, Jim talked and Bonner listened, writing endless notes, while Serafina kept the glasses filled and the tobacco close at hand, and set the pine logs crackling like musket fire in the grate. Jim told the truth plain sometimes, and sometimes he trimmed it up just a little so it would look better. Sometimes he lied mountain-style, which meant that where he had run ten miles to save his scalp he now ran a hundred, and where he had fought forty Blackfeet he now fought a thousand, and this was natural lying. But other times he lied out of bitterness and frustration, out of pride or shame or sheer sadness of heart, telling things the way they ought to have been rather than as they actually were. When the telling was all done Bonner said, “It’s a great story, Jim, but I have a funny feeling. I think the best parts of it are the ones you didn’t tell.”
“Well, it isn’t finished yet,” Jim said, with his arm around Serafina. “Maybe we can write Volume Two in another twenty years or so.”
“I’ll come around,” said Bonner.
Later Jim said to Rich, “Young Tom’s a smart boy, and knows all about books and writing, but he don’t know anything about the mountains.”
“Oh well,” said Rich, “he ain’t likely to make any more mistakes than you told lies, so it ought to about even out.”
It was a cold March night, with rain rattling on the windows and a booming wind. Rich sat looking into the fire for a long time without speaking, so that Jim knew he had something on his mind. Finally he said, “You been sitting with your bowstring pulled for an hour. Will you let that arrow fly?”
Rich leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Might’s well, though it ain’t going to hit anything and well I know it. I hear talk in Marysville.” Rich had sold the store in Sonora and moved there, and that was technically where he lived, though he spent a great deal of time in the valley. He refused to accept Jim’s invitation to stay there permanently, and Jim, respecting his desire for independence, only asked him once.
“What are they talking about in Marysville?” Jim was somewhat sour about his neighbors on more counts than one. When he opened up the wagon road through Beckwourth Pass they had seen the advantages the town would gain from it and they were more than willing to promise money to pay for the necessary work. Jim wound up putting more than sixteen hundred of his own dollars into the road, and the promises were all he had ever gotten back.
“They’re talking horse thieves,” Rich said.
“Is that anything new?”
“No,” said Rich. “And yes.”
“They hung up some horse thieves just this January. Ain’t they satisfied?”
“Seems like people are still losing stock. They’re talking Indian now.”
“The ones they hung were white.”
“They figure the ones they’re looking for now are red. Has Bartolomeo been behaving himself?”
“Sure he has. First place, he’s my friend. Second place, he knows better. He knows I’d kill him.”
“What about all the rest of ’em, Jim? Can you trust ’em all?”
Jim got up. “What you’re saying is, I ought to get rid of them. Fire the ones that work for me and tell the others not to come back.”
“Hotbed is the word they’re fondest of in Marysville. Next to kennel. Look at it from the outside, though, if you can. This is a big valley. All kinds of people drift through it to your trading post and you don’t turn anybody away. You’ve got a lot of Indians here and you ran a lot of stock. You’ve got a highroad out to the desert and points east, and it’s no secret that you and I helped run a lot of California horses east once before. If you ain’t in the horse-stealing business now they figure you ought to be.”
“Let them,” said Jim, “figure whatever damn way they please.”
He would not discuss it any more. But the next day he talked hard to Bartolomeo and then spent almost a week with him talking to other Indians, resident or encamped, and combing the valley for any piece of horseflesh that didn’t belong there. He didn’t find any, and the Indians he talked to seemed to be telling the truth. They were Christian Indians, barring the ones that had backslid. Even so Jim gave them a big talk about his medicine and how strong it was and how it could smell out evildoers no matter where they were. He built a small sweat lodge i
n the Crow fashion and smoked it, and made paint for his face and sang the songs, praying to his medicine. He promised it that he would put up a scalp pole for the hair of horse stealers. The Indians were impressed in spite of their Christianity. They believed Jim, if they didn’t believe in his medicine. The day after the ceremony Bartolomeo told him that four of the men had left, going away quietly in the night.
Jim was relieved. He was not in the least concerned whether the local ranchers lost their horses or not. He was only concerned about the Vigilance Committees and keeping his neck and his valley out of their hands.
Whether the men who had left so abruptly were the culprits or not, the horse-stealings abated and things quieted down. In spite of that Jim was not easy in his mind. He wished he could be as sure of his medicine as he had said he was. He rode the valley, and he felt as he had felt once before long years ago, when the life and the people he loved were still his and there was no reason to think of their going and yet they had seemed to slip away out of his grasp.
Secretly, all by himself, he went away up the valley and built another sweat lodge and blackened it with charcoal. He blackened his face, the color of victory, and he offered the smoke of tobacco and fragrant pine leaves to the Four Quarters, to the earth and the sky, to the Ones-who-make-things-happen. “Year after year may I remain here. Whoever comes against me, may he not succeed.”
He washed his face and rode away, still unsatisfied and sorry he had done it, because it made him all the more clearly remember Absaroka.
Throughout the next three years the pressures grew stronger. More and more people were settling in California. More and more people wanted land, and Jim was sitting on miles of the best land there was. Big ranchers wanted the whole valley. Small ranchers wanted part of it. And Rich told Jim repeatedly that he should sell.
“If you don’t, I’m warning you, they’ll find a way to make you. This country’s getting respectable, and crowded. Might’s well face it, Jim, you and I aren’t the kind they want for their big landowners.” He stopped, looking at Jim. “All right, I know, it’s yours, every damn blade of grass and drop of water, and you ain’t going to part with one of ’em. Then you better get rid of some of the people you got here. Like Bartolomeo. They never could catch him, but they were pretty sure of him around Stockton way, and the Marysville people know that. All they have to do is find one single horse on your land that don’t belong here.”
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