A Long and Winding Road

by Win

  Once more the rigmarole with the cards, once more the easy patter by Sumner, once more the fatal moment of choice—and Armijo picked the Lady again.

  Sumner declared, “Don Manuel, it is clear that romance is in the air for you tonight.”

  He scooped up the pesos and gave a stack each to two different men, field hands from their dress.

  “A thousand pesos, Gobernador? You are a great man in Nuevo Mexico….”

  But Armijo laughed, waved Sumner off, and walked on.

  “The Ocampos are here from Albuquerque,” Baptiste said softly to Sam.

  They found Nez Begay studying the musicians. He was an intimidating sight, face scarred, his long hair tied back in a chongo, his chest bare, muscular legs left bare by his breechcloth. He seemed puzzled by the music. Twice he had refused wine. Sam had kept two trappers with him all evening, just in case. His comment then was, “You say I’m a guest, but I feel like a prisoner.”

  “We have a surprise for you,” Sam told him.

  Nez Begay nodded, his massive face showing nothing.

  “Come.”

  They went to the courtyard of the main house. It tugged at Sam’s memories, but it was the best place for this meeting, quiet and walled off, with a well at the center and flowers around the borders.

  Sam opened the gate and led the way, Señor and Señora Ocampo and their family stood nervously by the well. Sam had never met them, but Baptiste introduced him and Nez Begay. No one shook hands. It didn’t seem right. Señor Ocampo gave a tight half bow, and he and his wife and two teenage sons walked away.

  Left were two Navajo girls, perhaps seven and ten.

  Nez Begay and the girls looked at each other in amazement. Suddenly his eyes erupted with feeling, almost with violence.

  Nez Begay turned stiffly back to Sam and struggled to make his face blank.

  Sam said to Baptiste. “Let’s go.”

  Beyond the gate Sam and Baptiste climbed the wall and sat on it with their backs to the Begay family and their rifles across their laps. As Sam looked around—there could always be trouble—he heard low murmurings and exclamations. A quick glance back showed the father on his knees, the daughters in his arms.

  The fiesta was winding down. It had been a big event, but Sam’s responsibilities were over. Two trappers guarded the casa primitiva where Nez Begay and his daughters spent the night.

  Sam got an entire bottle of wine and sat down in the courtyard with Baptiste and Tomás.

  “Do you think the girls were too young to be…?” he asked Baptiste.

  “Yes,” said his friend.

  Beyond the courtyard a few people still milled around. Laughs pierced the darkness. The torches Doña Rosa had set out made the leaves of the cottonwoods glow. The violins, guitars, and mandolins spoke of love.

  “Ah, romance,” said Baptiste.

  Sam was sure some people were finding romance behind buildings or in the willows. He wished he felt like romance himself. “Why aren’t you chasing the girls?” he asked his son.

  “My motto with women is veni, vidi, vici,” said Tomás, meaning I came, I saw, I conquered. “But sometimes I like to sit around with the old men.”

  He got a grin from Baptiste and a jaundiced eye from Sam.

  Sam took a slow sip of his wine and looked over the rim of his cup at Baptiste. Maybe he was a little tipsy. “You know,” he said slowly, “It’s time, past time. We are riding together. You’re an odd duck. I want to know your story.”

  “Me too,” said Tomás.

  “Fill your glasses full,” said Baptiste. “This is going to take a while.”

  Baptiste had been born high on the Missouri River and carried in a cradleboard to the Pacific Ocean and back. “She is a Shoshone,” he said, “my father a French-Canadian. She and her friend were abducted, and he bought them to be his wives.”

  At home four languages were spoken, French, Shoshone, Mandan, and English. “Languages have always come easily to me.

  “When my mother brought me to St. Louis to get an education, at the invitation of General Clark, that was the end of my life as an Indian.”

  They sipped and pondered that for a moment.

  “When I was eighteen and working at a post, up on the Kansa River, I met a man. He is an actual prince, Prince Paul, from Württemberg, in Germany. A good man, young, loves the wilderness, like me, loves hunting. He invited me to come home with him and live in his castle.”

  “A real castle.”

  Baptiste went on, “So I learned German. We went on hunting trips. We traveled to Spain and North Africa. I had the time of a young man’s life and at last came back to America.”

  Then he gave a philosophical shrug. “So who am I? A Shoshone, a French-Canadian, an American? A musician, a trapper? A red man, a white man? Maybe I am so many things I have become nothing at all.” Something in his voice was forlorn.

  Sam wondered whether Baptiste was too far into his cups.

  Tomás now spoke in an orotund voice. “Nunc est bibendum.”

  Sam and Baptiste hooted. “Latin?” said Baptiste, spilling wine on himself. “What does it mean?”

  Sam said, “‘Now it’s time to drink.’ It’s the only phrase he knows. Well, besides ‘veni, vidi, vici.’ Hannibal MacKye taught it to him.”

  “Not correct,” said Tomás. “I know one more.”

  “What is it?” said Baptiste.

  “Suppedisne.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Did you fart quietly?”

  18

  Sam and Tomás slept late, rose blearily, got a stack of warm tortillas wrapped in paper, and started on horseback for the rancho of Don Manuel Armijo. Their minds weren’t on the don’s hospitality, or any kind of business—this was strictly Lupe and Rosalita, Joaquin and the infant Francesca.

  As they rode, Sam remembered that May of five years ago, when life tossed Tomás and Lupe to Rancho de las Palomas on the same day, both slaves, the day Sam, Sumner, and Paloma bought them and set them free.

  In the spring of 1828 the teenage boy had been wild with troubles. Aside from the shock of seeing his village attacked, his parents killed, his sister raped and then hanged, he was staring straight into a future as a slave.

  Freeing him didn’t calm the angry waters. The next day Tomás went berserk and tried to kill the don who bought his sister. Soon he also had to sidestep the police, with Sam’s help.

  After his assault on the don, Tomás had to skip town ahead of the law. Since Tomás still needed a family, he and Sam made one, jury-rigged, but a family.

  At Armijo’s rancho Paladin balked for a moment at the front gate, like she didn’t want to go in. Sam didn’t blame her. This was where Tomás and his sister Maria were sold at auction. Sam clucked and they trotted to the jacales.

  When they found Joaquin, he was better. Instead of sucking on her father’s nipple, Francesca was in her grandmother’s arms. And Joaquin no longer looked blank and dead. His hair was wild and his face wilder—it was like each wiry strand of hair was throwing lightning bolts.

  Sam and Tomás swung out of their saddles and tied the horses. Sam walked over and looked at the baby. She had a swatch of very black hair and eyes on the alert.

  Sam turned to Joaquin, then stepped back—Joaquin was almost in his face. “We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “Now that there is no hope of Lupe,” answered Joaquin.

  “We’re not talking about that now,” said Sam.

  “You are not. It does not bother you that some Indian has her every day, maybe several Indians have her every day.”

  Sam didn’t rise to this bait.

  “Why are you so sure this Navajo,” Joaquin plunged on, “this kidnapper and murderer, why do you think he tells the truth?”

  “I know him, “ said Sam.

  Joaquin sneered. “Who would want to look into the heart of a murderer?”

  Sam didn’t answer. Joaquin was drunk enough to bounce off all the walls.

/>   “What will happen after you have wasted time with this exchange of prisoners?”

  Sam wanted to slug the jerk.

  Tomás butted in. “I go after me sister, the one who is also your wife. Maybe if you sober up, I will bring her to you.”

  Sam let them glare at each other for a long moment. Then he said, “I have given my word to find Lupe and Rosalita and bring them back.” He stepped toward Joaquin and grabbed him by the shirt. “And you, mi amigo, are going to ride with us and help out.”

  Sam went for a walk at first light. He loved the early morning this time of year, as the days got longer and longer and the sun rose further and further to the north. His dad told him that the Welsh back in the old country celebrated the longest day of the year—stayed up all night and drank and partied and made whoopee in the bushes. He wished he would be at rendezvous by June 21, so he could party all night with the other mountain men on the solstice, but he wouldn’t—way too much to get done.

  Man and coyote padded all the way around the two camps, Mexican and Navajo, and headed for the source of Turkey Spring, just below the ocher rocks. Coy stepped up to the trickle and lapped.

  Sam knelt by the water, scooped some up with his hands, washed his face, and ran his fingers through his white hair. Then he put his face in the stream and looked at the bottom. Flecks in the sand glinted back at him blurrily. He opened his lips and sucked the cool water in. Then he raised his head out of the water and shook his head.

  Coy shook himself, as though he’d gotten wet too.

  A fellow had to come up here to get a drink of really clean water. Hosteen Tso brought his outfit in early and took the good camping spot near the head of the spring, forcing the New Mexican party to camp a little below. And drink water the Navajos and their horses and dogs had already drunk from, and stepped in, and probably worse.

  Yesterday’s meeting, though, had gone very well. Sam had insisted that the New Mexicans bring some hostages other than Nez Begay’s daughters. Armijo grudgingly brought along one old woman. At least the blankets she wove in her remaining years, Sam thought, would not be slave blankets.

  By luck Hosteen Tso also brought three captives, all children from the raid at Tosato. They couldn’t have learned to be Navajos in so short a time, and their fathers and grandparents would be glad to get them back. Maybe these two peoples could begin to trust each other a little, and cooperate. But Sam knew the New Mexicans would keep pushing into Navajo country, and the Navajos would resist, and more men would be killed and more women and children stolen.

  Oddest of all oddities: The fiercest, most stubborn Navajo was Narbona, who was born Mexican. It all made Sam’s head spin.

  Yesterday afternoon Armijo and his functionaries sat with Tso and his warriors and threw pledges around like dust in the wind. Sam had kept Joaquin and his tornado feelings away from the palaver, and the other most volatile man, Nez Begay, was not angry these days.

  Now Sam said to Coy, “Why did I bring Joaquin?”

  He answered for the coyote, “because you’re crazy.”

  “Do I like Joaquin?” he asked Coy. “Or am I punishing him?”

  “You’re just crazy.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what Hannibal says.”

  Lunacy was a favorite topic with Hannibal MacKye. He had a saying for it: “If you can’t hear the music, you think the people dancing are lunatics.”

  As far as Sam was concerned, that explained his entire life.

  Sam took another drink of the sweet spring water. He was happy—he had accomplished something. This morning they would exchange captives and ride away, the Mexicans to the east, the Navajos to the west.

  What was on Sam’s mind was his own small outfit, headed north to look for Lupe and Rosalita. Joaquin would bring all his drunken bluster along.

  The Utes would merely think he was crazy. Morality? We paid a fair price for these slave women.

  Sam would buy them back if he could. If he was lucky, it wouldn’t cost him a year’s profits. The Utes would throw this idea back in his face: You do the same thing to our women and children. “Morality,” some warrior would say in disgust.

  Sam took a deep breath in and out. He wondered if this quest to find Lupe and Rosalita was hopeless. Maybe so. He wondered if Joaquin would grow up through all this. Could you grow up in middle age?

  Sam had other worries. How would he stay clear of Tomás’s teenage moods?

  Sam sighed. He had been in the mountains for ten years. He’d learned some things. Part of what he learned was not to worry about the future until it tried to trample you. Then a few moves were in order.

  His task was to find the women. Everything beyond that was up to the gods.

  Rideo ergo sum—I laugh therefore I am. That was Hannibal MacKye’s motto, and Sam’s.

  All three outfits were ready to break camp and go. It was best for all to leave at once. Each would check its back trail. They had found agreement here, and a sense of good will. All had better sense than to trust that completely.

  Sam put his moccasin in the stirrup and swung up onto Paladin. Tomás reined up beside him. Baptiste would ride at the rear of the pack mules and spare horses, Joaquin and the hired men alongside.

  Tomás grinned at his father. “Moving always makes me feel better,” he said. “Just moving.”

  Sam looked down the line and started to cluck to Paladin. Just then Nez Begay and his daughters came galloping up. They bore down on the trapper’s party fiercely and stopped in a spray of sand. Nez Begay teasing.

  He looked directly into Sam’s eyes. This time it was a compliment, a sign that Sam was not a stranger, to be avoided for fear of contamination.

  “I have a small gift for you,” he said. “The man you are looking for is Walkara.”

  “Walkara,” Sam repeated, uncertain.

  “A new leader among the Utes. I traded your daughters to him. He does a big business in slaves.”

  “Walkara.”

  “Now, foolish white man,” Nez Begay said with a sly smile, “one thing more. You remember what I told you about saying ‘thank you’ only when you mean…”

  “I do,” said Sam.

  Nez Begay nodded slightly at his daughters, who were grinning. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said the older daughter.

  “Thank you,” said the younger.

  The three Navajos spurred their horses and were gone, fast.

  19

  Walkara.

  This name was new to Sam, and he had dealt with Utes for years. However, it was on the tongue of every Ute he met as he worked his way north. Walkara is the leader of the Noochew people (as they called themselves). Walkara is a great horse thief. Walkara trades many, many slaves. Walkara is a friend to the beaver men. Walkara—you must speak with him.

  So Sam rode north along the mountains and then up the Siskadee, leading a pack train, plus Tomás, Baptiste, Joaquin, and four hired men. He had fine, hot June days. He was on the way to the village of Walkara and also on the way to rendezvous, far upstream from here, where Horse Creek came into this same river. Just below the Uinta Mountains, in a good country, well-watered, grassy, full of beaver, he came to the village of Walkara.

  The chief didn’t let Sam’s outfit walk right into camp. At least a dozen warriors rode out to meet the strangers. Sam had seldom seen such a display of Mexican silver—silver ornamented the bridles, the stirrups, the saddles, everything. As they approached, Sam said to Baptiste, “Where are these people getting this stuff?”

  “Trading slaves,” said Baptiste.

  Sam addressed the lead rider. “My name is White Hair. We come in friendship to see Walkara,” he said in signs. He didn’t speak Ute.

  The rider introduced himself and three others—“We are Walkara’s brothers,” they said.

  The warriors studied Sam curiously. He knew they were noticing the Crow beadwork on his moccasins and breechcloth, against the cloth of his Mexican shirt and beaver hat. But Utes kn
ew beaver men took on Indian ways.

  Some warriors spoke to each other quietly. Sam wondered if trouble was afoot.

  “That’s Shoshone,” Baptiste said. “They’re making little jokes about how funny we look.”

  Sam shot Baptiste a look. “How does a Ute come to have Shoshone warriors under his command?” The two tribes were traditional enemies.

  “Walkara must be one hell of a Ute,” said Baptiste.

  A few minutes later they were seated in council, and Walkara showed that he was in fact a hell of a Ute. “Bienvenu,” he said in French. “Bienvenido,” in Spanish. “Welcome to my camp,” in English. He grinned at his own expertise in languages.

  “Nah haintseh, kimma,” Baptiste said to him, offering a welcome in Shoshone.

  Walkara laughed out loud, “Kimma,” he said. Welcome. “Nah haintseh, tsaan puisunknna en.” Which meant ‘Glad to see you.’

  “This is a regular language convention.”

  “Babel,” said Baptiste.

  “Enchanté,” Walkara said, and roared with laughter at himself. “My name is Yellow Chief.” His face was painted with yellow markings. “In the Noochew language Walkara means ‘yellow.’ White People called me Walker.”

  “I am White Hair,” said Sam, “this is Baptiste, and this is Tomás.”

  Walkara was tall and handsome, eagle-beaked, and bore an amazing aura of fierceness. Though he appeared to be only in his mid-twenties, he carried himself with an expectation that anyone would do whatever he said—anyone, including whatever peons of beaver men sat with him now.

  Sam asked Tomás to put gifts in front of Walkara, tobacco, beads, and knives. Sam usually took the youth into council, as a way of teaching him.

  Walkara tossed his head as though the gifts were trivial, and these guests invited by his dispensation alone. He would sneer at anything, Sam judged, including however many guns you had, and many however men—he would scoff at anyone’s strength but his own. If you were before him, you breathed by his gracious consent.

  Sam began with casual inquiries in Spanish, which sounded like the best of the chief’s languages other than Ute. He asked how the weather had been. He inquired about the spring hunt, knowing that Utes often rode east to the buffalo country. He asked whether Walkara had any beaver skins or buffalo hides to trade.