A Long and Winding Road

by Win

  She walked back and stood next to her husband.

  “Pegleg,” said Sam, “I’m sorry for the disturbance. Seems clear the way things are. Maybe we can have a drink later.”

  “I want to talk to me sisters,” said Tomás.

  Sam took him by the arm and pulled him away, protesting.

  57

  Early that evening, as the sun dropped below the lines of the western mountains, vendors on the plaza folded their blankets and put away their merchandise. The people of Fernandez de Taos thronged to the plaza. Young, single men and older, married men, señoras and señoritas, old men and women, toddlers, kids, teenagers—everyone gathered, milled, and talked with animation in small groups. In the twilight cigarillos glowed in the fingers of both men and women. Jugs of aguardiente were passed.

  Most important, the musicians plucked out trial tunes on their instruments. Soon the music would sing, and all of Taos would dance. The sweet songs would make feet move, raise heads high, set bodies to swaying. And later these bodies, inspired by the dance to move together, would join in another way, in alleys, in the willows, and in unfamiliar bedrooms.

  Restraint? They cared nothing for that. Taos was a town in love with sensuality, in love with romance. Neither men or women paid attention to the bonds of marriage, or any other bonds. And they were happily led in this path by Father Antonio Martínez, the priest at the Church of San Geronimo, who set the example by siring children hither and yon throughout the valley.

  The trappers came to the plaza too, mostly the cantina run by Xeveria and her brother Gabriel, because they had money to spend. The commanding Ewing Young and his gangly partner William Wolfskill held court at one outside table, and men who had trapped with Young came and went. Some asked after Kit Carson, a fellow everyone liked and expected to see in Taos in the winter. “He sold his beaver here in October,” Young told everyone. “Now he’s trapping up on the Uinta.”

  At a table at the cantina’s opposite corner sat trappers and traders too small for Young and Wolfskill to see as competition. Hannibal MacKye chatted with Baptiste Charbonneau. If Captain William Drummond Stewart had joined them, most of the education in the mountains would have come together in one dialogue; but Stewart was wintering far to the north with Broken Hand Fitzpatrick. Sam Morgan, pretending to watch the scores of people, subtly observed Tomás and his fiancée. Tomás, who now introduced himself by his birth name, Guerrero, instead of Morgan, held hands with Grass. The young couple said nothing. Silence can be sweet, it can be sullen. This one cast a pall on the company.

  Joaquin wandered from table to table, cluster to cluster, family to family, joining anyone who offered him a drink.

  All at once Sam jumped to his feet, and Coy gave a little yip. Sumner strode to the table, grinning broadly. Sam’s friend always looked the dandy, but tonight he had outdone himself. He was outfitted in a moss green suit that set off his black skin dramatically. His royal blue beaver hat was the perfect complement.

  Sam embraced Sumner in the Taos style, an abrazo. “You are some,” he said. “Is that suit…?”

  “Silk,” Sumner confirmed. He pulled up a seat. “Did you notice the silver thread in the weave?”

  Everyone at the table murmured admiration for his outfit.

  Sam was surprised at how glad he was to see Sumner. His trading partner had written in care of Young and Wolfskill that he would ride up for a few days to talk about the coming summer’s business, but…

  Xeveria arrived in a fever to ask the handsome black man what he wanted. “Pass brandy,” Sumner said, his usual. In a flash she was back with the drink and Gabriel. She introduced her brother as though the new guest was royalty.

  “You are a peacock,” said Hannibal. “Everyone looks up to the slave who has made himself prosperous.”

  Sam introduced him to Grass. “Me fiancée,” added Tomás.

  Suddenly Grass interrupted. “When will dancing start?” As far as anyone could tell, dancing was what Grass liked most about Taos.

  “It starts when it starts,” said Sumner, “and it goes on forever. I intend to dance with every beautiful woman in Taos,” he said, “and the fiancée of my friend Tomás is at the top of my list.”

  Since Grass looked puzzled, Sam explained the compliment to her, and she beamed at Sumner.

  “Xeveria,” he said as the waitress appeared. He grasped one of her hands. “Will you be able to get off work and do a little fandango?”

  She gave him a flirtatious look. “For you, anything. My cousin is coming later to help tonight, so…” She twirled away laughing.

  Shadowed figures moved by, and Sam recognized the profiles Pegleg, Lupe, and Rosalita passing. He jumped up. “Join us,” he said.

  They stopped.

  “Please,” said Tomás. Lupe and Rosalita squeezed in, but Pegleg strode on to sit with Young and Wolfskill.

  Sam called, “Gabriel,” and the owner came. “What would you like to drink?” he asked the sisters.

  “Chocolate,” said Rosalita. Lupe nodded

  “An entire pot,” said Sam. He remembered making spicy Mexican chocolate with the two girls in Paloma’s kitchen many times.

  When the pot came, Sam poured Lupe’s cup because one of her arms was full of baby. Sam, Tomás and Grass leaned close to look at the child.

  “Beautiful,” said Grass.

  “Handsome,” said Lupe. “A boy.”

  “Congratulations on your first child,” Tomás said. Sam’s son was capable of a courtly politeness.

  Sam echoed, “Congratulations.”

  “His name is Thomas,” said Lupe, pronouncing it in the American way.

  “Tomás?” said the teenage Tomás, his voice sailing up the musical scale.

  Lupe nodded, a moony smile on her face. “My husband, the one you call Pegleg, his name is Thomas.”

  Pegleg nodded. Sam hadn’t known his given name until now.

  Sam sat back down in silence and sipped his coffee. Joaquin’s son. Now Pegleg’s.

  No one knew quite what to say next. Sam scratched Coy’s ears and decided he had to hand out some news. “Rosalita, your daughter is with Ernesto’s parents.”

  She nodded, dipped her head, and let her long hair cover her sad eyes.

  Sam didn’t need to tell her what happened to Ernesto—she’d seen it with her own eyes.

  “She is well.”

  “My husband,” said Rosalita, “he takes us to Santa Fe next, and will pick up my child. Our child.”

  And sell more horses. Sam also thought, Maybe the prodigious drinker and brawler is ready to take on a family.

  Sam looked across the heads at Pegleg. The man who amputated his own leg was staring at Sam’s table, his expression unreadable.

  “You look wonderful,” Sam told Lupe.

  “I am good, and it is because of my husband,” she said.

  “Good man,” Rosalita echoed.

  “I want to tell.” Lupe plunged forward with her story. “After the birth I got the childbed fever.”

  Sam blinked. That was what killed Meadowlark.

  “Pegleg, he put me on a travois and hauled me all day to San Diego, to a curandera. I owe him my life.”

  “He saved my sister,” agreed Rosalita.

  “Good for both of you,” Sam said, “and for Thomas.” He sneaked a look at Tomás to see whether his son understood the bond between Pegleg and these women.

  Suddenly the fanfare of a trumpet and fiddle put an end to all conversation.

  Toward midnight, according to the big dipper, Sam left the fandango. He loved the music, and he liked to dance. Tonight he’d danced with Grass and Xeveria, with Rosalita and Lupe, and with women he’d never seen before. Everyone had danced with everyone, in fact. The most popular of the men dancers was certainly Sumner. This afternoon Sam had thought of dallying with Xeveria himself—he couldn’t act like a monk forever. But once the black man appeared, Xeveria was his captive. In fact, Sumner could have had a harem.

  Tra
iled by Coy, Sam headed for the creek. He needed a drink that wasn’t whiskey, and he needed some peace.

  The moon was bright, and turned the flow of water to hammered silver. He knelt, plunged his face into the cold liquid, and drank. It tasted good. Bell Rock had told him once that mountain water captures those who taste it. “Once you drink of a mountain creek,” he said, “you will have to come back to its sweetness again.”

  Sam had borrowed a cigarillo back at the cantina, and now he lit it. Though he didn’t have his pipe with him, smoke was smoke. He offered it in a proper way to the four directions, the earth, and the sky. He said some words for the well-being of the children yet to be born; for all mothers, two-legged, four-legged—all; for the young, the old, the ill; for the men who would make the sacrifice of the sun dance or the vision quest on the coming year; for all medicine men of any religion; and last for the health, in body and spirit, of his family, his friends, all the men who hunted the beaver, all Indian people, all white people, and all two-leggeds everywhere.

  He rubbed Coy’s head. From the far side of the creek he could hear the herd Pegleg had brought, clomps of hoofs, flabbers of lips, wheezes, all the nighttime sounds of horses. One thought came strongly to him—bed time.

  He rose and started up the trail toward town. Ahead he could hear voices. Though he expected them to be the exclamation of lovers, these were two women. After a moment he recognized them. And a man.

  Then Lupe began to scream.

  Sam sprinted.

  Lupe was hollering bloody murder. Rosalita was shrieking helplessly. Sam saw that she had snatched the baby.

  The dark figure slung Lupe, and she fell hard on her back.

  The man jumped on top of her.

  “Diablo!” Lupe bellowed. She seemed to hit him in the face.

  Sam dived at Joaquin and hit him square in the trunk with one shoulder. They both rolled off Lupe and up against a bush.

  Sam hit Joaquin as hard as he could in the face with a fist.

  Joaquin’s head lolled sideways unnaturally.

  Sam looked at Lupe, on her knees now. “I kill the diablo. He thinks he owns me.”

  Rosalita wept piteously.

  Lupe wiped some sort of blade on her skirt and tucked it back into the waistband. “I don’t leave this job for Pegleg,” she said.

  Sam stood up from Joaquin’s body. The neck grinned red.

  Lupe walked over, cocked her foot, and kicked him as hard as she could between the legs. Joaquin was beyond protest.

  Then she stomped off.

  58

  “I can’t find Grass.”

  Sam opened his eyes and looked into Tomás’s face. He thought, I’ve got plenty to worry about, and I don’t need to chase women for Tomás again. But he blinked until he could see his lodgings, rolled out of his buffalo robes, reached for his blanket coat, and said, “Let’s walk around together.”

  They had to walk without coffee—the town was still in bed, whether for sleep or for fun.

  Sam took the search seriously. With Tomás fretting loudly at his side, he couldn’t do anything else.

  She wasn’t on the plaza. A rap on Xeveria’s door brought a sleepy “¿Que?”

  Sam asked the question, and Xeveria made a sound of disgust. “Go away.”

  She wasn’t visible in any of the twisted streets and alleys.

  “I’m worried that she’s hurt,” Tomás said.

  “Probably not as serious as that,” Sam said.

  “You saying she is in another man’s bed?” Tomás’s voice was full of challenge.

  “Haven’t you been in someone else’s bed?”

  Tomás’s face flushed. “She said she wanted to be with Lupe and Rosalita. I left her with them. But she didn’t come home.”

  That gave Sam an idea. “Then let’s go ask Lupe and Rosalita when they saw her last.” He was thinking that there might be coffee at Pegleg’s camp.

  Sam chose not to take Tomás along the main path, where Joaquin’s body probably lay frozen.

  At Pegleg’s they were unlucky and then lucky.

  No one was stirring. But the coffee pot still had some black brew in it.

  Sam set to making a fire.

  After a minute or so Pegleg’s roared from inside the tipi.

  “Making coffee,” Sam said.

  It was Rosalita who came out.

  “Where is she?” Tomás cried, even before Rosalita got all the way outside the flap.

  Rosalita pursed her lips and sat down primly on a log.

  “Me fiancée,” said Tomás, “where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Rosalita said.

  Sam said, “We’ve only got one cup, we’ll have to share.” He handed it to Rosalita.

  Tomás’s sister took one sip, looking fearfully over the brim at her brother.

  “You don’t know?!”

  “I will get some more cups,” said Rosalita, “and some nice ground coffee.”

  She disappeared into the tipi.

  When Lupe and Rosalita came back out, Lupe said firmly, “We won’t talk about Grass. We don’t know, we won’t say.”

  Pegleg never did come out.

  Sam began to worry the next day, December 30. He was glad it wasn’t another feast day. The four blowouts in a row starting on Christmas, plus new year’s eve celebration tomorrow night, that was plenty for him.

  He and Tomás walked the streets again. They asked everyone they saw. They stopped by the cantina several times. They walked over to Pegleg’s camp. He was packing up to go to Santa Fe, and was curt with them. Yes, he’d made a sale of some horses here, to Señor Fernandez, the alcalde. Yes, he was going to Santa Fe now, and expected to be back in about three weeks, without horses.

  Tomás hugged his sisters goodbye, but he and Pegleg still didn’t speak.

  “It’s not that odd,” Sam told Tomás on the way back to town. “We haven’t seen Hannibal or Baptiste in two days either.”

  “We keep looking,” said Tomás.

  At noon they found Sumner at the cantina, taking a breakfast of biscuits and coffee, and Xeveria sharing the table with him.

  Sumner gave Tomás a knowing smile and said, “I haven’t seen her.” Xeveria just shrugged.

  Sumner told Sam, “We need to talk business.” Rideo Trading, their small outfit.

  Sam looked at Tomás.

  Sumner said, “How about sundown, today, here?”

  Sam waited for Tomás, and his son shrugged.

  “Yes,” Sam told Sumner.

  As they walked away, Tomás said, “I’m really afraid something has happened to her.”

  “Then let’s go see the alcalde,” said Sam.

  A small town in Nuevo Mexico usually had no more government than a mayor, the man of paperwork, and a police officer, the man for dirty work, often the brother, son, or cousin of the mayor, or alcalde. If a dispute was large enough, the priest would get involved.

  The alcalde of Fernandez de Taos was a gray eminence named Fernandez. Sam didn’t know whether this Fernandez was somehow connected to the town’s founding family or not. He lived in one of the town’s few decent adobe houses. Sam presented their question to him simply and politely.

  Señor Fernandez, who seemed as thin and frail as corn silk, regarded Sam and Tomás for a long moment. “Morgan is your name?” he said.

  “Sam Morgan.”

  “And your name again is…?”

  “Tomás Guerrero.”

  Fernandez raised an eyebrow at Sam.

  “Sometimes he goes by Tomás Morgan,” said Sam.

  Fernandez rose and stepped into his own kitchen. Sam couldn’t understand the soft words he said to someone.

  Fernandez came back, seated himself, and said in English, “One minute.”

  In about five minutes a burly man of about forty barged in and pointed a pistol at Sam and Tomás.

  “Thank you, Jacinto,” said Fernandez. “The young man.”

  Jacinto reached out to grab Tomás.


  When Tomás went for his own pistol, Sam wrapped his son up from behind. “This is not the time,” he said softly. “I’ll take care of things.”

  Tomás let Jacinto wind a rope around his arms quickly.

  “Perhaps it will not be so easy,” said Fernandez. “Tomás Morgan is accused of murder.”

  “Murder?!” exclaimed Sam and Tomás at once.

  “Yes, murder. On the night of the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Of a peasant named Joaquin. We have a body.”

  “Accused by who?” snapped Sam.

  “Señor Pegleg Smith,” said Fernandez.

  Jacinto jerked Tomás out the door. Sam’s son flung a look of fury and fear back at him.

  59

  The town juzgado was a one-room shack on the back of Jacinto’s property. Sam suspected it had once been a double privy, moved to a new foundation. Since it had no window at all, Sam and Hannibal could see Tomás only through cracks. The lock on the door was sturdy. Jacinto stood a few feet away, weapon in hand.

  “The son of a bitch, he lies.”

  “Yes,” Sam said, “I told you. Pegleg wanted to protect Lupe. Now he’s got her out of town and he slapped you in the face.”

  “Viejo hediondo!” said Tomás.

  Hannibal said, “I’m getting to where I don’t see the humor in calling someone old.”

  “I sent Baptiste after Pegleg,” said Sam. “He’ll be back in a day or two and we’ll know more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pegleg would have to testify against you. I’m the only one who saw what happened. I could bring Lupe into court. Pegleg wouldn’t like that.”

  Tomás crashed his fists against the boards. “I am penned like an animal in this miserable shit hole,” he yelled. “I will kill the bastard.”

  “Pegleg takes a lot of killing,” observed Hannibal.

  “And I think we can work something out.”

  Hannibal and Sam decided to have their midday meal at Gabriel’s cantina—the town offered few choices—and take some tortillas back to Tomás. Being in jail in New Mexico apparently deprived you of food as well as freedom.

  Fifty paces from the plaza, as they were passing the house Gabriel and Xeveria shared, they saw Sumner coming out Xeveria’s door. With Xeveria behind him. And Grass behind her.