NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 2

The following material is an extract from NOT JUST ANY MAN, A Novel of Old New Mexico, Copyright © 2018 Loretta Miles Tollefson. Published by Palo Flechado Press, Santa Fe, NM

A Note about Spanish Terms: This novel is set in northern New Mexico and reflects as much as possible the local dialect at that time. Even today, Northern New Mexico Spanish is a unique combination of late 1500s Spanish, indigenous words from the First Peoples of the region and of Mexico, and terms that filtered in with the French and American trappers and traders. I’ve tried to represent the resulting mixture as faithfully as possible. My primary source of information was Rubén Cobos’ excellent work, A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish (University of New Mexico Press, 2003). Any errors in spelling, usage, or definition are solely my responsibility.

CHAPTER 2

The train trundles uneventfully southwest after that. They’re on the Cimarron Cut Off, so the only real issue is lack of water, a lack that gives Gerald a new appreciation for the wide and steady flow of the Missouri River. And the taste of fresh water, which they don’t experience until they reach the springs near a rocky outcropping unimaginatively called Point of Rocks.

From here, the Sangre de Cristo mountains break blue across the western horizon. Men and animals are travel weary and dusty, but Young doesn’t give them more than a day to rest and clean up. He begins almost immediately to divide the horses and mules into two groups: those who’ll tolerate a pack and those who won’t.

The second morning finds the one who will being fitted with loads of merchandise to be carried over the mountains to Don Fernando de Taos. The other, smaller group will tow the remaining merchandise in the now half-empty wagons to Santa Fe, where the Mexican government officials will levy a tariff on the goods. Apparently there’s no such tariff levied in Taos and this division of goods is common practice. Certainly, the teamsters seem to consider it routine.

“I guess you’ll be wantin’ to head straight to Taos,” Young says to Gerald as they watch the packs being loaded. “Since you’ve got business there.”

“I do, if you don’t need me with the wagons,” Gerald answers.

Young nods. “I’ll meet you and the others there and pay you all off,” he says. “You can find me at my store or at Peabody’s.”

Gerald nods. “That’ll be fine,” he says. “Where—”

A scuffle breaks out just then between two horses and a teamster, and Young heads toward them, leaving Gerald with his question unasked. He shrugs. He’ll learn soon enough how to find his way around Taos, locate Young’s mercantile, or this Peabody’s place of business.

He moves out with the pack train the next morning. They head due west, the animals strung together with ropes in long groups of ten, a man at the head of each group and one halfway back. Charlie is master now and he tells Gerald to settle in beside the middle of the second string, the one led by Enoch Jones.

The scout steers the mule train toward a gap in the hills. As they move west, the grass thickens. The late summer rains have greened the landscape nicely. Yellow sunflowers brighten the ground wherever there’s a bit of an indentation to hold the moisture. Gerald looks at them approvingly.

The next day, the grassy slopes begin to tilt upward and the sunflowers shrink in size and number. Juniper bushes scatter the landscape and fill the warm afternoon with a sharp urine smell. Farther up, there’s a type of tree Gerald’s never seen before: a kind of resinous pine, its trunk gnarled as if it’s been wind blasted for at least a hundred years.

The route moves uphill, along the side of a rocky slope, and the path narrows. Gerald focuses on his work. There’s not room for both man and mule, and he drops into the trees below the path to give the animals room to maneuver. Dirt and small rocks break under his feet and dribble down the slope to the gully below. He has to work to stay in line with his string.

Then the trail ahead becomes little more than a rocky outcropping. Gerald’s string of mules comes to a halt as the animals ahead of them edge cautiously across the ledge. The mules bunch together on the narrow path and snuffle at each other as if commiserating on their lot. Gerald scrambles up the bank to them, then farther up the slope to get out of their way but be within reach if they need him.

At the sound of rocks skittering down the bank, Enoch Jones turns and glares. “No time t’ be explorin’,” he growls.

“There’s not room on the path for both man and beast,” Gerald points out. The dirt moves under his feet and he clutches at a juniper branch for support. “I’ll be down as soon as we start moving again.”

Jones scowls and yanks on his lead mule’s chin strap, forcing the animal’s muzzle toward him. The mule pulls its head back, baring its teeth, and Jones whips the free end of the lead rope across its nose. The animal snorts angrily and jerks away, but this puts its hooves off the trail, scrambling in the dirt and rocks. The pack on its back tilts precariously.

Jones is pulled forward by the mule’s weight. Just as his feet hit the edge of the trail, the mule lurches backward down the slope, wrenching the rope from Jones’ hands. He drops to the ground and his right foot twists awkwardly under his left leg. “Whoa, damn you!” he yells.

But it’s too late. As the lead mule slides down the bank, the animals linked to it are pulled inexorably toward the edge of the trail. They brace themselves, their eyes rolling.

Gerald slips gingerly down the bank, trying to move as smoothly as possible to keep from knocking gravel onto the trail and frightening the animals even more.

“Whoa, now,” he says soothingly. “Whoa now.”

The mule nearest him turns its head, its eyes wild with fright. Gerald stretches to touch the mule’s neck, then moves cautiously to its head. He grabs the animal’s halter and peers over its shoulder and down the hillside. “Whoa now,” he says again.

Fortunately, the lead mule has found its footing. It stands, huffing irritably, on a small flat space below, its pack still intact but tilted to one side. The four mules strung behind it are stranded in an uneven row between it and the trail above. They scuffle rocky dirt anxiously as they try to find secure footing. They look more puzzled than frightened.

Gerald pats the mule he’s standing next to soothingly and moves past it, grateful that it and the four still behind it stalled when they did.

He looks at Jones, who’s still on the ground, his hands on his twisted ankle. “No harm done,” Gerald says.

Just then, Charlie appears on the trail ahead. “Ya’ll all right back there?” he calls. As he gets closer, Jones pushes himself upright, his right foot carefully lifted from the ground, his face twisted in fury.

“You give me green help, this is what happens,” Jones jabs a thumb toward Gerald. “He was too busy wandering uphill to keep ’em in line.” He puts his foot on the ground and winces. “An’ now I can’t walk.”

Charlie gives Jones a long look, then turns to Gerald. “On slopes like this, it’s best if ya stay below ’em, when ya ken,” he says. “Or directly behind. They get nervous when there’s somethin’ on the hillside above. Think yer a catamount or somethin’.”

Gerald nods. There’s no point in pointing out that Jones triggered this particular nervousness.

The scout moves to the edge of the path and peers down. “Looks like nothin’s lost.” He turns to consider Jones’ foot, then Gerald. “Think ya ken lead ’em up? Jones is gonna need to favor that foot a mite.”

Gerald nods and maneuvers around the other men to find a way down the hillside to the lead mule. As he passes, Jones mutters, “Damn green hand!” and Charlie answers evenly, “A man ken’t do what he ain’t been told, now ken he?”

Once all of the string is back on the path, Gerald and Charlie straighten the lead mule’s pack and tighten it down again, then Charlie returns to his own string and Gerald keeps the mule steady until it’s their turn to make their way across the outcropping.

Jones limps behind, alternately cursing damn mules and green hands. He soon falls behind the entire mule train, so Gerald doesn’t have to listen to him for long. But Jones is still fuming when he limps into camp that night, well after everyone else.

“Coulda been killed,” he growls, tossing aside the stick he’s been using as a crutch. He sinks onto a large piece of sandstone and begins loosening his bootlaces. “There’s Apaches out there, ya know.”

“There was nothin’ for ya t’ ride,” Charlie says mildly from across the fire. “And we weren’t that far ahead.”

Jones grunts and reaches down to pull off his boot, but the angle is wrong and he wrenches the swollen ankle out of position. “Hell!” he yelps.

“Want some help with that?” Gerald asks, moving toward him.

“Stay away from me!” Jones snarls.

“You know, Jones, if you’d been a little easier on that mule, she wouldn’t of jumped,” says the man who’d been leading the set of mules directly behind Jones and Gerald’s string. He glances at Jones, then Charlie, then the fire. “Looked to me like she was pretty calm ’til you slapped her muzzle with that rope.”

Charlie looks first at Jones, then Gerald. Jones glares at the man on the other side of the flames, who ignores him, but Gerald returns Charlie’s gaze steadily.

“You don’t know nothin’,” Jones growls. He glares at Charlie. “I got stuck with a idiot mule and a damn green hand. What’d ya expect?” The scout doesn’t respond and Jones turns his scowl on Gerald. “You green hands come out here and think ya know everything there is t’ know, an’ ya don’t know shit!” He moves his foot impatiently, then flinches and reaches for his swollen ankle.

“If ya wrap that up good and tight, it’ll help bring that swellin’ down,” Charlie says. “We ken redistribute goods in the morning and set up somethin’ fer ya to ride on fer tomorrow, at least.”

Jones nods sullenly. “In the meantime, someone could bring me some food,” he grumbles and Charlie nods to the other stringer, who rises quietly to make the arrangements.

Early the next day, with Jones riding at the head of the mule train, Charlie and his men drop into the south end of a valley thick with ripe grass. A small sparkling stream winds its way through the valley floor, heading north through more grassland. Mountains glimmer at the valley’s head, a good ten miles away. The bank of the little creek below has broken off in places, exposing a soil so black and fertile that Gerald’s fingers itch to run through it. Now this is land a man could raise a crop on.

He looks up at the almost-black fir-covered mountains in front of them, then northwest to taller, stonier peaks, the largest a massive, curved wall of rock. They’ve been climbing the last two days. The growing season here would be short, and the winters strong.

But still— Gerald looks down at the thick grass on the valley floor. Cattle would do well here. If a man built them adequate shelter, they could feed all through the cold season on hay harvested from these rich bottom lands.

But he has no money for land and the outlay needed to raise cattle or anything else. And this is Indian country. It’s an impossible dream. Even so, as the mule train moves into the trees on the other side of the valley, toward what Charlie says is Apache Pass, Gerald finds himself glancing back toward the bright trickle of water running steadily north.

Copyright © 2018 Loretta Miles Tollefson

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