Nothing Lasts Forever

A STORY OF THE 1847 TAOS REVOLT AGAINST THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF NEW MEXICO

On Thursday, January 19, 1847, long-simmering tensions erupted in bloodshed in Taos, New Mexico, brought to a head by the recent American takeover during the Mexican American War. Within 24 hours, almost all the Americans in Taos were dead, including Governor Charles Bent.

The insurrection was eventually crushed by American forces in a final battle that destroyed the Taos Pueblo church. The trials that followed are renowned for their biased juries, foregone conclusions, and speed of execution.

Nothing Lasts Forever explores the tensions that fed the 1847 rebellion from the point of view of the fictional Alma Locke, in Taos to bury her mother, and Governor Bent’s five-year-old daughter, Teresina.

A heartbreaking novel of love, loss, and conflicting loyalties, Nothing Lasts Forever explores the personal conflicts behind the rebellion and how two families coped with their losses and struggled to make sense of unimaginable tragedy.

A stand-alone novel, Nothing Lasts Forever is Book 4 of the Locke Family Saga.

Available as an ebook or paperback from Amazon and other retailers.

SAMPLE CHAPTERS

CHAPTER 1 – SUMMER 1843

Moreno Valley, New Mexico

Alma sits on a flat sandstone boulder in the long grass beside her grandfather’s grave and studies the long mountain valley below. Her father and brother are in the hay meadow, hunting prairie dogs. Ramón, her godfather and her father’s business partner, leads a horse from the steep-roofed adobe-and-log barn to the small forge between it and the log cabin. The forge her Grandfather Locke built and tended so carefully.

Tears well in Alma’s eyes. She pushes her overly curly black hair away from her light brown face. She has never believed the old adage that death is a part of life, a natural occurrence. It’s always seemed more of a tearing to her, a ragged hole in the fabric of life.

She lays her hand on Grandfather Locke’s sun-warmed headstone. Her mother is ill. She lies in the cabin on the hillside below, thinner than ever, with no energy for her loom, her plants, or her cornfield. Chaser IV, the big brown mastiff named for his three predecessors, is crouched on the floor beside the bed instead of patrolling the crops against deer and raccoons. He is bereft without the woman to guide him.

As is the girl. Alma lifts her tearstained face. The clouds above the mountains on the other side of the valley won’t devolve into rain until late this evening. How beautiful they are, with the sun shining above them like that. How oddly steady. She takes a deep breath, absorbing them, the mountains, and the hillside beneath her, the fall grasses soft under her hand. Surely her mother will get well and become her active, opinionated self once again.

Movement flickers on the dusty track that runs north-south down the center of the valley. A man and a horse, both walking. Alma squints, then grins. The man is wearing a black cassock, his bulky shoulders at aggressive odds with the priestly garment. The fact that he’s walking beside his mount is another sign. It’s Padre Antonio José Martínez, the perpetually restless Catholic priest from Taos. Has he heard that her mother is sick and walked east thirty miles to try once again to convert her?

Alma chuckles, stands, and bats grass seeds from her skirt. Her mother may be ill, but there’s nothing wrong with her tongue. This should be fun to watch.

But when the padre arrives, he has more than conversion on his mind. After the usual greetings and offers of food and drink, he gets down to business.

“¡Los americanos!” he grumbles, his high forehead creased with indignation.

Suzanna has risen and dressed in honor of his visit. Her rocking chair tilts to a stop as he speaks, and her dark eyes sharpen in her tired face. “What was that?”

“Not you,” Martínez says hastily. “You are one of us, your mother was half Navajo. And you,” he turns to Alma’s father, Gerald. “You have your own reasons for never returning to the land that would enslave you.”

Gerald’s gray eyes smile noncommittally as Suzanna frowns. The priest turns to Alma and her curly haired blond brother, Andrew, who are side by side on the bench by the corner bookcase. “It’s that americano trader, Charles Bent. He’s the worst kind of American. Greedy, arrogant—” He trails off, then swings back to their parents. “His ambitions will affect you now. He’s taking the land from under your feet!”

Gerald frowns. “Has Bent become involved in the land grant Governor Armijo gave to Guadalupe Miranda and Carlos Beaubien two years ago?”

The priest nods. His scowl deepens. “I thought my arguments then had effectively blocked that travesty of justice, but Armijo is back in power again and he’s approved their request despite all my protests and objections. Yes, we are under Mexican law now, but the amount he’s granted them is three times what would have been allowed under the Spanish! Almost two hundred thousand of your American acres!”

He waves an arm toward the door. “It includes all the land east of the mountain ridges on the west side of this valley.” Then he waves toward the opposite wall. “And everything beyond, the Cimarron River and all that drains into it. Vast amounts of timber and unspoiled grasslands. Almost everything the people of Taos Pueblo have hunted and grazed for generations! It’s part of their original grant from the Spanish crown! All Taos is enraged!” He nods at Suzanna. “Your father agrees with me, but even his words didn’t sway Manuel Armijo.”

“I suppose the Governor is worried that the U.S. will move into it and take anything that isn’t clearly occupied,” she says.

“Then he should send out colonists he can trust! People Beaubien and Miranda have chosen! But not Bent, that pretentious, greedy, spite-tongued Missouri merchant! They gave him the right to twenty-five percent of the grant, and you can be sure he’ll use his portion to control it all in the end!” He shakes a finger at her. “This will not end well, for you or anyone else!”

Gerald stirs uneasily. “I expect it’ll work out in the long run. It’s a great deal of land.”

“More than any of them have a right to!”

“There’s room enough for us all.”

The priest sniffs disparagingly and shakes his head. Suzanna glances at her husband with a slight frown. He nods. “I’ll talk it over with Ramón.”

“That is all I can ask,” Padre Martínez says. He rises from his seat and bows courteously, then turns to Alma. “I’d like to pray at the grave of your grandfather, if you will take me to it.” He turns his big head toward her mother. “He was un buen hombre, good although still a Protestant.”

Suzanna and Alma exchange a grin as the girl leads the priest toward the door.

When she returns to the cabin, Andrew has disappeared into the marsh below the house, where the Cimarron River begins, and her parents are on the porch. Suzanna, weak as she is, paces restlessly while Gerald sits on the wooden bench by the door, gazing at the mountains on the other side of the valley.

“We need that paper,” Suzanna says.

“I’ll talk to Carlos Beaubien the next time we’re in Taos.”

“And when will that be? This fall? Next year?”

He studies the fields below. “It depends on the harvest.” Then he looks up at the mountains again. The clouds are lower now, a wave of moisture creating a screen of gray mist over the pines on the lower slopes. “And how soon winter arrives. Ramón says it may come early this year.”

She scowls at him and turns away, stalking to the other end of the porch. She turns to make another pass, then suddenly jerks sideways and grabs at the railing. Alma and Gerald both start toward her, but she waves them away. “It was just a spasm. It’s already over.” She frowns at Alma, as if registering her presence for the first time. “Where is the padre? Did he leave without saying goodbye?”

“He’s still at the gravesite.”

Suzanna nods and absently rubs her side, then looks down the hill toward the rows of corn shining green in the sun. “I should check for critter damage.” She looks around. “Where’s Chaser?”

A dog barks as if in answer and the big mastiff lopes from the hillside behind the barn as Ramón emerges from the building, leading the padre’s horse. The priest moves toward him while the dog trots to the house. Suzanna sinks to the steps to greet him.

Padre Martínez and the old man exchange a few words, then the priest swings into his saddle and guides his mount to the porch. He raises a hand in benediction. “I bid you farewell and good health,” he says formally.

Suzanna grins up at him mischievously. “I feel better already.”

TERESINA

CHAPTER 2 – CIRCA 1880

Taos, New Mexico

I am old now, and I give the journalists what they want to hear. A narrative of whole cloth, moving past the jagged remnants of memory, the shards of a once colorful clay pot on the hard-packed floor of my childhood.

That day in late May 1846, when my half sister Rumalda was married, may be my last truly happy recollection. She was not a particularly pretty girl—her long wavy hair was her only true glory—but her flushed face and bright eyes glowed with happiness as my father placed her hand on Tomás Boggs’ arm.

I stood next to my mother, whose cheeks were marked with tears even as she smiled. “So young,” she whispered, squeezing my hand.

I looked up at her. Rumalda was fifteen, ten years older than I was. She had always seemed very mature to me, on a par with my mother’s beautiful sister, Josefa. Josefa was married. Why shouldn’t Rumalda be, also?

And the round-faced Tomás Boggs was a kind man, even if his lank hair was often in his face. He liked children and often brought my siblings and me candy. And he always called my hair “auburn” instead of “red.” He and Josefa’s husband, Christopher Carson, were good friends.

So, I didn’t understand my mother’s tears that day. Certainly, my father, Charles Bent, was happy. Normally a reserved and somewhat cynical man, his thin face beamed with delight as he moved among our guests. He even went so far as to clap some of the men on the back and bow to the old ladies. He had an extra smile for the Lashones, the couple whose house shared our back wall. He didn’t always get along with them but today was different. He would let bygones be bygones.

However, he was still an unbending man, and he didn’t go so far as to extend any pleasantries to Padre Martínez, who’d been invited by Tomás and cajoled by Josefa into performing the ceremony.

The priest was in a far corner, sipping punch and listening impatiently while my godfather, Don Cornelio, told a story. Normally, Mother might have been concerned about keeping the two men apart, but today she was focused on my father, watching him with a fond smile.

“He seems content with the match,” Luis Lee said from behind us. “Even though Boggs is a mere employee of the Bent and Saint Vrain business firm.”

Mama turned toward the tall man with the long blond hair and weak chin. “Tomás is Charles’ trusted friend and the son of Missouri’s former governor,” she said. “We are both quite pleased.”

“Ah, so there are political considerations, as well.” When she frowned at him, he shrugged. “The connection will be useful before long. I expect everyone in Taos will be American citizens before the year is out, whether they want to be or not.”

Her smile dropped. She reached for my shoulder, as if anchoring herself. “So, you also believe los americanos will invade?”

He nodded toward my father, who now stood near the corner fireplace, speaking to Tomás and Ceran Saint Vrain. “Doesn’t he?”

“So he tells me.” She glanced toward Padre Martínez. Worry lines marred her forehead. “Charles is confident in your American military prowess, but I foresee confusion and conflict and trouble. And until the invasion—if it occurs—does take place, foreigners here could suffer confiscation of property and other outrages.”

Her eyes swept the room and landed on Rumalda beside the fireplace, smiling happily as Josefa made a slight adjustment to her skirt. Mother’s chin lifted. She looked up at Luis Lee. “However, those are only possible troubles. Today is a day to celebrate certain joy and new beginnings.” Then she frowned. “I do wish Christopher was here.”

“Carson and Lucien Maxwell are still off in California with John Fremont?”

She nodded absently. I pressed her hand. “Father will make sure we are safe,” I said confidently.

Don Luis’ head swung toward me and both adults smiled indulgently. “Yes, your father will protect us,” Mama said as Señor Lee patted her arm and moved away.

On the other end of the room, the violinists father had hired began to play, and my brother and sister moved into position for the first dance. Estefina had recently grown several inches and was now taller than nine-year-old Alfredo, even though she was younger by two years. They looked a little ridiculous.

But then Mama said, “Come! It is a day for celebration. Rumalda is married!” and my godfather came toward me, his hands out in an invitation to dance.

ALMA

CHAPTER 3 – JUNE 1846

Moreno Valley, New Mexico

Footsteps thud on the wooden floor outside the bedroom door, past the loom. Suzanna hands the empty broth cup back to Alma and smiles faintly. “That will be your brother.” They grin at each other. Andrew is a quiet boy with a heavy step. The incongruity is a family joke he doesn’t find amusing.

There’s a tap on the door. Alma rises and opens it.

“Is she awake?” His brown eyes are anxious and excited at the same time. When Alma nods, he leans into the room. “Someone’s coming up the valley. A whole passel of people.”

Suzanna pushes at the blankets and sits up. “I expect it’s Stands Alone and his family.”

He shakes his head. “They have wagons. And cows. And someone real tall is leading the way.”

She frowns at him. “Quite tall, or very tall. Not ‘real.’”

He grins and pushes his curly blond hair away from his sand-brown face. “Extremely tall. And wide, as well. Ramón thinks it’s probably Ceran Saint Vrain.”

She gestures to Alma and moves her legs toward the edge of the bed. “I need to dress.”

* * * *

Ceran Saint Vrain smiles at Alma as he takes a sugar-dusted biscochito from the platter she offers him. Her curly black hair still smells of woodsmoke from the fire she started as Ramón mixed the dough. “You have been quite industrious,” he teases. His eyes drift to the dark heart-shaped mark on her cheek and he smiles slightly. “Have you learned to bake since we last met?”

Beside him, Charles Bent laughs as her father chuckles, his gray eyes twinkling. “She is helpful in more ways than baking,” he says.

Andrew circles the room, refilling glasses and cups with water and coffee. Ramón comes from the kitchen and leans toward Suzanna’s rocking chair. He says something in her ear, and she smiles up at him gratefully. Then she turns to the woman beside her. “You have travelled far today?”

The woman looks at her in confusion, and Suzanna switches to Spanish. “¿Ha viajado lejos hoy?”

The woman smiles and nods and rattles off an answer as Alma proffers the cookies. The woman’s eyes move politely over Alma’s face, but don’t react to the dark splotches on her forehead or the heart-shaped mark on her cheek. Instead, she explains that the little group of settlers left Taos two days ago. She and the other women have never been this far into the mountains. She was glad to see that it’s possible to build a house here, even if it isn’t made of adobe.

Suzanna laughs and says she was uncomfortable living in a log house when she first arrived but has grown used to it.

“You will have an adobe if you prefer it,” Saint Vrain tells the woman. He glances at her husband, who watches them all without speaking. “That is, if tu esposo agrees.”

The other man shrugs. “It is as you wish.”

“As you yourself wish, man!” Charles Bent leans forward, his narrow, perpetually skeptical face suddenly alight. “You’ll have land of your own and space for as many buildings as you can construct, adobe or log! The Poñil and the valley of the Cimarron contain everything you need!”

The man smiles thinly. Gerald raises an eyebrow. “The valley of the Cimarron? How far up the canyon are you settling these people?”

“Oh, far enough down, where the land opens up. Mostly around Poñil Creek. Though some of them may want to settle in that old Ute hunting ground halfway down.”

Gerald frowns. “I know you and the others have the right to do as you wish, but Stands Alone and his band still hunt there.”

Bent shrugs. Gerald and Suzanna exchange a glance, then she looks at the settlers. “You will be working on shares?”

The woman’s husband nods. “Sí, señora. On land assigned to us.” He glances at Bent. “On terms most generous.”

She turns to Bent. “Of course, there will be other arrangements for those of us who were here before the grant was established.”

Amusement glimmers in his face. He looks at Ramón, who’s still standing behind her chair. Ramón spreads his hands as if in apology but doesn’t smile.

Gerald looks around the room, at the watching settlers. “We’ll discuss it later,” he says. He and Bent nod to each other, but Suzanna frowns. After the visitors retreat down the hill to set up camp for the night, she follows Ramón into the kitchen, where he and Alma are working on dinner. “I don’t like this,” she says as she eases herself into a seat at the table.

“How are you feeling?” Alma asks.

Her mother scowls. “Tired. And worried.” She turns to Ramón. “We need something in writing. Something that gives us more rights than those poor tenant farmers.”

Alma’s father and brother enter the kitchen from the outer door, their arms full of firewood. They add the split logs to the stack by the cast iron cookstove. “I’m not sure how long they’ll be on the Poñil or anywhere else east of us,” Gerald says. He crosses to the table and sits beside Suzanna. “Bent and Saint Vrain are escorting them to the Poñil, but they’re not staying to help them set up. They’re heading to Missouri.”

“To buy trade goods?”

He shrugs. “That’s what they’re telling the settlers, but they told me privately that they’ve heard that the U.S. Army is mobilizing to push west. The American Congress has declared war on Mexico.”

Ramón turns from the stove and Alma from the sink. “War?” she asks as he says, “¿Guerra?”

There’s a long pause, then Ramón shakes his head, his kind face sober. “It has come at last.”

“Yes. I expected it, and yet—”

The other man nods and turns back to the stove. Alma begins slicing summer squash into neat rounds.

Suzanna puts her face in her hands. “Invasion,” she murmurs. “Those poor settlers.”

“Won’t the governor defend them?” Andrew asks from the door, where he’s leaning against the wall.

Suzanna and Ramón humph at the same time. “Manuel Armijo?” she says derisively.

Ramón and Gerald exchange a grin. “Cuando el dinero habla, todos callan,” Ramón says.

“When money talks, everyone shuts up?” Andrew asks.

Gerald chuckles. “It’s a true saying, especially for someone like the governor.” Then he sobers. He turns to Suzanna. “Bent says everything is likely to change once the U.S. takes over, so there’s no point in putting any kind of agreement about the land on paper just yet. It would all have to be redone in proper American legal form after the army arrives. We might as well wait until there’s a lawyer available to do it correctly.”

Suzanna scowls. “If we do it before they arrive, the documents can include my name. But the Americans don’t allow married women to own land. Which means I’ll have nothing to pass on to Alma when I go.”

“You aren’t going anytime soon,” Gerald says.

“Neither of has a will.”

“There’s no reason to worry about that for a good long while yet.”

She gives him an exasperated, tight-lipped look and pushes back from the table. “I’m going to go lie down.”

Suzanna’s lips are still compressed the next morning when Saint Vrain and Charles Bent visit the cabin to say goodbye. She offers them coffee, trying to draw them inside for more conversation, but they remain on the porch.

“You truly do have a lovely location here,” Saint Vrain says as he studies the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. Their tops are blushed pink by the light of the sun rising behind the cabin.

“Yes,” Suzanna says. “It was nice when Ramón and Gerald chose it almost twenty years ago, and it’s still delightful.”

Gerald’s lips twitch. She’s been ambivalent about life in the valley for many years, so this statement is slightly out of character.

Suzanna turns to Charles Bent. “I’d like to make sure it remains in the family.” Her hand presses her side.

“We’ll need to negotiate a good price.”

Her hand drops and her spine straightens. “We’ve been here eighteen years and done nothing but improve this land,” she says. “Your entire grant is made more valuable by what we have shown can be done with it!”

He grins at her. “You’re as bad as Padre Martínez. You never could take a joke.”

She scowls. Her hand returns to her side. “And you never have known when to mitigate your tone and your greed.”

Gerald’s head tilts. “Suzanna—”

She shakes her head and moves into the house, hand still pressed to her side. Alma follows her.

On the porch, Ramón says, “The illness makes her speak without thinking.”

In the cabin, Suzanna stops and half turns, eyes black with fury. Then her shoulders slump and she continues on toward the bedroom. “He’s right, of course,” she murmurs. “That was foolish of me.”

Behind them, Saint Vrain’s voice rumbles, lifting at the end, and the men all laugh companionably.

Suzanna smiles faintly. “Ceran’s a hopeless flirt, but he has a good heart.” Then her face darkens. “Which is more than I can say for Señor Charles Bent.” As she moves into the cabin extension, past the big loom she hasn’t touched in two years, she shakes her head. “I never have understood what your father sees in that man.”

When Alma returns to the porch, the men are still there. Ceran Saint Vrain smiles at her as she closes the door behind her. “I failed to tell you yesterday that my goddaughter was married last week,” he says. He glances at Charles Bent.

She brightens. “Rumalda? Who did she marry?”

“Thomas Boggs,” Charles Bent says smugly. He looks at Gerald. “Governor Lilburn Boggs’ oldest son.”

Gerald nods, his square face impassive. The former Missouri governor does not impress him, though he likes Thomas well enough. He glances at Alma. “She’s younger than you, isn’t she?”

Alma nods. “About three years.” She looks at Charles Bent. “Didn’t she turn fifteen in February?”

Bent nods, and Alma’s father raises an eyebrow, but Ceran Saint Vrain grins at him. “How old was Suzanna when you married?”

Gerald chuckles. “That was different.”

Alma suppresses a smile. Her mother has often expressed a desire that her own daughter not rush into marriage, has said she herself was too young. Not for marriage, but for moving from Taos to the valley. For taking on the responsibilities and work the mountain farm entailed. For being so isolated.

Alma sobers. She hasn’t seen Rumalda or any of her other Taos friends since the summer of 1842, four years ago. Before Grandfather Locke died. She sighs. “Everything changes,” she says quietly.

The men are chatting and appear not to notice her comment. “Have you heard about Padre Martínez’s latest excuse for causing trouble?” Charles Bent asks her father.

When Gerald shakes his head, he goes on. “A bunch of his family’s cattle were run off by Ute Indians early this year. He got it into his head that I told them to do it.” Bent makes a dismissive gesture. “In retaliation for his fighting the land grant, I suppose. But you know the calf. He talks a good deal, but his meaning disappears in all the noise.”

Gerald raises an eyebrow. “The calf?”

“He sounds like one,” Bent says defensively. “Always bawling about something.”

“He remains el padre,” Ramón says mildly. “It is a position which requires our respect.”

“Not from me, it doesn’t!” Bent’s thin lips are tight with irritation. “He certainly hasn’t earned it! Labeling my children bastards! Calling me a thief because I want to do something with land that’s been sitting idle time out of mind! Accusing me of colluding with those damn Utes! It’s his own people who were egging them on and buying those cows, not me!”

Alma is only half listening. She’s still thinking about all the changes in her life. The adults seem to be wholly absorbed in Bent’s diatribe about Padre Martínez, so she’s surprised when, after Bent winds down and he and Saint Vrain head toward the waiting train of settlers, Ramón touches her shoulder. “Nothing lasts forever,” he says gently.

She grins. “The feud between Padre Martínez and Charles Bent certainly seems like it will,” she says.

He laughs. “That may be!”

CHAPTER 4 – MID-SEPTEMBER 1846

Moreno Valley, New Mexico

Alma wakes to the sound of sheep. Her mother had been restless in the night so the girl stayed beside her and now her own eyes and limbs are heavy with exhaustion. But the bawling of animals and barking of dogs is unmistakable. She glances at her mother. There’s an unhappy crease in her forehead, but Suzanna’s eyes are closed and her breathing is steady.

Alma creeps out of the room to the window in the weaving room.

Beyond the hay meadow in the valley below, a large herd of long-haired double-horned sheep moves south, heading out of the high pastures north of the cabin toward the pass to Taos. Two of the shepherds have stopped to talk with her father, who stands between the sheep and the fields. One of the men gestures south, then spreads his hands wide, palms up as if in surrender.

Ramón enters the room from the main cabin, carrying a tray that holds a cup of broth and a slice of soft wheat bread with no crust. He stops when he sees Alma at the window. “Tu madre, she sleeps?” he asks.

Alma nods and he moves to stand beside her and peer out the window. “The sheep return early from the high pastures,” he says, frowning. “It is not a good sign.”

She glances at him questioningly.

“It may be that the snows have already begun in the north,” he explains. Then he shakes his head. “Or perhaps los hombres have received news which sends them home early.”

“News of the Americans?”

Available as an ebook or paperback from Amazon and other retailers.