NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 10

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 10

There are no beaver in the valley itself, so the men and mules move steadily through the ponderosas and occasional cluster of white-barked aspen that close in at the southern end. The land tilts up, then down again, and the trappers are once more in beaver country. Their pace slows as they trap steadily south over the next few weeks, through a rich grassland that contains a cluster of small lakes, then down Coyote Creek to the edge of another, smaller, snow-bright valley. In its center, adobe houses huddle together at the edge of a narrow iced-over river.

“Saint Gertrude’s,” Williams says. “It ain’t worth much. They don’t even have a taberna.” He turns and looks at the pack mules, now loaded with a substantial amount of furs. “No place to sell these furry bank notes, either. Or to resupply. Which is too bad, because that coffee supply is righteously low.”

Gerald nods. He feels an unexpected stab of disappointment. It would be good to see other faces, acknowledge the presence of other beings. He doesn’t consider himself a particularly social person, but he finds himself suddenly wishing for an adobe casa to sit in, a hot drink from the hands of a pleasant girl.

Suzanna Peabody’s face, dark eyes looking directly into his, comes to mind and he flinches away from it. He has no right to such thoughts. He flicks his mule’s lead rope and follows Old Bill as he circles the village and its snow-covered fields.

They head west, following the river Williams calls the Mora upstream into yet more mountains. They work their way north and west, halting wherever a beaver lodge bulks from the snow-covered ice or where clusters of willow have been clipped back by sharp teeth. Then, after a day or two setting traps in bone-chilling water, they move on, heading further into the hills as the snow deepens and the icy cold sharpens further.

As the year turns, Gerald, who had initially welcomed the adventure of it all, the opportunity to learn a new skill, begins to feel the drudgery of trapping. His experience has narrowed to cold water, half-frozen dead beaver, cold air, and cold bedding.

And Old Bill’s continuous string of advice and opinion. But at least Williams has dropped the teasing about Suzanna Peabody. There is that to be grateful for. As Gerald and the mule trudge up yet another gully behind Williams’ pack mule, he tries to talk himself into some kind of positive mood, but at this point all he really wants is to return to Taos and the warmth of the Peabody parlor.

On the slope above, a mountain lion coughs menacingly and Gerald snaps back to his surroundings. Daydreaming is a good way to discover that the wilderness isn’t as boring as it might seem. He clucks at his mule and quickens his step so he’s close enough to Williams’ mule to hear the low monotone of Williams’ running commentary.

~ ~ ~ ~

They camp that night in yet another narrow mountain defile smothered in two feet of early February snow. Heavy gray clouds block the sky and promise more snow in the night. The lower branches of the aspen thickets on the slopes above have been gnawed raw by hungry deer and elk. Strangely, the snow-laden alder and rose bushes beside the iced-over stream don’t appear to have been browsed. The only explanation is the presence of wolves or mountain lion stalking the few clearings near the stream. The browsers feel safer among the trees.

Williams and Gerald pull the packs from their mules, lash them into the protection of a nearby pine, then cut thin aspen branches for the animals and create a feed pile. The mules come eagerly to investigate.

“Anyone passing through’s gonna know we were here,” Old Bill says ruefully. “Not that it’s likely anyone’ll be passin’ through.” He shakes his head. “Only americanos like us are crazy enough to be out in this kind of weather. The Injuns have enough sense to stay in their lodges this time of year. And the mexicanos ain’t no fools, neither.” He looks up at the thick dark-gray clouds in the narrow bit of visible sky. “It don’t matter much what we leave behind us, anyhow. With that snow coming in, by noon tomorrow this feeding pile will be just another white mound of windfall.”

Gerald nods without really listening, moves to add more wood to the fire, then hunkers down beside it and pulls his wool blanket tighter around his shoulders. He’s too cold to care whether anyone knows they’re here. They’ve been wandering the mountains for weeks now and have seen little sign of other humans. The only person they’ve spoken to is Stands Alone, the Ute who thinks the black valley belongs to him. This whole expedition is beginning to seem rather pointless.

Gerald grimaces. He knows he’s being uncharitable, but they haven’t collected any beaver in a week, and the cold and snow is becoming monotonous. But he isn’t the one leading this expedition, so he doesn’t have much say in what they do. Maybe Williams knows something he doesn’t and there’s a reason they’re still wandering these frozen streams.

Old Bill joins him by the fire and huddles into his own blanket. “I sure do wish I had me some coffee,” he says. “Or some Taos lightning. Yes siree, some liquor would feel righteously fine right about now.” He shakes his head and his long red braids, frosted with tiny white flakes, glint in the firelight. “Snow melt water’ll warm you a mite, but something with a kick in it would go a lot farther. As long as there wasn’t enough of it to create a temptation to foolishness.” He chuckles. “I ever tell you about the time me and Old Pete got to drinking up on the Platte and that band of Crow found us?”

Gerald lifts his eyes from the flames. He hasn’t heard the story, but he doesn’t want to. “Yes,” he says.

Williams studies the younger man. His lips twitch, then he glances at the packs strung up in the pine. “I’d say we’ve accumulated a respectable amount of pelts for one season’s worth of work,” he says. “And it’s clear to me that the beaver up here are peterin’ out. We ain’t seen action for going on a week now, and the streams are gettin’ narrower and their ice is growin’ thicker. I’d say it’s about time to cash in our chips.”

Gerald glances up from the flames.

“Yes sir, I’m thinking it’s about time we headed back to the land of the living.” Old Bill glances up at the snow-encrusted slopes on either side of the campsite. “I’ve got a notion that if we head due west and a little north from here, we’ll get ourselves into Taos in pretty short order.” He shakes his head. “I’m getting powerful thirsty for a little inside warmth and some whisky.”

Gerald rouses himself. “Do we have enough furs to make it worthwhile?”

“I calculate we’ve got enough to get you set up real good for the next go-round, with a little something extra to buy a certain girl a trinket or two.” Williams grins at him.

“I’m looking for more than the next go ‘round and a trinket or two,” Gerald says. “I want enough for land and a home.” He glances at the other man, then returns his gaze to the flames. “As much as I appreciate the skills I’ve learned from you, I’m not sure trapping is something I want to do for the rest of my life.”

Williams nods. “Some like it, some don’t,” he says. “But you’ve got to start somewhere.” He shrugs. “And to learn when to pack it home. There’s no point in hangin’ on when the beaver ain’t biting. By my way of thinking it’s time we hightailed it on back to Taos.”

Gerald nods, trying to look disappointed, and rubs his chin. “So it’s time to pack it in?”

“For the time bein’.” Williams lifts a stick from the fire and pushes the ash at its edges closer to the flames, banking their warmth. “We’ll still be getting in before the rest of them, so you’ll have a good chance of getting to know Miz Suzanna a little better before the competition arrives.” He wraps himself more securely in the blanket, lays himself down next to the log he’s been sitting on, and winks at Gerald before he covers his face and goes to sleep.

Gerald grins in spite of himself, then shakes his head, and stares into the fire. Williams seems to think he has a chance with Suzanna Peabody. If only it were true and not the dream he knows it to be. A dream as likely to turn into reality as the smoke from the fire is likely to coalesce once again into sweet smelling pine.

But there’s no time for dreaming the next morning. Gerald wakes to a sharp intake of breath from Williams’ blankets and sits up abruptly. It’s still dark, the heft of it just starting to lighten as dawn filters through the clouds. But it isn’t the light that causes the hair on Gerald’s neck to prickle. There’s something different in the air. A smell? A movement? Something dangerous.

“Act natural,” Old Bill hisses. “But be quick. Something’s circlin’ us. More than one.” He’s out of his blankets now, rolling them efficiently into a tight tube. “Nah, don’t turn your head. Act natural, dammit!” Just beyond the clearing, a mule stomps anxiously and Williams responds with an encouraging cluck.

Gerald reaches for his boots. “What is it?”

“Apache, I reckon.” Williams lifts his pack and moves toward the mules.

Gerald scrambles to gather his gear, trying to move swiftly but nonchalantly in the darkness, as if he and Williams pack at this speed every morning. He glances at the snow-laden trees on the slopes above. He can see nothing, yet there’s a definite menace in the air. As if the shadows have shadows. He carries his pack to the mule, then returns for the food bundle. As he reaches up to unfasten it from the pine, dead wood slaps rock behind him.

Gerald whirls, knife half out of his belt, but it’s only Williams, kicking the fire apart to ensure that the coals from last night’s fire won’t re-ignite. It doesn’t seem likely, given the cold and the snow. But this is a precaution every mountain man takes, no matter the weather conditions. You just never know.

And taking care of the fire is part of the ritual of acting naturally, Gerald reflects ruefully as he slips the food pack from the pine and carries it to the mules.

Old Bill follows him. “Ready?” he asks as he reaches for his mule’s halter rope.

Gerald lifts his rifle from its scabbard. “All set.”

“That thing primed?”

“Ready to go.”

In the time he’s known Old Bill, the man has never used such short sentences, Gerald reflects as they move out, following the stream. Or been so alert: spine straight, head up, eyes scanning the way ahead as he maneuvers through the trees. The slope on the other side of the stream is steep here, almost straight up, and when a dark shape emerges between the pines above them, Williams’ mule rears back and screams in terror.

Williams drops the lead rope and fires, the shot echoing from the canyon walls. Then there’s a rustle behind Gerald and he whirls, dropping his mule’s rope and lifting his gun in one swift motion. As the muzzle roars, another sound rises, a wild scream that pierces Gerald’s ears and sends the mules crashing upstream through the brush. The scream comes again, closer this time, and everything in the forest seems to freeze in response.

Williams is half crouched, his gun ready, making a full, cautious circle.

The early sunlight has pushed through the clouds. It fingers the tops of the pines, confusing the shadows below. Gerald blinks, and stares up the slope.

Though he knows he’s seen at least two shapes, apparently human, and believes Williams’ gun, at least, found its target, there’s no sign of anyone among the trees on either side.

Old Bill straightens and scowls. “Hell and damnation!” he says. “Those Injuns were aiming to scare off the mules, not hit us! The damn scoundrels are after our plews!” He turns to peer upstream. “All we can hope is that those animals are smart enough to keep running and get away from them, whole and all.”

He stalks away, to the edge of the frozen creek, and begins forcing his way through the brush, following the mules’ trail. “Apaches,” he says in disgust. “I should of known it was too good to last,” he grumbles. “I might of known they were hanging around, waitin’ on us to finish up and put together a righteously fat pack or two before they bothered to sweep in and steal everything we had.” He snorts. “Well, we’ll just see about that.”

He stomps on for a full mile, pushing violently through the underbrush, making no effort at silence. Gerald follows close behind, a sharp eye on the slopes overhead.

Then Old Bill stops abruptly at the edge of a break in the bushes and scratches his matted red head.

“Well, what do you want to know about that?” he says softly. His voice rises, all of its anger gone. “Now that’s just something you’ve got to see with your own eyes to righteously believe it done happened.”

Behind him, Gerald frowns. He can see nothing but William’s buckskin-clad back and fuzzy red braids. There are twigs in the braids, where they’ve been snagged by the brush. Then there’s a huffing sound and the click of shod hoof on rock.

Williams moves slowly forward. “Here now, you jennie, you,” he says soothingly. “That’s a good and a right righteous mule. How you doing, now, huh? Did you get a little roughed up there, or did you manage to outrun those damn Apaches and that screaming old catamount, too? That screeching got you in a grand righteous panic, now didn’t it?”

He moves slowly toward the mule, still talking, his hand out. The mule backs away, eyes rolling. “There now, it all ain’t so bad is it?” Old Bill asks. “And you’ve done proved yourself a right clever mule, too. You took off through that brush and left us all to the mountain lion, now didn’t you? And that hellacious old catamount scared those Apache so bad they didn’t follow you after all.” He shakes his head. “There’s somethin’ to be said for Apaches believin’ those lions are devils.” His hand touches the mule’s halter rope and he gently reels her in. “Now let’s just take a look at that there pack and see what kind of shape it’s got in.”

He edges around her. “Not bad, not bad at all.” He nods at Gerald. “It looks like my bedroll’s gone, but the plews are all right.” He pats the mule’s neck encouragingly. “Now all we’ve got to do is find your partner in crime. You were smart enough to both break the same way and I can tell you I truly appreciate that.”

He turns to Gerald. “We’ll head on upstream and see if yours—”

Then the mule’s head lifts toward the stream. The willows rustle and the men brace themselves. Their spent rifles lift, then drop as Gerald’s mule appears.

Her pack hangs to one side, and Gerald’s rifle scabbard dangles precariously under her belly, but everything is still attached and the mule herself is unscratched. She moves into the tiny clearing and nuzzles at Gerald impatiently, as if asking him to straighten her load.

The men chuckle and get to work, checking the loads and tightening straps. They’ve lost a skillet and Williams’ bedroll, and Gerald’s rifle scabbard is badly scratched, but the beaver pelts have come through without damage.

“Now this here’s quite a sight,” Old Bill gloats. “I’d never have thought I’d be so damnably glad to have such a righteously skittish pack animal as this one. Or hear a catamount scream just when that one did. Yes siree, it makes you want to believe in a gracious almighty that takes personal care of you, don’t it?”

Gerald, tightening the straps around the food pack, grins to himself. They are definitely out of danger. Williams has fully regained his loquacity.

~ ~ ~ ~

They stop at the top of the ridge above the hillside road that will take them north to Taos and simply stand there, absorbing the view. On their right, the mountain slopes are black against a monotonously white sky, as if all color has been wiped from the world. But to their left, a broad swath of golden-brown grassland sweeps west and north from the base of the hill. The sky is a clear blue behind the rapidly thinning haze of clouds. Brown cattle, white sheep, and black and white goats dot the fields. There’s no snow in sight.

Gerald’s eyes linger on the animals, then move farther west. He blinks and looks again. He’s seen it before, but not from this angle, and the difference is truly breathtaking. A mile-wide gash bisects the flat Taos plain, north to south. It drops abruptly from the green pastures and plunges straight down, between reddish-brown rock walls. There’s a narrow glint of water far below. Gerald shakes his head at the wonder of it.

“Rio del Norte’s gorge looks diff’rent from this direction, don’t it?” Williams asks. “It’s a righteously grand sight, even if it ain’t got no beaver in it.” He shakes his head. “There ain’t nothing but a few river otter in that there river canyon. There used to be, but not now. This section’s no use for hunting at all, now.” He turns and flicks his mule’s lead. “But we ain’t got time for sightseeing anyhow. The way that sun’s moving, we’re gonna have to make some steady tracks if we want to get to Taos before dark.”

They move down the rocky slope to the road, Old Bill and his mule taking the lead. Then the red-headed trapper stops abruptly. “God damn him to hell and perdition!” he mutters. He raises his hand in a half-hearted greeting.

Gerald cranes his neck. A man with a stiff back and a military-looking hat rides a large black stallion up the hill toward them. Two men on shorter horses hang deferentially behind.

The man in the hat reins to a stop in front of Bill. His shoulder-length auburn hair glints in the afternoon sun and the tip of his long hatchet-sharp nose is red from the cold. “Mr. Williams,” he says formally. “You’ve returned earlier than I expected.” There’s an edge of disapproval in his voice, as if the trapper has failed to live up to some unspoken agreement.

“It appears that I did at that, Señor Sibley,” Williams says. He grins and gestures toward the pack mules. “We got so many plews we done run out of animals to carry ’em!” He chuckles. “But don’t go tellin’ the customs official I said so.”

Sibley nods absently. His eyes sweep over Gerald and turn back to Williams. “I am to Santa Fe to meet with the Governor,” he says. “I will then proceed to Chihuahua to consult with the officials there regarding the road survey.” His stallion sidesteps, away from Williams’ mule, and Sibley reins him in impatiently. “I presume you are to Taos.”

“It would appear so,” Old Bill says drily.

Sibley nods. “I will see you when I return.” It’s more of a command than a polite goodbye and Sibley doesn’t wait for an answer. He spurs his mount forward and his companions follow silently, not making eye contact with Williams or Gerald.

Williams watches them with narrowed eyes. Then he spits into the dirt, turns abruptly, and heads downhill toward Taos. Gerald can hear him muttering angrily to himself, but he doesn’t move close enough to hear the actual words. It isn’t necessary. There’s clearly no love lost between Old Bill and the head of the Santa Fe Trail Survey expedition.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

Williams and Gerald move down the Cimarron over the course of the next week, trapping as they go, a day or two in each location, setting traps, pulling in beaver, skinning carcasses, and stretching plews. They eat what they trap until the aroma of fatty flesh drifting from the fire begins to turn Gerald’s stomach.

Occasionally, they see wild turkey. The sleek birds slip through the forest without any apparent awareness of the humans, but keep well out of reach. Old Bill claims he doesn’t want to shoot them for fear of bringing larger, two-footed varmints into range, but Gerald suspects the red-haired man has an affinity with the birds that precludes killing them unless absolutely necessary.

Gerald himself finds the turkeys unaccountably beautiful. There’s a wild wariness to them unlike anything he’s ever encountered in barnyard fowl. Although he has to admit that an alternative to beaver flesh would be nice. When the men and their mules break into the small snow-drifted valley Williams calls Ute Park, it’s more than the scenic value that lifts Gerald’s heart. A herd of perhaps thirty elk browses at the base of a small rocky cliff to his left.

Williams halts, studying the herd. Although the elk seem unaware of the trappers, they also seem restless. Suddenly, a large cow bolts toward the river on the other side of the valley. As the other elk follow, three wolves—two small grays and a big black—circle into sight, tagging the stragglers.

The elk barrel across the snow and grass, surge into the icy stream, then scramble up the far bank into the trees. A young bull, its left hind leg dragging, balks at the river’s edge, perhaps wishing for a more shallow ford. The wolves move in swiftly. As they cut the elk away from the stream, a raven caws overhead.

Williams chuckles, drops his mule’s lead rope, and lifts his rifle. As its muzzle roars, an identical blast erupts from the base of the stone outcropping, and the bull stumbles and goes down. The wolves dart in, then pull slightly back. The big black looks over his shoulder, toward the cliff.

Williams’ head swivels, following the wolf’s gaze. “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled,” he says.

An Indian man, his hair in the long braids and tall pompadour characteristic of Ute men, moves from the cliff. He waves an arm at the wolves and they slink, tails between their legs, toward the leafless willow brush that crowds the riverbank a half-dozen yards downstream. Then they turn and crouch in the grass, eyes flicking between the approaching man and the elk.

“Waagh!” Old Bill groans. “That Ute’s gonna claim that bull, and now him and those wolves have that whole herd most righteously spooked. We don’t have a chance in hell of gettin’ another one, and all we’ve got for supper is that quarter beaver that’s on the edge of sour, and that little bit of tail.”

“It may have been your shot that brought that bull down,” Gerald points out.

“Don’t matter,” Williams says. His eyes rake the valley. “He appears to be alone,” he adds thoughtfully. Then he shrugs. “Well, it’s worth a try anyhow. We’re two against one.”

He grabs his mule’s lead rope and moves forward, Gerald and his mule slightly behind.

The Indian looks up as they move toward him. Then he raises his knife and slices deep into the elk’s belly. He yanks out a long handful of glistening entrails and turns to toss it toward the wolves. The black darts in, mouths the food, and drags it off, his companions following obsequiously.

“That’s us,” Williams says over his shoulder. “Those grays.”

Gerald grins and nods, his eyes on the Ute, who’s pulled off his buckskin shirt and gone back to work on the elk carcass, pointedly ignoring the two trappers. Gerald and Williams are within ten feet before he looks up again.

Old Bill signs “Hello” and the other man nods noncommittally as his knife continues to slice into the elk.

“That there was a good shot,” Williams says, then repeats himself with a few fluent hand signs.

A smile flashes across the Indian’s face. “You shot wide,” he says in English.

Williams chuckles. He looks down at the carcass and gestures toward its front quarters. “Mind if I just turn him a mite?”

The Indian, who’s now crouched at the elk’s tail, incising careful circles around its hooves, nods and pauses in his work. Williams moves forward, grasps the bull’s neck in both hands, and lifts, twisting the body first one way, then the other.

“There’s a bullet in each shoulder,” he says.

The Indian grins. “I arrived first. Made first cut.”

“You did at that,” Williams agrees. “But that’s a whole lot of elk for one man to feed on.”

The man’s eyes flash and the knife in his hand lifts slightly. Gerald shifts his rifle, but the Ute’s eyes remain on Old Bill’s face. He gestures toward the rocky outcropping and the mouth of the narrow valley that stretches further north. “My family waits.”

“I don’t suppose we could trade you a bit of beaver for a haunch?” Gerald asks.

Williams nods at Gerald. “Beaver fat would be just the thing to flavor that elk,” he says. He turns to the Ute. “You know how dry and tough elk can be. Especially this time of year, when the little grass they’ve had is all dried out and worthless.”

The Indian’s gaze moves across the valley’s patches of still-thick brown grass, then to Williams’ face.

“Though, I have to tell you we’ve got a righteous hunger for beaver,” the trapper says. “My partner here likes it so well he just truly can’t get enough of it. So you could say he’s makin’ a sacrifice, offering you some. We can spare you some tail, too, for that matter.” He looks at Gerald. “If that’s all right with you.”

Gerald nods and Williams looks at the Ute. “We just thought we’d do you a favor, is all. Give you somethin’ to sweeten the pot and put some taste in that rangy old winter elk.”

“Show it me.”

Gerald fumbles with the leather thongs that secure the wrapped portion of beaver to his mule’s packsaddle and lifts the meat down. “It was fresh yesterday morning,” he says.

The Indian leans forward slightly, his nostrils flaring. Then he pulls back, nods, and gestures toward the elk carcass. “I trade front left shank,” he says. He grins at Williams. “Your piece.”

Gerald grins. The front pieces are smaller than the hindquarters.

Old Bill nods. “That’ll do right well.” He sticks out a hand. “My name’s Old Bill Williams and this here’s Gerald Locke.”

The Ute frowns at Gerald. “I know older man this name.”

Gerald smiles. “My father and I are both named Gerald Locke,” he says. “I am called Gerald Locke Junior.” The man looks puzzled. “Gerald the younger,” Gerald explains.

The Ute nods, studying Gerald’s face. “I can see it is so.” He lifts a bloodied hand toward his chest. “I am Stands Alone.” His gesture takes in the valley, then the peaks upstream. “This my place.”

Gerald nods. How far does the Ute’s place extend? But he merely says, “We’ve been trapping beaver on the river here. Is that all right with you?”

Williams swings his head, glaring, but neither Gerald nor Stands Alone respond. They stand, looking into each other’s faces, then the Ute says, “For beaver to flavor the pot,” and Gerald grins and nods.

Williams shakes his head in disgust. He jerks his thumb downstream. “We’re trappin’ that direction.” His tone makes it clear that he’s not asking permission.

Stands Alone nods. “No beaver there beyond a half-day journey,” he says. “The water is swift.” He jerks his head southwest, toward the other side of the river. “That way, toward the black valley, there may be beaver.”

Williams frowns. “Not in the Moreno Valley,” he says. “We was just there and there ain’t any there. Never has been, far’s I know.”

Stands Alone gestures toward the peaks that rise above the opposite bank. “That way is a smaller valley with many seeps. I have seen beaver.” He shrugs. “Too far for too little meat.” He spreads his hands and a ghost of a smile glimmers in his eyes. “I give them to you.”

Old Bill throws back his head and barks a laugh. “We can have all we want, huh? As long as we leave the elk here for you?”

Stands Alone smiles noncommittally.

Gerald chuckles and gazes toward the pine-covered slopes. “I suppose the quickest way there is back the way we came.”

Stands Alone nods. “There is a way when grass is green,” he says. “But when snow comes, following water is best.” He bends and goes back to his work, deftly cuts a section of meat from the elk’s shoulder, then proffers it to Old Bill.

Williams shrugs, wraps the meat in a piece of buckskin, and attaches the bundle to his mule’s packsaddle. Stands Alone returns to his labors and doesn’t look up as the trappers turn and move up the valley.

As the canyon narrows around them, Gerald glances back. The Ute man has been joined by two female figures and a horse-drawn travois. The women bend over the elk while he washes his hands in the river.

~ ~ ~ ~

Intermittent snow slides in over the canyon brim as the trappers move west. The flakes become steadily smaller and more intense, and the cold increases proportionately. Gerald and Williams camp again at the foot of the eagle nesting cliff. When they wake, the snow has stopped and the valley beyond is blindingly white. As Gerald squints, trying to see the peaks on the other side, Old Bill grabs charcoal from the coolest edge of the fire and begins smudging it onto his face below his eyes.

“You best be doin’ this, too,” he tells Gerald. “It keeps the glare from gettin’ your eyes. Your skin’s darker’n mine but even the Injuns do it this time of year.”

Gerald swings his head, waiting for Williams to speculate on the difference in their skin tone, but Old Bill has turned away and is smearing charcoal on his mule’s cheeks, as well. The animal pulls back, resisting, and Gerald chuckles and reaches for his own piece of burnt wood.

They move out, into a sweep of icy, concentrated sunlight. The glare bounces from the snow and forces the men’s eyes into mere slits. Gerald’s head feels like it’s being split in two, first by the dry sharpness of the cold, then by the piercing light. Even with the charcoal smudged on his cheeks, he has to work to see Williams, a mere ten feet ahead.

Old Bill hugs the valley’s eastern edge, skirting the base of the snow-covered hills as they move south. On the west, the mountaintops are buried behind a mass of gray clouds that seem to only intensify the blaze of the sun above them.

Then a breeze springs up. It lifts the top layer of snow and spins an icy spray around the men and mules. “Might as well be snowin’ again!” Williams yells. His voice drops, still muttering, then rises. “That Ute can have it!”

Gerald’s lips are too stiff with cold for him to even smile in response, but when they stop to noon in the lee of a snow-covered ridge and he’s recovered a little, he grins at Williams. “You think Stands Alone spends much time up here in winter?”

“Not in a teepee!” Old Bill says. “These winds’d blow his lodge poles to smithereens.” He grunts disparagingly and uses a finger to work a piece of jerky from behind a molar. He pulls the half-chewed meat out, looks at it, puts it back in his mouth, and tilts his canteen. Nothing comes out. “Frozen solid.” He looks at Gerald. “You got any?”

Gerald reaches for his own water container and jiggles it. “It sounds like something’s still liquid,” he says. He hands Williams the canteen.

“See, that’s the difference between an Injun and a white man,” Williams says. “You just hand it to me, knowing I’m wantin’ a drink. An Injun’ll bargain with you, daylight to dark, to see what he can get out of you. Make you beg for what he’s planning to give you.”

Gerald tilts his head. A white man, huh? Well, that answers that question. But he can’t, in all fairness, let the mischaracterization slide. “I wish my experience bore that out,” he says. “I’ve known white men who wouldn’t so much as let you step on their land without making conditions.”

Williams shrugs. “I reckon there’s bad apples in every lot,” he concedes. He turns and looks up the valley. “But that Ute saying this valley is his? Well, that just ain’t so. For one thing, the Apaches come through here regular-like. They might have a difference of opinion about who all it belongs to.” He nods toward the cloud-covered peaks on the other side of the valley. “And, sure as shootin’, the Taos Injuns on the other side of those mountains would have a righteous something to say about his claim. It’s their hunting grounds, too.”

He shakes his head as he returns Gerald’s canteen. “But see, most Injuns don’t see the land the same way we whites do, with clear boundaries marked out and a man’s right to work it. To them, the country’s just something to hunt on and gather from, not to plant and work and turn it into more than it was at the start. Except for the Pueblos, it takes a righteous amount of palaver to get them so’s they’re willing to divide it up between them and actually plow it. Not like us.”

Gerald looks at the other man, thinking of his preference for blazing trail over living in a cabin. Yet here he is, asserting the value of making the land more than a place to hunt and gather. Gerald’s own propensities are toward plowing and planting, so he tends to agree with Old Bill, but the Utes and Apaches have been hunting and gathering on this land for generations. Which gives them some rights. It’s a different way of looking at it, is all. They just don’t feel the need to sink their fingers in the soil, the way he does. A need which is very strong.

Old Bill rises and Gerald grimaces at the quandary, wraps his mule’s lead rope around his gloved hand, and prepares to follow Williams back into the wind-driven snow.

The cold intensifies as the setting sun silhouettes the western clouds. When Gerald lifts his hand to his face, his glove bumps numb cheeks as stiff as boards. He turns stiffly, scanning for another sheltering abutment. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Williams move abruptly left. Numbly, Gerald follows.

A trickle of half-frozen water flows from the tree line, forming a slushy black line in the snow. The men and mules move along the rivulet and into the trees. The wind drops sharply in the lee of the hill and Gerald releases breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding.

The next morning they discover that Stands Alone spoke truly. Beaver ponds dot the small valley that parallels the larger one. And they’re not completely frozen over. It takes a good two weeks to trap them out.

When the men return to the larger valley, the snow has abated and the grass is visible again. Gerald pauses beside the small, still slushy stream, and gazes at the western peaks, especially the massive middle one. He looks south, then north, and nods. Yes, he has seen this before. From this angle, it’s recognizable as the valley he crossed with Ewing Young’s mule train. The one with the long grasses, the winding streams, the soil so black his fingers itched to to touch it, to tuck seed into its fertile protection.

As he follows Williams’ mule down the valley, he studies the pine trees on its slopes. They’re black against a now-turquoise sky. And to think that same sky was thick with grey snow-bearing clouds just a week ago! What a changeable place it is! He has a sudden urge to laugh out loud.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8

Over the next two weeks, Williams and Gerald trap their way steadily up the Red River. As they move higher, the temperatures drop a little more each night. The cottonwoods and the heart-shaped foliage of the white-barked aspens turn ever more golden.

Then snow falls for the first time. Williams stands by the morning campfire and studies the sides of the canyon. Its sharp rocks are outlined in white. The trapper swings his head toward the stream and the fingers of ice that edge its banks. Then he nods eastward, up the canyon.

“I reckon it’s about time for us to head on to greener pastures,” he says. “We’re not going to spy much more beaver up this creek. From here on, it’s too narrow and steep for them to have much chance at damming it solid. And anything dammable that runs into it is gonna be froze over anyway. We’re high up enough now that the snow’s likely to be nothing but serious from now until March. I reckon we’d better head on across Bobcat before it really sets in.”

“Bobcat?”

Old Bill jerks his head to the southeast. “There’s a pass thataway. It’ll drop us down into the prettiest little valley you ever saw.” He grins. “Well, not so little. But it’s a sight.” He swings toward his mule. “We’d best get to moving though, if we want to get over it before nightfall.”

The trail to Bobcat Pass is a steady climb up a rocky path dominated by snow-dusted ponderosas and other pine that cling improbably to almost perpendicular slopes. Gerald feels the upward incline in his ears. First a dull pressure, than a sharp pain until he sets himself to yawning and swallowing air. How high are they climbing, anyway?

High enough to be above the river, which slices through a steep sided and heavily treed ravine below. The actual pass itself is more grass than trees. The snow is thick, but drifted enough that the dried herbage is still evident. The men pause to let the mules blow and browse for a few minutes. They pull jerky for themselves from their packs, then begin the descent, into the trees again, on a slant almost as steep as the one they’ve just scaled. Elk lift their heads from pocket meadows too small even for beaver as the trappers and their animals move down the mountainside.

They drop into a narrow defile and follow it east and south below slopes dotted with twisted brown scrub oak and green-black pine. The snow hasn’t reached this side of the mountains yet and a small stream, not yet frozen, trickles merrily through narrow meadows thick with willow and drying grass. Just ahead, a flock of perhaps twenty wild turkeys moves silently away from the other side of the stream and weaves uphill through the trees. None of the birds turn their heads toward the men and mules, but they’re clearly moving away from the foreign presence.

Gerald takes a deep breath, breathing in the cold pine-scented air. Though the tree-covered slopes are almost close enough touch, the sky to the east feels more open, somehow. He suddenly realizes how closed in he’s felt in the last few weeks in the Red River’s canyon.

They reach the valley early the next morning, just as the sun is rising behind the massive snow-dusted rock abutment that Williams calls Baldy Mountain. As they move south beside the creek in the valley’s center, Williams gestures to the west. Gerald turns his head. The snow-clad peaks opposite Baldy glow pink, reflecting the sunrise.

Gerald shakes his head, bemused. The sun rises in all directions in this valley. In fact, the way the sunlight glints from the dew on the brown grasses makes it feel as if the light rises from the ground itself. The grass is long and healthy. It sweeps from the bushes scattered along Baldy’s slopes down into the valley floor and then west over the foothills to the edge of the pine-covered and pink-topped mountains. It’s thickest along the creek bank. Gerald’s farmer heart twinges with desire.

Old Bill and his mule drop back to walk beside Gerald. “This little bit of a stream’s called the Moreno River,” he says.

The younger man grins. The strip of water is so narrow he could jump across it, but they call it a river.

“Here in nuevo mexico, if it flows all year, then it’s a river. It don’t rightly matter how much water actually runs in it,” Williams adds.

“Doesn’t Moreno mean black?” Gerald asks. The water isn’t black, but the soil the stream cuts through certainly is. Dark and loamy. Inside his buckskin gloves, his fingers twitch, wanting to know how such a soil might respond to the touch. It looks as healthy as the grasses that weave their roots into its heart. He glances toward Baldy again and blinks. What he’d taken for bushes on the lower slopes have resolved into a scattered herd of feeding elk. Involuntarily, he wonders what Suzanna Peabody would say to such a sight.

But Williams is talking again, his voice high and querulous, a sure sign that he’s about to launch into a story. “First time I saw this valley, there was a foot of snow on the ground and a group of Utes camping just yonder, under that stony outcrop.”

He points to the right, where a mass of stone juts from the side of a flat-topped grassy hill. “I’d just pushed over Bobcat Pass in snow so deep the mules could barely plow through it. I’d been walkin’ three days. I figured if I stopped, I’d just righteously freeze to death.”

Old Bill shakes his head. “I tell you, I was mighty pleased to see that little camp of Utes down there and even gladder when I realized its chief was a friend of mine. They welcomed me well enough, but he wouldn’t tell me a righteous lick about what they were doin’ up here in that kind of weather. They should of been down Cimarron Canyon feeding their families and waitin’ out the winter like sensible men. Instead, they were laying here, waiting on something they probably weren’t supposed to be tanglin’ with. Mexicano soldiers, most likely. I got myself thawed out a little, then I hightailed it outta there with just my rifle, one beaver trap, and the clothes on my back.”

Williams shrugs. “Old Three Hands got two good mules for feeding me a couple of days, but I got out of tanglin’ in a fight that was none of my business. So I reckon it washed clean, although I sure did miss the use of those mules. I just hope they didn’t get turned into stew meat when those damn fools stopped waitin’ for a fight and headed for home.”

He pauses. Gerald knows he’s expected to prod the story forward. “You never got your mules back?” he asks.

“Nope, I never did. And the next time I saw Three Hands, he didn’t recall having seen me at all that whole winter.” Old Bill grins. “It turns out they’d had a bit of a scrap with the Mexican soldiers. He didn’t have much to say about that, neither. Those government troops seem to have got the better of them . Old Three Hands sure didn’t want to put his jaw to talking about anything that happened that season.” Williams chuckles. “The Utes ain’t ones for dwellin’ on their defeats.”

“Like most men.”

Williams snorts in agreement and points ahead, to a cluster of ponderosas in the curve of the stream. “We’ll stop there to noon. That’ll give the mules a chance to feed up. This grass may be brown, but it’s still tasty.” He nods southward. “If you’re thinkin’ this is pretty, wait’ll you see the south part.”

“There’s more?”

“You could say that.” Old Bill chuckles. “You might just be able to say that.”

The mules are reluctant to leave the long grasses, but once the men have eaten, Williams seems eager to push on. They follow the stream through a mile-long passageway that winds between the hills. The ground is thick with grass and spotted with thick-trunked ponderosas. Then the trees end and the land opens before them. Williams halts, grins at Gerald, and waves a proud hand at the view. “Now that’s something, ain’t it?” he says.

They’re standing at the top of a broad slope that angles gently down to a grassy basin that’s perhaps a mile wide and extends south toward haze-covered blue peaks. The valley is bisected by a series of low grass-covered ridges that block his view of the valley floor, but Gerald suspects the grass continues right to the edge of those southern mountains. If it’s anything like the growth at his feet, this is a rich valley indeed.

Elk are scattered across the hillside to his right. At its base, a stream narrower than the Moreno slips from the west and joins the Moreno, then snakes slowly southeast. Gerald’s gaze lifts and moves along the mountains that line the valley, east and west. He squints, puzzled. There’s something familiar about this place.

Williams gestures toward a low point in the peaks to the left, south of Baldy and a flat-topped ridge that bulks beyond it. “Those streams are headin’ there, where the Cimarron starts,” he says. “There’s a crag above the marsh there that the Injuns favor for gatherin’ eagle feathers. There were three big scraggly nests perched up in there the last time I come through. There’s likely more further up the slopes.”

He waves his hand at the grassland. “That there’s prime eagle hunting grounds for keeping their young fed up, what with the smaller birds and le petite chien.”

Gerald lifts an eyebrow. “Prairie dogs? The more the eagles eat, the better. They’d wipe out the grasses with their mounds. And that’s prime hay meadow, from the looks of it.”

Williams chuckles. “Prime elk browse, at any rate. Even the occasional buffalo.” He clucks at his pack mule. “This valley gets a mite windy and cold this time of year. We need to get a move on and get under the lee of one of those ridges before nightfall. I’m lookin’ to scout east along the Cimarron tomorrow and see if there’s any beaver come in since I was here two seasons back.”

Gerald follows the trapper down the broad slope, but his mind isn’t on beaver. The broad grassland and small streams move his thoughts inevitably to cattle and farming. The length and thickness of the grass here tell him there’s water available pretty much year-round.

And there are no people. No farmers, at any rate. The Indians apparently come through to hunt and even camp. Do they stay long? How would they feel about a man who wanted to actually put roots down here, build a house? Put in a garden? Grow a family along with it?

Suzanna Peabody’s straightforward black eyes rise before him and Gerald shakes his head. That’s presuming too much. But wouldn’t it be something if she should decide— He forces his mind back to the more plausible daydream of ranch, house, hay, and cattle.

“Does anybody actually live up here year-round?” he asks that night as he and Williams crouch next to a fire at the base of Eagle’s Nest rock. The canyon wall soars above them, black in the darkness. They’re right up against it, out of the way of the cattail-strewn marsh that absorbs the waters of the Moreno River. Gerald can hear it trickling from the marsh into the intermittent stream that runs through the canyon they’ll enter tomorrow. Cimarron Creek, Williams calls it. “Cimarron” because it’s as wild and unpredictable as the mountain sheep also called “cimarron.” “Creek” because it doesn’t flow year-round.

“This here valley’s too cold for perching in durin’ the winter months,” Williams says. “It’s a righteously beautiful place in the summer, once summer finally makes it this high up. It takes a mite longer than most places to warm up and the cold comes in earlier, too.” He shrugs. “It ain’t good for beaver though. Not enough trees and willow to make it worth their while.”

“I was thinking about how it would be to farm,” Gerald says casually. “But from what you say, it sounds like the growing season’s a bit short.”

Williams snorts. “The growin’ season’s short and the winter season’s long,” he says. “I surely wouldn’t try it. But then I ain’t a farming man.” He points to the rock abutment overhead. “I’d rather be on top of that rock, seein’ what I can see, lookin’ for new trails to blaze. Not cramped up in a cabin with nothin’ to do.” He shrugs. “But if a man was goin’ to venture livin’ up here, he could always run cattle. There’s grass enough. Though you’d have to fight the elk for the range and the wolves and the cougars for the calves.”

“And watch out for prairie dogs,” Gerald says wryly.

Williams nods. “And then you’d have to get those cows down to market.” He pushes back his hat. “I hear tell some of the Taos folk run their goats and sheep up here in the summer. Between them, the Injuns, the elk, and the weather, it’d be a contest who’d wear you out soonest.”

Gerald nods, gazing into the dark toward the marsh, his mind drifting toward the richness of the soil in the valley beyond.

“And you’d have a tough time findin’ a woman who’d be willin’ to live this far from nowhere.” Williams grins mischievously at Gerald. “Even Suzanna Peabody.”

Gerald’s head jerks toward Old Bill in spite of himself.

Williams stretches his legs toward the fire. “You ain’t the only one who’s dreamed that particular notion, you know. We’ve all had that idea, one time or the other.”

Gerald feels a tight fist of disgust in his belly and fights to keep it from showing on his face.

Williams shakes his head at the fire, a rueful smile on his lips. “Not that any of us’d touch her. She’s that fine a lady.” He nods at Gerald companionably. “But she does make you think of what it’d be like to settle with a girl like herself, don’t she now? Educated like that. Smart as a whip. Not takin’ sass off a soul, not even her daddy. But not mean like. It’s just she can talk him so sweet he don’t even know he’s been twisted around her little finger.” He chuckles. “’Course, that might be a reason for some of us to think twice about a gal of her caliber.”

Gerald permits himself a small smile. To think of another man thinking of Suzanna Peabody in that way makes his stomach clench, but he does like that Old Bill admires her qualities, knows what she’s worth.

Not that he himself really knows the girl, Gerald reminds himself. But what Williams says of her fits what Gerald instinctively feels. The true heart of her. The strength. As to her taking no sass off anybody, he knows that isn’t quite true. He’s seen her frightened, though not cowed. And he’s very glad that he happened around the corner of that narrow street where Enoch Jones had her cornered against that adobe wall.

Not that his intervention lays any obligation upon her, he reminds himself later, as he spreads his bedroll on the rocky ground beneath the cliff. Or means she’s special to him in any way. He would do the same for any woman in such a predicament.

Yet, as he dozes off, Gerald’s mind drifts to the image of black eyes looking straight into his, slim brown hands offering him a plate of food.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7

The day after the visit to the Peabody’s, Gerald shares yet another whisky with Old Bill in yet another Taos taberna. In the middle of a story about his life among the Osage Indians, Williams interrupts himself. “So how is it you happened to already know our Miz Peabody?” he asks abruptly.

Gerald shrugs. “A man was paying her what seemed to be unwanted attention and I intervened.” He lifts his drink. “Anyone else would’ve done the same thing.”

Old Bill lifts a scraggly red eyebrow. “Would the gentleman who was providing this unwanted attention happen to be named Enoch Jones?”

Gerald sets his drink on the table. “Do you know him?”

Williams’ back straightens and his eyes narrow. “I know him all right. I’ll wring his fat neck for him, the mothersuckin’ balls for brains bastard!”

Gerald frowns. “Has he been after her before this?”

“He’s made eyes,” Old Bill says grimly. “You sure it was him?”

“Oh yes. We were in the same train coming out.”

“He’ll be waitin’ for you t’ turn your back, you know.”

“He already disliked me.” Gerald shrugs. “This will just give him another reason.”

Williams raises an inquiring eyebrow and Gerald briefly describes the incident with the Kiowa boy, then—more fully—Jones’ treatment of the mules.

“He’s a godforsaken bastard, that one,” Old Bill says. “I’ve known a few craven-hearted men in my time, but he’s one of the worst.” His eyes snap. “To think he’d have the gall to put his hands on our Suzanna.”

“It was the way he spoke to her,” Gerald says. “As if she was dirt under his feet.”

“Well, he’s got this mothersuckin’ idea that a white skin makes him better than the rest of the human race,” Williams says. “And Miz Peabody being part Navajo but so well bred and nice mannered must just stick in his craw.”

“She’s part Navajo?”

“Now there’s a story for you.” Old Bill leans forward and lowers his voice. “No one talks about it much, because Jeremiah doesn’t like to be reminded how he was boondoggled.” He tilts his red head. “At least, that’s how he figgers it.” He shrugs. “Any other man would of known what the girl was up to, but he was still green and those New Englanders, they expect everybody else to have their same standards.”

Gerald frowns, confused.

Williams stretches back, fingering his whisky. “See, what happened was, Peabody showed up out here from the East along about 1809. He was still pretty much just a whippersnapper, runnin’ away from some trouble with a gal and another man.” Williams shrugs. “The usual. Anyway, he got out here safe enough and managed to sweet talk the ricos into letting him stay, but then this puta started after him. She was the daughter of a French trapper and a Navajo gal the trapper had bought from the Comanches.”

Williams grins ruefully. “The girl was a righteously pretty little thing and she pretty much got what she wanted. Jeremiah fell in love, or so he thought, and when she told him she was enciento, he hooked up with her. Didn’t marry her, though. He wouldn’t turn Catholic, even for a girl. But he swore he’d take care of her and the child. And he did, even when she started running around with other men.”

Old Bill shakes his head. “Should of turned her out. I would of. But by that time, the little girl was born and they say she was a righteous beauty even then. Her daddy fell in love for real then, that’s for certain sure.”

Williams pauses, looking incongruously bemused. “Babies’ll do that t’ a man if you’re not careful. Tie you down faster’n any woman can.” He shakes a finger at Gerald. “My advice is, don’t stay around long enough to find out if there’s gonna be a kid, and if you do find out, then cut out before the coon actually arrives. If you stay, you’re lost, sure as oil and water don’t mix.”

Gerald grins. “I’ll remember that.”

Williams raises both hands, leans forward, and slaps the rough wooden table with both palms. “So what’re you gonna do with yourself this winter? You decide yet?”

Gerald shakes his head.

“Why don’t you throw in with me?” the trapper asks. “I’ve got nothing to do here except play court to Sibley on his road commission work and I ain’t much good at payin’ court.” He snorts. “Sibley’d tell you that.” He leans back, hands still flat on the table. “I’ll show you the ropes and we’ll split the results. Just you and me, private like. I’m not about to share my hunting grounds with just anyone.”

“Your hunting grounds?”

Old Bill winks. “I know some places up in the hills that they all think are trapped out. But it’s good hunting if you know where to look and there ain’t too many out looking.”

Gerald studies the opinionated mountain man. There’s something about Williams that’s quite appealing. Or maybe it’s just that Old Bill’s loquaciousness means Gerald doesn’t have to talk much when they’re together. There’s certainly little need to explain himself or where he comes from.

Gerald nods thoughtfully, then more firmly, looking into the trapper’s face. “I’d be honored to throw in with you,” he says. “When do you expect to start?”

“Well, there ain’t no time like the present!” Williams scrapes back his chair. “Let’s get a move on.”

Gerald follows him out the taberna door, squelching his desire to make a farewell visit to the Peabody home, aware that he has no right to make such a call, hoping against hope that he might chance across Suzanna before he and Old Bill leave town. Or that Williams will decide he needs one last meal of the Peabody cook’s wheat flour rolls.

But when the old trapper decides to do something, he throws himself into it completely. He and Gerald are busy from dawn to dusk: stocking up on flour, coffee, and salt; purchasing Gerald’s gear, including elk hide moccasins and buckskin trousers and shirt; and locating and bargaining for two sturdy mules for their gear. Gerald keeps an eye out for Suzanna Peabody, but doesn’t catch so much as a glimpse of her in the next three days.

They slip out of Taos in the middle of the night. Williams has mentioned casually to several of the other trappers that he’s heading up the Rio del Norte, and he and Gerald move out in that direction under a star-studded sky.

The next morning, the wheat fields of Taos Valley give way to rolling hills covered with forty-foot juniper and occasional long-needled thick-barked ponderosa pine. But Old Bill is paralleling the Rio del Norte, not heading toward it. He moves due north, then slightly east, to hit what he calls Red River Creek well east of its confluence with the del Norte. They camp beside the creek that night, in the shadow of the mountains it flows from. According to Williams, the stream is called “Colorado” in Spanish, in honor of the reddish sediment that stains it during spring runoff.

The next morning they follow the Red’s narrow canyon east into the Sangre de Cristos. Williams leads the way, the gap between the men too far for any real conversation and Old Bill anxious not to be spotted. Gerald’s not sure if Williams is more concerned about Indians or other trappers.

He takes the opportunity to study the massive granite and sandstone boulders that jut from the canyon walls, dwarfing the men and mules, and the ponderosas that cling precariously in the gaps between them. There’s a brooding beauty in the darkness of the pines. Sunlight breaks around the rocks onto the clear-running river below, then cuts off abruptly as the canyon rim narrows overhead.

Where the canyon is wider, broad grassy areas stretch beside the stream. Even Gerald can spot the old beaver sign in these meadows. Graying tree stumps stick up from the grasses and show themselves among the alder and willows along the river bank. Their tops, gnawed long ago into dull points by beaver incisors, are chipped like poorly sharpened pencils.

The men find no truly marshy areas or ponds with active beaver lodges until well into the second day. Williams is ahead and Gerald’s beginning to wonder when he’ll decide to noon, when the older man raises his reedy voice. “Well now, that’s a beaver dam if ever I saw one!”

A windblown snag straddles the river from bank to bank. Ten- and twelve-foot lengths of two-inch thick branches are jammed hard against the snag at every possible angle. River mud has been smudged between them, whether by beaver or water flow, it’s hard to say.

The dam is massive, perhaps eight feet tall and fifteen long. Grasses dot its top and sides. They’re well rooted in the sediment and enhance the dam’s strength. Water slips around its near end, trickling downstream just enough to keep the pond behind it in check. There are no discernible banks to the pond itself. The impounded water seeps through a swath of cattails, then into a tangle of coyote willow. Beyond the willows, long grasses rise from mucky soil, creating a bog that blocks the canyon floor for a good quarter mile upriver.

Williams pushes his hat back on his head and scratches his scraggly red beard as he studies the dam and the pond. Then he turns to Gerald.

“This is where moccasins are better’n boots,” he says. “We’re about to get damp.” Old Bill’s mule nickers at him and he looks at her impatiently. “Ah hell, let’s noon first.” He pulls off his hat. “Then we’ll start slogging.”

They loose the mules to graze among the water-rich grasses, and munch buffalo jerky while they study the bog. “We could trap it from here,” Williams says. “If we’re careful, the beaver won’t know which direction we come from.” He snorts. “There’s sure enough water around here to wash our stink out.” He glances up at the sheer canyon walls. “But we’d only have one way out if any Utes or Apaches show up.” He clucks his tongue as he shakes his head. “We’re gonna have to get past this. Come at it from upstream.”

“And if Apaches or Utes show up when we’re above this?” Gerald asks. “Won’t this mess block us from moving out of here quickly?”

Williams grins mischievously. “Then we’ll have to head upstream instead.” He glances at Gerald’s feet. “Better put your moccasins on. Those leather boots will take a month of Sundays to dry out good and proper.”

Gerald grimaces. He suspects the elk hide moccasins aren’t going to be much protection against the icy water.

And he’s right. When he steps into the stream, the shock to his feet is truly breathtaking.

Ahead of him, leading a reluctant mule through the water-logged grass, Old Bill looks back over his shoulder and grins. “They’ll numb up soon enough,” he says. “Then you won’t feel a thing.”

Gerald grins wryly and clucks at his mule, who seems more interested in eating than wading. Smart animal, he thinks grimly.

They move upstream and well beyond the pond before Williams finds a camping site to his liking. The next morning, he gathers gear enough for a day’s trapping, hands Gerald a long piece of deadwood sharpened on one end, hoists a pack onto his back, and leads the way back to the beaver dam.

They maneuver downstream perhaps a mile, though it seems longer. Gerald’s feet are blocks of ice before the trapper abruptly halts. “Here it is!” Williams hisses. “Looks different, this direction.”

Gerald wades through the water to stand beside Williams in the eddying stream. A wall of willow lines the river’s banks, marking the edge of the beaver pond. On their left, there’s a narrow muddy incline between the willows. Neatly-clipped willow sticks lie beside it. A small bush has been sheared off to within a foot of the ground, the tip of each stub angled and sharp.

“Beaver feeding?” Gerald asks.

Williams hisses, “Quiet!” Then he nods and jerks a thumb toward the strip of mud. “That there’s their slide,” he whispers. “We’ll be settin’ the trap out from that, a good three feet or so.” He points at a small section of water that’s noticeably darker than the rest, a sign that the pond bottom drops sharply in that location. “Right about there.”

Gerald considers the dark spot and wonders just how deep the pool actually is. But he only nods.

Old Bill wades forward cautiously. He stops, extends his foot, and taps it along the bottom of the pond, then grunts approvingly. He turns and beckons to Gerald. “Come and see.”

Gerald edges closer, staying between Williams and the bank.

Williams moves his foot from side to side. The water swirls, turning brown with silt. “I’m using my foot to move some of this here mud into a little hill,” he explains. “When I’m done, the top of it’ll be about a foot below the surface.”

Gerald nods his understanding, if not his ability to see what the trapper is actually doing.

“I’ve got to make it wide enough to hold the trap and all,” Williams explains, gesturing with his hands, forgetting to whisper. He yanks the bag on his back around to rest against his scrawny belly, then pulls out a trap and begins unwrapping the steel chain that’s wound around it. “You know how to set this beast?”

“Well, I do on solid ground,” Gerald says.

Williams grins. “It ain’t so theoretical now, is it?” He lifts the trap chain to one side, out of the way, then flips the trap itself onto its side and braces it against his thigh. He wraps his hands around the metal clamps at each end and squeezes steadily, forcing them together. As the springs compress, the trap jaws are forced open and into position.

Old Bill gives Gerald a little nod and jerks his chin at the trap. “Just flip that trigger piece into that there dog.”

Gerald gingerly uses his free hand to snap the dangling piece of narrow, angled metal into the notch on the opposite side of the trap. This will keep the trap’s jaws open until an unwary animal ventures too close and bumps the trigger and the metal jaws clamp shut around the animal’s leg or other body part.

Williams lifts the trap carefully, gives a satisfied nod, and grins at Gerald. “That’s the way to do it.”

Gerald grins back at him. “That approach requires some real strength.”

Williams nods complacently. “It’s all in the hands.” He deftly slides the trap under the water and onto the pile of dredged-up mud, then lifts the chain and moves farther into the pond. When he finds the anchorage spot he’s looking for, he motions Gerald to bring him the trap stake.

Gerald wades across and hands Williams the piece of sharpened deadwood, and the trapper slips its blunt end into the final loop of the chain. Then he pulls a leather cord from a pocket, wraps it around the stick twice, then threads it through a loop of the chain, and knots it into place just below the top of the stake. Once the chain is attached, he grabs the stick with both hands and shoves the pointed end firmly downward, driving it into the pond floor. He nods in satisfaction and turns to follow the chain back to the trap site. Gerald wades after him.

“Cold yet?” Old Bill asks over his shoulder.

“Startin’ to feel it,” Gerald says, his lips so stiff he can hardly form the words.

Williams chuckles. “You got sand, I’ll say that for you.” He gestures toward the stake. “All that’s the preliminaries. This next step’s the crucial piece.” He wades to the willow bushes along the bank, pulls out his knife, and slices off a long switch. He scrapes the bark from one end, then reaches into a pocket. “I’m gonna need you to take care of this,” he says. He holds out the corked piece of antelope horn that serves as his bait container.

Gerald has smelled castoreum before, but the choking scent of it is always a shock to his senses. He grimaces as he removes the cork and tilts the contents toward the trapper. Williams grins at him, sticks his gloved forefinger into the goop, and smears it onto the scraped end of the willow switch.

As Gerald recaps the bit of horn, Williams chuckles. “Look at your face!” He shakes his head. “Better get use to it, sonny. That stuff’s what fortunes are made of.”

“It stinks like a lot of necessary things,” Gerald says dryly.

Old Bill laughs and moves to the edge of the pond. He forces the thicker end of the willow stick into the bank at an angle, so that the baited end hangs out over the water and dangles perhaps six inches above the surface and the set trap underneath.

“That should do it,” Williams says. He turns and begins wading upstream. “We need to make tracks up a ways before we can climb out. We don’t want that beaver smellin’ us. These critters can be mighty intelligent when they take a notion to be.”

There’s a good-sized male beaver in the trap when they return the next morning. Gerald carries it back to camp, where Williams proceeds to demonstrate how to skin and butcher the carcass, then how to stretch the skin onto a hoop he constructs from willow branches and thin strips of rawhide. When he hangs the hooped pelt from a ponderosa branch, the sun shines through the skin and gives it a reddish hue.

“You ever eat beaver flesh?” the trapper asks.

Gerald shakes his head.

“Well, you’re in for a treat,” Old Bill says. “Beaver tastes like beef and even has a little fat in it, unlike venison or antelope. They’re so dry you’ve got to add fat to the pot to make them righteously edible.” He squats next to the fire and reaches for the coffee pot. “With all that grease, beaver flesh doesn’t last long, but it’s good the first day, at any rate. And it’s a nice change from deer or elk or those other hoofed creatures.”

“I understand beaver tail is quite tasty.”

Williams grunts disparagingly. “If you’re craving fat, it’ll pass for it,” he says. “It’s too bland for my tongue. Though that cook of Jeremiah Peabody’s knows what to do with it. Someone brought her some last fall and by the time she was done with it, Peabody said it was like ambrosia.” He shakes his head. “That Chonita is a looker, too. It’s beyond my understanding why she’s not married yet. Waiting for the best proposition, I suppose. A female like her can take her time, be righteously choosy.”

Williams pauses, still holding the coffee pot, staring up into the golden narrow leaf cottonwoods between them and the river. “I knew another one like that once. An Osage gal.” He shakes his head and puts the pot back on the stone next to the fire. “Pretty, too.” He looks at Gerald. “Have you met her?”

“Jeremiah Peabody’s cook?” Gerald shakes his head.

Williams grins mischievously. “Well, you met his daughter, so nobody else matters much now, I reckon.”

Gerald looks away. Suzanna Peabody’s name isn’t something to be bandied about around a campfire.

“Ah, come on now,” the trapper says. “It’s not a thing to be ashamed of, that spark between you. And you can’t deny it was there. I saw it.”

Gerald glances at him, then rises. “I’m to bed,” he says.

Old Bill chuckles knowingly and reaches for the coffee pot again. Gerald’s face tightens. Is the man taking liberties because of the color of his skin, or is he just taking liberties? How dare he talk about Suzanna Peabody in that way! He has no right!

Gerald pulls himself together and spreads out his blankets. He has no rights either. No permission to think of the girl with such a combination of sweetness and longing. And no reason to think he’ll ever have such permission. She may smile that way at every new man she meets. She certainly must meet plenty of them in her father’s parlor. He seems to keep open house.

Despite these obvious facts, Suzanna Peabody’s dark eyes still sparkle in Gerald’s memory as he lays down, covers himself, and tries to force his mind elsewhere, away from the look on her face in that first unguarded moment in her father’s small Taos parlor.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6

“So how is it that you knew Gerald Locke Jr. yesterday, even though you had not been formally introduced?” Jeremiah Peabody asks Suzanna the next morning as he cuts into his egg-and-corn-tortilla breakfast.

Suzanna reaches for another tortilla. “You know, Encarnación’s tortillas are so delicious, I’m sure our visitors wouldn’t mind having them for tea instead of wheat rolls.”

“The cost of wheat flour may be high, but it means a great deal to these men to have a semblance of home in the shape of wheat bread, tea, and a pretty woman to serve them,” her father says. “And, as you say, Encarnación’s corn tortillas are well made, so it’s no sacrifice to eat them at our other meals. That young woman is quite a cook. I thank the day she appeared at our doorstop.” He looks up at her with a slight frown. “Unless you have grown weary of tortillas, my dear. In which case—”

“Oh no,” Suzanna says. “I could eat Chonita’s tortillas at every meal and never weary of them.” She pops the last bit into her mouth and lifts her cup of milk. “That and this good cow’s milk that Ramón so thoughtfully brings us.”

“Well, we do pay him for it, although Ramón has also been a great friend to us. Although I have reason to believe that we are no longer the primary attraction for him.” He smiles. “He seems to think Encarnación’s acquaintance is worth cultivating.” Then his eyes narrow. “However, if you think you are going to deflect me from my purpose, you are very sadly mistaken. How is it you know this Gerald Locke?”

Suzanna chuckles as she places the milk back on the table. “I couldn’t help but try,” she says. She looks at her plate. “I— I didn’t want to worry you.”

His head lifts sharply. “Should I have not invited him in? Shall I forbid his return?”

“Oh no!” She looks up in alarm. “He’s a good man who saved me from a very uncomfortable encounter. I was glad to meet him properly.”

“An uncomfortable encounter?” Jeremiah’s hands fall away from his plate and flatten on the edge of the table. “I think you had best start at the beginning.”

His knuckles have whitened by the time Suzanna finishes her story and his compressed lips are one thin angry line. “That Enoch Jones is a man who cannot rise above his station and so resents anyone who looks as if they might do so,” he says angrily. “Or anyone who has already surpassed him.” He takes a deep breath, picks up his knife and fork, and gives Suzanna a sharp look before reapplying himself to his food. “And Gerald Locke Jr. has clearly done so.”

She smiles at him radiantly. “I’m so glad you like him, papá.”

He raises an eyebrow. “So, it’s ‘papá’ now, is it?” He smiles and shakes his head. Then his face sobers. “But please be more careful as you traverse the town, my dear. There may not always be a Mr. Locke nearby to save you from men like Enoch Jones.”

Suzanna sobers. “I know it. I’ve thought about my route that day, and decided on a new path for getting safely to and from the plaza.” Her chin lifts. “But I have no intention of allowing the likes of Enoch Jones to keep me from enjoying my life.”

Her father chuckles, tosses his napkin onto the table, and pushes back his chair. “I have no doubt that is the case,” he says. “Not even I am likely to stop you from achieving your wishes. Are you prepared for your Latin lesson this morning?”

“Of course,” Suzanna says. “But before we begin, I need to check on the courtyard plants. I put straw on the greens last night, to protect them from the frost, and they need to be uncovered.”

“Has the frost reached the courtyard?”

“I thought that it might, so I was worried about the lettuce. I want to keep it going as long as I can. There’s enough for at least another salad or two.”

“And did you find a way to protect your seed potatoes until spring?”

Suzanna’s eyes brighten. “I placed them under the straw, as well. This afternoon I’ll find a dry space for them in the root cellar. It may be difficult to keep those tiny eyes from growing too long before it’s time to plant them.”

Jeremiah smiles at her. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

But her plants aren’t enough to keep Suzanna Peabody from thinking about Gerald Locke at odd times over the next few days. The way he looked into her face, didn’t let his gaze drift lower. The shy but somehow confident smile. The broad forehead above his gray eyes. The tone of his voice as he spoke to her father: low-timbered, respectful, self assured. There’s something about the way the man carries himself, a kind of firm gentleness.

She wonders what he’ll decide to do during the coming trapping season. There are groups going up to the Platte River country. At least that’s what their leaders are telling the government officials. They’re claiming that they’ll head north to trap outside Mexico’s boundaries. But word is they intend to sneak back across the border, then move south, all the way to the Gila’s rich beaver country. Somehow, she doesn’t think Mr. Locke would misrepresent his intentions in that way. He just doesn’t seem the kind of man who would intentionally deceive others.

He seemed interested in her potato project, Suzanna reflects as she picks pieces of straw from between the leaves of loose-leaf lettuce. He had leaned toward her a little, his gray eyes on her face as she explained how she planned to overwinter the pieces Carlos Beaubien gave her. She smiles a little to herself as she reenters the house, thinking again of that broad forehead, that kind-looking mouth. She doesn’t pause to think that she knows virtually nothing about him.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

But there’s still the matter of how he’ll spend his winter, whether he’ll plunge into the world of fur trapping or try to find some other way to earn his keep. He’s thinking about Ewing Young’s offer as he wanders Taos plaza two days later, with one eye out for the tall girl in American clothing. He idly contemplates a blanket covered with fat pumpkins, then glances up and sees Ewing Young striding diagonally across the plaza. A tall thin buckskin-clad man with long red hair in disheveled braids stalks beside him. The man gestures wildly and his nasal high-pitched voice echoes off the adobe buildings.

When Young sees Gerald, a relieved look crosses his long face. He slows as he reaches Gerald, although his companion is still talking.

“And he’s workin’ on a new-fangled trap that might hold some promise, if—” the man is saying.

Young puts his hand on the red-haired man’s arm. “Here’s someone you’ll be interested in knowing,” he says. “Gerald Locke Jr., meet Old Bill Williams. He came in yesterday with that bunch that’s surveying the Santa Fe Trail.”

There’d been talk around the campfire the night before about the Santa Fe Trail Survey team the U.S. Congress has sent out under Major Sibley, but Gerald had assumed they’d all be in uniform. He looks at the buckskin-clad man in surprise.

Williams snorts. “Expecting a little more dudin’ up?”

“I thought the survey was an army project,” Gerald says.

Williams shrugs. “They had to have an expert in the country to guide ’em.”

“You’ll find that Old Bill here isn’t shy about his talents,” Young says drily. “Fortunately, he usually manages to keep to subjects he’s got some knowledge of.”

Williams snorts. “Know more’n you about trapping!” he says. “And Injuns!”

“So you say.” Young’s eyes crinkle with amusement. He turns to Gerald. “Williams here has lived a lot of years in Indian country and thinks he knows all about it. Fact is, he’s so damn confident that he goes out trapping on his own in places where the rest of us hunt in groups in case of Indian attacks.”

Williams grunts. “I don’t plan on gettin’ sent to the other side any time soon, not ’til I feel like takin’ a few with me.”

Young grins and shakes his head. Then he glances toward the mercantile behind Gerald. “I need to go in and talk to Baillio.” He nods to Old Bill, then Gerald. “I expect we’ll be meetin’ again.”

Gerald and Williams watch Young duck through the store’s heavy wooden door frame, then stand in the dusty plaza and consider the vendors and the goods spread in front of them. Williams glances up at the turquoise sky, but Gerald’s eyes stray across the plaza, still watching for the tall girl with the American hairstyle.

“So,” Williams says abruptly. “You new to nuevo mexico?”

“I came in with Young’s most recent trade caravan.” Gerald brings his eyes back to the older man’s face. He’s probably about forty. Older than most of the Americans Gerald’s met here so far.

“You lookin’ to trap?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Gerald looks around the plaza. Still no sign of the girl. He looks at the red-haired man. “I’m still trying to sort out my options.”

“Well, that sounds like a mighty tall order.” Old Bill jabs a thumb in the direction of the nearest taberna. “Like Ewing says, I know about trappin’ and a few other things besides. If you’re lookin’ for advice about the lay of the land, I can share some pearls of wisdom for the price of a tangle foot.”

“Tangle foot?”

“A drink. Taos Lightnin’. Whisky.”

Gerald chuckles. “It’s a deal.”

They’re a long while in the bar and Gerald buys more than one drink, but he does learn a good deal: which of the Americans has the most experience trapping, who buys the resulting furs and at what prices, which groups are forming for the coming season. What Williams says accords with and expands on what Gerald’s already picked up from the campfire talk, so he’s inclined to believe this scrawny man with the long red braids.

Williams holds his liquor well, too. Three whiskeys in short succession have no impact on his speech or the brightness of his brown eyes. The only change Gerald can detect is that the mountain man’s sentences become longer and more complex, his diction more precise.

“And now that I’ve told you the sum and total of all my most profound knowledge about the art and technique of beaver trapping, let us proceed to more essential information,” Williams says. “Where is it you hail from, young man?”

“Missouri,” Gerald says. “I—”

“Ah, Missouri,” Old Bill says. He leans back. “I also consider myself to be of Missouri, though my natal state is North Carolina, of all the benighted places to be born. But when I was seven years old, my paterfamilias hightailed it for greener pastures and I’ve always been grateful for his sense of adventure. We landed far enough away from St. Louie to keep the stench of its sinful ways from my mother’s nostrils but close enough to take advantage of the fur market when we needed cash money.” He takes another sip of whiskey. “I was just a young whippersnapper when my daddy showed me how to set my first trap line and it sure did give me a taste of what it is to be independent. Then when I was sixteen I took me a notion to go live with the Osages and Christianize them.” He shrugs and grins. “That was most righteously green of me. In the end, they taught me more than I ever taught them, that’s for damn certain.”

Abruptly, the mountain man pushes away from the table. “Well, that was a mighty fine respite, that was, and we’ve had ourselves a healthy palaver, but I think maybe we could do with a feed and I know where to get it. Have you had the pleasure of meeting Jeremiah Peabody yet?”

Gerald shakes his head.

“Come along with me and I’ll introduce you. He’s always got a feed going. The man’s got a good cook and has the righteous sense to keep her busy.”

Gerald nods. He’ll finally learn where Peabody’s is. A restaurant of some kind, apparently. But by the time they’re halfway across the village, the loquacious trapper has set him straight on that, too.

According to Williams, Peabody is a New England man who came into the country around ’09 and set himself up as a teacher and scribe so the Spaniards would let him stay in the country legally. He holds open house for the trappers when they’re in town, as long as they aren’t liquored up when they arrive.

Gerald smiles slightly at this, thinking of the amount of whisky Williams consumed at the taberna, but holds his tongue. The man doesn’t appear to be drunk. Perhaps that will suffice.

And it does. The house is built in a U-shape. A gated adobe wall blocks the open end, but the wooden gate stands invitingly open. As Gerald follows Williams into the plant-filled courtyard beyond, a tall thin man with a black chin beard comes out of a short wooden door set into the adobe wall to their left. A Mexican man chops wood in the far corner.

“Well, Mr. Williams!” the man with the beard says. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir!” He gives Gerald a questioning glance.

“Jeremiah Peabody, you old scholar, you!” Williams says. “How are you?” He jerks a thumb at Gerald. “This here’s a young man I think you might wanta know, name of Gerald Locke the younger. He’s got a good head on his shoulders, according to Ewing. More importantly, he’s got the good sense to listen to my pearls of wisdom.”

Jeremiah Peabody chuckles and gives Gerald an amused glance. “That would imply that he has excellent manners and the patience of Job.”

“He might even have the patience to listen to you!” Old Bill laughs.

“And if I know you, William, you have neglected to eat since you rose this morning, although you have probably imbibed at least a drink or two.” Peabody turns back toward the house, waving them after him. “Come in, come in!”

Williams and Gerald follow him past a well, two small garden beds, and the man chopping wood. They duck through the door and move past a kitchen area, then down a short hall.

Jeremiah Peabody waves them into a fire-lit room crowded with tall bookcases and men sitting on carved wooden benches and cushion-topped chests. A narrow-shouldered blonde man and a slim dark-haired girl face each other in the center of the room.

The girl’s back is to the door. As Gerald enters, she says “Oh! Thank you, monsieur!” and the young man glances at the door and sees Jeremiah Peabody. His face flushes guiltily. There’s a general chuckle from the other men in the room as the girl turns, smiling, toward the door, a cloth covered package in her hands.

“Well, Mr. Bill Williams!” she says. “Hello!” Then her eyes touch Gerald’s face and her black eyes widen. Her smile deepens. “Hello,” she says.

Jeremiah Peabody looks puzzled. “Have you met Mr. Locke already, my dear?”

She shakes her head, eyes glinting with amusement. “Not formally, no.”

Peabody turns to Gerald. “My daughter, Suzanna.” Then, to Suzanna. “Mr. Gerald Locke Jr., newly arrived.” He glances at Gerald. “With Ewing Young’s train, I believe?”

Gerald nods, but his eyes are on the girl. “It’s my pleasure,” Gerald says.

She bobs a curtsey, her hands still full, eyes on his.

“And what is it you have there, my dear?” her father asks.

Suzanna lifts a corner of the cloth. “Look what Monsieur Beaubien brought me!”

Jeremiah Peabody frowns at the thin young man with the sharp nose who stands facing him, looking doubtful.

Peabody’s black eyes narrow and his gaze sweeps the room. “I know girls here marry at an early age,” he says, his tone clipped. “But my daughter is too young for gifts from eligible men.”

Beaubien shakes his head, spreading his hands. “They are merely the potatoes of Ireland,” he says in a polished French accent. “And most inedible, I assure you. I meant nothing by them.”

Jeremiah turns to Suzanna, his eyebrows raised. “Potatoes?”

Suzanna nods, eyes shining. “Mr. Young’s cook was going to throw them out, but Monsieur Beaubien thought I might be able to get them to grow here.” She unties one corner of the cloth. “Look, they already have eyes starting to form.” She lifts her chin at her father, her eyes just slightly defiant. “It’s a fair trade. I’ll give him some of my first crop.”

“Though she’s promised not to cook them herself,” Beaubien says mischievously. “I’ll let someone else have that honor.”

Jeremiah shakes his head and permits himself a small smile. “Very well. We’ll consider it a commercial transaction and leave it at that.”

Suzanna smiles triumphantly and carries her treasure out of the room. Old Bill crosses to the fireplace and turns, warming his long buckskin-clad legs. “Like you got a choice, Jeremiah,” he chuckles. “Who’s gonna tell that girl she can’t do what she’s already decided on doin’?”

“Must take after her daddy or somethin’,” a big broad-faced young man observes from the adobe seat that forms the sill of the multi-paned window overlooking the street. The panes are made of milk-white sheets of mica and the resulting muted light gives the room a sleepy, church-like glow that’s balanced by the color of the cushions on the chests and the light of the fire.

Jeremiah grins ruefully and crosses to the tea table in the right-hand corner. “Did you all get enough to eat?” he asks. “I’m sure you will be wanting something, William.” He lifts a small china plate. “What’s the news from Sibley’s survey expedition?” Then he turns. “I apologize, Mr. Locke. Have you met Carlos Beaubien and Ceran St. Vrain? And of course you know Ewing Young here in the corner, guarding the table for us.”

Young lifts a hand in acknowledgement, and Gerald nods to him and then the other men. They nod politely, then go on with their talk. Gerald drops into a chair near the door and tries not to watch it for the girl’s return. The way her eyes widened in apparent delight at the sight of him, the way she looked directly into his face. She’s unlike any girl he’s ever encountered.

When she returns, she has a book in her hand. The conversation stops when she enters and the men all watch her cross the room to Ceran St. Vrain in the window seat. She hands him the small brown volume. He takes it, looks at the spine, and shakes his head. Suzanna laughs as he hands it back to her. “You can face Apaches and Mouache Utes, but Samuel Johnson is too much for you?” she teases.

“You can face Samuel Johnson, but a skillet and oven are too much for you?” he answers.

Williams barks with laughter as Charles Beaubien chortles, “He caught you out that time!” But the girl only chuckles, crosses to a bookcase, and inserts the book in a row of similarly-bound volumes.

“We all have our strengths and weaknesses,” Jeremiah Peabody says, smiling. “While she serves the food we eat, her training is in literature and horticulture, not cookery.”

Suzanna tilts her head, gives him a small smile, and crosses to the table. “Shall I ask Encarnación for more tea and rolls?” she asks. She swings around, looking at the men in the room. “I suspect Mr. Williams and Mr. Locke have not partaken as much as they might like to.” She smiles mischievously at Old Bill. “You, of course, are always hungry for more of Encarnación’s rolls.” She turns to Gerald. “And you? Are you still hungry?”

Then she looks at his hands, empty in his lap. “Why, you haven’t eaten at all, have you?” She picks up a small plate, places two rolls, a piece of soft white cheese, and a napkin on it, and crosses the room to him. “That tea water is cold. I’ll bring more in a minute, along with some fresh bread.”

As Gerald takes the plate, he looks up into her eyes. Again, the straightforward quality of her gaze strikes him. There is nothing flirtatious in this girl. Yet he can barely move his lips to acknowledge her attention. “Thank you,” is all he can manage to say.

~ ~ ~ ~

Gerald sits beside the campfire that night long after the others have gone to their bedrolls, and gazes thoughtfully into the flames. Other than Enoch Jones, everyone he’s met in the West has made no reference to the color of his skin. It’s almost as if they can’t see that he’s a shade darker than the most sun-burnt of any of the Americans or Frenchmen here. He chews thoughtfully on his lower lip. That might not be true. A few of the French trappers, exposed for decades to the elements, are darker than he is. And, of course, the natives. Although some of them have both Spanish and Indian parents, so they’re also of mixed race.

For example, the girl Suzanna appears to be the daughter of Peabody and an Indian woman. Or perhaps half-Indian? There’s something about her, a creaminess to her coloring, that sets her apart. His mind strays, thinking about her height, the way she bears herself so confidently in her strangely old-fashioned American clothes. The way her eyes look straight into his—

Then he shakes himself and goes back to the original question. The question of his own parentage, whether he should be more upfront about his race. Even though he’s already settled the issue for the time being, he finds it rising again. Perhaps because of the girl? He pushes the thought away and considers. No one seems at all interested in his background. Although Jeremiah Peabody might be, if Suzanna takes a liking to him.

Gerald catches himself. The girl clearly has many admirers. It isn’t just her father’s table that brings the trappers and merchants to his parlor, men of standing and resources like Ewing Young. Even if Gerald’s parentage isn’t an issue, what chance does a poor man have against men of substance like Young or someone with the experience and way with words of Old Bill? He’d need a good deal more money than he currently has to even begin thinking of speaking to a young woman like that. A girl who reads Johnson but can’t cook. It would require a house with room for books. And a cook.

Gerald shakes his head. It will doubtless be a long while before he’s in a position to offer such a thing. She’ll have found someone else by then. Someone who can give her all she’s worthy of, long before he can even think of approaching her. Besides, he’d have to tell her about his father, about his race.

He stands, stretches, and heads to his bedroll. He knows it’s foolish to think of her, but the last image across his mind as he drifts into sleep is Suzanna Peabody’s face, her eyes widening with surprise and something akin to delight. It hasn’t even occurred to him that he knows virtually nothing about her.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

Ewing Young appears at the Taos campsite three days later and pays off his men. It’s heading toward late October now, the cottonwoods gold along the stream banks, the temperatures cold at night but still warm during the daylight hours. Most of the teamsters leave the next morning. They hope to sign on with a Santa Fe train that will head east to Missouri before winter sets in. A small group remains behind in the pasture. Most of them plan to either winter in Taos or join a beaver trapping group and overwinter in the mountains.

Gerald isn’t sure how he wants to proceed. He’d like to see his father again and have a real conversation with him, but he can’t figure out how to do this without rousing suspicion. Jones is still in the Don Fernando de Taos area, though Gerald isn’t sure where. The matted-haired man sloped off with a lewd reference to Mexican señoritas as soon as he’d collected his pay. His going certainly makes Ewing Young’s meadow more comfortable and, since Young has told the men to stay as long as they need to, Gerald sees no reason to leave just yet, despite the chill nights.

Young comes by late one evening and sits talking with the remaining men, his big frame bending toward the fire as he warms his hands. When the last of Gerald’s companions has slipped off to their bedrolls, Young turns to him. “You lookin’ to trap?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Gerald says. “I’d hoped to find work clerking, but I haven’t really started searching yet.”

“Still gettin’ your bearings?”

Gerald smiles slightly. “I suppose you could call it that.”

Young rises from the dead log he’s been sitting on. “I’m puttin’ together a band and headin’ out late next month. If you want to learn, you’re welcome to tag along. It might be a good way to earn the money for that farm of yours.” He grins. “If that’s what you’re still thinkin’ of doing. New Mexico has a way of turning a man’s mind in new directions.”

Gerald looks at him noncommittally and Young studies him. “I’m assuming you’ve got the wherewithal for the gear,” he says. “Traps are runnin’ ten dollars apiece and you’d need at least six, plus food and sundries. You’d be free trappin’, which means everything you bring in would be yours, but everything you put into it will be at risk, as well.”

“The investment resources aren’t a problem,” Gerald says, looking up at the big man. “And I appreciate the offer.” He shrugs and smiles. “I just may take you up on it.”

“I can sweeten the offer by assurin’ you that Enoch Jones won’t be comin’ with me,” Young says. “He made noises, but I’ve had just about all of him I can take for one year.” He stretches his hands over the flames. “Well, you know where t’ find me. We’ve got another week or so before headin’ out. I’m either at the store, my house, or Peabody’s place.” He turns away from the fire. “I’ll see you around.”

Gerald nods to the empty night and turns thoughtfully back to the flames. He picks up a stick and pokes at the fire, separating the pieces of burning wood so the flames will die out faster. He knows where Young’s mercantile is, and his house is on the other end of the pasture. But in the little time Gerald’s spent wandering the village, he’s seen no sign that identifies Peabody’s store.

He chuckles. But then, signs aren’t a major part of Don Fernando de Taos’ streetscapes. It’s an interesting place: half American, half Mexican, with a good dose of Taos Pueblo added in. The buildings are all brown one-story adobe mud that glint with flecks of mica in certain lights. In fact, in certain lights, the hamlet’s downright pretty.

And the people are pretty much live and let live, from what he can see. Best of all, he blends among them in a way he never has before, his skin simply another shade of the prevalent brown. In fact, he feels so comfortable here, he hates to leave.

But his money won’t last forever. He has only a few more weeks in which to decide what to do with himself. He hasn’t seen any need in the shops for another clerk. And Ewing Young is right. He doesn’t have the resources to set himself up as a farmer. Although if he did, he knows where he’d want to do so. If that’s possible so high in the mountains. On land surely already owned by someone. He pushes the thought of the long and fertile mountain valley out of his mind and douses the fire. Trapping seems like the best option so far.

~ ~ ~ ~

Gerald heads to the Taos plaza the next day for supplies, thinking again about how to approach his father in Ranchos. He’d truly like to get some advice about the idea of free trapping, not to mention passing as white.

He’s still accustomed to walking with a prairie-eating stride and he passes several groups of blanket-swathed Taos Indians who are also heading toward the plaza. He nods politely each time, but notices that their eyes tend to veer away from him. Even as they nod back at him, they don’t look directly into his face.

He frowns irritably, then remembers the slaves in Missouri. They did the same thing, carefully avoiding eye contact. Is it the sign of an oppressed people? Or simply politeness, not wanting to challenge or be challenged? It must be difficult to continue here in this land, with first the Spanish and now the Americans crowding in, encroaching on what was once only theirs.

Gerald reaches the plaza and slows to saunter past the cloths laid out on the ground and the produce and other goods carefully arranged on them. He finds he isn’t as interested in any of it as he probably ought to be, and veers off the plaza onto a street lined with adobe walls and the houses behind them.

All this vast land, yet the houses are so close together. There’s safety in that, of course. Although there are also plenty of shadowed corners for activity that might be suspicious in the full light of day. For example, this man facing the corner made by those two walls, his arms up and blocking the young woman who’s crowded into the niche, her back to the light brown adobe.

Gerald frowns. The man’s back is to him, but the matted white-blond hair under the dirty hat looks familiar. Jones? Then the man speaks, low and threatening, and there’s no doubt. Gerald stops in his tracks.

The girl speaks, in surprisingly good English, her voice sharp and clear. “I apologize if you have misunderstood me, Mr. Jones,” she says firmly. “I have no interest in keeping company with you.”

Jones reaches for her arm. “You think yer somethin’,” he growls. “But yer just another Mexican slut.”

“How dare you!” She twists, trying to get away, but Jones reaches for her shoulder and forces her back, against the adobe.

Then Gerald is behind him, fingers clamping Jones’ upper arm. “Let her go!”

Jones, startled, turns his head. “You!” His grip on the girl loosens involuntarily. She slips out of his grasp and darts down the dirt street. She looks back as she reaches the corner, dark eyes wide, and nods her thanks to Gerald, then is gone before he’s had time to do more than glimpse a light brown face and black hair neatly pulled up in an old-fashioned American hairstyle, soft tendrils framing her cheeks.

Gerald turns back to Jones and tightens his grip. “She clearly doesn’t want your attentions.”

Jones jerks his arm away and Gerald lets him go. “It’s none o’ yer business,” Jones growls. “’Sides, she’s just a Mexican. Just like yer just a nigger.”

Gerald’s eyes narrow. “She’s still a woman,” he says. “To be treated with respect.”

“Respect ain’t what they want.” Jones grins lasciviously. “They want tamin’.”

“It certainly didn’t sound that way to me.”

Jones shoves past Gerald into the narrow street. “You just stay out of my way.”

Gerald watches him go, then looks again toward the corner where the girl disappeared. She’s taller than the other women he’s seen in Taos. Her clothes are different, too. More American style, with an old-fashioned high waist and straight skirt that reminds him of the dresses his mother used to wear. Her skirts are longer than those of the other Mexican girls. He’d caught only a glimpse of ankle, instead of the half calf so common here. And her hair was tucked up. Off her neck, not down her back. A long, narrow back. A truly beautiful tawny-brown neck.

Impulsively, he moves down the street after her. But rounding the corner only reveals more adobe walls and a little boy playing in the dirt. The girl spoke perfect English too, although with a slight Spanish lift. A very pleasant lilt. Who is she?

Perhaps his father will know. It’s yet another question to ask him, apart from whether it’s wise for Gerald to continue to try to pass as white and what he would advise Gerald to do for a living, now that he’s here.

But when Gerald arrives at the Ranchos de Taos smithy early the next day, he finds that both the smithy and the casita beside it are empty. A middle-aged Mexican woman is pulling water from a well in the center of the compound. She looks at him inquiringly. He gestures toward the smithy and raises his eyebrows in a questioning look.

She smiles in amusement, shakes her head, and carries her water bucket through a doorway at the end of the compound.

A minute later, an American man comes out. He scratches at his scraggly blond beard and scowls at Gerald. “You wantin’ the smith?” he asks. “He took off. Said he was goin’ trappin’. Paid me my month’s due an’ hightailed it.” He peers into Gerald’s face. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about blacksmithin’, would you?”

Gerald shakes his head. “Did he say where he was going?”

The man waves a hand toward the mountains to the north. “Rockies, I guess. I dunno. He’s left me in a helluva bind.” His face brightens a little. “You needin’ traps? I’ve still got a half dozen he made before he took off.”

Gerald shakes his head again, then pauses. Maybe trapping would be the best way. “I’m not sure,” he says. “But if I do, I’ll come back for them.”

“Don’t know if they’ll be here by then.” The man scratches at his beard again. “They’re likely to go fast, once word gets out that Smith’s gone. He’s the best damn blacksmith we’ve seen in these parts for a while now.”

Gerald grins. “Then you should get a good price,” he says, turning away. “I apologize for waking you so early.”

“You come on back now, if you need anything,” the man says.

Gerald lifts a hand in farewell. “I’ll do that.”

He heads back to Don Fernando de Taos. His father has answered at least one of his questions. He’s left the area, leaving Gerald free to continue to pass as white. Gerald isn’t sure how he feels about this. Although most people don’t seem to care about his ancestry, clearly those who do care, care deeply. At least, Enoch Jones seems to.

And is it the right thing to do? Is it fair to others to not tell them up front? His jaw tightens. Why should it matter what color his skin is? He’s just a man, like any other man. The same hopes and desires, the same needs.

He stops in the middle of the path back to Taos and gazes up at the golden cottonwoods, the intense blue of the sky above them. It’s not like he set out to pass. In fact, he hasn’t actually told anyone he’s white. He’s just let them assume it. For that matter, he hasn’t denied his race to Jones. Although he hasn’t confirmed it, either.

But living on an equal footing with other men these past weeks has felt good. Gerald chuckles. ‘Good’ is such an inadequate word to describe the expansion he’s felt, the way he seems taller, somehow. He’s always known that he’s equal to any other man. Certainly, his parents made that clear enough to him.

Gerald grins, thinking of his Irish mother’s blazing blue eyes as she snapped, “You just be who you are inside and that’ll be good enough for anybody who has any sense, whether your mother’s a mere bondservant or your father a free negro.” He lifts two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. Yes ma’am. Then he sobers. But to be treated as equal is another thing entirely. It makes a man’s shoulders a little straighter, somehow.

He continues walking, his hands in his pockets. Maybe he’ll just continue on as he is and see what comes of it. Why cause trouble when it isn’t asking to be caused? Why not enjoy the experience and see where it takes him?

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

As they move closer to Taos, Gerald begins to ponder just how best to go about locating his father. The pack mules move steadily through the ponderosa forest, then turn and follow a small green valley to the canyon of the Rio Fernando, a river that seems like a mere creek by Missouri standards. By late morning the next day, the men and mules move out of the juniper at the mouth of the canyon and gaze at the sweep of the Taos Valley. It’s so broad it hardly seems like a valley, the mountains on the western edge a dim blue in the distance.

“That there’s the Taos Gorge,” Charlie says, ahead of him.

Gerald nods. It’s a gash in the earth that cuts the valley in two along its length.

“Doesn’t look like much from here,” the Scout says. “You oughta see it from the south. It’s somethin’ else agin.”

Gerald nods politely, his gaze moving to the objects nearer at hand, the town of Don Fernando de Taos. Though to call Taos a town seems rather pretentious. Flat-roofed mud houses cluster along narrow dirt streets that straggle out from a central square, or plaza. The town’s a hamlet, really, although the walls around the square look substantial enough. As the train draws closer, Gerald sees that the plaza walls are actually the back side of long low adobe buildings, all facing inward in a protective stance. The early afternoon sunlight reflects bits of mica in their walls. There are perhaps eight or nine buildings in all. Surely it won’t be difficult to find his father in a community this small.

The problem is how to go about asking for him. To need the services of a blacksmith is common enough, even if one doesn’t own a mount. The blade of a knife might be loose, a belt buckle might need to be mended. But looking specifically for a black-skinned smith whose last name is Locke is bound to raise questions. Why would a white man be looking for a black man with the same last name?

And there’s no guarantee that his father is actually in Taos itself. Gerald’s already discovered from the campfire talk that when someone says “Taos” they can mean one of a number of different locations: the village of Don Fernando de Taos, the Taos Indian pueblo north of the village, or the widespread Taos valley and one of the many hamlets it contains. So, while knowing his father is in Taos keeps him from having to search the entire Rocky Mountain region, it doesn’t narrow down his location as much as Gerald would like.

Well, he’s closer to his father here than he was in Missouri. That’s something. The question is whether to drop this attempt to pass as a white man and acknowledge their relationship. He isn’t sure how his father, ever the practical one and yet a man who treasures his son, will feel about that. Hopefully, they’ll have an opportunity to discuss the situation in private.

But while Gerald is still trying to decide how to go about his search, Charlie announces that he has business to take care of and needs help to accomplish it.

The men from the mule train are still together and camped on the northern edge of Don Fernando de Taos on land controlled by Ewing Young. No one wants to move on until Young shows up to pay them. Besides, he’s still providing the rations. But none of the men have been doing much to earn their keep, so when Charlie appears at the campfire two nights after they arrive, he isn’t in an asking mood.

“I need some of ya to head south to Ranchos with me tomorrow, first light,” he says abruptly. “We got a passel of animals that need their shoes looked after an’ the only smith Young trusts is in Ranchos.”

“Nothin’ in Ranchos I wanna see,” Enoch Jones says. “’Sides, it’s too far, with this ankle.”

“It’s three miles,” Charlie says dryly. “Yer ankle was well enough this mornin’, chasin’ the girls on the plaza like ya were.”

“Gonna cost you,” Jones says.

“None of ya’s been exactly pullin’ yer weight the last few days.”

Jones gestures toward Gerald, on the other side of the fire. “Green hand can go. It’s his fault I’m tied up.”

Charlie looks at Gerald, who nods agreement, then swings back to Jones. “I ken’t promise you extra,” he says. “That’s up t’ Young. But I’m sure he’d look kindly on a little help.”

Jones grunts and nods unwillingly. “When?”

“First light.” Charlie turns away and nods at two other men who are sitting at the far edge of the fire. “You, too.” They nod back, and he turns and disappears into the night.

“Gotta go visit his señora,” Jones says derisively. He pulls out his bone-handled knife, reaches for a flat stone, spits on it, and begins to draw the blade across the stone, honing the steel.

Gerald glances up and speaks in spite of himself. “He’s married to a Spanish girl?”

Jones snorts derisively. “Keepin’ her. Gotta turn Catholic t’ marry one of these gals.” He examines the knife’s blade, slips it back into the beaded sheath at his waist, then pulls out a flask and takes a swig. “But you don’t have t’ get religion anyways. These putas are all easy enough to come by.”

Gerald stares into the dying flames. Jones seems to make a habit of quick judgments. Not that the characters of the girls here really matter. Gerald’s more interested in land than women, though he doesn’t have the funds for either of them. His thoughts turn to the mountain valley with its black soil and long grasses, its tiny sparkling streams, running even in the fall. From what he’s seen of this land so far, that much water in the landscape, the thickness of those grasses, is unusual.

The men are up at first light, preparing to move out, the animals balky with sleep. They see no reason to move any further than Ewing Young’s grassy meadow.

The fall nights and early mornings here are cooler than Gerald is used to. He shivers a little as he waits for the others. The two mules he’s responsible for crowd him a little, as if they too are chilled. The mule with the missing shoe pushes its nose against Gerald’s shoulder and the jenny with the two loose nails shakes her hoof impatiently.

Gerald gives her a reassuring pat and looks over her shoulder. Enoch Jones seems to be adjusting a halter strap on his far mule. Gerald’s animals block his view somewhat, but he can see that Jones’ mules seem agitated.

Then the nearer one pulls back sharply, ears flat against his head. Gerald catches a glimpse of a sharp object in Jones’ hand as his fingers slap up and against the far mule’s lip. The mule’s right hoof comes forward and catches Jones in the left leg, knocking him off balance, and Jones lets out a howl of protest.

Gerald’s own mules stir anxiously and he speaks softly to them as Charlie materializes from the gray dawn.

“What’s goin’ on?” Charlie demands.

Jones gets to his feet. The object that had been in his hand is nowhere in sight. “Damn mule kicked me,” he says.

Charlie looks at Jones’ leg, then the mule, which stands, panting slightly, its ears still back. “If yer leg ain’t broke, keep usin’ it,” Charlie says. He turns away. “We need to get goin’.” He moves toward Gerald. “You ready, Locke?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Glad someone’s got some sense,” he mutters, just loud enough for Gerald to hear, as he passes him on the way back to his own animals. “Here we go!” he says over his shoulder as he snaps his lead rope. “Let’s get ’er done!”

The mules are slowed by missing shoes and loose nails, and it takes a full hour to reach Ranchos, but Gerald doesn’t mind the leisurely pace. As the sun rises behind the eastern mountains, the landscape begins to glow with light. The adobe walls of the houses are soft in the light. Then their flecks of mica begin to spark as the sun strengthens and fingers its way across the flat plain to the west and the mountains bulking beyond.

Gerald is craning his neck to see more when the view is abruptly blocked by a row of rangy narrow leaf cottonwoods strung out along a small stream and the men and mules reach the blacksmith’s shop. It’s not much of a shop. Just a ramshackle structure at one end of a barren compound of small adobe buildings. Thick posts support a loosely-spaced layer of thin, unpeeled poles. Sunlight filters through the gaps and dapples the dirt floor. A waist-high chimneyless adobe hearth stands in the center of the space, a small leather bellows on the ground beside it.

The coals on the hearth are cold and no one stirs in the compound. Gerald and the others hold the mules while Charlie knocks on the door of the nearest hut. He speaks to the man who opens it, then comes back to the mules. “It’ll be a minute,” he says. He gestures to the men behind Gerald. “Those ken wait a bit. He’s gonna hafta get a fire goin’ before he ken shape the shoes. Jest take ’em to the corral in the back.” He turns to Gerald. “We’ll get the loose nails done first.”

Gerald nods and leads his animals around the building, then returns to the smithy with the jenny with the loose nails. The blacksmith has come out of his hut now and is building a fire on the smithy hearth as he and Charlie talk.

“We got us a pretty good set o’ men this time,” Charlie’s saying as Gerald approaches the shed. “No Mexicans this time, though. All white men.”

As Gerald steps into the shed, the smith’s head swings toward him and his hand, reaching for another handful of coal, freezes. Then he recovers himself and continues feeding the fire.

Gerald’s a little slower. Joy surges through him and his face breaks into a broad smile. Then he realizes what he’s done and flattens his face. But Enoch Jones, standing in the corner has seen both reactions, and his pale blue eyes narrow with suspicion.

“No mulattos this time?” the smith says to Charlie with a small grin. “You didn’t want another Jim Beckworth in your crowd?”

Charlie grins. “Ah, old Jim’s well enough. Ya jest ken’t expect to believe anything he says.”

The smith chuckles and turns to insert his bellows into a small hole halfway down the side of the hearth and give it a light pump. He glances over his shoulder. “No green hands this time?”

In the corner, Jones snorts derisively. Charlie grins and jerks his head toward Gerald. “Well, we’re still trying to figure out what Locke here is. He says he don’t know anything but he keeps provin’ himself wrong.” He grins at Gerald and nods toward the smith. “This here’s Jerry Smith.” Gerald and the smith nod politely at each other, Jones watching them with narrowed eyes. “And you know Enoch Jones, I think,” Charlie continues. “He’s been around a while.”

The smith nods to Jones. “I think I did some work for you last spring,” he says politely. “Reset the blade of that big knife of yours.”

Jones shrugs. “Could be.”

Smith looks at Gerald. “You plannin’ on stayin’ for a while?”

“I hope to,” Gerald says. “If I can find a way to make a living.”

“He’s got the brains to be a trapper,” Charlie says.

Smith chuckles and shakes his head. He picks up a small bucket and pours more coals onto the fire, then pushes down on the bellows handle again. “Beggin’ your pardon, but I’m not sure how many brains that takes,” he says dryly.

Charlie laughs as the black man gathers up his hammer, files, and shoe nails and heads for the mule tethered outside. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” the smith says.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 2

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.

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That Free Chapter….

If you wondered what I was up to when I posted the first chapter of my novel Not Just Any Man last Sunday, I apologize. I scheduled the post intending to write an explanation before it went live, and then got waylaid by a recalcitrant spine. I had no idea a herniated lumbar disk could be so energy-sapping.

But now the meds are kicking in and I’m able to actually sit long enough to create this post and explain what I’m doing.

The reason I posted the first chapter of Not Just Any Man is that I intend to keep on posting additional chapters until the entire novel is available FREE at LorettaMilesTollefson.com/Not-Just-Any-Man-index. This is because I’ve decided to turn my focus to readership rather than sales.

If you want to buy the book, I’m not going to complain, of course. But I will be delighted if you decide to help spread the word that Not Just Any Man is available free at LorettaMilesTollefson.com.

My plan right now is to post a chapter a week. There are forty chapters, plus the Author’s Note and the list and short bios of historical characters. As my back pain subsides and I can spend more time at the computer, I hope to post twice a week. We’ll see. At the moment, my spine is telling me I need to go lie down.

P.S. Before I do that, I’m currently scheduling these to go live on Sunday mornings. Is this a good day of the week to do this? Is there a better one? When I go to twice a week, which days would be optimum? I welcome any input!

Fiction and Fact From Old New Mexico

LorettaMilesTollefson.com

Tag: Free American historical fiction

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 10

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 9

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 8

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 7

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 6

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 5

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 4

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 3

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 2

That Free Chapter….

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