Tag: Old Bill Williams

OLD BILL – 2 of 6

He entered the Ute camp warily, one hand on the mules’ lead rope, his rifle in the other. A man rose and came forward. Old Bill snorted a laugh. “Three Hands!” he said. “I done found you!”

The man studied him. “You searched for me?”

“Well, not ’xactly. But I sure am glad t’ find you.”

Three Hands nodded. “You are cold.”

“Warmer now than I was,” Old Bill said. “This is quite a little valley you have here.”

“Not so little.” Three Hands gestured to the south. “More below.”

“Sure am glad I stumbled in,” Old Bill said. “I was nigh to freezin’ comin’ over Bobcat Pass.”

The other man looked at the mules. “You trap?”

“I was, but the beavers are iced in nasty hard this winter. Can’t get at ’em.”

“The signs say the cold will continue.”

“That how come you’re here?”

Three Hands smiled noncommitally.

from Moreno Valley Sketches

OLD BILL – 1 of 6

Old Bill and the two mules had been stumbling south, half-blinded by snow, for three days. When he came over the top of the rise and looked into the valley below, he passed his hand over his face. He must be hallucinating.

He looked again. Sure enough, that was a valley below. The snow was thinner there. A herd of elk had worked large patches clear. The wolves patrolling in the snow beyond the herd were breaking through, snow almost to their hocks.

He studied the layout. Elk, snow melt for water. Bound to be Injuns. He passed his hand over his face again, warming his eyes, and looked again. Sure enough, smoke rose near the hills at the valley’s southern end.

He was coming in peace with little more than the mules and his clothes. They’d feed him, sure. Had probably already seen him. “C’mon, you mules,” he said.

from Moreno Valley Sketches

 

 

Valley of the Eagles

It was spring in the valley of the eagles, which meant it had been raining off and on for three weeks and the usually adobe-hard clay soil was soft enough to be dug. Once Old Bill had selected a likely spot for caching the packs of beaver fur, Pepe set to work. Old Bill stood farther up the hillside, chanting in a mixture of Osage and Ute. The prayers would help keep varmints away, Bill had said: both the two-footed and four-footed kind.

It was a good location for a cache, Pepe reflected: tucked under the hillside pines and marked by a massive sandstone boulder that would be easy to identify when they returned. After the Taos alcalde had decided that the few beaver plews they’d set aside to show him were truly Old Bill’s entire winter haul,  Pepe and Old Bill would slip back into the valley with a Taos trader to turn the cached furs into coin. Then Pepe would have a nice amount to take home to his wife while Old Bill gambled his own portion away.

Pepe chuckled and paused his digging to wipe his forehead with his cotton sleeve. He was always surprised at how warm it could get in this valley, as high up in the mountains as it was.

Small stones rattled past him and Old Bill came down the hillside. “War’s th’ other shovel?” he demanded in his nasal twang. “We ain’t got th’ rest o’ eternity!”

Copyright © 2016 Loretta Miles Tollefson