NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 16

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 16

“I met William Wolfskill in the plaza this afternoon, on my way back from Padre Martinez’s house,” Jeremiah Peabody says as he helps himself to more mutton stew.

Suzanna’s head jerks up involuntarily. “They’re back?” Then she stops herself. There’s absolutely no reason to sound so delighted.

Her father smiles at the tortilla he’s tearing in two. “Just Wolfskill and a few of his men. Not Mr. Locke, I’m sorry to say.” He glances at his daughter, who’s examining her bowl of stew, and forces the amusement from his voice. “I would have enjoyed hearing his reaction to a prolonged expedition with a large group of men. I expect the experience will be quite different from what he experienced with Old Bill.”

“I expect so.” Suzanna’s voice is carefully neutral. She will not ask whether Gerald Locke has sent a message. She has no right to expect such a thing. And he’s too much of a gentleman to presume to do so. She forces herself to eat another spoonful of stew. “Chonita has done an excellent job of flavoring this stew.” She grins at her father. “Did you notice that it includes Irish potatoes?”

“I did!” he says. “Are these from your harvest?”

She nods, forcing her thoughts away from the memory of Gerald Locke helping her plant the seed for the potatoes, walking beside her along the acequia ditches toward home. To her home, that is. Not his. She looks up at her father. “They’ve stored nicely,” she says. “And the straw Ramón brought me to cover them was extremely clean, so Encarnación found no bad spots when she prepared them.”

Her father nods, knowing a change of subject when he hears one. “They’re quite tasty,” he says.

Suzanna watches him. She wants badly to ask if he’s invited William Wolfskill to tea, but this once quite ordinary question now feels somehow dangerous. “And did Padre Martinez have any news of interest from Santa Fe?” she asks.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

The ground is dry and the going easy, and two days bring the trappers to the Chavez rancho, which is sprawled along the river. As Wolfskill’s party moves toward it across the llano, they pass shepherds grazing mixed flocks of goats and sheep. There’s no apparent move to get word to the Los Chavez padrón and former nuevomexico governor Franscisco Javier Chavez that the trappers are coming, but by mid-day a man on horseback has appeared to welcome them and lead them politely to a campsite under the massive cottonwoods beside the river.

Once the animals are unpacked, the men disperse to make themselves presentable to the Don and his daughters. The river is too shallow for proper bathing, but its waters are warmer and wider than the mountain streams in the highlands. Gerald finds a depression near the bank where he can shed his layers of clothing and weigh them down with some rocks, then lower himself into the water and let the river wash away at least some of the stink.

As he’s climbing back into his clothes, Ignacio appears, waving at him. “Come,” he says. “El señor prepares for us a feast.”

Don Chavez’s women have roasted two lambs and cooked several kilos of tortillas, as well as a tender cheese, or queso. Though there is no opportunity for interaction with the Chavez daughters, the food is a welcome change from camp fare. The trappers are in a mellow mood when they head back to the campsite. But their faces darken when William Wolfskill announces that they’re heading up to Taos the next day.

“We don’t all need to go,” he adds. “In fact, it’ll be quicker if most of you stay here.” He grins. “Especially those of you with Taos sweethearts. There just won’t be time for all that. We need to get there, consult with Ewing, and then hightail it back here and decide how to proceed.”

“Decide?” Thomas Smith growls. “What’s t’ decide? We’re gonna go back in there and teach those mothersuckin’ Apaches a lesson they ain’t gonna forget! Damn Indians!”

“We’ll need more men to do that,” Wolfskill points out. “And more supplies. Since Ewing has the biggest share in this outfit, it’s going to depend on what he wants to do and how much more money he wants to lay out.”

Smith scowls. “It’s my mule that got killed. I’ve got a right to a voice in this.”

“I know it,” Wolfskill says. “And that’ll be part of the considerations. But my partner and I need to confer. And if the decision goes the way I think it might, we’ll need more men.” He shakes his head. “There’s not likely to be many left in Taos this time of year. We’ll be scraping the barrel.” He looks around the circle. “Now, I need a few to go with me. Enough that we can fend off anyone layin’ in wait and get through t’ Taos in good time.” His eyes rest on Gerald, then pass over him. “Sublette, you’ll be wantin’ to stay and rest up that wound.”

Milt Sublette stretches his leg slightly and grimaces. “I’d just slow you down,” he agrees.

Wolfskill’s eyes move on. “I’m thinking Stone and Branch and Dutch George.” He grins. “As far as I know, none of you have sweethearts to distract you.” He nods to Ignacio. “And Sandoval to do the cooking.” He chuckles. “You can check in with your teacher, so he can send news to your pa that you’re workin’ hard.”

Ignacio grins sheepishly and Gerald feels a pang of something almost like jealousy. Had Ignacio been studying with Jeremiah Peabody before he joined Wolfskill’s trapping group? Would he see Peabody’s daughter? It’s more likely that he was working under Taos’ new Catholic priest, Padre Martinez. But there’s still a chance that the boy’s path will cross the Peabodys’ while he’s in Taos, and Gerald feels a twinge of envy. It would be good to see Suzanna again.

But he has no rights to such thoughts. He considers the fact that William Wolfskill didn’t name him as a man with no Taos sweetheart to distract him. He has to admit that Suzanna Peabody would be a distraction, but Gerald isn’t sure whether he’s pleased or annoyed by Wolfskill’s silence. Are others besides Old Bill aware of the pull the Peabody casa has for him? He feels a glimmer of amusement, then discomfort, and remains in the background the next morning, lest someone should decide to ask him what message he wants delivered to the Peabody parlor.

While the Taos party is gone, Gerald devotes himself to grazing his mule along the river in locations that won’t interfere with the Chavez stock and getting his gear back into shape. He also studies the way the Chavez acequia system channels water to the hacienda’s fields, and the primitive but effective wooden gates the laborers use to send it where it’s most needed.

The soil is sandy here, but rich wherever the river has flooded, and he’s told that it produces bountiful crops of chili and corn. The fields are barren now. Brown leaves rattle in the cottonwoods along the river. But Gerald can see that it’s a good land, and fertile wherever the irrigation system’s channels have been extended.

His mind strays to the girl in Taos who’s growing potatoes beside a similar water course, but he forces himself back to the ditch at hand. He has no right to think of her long-limbed stride, her black eyes gazing into his face. He has no right.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

But Jeremiah Peabody’s last sentence has registered on some level. By mid-October, after a month in the pine-covered southern mountains, Gerald has begun to seriously wonder what ‘doing well’ really means when it comes to trapping beaver.

A few days before the trappers left Taos, Ewing Young took ill and remained behind, so William Wolfskill is in charge. Wolfskill is a dark-haired, solidly built man with a broad forehead and determined eyes and mouth, and he sets a hard pace.

He has to, with twenty men along. As they move through the Gila wilderness, anywhere from eighty to one hundred traps are in action at any one time, and the beaver seem to evaporate from the landscape. Wolfskill’s band is rarely in the same place more than a night. Each morning they lift traps, skin the night’s catch, then push on to the next location, stopping in the early evening to fan out and set yet another round in the streams that thread the headwaters of the Gila River.

The pace is rough and there’s little time to enjoy a quiet smoke or conversation. When there is talk, it doesn’t focus on trapping. These men aren’t about to share what they know. Free trappers don’t talk about where and how they set their traps, and they don’t share tips for getting better results, either.

Instead, big-bodied Milton Sublette and short, round Thomas Smith brag about sharp trades they’ve made and Indian battles they’ve fought. Their impetuosity always comes out triumphant, of course. Trapping partners Alexander Branch and Solomon Stone swap travel stories with Richard Campbell, as well as tales of encounters with animals of various types and size, some of them more exaggerated than others. The trappers don’t always win these conflicts, but even when they’re worsted, the resulting scar is worth showing off, and there’s usually another story about the size of the wound and how quickly it healed.

Not everyone is loquacious: Smith’s partner Maurice LeDuc and the big Pennsylvania Dutchman George Yount say as little as possible. They simply listen and smoke.

The half-dozen Mexican camp keepers have little leisure time. While the trappers chat, the Mexicans go about the business of cooking, keeping the campsite organized, and preparing the beaver plews the trappers have collected.

Most of the workers seem content with their routine, but twenty-year-old Ignacio Sandoval apparently expected to actually learn how to trap on this trip. Wolfskill ignores the younger man’s dark looks, but Gerald is curious.

He can also see that, when the traps are full each morning, the Mexicans have more work than they can easily handle. Gerald begins skinning his catch himself and trying to re-teach himself the art of stretching the beaver pelts tight on their willow hoop frames. He’s surprised at how much he’s forgotten.

He’s hung his second attempt for the day from the lower branch of a pine tree and is standing back to admire the way the late-morning light glows red through the stretched skin, when Ignacio Sandoval approaches him.

“El señor, he say I stretch pelt for you,” the boy says.

Gerald turns. “Hmm? Thank you, but that’s not necessary. I only have two more to do.” He gestures toward the tree and smiles ruefully. “I’m still remembering how to go about it, so these are a bit rough, but I’m sure I’ll improve with some practice.”

Ignacio moves toward the pine. A grin flashes across his face as he examines the furs, which sag badly to one side. He starts to shake his head, then stops himself. “Si, señor,” he says politely.

Gerald chuckles. “They’re that bad, are they?” He moves toward the pine. “Perhaps you can help me tighten them up a bit.”

The boy gives him a swift, anxious look, but Gerald’s face shows only a desire for help.

Ignacio smiles. “Four hands son necessario a veces,” he says as he lifts the hoop from the tree.

Gerald chuckles. “Sometimes four hands truly are necessary to make it work,” he agrees. “Especially when two of them are mine and don’t know what they’re doing.”

The boy gives him a swift grin, then bends his head over the knots that hold the beaver pelt in place.

~ ~ ~ ~

By the time the trappers follow the Gila west out of the pine-covered mountains and into the juniper and piñon that scatter the foothills, Gerald has mastered the art of stretching beaver pelts. This is partly because there are fewer streams here and therefore fewer pelts and more time to string them.

Wolfskill doesn’t seem concerned about the reduced number of beaver. There’ll be more when the trappers reach the Colorado. What worries him is the increased sense of an Apache presence.

It starts while they’re still in the mountains. Although no one in the party actually sights an Indian, items disappear from camp: a sugar loaf from the mess, a beaver pelt hung on an outlying tree, a knife left on a rock, meat from a plate unattended while its owner takes care of private business.

If a horse or two had been stolen, it wouldn’t be so nerve-racking. They’d at least know for sure that Indians are around. But the disappearance of these smaller items makes their owners question their own perception. Did they actually leave the knife on the rock? Perhaps it slipped into a crevice or was picked up by one of the other men.

Yet the knife doesn’t reappear and the very pines themselves seem to wait for someone to turn his back. It’s a relief to get into more open country, where the landscape gives less cover to whoever is trailing them. But small items continue to evaporate in the December sun. Even when there’s no cover to speak of.

“I’ll warrant it’s that same band Sylvester Pattie was yammering on about when I saw him and his son James last summer, before Sylvester headed to the Santa Rita copper mines,” Thomas Smith says. “He and his boy were up in these parts last season and a group of Apaches harassed them all winter. Stole Sylvester’s Kentucky ridin’ horse and generally made their lives hell.”

“But here we are,” Maurice LeDuc observes philosophically. “Because here is the beaver.”

“We just need to stay out in the open as much as we can,” William Wolfskill says. “And keep a sharp lookout.”

~ ~ ~ ~

But a camp needs cover of some kind, if only to keep personal business personal. And the trappers are forced to stay along the river, among its cottonwood and willow, if they want to collect pelts. As the men move down the Gila toward the mouth of the Salt, small things continue to disappear and the tension continues to rise. It’s almost a relief when a small band of Apaches finally materializes.

The trappers are in the process of breaking camp. Thomas Smith, roping a half-pack of pelts onto his mule’s off-side, is the first to glance up and see the line of six warriors standing motionless beneath the rugged cottonwoods on the opposite side of the clearing.

“Holy shit!” Smith exclaims. Around him, men turn swiftly, following his gaze. Their hands move swiftly to rifle, knife, or hatchet—whatever is closest to hand—and William Wolfskill barks, “Settle and steady now!”

The Apaches are solidly built and menacing in their silent impassiveness. The very length of their black hair exudes a dangerous strength. Only one wears a shirt and something resembling trousers. There’s a broad palmetto-leaf hat on his head and red sleeves and leggings on his limbs, clearly the marks of a chief. The others wear strands of shell on their bare chests. Their legs are covered with thigh-high moccasins that reach almost to their breech clouts.

The Chief’s hands are empty, but two of his men carry battered rifles. Two others hold empty bows at their side. A younger man stands slightly behind, a notched reed arrow in the curved wooden bow he holds casually at his waist.

The man in the palmetto hat moves forward. His eyes sweep the trappers and land on William Wolfskill, who moves toward him. Wolfskill raises his eyebrows questioningly and lifts his hands. He closes his fists, points both index fingers toward the sky, then sweeps his hands swiftly down and across each other and up again, making the sign for trade.

The Apache chuckles and shakes his head, then stretches a hand toward Wolfskill, palm up, and gestures toward himself in a scooping motion.

Wolfskill scowls. “Give you?” he asks. “Why should I give anything to you?”

Thomas Smith moves forward with a hatchet in his hand. He snaps a few words in Apache. The Indian gives him a contemptuous look, then turns and speaks to Wolfskill.

“He says we ain’t goin’ any farther if we don’t give him gifts,” Smith says, his eyes on the Chief’s face.

The man glances at Smith, then speaks to Wolfskill again, rather impatiently. There’s a low chuckle from the men behind him.

“He says he’s the Chief of all o’ this land and we gotta pay to be here,” Smith translates.

“And you can just tell him to go to hell,” Wolfskill says pleasantly, his eyes scanning the men behind the Chief calmly. “They’ve been pilfering and we don’t have anything left to give, even if we wanted to. They don’t even hunt beaver, far as I know. We’ve got just as much right here as anyone else.”

Smith grins malevolently and nods at the Indians behind the Chief, then says something in Apache. The warriors’ postures shift slightly, then an arrow flies over Smith’s head and hits his mule’s left flank with a dull thud.

As the animal screams in terror, Smith’s hatchet flies across the clearing. In the same instant, rifles roar from both sides and more Apaches appear from the trees.

“To me!” Wolfskill bellows and Gerald finds himself beside the man, Ignacio Sandoval behind him, loading a rifle. Gerald takes a deep breath, aims carefully, and fires into the gunpowder haze that rises from the trees.

As he begins to reload, a hand touches his shoulder blade. Gerald turns his head and Ignacio offers him a newly-loaded rifle. Gerald nods, trades weapons, and turns back to the fight. Another mule screams.

A few yards to Gerald’s right, Milton Sublette howls with anger and charges across the clearing toward the trees. Then his legs crumple beneath him and he sits down abruptly and clutches his right thigh. An arrow protrudes from his buckskin leggings.

Gerald pulls his eyes away from Sublette and fires into the cottonwoods, then trades weapons with Ignacio again, the acrid gunpowder bitter on his tongue. The flurry of arrows from the cottonwoods has slowed. Gerald pauses, considering whether it’s worthwhile to fire again.

William Wolfskill raises a hand. “They’re gone, boys!” he says.

Gerald lowers his rifle and takes a deep breath. He and the others keep an eye on the trees as William Wolfskill moves around the campsite, assessing the damage, then heads toward the hobbled animals in the clearing beyond.

“Shit!” Milton Sublette says as he tries to sit up.

Thomas Smith goes to Sublette’s possibles sack and rummages through it. When he pulls out a whisky bottle, Sublette smiles grimly.

“Well, at least I’ve got a reason to get soused,” he says.

“Save some for sousin’ that wound,” Smith says. He pulls a clean shirt from Sublette’s pack and begins tearing it into strips. “Hey Locke, you game for helpin’ me with this?”

Gerald nods and moves forward. Then he pauses and reaches for his canteen. “Give me a minute to wash.”

“Naw, use the whisky,” Smith says, holding it out.

Gerald washes a swig of water through his mouth, swallows the bitterness that still clings there, then takes the whisky bottle from Smith and splashes liquor on his hands as Smith slices into Sublette’s buckskin trousers. He peels the leather back to reveal the Apache arrow and the bloody gash it’s made in Sublette’s leg. He carefully cuts off a strip of the buckskin, folds it into a narrow band, and hands it to Sublette, who grimaces and slips it between his teeth.

“Ready?” Smith asks.

Sublette nods, his eyes slitted with pain.

The arrow’s shaft is made of some kind of thick reed. Smith grabs it with both hands, one fist above the other, and snaps the shaft off six inches above the wound.

Smith raises an eyebrow at Sublette and the big man nods grimly.

Smith gently moves the shaft back and forth, working it away from the edge of the wound. “It’s a good thing Apache arrow heads ain’t barbed,” he says. “I ken pull it straight out.” He looks at Sublette, who nods again. A little impatiently, Gerald thinks. Sweat drops stand out on Sublette’s broad forehead.

“You’re gonna hafta hold his hands,” Smith tells Gerald. “Or he’ll grab at me in spite of himself.”

Sublette’s eyes are clenched shut. Gerald takes his right hand and reaches across for his left. “Go!” the wounded man grunts around the leather in his mouth.

“Got him?” Smith asks Gerald.

Gerald nods and Smith turns to the arrow. He moves the shaft gingerly, as if testing it, then tightens his grip and gives a little grunt as the blood-smeared head lifts free of Sublette’s leg.

Sublette gasps, shudders, and lies still, his chest heaving. As Smith begins binding the wound, Gerald releases Sublette’s hands. The wounded man takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Coulda done that quicker,” he grumbles. He turns his head. “Where’s the whisky?”

As Gerald hands Sublette the whisky bottle, William Wolfskill walks up, his hands on his hips. “Well, we got at least a couple of the bastards,” he says. “But we lost three of the mules and yours is wounded, Smith. It looks pretty bad.”

“The hell she is!” Smith exclaims belligerently. He scrambles to his feet, the piece of arrow still in his hand. “Those damn red skinned mother suckers! That’s the best mule in the whole damn outfit!” He scowls at Wolfskill. “I ain’t puttin’ her down, William.”

“I didn’t say she had to be put down, now did I?” Wolfskill asks reasonably. He looks around at the silent trappers, then turns back to Smith. “The more important issue at hand is how much we have remaining in the way of supplies. And it’s not much. We’re going to have to pull out.”

“Retreat?” Smith spits. “After they attacked us and wounded my mule and put a arrow in Milt’s leg? You wanta retreat?”

Wolfskill lifts a hand. “We need to regroup,” he says. “I say we go back to where we can get word to Taos for reinforcements and more supplies, then we come back and teach these bastards a lesson they won’t forget.”

There’s a murmur of agreement from the other trappers, but Smith only says, “We’re takin’ that mule with us.”

Wolfskill gives him a skeptical look. “You’ll need to practice your doctoring skills on her,” he says. “But if she can keep up, we’ll take her with us.”

Smith crosses to the mule, who’s standing at the edge of the clearing, blood seeping steadily from the arrow in her left flank. He runs a hand over her rump and she jerks away from him, her ears back. “Hurts, don’t it?” he asks. “Thata girl. We’ll fix you up so you’ll be in high beaver.”

“She’s going to have to keep up,” Wolfskill says again. “And we can’t be waiting around for her, either.” He studies the other trappers, then turns to Sublette. “Milt, do you think you can ride?”

Sublette moves his leg slightly and winces. “Give me a day and I’ll be ready to go,” he says.

Wolfskill nods. “Day after tomorrow then.” He turns to Smith, who’s pulling a jar of ointment from his possibles sack. “Day after tomorrow early,” he says, raising his voice slightly, but Smith doesn’t respond.

The doctored mule is limping and irritable, but she’s in the train that turns back up the Gila River within an hour of sunrise two days later. Unlike the other animals, she carries no packsaddle and there’s an oily smear on her left flank. But she’s moving. Smith is in good spirits.

While Milton Sublette’s leg heals more slowly than he would have liked, it is healing. By the fourth day, he’s able to walk for short distances. But the mule isn’t so fortunate. She’s weaker than when they began the trek and her wound is giving off a rotting-meat smell. The other animals, and then the men, give her a wide berth.

“That’s going to start attracting mountain lion,” Wolfskill tells Thomas Smith that night. “She’s not going to make it, Tom.”

Smith scowls at Wolfskill’s back as the group’s leader walks away. He strokes the animal’s neck, trying to coax her to eat, but she only rolls her pain-ridden eyes and gingerly lifts her hind leg, as if this will ease the discomfort.

“Godforsaken mothersuckin’ Apache!” Smith growls.

Gerald watches sympathetically but knows there’s nothing he can do to help. When Smith leads the limping animal out of camp the next morning, no one accompanies them and they all pretend not to hear the gunshot that reverberates across the mountainside half an hour later.

Everyone avoids Smith’s eyes when he returns. “Damn Apaches!” he mutters as he drops the mule’s halter and rope onto a log near the fire. “Coyote bastards! She was the best damn mule I ever had!”

Sublette, perched on a big piece of sandstone at the end of the log, shifts his leg into a more comfortable position. “Damn Apaches, is right,” he says. “We’ll come back and take that mule outta their skin, Tom. That and some payment for this leg.”

Smith drops down to sit beside him and leans forward to lift a stick from the ground. He pulls out his knife and begins whittling ferociously. “I’ll cut off more’n their scalps,” he vows. “That there was my best mule. Best one I ever had.”

Gerald looks at the two men thoughtfully. Is this what trapping in Apache territory does to a man? Winds them up so tightly that they value a mule’s life over that of another man’s? At least two Apaches died in that fight. But then, not everyone thinks an Indian’s life is equivalent to a white man’s. Or a Mexican’s. Gerald watches Ignacio Sandoval move to the fire with an armful of wood. Would Smith have been so upset if Sandoval or one of the other camp keepers had died?

Gerald stirs uneasily. If an Apache or Mexican life isn’t worth much to these men, how would they value a black man who’s also part Indian? Especially one who’s passing as white? His stomach clenches. It seemed so simple at the time. On the prairie. On the road between Ranchos and Taos. And surely some of them have guessed. But no one has confronted him, and they certainly seem to treat him as an equal.

His tension eases a little and his back straightens. He’ll just have to play it out and see where it takes him. But the fact remains that he’s not like these other men. He’s not just any man.

Smith is still muttering about losing his mule when the trappers break out of the mountains a week later and see the Rio del Norte winding like a silver ribbon through the dry land below, the bosque’s gnarled gray cottonwoods running beside it. The hamlet of Socorro, surrounded by fields and sheepfolds, lies between them and the water.

“Well, it ain’t much, but it’s bound to have food,” Milton Sublette says as they gaze down at the dusty clutch of adobe casitas.

Suddenly, Ignacio Sandoval is at William Wolfskill’s elbow, looking at him pleadingly, his voice low and urgent. Wolfskill gives the young man a quizzical look, then throws back his head and laughs aloud. He turns to the others. “I guess we’re gonna have to take the long way to the river,” he announces. “Sandoval here says his Daddy lives down there and he don’t know Ignacio’s with us. He’ll likely cause quite a ruckus if we show up with the boy in tow.”

“Thought you was from Taos!” Thomas Smith says to Ignacio.

“He believes me there,” the younger man says reluctantly. “He sent me to study.”

“You’re supposed to be goin’ to school?” Sublette asks incredulously. “You’re a Mexican! What the hell do you need schoolin’ for?”

Ignacio gives him a sheepish grin and shrugs.

“I know his daddy and he’s got a sharp streak to him,” Wolfskill says. “We’ll just ease on around this little mud town and head on up to Los Chavez. Señor Chavez is likely to be more welcoming and he has a bunch of pretty daughters, besides.”

“Well, for a pretty girl I guess I can go a little farther on this bum leg,” Sublette says. There’s a general chuckle of agreement and the trappers move out, heading north across the dead grasses of the llano, keeping the gnarled gray cottonwoods that line the Rio del Norte well in sight.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 13

Gerald stops in the middle of the path and stares at the small fenced-off area beside the brimming irrigation ditch, what in nuevomexico is called an ‘acequia’. The plot is perhaps an eighth of an acre and filled with vibrant green sprigs of pigweed, a sign both that the soil has been turned in the past year and that it’s fertile. The weeds will be easy to pull once the plot is flooded with water from the ditch.

He puts a hand on the rough rail fence. A shallow indentation extends from the acequia along one side of the plot. Only a small ridge of dirt blocks the ditch water from moving down the furrow and into the weeds. Gerald crouches, reaches through the fence, and picks up a small clump of dirt. He lifts it to his face. It smells good. As if it’s been fertilized. Potatoes would do well here.

“Señor?” a boy’s voice asks.

Gerald looks up. A thin dark-skinned teenage boy with large brown eyes and a mass of straight black hair stands behind him, clearly trying to understand why this americano is holding a clod of dirt to his nose.

Gerald doesn’t know the Spanish for ‘garden’ or ‘rent,’ so all he can do is gesture at the garden plot and ask “A cómo?”

The boy frowns, puzzled, then lifts a hand. “Un momento,” he says. He circles around Gerald and the plot of pigweed to the acequia. He moves nimbly across it on a narrow plank of thick wood and disappears into a tangle of young narrow leaf cottonwoods.

Gerald waits, not sure if the boy understood. The sun is warm on his shoulders and he breathes in the green smell of the plants in the plot. It’s good to just stand here, soaking it in.

Just as he’s beginning to think the boy won’t return, two figures emerge from the cottonwoods: the boy and a solidly-constructed woman in a knee length black dress. Gerald holds his breath as first the boy, then the woman, use the plank to cross the ditch.

The woman’s dress is spotted with damp, her long sleeves pushed up, and her hands pale and wrinkled, as if she’s been interrupted in the middle of her washing. Her eyes are narrow and her lips tight. She puts her hands on her hips. “You want buy land?” she asks brusquely.

Well, at least she speaks English, even though she looks ready to do battle. Gerald shakes his head. “I apologize,” he says. “My Spanish is not good.”

Her expression softens a little and she nods.

“I want to know if the plot is for rent,” he explains. “Not to me, but to someone who may wish to use it for her garden.”

The woman looks at him impassively. “How much?”

“I—.” He stops, unsure. After all, he has no idea what price would be appropriate, if this is something that Miss Peabody truly wishes to do, or if her father has the resources to rent the plot. “I would need to consult with the young lady,” he says.

“Ah, una señorita.” She smiles a little and tilts her head to one side. “It depends on la señorita and what it is she wishes to plant.”

“I will need to consult with her,” he says again. What a fool he is. What has he gotten himself into?

The woman shrugs and turns away, then back. “I am Maria Antonia Garcia,” she says. “It is my land.” She gestures across the ditch. “If your young lady wishes to speak to me, she can find me there.”

Gerald hesitates, then nods. The woman turns and heads back across the plank. The boy smiles shyly at Gerald, then follows.

Gerald puts his hands in his pockets and watches them disappear into the trees. Then he turns back to study the garden plot. Would it be presumptuous to use this as an excuse to call on Miss Peabody and her father again? He grins. It’s better than nothing. And she did say that she wants to find a plot for her potatoes.

~ ~ ~ ~

Suzanna Peabody strides so eagerly beside him that Gerald has to lengthen his stride to keep up with her. “I know Antonia Garcia,” she says. “She and Encarnación are related somehow. Antonia does laundry for us sometimes, when Chonita has more baking than usual, or when the load is more than she and I can do on our own.” She glances at him with a small smile. “I may not cook, but I do know how to clean.”

He smiles down at her. “I suspect, though, that you would rather be gardening.”

She laughs. “You suspect rightly!” She looks eagerly up the path. “Is that the plot? Oh, that’s where they were holding the pigs last spring!” She purses her lips, eyes dark with thought. “The fence was too low for them, so they weren’t there very long. Certainly, it’s been enough time that the manure will have cooled sufficiently.” She looks up at him, eyes dancing. “Potatoes could do well here!”

He nods. “I think they might.”

They stop at the fence and gaze into the plot. “There’s access to water from the ditch,” he points out.

She peers across the pigweed at the acequia. Gerald looks at her in amusement, then finds his gaze dropping. Her breasts strain slightly against the cotton of her dress. He pulls his eyes back to her face as she turns to him. “If I’m allowed to access the water, it will do nicely,” she says.

A figure moves in the trees on the other side of the ditch and the teenage boy materializes on the opposite bank. Suzanna waves her hand. “Hola Juan Gregorio!” she calls. She gestures at the acequia. “May we cross?”

The boy smiles and makes a beckoning gesture. Suzanna moves around the garden plot and trots briskly over the wooden plank. She stops on the other side and grins at Gerald. “It looks more narrow than it actually is,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow and follows her gingerly. As he steps onto the opposite bank, his foot slips and he throws his arms out for balance. Suzanna grabs his hand, pulls him to safety, then releases him the instant he’s upright again.

“Thank you!” Gerald exclaims, but she’s already turned away. She and Gregorio plunge into the cottonwoods without looking behind them to make sure Gerald is following.

He lags behind glumly, but by the time he can see the Garcia’s low adobe house through the trees, Suzanna has turned twice to glance behind her, and Gerald’s confidence returns. He’s beside her as they enter the yard. Wooden washtubs stand in a neat row along one side of the building and men’s drawers hang from clothes lines that have been strung from the adobe’s vigas to cottonwoods on the other side of the yard.

Señora Garcia invites them inside and they sit on blanket-covered adobe benches that jut from the walls while she and Suzanna negotiate terms. The Spanish is too rapid for Gerald to follow, though he has the impression that the conversation has moved on from the garden plot when the señora glances at her son, then Gerald, and frowns irritably. She almost seems to puff up with annoyance. But then Suzanna says something soothing and the woman settles.

Finally, the conversation ends. Suzanna and Gerald say their farewells and slip back through the trees. “Isn’t there another route to this house?” he asks.

“There is.” Suzanna waves an arm. “It’s in that direction, but it’s very long and involves trespassing across the land of a man who Antonia is angry with. There was some kind of boundary dispute a number of years ago and she believes she was cheated of her rights. Antonia isn’t one to forgive and forget easily.”

They reach the irrigation ditch. Gerald waves Suzanna ahead of him and she slips easily across the plank. He follows more slowly and makes sure his footing is secure before he steps onto the opposite bank. Suzanna stands back, giving him plenty of room as she pretends to examine her new garden plot.

They head back toward the village. “It’s a good bit of a walk to Taos from here,” Gerald says. “I wasn’t sure if that would be an issue for you.”

“Oh, I love to walk,” Suzanna says. “I constrain my ramblings when the American hunters are in residence, because my father worries, but when you all aren’t here, I often walk to Ranchos and back.”

“You walk for health reasons?”

She looks at him in surprise. “No, I walk because I like to walk.” She smiles mischievously. “I find an errand that requires that I go to Ranchos, and then I go.” She shrugs. “But the garden plot isn’t nearly as far as Ranchos. I’ll explain to Father why it’s important to me, and he won’t protest.” She chuckles. “Not too much, at any rate.”

“Are we American hunters so dangerous?”

She smiles. “Not all of you.” She looks up at him. “Certainly, I wouldn’t be worried about meeting you on the streets.” She makes an annoyed flapping movement with her hand. “But you saw how Enoch Jones is. And there are others like him.” There’s a long pause, as she studies the trees beside the path. Then she glances at him shyly. “I never thanked you for intervening that day.”

“I was happy to do so,” Gerald says a little stiffly.

“Jones is—” Suzanna sighs. “How can I say it? I don’t believe he is an evil man, but he seems persuaded that all women are his property, especially if they are women with brown skin. And that, as his property, we are required to do whatever he wishes.”

Gerald feels a surge of revulsion. “His wishes are pure filth!” he says, more sharply than he intends.

She smiles at him. “That’s what I like about you.” She slows her pace slightly and takes his arm. “That and the fact that you know how to walk quickly.”

“While I’m here, will you allow me to accompany you?” he asks impulsively. “Then you can walk as far as you like.”

“I would like that,” she agrees, her eyes on the path. Then she looks at him again. “Though I expect you won’t be here much longer. You’ll be going out on another hunt soon, will you not?”

He nods glumly, wishing he could walk this path with her for the rest of his days.

“Did you see the look Antonia sent your way?” she asks abruptly.

“She seemed quite annoyed with both me and her son,” Gerald says.

Suzanna chuckles. “She is,” she agrees. “I told her you’re a trapper. Her son has expressed interest in going with the men this fall and she’s unwilling to allow it, but he’s insisting quite strongly. He says he can make more money being a camp keeper than he can staying at home.”

The girl shakes her dark head. “He’s quite strong, although he doesn’t look it. I’m sure you noticed the wash tubs and clothes lines. She may not like trappers, but she does washing for them. Gregorio helps her with the heavy lifting. But he wants very badly to go trapping instead.”

She lifts her hand in a helpless gesture. “Antonia worries that he will be in danger in some way or that he will be treated unjustly. But in the end he will undoubtedly have his way.” She grins ruefully. “As my father says, we only children can be quite willful.” She lifts an eyebrow at Gerald. “Didn’t you say you also are an only child? Did your parents find you willful?”

He laughs. “My mother used to say I was the sweetest obstinate child she ever knew.”

“I’m not sure my father would include ‘sweet’ in his description of me,” Suzanna says ruefully. “I suspect he’d use the term ‘verbal’ instead. He claims that I can talk him into almost anything.” She grins. “I prefer to think of myself as logical.” Then she sobers. “I wasn’t sure what to say to Antonia about Gregorio going out with the hunters. Do you think it would be safe? After all, he is her only child.”

Gerald shrugs. “Is anything completely safe? If he goes with responsible men, he will be as safe as staying here. Even here, there are dangers.”

Suzanna nods. “Yes. A group of Comanches raided some ranchos in the cañon east of here just a week or so ago.”

He looks at her in alarm. “And you still walk alone?”

She laughs. “They weren’t here in the valley. They were out on the fringes.” She grins. “Actually their presence is something of a boon to the American trappers. Governor Narbona stationed soldiers at Taos to monitor the trappers’ activities, but the troops have been too busy chasing Indians to pay much attention to the Americans.” She shakes her head and shrugs. “Even if the Comanches get closer to town, I know enough sign language to communicate with them. And they have dealings with my father. I don’t believe they would harm me.”

Gerald chews on his upper lip. He has no rights, but still— “I hope that while I’m here you will allow me to accompany you when you should feel the need for a walk,” he says, his eyes on the path in front of his feet. “I would blame myself greatly if something were to happen to you as you go to or from that garden plot.”

She pulls her hand away from his arm. “I am quite capable of looking after myself,” she says stiffly.

“I am sure you are,” Gerald says. What has he done? He has no rights. And now she’s angry. “But I cannot forget Enoch Jones and his attitude,” he says lamely.

They walk several more minutes before Suzanna takes his arm again. “It’s just that I dislike being constrained,” she says. “Even the Taos, as small as it is, seems to constrict me sometimes. I long for movement and space.”

“And plants?” he asks, his spirits lifting.

“And plants!” she laughs. She waves a hand at the wild rose bushes between the path and the acequia. “Have you noticed how plump last year’s rosehips are this spring? I must bring a container next time and collect some. Encarnación makes an excellent rose hip jelly which my father particularly enjoys.”

Gerald smiles at her, marveling again at the way her eyes are level with his. But as they enter the town and turn down the lane to the Peabody gate, his spirits drop. He wishes the distance between the house and the garden plot is longer, that there’s somewhere else she wants to go, some other destination to which she needs an escort. But he can think of no good excuse to prolong their walk.

His pain lessens when Suzanna turns at the open gate and looks into his eyes. “Would you mind very much if I ask you to accompany me to the garden plot tomorrow?” she asks. “Gregorio has agreed to irrigate it and pull the epazote for me, but before he does, I’d like to harvest the smaller leaves so Encarnación and I can dry them for her cooking pot this winter.”

“The pigweed?” Gerald asks in surprise.

“Oh yes. It’s an essential addition to the beans that we eat so often here. Besides enhancing the flavor, epazote increases the bean’s digestibility.” She grins mischievously. “My father says it civilizes the beans. Or at least the bean eaters.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Gerald spends the next several weeks accompanying Suzanna back and forth to the new garden plot and helping her plant the seed potatoes. He notes with a relief he doesn’t dare express that she carries a cutting knife with her at all times. She uses it for her gardening, but its sturdy eight-inch blade would do substantial damage if she had to use it against a human foe. She calls it her cuchillito and says Encarnación gave it to her as a gift.

Gerald’s eyes narrow at that. So the Peabody cook also feels Suzanna needs protection. But he has no right to further caution Suzanna. Perhaps someday he will have that privilege— Even then, it’s unlikely. She isn’t a girl who likes to be cautioned.

Somehow this train of thought converts into a mental tally of the funds in Gerald’s possession. His only option for increasing them is to trap. Although he hates the thought of leaving Taos, he pays close attention when the fur brigades begin to form up in August. At least three parties are heading south and west to the Gila River and its tributaries. But that’s all owned by Mexico and a man needs a Mexican passport to trap there. At least, nuevomexico’s Governor is insisting that passports are required, even though no one seems to have actually seen the directive that says so.

But, according to Old Bill, passports aren’t an insoluble problem. “You just got to sign on with someone that has one,” he explains one afternoon in the Peabody parlor. “One guía is good for however many men you tell his Excellency the guvnor you’re taking, and after that nobody’s counting.” He leans toward Gerald, whisky on his breath, and Gerald exchanges an uneasy glance with Suzanna.

“Me and St. Vrain, we’re sayin’ we’ve got around twenty men,” Old Bill says. “But that don’t include camp keepers and such.” He winks and leans back. “We ain’t truly decided just yet where we’re headed, neither.” He grins. “The paper we got says we’re going south to Sonora.” Suzanna looks at him disapprovingly and he swings his red head toward her father. “What do you think, Jeremiah? Think we’ll find beaver in the deserts of Sonora?”

Jeremiah Peabody glances up from the two-week-old newspaper he’s been thumbing through. “I’m sure I couldn’t say,” he says. “Although I understood from St. Vrain that the guía you obtained was for trading, not trapping.”

“Ah, it’ll cover it all!” Williams chuckles and slaps his knee. “And it’ll take in the Gila River quite nicely. Even the mountains to the north of it.”

He looks at the three faces gazing back at him. “Well, I can see you all have more interesting things to cogitate on than mere beaver,” he says mischievously. “So I’ll just mosey on back to the taberna.”

They all say muted goodbyes and Suzanna rises to see him out.

“Are you anticipating a return to hunting with Mr. Williams?” Jeremiah Peabody asks when he and Gerald are alone.

Gerald shakes his head. “He hasn’t suggested it,” he says. “And I doubt I would take him up on such an offer if he did.” He gestures toward the door. “He’s very knowledgeable about the ways of the wilderness, but—”

“I suspect that you may have learned all he can teach you,” Peabody says drily.

Suzanna comes back into the room. “I wish he wouldn’t drink so,” she says. She moves restlessly to the dimly lit window. “Why must men throw themselves away on whisky?”

“Not all men do so, my dear,” her father says mildly.

“They have nothing else to give their lives meaning,” Gerald says.

She glances around and his eyes meet hers. Her cheeks flush scarlet and she turns back to the window. “I suppose you’ll be leaving with one of the fur brigades soon?” she asks. She moves back across the room, and seats herself beside the tea table. “With Mr. Williams, I presume?”

“Ewing Young has suggested that I join the group he and William Wolfskill are organizing for the southern mountains and the Gila River,” Gerald says. “I believe he has the appropriate permissions.” He turns to her father. “Young will be leading it and some of the men going with him will be free trappers, but he’s offered me a contract. I’d earn a wage instead of taking the risk of bringing back enough furs to make it worth my while.”

“Leaving the risk of a good take to Young is a fine strategy,” Jeremiah Peabody says. “You may not make as much as you would if you were free and your catch was good, but you don’t risk losing all of it, either. And Young and Wolfskill are two men with a fine reputation for good sense.” He accepts a fresh cup of tea from Suzanna, then adds, “I’m glad you aren’t thinking about going out with the party that Michel Robidoux is putting together for the Gila. He doesn’t seem seasoned enough to be heading up such a venture.”

Gerald nods absently and glances at Suzanna. “I hope to add a decent amount to what I’ve already earned,” he says. “Though I’m reluctant to take with me the funds I already have. I understand some men put theirs in trust with a merchant here or in Santa Fe.”

“Either way is a risk,” Peabody says.

“I wondered if you would be so good as to keep my small earnings for me.” Gerald hesitates. “Though, if you don’t wish to carry the burden—.”

“I would be delighted to take on that responsibility for you,” Jeremiah Peabody says with a smile. He glances toward Suzanna. “You honor me with the request to entrust your resources to my care. And I’m sure you’ll come back from this venture with more to add to it. A group led by Young has every chance of doing well.”

But Gerald barely hears this last sentence. He has turned toward Suzanna and is too busy looking into her smiling eyes.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12

“I’m glad you invited him and that he came,” Suzanna says at dinner that evening, interrupting her father’s silent train of thought.

He looks up from his plate. “Who, my dear?”

“Mr. Locke, papá.”

“He’s quite a nice, gentlemanly young man,” he agrees. “Although I fear you may have frightened him off with your diatribe about trapping and the resultant drunkenness.”

“He didn’t seem frightened,” she says. “Besides, if he’s going to visit us, he’ll have to get used to my opinions.” She dips her spoon into the bowl of mutton stew, then pauses to look up at him with narrowed eyes. “And what do you mean by ‘frighten him off’? Why should it matter to me whether he visits or not? After all, he’s not coming to court me. You’ve made it clear enough that I’m not of an age for such things.”

She takes a bite of stew, chews, swallows, then adds firmly, “Not that I’m particularly interested in him or any other young man.”

Her father’s lips twitch. “It would be wise to not become interested in a trapper,” he observes mildly. “Theirs is an unsettled life and prone to discord. Unlike that of, for example, New England.” He bends his head over his food, his eyes clouded.

Suzanna puts down her spoon and studies him. She’s never been certain just why her father left New England. Something about a girl, pistols, and the wounded heir of a powerful family. Jeremiah had just read Lt. Zebulon Pike’s newly-published book about the far-away land of New Mexico, so that’s where he headed. Suzanna knows more about his journey west than the events leading up to it.

Her father rarely speaks of New England, although it’s reflected in the intonation of every word, the turn of his narrow head, his firm and piercing eye. To him, his true life began somewhere on the trek from New England to the Rocky Mountains, found its purpose when he held Suzanna in his arms for the first time.

She doesn’t know much about his early life in the Rockies, either. Once in a long while, a man who knew her father in the two years between his New England life and Suzanna’s birth shows up in Taos. Their reminiscences have given her a glimpse of a man quite different from the dignified scholar she knows. A warrior, a man who dealt with the natives in a way that won their grudging respect, a skilled fur trapper and hunter.

She looks at him thoughtfully. “Did you dislike trapping so very much?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Any man can hunt and trap if he must,” he says. “But it is not well for a man to get caught in that life if his heart is elsewhere.”

“And that appears to be the case with Mr. Locke.”

Her father nods. “It does so appear.” He shakes his head. “He seems to be a man with a dream. Whether or not he can achieve that dream will depend on many things, some of which he cannot control.” He reaches for a tortilla and begins tearing it into small pieces and dropping it into his stew. “I would not desire any daughter of mine to be dependent on the dream of a man without the means or the will to accomplish what he sets out to do.”

Suzanna’s lips tighten. She’s already said she’s not interested in Gerald Locke, Junior. Why does her father persist in this train of thought? Besides, Mr. Locke appears to be perfectly capable of making any dream he may dream a reality.

The thought creates a small bubble of something like hope in her chest, but Suzanna only shakes her head at her father and smiles. “Since you only have one daughter that I know of, and that daughter is known for her independence of mind, I doubt there’s any real danger,” she says lightly. She reaches for a tortilla. “At any rate, your concerns are of a purely hypothetical nature. I’m not interested in becoming dependent on Gerald Locke or anyone else.”

Jeremiah Peabody smiles at his stew, then asks, “Is your garden in the courtyard ready for the soil to be turned? I believe Ramón is bringing us more firewood tomorrow morning. Shall I ask him to start digging?”

“I’ll ask him,” Suzanna says. She grins mischievously. “It’s still cool enough outside that Chonita can invite him into the kitchen to warm his hands. She seems to enjoy feeding him.”

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Sale!!!

I have two books on sale this month, since they have strong links to August events. I thought you all might want to know about them before the sale ends on the 31st….

Pivotal plot twists occur in Fall 1837 in No Secret Too Small, as the move Alma’s mother has made to Santa Fe places the children in a position to experience revolt at first hand. The ebook is available through Saturday, August 31 for $.99 (full price $5.99), while the paperback is half off its usual price.

There Will Be Consequences provides more details about the August 1837 rebellion, with the historical participants taking center stage. This ebook is also available for $.99, and the paperback is 50 percent off. These prices will return to $5.99 and $17.99, respectively, on Sept. 1. So, if you haven’t read them, now’s your chance!

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

Gerald steps out of the trader’s store and pauses in the late February sunlight, waiting while Old Bill seals his own fur-trading transaction with a drink or two. He looks up at the sky appreciatively. It’s deep blue and holds only a handful of small, fluffy white clouds. The sun catches the flecks of mica on the Plaza’s adobe walls. The glitter reflects his mood. There’s $332 dollars and fifteen cents in his money belt, more than he’s ever possessed.

His hand moves unconsciously toward the belt and a passing young woman with long black hair, short skirts, and a low cut blouse looks flirtatiously into his face. Gerald smiles slightly and shakes his head. Is it that apparent? But then, any trapper just back from the mountains and standing outside a trader’s store is likely to have money to spend.

Old Bill bends his lanky frame through the low wooden door frame and straightens beside Gerald. “Ah, it’s a wonderful thing, ain’t it?” he asks. “Those furry banknotes.” His breath smells of whiskey. Another young woman passes, this one flicking her skirts around her knees, and Williams’ eyes follow her appreciatively. “I think I’ll get me a drink and a señorita,” he says. He glances at Gerald as he claps his hat on his head. “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me.”

“Perhaps for the drink,” Gerald says. “But not for the señorita.”

“Ah, what a wondrously righteous thing is young love,” Williams says. “You keepin’ yourself pure for Miz Peabody, are you?”

Gerald scowls and Old Bill raises a hand. “That’s that there Taos Lightning loosening my tongue a might, that’s all that is,” he says apologetically. “I’ll take myself off now, before I say something we both find regretful.”

He grins at Gerald mischievously and Gerald smiles back in spite of himself. He watches the long-legged trapper lurch across the plaza to the nearest taberna and considers Williams’ remark. It isn’t so much that Gerald is keeping himself pure for Suzanna Peabody. After all, he has no claim on her affections. And the fact of his black heritage weighs on him, makes him reluctant to put himself forward. He can’t bring himself to even think how her face might change in the instant she knows the truth about him.

But he’s never met another girl even remotely like her. And why would he chase after other girls when there’s someone like her in the world? He can’t imagine being attracted to anyone else. Not that there’s much hope for him. He doesn’t even know her father well enough to approach their house on his own. He certainly doesn’t have the impudence to take her a gift. Her father’s eyes darkened at the idea of potatoes. Gerald can’t imagine what he would say to jewelry.

He turns away from the plaza and spends the next three days restlessly wandering the village or meandering down to the still-empty blacksmith shop in Ranchos to confirm that his father hasn’t returned. There’s nothing for him here. He’s wasting his time. He should locate someone else to trap with in the fall.

Or go to Santa Fe and try for a place on a mule train returning to Missouri. He has enough now for a small farm of his own there, if he’s careful. If prices haven’t risen with the onslaught of farmers and slaves from the southern states that had begun well before he left.

But he feels only a sinking sensation in his stomach when he thinks of Missouri and he knows he won’t return. After the freedom of movement he’s experienced here, the acceptance, he can’t imagine returning to an American slave state.

What he will do is less certain. All he knows is that he continues to find himself wandering Taos’ plaza and few streets, especially the small lane where he first glimpsed Suzanna Peabody.

He sees little of Old Bill, who seems to be trying to spend all of his season’s earnings in the plaza tabernas. Other trappers have also drifted back into town and several, including Enoch Jones, are making themselves at home in the saloons.

Gerald himself visits the plaza at least once a day, walking in from his campsite beside Ewing Young’s pasture north of town. He tells himself he needs provisions and that it’s best to buy them fresh daily, but this task somehow takes up most of each day, and while he’s about it, his eyes tend to stray toward any girl taller and slimmer than usual.

On the fourth day, he’s just purchased a small clutch of eggs and a few still-warm tortillas when voices erupt in front of a saloon on the opposite side of the square.

“You devil! You pig! Get your filthy hands off of me! How dare you accost me!” The young woman’s shawl has slipped off her dark head and the full force of her glare is focused on Enoch Jones, whose hands are reaching for her shoulders.

She slaps at him and her palm connects with his cheek. He grabs her upper arm and she yanks away and faces him, hands on solid hips, large black eyes blazing. “You sorry excuse for a human being! You four footed beast! Eres más mala que Judas! You are more evil than Judas!”

Jones laughs and lunges at her again. He grabs her shoulders, one in each dirty hand. “Just one little kiss!”

The girl twists, trying to get away, but his face darkens and he jerks her toward him. As she turns her face from his slobbering mouth, Gerald moves forward, eggs and tortillas still in his hands.

Then a long red-headed form erupts from the taberna door and Old Bill has Enoch Jones by the scuff of the neck. “Let her go,” the trapper growls.

Jones’ hands fall away from the Spanish girl’s arms. “I was jus’ askin’ fer a kiss,” he says.

“I am not one of your putas!” the girl blazes. “How dare you!” She backs away, still glaring, then nods at Williams. “I thank you, Mr. Williams,” she says. She looks him up and down as she straightens her shawl. “Though I would prefer to have met you without so much liquor on your breath.”

Williams releases Jones from his grip and draws himself up to his full lanky height. “I apologize for inconveniencing you, Señorita Encarnación,” he says with drunken dignity. He turns back to the taberna door.

Jones snickers. “Yeah, Carny,” he says. “Make him apologize. Make ’im grovel fer yer favors.”

She looks at him contemptuously. “Filthy pig!”

Jones scowls. “You think yer so high ’n mighty in Peabody’s kitchen, but yer just a Mexican slut like the rest of ’em.” He waves his arm, encompassing the plaza and the silent, brown-faced men and women watching. “Yer all a bunch o’ greasy Mexicans too lazy t’ do anything but take the money o’ anyone man enough to winter in th’ mountains an’ take what’s rightfully ours.”

“Yours?” Jeremiah Peabody strides into the plaza, his mouth a thin angry line above the neat black chin beard. He pauses at Encarnación’s side and looks down at her. “Are you quite all right?”

She nods and raises her shawl to cover her now-disheveled black head. Peabody turns to Enoch Jones, his eyes steely. “I will thank you to leave the members of my household in peace.”

Jones scowls but doesn’t respond. Williams reappears in the taberna doorway and Peabody looks him up and down. “And when you have recovered from your drunk, I will be pleased to see you once again under my roof.” He turns away. “And now, gentlemen, I will leave you to your recreations.”

Then Peabody catches sight of Gerald, halfway across the square and still holding his eggs and tortillas. Peabody’s face softens. He says something to Encarnación, pats her on the arm, then crosses the plaza toward Gerald. “Mr. Locke, you appear to be a man who knows how to provision himself,” he says. He smiles. “If you would care to visit us, I’m sure Encarnación will be happy to provide you with even fresher tortías. And my daughter would be happy to make your further acquaintance.” He touches his finger to his hat and moves away as Gerald nods dumbly.

Movement returns to the plaza as the vendors, marketers, and Encarnación begin once again to go about their business. She smiles slightly as she passes Gerald, and drops him a small curtsy. “Señor,” she says pleasantly.

Gerald, still processing Jeremiah Peabody’s words, can only nod. ‘My daughter would be happy to make your further acquaintance.’ Gerald tamps down the surge of delight and the smile on his face. The man is merely being polite. There’s no more to the invitation than that.

He stalls for two days, unwilling to believe Peabody is serious. But then they meet again, again on the plaza. This time, the New Englander is accompanied by Suzanna herself, her hands tucked into his elbow, her eyes tight with irritation. The eyes relax a little when they meet Gerald’s. She glances at her father and releases his arm.

“Mr. Locke,” Jeremiah says. “How fortunate to meet you here.” He glances down at Suzanna, who gives him a small nod, then returns his gaze to Gerald. “I hope you will join us this afternoon for tea. I believe we will be quite alone, so we can have a nice chat.”

Quite alone? The phrase sends a shiver of alarm through Gerald’s spine, but the look Suzanna gives him is so friendly, he finds himself smiling an acceptance to her father’s invitation.

“About three then?” Peabody asks. A smile flashes across his thin face. “Or have you acclimated so well to Mexican time that we must be more general than that? Mid-afternoon?”

Gerald laughs. “No, I haven’t adjusted that thoroughly,” he says. “Three o’clock, then.”

He arrives at the Peabody’s door a few minutes before three and loiters outside the gate, not wanting to enter before his time. Besides, his boots are muddy. As he scrapes them against the edge of a nearby rock, the young woman Enoch Jones accosted in the plaza appears in the gateway. She puts her hands on her sturdy hips.

“The boots, they are dirty?” she asks.

He nods and gestures at the street. “The roads have become muddy with the spring rains.”

“Sí, but the rains have also watered Señorita Peabody’s plants,” she says. She smiles at him. “I am called Encarnación Mora. I believe you are Señor Gerald Locke.”

“Yes ma’am.” He pulls his hat from his head. “I am Gerald Locke Jr.” He bows a little, not sure if he should offer his hand, and she chuckles.

“I am not a señorita, sir,” she says. “I am only the cook.”

“And a quite accomplished one,” says an amused voice from behind her. “She makes up for my shortcomings.” Suzanna appears at the shorter and plumper woman’s elbow. “Welcome again to our home, Mr. Locke.” She dips him a small curtsy.

“Please, call me Gerald.” He moves forward, his hand out, and she takes it with a smile.

She looks into his eyes and something moves within him. It’s as if his heart has adjusted itself to a different rhythm. “And I am Suzanna,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “Suzanna.” Then feels like a fool.

But she only smiles, turns, and leads the way across the courtyard, between the two small garden beds, and into the house.

Her father is in the parlor, reading beside the fire, and truly alone. Suzanna enters ahead of Gerald, then immediately turns and disappears back into the hallway. Anxiety rises in Gerald’s chest. But then the older man puts down his book, smiles, rises, gestures Gerald into the chair on the other side of the fire, and sits down again. “I’ve been re-reading Susanna Rowson’s novel Charlotte,” he says.

He waves at the cloth-bound book on the table beside his chair as Suzanna comes in with a tray piled with sandwiches. Her father stands again, takes the tray, and sets it on a table in the corner. “Do you know the book?” he asks Gerald.

Suzanna shakes her head at him and smiles at Gerald. “He reads more novels than I do,” she says. “I prefer Shakespeare or botanical texts.” She perches herself on the brightly cushioned and painted wooden chest opposite him as Encarnación carries in a tray with a teapot and three cups.

Gerald grins. “I prefer Shakespeare, myself.” He turns to Jeremiah Peabody. “Although I have not read Miss Rowson, so perhaps ‘prefer’ is too strong a term.”

Peabody chuckles. “You are a diplomat! But Suzanna is teasing me. She knows I enjoy Shakespeare as much as she does.”

“Though I think you prefer your Latin authors above all else,” she says. She moves to the table and begins preparing the tea.

“My daughter can read Latin as well as I can,” Jeremiah Peabody tells Gerald, pride touching his voice.

Gerald looks at Suzanna. “I envy you,” he says. “My education never extended that far.”

Suzanna hands him a cup of tea. “Oh, I forgot,” she says. “Do you take milk or sugar?” She wrinkles her forehead in a self-deprecatory smile. “Somehow I just assumed you take your tea black.”

“Actually, I do,” he says. Their eyes lock for just a moment, then she moves hastily away to prepare her father’s cup.

Gerald turns to Jeremiah Peabody. “I’m afraid I learned to read at my mother’s knee,” he says apologetically. “I had no opportunity for a formal education.”

“You have the speech and carriage of an educated man.”

“Speaking correctly was important to both my parents.” He looks into his teacup and smiles. “My mother was something of a stickler for proper manners.” He looks up. “As was my father, but he wasn’t quite so insistent.” He chuckles and shakes her head. “My mother was passionate about everything she did.”

“They are both deceased?” Jeremiah Peabody looks into Gerald’s face as if he wants to read his very soul.

Gerald lifts his chin slightly, holds his voice steady. He will not lie to any man. And he will not be ashamed, no matter the outcome. “My mother died when I is still a child,” he says calmly. “My father— My father is here in the Mountain West. I don’t know where or with whom.”

“You came here to find him?”

Gerald nods, a slight trace of sorrow in his eyes.

“Well, give it time,” Suzanna says. “Sooner or later all the mountain men and traders pass through Don Fernando de Taos. It’s a kind of magnet, drawing them. Even Major Sibley was here this winter, when by all rights he ought to have been in Santa Fe speaking with the Governor.”

“He had business to attend to here and he believes our air to be more salubrious than that at Santa Fe,” her father says drily. He turns to Gerald. “I came here myself to escape the confines of the States and have not had reason to return.” He smiles at Suzanna. “Or perhaps I should say I found a reason to stay.”

She smiles back at him affectionately, then turns to Gerald. “A sandwich?” she asks. “I think Encarnación’s bread is the only norte americano bread in nuevomexico.”

“Yes, please,” he says. He turns to her father. “I have been trying to pick up a little Spanish. When you first arrived here, did you find the language a difficult barrier?”

The talk moves on then, to language, to Shakespeare, to Suzanna’s plants and her plans for her spring garden beds. Gerald finds himself relaxing in spite of the slight formality of the New England man’s diction and bearing. He clearly cares deeply for his daughter and she clearly respects and loves him, although she feels no obligation to bow before his opinions.

Finally, the conversation turns to Gerald’s recent trapping expedition with Old Bill.

“And Mr. Williams has again debased himself with drink.” Suzanna shakes her head. “It’s such a shame that he carries on in that way. He’s such a— A nice man when he’s sober.”

“For a moment I thought you were going to call him a gentleman,” her father teases.

“Well, he can behave in a gentlemanly way when he wishes to,” she says tartly. “Though all of that seems to disappear when he’s been imbibing.”

“Even when he’s been drinking he doesn’t quite forget himself,” Gerald says. “Your Encarnación can attest to that.”

They look at him, startled.

“She didn’t tell you?” Gerald frowns, uncertain. “The interchange with Enoch Jones?”

“Father entered the plaza just as that ended,” Suzanna says. She chuckles. “Chonita said a good deal about her interaction with Jones, but most of it was not repeatable. At least, not by me.” She hesitates, then gives Gerald a slight frown. “She said nothing about Mr. Williams.”

Briefly, Gerald tells them what happened before Jeremiah arrived in the plaza.

“The entire incident demonstrates the goodness of William’s heart,” Jeremiah says.

“And the filthiness of liquor, and the pain and sorrow it causes!” Suzanna says. She turns and begins rattling the tea things on the table beside her, her black eyes snapping. “That Enoch Jones is a disgusting man made even more disgusting by drink! Sometimes I think trapping is the very essence of evil. The men endure incredible deprivation to accumulate furs in order to satisfy the vanity of folks back in the States and in Europe, people who have no inkling how their luxuries are obtained.”

She glares at her father. “Then when the trappers come out of the wilderness and exchange their plews for gold, they’re like springs wound too tightly for too long and they go on a binge fueled by Taos Lightning. Aguardiente indeed! Water of fire? Water of poison! They fling away a season’s hard earnings in a matter of days and are left with nothing to show for the misery they’ve endured!”

She flounces a little in her chair, as if the irritation she feels is too much to hold in, and turns to Gerald. “It’s just nonsensical!”

Jeremiah grins at Gerald. “I suppose you have no idea what her opinion is about such matters,” he says drily.

Eyes still bright with anger, Suzanna stands and paces to the window. She peers out. “I wish I could actually see through these selenite panes,” she grumbles. “The light may come in, but I can’t see out.”

She turns back to the men. “And the impact the trappers’ nonsense has on the women in this town is just unconscionable,” she says. “They wait all winter for men who don’t actually return when they return. They’re too busy carousing. Most of them have completely forgotten the promises they made, even to women who have born them children. Instead, they squander their money on women of the street, some of whom have sunk to that condition as a result of mistreatment by other men who’ve wandered into the mountains and never returned.”

She scowls at her father again. “I swear, this town would be better off without hunting and trapping, without the furry banknotes that Old Bill Williams is always lauding. The income it brings is more of a curse than a blessing.”

Gerald studies her as she stands there, her tall gently curved figure in its old-fashioned narrow gown silhouetted against the dim light from the mica-paned window. “There are some men who are able to endure the discomfort of the wilderness, obtain their financial reward, and yet not succumb to the temptation to squander their wealth when they return,” he says mildly.

Suzanna looks down at her hands and crosses the room back to her seat by the table. Gerald turns to her father. “Not that I would call what I obtained on this expedition true wealth,” he says ruefully. “But it’s certainly more than I’ve been able to accumulate in the past.”

Jeremiah Peabody takes his pipe from the small table beside his chair and begins filling it with tobacco. “Will you return to the wilderness?”

Gerald nods. “I think so. I’d like to gather enough of a nest egg to set myself up with a farm.”

“A farm?” Suzanna’s voice is calmer now. She leans toward him. “What would you raise?”

“I know a little about wheat,” Gerald tells her. “And cattle always seem to bring a good profit, if you can over-winter them safely. My daddy is a blacksmith, so I know enough to do most repairs myself.”

When Gerald turns his head, Jeremiah Peabody is studying his face, his eyes slightly narrowed. “Your father’s a blacksmith?”

Gerald nods. Has he said too much? His chin lifts a little. He won’t deny who he is, even if it means losing this girl. Not that he has this girl. “Yes,” he says. Best to just leave it at that.

Peabody nods and leans into his pipe, lighting it.

“You would only grow wheat?” Suzanna asks. “What about corn and potatoes and peas?”

“Those also, perhaps,” Gerald says. “That reminds me, have you planted the potatoes Charles Beaubien brought you?”

“It’s too early to plant them just yet,” she says. “And I’ll need more space than what’s available in the courtyard.” She glances at her father. “I’m trying to find a small plot outside the village that I can rent.”

Gerald feels his muscles relax as they plunge into a discussion of site requirements and potato spacing, as well as the best types of fertilizer and what might be available here. Jeremiah Peabody returns to his book, and the rest of the room recedes until there’s nothing but the subject at hand and the spark in Suzanna’s intelligent black eyes.

Finally, the light beyond the window’s small panes dims so much that even Gerald becomes aware that he’s outstayed his time, and he tears himself away. He moves briskly through the dusk toward his campsite, his spine energized by conversation and hope. What a girl. What eyes, what smooth hair, what enthusiasms. He smiles. The intensity of her opinions is something else again. He spins on his heel and faces the village, its adobe walls glowing in the light from the setting spring sun.

What he would give for the right to return to that adobe house and its courtyard, to continue talking to the girl with the fiery eyes and strong opinions. To sit in the parlor with her father and watch her hands move over the tea things. To tell her that there are men in this world who want nothing more than a woman to return to. A woman like her.

Gerald shakes his head, straightens his shoulders, turns, and heads himself firmly toward the edge of Ewing Young’s pasture.

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 10

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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Fiction and Fact From Old New Mexico

LorettaMilesTollefson.com

Tag: Old New Mexico fiction

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 13

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12

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NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 10

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 9

NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 8

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