A Long and Winding Road

by Win

  Sam and Baptiste looked at each other. Coy squealed and panted.

  “My grandson went to the meeting at Turkey Spring hoping to retrieve his daughters. But the Spaniard Armijo, he had other ideas.”

  Now Narbona’s voice had lost its edge of wry amusement. Armijo’s stunt of showing up for an exchange with no captives at all—that was a cause for cold fury.

  Sam stuck his neck out. “Nez Begay, my heart is good toward you. I am willing to help you.”

  Nez Begay said, “Maybe you would be wiser to be afraid.”

  They all sat and attended to those words for a moment.

  “Like Nez Begay,” Sam said to Narbona, “I went to the exchange, and came here, searching for two relatives, Lupe and Rosalita, my daughters and the sisters of my son Tomás. These women, they lived at Tosato.”

  Narbona said, “Nez Begay led the raid at Tosato, and he took them. I told him to take our young men there and make the Spaniards eat the poisoned fruit of their actions. We will do it again.”

  Nez Begay said, “And again and again.”

  After a silence Sam went on, “We do not expect to get our relatives back for nothing. We will pay for them.”

  Narbona studied Sam. “We do not have the women,” he said. “Nez Begay traded them to the Utes.”

  Sam’s heart sank. Ute country stretched all the way to the Great Salt Lake, and whoever had the girls had a big head start. Sam and Baptiste would have to go back to Santa Fe and get outfitted.

  It struck him that he didn’t know whether Narbona was telling the truth. “Which band of Utes?”

  Narbona named the Utes near the mountains the Siskadee went around in a half circle. Then he waited, thinking. “I would be glad to get money from you,” he said. “I like gold coins, and have no reason not to sell captives. But I don’t have these women.”

  Nez Begay said something harsh-sounding in Navajo.

  Narbona ignored him.

  They all waited.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” Sam asked Narbona.

  “Just carry my message to the Spaniards,” said the old chief. “Maybe someone smarter than Armijo.”

  Sam nodded. He and Baptiste rose.

  “You are welcome at my home,” said Narbona.

  Sam felt a gush of relief. He almost made the mistake of saying “Thank you.” Instead he said, “And you at mine.”

  As they packed up to go, Sam said, “Did you catch what Nez Begay said that Narbona wouldn’t let the translator say?”

  “Yeah,” said Baptiste. “He said he liked lying between your daughters’ legs.”

  16

  “I don’t trust Nez Begay,” said Baptiste.

  Sam said, “Me neither.”

  “Narbona wants us to take his message back.”

  “Maybe Nez Begay figures our bodies would deliver it better.”

  So they traveled as far as they could that first day. It was a skill, traveling far without wearing a horse down to nothing. It required lightness and balance in the saddle and moving with the horse instead of against it. You also needed to pick the best route across a landscape continually gashed with patterns of erosion, like the shell of a walnut. The hardest part was concentrating all the time.

  Sam was lucky to have Paladin. She was a natural athlete and had a big heart. But she was in foal, and soon Sam would not be able to push her.

  They rode fast and didn’t check their back trail—they had no idea whether Nez Begay was there.

  They stopped for the night at a well-known camping spot, Sheep Springs, which they’d used on the way west. Travelers stopped here regularly, and a Navajo family lived in a hogan here during the heat of the summer and grazed their sheep. Sam and Baptiste drank, filled their flasks, staked the horses, laid out their bedrolls, and put their rifles next to the blankets. They built a nice fire out of sagebrush. Then they broke off more brush, piled it under the blankets, and slipped off to a boulder twenty paces away. A good place to watch.

  “Coy will tell us if he comes,” said Sam.

  “Let’s take him alive,” said Baptiste.

  “Right.” No need to make an enemy of Narbona.

  They would take turns on watch all night.

  Neither one of them could sleep. They were too keyed up, wondering about where Nez Begay might be, and when he would slip in.

  Somewhere beyond midnight, according to the Big Dipper, Coy suddenly sat up, the hairs along his spine stiffened, and he growled low. Sam had taught him not to bark at times like this. He was pointing straight toward the fire. Since the wind was from behind them, Coy was hearing someone, not smelling them.

  Sam’s eyes searched the darkness, but in the half moon he saw no figure.

  Sam smiled at Baptiste. He was glad, actually—the waiting chewed on him. “You from the left, me from the right,” he said in a quarter of a whisper, making arcing motions with his hands.

  He put Coy on a lead and with a pistol, butcher knife, and tomahawk slipped into the darkness. This was sagebrush country. He would ease from bush to bush quietly. Action felt good.

  Since Coy was pointing straight at the camp, Sam also moved fast. Nez Begay would discover their trick quickly.

  There!

  A man shape stood up on the edge of camp.

  Baptiste shouted something in Navajo.

  Sam dashed at Nez Begay.

  The man shape turned and said, “Dad?”

  Sam turned a knock-down charge into a hug.

  “Tomás! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been following you.”

  Baptiste stepped into the firelight. “Tomás!”

  Coy barked like the devil, off into the darkness.

  “You’ve been following us?”

  “The whole time?”

  “Yeah. Listen, that Navajo, Nez Begay, he’s somewhere around here. We better…”

  Where Coy was pointing, on the outer edge of the firelight, Nez Begay rose and pointed his rifle at Sam and Tomás.

  “You, Baptiste,” he said, “over there with them.”

  Baptiste went.

  “Now put down your weapons,” he said, “or I shoot the arrogant boy who fought with me.”

  Coy sat and growled. He gave Sam an I-told-you-so look.

  Sam stood back from Tomás and put his pistol on the ground.

  “The knife and tomahawk too. All of your weapons, all of you.”

  They did.

  “Put your hands on top of your heads.”

  They did.

  Nez Begay stepped forward and felt their clothes for weapons, Baptiste first. He unbuckled Baptiste’s shooting pouch and let it fall to the ground. “That’s where you keep the little knife you cut rifle patches with,” he said.

  He slid Tomás’s pouch off his shoulder and let it fall.

  Sam started to unbuckle his pouch, but Nez Begay said, “Hands back on top of your head.”

  Sam obeyed, and now his hands grasped his hair ornament and his fingers began to twist.

  “What do you want with us?”

  If Nez Begay had wanted to kill them, he would have shot without warning.

  “I want to find out how good you are at walking,” said Nez Begay. “Walking all the way to Santa Fe. Naked. Without food or water.” He chuckled. “My grandfather sends messages in what he says. I send them in what I do.”

  Baptiste said, “Why not just kill…?”

  In the instant Nez Begay looked at Baptiste, Sam struck.

  The blade in the hair ornament sliced the Navajo’s face open from the eyebrow across the bridge of his nose.

  He whipped the muzzle of the rifle toward Sam and pulled the trigger.

  Tomás rammed his head into Nez Begay’s gut.

  The rifle boomed, smoke erupted, and Sam was still alive.

  He butted the tangle of Nez Begay and Tomás, and the three of them felt onto the fire.

  From the bottom Nez Begay screamed, and they all rolled away.

 
; Sam thought about the problem all night and half the day.

  He stitched up the cut on Nez Begay’s face. The burns on the Navajo’s back weren’t as bad as Sam feared. Baptiste killed a stray ram, and they slathered the wounds with fat. He also doctored the burns on Tomás’s arm, and his own. They would ride tomorrow.

  Sam showed Baptiste his hair weapon, and Nez Begay and Tomás watched. “It’s something Hannibal had a blacksmith make,” he explained. The ornament was four or five inches long and as thick as a finger, made of polished walnut. It was decorated with circles painted red, yellow, black, and white, the colors of the four directions. And in the middle of one of those circles it slid apart. Inside was a short blade, nastily sharp. Sam showed how he greased the join of the two pieces of wood and stuck it back where it held his white hair out of his face.

  “It works because enemies tell you to put your hands on your head,” Sam said, “and because it looks innocent.”

  “The white man is cunning,” said Nez Begay.

  So you have a little humor. “It won’t be cunning if too many people see mine, or get a blacksmith to make them one.”

  Sam thought about the problem more while they gorged themselves on mutton. Since the meat would spoil fast, they might as well eat all they could.

  “If we kill him,” Sam said to Baptiste in English, “we make an enemy of Narbona.”

  “If we don’t, Nez Begay will never stop coming after us.”

  “Right.”

  Sam gnawed meat off bones.

  Sam handed Nez Begay a broiled rib. “You’re coming with us,” he said in Spanish.

  An expression of loathing and fear flushed into Nez Begay’s face. The stitched-up slash across his eyebrow slithered.

  “Not as a prisoner,” said Sam, “and you are not going to be a slave.”

  Everyone wondered what Sam was talking about.

  “We are going to escort you into Santa Fe as a spokesman for your people. We will guarantee your safety. And we will demand that, when the captive exchange party goes out to meet with your people, you and your daughters will go with it.”

  Sam looked at three faces of disbelief, Nez Begay’s, Baptiste’s, and Tomás’s. He grinned at them.

  “Why?” said Nez Begay.

  “Because it’s right,” said Sam.

  17

  In Santa Fe things got done fast, but not as fast as Sam wanted. To get started for rendezvous—that was eating at him.

  Sam, Baptiste, Tomás, Nez Begay, and two other well-armed trappers had an audience with the governor, with Armijo in silent attendance. Sam delivered Narbona’s message word for word, and he saw approval in Nez Begay’s eyes when he did so.

  The governor ordered a man to take word to the Navajos that Narbona’s grandson was being treated with honor, and that the exchange of captives would take place at the half moon, as agreed, with Nez Begay and his daughters present.

  The governor dismissed Sam, Nez Begay, and the men guarding him with official thanks. Sam didn’t think he’d made any friends in the Palace of the Governors.

  Outside Sam said to the Navajo warrior, “I have pledged my honor to protect you. I want to act as a friend to the Navajo people. If you…”

  Nez Begay stopped him with a hand. “I will do nothing foolish.” He gave a little grin. “Sam Morgan,” he said, “do you know you are a good man?” He gave a lop-sided grin. From now on his scar would always make him look fearsome. “A rare thing among white people.”

  With the permission of Paloma’s sister Rosa, Sam and friends took up residence at Rancho de Las Palomas. They used the casitas primitivas—Sam couldn’t stand the thought of being in the big house with Paloma gone. It would stand empty, except for when Paloma’s sister and her family came down from Santa Fe. Right now the rancho was the safest place for Nez Begay.

  Sam got his outfit in order to go to rendezvous—horses and mules bought, hands signed on, last trade goods purchased. He and Sumner had maintained an arrangement for four years now—Sumner put up the money, Sam was the field leader, and they split the profits down the middle.

  The whole arrangement made Sam smile to himself. In 1823 he came to the mountains as an illiterate backwoodsman, utterly green to the mountains. Now half the year he was a brigade leader and minor entrepreneur (he even knew how to spell it) and the other half lover to a rich Santa Fe woman. Also a father, twice. Plus, in his own way, a Crow named Joins with Buffalo, and a pipe carrier. One decade, a whole new man. The New World, as Hannibal liked to say.

  Soon he would travel with the New Mexicans as far as the meeting for captive exchange, try to keep everyone level-headed there, and make his way far north to the Siskadee, where the fur men held their annual get-together. For five years his life had revolved around two females—a long winter with Paloma and a brief summer rendezvous where he saw his daughter Esperanza. Now it turned on Esperanza and two other women, Lupe and Rosalita.

  When he met with Sumner to go over the books for the trading expedition one last time, Sumner said, “Somep’n, it be missing.” The black man’s slave talk again.

  Sam cocked an eye at his friend across the desk. Somewhere in the last several years Sumner had acquired a small but beautiful home in the viga y latilla style found everywhere in Santa Fe.

  “We need a fiesta. At the rancho. Your goodbye fiesta.”

  Violins, mandolins, and guitars both large and small filled the evening air with music. The band wandered through the crowd, amusing some people, inspiring others to dance, and even bringing a tear here and there with a sentimental love song.

  Sumner’s idea for a fiesta had mushroomed. Paloma’s sister, Rosa Luna de Salazar, had not only welcomed the idea—she decided to make it a grand reception for the new ownership of Rancho de las Palomas and to invite the whole town.

  Several hundred people made the short trip down the river road from Santa Fe, common people, artisans and craftsmen, merchants, and aristocrats of the five great families of Nuevo Mexico, Armijo, Chavez, Otero, Perea, and Yrizar.

  Wine flowed abundantly. Doña Rosa was showing off her sister’s vintages—wine later to be marketed throughout the province. Sam didn’t care why the wine was flowing—he was just glad of the festive atmosphere.

  Sheep, beeves, and pigs had been turning on spits over open fires all afternoon. “Everyone will eat, drink, and dance until they drop or go mad with passion,” Doña Rosa told Sam. He liked her.

  The mountain men had their roles to play—Sam and Sumner’s little trading company had been announced as co-host of the party. It was named Rideo Trading, after the motto invented by Hannibal MacKye and adopted by Sam and Sumner—“Rideo ergo sum”—I laugh, therefore I am.

  “We will invent divertissements,” Baptiste said in a Frenchy accent.

  Sumner’s divertissement was to entertain people with card tricks and card games. First he made a good show by decking himself out as a dandy, a suit of a light wool in a daring plum color that flattered his black skin wonderfully, a white waistcoat with a golden watch fob, and an elegant, dove gray beaver hat. He was outdonning the dons.

  His card tricks were dazzling—Sumner would let a child pick a card from a deck, look at it, and put it back. Then the gambler would reach out and pluck the card out of the child’s ear. He would give a man the four aces of a deck, let the fellow put them back at random, shuffle the cards once, and turn the four aces up on top.

  The card game was even better. Sam and Tomás stood to watch for a moment. It was an old con, three-card monte. Sumner sat at a table with a sign laid on one corner—STEAL FROM THE RICH, GIVE TO THE POOR. Whenever a don passed, Sumner caught the fellow’s attention and tried to seduce him.

  Now Manuel Armijo himself drifted by, grinning and perhaps a little drunk. “El Gobernador, you, Señor,” Sumner cried, “may I interest you in a little game? It is child’s play. In fact, watch—a child will win at it.”

  Then Sumner laid three cards in front of two kids who were standing there, g
ape-mouthed. One was a raven-haired girl of eight or nine, the other a red-headed boy of ten or twelve.

  “Here you see the Gentleman, the Lady, and the Boy with a Hoop,” Sumner proclaimed to the crowd. “Now watch carefully, my lad,” said, nodding at the redhead. The boy peered intently at the cards.

  Sumner picked them up, held them where all could easily see the backs, and deliberately, one at a time, shuffled them. Then he laid them face down on the table.

  “Now,” said Sumner with elaborate formality—he did his show in the fanciest possible Spanish—“pick out the Boy with a Hoop.”

  The redhead shyly pointed to the card on the right end. Sumner turned it over and—“Estupendo!” he exclaimed. “This young man has won a peso.”

  He handed the boy a coin. “And the lady wins too,” he announced, giving another to the girl. The kids beamed.

  Sumner addressed Armijo. “Don Manuel, surely you can win at a game conquered even by children?”

  “Your sign alarms me,” said Don Manuel.

  “I’m sure you are a generous man. If you lose, you will make a small donation to someone less blessed than yourself.”

  Armijo stepped forward, intrigued.

  “Bet whatever you like, Don Manuel.”

  Armijo set out a ten-peso piece.

  Sumner went through the same rigmarole with the cards. He shuffled the three of them so slowly that anyone would be sure which was which.

  Armijo pointed—and chose wrong.

  “The Lady. I venture a guess that such a choice is characteristic of you, Gobernador.”

  Armijo laughed, and the crowd joined in.

  Sumner quickly distributed the pesos to several kids in peasant clothes. They got excited.

  “This is an easy game, Don Manuel, and money comes to you as sunshine falls on the grasses of the field. Another game—a hundred pesos this time.”

  Armijo plunked down the stacks of coins.

  Sam and Tomás grinned at each other. A hundred pesos was about three week’s wages for a laborer.