by Win
He stood up and said to Coy, “Empty. Not a soul here.”
He grinned. Just what he hoped for. Now, as the cold months approached, the Indians would be setting up their winter camps. Trappers of these southern Rocky Mountains would be finishing their fall hunts and heading for Taos. He could be alone. True, he had ridden south for nearly a month without speaking to another human being, Coy’s comments being cryptic. Yet he hoped for more of the same. Since he first came to these springs six years ago, he’d yearned to spend time here with no one but Coy. The place stood big in his heart.
In fact, he told himself with an inward chuckle, maybe he would stay forever. This country, the headwaters of the South Platte River and the headwaters of the Arkansas, what the mountain men called South Park, was the finest land he knew in all the mountains. For some reason the big fur companies didn’t bring their brigades here, but left it to the free trappers like Sam.
South Park was lofty. It spurted clear, cold creeks down every gully, and beaver were plenty. Buffalo, elk, deer—game was as abundant as corn in a planted field. There was grass enough to feed even the vast horse herds of California, and good timber. In summer the high country would keep you cool. In winter, if you didn’t want to go to Taos, you could camp next to one of a hundred hot springs. The steam keep you warm and the grass bare. If you went crazy, you could take a bath any time.
He set up camp in a good spot, filled his belly with fizzy water, gathered firewood, and set out to make himself at home for a week or more. His plan was to shoot a fat buffalo cow tomorrow morning—the beasts dotted the hills only three or four miles down the creek. Then he would cut the meat into strips and spread it out on racks. The drying would need four or five days, probably. And what would he do while the meat turned to jerky? Lounge and drink mineral water and do, or not do, exactly what I feel like.
On the second day of the drying he took a notion to build a sweat lodge. He cut willows along the creek, tied them into an upside down bowl, and covered them with his blankets. Besides housing some sweats, the lodge would also come in handy if it snowed.
He sweated most of the afternoon. It wasn’t that he wanted to ask the powers for anything special. He just wanted to perform the ritual, to pray and chant. He supposed Catholics went to mass for no particular reason sometimes. Just before the early sunset he finished the last round, dipped himself in the freezing creek, hurried back to the fire, and warmed himself with rare steak cut from buffalo back strap.
That evening he played the tin whistle for hours.
The next day he spent part of the morning walking with Coy, and part of it looking into his kaleidoscope. It crossed his mind idly to wonder about the answer to the old Mexican gentleman’s riddle—what was the meaning of life?—but he didn’t feel like chasing after any answers now.
That afternoon he spent in the sweat lodge again, praying and singing. In the evening he gorged himself and then played music.
And so went every day. He ate, he tended to the drying meat, he walked, he sweated, he smoked his pipe, he ate, and he played music. Having the pipe felt damn good.
About the fifth day he asked himself, What am I doing?
He answered, Not thinking. For some reason that seemed funny.
On the sixth day the meat was dry enough, but he decided to let it stay on the racks. He was in no hurry.
In the sweat lodge that afternoon, when he was smoking his pipe between rounds of steaming, he had one sudden, thunderous feeling: He ached for Tomás. Before he could correct himself—wasn’t he headed to Taos specifically to find Tomás?—he went on to the next feeling: He had a huge pang for Esperanza. And for Meadowlark. Or was it Paloma?
Words came into his mind: I want a family. That’s the realization he was fishing for.
I want a real family.
He started to shiver. Family—children of mixed blood—every kind of trouble.
He stopped the shiver, told himself to stop stirring words through his head, closed the lodge door, poured water on the fiery rocks, and asked the powers of the east, south, west, and north for a family.
53
The next morning Hannibal MacKye rode into camp with a big grin. “Thought I might find you here.”
He’d ridden up from Taos for two weeks. They’d done this before, spend some days here at Boiling Fountain Creek before heading down to New Mexico.
This time it was different. Sam shook his shoulders to throw off his discomfort.
Hannibal staked his horse and walked straight to the meat rack. “It’s ready,” he said, and helped himself.
Sam filled a second cup with coffee for Hannibal.
“I brought something,” said Hannibal, and spooned sugar into both cups. Sam had hardly tasted sugar since rendezvous.
He shook his shoulders again, and the bad feeling still didn’t go anywhere. “What’s the news about Paloma?”
“I left her at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.”
So she’d made it.
“The holy sisters,” Hannibal went on, “said they’d take care of her from there.” He felt silent for a moment. “She was near at the end of her time.”
Sam jumped up and walked away. I knew it, he said to himself. Why am I upset? I knew.
He and Coy walked up the creek for half a mile or so and came back. Hannibal was still munching on jerked meat.
“Thank you,” said Sam.
“She was my friend,” said Hannibal.
They laid around idly the entire day. Sam thought he could turn into the best idler in the Rocky Mountains
Finally he said, “Has Tomás turned up in Taos yet?”
“No.”
“Pegleg Smith?”
“No.” Then Sam had to tell Hannibal about Lupe and Rosalita getting abducted, and himself and Tomás trying to find them, and at last getting word that Pegleg had them.
Hannibal twisted his lips. “What a world,” he said, “where your friends take your sisters to be slaves.”
Other than that, they scarcely talked. There was no need.
The last thing before they fell asleep, Hannibal said, “Sounds like we better cut this short and get back to Taos.”
Sam thought about how far his friend had ridden. He consulted his own mood. “Two more days here,” he said.
54
“You seem different.”
The cold wind had died down, and the sun had warmed the day up half way. The motion of Paladin felt good. Sam thought and said, “I relaxed. Spent a week not thinking.”
“You mean not remembering?”
So much to remember. Right now especially Lupe and Rosalita, angry Tomás, and even Peanut Head, the reason for his mutilated ear. “Yeah, not remembering,” he said. “Also not picking things apart in my head.”
“That’ll help.”
Coy sprinted ahead, and a prairie dog ducked down a hole.
“And not fretting.”
Hannibal raised an eyebrow at him.
“The kids.”
Hannibal knew about the fight, and Tomás’s disappearance.
“For a long time the past kept kicking my door in. My mind was in the dregs with Meadowlark. Or recently with Paloma. Sometimes with Jedediah.” He mused and moved with the horse. “There’s a lot of past, but it’s not pounding on my door right now.”
They rode.
Sam thought about asking and then couldn’t believe, over eleven years, he’d never asked. “You ever have a long-time woman? Kids?”
“Women, only in passing. Kids, not that I know of.”
“Because they’d be mixed-blood?”
“Actually, I think the world needs all the mixed-bloods it can get.”
“Mulattoes aren’t accepted back in the States. I doubt French-Canadians are in Montreal.”
“Hell, we’ll just outbreed the pure-bloods. You’re doing your part.”
Sam squeezed out a chuckle, but it wasn’t real. “I’m worried about the kids. You know what Milton Sublette told me
at rendezvous?”
Sam looked across at the northern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the west. More than two hundred miles to Taos.
“The Methodists are working up to send missionaries to Oregon next summer. Come out with the supply train to rendezvous, travel on from there.”
He watched the hilltops for a moment. “Ten years ago I swore to the Crows that white people would never come here. Now they’re on the way. Not that I believe they’ll stop in these mountains, nor in the deserts. They’ll go on to land they can plow. But white folks are going to traipse across this country like ants on a mission. Then they’ll fill Oregon up.”
“Also California,” said Hannibal. “The Californios expect it. Half of them would rather be part of the States than Mexico right now. They’re sick of el presidente in Mexico City.”
Sam nodded. He knew. “So what about Esperanza, and Tomás, and Azul, and Rojo? And Jim Bridger’s kids, and Joe Meek’s, and all of them? We’ve left a trail of half breeds wide and long as the Missouri river. What will the missionaries say when they see them? What will the housewives say?”
They rode.
“They’ll treat them like dirt,” said Sam, “just like they do back in the States.”
Hannibal said nothing for a long while. Then, “A man’s happiness is in his own heart.”
They rode.
Finally, Sam said, “Not all of us are strong as you, Hannibal.” Clop-clop, clop-clop. “I’m not myself.”
This turned Hannibal’s head.
Sam plunged onward. “I feel like an in-betweener. I’m not white, haven’t been for a long time. I’m not comfortable in boots, nor pants. I don’t see things their way. Don’t like whatever big whoopteedoo they’ve got going back there—factories, jobs, products, more factories, more jobs, more products. It puffs out money like a steam engine, but it burns up people.”
Clop-clop, clop-clop.
“I don’t believe in their God. The four winds, Father Sky, and Mother Earth make a lot more sense to me than those stories about Jehovah and sin and hell to come.”
Sam whistled, and Coy came trotting back.
“I’d rather be a Crow, which I can’t be either.” Now he was surprised at the bitterness in his own voice.
Clop-clop, clop-clop.
“The kids are the same, all our children, all in-betweeners, all heading to be despised and scorned.”
They rode so long Sam wondered if Hannibal had been listening.
Suddenly Sam started singing, and making up some of the words:
This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through
I keep on searching everywhere, but that just makes me blue
The housewives shoo me off, and then they slam the door
And I don’t feel at home in their world anymore.
They rode, looking at the empty hills. Finally Hannibal said, “If you don’t have a home, you have to make one.”
Sam thought on that.
Hannibal said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken up about following your wild hair.”
They both grinned. “No,” said Sam, “I won’t ever regret that.”
“It’s lonely,” said Hannibal. “The world is lonely. I’m lonely. You know how I got started wandering?”
Sam looked at his friend a long moment. “No.”
“When I got my growth, I wanted to make my way in the world. Didn’t have a dime to my name, but I could read, even read Plato in Greek and Caesar in Latin. Even if I was half Delaware, I was strong and willing.
“I went to work for John Bill Pickett’s circus in Philadelphia, took care of the horses, learned to do the trick riding on them, even learned to train them in it. I was good, I could have been a star, but Pickett wouldn’t let me. A white audience didn’t want to make a hero out of any Injun, he said.”
Hannibal looked inward for a while, or into the past.
“So I decided just to wander. You know the story of the Wandering Jew?”
“No.”
“When the Christ was carrying his cross to Calgary, a porter mocked him and struck him. Fellow’s name was Buttadeo, isn’t that rich? Butt-a-deo, God’s ass. Anyway, Jesus put a kind of curse on him. ‘Wait until my return,’ he said.”
Hannibal gave a strange smile. “Somehow the Second Coming has been laggard in getting here, and it’s not in sight yet. Buttadeo, he did what he could—became a Christian, got himself baptized. But the curse stuck. He grew to be a hundred years old and then, like a snake, he shed his skin, reverted to the age of thirty, and started over again.
“And he wandered. He was seen in Armenia. In Poland. In Moscow, Athens, Rome, Paris, even London—everywhere people saw the Wandering Jew, plodding on. Wherever he went, he would trade the story of his life for a little food and a place to sleep for the night. In each place people doubted him, and then tested him, and always found him to be the genuine article.
“Well, I figured he got to understand life better than anyone ever did, and that seemed good. So I set off wandering, never knowing where I would go next. But I didn’t trade the story of my life—instead I traded a little thread, an awl, a knife, and on like that. It worked out fine.”
Amusement jumped between the eyes of the friends.
“I haven’t gotten to a hundred yet, so I can’t say I’ll be able to shed my skin and start over. And I don’t know that I understand life. But I have learned to enjoy it day by day.”
“You ever going to stop wandering?” asked Sam.
“Maybe. I’ve thought about one place.”
Sam waited.
“California.”
Sam waited.
“When Europeans came to America,” Hannibal said, “they called it the New World. Part of the deal, I think, was leaving the Old World behind, and all its miseries. The church and the nobility, between them, did a hell of a job of keeping ordinary men and women down. Lots of people who came to America, I believe, saw themselves as Adams and Eve in a new Garden of Eden. A chance to start over and do things right.”
Sam grunted agreement.
“In some ways it hasn’t work out. People brought too many old habits with them and made the same old mistakes. But when I ride around California, it seems different. It started out ruled by the Spanish, but it’s not anymore. At first the padres worked hard at making the Indians Catholics, but the missions are all closing.”
“I heard that.”
“No more saving Indians, or enslaving them.”
“A big step.”
“The Mexican government hardly even knows the province is up there. Spaniards are marrying Indians, creating a new race. Americans are starting to move in, which will make three bloodstreams in each person.”
Sam saw a far-away gleam in his friend’s eye. “There’s possibilities in California. Life is good. No winter, just summer and spring. If people want to farm, they can raise maybe three crops a year. And, I don’t know, there’s something in the air … It makes me think it could be a new world. It makes me dream ”
After a while, he added, “So if I stop wandering, I’ll settle there.”
Sam looked at him quizzically.
“That’s a big if.”
Sam thought, Make a home.
Camp high on the Cimarron River: Tonight they were at the foot of the pass that crossed the mountain to Taos. The next two days they would be high and cold. Right now Sam felt cold enough. The sun was far gone beyond the Sangre de Cristos. The blackness of sky and the rushing of the river made the night feel even more bitter than it was.
The fire crackled, and Sam put the coffee pot on.
“Two weeks with these same grounds,” he said.
“Better than nothing,” said Hannibal.
Sam would as soon drink the hot water straight, but he didn’t say so.
He handed Hannibal a couple of strips of jerked meat and tossed one to Coy. The coyote looked at it, sniffed it, and looked off across the plains. Out that direction was maybe a thousand miles
of prairie, and the Mississippi River. Sam said, “Maybe he thinks the food around here is lousy, and he’d do better out there hunting.”
Sam and Hannibal grinned and chewed. Neither of them would complain. They had pushed the horses down from Boiling Fountain Creek, doing no hunting, not even gathering wild onions or picking berries and rose hips—all they did from dawn to dusk, through the short days of early winter, was ride. They were half cold and half hungry. “I want some chile verde,” said Sam.
“Taos lightning,” said Hannibal.
“A room with walls and a ceiling.”
“A woman. I want a woman.”
Hannibal looked at Sam, but the white-haired man said nothing. He was thinking, I hope I feel like having a woman.
Then for some reason Sam thought of the kaleidoscope. He fished it out of his possible sack, pointed it at the flames, and gazed at a weird picture. “If hell has churches,” he said, “the stained glass windows look like this.”
He handed it to Hannibal, who eyed the devilish art.
Sam poured bitter coffee for both of them. “I never did figure out that riddle of the old Mexican gentleman’s. The meaning of life.”
“No ideas?”
“Nope.”
“I did worse than you.”
Over the rim of his cup Sam asked a question with his eyes.
“I went back to the old man and presented him with what I figured out. Something like this.” He handed the kaleidoscope back to Sam. “Every picture this thing makes is new, unique, and it will never be repeated. Like days. Every one brand, spanking new, beautiful in its particular way, and never to come again.”
“Well?”
”The old gentleman just shook his head, laughing kind of soft.”
Sam waited.
“So I gave him my second idea. There is no meaning. That’s the secret hidden in kaleidoscope. There is no, well, meaning to life. There’s just… the whatever is right in front of you.”
Hannibal poured his coffee back into the pot.
“Now the old man did laugh. I felt a little irked at that, so I said, ‘All right, you tell me what it is.’”
