Scent of Tears

by M. Juan Knecht

  Chapter Fourteen

  The wagon pulled into camp the next afternoon, loaded with supplies. Don Topo must have missed his daughter because he had sent new coats, scarves, blankets and gloves. Stacked on top of the clothing was every type of food that would travel a long distance. It was getting cold enough on the trail, that his generosity was deeply appreciated. He had also sent Gotch-Eyed Juan back with the wagon.

  Juan, close-mouthed as always, didn’t say why he left Monterey. It would stand to reason that the more time passed following the killings, the more people would forget. Juan would be on hand to protect Lucinda, which was doubtlessly a consideration for Topo. I was glad to see the gunman return. We were going into unknown territory and Juan’s glowering presence alone might deter trouble.

  I started sleeping in the back of the wagon on top of some the new blankets Topo had sent. The wagon bed was even and better for my back than laying on the ground. Every night I dozed off, watching the small kerosene light glowing from inside Lucinda’s tent. I avoided talking to her, but I couldn’t help watching her. For her part, she didn’t argue with me or offer suggestions about where to steer the cattle more often than twice a day.

  The next morning, I woke up and found Lucinda had again caught the calf she had used to bait the cattle into crossing the bridge. She tied its legs together. With Juan’s help, they put it in the wagon and drove away. The mother cow followed the calf’s bawling from a distance, but soon came back to the herd. Lucinda hadn’t discussed her plans with me. I imagined she was going to a settlement we had passed along the way. I could have started with the herd without her, but decided to wait. She came back in the late morning with a pail of milk and sacks of grain for the horses, as well as some canned fruit. Lucinda had traded the calf for the victuals. It was a good trade because the horses would need the grain and the little calf never would have survived the drive. When she pulled up in the wagon, Lucinda announced that she was going to make a real dinner for the crew. To everyone’s astonishment and delight, she made a peach pie, fried potatoes, flatbread covered with jam and fresh coffee served with cream. It was wonderful food and the cold weather made it taste even better. At the end of the meal, the stoic, eternally quiet Castro brothers spontaneously started clapping. I joined in. After a moment, Gotch-Eyed Juan began slowly clapping as well. Lucinda blushed and then took a bow, her face beaming. Everyone was so full that I decided to let the cattle rest and the horses eat their grain. Subsequently, we lost a day.

  The next morning I woke up to the snap and pop of the fire. It was the first morning I had slept in since we started. Lucinda had fried some flatbread in grease left over from the night before. I had never smelled anything so wonderful in my life. I ate the bread and sat by the crackling fire, feeling fat, warm and content. Lucinda had wrapped some hot stones in a horse blanket and put them by my feet, so even my toes were comfortable. After a while, I shook the peaceful feeling off and saddled up.

  We made good time for the next ten days. I estimated we drove the cattle around three hundred and fifty miles by the time we reached Scottsburg, which was located at the northern end of California. I held the cattle up a mile out of town and went into town in the wagon. I asked Lucinda to stay with the herd. I might as well have been talking to a stump.

  There was a low-slung log building standing along-side the road underneath some tall pines. It was a small place with nothing fancy about it. The kerosene lanterns barely glowed through the cow intestine stretched over wooden frames that passed for windows. I tied the horse up at the hitching post, helped Lucinda down and went inside. Two miners were sitting at one of the tables. A fat man with a greasy apron stood behind the plank bar. For a moment, I wished I had brought Juan. However, I guessed we could order dinner without getting our throats cut or robbed at gunpoint.

  As I pulled out the chair for Lucinda, a tall man dressed in buckskins came out of the shadows. He was at least six feet four inches tall and was thin as a rail. He sported a full head of white hair and a mouth full of chew.

  “You be the one in charge of the cowboy crew that’s bringing those four hundred heifers to Oregon?”

  I stood up and extended my hand, giving him my name and introducing Lucinda. After looking down his nose for a long moment, he shook my hand and introduced himself as William Dodge.

  “Do you have the funds I was promised?” he asked.

  “Back at the herd. Half now, half later.”

  “I’ve been hired to give advice. Here are two pieces of advice for you, and the little lady. First, don’t order the pork. The pork has been hanging on the hook a little too long so order the beef steak. The second piece of advice is to hurry up and eat whatever you order, because we leave after dinner.”

  “Are you drunk?” Lucinda asked.

  The tall man regarded her. There weren’t many women in California and absolutely none who looked like Lucinda. Dodge appeared to be trying to absorb her beauty into his very core, like someone who is cold, trying to absorb the sun. After a moment he turned around and dragged a chair over to the table, sat down and turned to me.

  “You took your time getting here, you’re late. You were supposed to be here five days ago. Late in the mountains can be fatal. Now this Don Topo, who I have never met, offered me an extra hundred dollars if I can get these cattle through the mountains and down to the country he bought without losing more than ten head. I intend to do that if I can, but you are going to have to let me help you. By help you, I mean do what I advise.”

  The fat man with the greasy apron came over and said he had beef steak if we wanted to order some. He asked if we would like whiskey or wine. Lucinda asked for wine.

  “Don’t you think traveling in the dark might be dangerous?” I asked our erstwhile pathfinder.

  “Child, I’ll tell you what’s dangerous. Dangerous is having these cattle ball up in a snowstorm, lay down and freeze to death in their tracks. Dangerous is when one of your men dies twenty feet from the camp because it’s snowing so hard he can’t find the fire. Who is this Don Topo anyways?”

  “I don’t care for your tone,” Lucinda said.

  Dodge seemed to think any comment made by Lucinda was a ticket to stare at her for a minute or two, which he did. He then turned to me.

  “Don Topo understands how dangerous a snowstorm can be. You don’t, or you wouldn’t have been five days late. There is a meadow about twenty miles up the road with some feed on it. We let the cattle eat for a day and get full. After that there ain’t nothing but swift streams, granite rocks and pine trees for thirty-five miles until we get through the passes. If we don’t get snowed on, that’s three days your cattle will go without feed. If we do get snowed on, it will take five days and that’s when they start laying down and dying. Now, either you finish your meal and we mount up, or you can go at your own pace without me.”

  “Is there water along our route?” I asked.

  “Up here there is always enough water to drown in,” Dodge replied and stood up from the table.

  We finished our meal and went back to the herd, Lucinda cursing under her breath the whole way. I got the hands up and we drove the cattle through the moonlit night, getting to the meadow at ten the next morning. There wasn’t much feed but it was a big meadow. After we set up camp, we split the watch and everybody who wasn’t holding the heifers went to sleep.

  An hour before dawn, Dodge shook me awake.

  “Get your crew up and let’s get on the trail,” he said in a less than charming voice.

  I got up and almost ran into Lucinda as she was coming out of the tent. She neglected to say good morning, went to the fire and started the coffee. The other members of the crew awoke and went about gathering and saddling the horses without comment.

  Overnight, the weather had turned colder. The feed in the meadow seemed to have done the heifers good because they dropped their heads and walked out without a problem. We started into the mountains in silence with nary a whoop or holler. Dodge an
d I rode ahead to make sure the cattle didn’t turn up the wrong canyon. The herd was trail broke enough that they strung out and followed the leaders without incident. When we stopped for the evening, there was no feed for the cattle but plenty of water from the mountain streams. Cattle, like people, can go longer without food than they can without water. I had no idea how many miles we traveled. The country had become steep enough so that Dodge said we would have to leave the wagon. We had run out of grease for the axel and one of the wheels was about to fall off anyway. A wagon was worth a good deal of money and I wished I had sold it to some settlers before we got into the mountains. We carried enough grain in the wagon to give the horses a good ration that night. After that, we would put everything on pack horses.

  The following morning, the cattle were drained of energy. Several head refused to get up. The vaqueros had to get off their horses and twist the heifer’s tails until they scrambled to their feet. Traveling over sharp rocks without any grazing was not a good combination and even the strong heifers didn’t want to take the trail. After much yelling and whooping, the Castro boys got them started up the trail. It was slow going and hard work for the horses, the cattle and the vaqueros. The Castro brothers were tough, but had never been in the mountains or suffered from the mountain cold. The fifteen year old boy who aspired to be a reins-man was standing, looking at the fire, too cold to move. I gently moved him until he started to walk on his own.

  That night the wind howled and the temperature dropped. We were camped near a creek and the roar of the water was nearly as loud as the wind coming down through the canyons.

  The huge fire we built didn’t seem to help with the cold. I could feel the ice form on my sparse beard. The men had taken to wearing their blankets over their coats and no one removed their gloves, even to eat. While I was pitching the tent, Lucinda sidled up next to me and grabbed my arm.

  “Sleep in the tent tonight, Charlie,” she said in a low voice. Her lips looked blue.

  “Are we husband and wife again?” I asked.

  “It’s so cold. I would be warmer if you slept with me,” she said.

  “I had better stay out here where I can hear what’s going on with the cattle,” I said.

  “Where are the cattle going to go? Many of them won’t stand up now,” she replied.

  “It isn’t good if I sleep in the tent and everybody else sleeps outside,” I said.

  “You’re the boss, Charlie. You sleep where you want,” she said.

  “Sleeping in the tent with Monterey’s most beautiful woman isn’t exactly leading by example.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head.

  “This is no time to be impertinent. I am so cold it hurts.”

  “Can I share something with you?” I asked.

  She stayed silent, glaring at me in the fading light.

  “I am truly worried.”

  Through her shivers, Lucinda spit out, “Is there anything that doesn’t make you truly worried?”

  I glanced down at her. We were so frozen we could barely form our words.

  “Yesterday I didn’t feel my feet until noon. Tomorrow morning the horses will start a long day with no grass and no grain in their bellies. The cattle are so sore footed they may lay down and not get up. There is no way it could be any colder. Dodge says the weather is changing. He smells a storm and I can see that if we get a deep snow up here we could lose all the cattle. We could lose the crew and our horses. Even if we don’t all die, I don’t want to go back to Monterey to tell Don Topo his cattle are dead. Tomorrow will be the big push to get down off the mountain.”

  “What does this have to do with where you sleep?”

  “If I want to call on the last bit of strength that the Castro brothers and Juan possess, then I need to sleep on the ground just like they are, and not take comfort in a tent with you.”

  “You’re doing this because I hurt your feelings.” Lucinda pouted.

  “Of course, it is really all about you. The part about needing everybody to give it their all was something I made up. I was also fooling about a snowstorm killing us and the cattle,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.

  Lucinda looked at me before putting her gloved hand on my chest.

  “If we die tomorrow, wouldn’t you feel better about it if you had spent your last night with me?”

  I reached out and brought her body close to my chest, kissed her forehead, then turned away.

  “Charlie,” she said.

  I turned around to face her. When Lucinda wasn’t angry or involved in doing something dangerous, she looked almost delicate. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “You won’t let us die.”

  I smiled at her through chattering teeth.

  “No, Lucinda. I won’t let us die.”

  “Even if it snows?”

  “Even if it snows.”

  Scent of Tears