Your loving son,
Barnaby
Monterey, Alta California, Mexico,
October 30, 1832
Skye dipped the nib into an inkwell and addressed an envelope and handed the letter and envelope to Baromillo.
“If you can read English, please read this, sir, so that you might know the kindness you are doing me by letting me send this letter.”
The fur trader did, and quietly folded the letter, inserted it, and sealed it with candle wax.
“Now you must leave Méjico,” he said.
Skye clambered aboard his unruly horse, which humped and threatened to pitch him off, while Victoria mounted hers and adjusted her voluminous skirts. Then he heeled the sullen horse, which refused at first to go, but No Name intervened, nipping at fetlocks until eventually the train moved, two green horses and two half-wild mules, along the shore of the bay, never far from chaos.
Thus ended a dream. He would never fulfill his desire to live as a free Englishman without stain upon his honor. Nor reunite with his beloved family. He saw no future. His spirits did not lift.
thirty–four
Victoria was too busy wrestling with her rebel horse and the balky mules to notice the glory of the Monterey coast. So was Skye.
Her mare wouldn’t turn unless she yanked hard on a rein. It stopped repeatedly, tried to run off, kicked at the mules trailing her, bit at her shoes, waited for the chance to buck her into the ocean, and refused to trot or run. If her horse was bad, the mules on the jerkline were worse. The one carrying the packsaddle, from which their few possessions hung, would stop dead every few yards, jolting her procession to a halt. The other mule occasionally ran forward, threatening to break free. Only the dog, nipping at fetlocks and stifles, managed to keep the horses moving.
Skye, ahead of her, was having his own troubles with a horse that would trot a few yards and stop, try to break for Monterey, pitched on the slightest excuse, and shied at every shadow or bird or for no reason at all.
They came at last to a willow grove, and Skye dismounted.
“Hold this rein while I whittle a couple of switches,” he said.
He extracted his Green River knife from its belt sheath and began whittling two stout willow switches. He handed her one and kept the other.
“You lead with the mules. I’m going to walk behind your horse, leading mine,” he said. If your horse or the mules cause any more grief, they’ll answer for it.”
“Sonofabitch,” she said. She had heard the trappers use that expression many times, and found it highly satisfying and useful and a valuable addition to the English tongue, especially when dealing with horses. She had the notion that it was vaguely prohibited by some of the white chiefs and that made it all the better.
She attempted to start her mare, without effect until the sharp smack of the switch jolted the mare into a trot. Resounding cracks of the switch behind her let her know the mules were receiving the same discipline, and so the procession north began again, this time with more success. Skye, walking beside her mare or the mules, did not spare the switch, and the three beasts of burden settled into grudging compliance.
Thus they actually made some time that afternoon. Skye eventually mounted and employed the willow on the croup of his own saddler, even when the result was a fit of bucking and rebellion.
The yellow dog bore down, and any foolery by any mule was met with a quick nip. Somehow, No Name evaded the wild kicking that always resulted when he vectored toward the rebel. Victoria marveled. The dog was as good as another herder, maybe better, and the Skyes began to pick up some speed. She squinted at Skye’s spirit-dog and thanked the mascot for his great kindness.
Now at last she began to notice the golden panorama before her. At a point well north of Monterey the trail left the bay and headed inland. Skye took it. Trails always led somewhere, and this probably would take them to Yerba Buena. Soon the green ocean vanished and they rode between golden, autumnal hills covered with waxy-leaved green shrubs and junipers.
She had marveled at Monterey. These Mexicans had built their lodges of earth bricks, daubed them white, and covered them with bright red tiles, cleverly designed to drain off the rain. At every hand she discovered marvels: carriages with wheels on them, drawn by burros or mules. Handsome horses, caparisoned with carefully tooled saddles. Women who wore perfumes, amazing scents that invoked envy in her. Great trading buildings heaped with good things: barrels of wine, sacks of grain, shelves of iron-work, and everywhere leather goods. They made leather do for everything, from ropes to vests and riding pants.
But the women fascinated her most. They were honey-fleshed, not as dark as she was, not as fair as Skye, but warm-colored, with glowing eyes and swift, sweet smiles. And they wore mountains of clothing, one skirt over another, as if they did not wish to show the contours of their bodies from waist down. They were mad for jewelry, too, and wore copper and silver and sometimes even gold, or polished stones, and ribbons in their hair, and soft slippers rather like moccasins.
She thirsted to learn everything there was to know about this tribe called Mexicans, and she knew that at the campfires on the trail, she would think up questions to ask him. He seemed to know all about them and she marveled that he knew so much, or could walk into a trading place and come to an agreement with the fat brown clerks without even understanding their tongue. She marveled at prices. How did anyone know the price of anything? Why were some things so cheap and others so costly? Who set these prices and why?
Skye scanned the heavens, constantly alert for rain. They had little to protect their food and bolts of trade cloth except the ponchos, and that worried him.
“If it’s clouding up, look for shelter, Victoria. Anything. Those burlap sacks aren’t much use in bad weather.”
She marveled at the sacks, having never seen one, hoped she might receive them all from Skye some day.
That evening they camped in a peaceful notch in the hills, watered by a clear, sweet spring that wrought a comet’s tail of green vegetation down a gentle grade. The place showed signs of frequent use, and she had to travel a way to find deadwood for their cookfire, but she didn’t mind. She liked this Mexico place, and its peace, and the sweetness of the air, and the mildness of the climate.
Skye unloaded the surly horses, put them on improvised pickets where the golden grasses grew thick, and sat down. She studied him closely and knew the sadness had not left him. For many moons he had thought of nothing more than sailing across the big waters to his home and his father and sisters and family. Of repairing the wrong and winning a good name. All this had possessed him, inspired him, driven him from the mountains to Oregon, and then down to this place called Mexico. And now it was gone, destroyed in a few hours by a chance encounter with the Royal Navy, the very ones who had stolen his liberty from him in the first place.
Now he looked weary, and she saw something else in his weathered face: a great sadness. She did not know whether she could comfort him. What could some woman of the People do to console this man, whose family had been ripped from him forever?
What was she to him? Was she still his beloved woman?
After they had eaten some beans she had boiled, and some hard biscuits he had purchased, she knelt beside him while he smoked a pipe of precious tobacco, actually part of the trade goods he had purchased to succor them along the way. He drew deeply and let the fragrant smoke eddy out of his lungs, even as he stared at things invisible to her. He handed her the pipe and she sucked deeply, enjoying the smoke in her throat.
“Skye,” she said. “Would you talk?”
He didn’t reply at first. “I am a man without a country,” he said. “And without a future or a past.”
“Without a future?” She was hurt.
“I had always, in the back of my mind, thought of returning to my home; England, some day. I’ve always wanted to receive my good name back; to be honored among my people. Even if I chose not to stay there, but make my home here with yo
u, I wanted to clear that up. Now I can’t. I can never go home, never make the name of Barnaby Skye an honorable one in England.
“A man wants a good name. A man wants to be honored by his own people.”
“But you have a good name, Skye. You have a good name among my people, and among the Yankees. You even have a good name with Hudson’s Bay, or at least the big man, McLoughlin.”
He sighed. “Yes, and that is good. But my heart cries for a good name among my people.”
“Ah, it is truly so. I understand this thing. I would not wish to have a bad name among my people. My heart would feel bad even if I had a bad name among your people. This I understand. When you have a bad name, there is no future.”
He took the pipe from her and drew long, and exhaled slowly. The smoke was good. The smoke was making him :alm, and maybe taking his suffering away. Tobacco was a good thing and the messenger of peace among the tribes.
“You have a very small country,” she said. “Your country is me and this dog that lies beside us. We are your country for as long as you will have us.”
He smiled and handed the pipe back to her. “That is a very good country,” he said.
But there was something in his tone that troubled her and she fathomed what lay behind his words. He yearned for the things she simply didn’t understand. He sometimes spoke of books. She had scarcely seen a book, and they were great mysteries to her. How could anyone get something from all those iny black marks on a thin sheet of paper? He spoke of art and politics and ideas and philosophy and the sciences and applied arts, and she knew she was like a child and knew nothing of these things. What she fathomed, at bottom, was that her life was too small for him, and that he would always be a little sad, even when he was closest to her and they seemed almost happy. She would always give him what she could, and it would never be enough.
thirty–five
The next dawn Skye tried out the old flintlock. He rested the barrel on a boulder, sighted on a knot, and squeezed. The flint snapped sparks into the pan, ignited the charge, and the patched ball whumped the tree trunk, but about two inches lower and to the right of where he had sighted. He tried again, with almost the same result, and knew he must compensate.
The night had been mild, the California slopes peaceful and empty. He saw little evidence of passage along the trail, and concluded that this province of Mexico was lightly inhabited; a sunny wilderness wanting only water to make it a paradise.
He and Victoria had worse trouble with the green horses and mules that morning than the previous; it was as if the beasts had learned nothing from yesterday’s discipline. He saddled his balky mount, which reared back and snapped its halter rope and dodged him. His temper heated until No Name herded the horse toward Skye with snapping jaws. Victoria’s mount accepted a saddle but threatened to buck. The yawning packmule humped when the packsaddle fell over its back, and lowered its head, ready to buck the burden off. Skye sighed and cut fresh switches from a live oak, and handed one to Victoria.
After some mighty cursing and lashing, they got their unruly transportation moving. The dog helped, nipping at the heels of the stubborn mules. The saddling had cost them an extra hour and slowed their start. But by the time the sun was pouring merry warmth upon the brown slopes, and the hawks were circling the blue sky, the Englishman and his Crow bride were making headway, ever northward, through a land too sweet to permit gloomy thoughts.
This day, at least, the rebel animals settled faster into a routine than the previous day. Skye didn’t mind. Where else could he acquire four-footed beasts of burden for a few shillings? Any horse or mule that had received the benefit of the great equestrian skills of the Californios would have cost fifty times as much.
And so they passed a magnificent November day, pushing ever northward, inland from the coast but never far from a salty sea breeze. The wound up and down great golden hills, and even crossed low coastal mountains, seeing no one but enjoying the abundance of life at every hand: deer, fox, an occasional stray longhorn bearing an elaborate Mexican brand that had been burned into a thigh or shoulder; and always the crows and gulls and songbirds wheeling in flocks as they rode by.
For two days they traveled north, making better time as the livestock settled down. The dog trotted ahead, an outrider alert to danger, and Skye was glad to have him along. The trail crossed few rivers, but offered many springs that emptied down a cleft or rose in a slough. The aching emptiness of this northern Mexican province astonished Skye.
Then, while nooning at a sweet spring purling from a gray cliff, No Name growled quietly and they found themselves in company. Several beaming Mexicans on fancy ponies, dressed in charro clothing, white-stitched black pantalones, soft leather boots, splendid embroidered waistcoats, and extravagant high-peaked hats with broad brims, drew up. Among them was a girl dressed entirely differently, in a plain skirt wide enough to permit her to sit astride her horse, and a well-filled but begrimed white blouse.
What struck Skye at once was the weaponry carried by these seven jolly Mexicans: dragoon pistols on each man; rifles in scabbards dangling from each saddle; a sheathed sword on several.
“Hola! Hola!” said one, smiling broadly. This one was barely five feet high and almost as wide, but somehow looked much larger.
“Jesús Santamaría,” he said, driving a thumb into his own chest. Then he rattled on in Spanish, and Skye comprehended not one word. “El Grande Santamaría,” he concluded, “Santamaría gordo, Santamaría borracho, Santamaría magnifico.”
The others dismounted from their groomed steeds and surveyed Skye’s animals or washed their faces in the rivulet flowing from the spring. All except the girl. But Santamaría eventually gestured to her, and she silently slid off her horse and walked around a bend and out of sight.
Skye waited warily. Victoria stood, uncertainly, but neither spoke. He thought this might be trouble, but probably was not. Men bearing so many arms might be up to no good, but perhaps this was dangerous country. Skye realized he hadn’t been very watchful. So tranquil was this province that he had scarcely kept up his guard.
The visitors seemed to be waiting for something and it was only when the girl reappeared and Santamaría began jabbering, in harsh staccato, that Skye began to fathom what this visit was about. Smoothly, Santamaría pulled his big pistol from its leather nest, and instantly the other six hombres did also, and Skye found himself peering into the huge black bores of seven cannons, the flintlocks cocked back and ready.
Santamaría was obviously shouting directions, but Skye couldn’t fathom a word.
“He says put up your hands,” the girl said in flawless American English.
Skye did, slowly, seeing his imminent death. Victoria did also.
The weary girl slowly translated Santamaría’s next outburst.
“He says he is the great Santamaría, unsurpassed in all of Mexico for robbery, terror, murder, torture, crucifixion, and rape of women, young and old, virgins and whores. He says he is a legend, the scourge of all California, the only man spoken of only in whispers. Men die of fear, of heart failure, when he approaches, and he wants you to know that.”
She listened to another outburst, while the fat bandit minced back and forth.
“He says you are being robbed and maltreated by the king of all bandits under the heavens and on earth and upon the seas and under the ground. No pirate has half the reputation as Jesus Jose Santamaría for murder and torture. That the name of Santamaría will live forever, and be whispered over graves, and put down in history books by those who can write.”
Santamaría pointed a finger at Skye and shouted endlessly.
“He says he has killed forty-three men, sixty-one women, eighty children, countless animals, and seventeen priests, but you are a foreigner and wouldn’t know these things, so he will have to demonstrate his great prowess to you so that forever more you will know that Santamaría robbed and pillaged you and left you for dead.”
That was the first ray of
hope. Skye believed until then that he and Victoria would die. Not that being left for dead was much to hope for.
Skye addressed the girl: “Ask him how he came to be a great bandit.”
Santamaría listened to her, and smiled, baring gold teeth, and began that staccato again.
“He says that he was the son of a rich man, and got bored because everything came so easily to him. Beautiful senoritas waiting in his bed, fast-blooded horses, heaps of gold, cattle too numerous to count, everything. He lacked for nothing. He got fat from good eating. He says he is a bandit and outlaw because he has everything and is bored, which is far more wicked than being a bandit because he is poor or unhappy or unjustly treated. The only thing that counts is fame. He wants to be the greatest of everything: have more women than any other man in Mexico, more money, but reputation is all that matters. He says he wants to live forever.”
“Who are you, miss?”
She looked hesitantly at him.
“I am his woman.”
She explained that to Santamaría, who retorted at length.
“He says I should correct that; he has had a thousand women, and he will pitch me to the wolves … soon.”
She looked frightened.
Skye said, “Tell Santamaría the great bandit that I will have a shooting contest with him. Rifles, pistols, anything. And if I win, we go free, and we take you with us.”
Hesitantly she translated, only to meet with wild laughter.
“He says you are loco, crazy. He will not give you a fair contest. He is even now thinking of ways to torment you.”
“Ask him for a duel. Any weapon of his choice at ten paces.”
Apparently he understood without translating, because he laughed at length, and then fired his pistola at Skye’s feet. The ball plowed dirt inches from his boot, just missing the dog. The bandit casually sheathed that weapon and plucked out his second as acrid smoke drifted past Skye.
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