Heaven Is a Long Way Off

by Win Blevins

  Stout slammed his spear into Sam’s wrist.

  The butcher knife went flying.

  Stout grinned in triumph.

  Sam grabbed his empty pistol and threw it at Stout’s head.

  Stout ducked and the pistol sailed by. Stout laughed.

  Yes, you bastard, I’m disarmed.

  Sam fingered his trick belt buckle. Coy barked furiously at Stout.

  Sam smiled. “Right. Hey,” he told Stout out loud in English, “look what I’m doing.” He jerked at the buckle, and his breechcloth dropped.

  Stout’s eyes darkened at the insult. He bounded forward. Coy launched himself at the warrior’s groin. Somehow Stout thrust the spear.

  Sam spun.

  The point nipped his ribs.

  When Sam came full circle, he crowded inside the spear point. His belt buckle had turned into a steel blade in his hand, and he drove it into Stout’s belly.

  He jerked it out, looked at the blood, picked up his breechcloth, and wiped the blade.

  Stout sat down hard and loose.

  Sam looked with satisfaction at his glassy eyes.

  Coy gave a last bark and snipped at Stout’s face.

  “Thanks, Gideon,” he said.

  His friend had smithed him a dagger with a belt buckle as a handle. Sam slid the blade back into his belt, deep, fastened the buckle, and put his breechcloth back on.

  He walked over and picked up his pistol. Since The Celt was lost, the pistol was essential. He looked around. The herd had run off toward the hills, and the Mojaves were chasing them. Thirty horses, he thought. A huge triumph for them.

  Where was Hannibal? Sam didn’t know. If he could, Hannibal would have led the herd into the river. Where was Paladin? With the herd. Injured.

  All right, no Mojave was close. A grove of cottonwoods marked the bank. Sam loped toward the water, Coy bounding alongside. He hit the top of the bank in stride and made a long, flat dive.

  The river was a turmoil. Waves slapped him in the face. They rolled him over. Suck holes grabbed at his legs.

  He flailed at the water with his arms, he kicked at it with his feet. He fought the goddamn water. He battered it. He punished it. The river laughed and tossed him up and caught him. It jerked him under and let him up.

  Sam whacked at the river with arms and legs.

  Long minutes later, minutes he couldn’t remember, a mewling woke him up. Coy, he realized. Consciousness picked at his brain.

  A hand touched him. He opened his eyes. Hannibal. They were on the far bank.

  “I’m checking your wounds.”

  He prodded at the gash in Sam’s hip and the slice along his ribs.

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “Where’s Paladin?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where’s Ellie?”

  “Dead. Let’s get up to the others.”

  “Dead!”

  Hannibal pulled Sam to his feet. “The ass cut Ellie’s throat. I cut his.”

  They stumbled upstream, splashing in the shallows, feet sinking into the sand bars. Pictures invaded Sam’s mind, images of the handsome stallion lying on the sand, neck pumping out blood. Then he thought of Paladin and wondered how her hindquarter was. His blood prickled.

  Around a couple of bends stood Captain Smith and eight other men. Diah was looking across the river with his field glass. The trappers looked at each other with the bright knowledge of mortality in their eyes.

  Diah lowered his field glass. Sam could hardly hear his words. “They’re all dead.” Sam looked across the river. Hundreds of Mojaves milled around. From this distance he could make out no one in particular. He pictured Red Shirt’s face, Francisco’s face, Spark’s. What in hell…

  “Why?” said Diah.

  No one answered. These Indians were friendly last autumn. Why?

  They looked at each other, mute and afraid.

  Now the captain’s voice of command came back. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Two

  THOUGH THEY’D LOST half their equipment, without horses they couldn’t carry even what was left. They stared bitterly at the gear. The captain put their food in his own possible sack, fifteen pounds of dried meat—that was all they had to eat. Then he filled his sack with trade goods for Indians, beads, ribbon, cloth, and tobacco. He grabbed several traps. His possible sack got heavy.

  He told the other men that they had to walk a dozen sleeps in blazing heat. Considering that, they should take whatever they wanted. “This was company property. Now it’s your property.”

  Sam looked at Diah’s sack and considered. Eleven men, fifteen pounds of meat, twelve sleeps (if they were lucky), that didn’t add up. And there was no game out there.

  Five men still had their rifles. Sam grabbed the single tomahawk and held it high. He knew how to throw one. My anger will make it a vicious weapon.

  He barely paid attention to what the others picked up. Knives seemed to go first, then traps, then bridles, in hopes of getting horseflesh. Last, they picked up more items for the Indians. These men had learned a hard practicality about that.

  When each man had the load he wanted to carry across the Mojave Desert, Jedediah said, “Scatter the rest across the sand. Tempt them.”

  They did. The thought of savages boiling over this equipment fevered the brain of every man. There was no point in asking how soon they would be here.

  “Drink your fill,” said Jedediah. “We have only one kettle to carry water with.”

  The men flopped onto the sand and sucked up all the river they could. Coy did the same. Sam refused to think of what it meant, starting across the Mojave with no water casks and only one kettle.

  They started walking west.

  “They know where we’re headed,” said Jedediah. “We have to get to that first spring.”

  The men chewed on that. They looked around at the barren country. Desert scrub, desert scrub, desert scrub, and no place to hide.

  Fragments of ugly reality spun through their heads. The screams of their dead friends. The flash of knife, the silhouette of arm-cocked spear. The mud made by blood in the dust. The thump of human bodies on the sand.

  They tramped. They waded through grief. They looked slyly toward their own deaths, which lay ahead.

  Only Coy kept his head perked up.

  After a few minutes Hannibal said, “You know why older women are better in bed than young ones?”

  Sam was stupefied.

  Hannibal went on, “Ben Franklin wrote this. I’m going to quote it.”

  “Hannibal!” complained Sam.

  “Go ahead, Mage,” said two or three voices.

  “‘In your amours you should prefer old women to young ones. This you call a paradox, and demand my reasons. They are these: One—because they have more knowledge of the world, and their minds are better stored with observations; their conversation is more improving, and more lastingly agreeable.’”

  “Conversation,” someone mimicked.

  “‘Two—because when women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over man, they supply the diminution of beauty by an augmentation of utility. They learn to do a thousand services, small and great, and are the most tender and useful of friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old woman who is not a good woman.’”

  “I’ve knowed some wasn’t good,” said Isaac Galbraith. He was a Herculean man with a strong Maine accent.

  “‘Three,’” Hannibal barged forward. “‘Because there is no hazard of children, which irregularly produced may be attended with much inconvenience.’”

  “Sacre bleu,” said Toussaint Marechal, “can you no speak straight out?”

  “‘Four,’” persisted Hannibal, “‘because through more experience they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an intrigue to prevent suspicion. The commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your reputation, and regard to theirs; if t
he affair should happen to be known, considerate people might be inclined to excuse an old woman, who would kindly take care of a young man, form his manners by her good counsels, and prevent his ruining his health and fortune among mercenary prostitutes.’”

  “Zis hivernant me,” said Joseph LaPoint, “I take whatever come.” Hivernant was Frenchy talk for an experienced wilderness hand. LaPoint was called Seph by everyone.

  “Godawmighty, Hannibal!” said Sam.

  “This is good,” the captain said softly to Sam.

  Sam shut up. He noticed, though, that Jedediah was keeping a very sharp eye out.

  “‘Five,’” said Hannibal, “‘because in every animal that walks upright, the deficiency of the fluids that fill the muscles appears first in the highest part. The face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the neck; then the breast and arms; the lower parts continuing to the last as plump as ever…’”

  “We’re turning around,” interrupted Jedediah.

  He wheeled and headed back to the river at a trot. Every man followed him close. “The Mojaves are coming,” Diah said quietly to Sam.

  They would have a better chance in the cover of trees along the river.

  WHEN THEY GOT to the river alive, they eyed each other as though sharing a secret joke. In a grove of cottonwoods they felled small trees, grumbling that they had to use knives, since Sam wielded the only tomahawk. They made a flimsy breastwork from these poles. Then, waiting, men began to lash their butcher knives to the ends of light poles, making lances.

  No need to speak about the situation. Only five of them had rifles. Sam and Hannibal had pistols, useful only at short range. Since they got their powder horns soaked swimming the river and there wasn’t time to dry it, the other men gave them powder. Three men had no weapons but the lances. The river protected the trappers’ backs, but the Indians could attack from three directions. They would probably outnumber the trappers fifty to one. More than one trapper pictured the Indians’ hands still dripping red with the blood of their comrades.

  Sam said to himself several times, “Make them pay.” That’s all the defenders could get for their lives.

  As he worked, he thought of other reasons to make them pay. The bastards had The Celt. They had Paladin. Probably Skinny would try to keep Paladin, but Red Shirt would claim her for himself, because of the wonderful tricks she could do, the routines Sam and the Mage had taught her. Sam grimaced. The chief wouldn’t know how to signal Paladin to perform, and wouldn’t understand why she didn’t.

  On the other hand, Paladin wouldn’t get the fun of doing the circus routines again.

  “Let me see those wounds,” Hannibal said.

  Sam turned his hip to his friend (this was the convenience of wearing just a breechcloth), then raised his shirt to show the ribs.

  Hannibal fingered both of them. “Tonight I’ll put poultices on them.”

  Sam grinned at him. Tonight—that’s optimistic.

  “What’s that blood on your belly?”

  “A Mojave’s.” Sam whipped out the belt-buckle knife and mock-pointed it at Hannibal. “Gideon made this for me, said it was thanks for amputating his leg.” The two friends held each other’s eyes a moment.

  Sam snapped the knife back into its belt buckle guise, and flashed it out again. “Easy to get out.”

  Hannibal inspected it. The blade was the sheathed part, fashioned in the double-edged style of a dagger and very sharp.

  “So you have two secret blades,” said Hannibal, fingering it. They each had a knife concealed as a hair ornament. “You ought to wash the blood off.”

  Sam thought about the stabbing, about Stout, and about his dead friends on the far bank. “No, I’ll keep it for a while.”

  Coy barked. Head to tail he pointed toward the river behind them.

  Five rifles trained on the brush in that direction.

  “Hey!”

  The voice came from the riverbank. Every man looked down his sights or held his lance in that direction.

  “Hey!”

  “That’s English!” said Hannibal.

  Thomas Virgin’s half-bald head peeped out of the bushes. It was still bleeding.

  Sam ran forward and supported the old man. His shiny head sported a lump nearly the size of a fist. The wound was still trickling blood. Sam remembered he’d been clubbed. A stone war club could do a lot of damage, often fatal damage.

  Virgin was soaked, and he’d lost everything. His britches were gone (he preferred those to a breechcloth), his shot pouch was gone, his belt, his knife, and his belt pouch were gone. He lost his knife and pistol. The old man was nothing but flesh, moccasins, and a torn cloth shirt.

  “I dropped ever’thing in the river, one by one,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t have made it otherwise,” said Hannibal. He and Sam helped Virgin up to the breastwork.

  How had the old man made it? Sam wondered. The sight of him lifted his spirits. But it wouldn’t for long.

  Coy sniffed Virgin like he was something alien.

  “Everyone keep watch,” said the captain.

  “The next voice won’t be English,” someone muttered.

  The men eyed each other surreptitiously.

  Five minutes ticked by. Ten. The men spent it by cutting brush and stuffing it into the breastwork. It wouldn’t do much, but…

  LaPoint said in a quavery voice, “Can we do it, Captain?”

  Marechal snickered.

  “Captain?” echoed someone else.

  Sam grimaced. The men wouldn’t ask if their blood wasn’t running chill.

  “We’ll drive them off,” said Jedediah.

  His voice was calm, firm. Sam was amazed. He and the captain looked at each other, and Sam saw that Diah knew better. Knew for sure.

  He and Diah had nearly died on the Missouri when the Rees fired down on them on an unprotected beach. Most of the men stayed on that beach forever. Diah and Sam and a few others escaped.

  They almost died together just three months ago, crossing the salt waste from the California mountains to the Salt Lake. Bashed by heat and weakened by thirst, they actually buried themselves in the sand. But they rose from those graves and walked.

  Sam said to himself, Every man’s luck runs out.

  Jedediah glassed an area south in the brush, then let the glass hang from the lanyard around his neck. Sam looked carefully and saw them even with the naked eye. Yes, the Indians were coming.

  “Rifles, spread out across the breastwork.”

  Galbraith, Marechal, Swift, and Turner placed themselves where they could shoot in three directions.

  “I’ll call the fire,” said Smith. “We’ll always keep two rifles in reserve. I’ll name two men, and those only fire.”

  The riflemen nodded. “Under no circumstances empty all rifles at once.”

  Coy stood stiff, facing south. He heard or smelled the enemy.

  Sam’s hands felt ridiculous without The Celt. Hannibal looked as edgy as he felt. Sam wished he and Hannibal had Swift’s and Turner’s rifles. Ike Galbraith was a great shot—he could knock the heads off blackbirds at twenty paces. Marechal was a good hunter. But Sam wasn’t sure of Swift and Turner. Goddammit! I’m the one to defend my own life!

  Indians showed themselves now, defiantly standing in the open and then ducking back.

  “Galbraith, Marechal, ready,” said Jedediah.

  The shooters trained their sights on whatever targets they could. It was a long shot, over a hundred paces, but there was no wind. Four Mojaves were visible.

  “Fire!”

  Two Mojaves dropped. A third grabbed himself, perhaps wounded, and started running away.

  A dozen Mojaves ran away. A score. A hundred.

  Several hundred Indians bolted from cover and streaked away from the trappers, scurrying around rocks, bounding up hillocks. Their hide loincloths flounced in the afternoon sun.

  “Rabbits!” called Hannibal.

  “Rabbits!” yelled the other men. “Rab
bits!”

  The trappers stood up and shook their fists in the air. They clapped each other on the back.

  “Sum bitch!” yelled one.

  “We done it!” yelled another.

  “Victoire!”

  “Zey are tinned cowards!” cried Marechal.

  Diah and Hannibal looked at each other, and everyone at them. They shrugged and started laughing.

  “Tinned?” said Hannibal, slapping his thighs.

  “Tinned cowards!” hollered Sam, shaking his fist.

  They all took up the cry. “Tinned cowards!” They stumbled around like they were drunk. They embraced each other.

  Everyone celebrated but poor Tom Virgin, who was unconscious.

  “All right!” said the captain loudly. “Get a drink from the river and get back here! This might not be over!”

  But it was. The trappers waited, alert, until nearly dark.

  Jedediah got Virgin awake and spoke soft words to him. Virgin struggled to his feet.

  “Let’s go,” said the captain.

  THEY MARCHED THROUGH the night hungry and thirsty.

  “Better than during the day,” said Sam.

  “Better than being dead,” said Hannibal.

  Sam kept an eye on Virgin. The wounded man weaved as he walked, but he managed to go slowly, steadily forward.

  The trail was an old one, worn by long years of trading with people of the seashore. The Mojaves wanted the shells of the sea, and the coastal peoples wanted Mojave melons, pumpkins, corn, squash, and beans. The captain and Sam had ridden the stretch three times last fall, the first being a false start. It wasn’t a hard trek, even in the dark.

  Sam knew, though, that the sands blew, and blew, and signs of the trail would be wiped away in some places, perhaps for miles. Parties steered by landmarks of hills and mountains, which were murky and deceptive at night.

  His spirits were low. As he tramped, he talked to himself.

  We’ve got no way to carry water, said the nervous part of himself, and added mockingly, one kettle.

  Gonna be parched all day, every day, said some other part. This part was more relaxed.

  What if we miss a spring? said Nervous.

  What if? said Relaxed.

  We’ve got about one day’s supply of food.