by Win Blevins
Shining times, answered Relaxed.
Ten- or fifteen-day trip, said Nervous, starving.
That’s how I remember it too.
We’ve lost all our horses and nearly every damn thing.
Hallelujah!
Tom Virgin’s going to slow us down.
Or he may die.
Why are you so easy about it?
Just crazy, I guess.
The outfit came to the spring before the sun got hot the next morning. They drank. They ate a little meat, very little. Because the August sun would get blistering hot, they stayed by the spring all day. Mostly they slept in the shade of bushes or rocks. For an hour in mid-afternoon Jedediah worked on his journal.
When he finished, Sam moved next to him. “What did you write?” As a brigade leader in training, Sam wanted to know.
“First, what happened when we pushed off into the river, and the names of the men who died.” Diah looked at his own page. “‘Silas Gobel.’” Sam and Diah looked at each other. Gobel was one of the companions buried in the blazing sands two months ago. He rose up from that death only to walk blind into another.
“‘Henry “Boatswain” Brown,’” Jedediah read on, “‘Polette Labross (a mulatto), William Campbell, David Cunningham, Francois Deromme, Gregory Ortago (a Spaniard), John Ratelle, John Relle (a Canadian), Robiseau (a Canadian half-breed).’”
A checklist of slaughter. Sam took a big breath in and out.
“Next, a list of the men still with me.” Sam could see the ten men around him—aside from Sam and Hannibal, Galbraith, Marechal, Virgin, Turner, Swift, LaPoint, Daws, and Palmer.
“Then an account of how we drove them off at the riverbank.”
“Read it to me.”
“Here’s part of it. ‘We survivors with but five guns were awaiting behind a defense made of brush the charge of four or five hundred Indians…Some of the men asked me if we would be able to defend ourselves. I told them I thought we would. But that was not my opinion.’”
The captain and his segundo looked each other in the eye. Hannibal walked over and sat close. Coy lay down against Sam’s thigh.
“A wise man learns his letters, my friend,” the magician told Sam.
“Yeah.”
“A brigade leader needs a record,” Jedediah said.
“That’s what a clerk is for,” said Sam. He didn’t add that he wasn’t eager to be a brigade leader. Something about it bothered him.
The brigade’s clerk, Harrison Rogers, was ahead in California. Meanwhile Jedediah kept the ledgers himself, company property sold or given away.
“Learn to read or not?” said Hannibal.
“Learn to read,” said Sam, “some time.” He turned to Diah. “So what are we going to do?”
“Go to the Californians.”
“Damn.” He looked at Hannibal. “Last year they practically jailed Jedediah because we didn’t have passports. They told us we could go only if we hightailed it out the way we came and stayed gone.”
Jedediah spoke up now. “We left coastal California by the same pass. Then we went to a desert the Spaniards haven’t settled and north to some mountains they haven’t approached. I don’t think they have any honest claim to that country.”
Hannibal nodded, understanding.
“We can’t go straight to the brigade?” said Sam.
“We need horses, we need food, we need weapons, we need a lot of things. Father Joseph will help us.”
“He’s the head of San Gabriel Mission,” Sam told Hannibal. He looked back at Diah. “And the governor may arrest your ass this time.”
Jedediah gave a thin smile. “We’ll be quick on our feet.”
Sam frowned.
“Sam, I know you’re anxious to get to Esperanza. We said we’d be there by September 20, and we will.”
Sam walked off. He thought. He fretted. He looked down at Coy. He looked at Tom Virgin, who tumbled to the ground like a rag and slept every time they stopped.
Sam thought, Life goes topsy-turvy into death.
THAT NIGHT, WANDERING among the desert hills, Jedediah stopped the line of men. For a moment he looked around.
“You know where we are?”
“No,” said Sam. They’d traveled this route only once, with guides, and in the daylight.
Everyone sat down. Some sprawled, and Virgin seemed to pass out. They’d trudged all night, zigzagging through creosote bushes, dipping down into dry washes and clambering up the other side, mounting hillocks and descending again onto flats that appeared infinite, but flexed irritatingly up and down. Now the captain doled out the liquid from their one kettle, a swallow at a time for each man except himself. “I’m used to going without,” he said. He made Virgin sit up and take an extra swallow. That was the last drop.
“God, more water,” said LaPoint.
“Balm of Gilead,” said Hannibal.
“We’re lost,” said Jedediah.
That got their attention. The captain didn’t know where the next spring was. Every man wondered if he would taste water again.
“Daybreak soon. Let’s rest until then.”
Coy whimpered. He thinks this is ridiculous, thought Sam.
They stretched out. Some slept. Most couldn’t.
At first light Jedediah said, “I’m going up that hill to spot the trail.” There was the advantage of the field glass Diah carried.
A while after sunrise he was back. Sam could see the result in his face.
“I don’t know. The trail goes on one side of that hill or the other, but I can’t tell which.”
The men were too tired to grouse.
“I want one man to go with me to look for water.”
“I’ll go,” Sam and Hannibal said at the same time.
“No.” He looked around. “Galbraith, come with me. That hill”—Jedediah pointed toward a much higher one—“that’s the direction we need to go.” It was the opposite direction of the rising sun. He pursed his lips, thinking. “If Galbraith and I don’t come back, head that way. Sam, you’re in charge. You’ll recognize where the next spring is.”
Sam let all this flap through his brain. If Diah doesn’t come back…All right, the party had missed one spring and was hoping to hit the next one. If Sam could spot it.
“Understood.”
Diah and Ike Galbraith walked off.
“I don’t know if I’ve got any move left in me,” said Hannibal.
“I’ll carry you if you’ll carry me.”
They watched their friends disappear around a hill.
Sam studied Virgin, asleep, his mouth hanging open. The bulge in his skull looked terrible.
“All of us could easy die,” said the Mage.
IN AN HOUR Galbraith was back, looking amazingly hearty.
“We found water. The captain’s there sleeping.”
“Zis man, my Ike, he has ze hair of ze bear inside him.” This was Marechal.
“The water did it for me. Let’s go. It’s only gonna get hotter.”
Sam roused Virgin and they tramped off.
The little spring was marked by a few bushes where fluid seeped from rocks at the bottom of a hill. Jedediah sat up as the outfit approached.
They were too dry to talk. Each man scooped a little water into his hands and slurped it up. The trickle was tiny, and they took a lot of time, one after another, filling their bellies with liquid. Waiting made them wild-eyed. Finally, they were lazing by the spring. They watered their stomachs over and over, and rubbed water onto their faces and arms and legs, and wadded their clothes up in the spring.
“We’ll stay here today,” said Jedediah. “Right now I’m going to climb that hill”—it was the highest in sight—“and look for the trail and the next spring.”
Off he went.
“Hellacious almighty,” said Galbraith, looking after the captain.
“We walk all night, no water,” said Marechal.
Hannibal said, “We can’t even piss.”
&n
bsp; “Jedediah walks up a hill and back by himself while we rest,” said Sam, “and then he hikes off and finds water.”
“Now,” said Galbraith, “with me panting and desperate, he marches off to climb a big hill in the heat of the day.”
“And he’ll come back ready to walk tonight.” Sam rolled onto his side to nap. “That’s why he’s the captain,” he said.
THE CAPTAIN DID spot the trail in the glass, about five miles to the south, and he saw where the next spring was. That night he led the party straight across open desert, not bothering with the trail until they rejoined it at the spring. They rested there all day and all the next night. Jedediah rationed out a little dried meat, about a third of what a man needed for sustenance, every other day.
Sam was wondering if they could afford to rest, with food running out.
Marechal said under his breath to Sam, “Hardly no water, hardly no meat, no whiskey any, you Americains…”
The next day they trekked across the desert during the day. The heat was awful, but the risk of getting lost seemed worse. Jedediah remembered a shortcut pointed out by last year’s guides, who thought it too stony for horses. Now they took it.
The sun hit them like a club. Every step was a struggle. They trudged, they wandered, they stumbled. Sam and Hannibal took Virgin by the elbows to steady him. All were too parched and too exhausted to utter one word of complaint.
Occasionally men got a little satisfaction by cutting off slices of cabbage pears and chewing on them. The juice was a blessing on the tongue, and when you chewed the fiber, you could pretend you were eating.
The men were disgruntled, discouraged, failing. Jedediah boosted them continually with encouraging words. “It’s not far now,” he would say. Tramp, tramp, tramp on the sand. “There’ll be a spring against the hill.” Tramp, tramp, tramp. They stopped, and the captain glassed. “See the dark spot at the bottom of the hill there? Those are bushes, and bushes mean water.”
Some men lifted their eyes and gazed blearily in the direction of the hill. Maybe someone saw the dark spot. No one mentioned the thousands of footsteps between here and the hill.
Late in the afternoon Virgin collapsed. Seph LaPoint plopped down beside him.
Smith bent over Virgin. “I’m done,” he said. No more words came out.
“Me too,” said LaPoint.
The captain studied them. Sam thought, They don’t have strength even for words…
“Tom,” said the captain, “you’ve soldiered this far. We all admire you.” He looked back and forth from Virgin to LaPoint. “You’ve got grit. You’ll both make it.
“Normally, I’d cover you with sand, keep you cooler, but we don’t have any shovels.” He thought. “Scoot into the shade of the grease-wood here. When you can, dig in the sand with your hands. Make a shallow hole, get in it, and cover up.”
LaPoint snickered.
“Seph, it’s your job to dig for Tom and cover him.”
LaPoint shrugged.
“Do it. Sam saved his own life this way.”
“I will,” rasped LaPoint. His voice sounded like a scrape on a washboard.
“I’ll bring water.”
They walked on. Sam’s heart twisted at leaving, but he resisted looking back. The first time this happened, two months ago, he and Diah and Robert Evans left Silas Gobel behind. Gobel, who was now nothing but bones. The second time, Diah and Gobel had to go off and leave Sam and Evans. Both times Diah had found a spring, both times someone carried a kettle back, and both times the men were saved.
Sam checked the sky for buzzards. I wonder if I’ll have to see them circling over Virgin and LaPoint.
Or these eight figures trudging across the Mojave Desert.
Just after sunset Diah led them to a spring.
“I’ll go back,” said Sam.
“Me too,” said Hannibal.
Two men to carry one kettle, but Sam was glad of the company.
What a world, he thought, where nightmares get to be routine.
THAT NIGHT EVERYONE talked about the Inconstant River. Drank and talked and drank some more and talked about the Inconstant. Their thirst felt so wide and dry they didn’t even miss food.
LaPoint wanted to know why it was called Inconstant.
Sam smiled and answered dryly, “Because the water disappears into the sands and then comes back up and disappears again.”
“In lots of places you can dig for it,” said Jedediah.
Sam held up his bare hands and looked at them. He said good-naturedly, “My hands are begging to dig.”
The men chuckled. Anything for a chuckle, as downhearted as they felt.
“It flows out of the mountains to the west,” Jedediah said. “One way or another, there’s water steady enough up the river.”
Sam added, “Last year there were Indians at the foot of the mountain. We traded with them.”
“We can cross the mountain in two days,” the captain said, “and we’ll see deer.”
Men slunk off to separate boulders and bushes to sleep. They didn’t feel much like talking, didn’t feel like company. Some were slipping off into a private place in their minds where they could die peacefully. Sam wondered whether Virgin would wake up in the morning.
He knew the men were bothered by a lot of things. They were starving. They were half-thirsting. Their bodies were wasting. If they traveled like this for long, they’d die, no question.
“I can tell you this,” said Hannibal. “Death hath dominion here.”
Sam shook off that thought. Something else was bothering him.
MOUNTAIN LUCK, THEY called it. Desert luck too, Sam supposed. Like mountain luck, it could be very good and very bad.
The river was drier than the year before. At first Sam was worried about water. But in the middle of that first day walking up the Inconstant, Hannibal spotted two horses.
The captain stopped the outfit and circled the mounts, looking for their owners. He found two lodges and eased up to them gently enough that the Indians didn’t have a chance to run away. Paiutes, they said they were. He made them presents of some beads.
Then he brought the men up. The Paiutes trembled visibly, men, women, and children. Sam could see that every impulse was to run like hell, but they stayed. Slowly, Jedediah began to trade with them. He offered more beads, which pleased the women. He put out cloth, which thrilled them. He laid down a double handful of knives. In an hour or two he’d traded for both horses, some water pots, and big loaves of candy made from cane grass.
The brigade had this candy last fall. It was funny stuff, a loaf of sugar hard as a rock. You knocked off pieces with a tomahawk or your knife. Strange food, but the sweet tasted great and any nourishment helped.
The Paiutes told the trappers that the lodges of the Serranos were still at the foot of the mountain, where the river came out. All the beaver men were sitting in front of the Paiute lodges, sucking on chunks of candy.
“We’ll be able to trade for food and horses there,” Jedediah said with satisfaction. “The closer to the Spanish settlements, the easier to get horses.”
Last year, Sam remembered, the Serranos made a rabbit drive through the desert, many hunters marching, and put on a feast for the trappers.
They loaded the horses, took their leave of the Paiutes, and resumed their march. The Serrano lodges were about three days ahead, and the horses, not the men, were the beasts of burden.
Sam looked carefully at the captain. Jedediah would never say it, but he was proud. His brigade had blundered into a disaster at the Mojave villages. Without water, without food, and without horses, he had brought them across the worst desert anyone had seen.
That night when they bedded down, they knew they were going to live.
First day up the Inconstant—the river was almost completely dry—but they had water in the pots. They found a standing pool to camp by. The men stripped and dunked their entire bodies in the liquid.
Second day, there was water enough in
occasional places in the riverbed—they would have been fine even without the pots.
On the third day they walked into the cluster of lodges that made up the Serrano village. Their guides from last autumn weren’t here, but the chiefs remembered the fur men well. Jedediah gave them presents, they gave the trappers dried rabbit meat.
The men fell on the meat like vultures. While the captain traded for two more horses, they gorged themselves. Then they napped and gorged themselves again. They lay down, slept, woke in the middle of the night, and filled their bellies once more. They acted ravenous and uproarious.
Sam ate as big as any man, and spent the night churning his mind about what he had to do. Every day this journey, going to California, bothered him. The only home he had, it wasn’t here. And now things were about to get worse.
In the morning, while the captain was making sure of the hitches that held the gear and newfound food on the horses, Sam touched Jedediah on the shoulder. Smith turned to him.
“Diah, I have to go back.”
“YOU WHAT?” THE captain’s voice crackled.
Men were craning their necks to hear this conversation. Jedediah took Sam’s elbow and moved off. Hannibal followed. Jedediah looked at him, hesitated, and then nodded.
“What are you talking about?”
“Paladin is back there. My father’s rifle is back there. I can’t walk away.”
“You are second in command here. You have a responsibility.”
Sam poked the dirt with a moccasin. “One to myself too.”
“Sam, you can’t do this.”
“If I have to, I’ll quit.” He paused and added, “Sir,” the first time he’d spoken that word to Jedediah in several years.
“It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s risky.”
“Water, food, you can’t do it.”
Sam just looked at him. They both knew the outfit had just done it.
“You giving up on Esperanza, Flat Dog, and Julia?”
Sam’s daughter, Meadowlark’s brother, and his wife. “Not a bit. I’ll be along.”
“Late.”
“Yes.”
Jedediah looked toward the horizon to the east, where they’d just walked, and said, “Let’s sit.”
