Heaven Is a Long Way Off

by Win Blevins

  Hannibal gave Sam a look of warning.

  She shouted, “I hated the diablo!” She slammed her fists against the bedclothes at her side. “I hated him!” She glared at Sam and Hannibal.

  Coy yipped.

  Esperanza woke up bawling.

  Immediately Julia sat up. “Hand her to me.”

  Sam did.

  Julia raised her blouse without hesitation, put Esperanza on one breast, and lay back down. “Stay with me,” she said, “please stay.”

  Her chest began to heave again.

  Sam and Hannibal sat down on the end of the bunk and looked at each other uncomfortably.

  Sam glanced at Julia and for the first time admitted this thought clearly to his mind: When I lost Meadowlark, I lost Esperanza.

  “It’s true,” said Hannibal.

  Sam shot him a look. Damn, get out of my head.

  “Sad but true.”

  Azul whimpered

  Julia held her arms out. Sam put her son in them. In a moment she had a child on each breast.

  I lost her.

  Soon the children were asleep. “Take them, please.”

  When Sam did, Julia began to bawl again, and then to wail.

  Sam curled up on the floor and tried to sleep.

  Hannibal sat in a corner, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

  TWO HOURS LATER they were back on watch with the horses, peering into the darkness.

  Coy growled.

  “A change in the weather, gentlemen.”

  Captain Bledsoe, evidently wandering his ship at night. The odor of his pipe was as strong as the smell of the sea. “It’s time. They don’t have four seasons on this coast, just dry season and rainy season. The storms can blow hard. This sea is not pacific.” With a quick smile at his pun the captain continued on his rounds.

  Sam smiled to himself. Odd how many people in his life gave importance to words. Pacific not pacific. Grumble treasured words, so did Hannibal. Sam’s father, Lewis Morgan, had had a tongue voluble and creative. A Welsh tradition, said his father. I should learn to read.

  “We already had our California storms,” said Hannibal.

  “I want to go home,” said Sam.

  “California is beautiful and languid,” said Hannibal.

  Coy whined and thumped his tail.

  “One day it will be American.”

  Sam looked at Hannibal in surprise, and then back at the dark continent off the port bow. His single thought was, What on earth do I do now?

  Hannibal said, “Let’s drive horses to the mountains and sell them.”

  IT TOOK THEM a week to arrange things in San Diego.

  First they brain-stormed their plans. The men had gold in their pockets, from selling the saddles, firearms, and other weapons. Since they’d all played the roles of fighters and rescuers, they would divide the booty equally.

  Robber and Galbraith weren’t interested in taking horses anywhere. They liked the little town and the easy life in California. They would stay.

  “Who else wants what?” asked Sam.

  “I think it might be well to take leave of California for a time,” said Grumble.

  “I goes where my massa goes,” said Sumner, the apprentice con man.

  They laughed at the darkie accent. Coy gave one sharp yip at all of them.

  “Where are we going to go exactly?” said Flat Dog. “Winter’s coming on.”

  “Winter’s the time to cross the desert,” said Sam. He would never forget that terrible June crossing with Jedediah, Gobel, and Robert Evans.

  “Let’s go to Taos or Santa Fe,” said Hannibal. “Spend the cold months there before we head for rendezvous.”

  They considered and one by one the men nodded. Julia just listened. Since her one night of wild grief, she had seemed even-keeled. Flat Dog remarked to Sam that with two children to take care of, she showed less interest in men’s doings.

  “All right, we can probably buy horses from the mission,” said Sam. Jedediah Smith had seen the huge herds when he was force-marched to San Diego last winter. The Californios had far, far more horses than they had any use for.

  “What do you think we’ll have to pay for them?” asked Sumner.

  Grumble said, “At Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo we paid six dollars for a pair.”

  “And they were broke to harness,” said Sam. “These will be unbroke.”

  Flat Dog said, “And at rendezvous we can sell them for…?”

  “Fifty to a hundred each,” said Sam.

  “That appeals to my larcenous heart,” said Sumner.

  “Can we get fifty animals?” said Flat Dog.

  Hannibal shook his head. “We have to buy supplies.”

  “Say thirty,” said Sam.

  Grumble put in, “How many can we drive?”

  Sam and Hannibal took thought. “Five men,” said Flat Dog.

  “Don’t count me,” said Grumble. The cherub hated riding, and hadn’t forked a horse once on their entire journey. “I may walk the whole way.”

  “We could drive a hundred easily,” said Hannibal.

  “All right, here’s a proposition,” said Grumble. “I’ll put my hand in my trunk and bring out enough coins to bring our horse count to a hundred.”

  “Grumble, you have that much gold?” said Sam.

  The con man gave a dry smile. “For me money is a tool.” He looked merrily at them. “This way we all get a handsome profit. Divided by five, up toward a thousand dollars each. But I get something in the bargain.”

  “Oh, no,” said Sam.

  “We’ll winter in Santa Fe, yes?”

  “Probably,” said Hannibal. “Or Taos.”

  “Santa Fe is bigger, so let’s head there. The deal is, one day or night a week each of you plays a little game with me.”

  “Chicanery,” said Hannibal.

  “Con games,” said Sam.

  “Exactly,” said Grumble.

  “Nothing that will get us arrested,” said Sam.

  “I am revolted by jails,” said Grumble.

  “It’s a deal,” said Hannibal.

  One by one, they all agreed—Sam, Hannibal, Flat Dog, and Sumner. Coy gave another yip.

  “Let’s get mares,” said Sam. “There’ll be foals in the spring before we go to rendezvous.”

  “Good thought.”

  And on into the night they planned.

  San Diego was a cinch. Aside from the mission and presidio, the town was only four adobes and about three dozen dark huts overlooking a fine bay. The letter of safe passage assured their hospitality at the mission. They avoided the presidio, where some officer might demand passports.

  In a week they bought their hundred horses, got supplies, hired an Indian guide, and got started east across the Mojave Desert.

  “Let’s not go anywhere near the Mojave villages,” Sam told the guide in Spanish. He was an older man, with a look of having seen everything.

  “No,” the man answered, “we go to the Yuma villages.”

  So they did.

  For the first time since leaving rendezvous Sam thought, I am headed home. Roundabout, but home.

  The desert was easy enough. Julia traveled almost as comfortably as a Crow woman, even with the two children. Sam felt like an old hand there now, and the guide knew where to find water. The crossing of the Colorado River wasn’t bad—in November the river was low. Coy not only kept up with the herd but led the way—the little coyote didn’t like swimming, so he did it fast.

  At the Yuma villages they were welcomed as enemies of the Mojaves. They gave the Indians some presents, hired a new guide, and passed on rapidly. The route of the Gila River, said the Indians, had been used by other trappers, those from Taos.

  Now they got the story of that trapping party and the Mojaves. The trappers worked their way up the Colorado, the Yumas said, to the Mojave villages. Red Shirt demanded payment for the beaver they’d taken out of the river. Incensed, for the Mojaves had no interest in the beaver,
the trappers refused. In the ensuing fight several Mojaves were killed.

  “And took it out on us,” Sam said to Hannibal.

  Up the valley of the Gila they went, clear to where the Salt River joined it, and above. Though the river was full of beaver, they didn’t pause to trap. Their minds were on getting the livestock safe to Santa Fe. Coy stayed near Paladin’s hoofs and helped control the herd.

  The Apaches watched them closely all the way, but didn’t seem to want to make trouble.

  Flat Dog, Julia, and the small children spent every night in a tipi. She fed both of them at her breasts, and tended to all their needs.

  Spending his days alongside the herd, watching for trouble, Sam realized that he felt more like Esperanza’s uncle than her father. He reflected that Julia and Flat Dog were the real family, and would be the parents in the eyes of the Crow people.

  I have no family, he thought often.

  That night, as all of them sat around a warm, crackling fire, he felt like playing his tin whistle. He hadn’t touched it in California. He played an old tune in a minor key. Coy joined in with a mournful howl. Sam spoke sharply to him, and he fell into a resentful silence.

  After one time through the tune, Hannibal raised his husky bass voice with the words, and Julia hummed a high, floating harmony over it all:

  I am a poor wayfarin’ stranger

  A-wanderin’ through this world of woe

  But there’s no trouble, no toil or danger

  In that bright land to which I go.

  I’m going home to see my father

  I’m going there no more to roam

  I’m just a-goin’ over Jordan

  I’m just a-goin’ over home.

  Sam thought, It’s how much I miss my dad, that’s why I played this song.

  After singing the second verse, Hannibal put in the other chorus—

  I’m going there to meet my mother

  She said she’d meet me when I come…

  Sam wondered if his mother, that good, weak woman, was still alive. If so, she was under the thumb of brother Owen.

  When Sam put away the tin whistle, he realized how much he’d missed playing it. He reached down and scratched Coy’s head. The coyote felt like an old, old buddy.

  The next night Sam played again for a few minutes. Then he did something totally spontaneous. He said to Grumble, “Teach me to read.”

  Grumble and Hannibal competed for the privilege of teaching Sam. Grumble wrote out a list of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Hannibal taught Sam how to recite them to “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.”

  “Now you can sing the alphabet while you ride alongside the herd by yourself all day.”

  Near the headwaters of the Gila they saw the rough road that led up to the copper mines, and wagons coming down. They crossed the divide above, coasted down the mountains into the huge valley, and turned north along the Rio Grande.

  As they drove their herd up the river toward the capital city, Sam picked out his first words from a copy of the King James Bible, one of several books that Hannibal carried. He found reading frustrating, maddening, and worse. The way English is spelled made no sense to him.

  By the time they passed the hamlet of Albuquerque, he was understanding his first English sentences. Soon he learned to pick out sayings he’d heard all his life—“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

  “Not enough for me,” said Sumner. “You take my eye, I take both yours.”

  Coy squealed.

  “I abhor violence,” said Grumble.

  Sam sounded out the next one Hannibal had marked for him slowly. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

  “The world chooses not to live by that admonition,” said Grumble. No one disputed with him.

  “Why can’t they use plain talk?” said Sumner. “‘Thou,’ ‘thy’—it’s dumb.”

  “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

  “I’d recommend that one,” Grumble said.

  “You’re just afraid of getting stoned,” said Sam.

  “You white folks,” said Sumner. Everyone looked at him. “Bible words,” said Sumner, “made me dump that whole religion down the outhouse.”

  They all looked at each other around the fire.

  Finally Hannibal shrugged. “Sam, if you want to know some gods, read up on the Greeks. Sex, murder, revenge, incest, the whole kit and caboodle.”

  Sam looked at Flat Dog. “What do you say about this? Give us a story about Crow gods.”

  “They’re not really gods,” said Flat Dog, “more like heroes.”

  Julia cleared her throat. Flat Dog looked at his wife. Her face gave warning. He smiled at Sam and shrugged.

  “All right,” said Sam. He turned to Julia. “What about you?”

  “I am a Catholic. Religion is something I do, not something I analyze.”

  Coy whined and looked at Sam for attention. He cocked his ears forward and then backward. Sam scratched his head.

  “So what do you want to do?” asked Hannibal.

  “Go to mass on Christmas Day. Get me to Santa Fe in time to go to mass.”

  They rode into the city on Christmas Eve and close-herded their horses on good grass on the Santa Fe River above town. Flat Dog went with Julia to the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe the next morning to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Christ.

  And Julia had more to do. The next day the priest baptized their son Azul into the Christian faith. At her request, which felt like a command, Sam Morgan stood as the infant’s godfather.

  Father and godfather, he thought. He didn’t know what it all meant.

  Eleven

  THE PRIEST, FATHER Herrera, took them visiting. “This is the casa of the Otero family.” Sam, Coy, Hannibal, and Flat Dog trundled along beside the priest. “Señora Luna, the sister of Señora Otero, is likely to help you, I think. Since it is the day of the birth of our Lord, she is in town.”

  Sam liked Santa Fe. It was perched on a high plateau below snowy mountains. The low buildings were all adobe, and columns of smoke rose straight up into a golden light that shimmered. The town was built along the river, and the streets wound out from the plaza unpredictably, twisting like roots of a tree. He had no idea where this winding lane would lead them, but the town was striking, even beautiful.

  He hadn’t seen so many people in several years, several thousand of them. The men of means wore huge-brimmed hats, the rowels of their spurs were enormous, almost comical, and they threw a blanket over one shoulder in a dashing style. Their horses were the same wiry Spanish ponies he’d seen in California.

  “Señora Luna owns Rancho de las Palomas,” the priest had said. “It is a splendid ranch of great size. The wagon trains, on El Camino Real from Santa Fe on the way to Chihuahua, they stop and trade there. The señora does an exemplary job running the enterprise.” Sam’s Spanish really wasn’t up to words like “exemplary,” but he got the point.

  Hannibal raised an eyebrow at the priest.

  “A widow,” the padre said, “and an accomplished woman.”

  “Paloma?” said Sam as the three of them ambled lazily along. “That’s a new one on me.”

  “It means ‘dove,’” said the padre. “There is a fine Spanish novel called Linda Paloma. Beautiful dove.

  “Here we are,” said the priest, opening a gate into a courtyard.

  The casa was handsome in the Santa Fe way, vigas jutting out above walls of plastered adobe. But they weren’t going inside. Father Herrera led them into a courtyard and introduced them to two sisters, Señora Paloma Luna y Salazar and Señora Rosa Otero y Salazar.

  “Excuse me a moment,” said Señora Luna, finishing some sort of work with her hands. Sam was stunned. He’d expected a woman well along in years. The señora was in her early thirties, he guessed, and possessed of a grave beauty.

  Señora Otero acknowledged the introductions, excused herself, and stepped into the house. The
priest went with her.

  Señora Luna came forward, holding a long string of red chiles. She hung it from a viga, retreated, and looked at it and the entire row of them along the house. “Ristras,” she said. “I find beautiful things irresistible.”

  Sam thought, She is beauty.

  She made sure of each of their names, gave Coy a pat on the head, and invited them to sit. The winter afternoon was mild and the sun strong. “It’s pleasant out here,” she said. “Very well. Padre says you have a business proposition for me.”

  They explained. If Señora Luna would permit them to turn their horse herd out on her grass, Sam and Flat Dog would train her horses as saddle mounts. “One horse each,” Flat Dog offered. Sam couldn’t have squeezed a word out.

  He and Señora Luna gazed at each other.

  “Also,” said Hannibal, “you will get new blood for your mares.”

  Coy made a squealing yawn, perhaps in approval.

  The señora snapped back into the conversation.

  “Do you train with the jaquima?” she said.

  “Sure,” said Flat Dog. Since Indians didn’t use bits at all, he and Sam were used to training riding horses with the piece of equipment called in English the hackamore.

  “Sam is something special,” said Hannibal.

  Sam flushed red, which he always hated because his white hair made him look redder. The señora couldn’t resist a smile of amusement.

  “May we show you tomorrow?” said Hannibal.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m sure we can work something out.” She gave them instructions on how to get to her rancho, which was down the Santa Fe River.

  “I remember the place,” said Sam. He was half proud that he’d found words and gotten them out.

  Señora Luna rose. “Tomorrow, then, with your herd.”

  “Yes,” said Hannibal.

  “When will you take the horses to head for your fur hunters’ summer rendezvous?”

  “Early May,” Hannibal said.

  She thought. “Four and a half months.” She turned to Sam. “I think we can form a profitable relationship.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I’ll expect you in the afternoon.”