by Win Blevins
“What’s your last name?”
“Carson.”
Before they got to the Romero house, Sam and Hannibal spoke sharply to Tomás about stealing. “Besides,” Hannibal said, “didn’t you see what that young fellow is like? He’d be a wildcat to fight.”
“I said I’m sorry,” repeated Tomás.
That night Sam and Hannibal tossed words back and forth about Tomás. He was off kilter. No telling what he might do. They looked at each other helplessly.
THE NEW HANDS were Esteban—a Mexican in his thirties, an old man by mountain man standards—and Plácido, his teenage son. By the time they led the party across from the Rio Grande to the San Juan River and on west, Sam knew the older man was as good a pilot as people in Taos said. He knew the rivers and mountains, knew how to travel in Indian country, and altogether made a good hand. He was worth the fifty dollars he was getting. Plácido? Sam would rather have had another grown man. Both father and son planned to hire on as trappers for the fall season with other outfits when they got to rendezvous.
It was a good time for Sam. He rode behind the herd every day, balancing Esperanza on his lap for as long as she was willing to stay each session. His daughter was learning to talk. She called Julia Mamá. She addressed both Sam and Flat Dog as Papá, which stung.
Good times, though, were to be enjoyed. Spring was gentle and graceful on the land. Since they didn’t go over any high passes, the snow was melted into life-giving fluid. Wildflowers sprouted everywhere. The days were warm, the nights crisp. The creeks were running full in a country that otherwise could put a lot of distance between drinks of water. Some days were windy, and they kept an eye out for sandstorms. But they moved along lazily, not rushing the newborn horses. They had no Indian trouble. They thought about the profit they would make at rendezvous. Life had a savory taste.
One evening Sam walked down along the river with Esperanza holding onto his finger. Soon she saw a prairie chicken and ran at it. The damned chicken didn’t fly, but just ran around a log and froze. That wouldn’t stop Esperanza. Around the log she scampered, knees pumping.
Now the chicken flew—about six feet, back over the log. It went into its disguise as a rock or a clump of dirt. Here came Esperanza back the other way. Sam didn’t know whether she wanted to hug it or whack it.
They played this way for half a dozen rounds. Sam had never seen such a crazy prairie chicken, though they were well known to be dumb. Esperanza would have kept on all day, but finally the chicken flew up to the lowest limb of the fir.
Esperanza immediately began to crawl onto the tree. Unfortunately, this was half possible. The trunk was tilted sharply out over the river and barely clung to the bank. Sam grabbed his daughter, sat her down on the log, and took guard position at the base of the fir. She stood up, pointed at the bird, and started talking to it, not words but sounds—squeals, hums, coos, every kind of sound but a word.
Funny that fir—the current had undercut the bank, and some of its roots were exposed. By next spring it would join the river, float downstream, and end up on a sand bar when the flood waters dropped back. He watched the waters froth by. They went on forever. The Crows said only the rocks live forever, but that wasn’t true—the waters lived forever, charging down from the mountain peaks, marching out over the plains, joining together with other rivers drumming their way to the sea. There they got picked up, carried back to the peaks, and started the forever circle again.
He watched Esperanza, who was still carrying on a big conversation with the prairie chicken, and the bird was sitting on the limb paying respectful attention. Esperanza would live—this was everyone’s plan—in the village where Flat Dog grew up, on the Wind River in winter and in the Big Horn Basin in the summer. Her grandparents, Needle and Gray Hawk, would certainly spoil her rotten. The two pivot points of her life would be the big buffalo hunt in the spring and the huge hunt in the fall, which brought lots of villages together. And the only language she would hear, except sometimes from her two fathers and one mother, would be Crow. She would play entirely with Crow children. She would learn to put up a tipi, dry buffalo meat on a rack, and quill moccasins. She would be raised with the Crow stories, in the Crow religion, and the Crow way of seeing the world.
Sam accepted all this. It was a good road to walk. He hadn’t forgotten that he himself carried the sacred pipe and had given a sun dance.
“See,” said Hannibal, “she already speaks foreign languages.” He was walking toward them, Coy on one side and Plácido on the other.
Now Esperanza, maybe because she had a new audience, started in on her list of words. She had a fair number—“want,” “milk,” and a baby fistful of other useful words—and she babbled right through them. Then she stood up, stuck her hands out, and said, “Water. Agua. Water. Agua.”
Tickled, Plácido gave her a drink from his canteen.
“Bilingual,” Hannibal said, grinning. Sam had learned a lot of out-of-the-way words, hanging around with Hannibal. “She’s getting three languages, right in the tipi.”
Suddenly Esperanza dropped the canteen to the ground and held her arms up to Hannibal. He picked her up. From her higher stance she pointed at the prairie chicken and launched into a tirade of her sounds that weren’t words. She gave that bird a good talking to.
Plácido hooted. Laughing, Hannibal staggered around in a circle, keeping a tight hold on Esperanza.
Sam told Hannibal, “I’m going to take her to rendezvous most years.”
“Besides picking up a lot more English, some Spanish, some French, Iroquois, Delaware, she’ll be able to talk to all the birds in their own tongues, prairie chicken, raven, hawk, osprey, eagle…”
Esperanza reached a climax in her prairie chicken lecture.
Coy yipped, and the bird flew off in search of peace and quiet.
“Down,” said Esperanza. Hannibal set her on the ground.
She was good at this word. Every day, riding along with her dad, she got tired of being held and said firmly, “Down.” When he dismounted and set her on the ground, she toddled over to the pony drag and crawled onto it. Sam lashed her in. There she could play with her cousin Azul or nap. At the age of six months Azul didn’t interest her much yet, but that would come.
Though Julia and Flat Dog had cradleboards, keeping them on the drag was easier.
“Mamá,” said Esperanza.
Sam and Hannibal started walking back with her slowly. She didn’t want to be carried, but toddled along on her own. Then she forgot her need for mama and stopped to inspect everything interesting along the way.
The next morning, as they were finishing eating, Sam found himself alone by the fire with Tomás. He decided to speak up.
“You know what happened to Maria, none of it…”
“You say nothing about my sister.”
Sam looked at the kid. Hannibal ambled over with his empty coffee cup.
“Tomás, you have to know your sister didn’t deserve…”
Tomás stood up and hurled his butcher knife into a nearby aspen. He stalked off. The handle on the knife quivered.
Hannibal walked over to the aspen, studied the knife, and pulled it out. “This far in,” he said, holding thumb and forefinger about two inches apart.
Hannibal filled his cup.
Sam looked after Tomás and wondered.
They decided the best way to help Tomás along, whatever his emotional storms were, was to help him learn something. In the evenings either Sam or Esteban rode up whatever creek or river was handy, taking the two teenage boys and setting traps. They showed Tomás and Plácido how to spot beaver sign, the gnawed trees, the slides, the dams. Taught them how to ease into the water well upstream of where they wanted to set the trap. What depth of water to put it in, so the beaver could stand up to smell the bait. How to bait the small stick with medicine out of the stoppered horn. How to set a trap pole stout enough that the big rodent couldn’t swim off with it. How to skin the drowned creature.
/> When they brought beaver back to camp, Julia took over, for she had learned well during her months in the Sierra Nevada. She showed both boys how to scrape the inner side of the hide clean and then stretch it on a willow hoop, so it could be put into a pack and transported on the back of a horse.
The boys got to keep the pelts they brought in, share and share alike. Tomás gradually got outfitted. A pony for five pelts, New Mexico price. A patch knife, a hunting pouch, two horns (small and large) to hold the two kinds of powder, a bar of lead, and a tool to make the lead into balls.
“You catch on quick,” Sam told him.
Tomás gave a sly smile. “I am smart,” he said.
“Yes,” said Sam.
Finally—this was a proud day—he traded Tomás one of the outfit’s mountain rifles for two plews.
Being a little older, Plácido already had a rifle and other gear.
The outfit took a nooner every day. The horses did well with a break in the middle of the day, a chance to water and graze. The foals particularly needed time to nurse or do nothing for two or three hours. During times like this Sam taught Tomás to shoot that rifle. How to make a round ball from a bar of lead. How much powder to pour down the barrel, and how to patch that with cloth. How to seat the ball on the patch. How to use the double triggers. Which powder to pour into the pan, and how to make the hammer whack the flint in the pan and create the spark that made the whole thing go ka-boom!
The first time Tomás fired the rifle Sam had to giggle at the expression on his face. Between the roar and the cloud of white smoke the boy was bamboozled.
“He’s doing all right,” Sam told Hannibal that evening.
“Would be good if he made friends with Plácido,” Hannibal said. “That kid has a nice calm about him.”
“Tomás is only surly about half the time,” said Sam.
“He’s damn near able to tolerate the man who saved his ass,” said Hannibal.
Sam laughed. The truth was, they were both relieved at how the kid no longer seemed about to go twisty at any second.
During the next couple of days Tomás practiced shooting at trees, then at marks on trees. Sam supervised him carefully, instructed him about where to place his left hand on the stock, how to use the sights, how to get steady, and just how to pull the triggers.
Then Sam scraped the bark away from a spot on a cottonwood, and Tomás and Plácido competed shooting at it.
First round: Plácido hit the mark. Tomás missed the tree clean.
Second round: Plácido hit the mark. Tomás missed the tree clean.
Third round: Same result.
Sam could see that Tomás was trembling with rage.
“Enough for today,” he said. “Tomás, don’t worry about it. That barrel’s too heavy for you right now, and you’re wobbly. You’ll get stronger…”
Tomás rammed Plácido in the chest with his head. They went down hard and came up fighting like cats.
“Pendejo!” yelled Plácido.
“Hijo de puta!” retaliated Tomás.
Sam tackled them both and knocked them to the ground. With a big effort he pushed them apart and got a kick in the cojones for his trouble.
“O-o-o-w!” Sam hollered. He kept holding the boys apart and glared at each of them in turn. “Anybody wants to fight, he fights me.”
Tomás looked ready to charge. Plácido said, “Looks like maybe this is a good time to fight you, señor.”
Sam grinned.
Tomás turned and walked away, mumbling something.
“Don’t ask him what he said,” Sam instructed Plácido.
SOON THEY WERE herding the horses down El Rio de Nuestra Señora de las Dolores, as Esteban called it.
“River of Our Lady of Sorrows,” said Hannibal.
“The name would half keep me away,” said Sam.
But it was a lovely stream, a mountain creek, meandering through meadows or bouncing downhill fast. “She comes to the desert,” said Esteban. “To the Grand River, above where it flows in and makes the Colorado.”
Sam was in no hurry to get back to a desert.
Early one morning just as the sun rose, when the morning smelled truly fresh, Tomás squatted by Sam’s blankets. He was coming back from the last watch of the night. “Sam,” he said, “your mare, she has her colt.”
Sam sat up and saw the dewy-eyed look on the boy’s face. “Let’s go have a look.” Hannibal sat up and went with them.
The colt had Paladin’s markings exactly, the dramatic combination of white all over with black around the ears like a hat, black blaze on the chest, and black mane and tail.
“Beauty,” said Hannibal.
Paladin was standing, and the foal, a horse colt, was nursing. The mare gave the three human beings a wise, satisfied look.
“Do you think he’s Ellie’s?”
Tomás knew about the stallion—Hannibal had talked about him a lot when they were putting the horses through their routines for the sale. The boy also knew how much Hannibal missed Ellie.
“The colt is big,” said Hannibal. Ellie had been an American horse, not a Spanish pony. “One way you can tell is by counting the vertebrae. Be an extra one. So it’s Ellie’s.”
They watched, wondering, smiling.
Perhaps enchanted, Tomás said, “I want him.”
“What?” said Sam.
“I want him for my horse.”
“Then you’ll have to earn him,” said Hannibal.
“Four plews,” said Sam. Sam had been thinking of this foal for himself.
Tomás pursed his mouth. “I earn him.” Again this was in English. And a little defiant, judged Sam.
ESTEBAN RODE AHEAD with Sam and Hannibal to the Grand River. The sight made Sam suck in his breath hard.
“Damn full,” he said. They’d crossed to the north side of the Dolores to get above the confluence.
“Daunting,” said Hannibal.
“What you call a beetch,” said Esteban in his home-grown English.
It was early June, and the spring runoff was in full swing. The three of them watched the monster slosh against its banks, and out of them, and wondered.
Esteban said, “I know a better place. We must march one day to the north. There two other rivers come in, one on each side. Above that there is a…paso.”
“Ford,” said Hannibal.
Then on north over a divide to the Siskadee, Esteban explained, and up that river to the Uinta Mountains, and into Bear Lake by a route they all knew. A lot of desert ahead. Sam wanted mountains, like the ones in Crow country.
The morning of the crossing dawned fine and clear.
“Going to be hot,” said Sam. He rolled out.
He and Hannibal had gotten in the habit of taking the time of predawn light to talk, a good time to be alone.
As soon as Esperanza woke up, she would burst out of the tent and pitter-patter toward Sam’s blankets. “Papá,” she would call. And Sam would toss her up in the air and catch her.
He was satisfied that the kids would be safe on the crossing. Flat Dog and Julia would carry them in the cradleboards. Sam had ridden Paladin across the ford and back, and the horses could keep their feet the whole way. Still, they’d taken an extra day in camp, to rest the animals and the people.
Everyone knew his job. They made sure of the hitches on the pack animals. Then Sam, Hannibal, Flat Dog, and Esteban moved the loose horses toward the bank. The two boys kept the packhorses well back, and Julia stayed with them. The plan was to take the loose horses across, then the pack animals. Sam was glad to have Paladin between his legs for this job. He trusted her.
He and Hannibal looked across the horses at each other and nodded. Time. They signaled to Esteban and Flat Dog at the rear.
“Hi-iy-iy!” Sam yelled, and snapped a blanket at the horses. All four men yelled and waved hats and blankets. The herd bolted.
Sam and Hannibal galloped past the leaders and charged into the river. The herd plunged into the water. The r
iver was a melee—horses whinnying, manes and tails flying, water splashing up in barrelfuls—it was crazy. Sam loved it.
Coy ripped along behind, in a rush.
The crossing was over almost before Sam knew it. He was soaked head to toe. Easy. Hot damn. Let’s do it again.
They got the animals to circle, slowed them down, and took a few minutes to get them settled. The riders grinned at each other. Back across the river. Coy stayed where he was—he didn’t like this back and forth stuff.
“Why don’t you and Julia go now?” Sam said to Flat Dog. “There’s some good shade right over there.”
The Crow and his wife got the children in the cradleboards and the cradleboards on their backs. They pussy-footed their mounts down the bank and into the shallow water. “Stay here,” said Flat Dog. “We’ll be fine.”
And they were.
Coy barked across the waters at Sam—what’s going on?
The score of packhorses was trickier. A heavily laden animal was more likely to lose its balance in the swift current, and one might bang into another, and several could go down in a tangle.
While Julia sat with the children, the other riders worked the pack animals gently to the bank. Sam and Hannibal put two of the most reliable on lead lines and started them across. Flat Dog and Esteban pushed all the rest from behind. One by one, two by two, the horses stilted into the water. Once there, they looked more comfortable. The two teenage boys, as instructed, rode upstream of the middle of the herd.
Sam turned in his saddle, looking back.
Then he saw it.
A huge fir tree rampaged down the middle of the current, evergreen leaves dead and brown, roots pointed straight toward men and horses.
“Get out!” Sam yelled, pointing. “Get out!”
Everyone saw the menace. The roots looked like a madwoman’s hair violently shaken. The whole tree raised and dived in the waves—it bobbed and sawed back and forth, an immense ramrod gone wild.
There was not one damn thing Sam could do to stop it.
He and Hannibal threw the lead lines away and slapped their packhorses on.
Luckily, some other horses followed. If they had seen the tree, panicked, tried to turn around, milled, done anything but charge straight ahead…
