by Win Blevins
Sam and Diah poked through the settlement for these men. While they poked, Jedediah talked about responsibility. A brigade leader, he said, takes responsibility for the well-being of every man. He chooses the route. Going into new country, he never skylines the party, seldom blocks its vision, stays aware of where cover is, keeps a sharp eye against trouble that might await, watches for water and grass. The leader can never just relax and have a good time. Alertness—wariness—those are his stances, always.
He must work harder than any of his men. Late each afternoon, when everyone else is worn out, he must ride or walk up a nearby hill to scout the terrain for tomorrow. If any man gives out, the leader must go back for him. When there is danger, the leader must go out first to meet it. If Indians approach, for instance, it is the leader who must walk out to them with the offer of friendship. The leader must even, said Jedediah, set an example for the men in his moral character.
Sam started to smile at Diah’s idea of moral character …
But the look on Diah’s face stopped him cold. Sam didn’t smile or take exception, even gently—he valued their bond. Then came a remark that stuck with Sam, not only the words but the faraway look in Jedediah’s eyes when he said it. “A leader is like a father,” he said, “even a little like Our Father. He cares for his sheep, and tends to them.”
They walked on a few more steps. “A distant father, though. Have you heard of Mount Olympus?”
Sam shook his head no.
“In the Greek idea of the gods—a pagan idea—the chief god, Zeus, ruled from a great distance, from the summit of Mount Olympus. He meted out justice. When a human being sinned, Zeus hurled down a thunderbolt. From afar, you see.
“That’s the model for a leader—just, but still willing to discipline, kind but distant.”
Something from another time or place, unreadable, swam in Jedediah’s eyes. Sam had no idea what it was. He held his tongue.
By the end of the day’s work they’d confirmed that the Siskadee did not run from these villages in the direction of the Spanish settlements—it went south to an ocean. The settlements were to the west. Yes, that desert could be crossed, but it was dry, very dry, and you had to find certain springs or you would perish. There was one spring a day’s travel to the west, easy to find, but the others …
Sam didn’t tell Diah about Meadowlark’s pregnancy. He couldn’t.
Several informants said some tribal members who used to live near the mountains beyond the desert would know the way. And two young men from the Spanish mission could say exactly. They were down there by the river, or on the other side of that hill, or …
“We must talk to these Indians,” said Jedediah. But they found none that day.
“I’m taking Paladin down to the river,” Sam said.
Meadowlark nodded.
He led the mare through the willows to the muddy stream, much more muscular than it looked. When he and Meadowlark played in the river each evening, they carefully picked an eddy. Now Paladin stepped into some shallows to drink. Coy curled up and went to sleep. Sam sat on the bank and watched the brown current beyond as it curled, swirled, and powered downstream.
His mind was somewhere else, everywhere else. Meadowlark. Diah. His father. The child on the way. Meadowlark. The hardships ahead, and behind. The child …
Before he knew it, his memory, or maybe his spirit, had traveled back to his time with Lewis Morgan, his father, especially the last day they were together.
His dad was Sam’s first teacher. Not teacher of the mill business. In the world’s eyes Lew Morgan was a miller, and the founder of a village, Morgantown. To Sam his father was the bearer of an older knowledge, now imperiled, the legacy of Lew’s own youth, an understanding of the woods, of the four-leggeds and the flying creatures and the crawlers and the rooted—how all came together to make Earth work.
Father and son had a place in the forest where they went, their own place, it felt like. They called it Eden, and pretended they were the first people into this garden. When Sam was a kid, his father let him give all the creatures names, even the trees and bushes and grasses. Later, bit by bit, in morning after morning stolen from milling, Sam learned the right names, what made each bush or tree what it was, how it reproduced its own kind, and how it gave something to the other creatures, like the deer that browsed on the leaves, the birds that fed on the seeds and berries. Day by day, this world became a home to Sam.
His father also taught him skills, how to build a fire with flint and steel, how to feed on those same berries and leaves, plus roots and stems, how to find animals that offered meat, and how to take one of those animals to nourish your own flesh. It felt to Sam like the one kind of knowledge that truly mattered to a human being, and he could hardly believe that others seemed bored by it.
He mastered woodcraft, and he mastered the long rifle. Even now he carried the rifle he’d inherited from his father. He’d had a gunsmith add a brass plate to it, bearing his father’s nickname, The Celt.
Lew Morgan died on Christmas Eve, on Sam’s sixteenth birthday. They were together in their place, Eden. And his father …
Coy’s head came up, and he growled a little.
Paladin munched on grasses a few feet away. The riverbank offered good grasses.
As Sam was getting to his feet, a body blasted into him. Off the bank he sailed. He landed on his back in the shallow water with an Indian on top of him.
A stout teenager with a shell necklace choked him. A skinny fellow had hold of Paladin’s lead rope and was pulling her into the river. Sam’s head went under.
Coy barked and bit Sam’s attacker in the thigh.
The choking grip loosened. Sam rolled hard. The Indian went underneath him, water roiling against his body. Sam elbowed him in the face and jerked away.
Paladin was fighting her captor. Good girl.
Sam had a quick thought of the pistol in his belt. Instead he grabbed for his knife.
Coy ran at the stout Amuchaba, but the Indian kicked him half a dozen feet.
Now Stout was holding his own knife low, advancing. Sam thought of a nice little trick. With his free left hand he slipped the hair ornament from his head.
Coy was whining and nuzzling his own ribs.
Paladin jerked away from Skinny and bolted into the river. Skinny splashed after her.
Sam made a thrust that wasn’t his quickest. Stout blocked it hard, and Sam let his knife spin out into the river.
He backed off fast. Stout charged, but the foot-deep water slowed him down. Sam spun to one side and flicked his hand at the wrist that held Stout’s blade.
A lovely line of red welled up, and blood weaved its way around the wrist.
Stout looked stupefied.
With a malicious grin, Sam held the small blade so the Indian could see it.
Stout was furious. He charged again, wildly.
Sam hacked a stiff hand at the knife arm. The weakened hand dropped the knife into the river.
Both men stood amazed for an instant.
Coy recovered and ran hard at Stout.
The Indian ran like hell toward the current. When he got there, he swam after Skinny and Paladin.
The mare was being swept downstream by the current. She whinnied in panic.
It’s not me they want, it’s her.
He bounded onto the bank and grabbed The Celt. As he leveled the rifle, he realized, I got dunked, and both my powder horns went under. Wet powder.
He couldn’t abandon Paladin. He couldn’t swim off and leave The Celt.
He got an idea.
He started running downstream on the bank, hollering like hell. “Help! Help! Help!” Coy followed, barking.
The current was taking Paladin away fast. That was one powerful river.
“Help! Help!”
Paladin was swimming toward the other bank.
He felt a spasm of fear. Am I going to lose Paladin?
He got downstream of the mare and the swimming Indians
.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”
It was the giant Gobel, with Sumner on his heels.
“They’re stealing Paladin! Keep this!” He thrust The Celt at Sumner and set his pistol down.
Here the riverbank was high. Sam looked at the water and hoped it was deep. “Grab Coy and don’t let him come.” Then Sam made a clean dive into the water. Gobel cannonballed after him.
Wild, the current was wild. It slapped, it sucked, it bounced you, it tumbled you. Sam couldn’t see over the waves. He was still downstream of the swimming mare and Indians, but he had a lot of current to cross to catch them.
And, oh, goddamnit, there was …
The current divided down below, on both sides of a cottonwood washed onto a shallow place.
Sam swam like hell for it. Either he’d get washed onto the tree, or sucked down and held against its branches, or the water would be shallow and he could stand up.
Gobel powered ahead of him. What was he doing?
Sam angled higher against the current, to give himself a better chance to get onto the tree. If he could get that far. This damn current is killing my arms …
Ten more strokes. Seven more strokes. His arms were failing. Five more strokes.
Big hands seized him, and Gobel stood him up.
Sam stumbled toward the dead tree trunk and heaved himself on top of it.
Paladin was maybe fifty yards above the tree, on the far side. At least she wasn’t going to wash into it. Skinny was hanging on to her tail.
Sam whistled.
Paladin kept swimming toward the far bank.
Sam gave an earsplitting whistle.
The mare looked around.
Sam jumped up and down and waved.
She hesitated.
He whistled a third time.
She threw her head up and looked around crazily. Then she turned and swam hard toward the tree, towing Skinny.
Stout crashed into the upstream end of the tree, where the roots were, and disappeared below the surface.
Gobel ran forward, clambered along the roots, and groped downward. He saw a hand flailing above the water a couple of feet over. He flopped to the side and grabbed the bloody wrist. The other hand popped out and gripped Gobel’s wrist. With a loud groan, and with agonizing slowness, Gobel heaved Stout half clear of the water.
Sam helped Gobel haul Stout all the way onto the roots.
Then he saw that Paladin was wading instead of swimming. He ran along the log and splashed out to her.
Skinny dropped Paladin’s tail, stood up in the water, and hung his head.
Shots sounded from the east bank. Two bursts of black smoke spewed into the sky. Half the brigade waved at Sam and Gobel. Sam thought he could hear them cheering.
Scores of Amuchabas stood on the bank, silent.
The two teenage boys were properly hangdog about what they had done. Though Sam couldn’t understand the words, their parents upbraided them loudly about it. His guess, though, was that their fathers would have slapped them on the back if they’d succeeded.
After the tongue-lashing, the boys disappeared into the desert.
That night the boys’ families gave a big feast for the brigade. They made Sam and Gobel gifts of obsidian knives with beautifully carved bone handles. Sam was pleased. No blade was as sharp as obsidian.
As they walked back toward the trapper camp, Jedediah said, “I’d still keep an eye on that horse.”
“Damn straight,” said Sam.
They never saw Stout or Skinny again.
“One spring for every camp, people say.” Sam was having a last drink of river water before bed. “It will be a tough trip. I’d bet one spring will be dry.” Sam swigged deep from the horn. “They say ten camps, but a lot can go wrong.” His face modeled worry.
“Oh, you men,” Meadowlark said. She was sewing new moccasins.
He slipped into their robes. She set down her work and followed him.
The next morning, while the men gorged themselves on leftovers from the feast and started scouting for available women, Sam and Jedediah worked. Despite not being chiefs, some Amuchabas were more important than others, and they had more horses and more women. Curiously, they were uninterested in trading their horses for all the plunder in Jedediah’s packs—blankets, tobacco, knives, even the odd musket didn’t interest them, not compared to their horses. So the day’s work came to this: Jedediah traded three of his poorer mounts for two that were in good shape.
On another day they traded for lots of the squash, pumpkins, melons, corn, and some of the bread the Indians ground and baked from the oversized beans of the honey locust. They found two of the Indians from the other side of the desert, and one from the mission, and got good directions to the first spring to the west. Ten or twelve sleeps to the mountains, these men agreed, and only one sleep beyond the mountains to a mission of the Spanish friars, with lots of horses and cattle and every kind of food imaginable—the Spaniards had abundance upon abundance, the Indians said.
But the Indians didn’t want to go near the mission. Sumner had an opinion about that. “Probably them friars treats ’em like niggers,” he said.
On other days Sam and Diah just talked in front of Sam’s lodge. As Meadowlark came and went, busy sewing or making food, Sam tried to find out Jedediah’s long-term plans. The captain said he intended to cross the desert ahead to get into a better country. Beyond that, he didn’t know. Probably he would find mountains that would support hunters, and go north until they found beaver.
“I don’t know where that might be.”
So Sam forced it out. “Meadowlark’s carrying a baby.”
She made a stern face at him.
“How long?”
“Due in April,” said Sam.
“Don’t talk about me like I am not here,” she told her husband.
Diah waited.
“This whole thing scares me,” Sam admitted.
Meadowlark made a wry face at the captain.
“Maybe she and I could stay here,” Sam said, “with the Amuchabas.”
“You know better than that,” Diah said.
“Listen, both of you.” Though she said “both of you,” she was glaring right into her husband’s face. “I want to see the ocean. I told you to start with, I came on this trip because I want to see the ocean. It’s right over there”—she pointed west across the bleakest country Sam had ever seen—“and we’re going.”
After two weeks with the Amuchabas the brigade made a raft, ferried men, animals, and equipment across the river in two trips, and started for California.
The first day was bad. The soil was sand. The vegetation, only a single kind of bush with oily leaves, sparsely placed. The mountains, absolutely barren, mere piles of rock, sometimes rust-colored, sometimes black. They looked to Sam like burnt meat.
They found the first spring without trouble, but everyone was uneasy.
Paladin had gained some weight with the Amuchabas, but was still a little gaunt. She needed sharp watching.
Diah squatted down by the fire with Sam, Gideon, Flat Dog, and Sumner. Meadowlark and Spark came and went like ghosts. “What do you think?” asked the captain.
“Ze horses, they be not strong enough for this,” said Gideon. “Not yet.”
Diah looked at Flat Dog, but the Crow only shrugged.
Sumner pitched in, “Only white people crazy enough to do this with gaunt horseflesh.”
Diah only nodded and looked at Sam.
Sam said, “Looks bad. I don’t like it. Fact is, we don’t know where we’re going.”
They waited. Sam knew the captain had decided before he sat with them.
“In the morning we head back,” Diah said, and rose. “Recruit the horses more and get some guides.”
They returned, and while the men rested in the village, Sam found potential guides, teenagers who grew up near the Spanish settlements, and brought them to Diah. They talked a long time. The men were
helpful with information, but didn’t want to go.
“They’re afraid,” Sam told Diah. Meaning, We ought to be afraid.
“It isn’t the desert that worries them,” said Jedediah. “It’s the Spaniards.”
Sam had to admit this seemed true.
Jedediah reminded the teenagers that they would see their families. He offered to pay them handsomely.
After another quarter moon and a few days more, the brigade set out on the raft again, this time with guides.
Sam said to Meadowlark, “That desert looks nasty.”
She answered with a grin, “We’re going to see the ocean.”
Six
Across the Desert
It was November 10 in this epic year of 1826, Jedediah and his clerk Rogers calculated, that the outfit launched across the burning sands.
Man and beast plodded, head down. The day was warm. Sam wondered what it would have been like in the summer. Blistering, damn sure. No place for anyone to be riding or walking. He forced a smile in Meadowlark’s direction. She kept things simple, which was good. Their job was to walk across a stretch of desert to a spring, and to lead a pony dragging poles. Meadowlark’s mind didn’t wander. It didn’t fetch up goblins or run wild with pictures of crawling across these sands, throat drier than a corn husk. It stayed with what was real.
Flat Dog’s eyes glazed over from time to time, but he made no complaints, not even the joking cracks of the other men. His only comment, ever, was, “Where we live, in Crow country, we got lots of beaver and plenty of water.”
Sam patted Coy. He guessed that the coyote had long since decided his people were crazy. This country was almost too arid for mice to catch. But Coy licked his sore ribs and stuck with his partner Sam.
Paladin walked along smoothly. She had an easy, effortless walk. Maybe she was the strongest of them, but Sam never forgot that she couldn’t speak if she started hurting.
Late that afternoon, Sam was walking alongside Diah in front and thinking that the first spring would be in sight soon. From behind, Gideon bellowed, “Where’s Spark?”
Sam looked up and down the line and didn’t see Gideon’s new mate.
Jedediah stopped everyone. Sam, Flat Dog, and Gideon walked the length of the brigade. All but Gideon were afoot to save the animals. They stood in the full sun, heads down, minds on nothing but water and shade. No sign of Spark. With air-dried voices they called to the knolls and bushes in the near distance. No answer.