by Win Blevins
Now Abby, Grumble, and Sam took turns telling a story that gave Meadowlark’s imagination a whirl:
When they were floating down the big river, Abby carried a lot of gold coins sewn into her dress, or into something called a corset, apparently worn under the dress. (Meadowlark didn’t know why anyone would wear clothes under a dress, especially the sort of dress Abby wore, covering everything but face, hands, and shoes.) The boat crew saw her sewing the coins in and decided to steal them.
When Abby, Sam, and Grumble went out for an evening of drinking in cantinas, three crewmen caught them in a dark street. Two of the crewmen were huge brothers, Elijah and Micajah. Elijah, the leader, pointed a shotgun at the three friends. Since these friends were a woman, a teenager, and an old man, the thieves thought the conquest would be easy.
Coy woofed, as though it wouldn’t have been easy if he’d been there.
But Abby had a trick. She lured Elijah into coming close enough to feel the gold coins and make sure they were in the corset. As instructed, she held her hands up on her head. Suddenly a tiny knife was in her hand, and Elijah’s throat was cut. In the fight that followed, Abby shot one crewman with a “lady gun” and chased Micajah off by threatening him with the gun. Only Grumble was hurt.
“But not badly hurt,” Abby said to him with a mean eye.
“Not badly,” the cherub said with a smile.
Meadowlark sensed a story here and hoped she’d hear it later.
First she said, “Maybe you will show me this lady gun.”
Abby fetched something out of the big cloth pouch that dangled from one of her wrists. It looked just like any pistol, except that it would fit in the palm of a hand. “Cute, isn’t it?” said Abby.
Meadowlark started to pick it up, but Sam gave a small shake of his head.
“And the tiny knife?” Meadowlark asked.
Abby pursed her lips. “I don’t want anyone to see where I keep it, but I’ll show you something like it.”
Sam gave Meadowlark a little nod and unconsciously touched the ornament he kept in his white hair.
Abby fished a finger-shaped object from her other wrist bag. It had very rough surfaces on both sides. Meadowlark turned it over and over, then held it up. “Your knife is such a size?” Abby nodded. “But what does it do, this thing, not the knife?”
“It’s an emery board. You file your nails with it.”
She demonstrated.
Meadowlark thought this was far more amazing than a gun or knife. She tried it herself, and it worked wonderfully.
“You may have it as a gift,” Abby said.
Meadowlark made a little squeal of glee. She thought Abby was fascinating.
The six friends had supper, and more brandy, and floated on oceans of glee and laughter through the evening.
Voices woke Sam, loud, harsh voices. They mixed with the other common sounds of the mission, men coming and going, horses clopping or whickering, but he thought he recognized them.
He slipped out of the bed with Meadowlark. He liked the idea of an afternoon nap for her. He was still fretting about her health, and the baby’s. But he napped very lightly, or daydreamed, or worried.
He slipped out into the twilight, Coy at his heels. The sun set early on these short December days. He hated the short days near Christmas. He dreaded his own birthday, on Christmas Eve. Yes, the day he was born, but also the day his father died.
He walked past the kitchen where the Indian women were readying the food, always hot, always plenty. The friars were being very generous to their guests. He wound his way into an obscure, weeded area behind the smithy, where the voices led him.
Three figures—Jedediah, James Reed, and a mission soldier.
Coy barked and ran toward them yipping.
“Coy!” said Sam sharply.
The coyote waited for Sam to catch up.
Sam did not like the blacksmith Reed. Since the brigade got to the mission, the man had stayed drunk. In the months before he had alternated between boiling and cowering, depending on his mood.
But Sam also did not like the rest of what he saw. The soldier stood by with his sword out, and Jedediah raised a whip over Reed’s bare back.
CRACK! Sam shuddered—what did such an awful sound mean about the man’s flesh, his ribs?
“One!” said Jedediah.
Sam walked close. Coy growled. Sam quieted him with a hand.
CRACK!
“Two!”
Sam looked closely at Jedediah’s face. It was fixed in neutrality.
“Three!”
The sound still made Sam jump. Coy was growling again.
“Four!”
Sam was horrified but transfixed. He couldn’t walk away.
“Five!”
Jedediah noticed Sam now. He said, “You. Get gone. You don’t need to see this.”
Sam didn’t move. He picked up Coy in both arms, to calm the coyote.
“Six!”
“All right, stay. Maybe”—he cocked the whip again—“you do need to.”
“Seven!”
Sam turned away from the bloody mess that was Reed’s back. He looked at Diah in fascination and revulsion.
“Eight!”
Perhaps the captain’s eyes showed a hint more than neutrality.
“Nine!”
Maybe they were angry. Maybe they were … self-righteous.
“Ten!”
Jedediah handed the whip to the soldier, who walked away.
Reed didn’t stir.
“Well?”
Sam had no idea what to say. Coy wiggled, and Sam put him down. Coy went close and sniffed at poor Reed’s wounds.
Finally Sam emitted, “Why?”
“Reed, why did you get flogged?”
Reed rolled over onto one side. After a moment he opened his eyes and looked up at the captain, but he said nothing.
“Reed!” Now the voice was itself a lash. “Tell Morgan why you were flogged.”
Reed squeezed out a word, but Sam couldn’t make it out.
“Let us hear it!” said Jedediah. Sam was amazed at how the captain never raised his voice but still charged it with energy.
Reed lipped out the syllables one at a time. “Im-per-ti-nence.”
“Exactly.”
Jedediah walked away.
Sam bent over Reed, but the blacksmith swept him away with an arm. “I don’t need the captain’s pet.”
Sam stood up, looked at Coy, and trotted off. He caught up with the captain. They walked along together for a bit.
Jedediah said, “You’d best watch that coyote. Don’t forget he’s a wild animal.”
When they passed the kitchen, Sam finally spoke. “How did that feel?”
Jedediah’s face snapped toward Sam. After a moment he smiled slightly and answered, “Firm. Distant. Olympian.”
“Jedediah wants us to go to San Diego with him,” Sam told Meadowlark after supper. They’d been guests of the mission for nearly two weeks.
“Why?” said Meadowlark.
He smiled at the difficulty of explaining it to her. “We didn’t ask the Mexicans permission to come into their country.”
He saw in her face what Meadowlark thought: What an idea. No telling what “civilized” people make rules about.
His wife’s thoughts and feelings, whatever they might be, were always ultra-vivid. He smiled at that too.
“Is the ocean at San Diego?”
“Yes.” In fact, he’d heard it was a very fine harbor, well protected against the open sea.
Her eyes sparked.
“We can’t go.”
“I want to go.”
“You need to rest. You’ve walked a thousand miles to get here, not eating or drinking half the time, and you’re supposed to be eating and drinking enough for two.”
She gave him that angle of head that meant he should straighten up and act right.
“We’re not going.”
She whirled away from him.
“We can go to the ocean down at San Pedro.”
She turned to him with a look of immense disappointment, and he didn’t know why.
“Hey, they say the port is poor, but it’s ocean, and they’ll have big sailing ships there.”
“If you say so.”
Sam said lamely, “I’m keen to see it too.”
Her face softened.
“Abby and Grumble want to go with us.”
Now she half smiled.
“There’s something else mixed up in it too.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“The governor, he sent for Jedediah. Wants to ask questions about why we came into California without permission. If Jedediah gets thrown in jail, or sent to face a higher authority in Mexico City, we don’t want to go with him.”
“That’s for sure.” She kissed him.
“And there’s something else.”
He told her about the flogging. He’d kept it inside for two days but could hold it no longer. For some reason, he didn’t know why, it made him ashamed.
He gave most of the details. As he was skipping over just how really bloody it was, she said, “I saw Reed’s back. I helped put a poultice on it.”
Her eyes were sympathetic.
“It … It bothers me.”
“Me too.”
“Why?”
“Because your captain is like that.”
That stung. Sam waited, but she didn’t say anything more.
“I could hardly believe it.”
She waited.
“I asked him how he felt after he did it.”
“And he said?”
“Firm. Distant.” Sam hesitated. “He said ‘Olympian,’ and he’d told me about that. It’s a mountain where the boss god goes and looks down and throws thunderbolts at people who act bad.”
Meadowlark couldn’t help giggling.
“I guess Reed got thunderbolted.”
Meadowlark said, “Men.”
They held each other’s eyes until Meadowlark smiled and kissed him lightly.
Sam said, “I’ll tell him we’re not going.”
“We’ll have fun instead.”
Eight
The Pueblo of the Angels
Grumble and Abby wondered if the Pueblo of the Angels was their long-term place for sport and business. It did have some cantinas, and Abby could start another. “I want to start a fancy place,” she said, “the sort of place they don’t have here. Where rich people will come.”
They were strolling through the town in leisurely fashion, Abby and Grumble, Sam and Meadowlark, Flat Dog and Sumner. “The people with money don’t go to these cantinas,” said Grumble, grumbling.
The friends saw plenty of the rich on their fine horses—and these Mexicans did have good-looking horse flesh. The dons galloped through town wearing huge Spanish hats over their dark faces, serapes over their shoulders, leather leggings, and boots with huge spurs. Flat Dog pointed out a handsome woman in a carriage, apparently with her husband, decked out in splendor. She wore a gown of scarlet silk, jewelry everywhere skin showed, and a high comb mounted in her hair, which was brown, not black. Her fair skin marked her lineage as Spanish, not Indian, surely a source of pride.
“You going to fall in with the style?” Sam asked Abby.
Meadowlark hung on the answer.
“My advantage is in being different,” Abby replied.
“They say,” said Grumble, “that the difference between these dons and ordinary folks is one drop of blood. If you can claim a single drop of Spanish blood, you belong among the gentry. Otherwise you’re a peasant.”
“Hell,” said Sumner, “I’d claim that drop real quick.”
Coy yipped, and everyone laughed.
“You and I must have a talk about what you may do,” said Grumble to Sumner.
The streets were narrow, crooked, and dusty. Both sides were lined with hovels, but there were some proper houses built of sun-baked clay, which the local people called adobe. Probably half of the few businesses were cantinas.
“Plenty of vice here,” said Abby.
“But you can’t separate people from their money if they don’t have any,” said Grumble.
“What about the port town?” asked Sam.
“It looked like a hellhole,” said Abby.
“Can we go to the ocean there?” asked Meadowlark.
Grumble saw the look in her eyes and understood. “Of course. Anything for a beautiful lady.”
He turned to Sumner. “You want to start your apprenticeship now?”
Sumner smiled wryly and nodded.
“All right, the rest of you, go entertain yourselves. I must take Sumner to school.”
“Your great advantage,” Grumble said to Sumner as the others wandered on, “is that people will think you’re dim-witted.”
Sumner gave the white man the eye.
“If I thought that,” Grumble said, “I wouldn’t be teaching you. They’ll assume, because of your color, that you think slowly. It is an enviable advantage.
“So here’s a little game that makes ‘stupidity’ profitable.”
In an hour Sumner had it down pat.
Sam chose a cantina with three outside tables served by a Mexican woman whose black eyebrows bristled like daggers. Sam guessed that she woke up ready for something to be irked about.
He left Coy on a leash with Grumble and Meadowlark.
Sam more or less slid toward a table, appearing to balance carefully. He ordered a mescal, which definitely should have been one too many. Eyebrows went to get it, and when she came back, Sam clumsily hid, or actually failed to hide, a glittering object in one hand.
He tossed the mescal down before Eyebrows could take a step and ordered another to make the show good. Then he started admiring his bauble openly. It appeared to be a gold ring with a splendid ruby, probably a full carat in size, the sort of ring a man would give a very special woman. As Eyebrows approached this time, he slipped the ring clumsily into a velvet pouch.
Sumner sidled in, looking for a table. Sam gave him a foul look. Insolently, Sumner picked the table right next to Sam.
Sam tossed his second mescal down quickly and stood. With a nasty look at Sumner, he stalked out.
In the open on the table sat, temptingly, the velvet pouch.
In the corner of one eye Sumner saw Eyebrows step out the door. She looked after Sam, pivoted, and started to go back inside.
“Señorita!” Sumner cried. Can’t let her miss the little gift.
Eyebrows came toward the black teenager.
“Aguardiente,” said Sumner firmly, meaning brandy.
But Eyebrows had spotted the velvet pouch. She eased slowly toward Sam’s table.
Sumner was quicker. He leaned across and snatched the bag right out of Eyebrows’s claws. He grinned big at her. Then he looked inside, drew out the bauble, and beamed with a delight possible only to the very innocent and dim-witted.
“Ain’t it pretty?” said Sumner in the vile Spanish of peasants.
He tried to slide it onto one of his pinkies, and it fit like a dream. Take the bait, idiot.
“No es tuyo,” Eyebrows said. (It is not yours.)
“Oh, que bonito.” (Sure is pretty.)
“It is the gentleman’s,” said Eyebrows, continuing in Spanish. “He will be back for it.” She held out a demanding hand.
Sumner shook his head slowly, teasingly. “Finder’s keepers,” he drawled.
Instantly, he realized his mistake—I spoke English!
He covered the error with anger. He balled a fist around the ring and rammed it behind his back. “You leave me alone,” he said in Spanish.
“What are you going to do with the ring?” said Eyebrows. “Wear it? If one of the dons or friars sees it, you know what happens? They take it and give you ten lashes, como un ladrón.”
“A thief?” Sumner started to protest and then settled down. “They would,” he said softly. “They would do that
.”
He turned the ring slowly in front of his eyes, seemingly mesmerized. “Finding this would be some luck, ’cept a black man, he don’ get no luck.”
“I’ll buy it from you,” said Eyebrows, shrugging lightly. “A peso.”
Sumner was genuinely offended. This ring was authentic, probably worth a month of a working man’s wages. “A peso? You think this Nigger is stupid? That’s real gold there, that’s a real ruby. This ring, it’s worth twenty pesos, maybe more.”
Eyebrows shrugged again. “You want to eat?”
Sumner ordered a big meal.
While Sumner waited for his dinner, Eyebrows found excuses to stay nearby, wiping tables, adjusting chairs. Finally, she couldn’t stand it. “Let me see that ring,” she demanded.
Sumner pulled the velvet bag out of the big, dirty pouch that hung inside his shirt. Gently, he opened the bag and held the ruby ring out to her. She touched the ruby, but Sumner held on to the ring.
“Give it to me,” she said. “It belongs to the customer. He will come back for it.”
Sumner gave a slow shake of his head.
She lashed him with a look. “Don’t you need money? You want that flogging?”
“Black man always need money,” said Sumner. He seemed to ponder. “I owes a man … I’d like to sell it, but I’m afraid to show it to anybody with enough money.”
Eyebrows bristled off and came back with a big platter of beef and pork cooked in red chile sauce.
“Enjoy your dinner,” said Eyebrows, “I’ll be back.”
In less than ten minutes Eyebrows and another Mexican appeared at Sumner’s table. “Give him the ring,” Eyebrows demanded.
“I won’t steal from you,” said the man gently. He was fair-haired, light-skinned, and so slender, his posture so slight, that at first Sumner took him for a woman. He held a magnifying glass in one hand.
What the hell?
Eyebrows said, “This man is an expert. Let him see it.”
She thinks I don’t know a magnifying glass when I see one.
Sumner drew out the ring and handed it to the stranger.
The man studied it. “This glass is ten power,” he said, “very strong.”
Finally, he handed Sumner the ring and said, “It is real, both ruby and gold.”
With cries of “Gracias” from Eyebrows, the stranger was gone.
