by Win Blevins
Now Sam fingered silently along with Red, trying to hear the tones.
“Forward again with the left hand ’round.”
Sam thought maybe he was finding some right notes.
“Do-si-do.”
So progressed the evening in a spirit of fun. Within an hour Sam was having a grand time, proposing and playing tunes he knew and following along on those he didn’t.
Fiddlin’ Red introduced a very old Irish tune called “Bridget O’Malley,” calling it “a sad tale of lost love.” It began,
Oh, Bridget O’Malley you left me heart shaken
With a hopeless desolation, I’ll have you to know
It’s the wonders of admiration, your quiet face has taken
And your beauty will haunt me, wherever I go.
Evans declared, “It’s time, Sam. It’s time. Now.”
Sam nodded.
“Ladies and gentleman,” called Evans, “we have a special song tonight, one made up by Sam and meself and some of our companions who now languish far away across the mountains and deserts, in California. The hero of our song is one of our companions, for ’tis called”—he lifted his voice now—“‘The Never-Ending Song of Jedediah Smith.’”
A general huzzah went up. Men clapped Diah on the back. The poor captain looked sheepish.
Sam sang and Evans piped. Sam’s main virtue as a singer was being loud enough to make the words understood.
THE NEVER-ENDING SONG OF JEDEDIAH SMITH
We set out from Salt Lake, not knowing the track
Whites, Spanyards and Injuns, and even a black
Our captain was Diah, a man of great vision
Our dream Californy, and beaver our mission.
(chorus)
Captain Smith was a wayfarin’ man
A wanderin’ man was he
He led us ’cross the desert sands
And on to the sweet blue sea.
Red had caught onto the tune and joined in vigorously, giving it a new bounce.
Now Sam told in music of the red-rock desert, which was so dry (one of his favorite lines) they got to drink mud. He mentioned eating fleas, then told how the brigade got lost, and Diah looked in the Good Book for a map.
Every few verses they came around to the chorus naturally, and all sang together—
Captain Smith was a wayfarin’ man
A wanderin’ man was he
He led us ’cross the desert sands
And on to the sweet blue sea.
Now Sam sang of the getting to Californy, and how the Spaniards threw a big jamboree for them. The captain, however, proved too moral ever to lift a skirt. This brought lots of laughter and more claps on Diah’s back.
The only trouble was, Sam sang, the brigade couldn’t get home. There were mountains chock-full of snow in the way, and beyond the mountains the driest desert any man ever saw.
That brought Sam to the verses they’d written only this afternoon. He hoped desperately that he could remember all the words.
Diah, he stared at the mountains and snow
How to get over, I think I may know
A few men I’ll take, and hay for the mounts
We’ll fight and we’ll claw and come through when it counts.
His words gave no hint of the desert beyond
The fierce sun, the hot winds—mirages, not ponds
They wandered but found only dry watercourses
And finally, half starved, they ate up their horses.
Singer, piper, and fiddler now pitched into the chorus. Sam was hugely relieved at remembering the words so far.
One terrible noon, a man fell to his knees
No more, he cried, just leave me—please
They shoveled the sand clear up to his chin
We’ll be back, they promised, don’t never give in.
After three stumbling miles, they came to a spring
They drank deep, they splashed—oh, water was king
Diah took back a kettle, good as his word
They knew then they’d make it—Die? That’s absurd.
Captain Smith was a wayfarin’ man
A wanderin’ man was he
He led us ’cross the desert sands
And on to the sweet blue sea.
They spied out the Salt Lake, and thought journey’s end
Their hearts were for meat and whiskey and friends
When the camp saw them coming, they gave out a hoot
Got out the cannon and fired a salute.
So the story went ’round, from white men to red,
Jed Smith may be pious, but living or dead
He’s a captain to ride with, a partner to side with
A leader with art, and a friend of big heart.
Captain Smith was a wayfarin’ man
A wanderin’ man was he
He led us ’cross the desert sands
And on to the sweet blue sea.
As the song swung to its final cadence, the audience yelled and applauded.
Evans held up his hands for quiet. “Don’t you think it’s finished yet. This song can ne’er be finished. As long as Jedediah Smith lives and leads, there will be more verses to sing his praises, and maybe to twit him a bit.” Evans paused and then yelled, “Hurrah for the captain!”
Everyone hurrahed.
Jedediah actually grinned.
Late that night Sam went to the brush hut happy. Music made him happy. But loneliness, here in the blankets, made him miserable. He reflected that out of nearly two hundred men, probably the only ones without the comfort of a woman’s love tonight were Jedediah Smith and himself.
Twenty-two
Laughing
Hannibal guided his friend to a fire with lots of meat for the midday meal. Sam needed all the eating he could get. He didn’t know how bad he looked, his fair skin piebald with sunburn and peeling, his body gaunt, and his eyes haunted. That was the worst of it, the eyes.
Hannibal wanted to help. That was simple, and it was his way. Not that he made gestures to save the world. No, to help those he came across and liked, that was challenge enough.
In Sam’s case he felt responsible: “Follow your wild hair.” Truth, but sometimes truth led to deep and searing pain.
Hannibal was patient. He knew that part of the grief, the blackness Sam brought back from California, kept him from speaking.
After gorging themselves, Hannibal suggested a dip—this was a blistering July day. They walked down to the lake, stripped off their clothes, and jumped in. They played a little, the usual tomfoolery, but then they sat on the sandy bottom, up to their chests in the cooling water, and looked around at the mountains and the sky. Hannibal liked skies like this, which you saw only in the West—a dome of perfect deep blue, unscratched by clouds, unblemished by even a slight variation in color from horizon to horizon.
Maybe it was the water, maybe the comradeship, maybe the glory of the sun-struck afternoon, but after a while Sam talked. Halting, true talk.
“Meadowlark died birthing our child.”
Hannibal waited, openhearted.
As Sam told the whole story, Hannibal could tell he was keeping it as short as he could, striving to stay on an even keel. He heard how Meadowlark and everyone lost weight and got weakened on the crossing of the deserts, how Sam worried about her, because she should have been eating for two. How they recuperated at San Gabriel Mission. How she got swollen hands and feet as the baby’s time approached, and her shortness of breath. How Sam took her to the mission at Monterey to get the best doctoring that could be found.
Then Hannibal heard the true words of darkness: convulsions, cesarean section, and finally the fatal childbed fever.
He knew them well. Hannibal was a man acquainted with death. As a young man he had struggled with cynicism and anger at the world. Now, knowing how full of pain the world was, he simply tried to live happily each day. It was a resolution notably difficult to keep, but he practiced resolutely.
Sam surprised
him. “Esperanza, my daughter,” he said, and fell silent.
A girl child, left in California. That’s why Sam would be going back to California with Jedediah. Hannibal considered this. To his way of thinking, Jedediah Smith walked far from Hannibal’s path—he filled life with duties and struggles. A man like Jedediah could never do well enough to be satisfied with himself, and would make others feel the same.
In a lurch of haunted words Sam went on with his story. It was water scrapes, starvation, and other troubles, bigger ones than even other mountain men had lived. What Hannibal was paying attention to, though, was the listlessness in the way Sam told it. When emotion did come through, it was self-castigation.
I am truly, truly sorry, my friend.
At the end of the story Hannibal studied his companion’s face. Sam sat next to Hannibal, chest-deep in precious water, on a glorious summer day, yet his spirit was mired in a black swamp.
Hannibal understood, and could think of nothing to say.
“Why don’t we swim across the lake and back?” It was a big lake.
“Why?” said Sam.
“Why not?” said Hannibal, with tease in his voice.
Afterward, as they slipped into their clothes, Sam seemed not as weighted down. Not until he spoke the next words: “I’ll be going to get Esperanza.”
Hannibal nodded. He wasn’t much on have-to’s, but Sam was right about this one.
They sat on the bank of the lake, turned around now, watching the sun slide behind the western mountain, saying little, and speaking idly when they did. Mostly they just soaked up the colors and the company. Hannibal thought, These are the times that make life good.
Sam felt the days dribbling away from him. The rendezvous was good. Right now everything else felt hard. The deserts between here and California. The thirsting and starving. Seeing Flat Dog, Julia, and Esperanza, and what they would remind him of.
Jedediah said the brigade would leave in a couple of days.
Sam told Hannibal how gloomy he felt about leaving. Hannibal said the solution was to play hard and learn to laugh again, really laugh.
This morning Sam was putting the finishing touches on another horseback trick, a cartwheel from his handstand on Paladin’s back to standing up on her rump, then back to the handstand. It was fun. Work was fun, play was fun, anything that wasn’t remembering was fun.
Soon Hannibal applauded. Sam had the cartwheel down.
“Now let me show you,” Hannibal said, “what comes next.”
He led Paladin out of the ring and Ellie in, then jumped onto his stallion’s back in a sitting position. To his cluck Ellie started loping.
Up Hannibal went onto his handstand. Then, with astonishing ease, a somersault in the air onto Ellie’s rump.
Over and over Hannibal flipped, grinning, playing.
At last he jumped down.
Sam was bedazzled. “God, I want to do that.”
“You will, you will.”
They watered the horses and splashed them off in the lake.
On the way back to their rope corral Sam said, “Why don’t you come to California with our outfit?”
Hannibal walked a few steps musing. Finally, he said, “Sure. Why not? Sure.”
A quick conversation with Jedediah and it was set. He was glad to have a man as reliable as Hannibal along. The brigade would be a dozen and a half men, and they’d leave day after tomorrow.
When they woke up on their last full day of rendezvous, after a late night of music and dancing, Sam and Hannibal built a small fire, ate, drank strong coffee, and looked into the coals. The air was cool—mountain mornings were chill, even in July.
Hannibal could see something was on Sam’s mind. He’d been mulling, quiet, all yesterday. Now it finally came out.
“All that reading you did, all those classics you learned … Anything there to help me … square up to death?”
Hannibal was taken by surprise. After a moment he thought it was a good surprise.
“Maybe.” He reached to a pile of kindling and picked up a twig. He held it up to Sam and then tossed it on the fire.
“It was a twig. Now watch it become something else.”
The twig burst into flame, then slowly subsided to coals and then to white, papery flakes. Sam watched the spurts of light, the pulses of darkness, the shift from wood to ash.
“It was a piece of wood. Fire changed it into something else, heat and light.”
He sorted his thoughts. “You can see this in all the old religions. Fire creates and destroys. Everything in the world is being created and destroyed, all the time.”
The expression on Sam’s face hadn’t improved much.
Hannibal tossed on another twig. “Look at it burn. This is what happens to every one of our days. We burn it up. By night it’s gone, behind us for good. And the next day we burn another twenty-four hours.
“Here’s the way of it. Life is change. Everything changes every day. You’re somewhere else. You bend down for a last drink at night, a first drink in the morning, but the water in the creek isn’t the same. What you drank from yesterday is way downstream. The wind is gone on, haunting someone else. The friend you rode with yesterday has taken another trail.”
He sat waiting, looking straight at Sam. “You had a dad, and lost him. You had a best friend, Blue Medicine Horse, and he got killed. You got Meadowlark, lost her, got her back, lost her for good. Tomorrow you will gain, and lose, who knows what.” He paused. “Never-ending, ever going on …”
He sighed. “If it matters, I don’t think we go away for good. Nothing goes away. Like the stick, we change. Into what? I don’t know. Maybe energy.”
He thought. “You can look at this one of two ways. You can grieve the loss of what you had yesterday. You can welcome what comes today.”
He couldn’t tell what effect this was having on Sam.
“Love it or hate it—that’s your choice, pure choice.
“Me? I embrace it. I bear-hug it.”
Hannibal waited a long time, sneaking an occasional sideways glance at Sam. “Any of this help?”
Sam didn’t answer.
For today they’d made two decisions: First, they would train all day, because tomorrow they’d be on the trail. Second, they’d see if Paladin would do her tricks to music.
“I’ve never been quite sure,” said Hannibal, “whether the horse follows the musicians, the musicians follow the horse, or some of both.”
First they did liberty work with Ellie. Sam piped a four-square tune, “Old Zip Coon.” Hannibal gave the stallion hand signals, and the horse’s hooves seemed to make drumbeats in time with the whistle.
“Actually,” said Sam, “I think we’re both following your hand signals.”
“Now let’s try Paladin doing it along with Ellie. Maybe the example will help.”
It worked great. Sam whistled, Hannibal waved signals, sort of the way a band conductor would, and Paladin kept perfect time—forward four beats, stop on the fifth, backward three beats, prance to the side in rhythm, stop on the fifth beat, curvet in rhythm.
It felt like a miracle to Sam.
They worked and worked. Sam did his handstands, and before noon he managed to stay up for two full circles while Paladin cantered around the ring.
They were so happy they took a short lunch break.
After lunch they worked first with Coy. Now he was good at doing somersaults while Paladin walked. They signaled the horse to a lope. Coy had caught on to staying on during a lope, and even to sitting up. When he tried to somersault, though, he fell off every time.
After a while, Hannibal said, “Let’s quit before he gets discouraged.”
Toward the end of the afternoon Sam piped while Hannibal did somersaults on Ellie—bounce off the rump, spin in the air in a tuck, and land back on her rump when she was about a horse length forward.
The stunt amazed Sam. Hannibal did it exuberantly. They even began to draw a crowd. Robert Evans came up and start
ed piping with Sam.
Hannibal somersaulted as if he were in a trance.
“Come on,” said Evans. “You get up there, Sam. I’ll pipe, and we’ll get a regular circus going.”
Sam ran for Paladin. He got her into the ring and in position behind Ellie.
“I’ll give the signals,” said Hannibal. It would have to be by voice.
Hannibal called out, Evans whistled the tune up to the sky, both horses started cantering in a circle, and both men launched into their tricks.
Hannibal bounced into the air, flipped, and came down with perfect grace. Sam rose to his handstands, cartwheeled back to the hindquarters, and jumped forward into another handstand.
’Round and around they went. Evans picked up the tempo, and the horses followed his rhythm. Faster and faster they cantered, ’round and ’round, faster and faster each man soared into the air, came back to his horse, and soared again into the air.
Sam was laughing from the center of his belly, rich and real.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Rendezvous series
One
THEY WERE LATE arriving, and the last of the sunlight spread red-gold across the summits of the western mountains. A fresh, damp smell lifted up off the river, a promise of a blessing as evening came to the desert. A breeze stirred among the willow branches along the banks. The finger-shaped leaves caught the light of the sun and tossed it, red-gold-green, into the soft evening air.
Along the top ridges the cinnamon mountains turned the color of candied apples, and grew amethyst shadows on their lower slopes. The Colorado flexed and muttered on its journey from the mountains to the sea.
Sam Morgan looked around. Again he found the desert strange and alluring. He said to himself, What the hell am I doing here?
“On the adventure,” said Hannibal. Sam’s friend had an irritating habit of reading his thoughts.
Village leaders were riding out to meet them. It would be impolite to go closer to the village before courtesies were exchanged. Impolite even though these were the Mojave villages, where the fur brigade had spent a couple of weeks last autumn and knew the Indians were friendly. So Sam, Hannibal, and Captain Jedediah Smith sat their mounts in this place. Sam cursed. He squirmed in the saddle, itchy from his own sweat after the long ride. His pet coyote, Coy, sat in the shade of a creosote bush and panted.
