by Win Blevins
He could make his move now. Sam’s way was to be daring, to act without planning everything out, to strike whenever opportunity seemed to open and ride out the storm. The edge always went to the bold.
Yes. He could take the guards out quietly one by one. He could grab The Celt and Paladin, swim the river, and ride hellaciously for California. He might also run the horse herd off. If he did that, the Mojaves would either have to take time to gather the horses or chase a well-mounted man on foot.
He’d be giving up the chance to get more rifles back, and to get even with Red Shirt, but…
He got to his hands and knees. He felt it rise in him. I need to act. He saw what to do. Guards had to drink, especially on a sun-blasted day like this one. He would wait by the river and take the first man in silence.
The second…?
It took time to slip back into the ravine, circle the herd on the upstream side, and get into the cover of the brush alongside the Colorado. He dropped to his knees and drank deep.
Coy lapped gingerly. He never seemed to need much water.
Sam surveyed the ground, which would become a killing field. The other advantage here, he noted, was that the rush-rush of the current would cover the sounds of his movements.
He slipped back through the willows, searched for the guards, and got a nasty surprise.
Four guards stood together talking.
Sam waited and watched. They chatted. Reed and Limp waved, walked away toward the river.
Damn, they were changing the guards. In the middle of the day.
This thought gave Sam a chill. As he’d slipped down from the ridge to the river, he’d crossed paths with the arriving guards.
Reed and Limp strolled casually through the brush, worrying about nothing.
Sam put a hand on Coy and kept low in a clump of willows. Reed was carrying The Celt. Sam ached to jump out and grab his rifle. But it didn’t feel right.
Reed and Limp drank from the river, looked around, laughed about something, and headed along the bank toward the village.
Sam followed on the sly.
HOURS LATER, BACK at his bivouac, Coy resting and Brownie grazing nearby, Sam added up his information. He knew the spread of the brush huts on the sand flat thoroughly. Now he’d seen that Reed’s hut was on the northern end, and he had a pretty wife with a child on the way. The wife had a mole next to her left nipple, what among white women might be thought of as a beauty mark.
The Celt was tucked into the hut—not lying directly on the sand, Sam hoped. Reed sat on a cottonwood log with other men, all of them straightening arrow shafts. Beauty Mark puttered around the hut. Then she went to work the fields by the river with other women. Sam followed them, bush to bush. For a moment the hut was unattended. But Sam’s white skin and white hair would be spotted.
He slipped back here to rest and wait for the cover of darkness. Surely The Celt would be in the hut tonight. He pictured the dome of brush. It was outlying; it faced east. A fire pit blackened the sand in front of the door, evidently where Beauty Mark did the cooking. A shovel leaned next to the entrance. That shovel irked Sam—Jedediah had traded shovels to the Mojaves just a couple of weeks ago.
It would be dicey to slip into the hut with the couple sleeping there, dark or not. And if he woke them, he’d have a hell of a long run to reach the herd and get Paladin.
Would the Mojaves guess the horses were a target? He thought so. Then they would boil around him like hornets. He couldn’t take the chance.
On the other hand, he did have a trick that might let him get Paladin out of the herd…
He shook his head to clear it of doubt. Hell, maybe the Indians would have a get-together tonight, some sort of ceremony, and his rifle would be unwatched.
One comfort—the camp dogs wouldn’t get excited about Sam or Coy. After the days spent around each other, the dogs were used to them.
Oh, didn’t he miss his pistol now? He was thinking of how the Mojaves panicked at the firing of two rifles on the day of the slaughter. But he traded his pistol for Brownie, who was essential.
Well, he thought, maybe I’ll just have to do what I like to do, start the trouble and then improvise like crazy.
On that note he took a cat nap.
THE NIGHT WAS chill. Lying on a boulder, Sam hugged himself. Coy was all eyes on the village, and Sam was riveted on a single hut, Reed and Beauty Mark’s.
Curiously, the horse herd was more closely watched than the village. Looked like enemies in this country were more likely to steal horseflesh than to attack such a big camp.
Everyone was asleep, had been asleep for hours. Sam didn’t see a good opportunity yet. Damn, If I don’t get a chance by first light, I guess I’ll just go like a berserker. That was a word he’d learned from Hannibal the magician.
Oh, cuss and to hell with it.
Sam stood up on the boulder. Now.
He looked at the moon, sagging down the western sky, full-bellied. Now was the time. Maybe the moonlight would be enough to find The Celt.
He slid off the rock, and Coy leapt down. Sam padded slowly, carefully toward the hut. He kept balanced. He avoided touching the limbs of bushes. He made sure of every foot placement. After every step he waited and listened.
He circled the hut and approached the back side. The moon shone bright here. The willow leaves, dry on the branches, let speckles of moonlight into the hut.
A dozen feet behind the hut Sam squatted. He could make out nothing in the interior but shadows. He couldn’t even be sure where the sleeping figures were. If they were like Crows, Reed and Beauty Mark slept at the rear of the lodge.
He studied the area above where the couple’s bed probably was. Crows, Sioux, most Indians of the plains and mountains hung their rifles from leather thongs at the rear, well off the ground. Maybe…
He thought about it.
He covered his face with his hands so his eyes would let in more of the faint light. He popped his hands away. Yes, he was pretty sure. Parallel to the earth, three or four feet off the ground, at the very back of the lodge he could see a long, rodlike shape.
The Celt.
He hardly dared think. Could he do it? Slip both hands silently through the branches? Yes. The branches bent to shape the lodge stood well apart. Hold The Celt with one hand and cut the thongs with the other? He probably could. Slip The Celt back out of the branches? That would be tricky. But what a hoot, if I can get away with it.
He cautioned himself. When I get it, I can’t fire it. There was no telling whether the muzzle might be blocked with something.
He stood up again. Step by step he eased forward. Coy stood to one side, sniffed, and watched curiously. Every step closer, every step closer.
Now he could almost smell the sleeping couple, almost hear the deep, rhythmic breaths. He could hardly believe that The Celt was within reach.
He snaked his right hand through the lodge branches. Silence. Had he done it?
He grasped the rifle.
Except it wasn’t The Celt. He had his hand on…a flint spearhead.
Sam smothered a laugh and almost peed on himself.
He was holding Reed’s spear!
“Mmmm!”
Every hair on his body squiggled.
He jerked his hand out and leapt back.
Someone spoke.
Sam jumped. He breathed and calmed himself. A female voice. Sounded like “ark-fart,” but he knew only about twenty words of Mojave.
He padded slowly backward, watching the hut.
Now the man’s voice sounded.
The woman’s.
He lost his poise—he turned and sprinted back behind the boulder. Coy trotted at his heels.
He crouched and listened.
Nothing. He seemed to have disturbed no one. No movement came from Reed and Beauty Mark’s lodge, and no sounds loud enough to hear. He tried to melt into the rock.
Silence. Waiting. Breathing again.
Soon a surprise. Across the vi
llage he saw tinder flame up. An infant fire lit the face of a woman bending over it.
He watched and waited, every sense super-alert.
Beauty Mark came out of her hut, got down on her knees, and started making a fire. The way she was going about it, it looked like she would singe her bare nipples.
Around the village other fires spurted up, a dot of orange here, a flicker there.
Beauty Mark hung a metal pot over the flames on a tripod, a pot the fur men had traded to the tribe. She poured water from a clay jug into the pot. She dumped something else in.
Sam understood. He’d seen the women picking beans yesterday afternoon. Now they were boiling them. They probably did the cooking early so they wouldn’t have to lean over fires during the heat of the day.
Sam noticed that night was lifting, the sky easing from black to gray. First light.
He made a very simple choice. Go berserk!
He gripped his tomahawk in one hand and his butcher knife in the other. He sprinted toward the hut pell-mell, bellowing as loud as he could.
Beauty Mark jumped back in alarm.
Sam ignored her and went for the lodge. He leapt with both feet onto where he thought Reed would be stretched out. His knee hit what felt like a raised head.
He jumped into the air and came down ass first on the center of the lodge. Branches splintered. Sam and the lodge dome banged to earth.
From inside Reed roared. Beauty Mark was shrieking.
The broken lodge branches rippled. Sam could see Reed crawling toward the entrance. He kicked and hit a butt. He looked sharp, kicked again, and seemed to catch a neck.
Beauty Mark jumped onto his back.
Sam roared and threw himself over backward onto the branches. He came down square on Beauty Mark’s chest, and heard the breath whumpf! out of her.
Reed was crawling out of the smashed entrance.
Sam clubbed him with the flat side of the tomahawk.
Reed got to his feet but staggered sideways. Sam slammed the tomahawk blade at his shoulder.
Beauty Mark came at Sam clawing.
He put his hands on both of her breasts and shoved fiercely. She went flying backward.
The whole camp was aroused. People howled. Men ran toward him with weapons in hand.
Sam spotted The Celt’s butt plate sticking out of a hide wrap on the dirt floor of the hut. He heaved the rifle out and ran like hell.
Two arrows whistled by his pumping arms. Coy dashed at the attackers, barking ferociously.
Sam whirled. The Mojaves slowed down or stopped. He raised and pointed The Celt. The warriors hurled themselves to the ground, behind bushes, or behind lodges.
Fooled you! The rifle wasn’t even cocked.
Sam whooped and ran. In an instant Coy was alongside him. They dodged around bushes. For now the brush would save him. No one could get a clear shot.
Fifty yards into the brush Sam turned hard to the right to head for the herd. Paladin…He ran like a madman. Paladin will save us.
He jumped into a dry wash, bounded across, and scrambled up the other side. There he faced a grove of cottonwoods—and forty or fifty armed and angry Indians.
He stopped. Oh, hell, I can’t berserk my way out of this one.
He jumped back into the wash and fled upstream.
A dozen, two dozen, three dozen Mojaves jumped in and called out their war cries. Others ran along the banks. They came at him like baying hounds.
Come on, feet, do it.
Sam sprinted for everything he was worth. I can’t slip out of this one…
When he put one foot on a fist-sized rock, it turned and he went down hard. His shoulder plowed a groove in the gravel.
Rising to a knee, Sam saw a huge Mojave bearing down on him. The man cocked his spear.
Sam lifted The Celt.
A gun roared.
Blood squirted from the Mojave’s chest, and he crashed to the ground like a felled tree.
What the devil? A gun? He almost checked The Celt’s muzzle for smoke.
From the left bank, the direction Sam came from, a cloud of white mist floated over the wash.
All the Mojaves ran back toward the village.
A head rose over the bank.
Hannibal?
Another head appeared.
Hannibal on Brownie!
The Delaware jumped Brownie into the wash, galloped to Sam, and skidded to a stop in the gravel. Sam hopped up behind Hannibal.
The horse labored out of the wash and ran toward the herd. As they went, Hannibal reloaded his pistol.
“We’ve got them buffaloed,” he yelled, grinning hugely. “You all right?”
“The horse sentries heard that shot.”
“We’ll take them.”
Brownie and Coy topped the next to last ridge and plunged into the ravine.
A sentry loosed a flock of arrows at them.
Sam and Hannibal dived off the horse in opposite directions and scrambled behind bushes. They were too close, maybe twenty-five paces, and too exposed.
Pain lightninged up Sam’s arm.
His left hand sprouted a shaft and feathers. He yelled, and his knife clattered to the ground.
A second sentry rose on the ridge, pointing a rifle at Sam and Hannibal.
Sam cackled loudly. “What do you mean to do,” he hollered, “scare us to death?”
Hannibal stood up, leveled his pistol, and shot the arrow warrior square in the chest. His body lifted and dropped backward.
Instantly Sam and Hannibal charged the rifleman.
The fellow threw the rifle down and ran.
From the top of the ridge Sam threw his tomahawk at the man. It hit him handle-first on top of the head and bounced forward. The Indian hightailed it for the hills.
Hannibal grabbed the abandoned rifle.
Sam whistled piercingly, low-high.
Paladin tossed her head and cantered toward them.
Hannibal smiled. “Magic.”
Sam touched her muzzle, jumped joyously onto her back, grabbed her mane, and rubbed her ears.
Brownie trotted up to join Paladin. Hannibal grabbed the rope bridle and vaulted on.
“Let’s go!” Sam yelled, and kicked Paladin toward the river.
Hannibal said, “I’m going to get something for our trouble.”
Quickly, they separated a group of seven horses from the main herd. Hannibal drove them toward the water. Sam dashed Paladin at the rest of the herd, shouting and waving his hat. They broke like a flock of sparrows and ran in all directions.
Sam put Paladin to a gallop after Hannibal and the seven stolen horses. From the bank he saw their heads bobbing up and down in the river. Without missing a step, Paladin leapt into the shallows and soaked Sam. In a few steps she was swimming. The cool of the river was a blessing.
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Author’s Note
This is the third novel in my Rendezvous series, which tells the grand story of the Rocky Mountain fur trade at its height, 1822–38.
All the novels follow closely the actual doings of the mountain men. The first volume, So Wild a Dream, told of the trappers in the employ of General Ashley in 1822–23, from their first land crossing to the Rockies to their return, in fragments, to Fort Atkinson. The second novel, Beauty for Ashes, mirrored the adventures of the same outfit in 1824–26, through the first two rendezvous. This book tracks the expedition led by Jedediah Smith to California in 1826–27.
The curious reader can find excellent historical accounts of this important journey, the first crossing of the continent to California. I recommend Dale Morgan’s Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West and The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah Smith: His Personal Account of the Journey to California, 1826–1827, edited by George R. Brooks.
These trappers endured great hardships, wandering through the deserts of the Southwest without knowing where their next water might be, or food, even without knowing where they were going, or why. Luckil
y, they left two journals that tell the story of the expedition almost day by day, in such detail that history buffs have been able to retrace the outfit’s route through central and southern Utah, and across California’s Mojave Desert on the way to the West Coast, then across the Sierra Nevada and the high deserts of Nevada and Utah on the way back to the Great Salt Lake.
These journals, written independently by brigade leader Jedediah Smith and his clerk Harrison Rogers, do more than give us a full picture of the details of daily living, even to where they camped. They voice eloquently the interior life of the young explorers, especially Smith’s, their hopes and fears along the way.
Dancing with the Golden Bear is a personal story woven carefully around the hard framework of the brigade’s adventure. I have stuck closely to the journeys in describing how the trappers traveled from Cache Valley through southern Utah and crossed the Mojave Desert to the pueblo called Los Angeles; how they spent weeks there, under threat of detention; how they trapped their way north along the Sierra Nevada, and how Jedediah Smith led a small party across the mountains and back to rendezvous. Even the episodes of being buried in sand are taken from Smith’s journal.
Sam Morgan, his wife Meadowlark, her brother Flat Dog, Gideon Poor Boy, Grumble, Abby, and most of the Californios in this book are fictional characters. I hope that through them the reader can not only know what happened, but see, hear, taste, and feel it.
Smith, Robert Evans, Silas Gobel, John (the black slave who takes the name Sumner), and others are drawn from history. Though I have changed nothing about them that is known, I have filled out their characters and interior lives considerably.
My view of Smith has changed over the years and now departs from tradition, even from my own earlier account of him. Now I see complexities in his character (some will call them faults) that escaped me as a younger writer. Debate is welcome.
I’ve made one particular speculation: Smith said that his purpose in heading south and west from the Salt Lake was only to find new country for hunting beaver. I believe (as other writers have) that in fact what drove him was a half-acknowledged yearning to see new country, to venture ever into the unknown, simply for the joy of exploring. So in this novel I have supposed that he knew, when he set out, that he was bound for California.
