Santa Fe Woman

by Gilbert, Morris

  Mark ducked his head. “I know it,” he muttered, “but what am I going to do? I’m not fit for anything, Aunt Kate!”

  “Well, whatever is ahead of you won’t be handed to you on a silver platter. We’re all going to have a different kind of life, but that doesn’t mean it has to be bad.”

  Mark Hayden stared at his aunt. She had a steadiness about her, a calmness, that he envied. She alone of the family had known no anxiety or fear at all of what lay ahead. He started to say something but realized that whatever he said wouldn’t mean anything. “What did Father say about all this?”

  “He doesn’t know about it, and I don’t think he needs to unless you want to tell him yourself.”

  “I’ll do that. It would get back to him anyhow.”

  “It’s always best to face up to the truth. You’ve got to get home and clean up. Your father’s bringing a guest home for supper.”

  Mark stared at her in disbelief. “A guest for supper? What do you mean? I don’t think any of us are really in the mood for having jolly parties for guests.”

  “I don’t know who he is,” Kate said calmly, “but I want you to go home and clean yourself up and try to be a little bit more positive, encourage your sisters. You’re a man, Mark—so act like one!”

  * * *

  ALBERT BLANCHARD WAS IN his midfifties, approximately the same age as Leland. The two of them had been in college together, but it was obvious that Blanchard’s life had taken a different road. He was weathered, his face was deeply lined. His hands, they all saw, were hard with calluses. He was wearing a snuff brown suit and heavy boots that had not been polished in recent memory. He had a bushy beard that covered the lower part of his face, and his eyes were black and lively. He had a husky voice, and from time to time he would break into a slight stutter.

  Leland had introduced him as simply an old friend from his college days, and all of them were wondering why Leland had chosen to bring him home. It was the first guest they had had since the blow had fallen. Kate had plunged in at once and made a good supper. It consisted of thick fried pork chops, red potatoes, creamed peas and onions, fresh baked bread, and a variety of cheeses and fruit for dessert.

  They were having dinner in the smaller and less formal of the two dining rooms. After they had had their dessert, Leland leaned back and said, “I haven’t heard from Albert in a long time, but I got a letter from him a few months ago. In the letter he told me about a venture I might be interested in. I wasn’t interested at the time, but now I think I’d like for you to hear about it. Maybe you’d like to tell them about it, Al.”

  Al Blanchard brushed his whiskers back to take another sip of the strong coffee. He set his cup down and looked around the table. “Well, I don’t know whether it’s something that will appeal to you or not, but here’s what it is. I guess maybe you don’t know about Santa Fe. It’s a trading center just this side of California. Up until now Spain has owned it, and, I’m tellin’ you folks, she was plumb cutthroat in her taxation! The only way to get any goods there was to go through Vera Cruz, and then the merchandise had to be toted two thousand miles away on pack mules. Well, the cost of all that transportation, the tax, and Spanish merchants there brought the price of goods up some-thin’ fearful. A piece of calico that costs a few cents a yard in Boston sells there for three dollars a yard.”

  Mark leaned forward, his face alight with interest. “Why, that’s an unheard of margin of profit.”

  “I reckon so,” Blanchard nodded. “But it’s so. I took one load myself. It’s a hard tough trip, but I made some money on it.”

  “How far is it?”

  “About eight hundred miles from Missouri, but maybe you heard about the revolution down in Mexico.”

  “I read a little about that,” Kate said. “The Mexicans won their independence, didn’t they?”

  “They sure enough did, ma’am, and that’s changed things pretty sharp. Santa Fe’s wide open now. They ain’t got no other way to get goods except to have the Spanish haul them in from San Francisco, and the Spanish are downright lazy. They won’t be doin’ much haulin’. So, like I told Leland, it’s the right time to jump in and make some money.”

  “I don’t know exactly how to get there,” Jori said uncertainly.

  “Well, look, I got a map right here. It ain’t the best, but you can all come and take a look at it.”They all got up and gathered around the map that Blanchard took from his inner pocket and unfolded. “Right here,” he said, “is Franklin, Missouri, right in the western border. You see this river here? That’s the Kansas River. The trail follows that until it gets to the Arkansas River, and then it hooks around and goes all the way to La Junta. Then you turn north and run along the Sangre de Cristo Mountains right into Santa Fe. Santa Fe is right on the Rio Grande River, don’t you see.”

  “That river goes all the way to Texas.”

  “Yep, it shore does, but it ain’t quite as safe goin’ up from Texas. You have to cross through territories jist crawlin’ with the Comanche and Cherokee and Shawnee. Best to stay away from those red devils if you can.”

  Jori listened as Blanchard spoke glowingly of the profit to be made, but finally she said, “But, Mr. Blanchard, we don’t know anything about freighting.”

  “I didn’t reckon as how you did, Miss Jori, but I thought you might hire a good man to take the train through.”

  “Why don’t you do it, Mr. Blanchard?” Kate said. “You’ve made the trip.”

  “Takes a young man and a tough one. I might have done it in my younger days, Miss Johnson, but I’m past that now.”

  Leland suddenly said, “We always were pretty honest with each other in the old days, Al. I’m going to tell you now that we’re pretty desperate.” He laughed self-consciously and said, “I’ve got to find something to do. So far nothing has turned up. I feel a little bit like a man in the middle of a bridge that doesn’t have any ends and all I can do is look down at the water.”

  “Why, it ain’t that bad, Leland,” Al Blanchard said warmly. “You’re a young man. You can start all over again. I’ve had to do it twice. Lost my shirt in two ventures. But if I can do it, you can too.”

  “How much would it cost to get a train to Santa Fe?”

  “Well, it depends on a lot of things. You’ve got to buy wagons and lots of mules or oxen. Then you got to buy the trade goods, and then at the other end of the line you have to pay the mule skinners off. It will take a bunch of them.”

  “How big should the train be?”

  “I’d say maybe four big wagons, maybe twenty men countin’ the mule skinners. Somebody to take care of the herd and cook. Oh, and you got to have about fifty mules.”

  “That seems like a lot for just a few wagons.”

  “Don’t hurt to have more in case you get jumped by the Pawnee. They raid up north sometimes. Takes pretty tough men. I’m just guessing, but I’d say somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars to do it.”

  Leland did not speak, but his eyes met Jori’s. Both of them knew they would not have that much money even after everything was sold. “I want to thank you for sharing this with us. You’re sure you’re not going to get involved with it?”

  “No, I got another venture or two.”

  “But you’d be willing to give us advice,” Kate said, “in case we decide to do it?”

  “Why, I’m mighty free with my talk, Miss Johnson,” Blanchard smiled. “I have to throw this in though. It’s a risky business. It’s dangerous and it’s hard, but the rewards are great.”

  Blanchard did not stay long after supper, and after he left the family sat around talking for a time.

  “I don’t see how we can do it, Papa,” Jori said. “In the first place, we don’t have enough money. And in the second place, if we did have enough money, it would take it all to make the trip. What would the rest of us do?” Jori paused. “We’d have to live, and that trip would take several months.”

  Kate sat quietly listening, and finally
she heard her brother-in-law say, “Well, I didn’t tell you about this, but I have a job offer with the Carter office.”

  “What kind of an offer?” Jori demanded. She had not forgiven the Carter family for advising Gerald to cast her off.

  “Well, I’d be a clerk, more or less, a junior clerk at first.”

  “I won’t let you do that!” Jori exclaimed. “We’ll find something.”

  “Well, we can think about it for a little while, but Al says if we’re going to do it, we’ll have to get started by April. And that’s not much time. It seems impossible to me.”

  The rest, more or less, agreed with him, all except Kate. She said nothing but spent the night seeking God in prayer.

  * * *

  KATE WAS LATE FOR breakfast. When she came down there was a light in her eyes, and she said, “I want to tell you about a dream I had last night.” The rest of them were seated, but she stood looking at them with her eyes bright. “I dreamed of wagons with canvas tops, just the kind that Mr. Blanchard was talking about. They were pulled by mules.”

  “You think that means we’re supposed to go into this?” Mark asked. He shook his head doubtfully. “I think we need more than that.”

  “There’s more to the dream,” Kate said. “I dreamed that there were people walking alongside the wagons, and when I got closer, I saw that it was us. It was our family. We were all filed alongside the wagons headed to some place.”

  “It was just a dream,” Mark mumbled.

  “No, it wasn’t. As I was watching us go along the trail with the wagons, I heard a voice. It said, ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.’”

  “That sounds familiar,” Leland said, shaking his head. “I can’t place it.”

  “It’s from the twelfth chapter of Genesis,” Kate said. “It’s in the first verse. God said that when He called Abraham out of his home into a new country.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jori said. “You’re not suggesting that all of us go join that wagon train, are you, Aunt Kate?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m saying. I believe it’s what God wants us to do.”

  “Why, we can’t do that,” Mark exclaimed. “We don’t know a thing about wagon trains!”

  “We can do it,” Carleen said, her face alive with excitement. “We can all go!” Her eyes were dancing, and she got up and stood next to Aunt Kate. “It’d be just like the frontier that you told me about.”

  “It will be pretty rough, honey.”

  The argument went back and forth with only Kate and Carleen in favor. Finally Leland stared at his sister-in-law. “Are you telling me we need to move to Santa Fe?”

  “Why not? If we stay here, we’ll soon run out of money,” Kate said. “Besides, if Al Blanchard is right, we can make enough money to live there comfortably. Once we make the trip, we can send somebody back and make another trip, and there’s bound to be something to haul from Santa Fe back on the return journey.”

  “But we’re city people!” Leland protested.

  “So was Abraham—from the city Ur of the Chaldees.”

  Mark threw up his hands. “It’s crazy!”

  Finally Leland said, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “The least you can do, Leland, is to ask Al Blanchard what he thinks about it.”

  “All right. We’ll do that, but I can tell you right now he’ll think we’re as crazy as I do.”

  * * *

  AL BLANCHARD LISTENED AS Leland explained their proposal. He lifted his eyebrows with surprise, but he was not in shock. “Why, I never thought about you takin’ your family, Leland.”

  “I never thought of it either, but we’ve got to do something,” Leland said. His face was tense, and he faced his friend squarely. “Can it be done, Al?”

  “Well, shore, with the right man I believe you could make it.”

  “What’s the country like around Santa Fe, Al?” Jori asked.

  “Why, ma’am, it’s the finest country you ever seen. Air is clear as any you’ll ever breathe.”

  “But it’s in the backwoods!” Mark protested.

  “Well, it’s not Little Rock, but if you establish a freight line, you can move back here and run it from this end or else you could move to San Francisco. That’s citified enough for you.”

  The talk went on for a long time, and finally Al shook his head. “One thing is shore. Whether you make it or not depends on the man who runs the train, the wagon master.”

  “Do you know anyone you could recommend, Al?” Leland asked.

  Blanchard shrugged his shoulders and seemed to be running through something in his mind. Finally he said, “Well, if I was gonna go into this myself, I reckon the man I’d want for my wagon master would be Rocklin.”

  “Rocklin? Who is he?”

  “Well, he’s all sorts of a fella.” Blanchard shrugged and turned to face Jori, who had asked the question. “The thing about him is he knows the country better than any man in the West, I reckon, and he’s tough. He’s done some mule skinnin’ himself, and he knows how to boss men. But you can’t get him.”

  “Why not?” Jori asked. “Would he be too expensive?”

  “No, it ain’t that, ma’am. See the thing is, he’s in jail in Fort Smith.”

  “Is he an outlaw?” Carleen cried at once, her eyes brightening.

  “Well,” Blanchard grinned and faced the young girl, “that ain’t quite been settled yet, missy. Rocklin’s kind of on the edge of a razor. If he falls off on the left side, he might be an outlaw. If he falls off the other side, he won’t be. He’s been kind of waverin’ between the two, don’t you see? But the thing is, he ain’t never killed nobody that didn’t deserve it.”

  Jori straightened up and stared at Blanchard with incomprehension. “He’s a killer?”

  “I reckon you see things different here, ma’am. You’ve lived in a civilized place all your life, but Rocklin, like lots of other fellas, has lived among the Indians and the worst men you can even think of. He’s had a rough life, ma’am, and he’s had to fight to save his own skin.”

  “I think we need a tough man,” Kate put in. “But if he’s in jail, he couldn’t lead the train.”

  “Oh, he ain’t charged with anything serious, Miss Johnson. He’s just in the city jail there in Fort Smith. It ain’t like he’s in the federal pen or nothin’.”

  “What’s he in jail for?”

  “There was some liquor involved and a fight, and a man got shot. I ain’t sayin’ he didn’t deserve it, but he had some influential friends. If you go see Sheriff Oswalt and explain it all, I think he’d be willin’ to put Rocklin on probation.”

  That was the essence of Blanchard’s visit. He had offered to write a letter to the man called Rocklin if someone decided to go look into the matter, and just before he left, he cautioned them. “I’m warnin’ you, the Staked Plains ain’t like Little Rock.”

  As soon as Blanchard was gone, Jori said, “My head’s swimming. I don’t know how to think.”

  “Well, I do,” Kate said. “I still believe God wants us to go.”

  “You may be right, Kate,” Leland said. “It’s a big thing, and it’s so—so unorganized.”

  Kate suddenly laughed. “You think like a stockbroker, that everything has to be organized.”

  “Well, someone has to make plans.”

  “Of course they do, and that’s what we’re doing. But it’s not going to be like a trip to Central Park,” Kate said. She thought for a moment and said, “You know, I imagine when Moses struck the rock and the water poured out; some folks were complaining because he didn’t use a fancier stick.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Aunt Kate?” Mark asked with irritation.

  “It means we’re gonna have to use any kind of stick we can get to keep this family together, and this is the one that I see is in front of us.”

  The talk went on for over an hour, and finally Leland shook his hea
d. “Remember the preacher last week preached on Moses, how that he prayed for his people when they were in battle. He held his hands up, and as long as he held them up, Joshua and the soldiers won. But when his arms grew tired and he dropped them, the army of Israel failed. Well,” he said in a weary voice, “I’m like Moses, only it’s my thoughts that are so tired that I can’t seem to hold them up.”

  At that instant Jori Hayden knew she had to step to her father’s aid. Mark was too unstable. She was the oldest child and the strongest in many ways. She said strongly, “I think Aunt Kate’s right. We’ve got to do this. I’ll go to Fort Smith at once and talk to the sheriff there about getting this man Rocklin.”

  “But he’s an outlaw, or an almost outlaw,” Mark protested.

  “I’d use Blackbeard if I had to to make a new life for ourselves, Mark,” Jori said. “I’m leaving first thing in the morning!”

  Chapter Four

  THE NARROW-GAUGED, WOOD-BURNING ENGINE that had pulled the four cars from Little Rock to Fort Smith had passed out of the flatlands into mountain country. Jori ignored the cinders that came in from the window that some of the passengers opened despite the cold and enjoyed the green forest of firs and pines that covered the sides of the Ozarks.

  The train pulled into Fort Smith emitting a shrill banshee scream, and when Jori saw Fort Smith itself she was disappointed. The town was a rough collection of false wooden fronts, and a wide central street had been churned to a sea of brown mud by late rains. Getting up from her seat, Jori moved stiffly down the aisle, thinking grimly How could anything good come out of this mudhole? The conductor, a bulky, red-faced individual with a pair of piercing blue eyes, reached up to take her hand, grunting, “Watch your step, miss.” She took his hand, placed her foot on the steel portable step, and gave him a brief smile of thanks as she stepped down.

  A quick look revealed a shabby building that had once been painted a brilliant turkey red, but time had weathered it to a faded brown. She waited until her suitcase was tossed off by a tall brakeman, then looked around to find someone to carry it, but there was no one. Only two people had gotten off the train, an elderly woman who was greeted by a younger couple and a short, rotund soldier wearing a rumpled private’s uniform. He gave her a careless glance, then headed for town.