Heaven Is a Long Way Off (20 page)

I
N THE CHAPEL
Grumble gave Tomás a useful device the boy had never heard or dreamed of. Grumble quickly explained its normal use, which made Tomás look wildly at Sam and grin like a fool. Then Grumble explained how Tomás was to employ it in front of the police, which sobered the young man hugely. For a moment Sam thought Tomás was about to leap into fear and darkness, but then the boy seemed to make up his mind to see the thing through.

Grumble spoke to Sam briefly about the pistol kept in his belt. When Sam understood, he made certain adjustments to it.

“Act it out,” said Grumble. “Both of you. An actor sells his reality to the audience.”

Sam nodded. Tomás didn't. “It's the only way,” Sam said.

Tomás pursed his lips.
“Bueno.”

Then the three of them knelt and prayed, or pretended to. Sam worried. He eased off on that when he thought how scared Tomás had to be.

They heard Paloma's voice down the hall. “Put your weapons away. Not in my house.”

She appeared in the doorway. “The police have come for Tomás.”

“Admit them,” said Grumble.

That was unnecessary because the officers were already pushing past Paloma.

The candlelight in the chapel was dim, and the officers needed a moment for their eyes to adjust. Sam noticed that their pistols were in their belts.

“Tomás Guerrero,” said the tall, fat officer, “you are under arrest for assaulting Señor Emilio Durán.”

The three of them rose from their knees.

“The boy has confessed,” said Grumble, “and is now ready to yield his fate and his soul to God. He will go with you peaceably.”

Sam scowled at Tomás, drew his pistol, and held it against his ribs, assisting the police.

Tomás looked crazily from the policemen to the pistol next to his heart.

“The devil!” he screamed, and swung wildly at Sam's face.

Sam's pistol boomed. The chapel filled with white smoke.

When the smoke cleared and Paloma brought a candle close, everyone saw this tableau: Tomás lay on the stone floor with a shirt bloodied over his heart. Sam stood over him, pistol in hand, with a nasty expression on his face.

Paloma gasped.

“I told you the kid was no good,” Sam said in a snarl to Grumble.

Grumble knelt over the prostrate figure and started to pull the shirt away.

At that moment Tomás coughed violently, and blood gouted out of his mouth.

The two officers looked at Grumble. Everyone knew what that meant, a chest wound that made the victim cough up blood.

“Don Emilio is avenged,” said Grumble.

“And I paid good money for that little bastard,” said Sam.

Grumble felt for a pulse and then spoke to Paloma. “He's gone. We'll get the priest in the morning.”

Paloma nodded.

The officers headed back to Santa Fe to give the good news to Don Emilio.

 

B
ACK IN THE
dining room they had another dessert, more coffee, more wine, and by popular demand a repeat of the performance from Sam and Tomás, the actors, and from Grumble.

First Grumble, the stage director, showed everyone a condom. “They are made from the intestines of lambs,” he said.

“Mother Mary,” said Paloma, “I heard of them, but…”

Then he showed them his vial of chicken blood. He poured some blood into the tip of the condom, knotted it off to the size of a finger joint, and clipped the remainder away.

Immediately, Tomás popped the balloon into his mouth and held it with his back teeth so everyone could see.

“When you clamp down,” said Grumble…

Tomás did just that. Chicken blood squirted out, making everyone laugh.

“But the wound,” said Flat Dog.

“Let me see that,” said Paloma.

Tomás did. It was trivial. Still, Paloma clucked and put water on the stove to boil.

“Explain to them,” Grumble said to Sam.

“I took the lead ball out of my pistol. All that was left was the powder and cotton patch.” He showed them one of the patches normally used for firing a flintlock firearm, a disc the size of the tip of a finger. “When I pulled the trigger, the gun fired. Only the cotton blew out.”

Grumble said, “Which hit Tomás hard enough to break the skin, but…I've done this before.”

“Broke it quite a bit, I'd say,” Paloma called from the kitchen.

Now Tomás leapt in eagerly. “I had the other condom in my hand”—he held his palm out—“and when Sam shot me, I clapped my hand hard against my chest.”

They all pondered it.

“Lots of blood,” said Tomás.

“The art of illusion,” said Grumble.

“And now,” said Sam, “what are we going to do with this little criminal?”

“I go with you.” Then he repeated, for his first sentence in English, “I go with you.”

Sam smiled. But then he thought,
I've already got a kid.

No one spoke until Hannibal did. “Tomorrow we're going to bury an empty box outside the chapel. Then we're going to buy supplies for rendezvous. And the next day we're going to head for rendezvous. Tomás will be riding with us.”

Tomás grinned.
“Bueno,”
he said. “
Bueno.
I am a mountain man.”

“W
HAT IS IT?”
Hannibal asked Sam.

“Nothing.”

Hannibal turned in his saddle and looked back at the casa. “She's standing under the covered entrance, watching us ride away. She's lovely, and the bushes leafing out on each side make her more lovely. The red
ristras
are swaying a little in the breeze.”

“I feel like I've spent my whole life riding away.”

“Is that it?”

It wasn't just Paloma. They'd said good-bye last night to Grumble and Sumner. The two gamblers intended to get back to California, Grumble said. Sam didn't know when he'd see them again.

He kept his eyes straight ahead. “I've got bigger things to worry about.” He swept a hand to indicate all that was in front of him. There was a herd of ninety horses and about three dozen horse colts and fillies. A score of the horses bore packs of trade goods. Two riders led these packhorses on a string, Flat Dog and Gregorio, a hand Paloma had loaned to them. Out in front of the herd was a boy, Tomás. And beside Sam and Hannibal rode Julia, dragging a travois with the thirteen-month-old Esperanza and six-month-old Azul. They were heading down the Santa Fe River to where they would turn north along the Rio Grande, toward Taos.

“Look like enough?”

“Yes, but your mind is back there.”

Sam still didn't turn his head. The last thing he wanted was to see Paloma standing in the sun on a fine May morning watching him go.

Sam forced his mind to practical things. “We can't push these horses now—too many haven't foaled yet.”

“And when they have, we go easy to let the little ones keep up.”

In fact, Paladin herself was one of the mares that hadn't foaled. Sam was riding a stallion he'd trained during the winter, the one that acted like a knothead and needed some kinks worked out.

“What else are you worried about?”

“It might be hard to hire good men in Taos.”

All the Nuevo Mexicanos had assured the beaver-hunting Americans that Taos was full of men who had traveled up the Rio Grande and all the way to the Salt Lake to trap beaver, and knew the way well. These men, people assured them, were easy to hire at reasonable wages. Sam's thought was,
They damned well better be.

“What else?”

“It's a long way to rendezvous with a lot of Indians along the way who'd like to run our horses off.”

“And the rivers will be running full this time of year.”

They both looked up at the high peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind them. Only now was the snow beginning to melt. Soon it would make the rivers flood.

Sam breathed in and out big. “None of this is a big problem.”

“We hope.”

“Tomás.”

They looked at each other.

It was a litany of trouble. Kidnapped, maybe witness to murder. Definitely a witness to rape and suicide. Then attempted murder of his own. Police attempting apprehension. A desperate trick that happened to work. A wound.

“He's got a lot to sort out,” said Hannibal.

“Truth is, we don't know what the hell he might do.”

“That's right.”

Sam looked across at his friend.

“So you worry too.”

“Sometimes. But I have a motto I live by.”

What's that?”

“Rideo, ergo sum.”

Sam shook his head. Whenever Hannibal quoted Latin, it felt like he was a wizard out of a kid's story, with secret knowledge no one else had. “Meaning?”

“I laugh, therefore I am.”

Sam laughed. “And if I took up that motto of yours right now, I could stop worrying?”

“Also you could ride back and kiss that beautiful woman good-bye. I saw the way you two parted. Uneasy.”

They poked along for a few steps in silence. The last words Paloma Luna had said to Sam were, “Don't come back for a few years. I need the time.”

Maybe she was still outside watching. He looked back, but the covered entrance to the house was in shadows. “Rideo whatever,” he said to Hannibal.

Sam wheeled the knothead and galloped back to the gate and to the casa. Coy sprinted at his heels.

Still standing on the porch, Paloma smiled and cocked her head at his appearance. “I'm back,” he said. He gave her a rip-roaring kiss, and she returned it lustily. She laughed, and he galloped away.

When Sam caught up, Hannibal said, “All right to be going?”

Sam thought and said, “For the first time in two years I'm heading the right direction. Home.”

 

“I
T'S TWO TOWNS,”
said Sam.

“One Indian, one Mexican,” said Hannibal.

The herd was grazing on good grass downstream, not far above the Rio Grande, watched by Flat Dog and Gregorio.

“The pueblo is beautiful.” Tomás seemed mesmerized by it.

It was a ramble of multistory buildings, adobe the color of the reddish tan sand and windows and doors painted the light blue of the robes of the Franciscans who had ministered there for two centuries. The Mission San Geronimo stood firmly in the foreground, topped by three crosses. The buildings beyond were a jumble, yet at the same time came together in an attractive way, like boulders rising on a mountain ridge. Ladders jutted out of the kivas, the chambers where the men gathered and the ceremonies began.

“Crosses on a background of kivas,” said Hannibal.

“How do they do it?” said Sam. “Take the old religion, scramble it together with Catholicism, and make sense of it?”

“Let's get to it,” said Hannibal.

Below the pueblo stretched the Mexican town, a knot where business got done, strings of adobes thrown here and there, and cultivated fields beyond.

In the knot they found the place easily enough, Young and Wolfskill's store. Ewing Young was a Tennessean who had made good money trading between Missouri and Santa Fe and now proposed to make more money by leading parties of trappers throughout the mountains of the Southwest. His store and home were the nerve center of the beaver trade in Taos. Since this country was under the sovereignty of Mexico, however, he had no standing. Governor Armijo took every opportunity to oppose him. So Young had recently gotten Mexican citizenship. Or such was the scuttlebutt Sam and Hannibal had picked up in Santa Fe. Everyone told them that if they wanted experienced guides or trappers, Ewing Young was the man to talk to.

Mr. Young, however, was not in the store. The clerk was a small, sandy-haired teenager. Since he didn't offer his name when Sam and Hannibal introduced themselves and Tomás, Sam asked.

“Kit,” the boy said softly.

In answers to questions he was polite but not forthcoming. No, he didn't know when Mr. Young would be back. Yes, he allowed that the town had some men who had trapped the country north on the Rio Grande and west toward the Colorado River, maybe quite a few.

Sam thought the youngster was partly stuck between being a kid and being a man. “Kit,” he said, “may I buy you a cup of coffee?” Sam had noticed the potbellied stove and the pot on it.

Kit apologized for his lack of hospitality and poured three cups, no charge. Sam, Hannibal, and Kit sat around the stove like friends. Sam noticed that none was poured for Tomás, who now roamed the room.

“Call me Sam and him Hannibal. Have you done some trapping yourself?”

It turned out that the young man had a good deal of experience trapping. As he spoke, slowly, spending words like hard-earned coins, he admitted he'd been over much of the country to the south and west. Mr. Young was a strong leader and determined as a man could be. He'd taken brigades all the way to the Colorado out at the Yuma villages, all up and down the Gila and Salt Rivers, up on the San Juan…

Sam revised his estimate of the boy's age from sixteen to eighteen, a small but sturdy eighteen. “You like that life.”

The boy nodded. His eyes never sat still on the men he was talking to, but skittered about the store restlessly.

“How about you?” asked Sam. “You've been on the San Juan yourself?”

Kit nodded.

“You know the country—why don't you come with us?”

“My time is promised. I'm going to Chihuahua.”

A trading caravan then. Sam supposed it would take slaves. He wondered if Kit cared.

Hannibal was interested. “Is Mr. Young sending a caravan to Chihuahua?”

Kit shook his head no. “Another outfit.”

“Will you give us some names then? Men you can recommend?”

“Yes, there's…”

Kit pounced and landed right on top of Tomás.

Quick as an eel, Tomás slipped away and shoved his assailant forward.

Kit half banged into a counter, wheeled, ducked under a punch, and tackled Tomás. They crashed to the floor and skidded across it.

Sam and Hannibal got to them at the same time and pulled them apart. Kit was almost more than Sam could handle, though Sam was stronger and half a foot taller.

“Look in his pouch,” snarled Kit. “He's a damn thief.”

Hannibal held out a demanding hand.

Tomás hesitated, then slipped the pouch off and slammed it into Hannibal's hand.

Hannibal let him go, and Tomás stalked off into a corner.

“He's got a fire steel in there,” said Kit.

Hannibal fished inside and held up the steel.

“Come here to rob me, did you, boy?” The voice was a knife blade.

Tomás just glared at Kit.

“Tomás asked me if he could buy a steel,” said Sam smoothly. “I've been teaching him to start fires with mine.” The second part, at least, was true. “We'll be buying that and some other gear.”

Kit looked Sam straight in the face, and the eyes said Sam was fooling with the truth. He set the fire steel next to a pad on the counter.

Kit sat and seemed to calm down. He said, “All right, I'd say Antonio Romero is a good man. He lives over at…”

Sam copied down the name and instructions.

“Then there's Esteban…”

As Sam wrote, he grinned sideways at Hannibal. He was proud—this was the first practical use for his winter's learning.

In ten minutes they were totaled out and on their way out the door.

Sam turned back. “Kit, I'm sorry for what happened here.”

The youngster nodded.

“Why don't you come to rendezvous sometime?”

Kit waited, maybe deciding. “I might do that, Sam.”

“What's your last name?”

“Carson.”

Before they got to the Romero house, Sam and Hannibal spoke sharply to Tomás about stealing. “Besides,” Hannibal said, “didn't you see what that young fellow is like? He'd be a wildcat to fight.”

“I said I'm sorry,” repeated Tomás.

That night Sam and Hannibal tossed words back and forth about Tomás. He was off kilter. No telling what he might do. They looked at each other helplessly.

 

T
HE NEW HANDS
were Esteban—a Mexican in his thirties, an old man by mountain man standards—and Plácido, his teenage son. By the time they led the party across from the Rio Grande to the San Juan River and on west, Sam knew the older man was as good a pilot as people in Taos said. He knew the rivers and mountains, knew how to travel in Indian country, and altogether made a good hand. He was worth the fifty dollars he was getting. Plácido? Sam would rather have had another grown man. Both father and son planned to hire on as trappers for the fall season with other outfits when they got to rendezvous.

It was a good time for Sam. He rode behind the herd every day, balancing Esperanza on his lap for as long as she was willing to stay each session. His daughter was learning to talk. She called Julia Mamá. She addressed both Sam and Flat Dog as Papá, which stung.

Good times, though, were to be enjoyed. Spring was gentle and graceful on the land. Since they didn't go over any high passes, the snow was melted into life-giving fluid. Wildflowers sprouted everywhere. The days were warm, the nights crisp. The creeks were running full in a country that otherwise could put a lot of distance between drinks of water. Some days were windy, and they kept an eye out for sandstorms. But they moved along lazily, not rushing the newborn horses. They had no Indian trouble. They thought about the profit they would make at rendezvous. Life had a savory taste.

One evening Sam walked down along the river with Esperanza holding onto his finger. Soon she saw a prairie chicken and ran at it. The damned chicken didn't fly, but just ran around a log and froze. That wouldn't stop Esperanza. Around the log she scampered, knees pumping.

Now the chicken flew—about six feet, back over the log. It went into its disguise as a rock or a clump of dirt. Here came Esperanza back the other way. Sam didn't know whether she wanted to hug it or whack it.

They played this way for half a dozen rounds. Sam had never seen such a crazy prairie chicken, though they were well known to be dumb. Esperanza would have kept on all day, but finally the chicken flew up to the lowest limb of the fir.

Esperanza immediately began to crawl onto the tree. Unfortunately, this was half possible. The trunk was tilted sharply out over the river and barely clung to the bank. Sam grabbed his daughter, sat her down on the log, and took guard position at the base of the fir. She stood up, pointed at the bird, and started talking to it, not words but sounds—squeals, hums, coos, every kind of sound but a word.

Funny that fir—the current had undercut the bank, and some of its roots were exposed. By next spring it would join the river, float downstream, and end up on a sand bar when the flood waters dropped back. He watched the waters froth by. They went on forever. The Crows said only the rocks live forever, but that wasn't true—the waters lived forever, charging down from the mountain peaks, marching out over the plains, joining together with other rivers drumming their way to the sea. There they got picked up, carried back to the peaks, and started the forever circle again.