A Long and Winding Road Read online

  They checked on Red and the guitarists in the courtyard. Three more players wandered around performing serenades—Armijo had hired these others spontaneously. The governor loved a baile.

  Sam, Hannibal, and Coy stopped to greet a merchant here, a tradesman there. Several times Hannibal poured from decanters, wine Paloma produced here on the rancho. Occasionally Sam accepted a sip himself, and he was pleasantly tipsy.

  Couples moved rhythmically to the music in the courtyard. Some of them were Santa Fe married couples, others young people courting, others American mountain men swinging any willing women. The custom was that no trapper spent the night alone after a blow-out. Some married pairs huddled here and there, talking and drinking Paloma’s wine. They didn’t entirely approve of the libertine ways of the young women with the Americans.

  “There’s none of the big families here except Armijo,” said Hannibal.

  “The rich don’t like the way Paloma sees things.”

  “The anthropophagi wouldn’t,” said Hannibal agreeably.

  Sam wasn’t sure what that meant. His friend liked to use big words sometimes. He was the son of a Dartmouth professor of classics and a Delaware woman, fluent in English, backwoods American, Greek, Latin, and other languages. For a decade he’d been like a big brother to Sam, or a wise uncle.

  They went looking for their friends the beaver hunters.

  “I haven’t seen Paloma for a damn,” said Sam. “One night here, then she sent me and Tomás to Taos.”

  Coy growled.

  Hannibal knew Sam’s mission had been to get some fine embroidery from a merchant. Tomás’s was to flirt with a certain waitress, Xeveria. While there, Sam enticed Carson, Pegleg, and a couple of other mountain men to ride down from Taos with him just for this event. His promise had been all the whiskey they could drink and a chance to taste the women of Santa Fe.

  The buckskinned men and two gamblers were sitting cross-legged around a keg on the grass in the last of the sunlight. Even on a mild evening like this one, people would soon move inside to the fireplaces.

  “It’s not the same,” said Sumner, “not at all.” The black gambler had a sunny disposition, and the gold and jeweled rings on his fingers flashed. But now he was looking at Tomás beetle-browed.

  Sam paused to hear what this was about. The lingering sun caught Tomás’s agitated face.

  Sumner went on, “If you think Indians treat slaves the way white people do blacks₀”

  “Funny,” said Tomás, “I thought losing your family was losing your family.”

  Sumner gave him an exasperated look.

  “I thought being hauled to another country,” Tomás proceeded, “was being hauled to another country.”

  Sam felt for his eighteen-year-old son. The boy was proud, he was smart, and he wasn’t about to be one-upped by Sumner. In fact, being short and scrawny, he refused to be one-upped by anyone.

  “Listen to me. I am not talking about what was done to you. You know Narbona, that head man of the Navajos, was born a Mexican?”

  “To hell with that,” interrupted Tomás. “When the Navajos come raiding, point a gun at your head,” said Tomás, “you gonna go with them, or you gonna fight?”

  “I kick they ass,” said Sumner in slave talk.

  Coy got to his feet and sent up a peal of yips.

  “Me too,” said Tomás. “What happened to me, I never fortheget it.”

  Sam smiled. Tomás had some oddities in his English, like fortheget for forget and me for my. When Sam tried to correct him, Tomás just said, “I’m smart.”

  Now the debaters all simmered down, happy. Until Pegleg spoke up. “I don’t cotton to it,” he said. He put on a big grin, but he was drunk and slurring his words.

  He got up slowly on his wooden leg and lifted his cup, sloshing whiskey out of it. “I done bought Indian women for my bedroll. I’ve had ’em from this here country, and”—he flashed his eyes at Tomás—“and I’ve had ’em from way south. And I’ve done traded both kinds, from above or below, to the next man.”

  He grinned broadly, looked around at his fellows, and seemed suddenly to take thought about what he was saying. He lifted his cup in a toast, losing more whiskey. “From what I’ve learned,” he said less raucously, “Joaquin and Ernesto look fair to have some fine tumbles around the bed.”

  He lifted the cup as high as he could and poured whiskey straight into his open mouth. After one dribble it was empty. He banged the cup on his thigh and peered around the circle. Then he pounded on his chest. “This here man”—it sounded like he wanted to say white man—“does as he likes, and don’t you fortheget it, boy. Gimme some aguardiente.”

  It was one insult too many.

  From a sitting position Tomás bulled forward and plowed his head hard into Pegleg’s gut. Youth and older man went sprawling onto Kit Carson, who thought he was having a peaceable evening.

  Tomás whacked at Pegleg’s face.

  Carson grabbed both the young man’s fists.

  They glared at each other.

  Pegleg grabbed for his knife, but Sam was quick to put a foot on his hand.

  “Idiota!” Tomás barked in Pegleg’s face. Whenever he was angry, he lost his English.

  Sam and Hannibal pulled the one-legged man a few steps away. “Let’s go somewhere and find you another drink,” said Sam. The thought of Pegleg passed out on the grass seemed good to him.

  “Idiota!” Tomás yelled again at their backs.

  When they’d found Pegleg a bottle of his own, Sam and Hannibal ambled on with Coy. They saw the two bridal couples, clinging together, holding hands shyly, conversing politely when they wanted to be elsewhere. They watched Paloma chatting with some of her guests. She was gravely beautiful, this woman. Sam had met her when he first came to Santa Fe five years ago. Then she was thirty-three and a wealthy, widowed ranch owner, and he twenty-three, a poor trapper, a widower with an infant daughter. Despite these differences, she had seduced him immediately.

  For the last five years they’d had an improvised life together for half of each year. From May to November Sam traveled to rendezvous to spend time with his six-year-old daughter Esperanza and then hunted beaver. The rest of the time he lived with Paloma at the ranch, training her horses by day and loving her by night. Then back to trapping and to rendezvous.

  Paloma spent each year nurturing her ranch. Unable to bear children, she cultivated her lands and animals with a passion.

  Now he was almost twenty-eight, she approaching thirty-eight.

  “You still thinking about how different you two are?”

  Sam looked at Hannibal. Age, social class, money, language, culture, nationality—all had looked like obstacles. “Not any more,” said Sam. He tapped his shooting pouch and smiled at Hannibal. That was where he had the surprise tucked away.

  He sighed and reminded himself of the new song he sang today. “I’m ready.”

  “Let’s drink to the New World.” They did.

  He pictured Paloma and thought of the bond of their passion, and their other ties. Days they spent with the horses, riding, training, and breeding them. In the evenings she read to him classic Spanish love poetry. The poetry became part of their heart life.

  Still, their commitment was partial, half of each year. As far as Sam was concerned, all that was past now. It would change tonight.

  As he looked at her, as he saw the grace with which she raised a wine glass to her lips, heard her soft, throaty laughter, and admired the loveliness of her form, he felt his love like a warmed stone against his chest.

  “Excuse me,” he said to Hannibal.

  He walked to Paloma, acknowledged her friends, and took her aside. He said to her, “I think we’d better rescue the wedding couples.”

  She looked at him quizzically. Coy rubbed up against Paloma’s legs.

  “Fiddlin’ Red,” said Sam, “has been dedicating one song after another to each of the four. They’re trapped.”

  Paloma laughed g
aily. That felt good to Sam. She wasn’t withdrawn now—probably had just been preoccupied with the wedding, anxious about it.

  The two of them stepped forward. “Señors and señoritas,” said Sam loudly enough for all the courtyard dancers to hear, “we hope that Fiddlin’ Red keeps your toes tapping until dawn. It is time, though, to excuse our new brides and grooms. I think they have other hopes for the evening.”

  The dancers tittered.

  “So if you’ll play a processional, Red…”

  To some tune Sam didn’t know, he and Paloma led Lupe and Joaquin, Rosalita and Ernesto toward their casitas. The women knew these homes well—they’d cleaned them thoroughly the last few days, decorated them a little, and provided them with many candles provided by Paloma. But these domiciles were only temporary. Both couples had accepted the government’s invitation to start a new village on the edge of Navajo country. They were starting their married lives as landowners, and were thrilled about it.

  “Good night,” said Sam.

  “God bless you and your unions,” said Paloma.

  Coy mewled.

  The unmarried couple watched the newlyweds disappear into the darkness.

  “I’m still worried about them out at Cebolleta,” said Paloma.

  It was a big volcano, a sacred peak far to the west, that marked the eastern boundary of Navajo land, Dinetah. The government had offered a score of families plots of land in return for moving there. Thus issued forth a political statement to the Navajos—this is ours—and the families got to own land, a rarity for peasants.

  But Cebolleta was far from Sam’s mind. “I want you.”

  She smiled and kissed him lightly. “I have many duties tonight,” she said. “Right now I want to talk to my sister, alone.”

  Rosa Luna Salazar de Otero was the wife of one of the other ricos of Santa Fe.

  Sam frowned at his mistress.

  “Meet me in the courtyard in half an hour, and we’ll dance.” She gave him another peck on the lips and ran off.

  “I wish she’d given me that kiss,” came a voice from the darkness.

  It was Baptiste, sitting in a cottonwood.

  Sam barely knew this trapper, and was curious. He laughed. “Even a peck?”

  “Todo en amor es triste,” said Baptiste, “mas triste y todo, es lo mejor que existe.”

  Sam had to laugh—a French-Canadian sitting in a tree, probably half-drunk, quoting a Spanish proverb. It meant, ‘Everything about love is sad, but sad and all, love is the best thing in life.’

  “I don’t think you’ll have trouble finding love tonight.” Of all the trappers Baptiste was the only one who was classically handsome, and he spoke elegant French, elegant English, and as Sam had just discovered, beautiful Spanish.

  Now Sam said to Baptiste, “You’re a mystery man to me.”

  The French-Canadian jumped out of the tree, shifted his wine bottle to his left hand, and extended his right. “My full name is Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.”

  Sam grasped the hand. “Charbonneau,” he said. “I know your father.”

  “The whole world knows him,” said Baptiste. Sam couldn’t tell whether the French-Canadian was pleased about this.

  Old man Charbonneau and his young wife Sacajawea had tramped along with captains Lewis and Clark on the best-known expedition in the history of the half-century-old United States of America, to the Pacific Coast and back. Sam had heard some of the expedition’s stories from General Clark himself, in St. Louis. The stories made Sacajawea sound useful, but her husband was a braggart, a drunk, and half useless.

  Sam shook his head, looking at the handsome son of the drunk. “Well, I’ll be damned. So how did you get your beautiful Spanish?”

  “I lived in Europe for six years,” he said, “and traveled in Spain.”

  Sam nodded. He took another swig. “Lived in Europe six years. Amazing for the son of a slave woman.”

  “Sometime I’ll tell you a little of the story,” said Baptiste. “Right now I want to find a dancing partner, and you must attend the beautiful Paloma, as you promised.”

  Sam walked, Coy at this heels. Now he was fascinated.

  Baptiste went through the gate and within seconds was dancing with a young woman Sam knew as a seamstress. Sam hoisted himself onto the wall and watched the couples swirling. Fiddlin’ Red’s music pranced through his head. He looked around for Hannibal but didn’t see him. Had his friend already found a woman to entrance him?

  Through a window Sam could see Paloma in the cuarto de recibo, the room for receiving guests, in urgent discussion with her sister. He felt lonely.

  “Not the bedroom, not yet,” said Sam, pulling Paloma toward the kitchen. There he had already made their favorite midnight snack, chocolate milk spiced with cinnamon and sugar, piping hot. He poured them each a cup. He gave Coy a few meat scraps, as he usually did when they had a midnight snack.

  “I am tired,” Paloma demurred, “and I want you now.” She rubbed against him and kissed him.

  Sam knew they would make love tonight. Six months apart, and only one brief night last week. Then Paloma had seemed distracted—she did not even shed her nightgown—yet she had been physically voracious. Now he felt the need for her strongly.

  “First I have something to give you and something to say,” said Sam. They sat at the kitchen table, and Paloma sipped at the chocolate.

  Sam took the gift, wrapped in a beautifully tanned piece of white sheepskin, from his shooting pouch and put it in front of her. “For you.”

  He watched her open the wrapping. Sam had written to his old trapping partner Gideon Poorboy for this extravaganza. Gideon had become a very good silversmith. Sam had sent a letter months ago via New Mexican trappers going to California, and had picked up the finished piece only last week.

  Paloma gasped. “It’s gorgeous,” she murmured.

  From a gold chain long enough for her slender neck hung a large golden ring. Encircled by the ring was the figure of a dove, a paloma, pictured in flight. Its body was silver, to suggest the dove’s gray. Chips of sapphire edged the chips of the wide-spread wings, where they would catch the air. The pink and violet of a dove’s neck were ingeniously wrought in chips of amethyst and rose quartz. And the bird’s single eye was a large, beautifully faceted sapphire.

  “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” said Paloma.

  “Gideon Poorboy made it for you,” said Sam. Paloma had heard many stories about Sam’s friend, even the tale of the terrible night Sam had to amputate his leg.

  “It’s too extravagant,” she said.

  “I asked Gideon for his best work and sent him gold coins,” Sam said. “He sent the coins back. This is his wedding present to us.”

  Her head snapped up. “His what?”

  “Paloma Luna, will you marry me?”

  She looked at him long, and he saw grief in her eyes.

  “I would love to be your wife, Sam Morgan,” she said.

  But something was wrong.

  “Come with me to the bedroom, please.”

  In front of her full-length mirror she undressed completely. She was lovely, her body lithe. Coy sat and looked at her in the mirror too.

  She put her hands on her left breast and squeezed. An odd-looking fluid oozed, not milk, but something thinner and clearer.

  “Touch it,” she said. “It itches all the time.”

  The flesh felt hot to Sam, and hardened and thickened. The breast was red, in places even purple. There was one reddish area, and in another what looked like a bruise. The aureole was dark. With a sharp pang Sam understood why she had kept her nightgown on last week, why she had seemed remote.

  He looked into her eyes, and saw it all.

  “Breast cancer, the doctor says,” she mumbled unnecessarily.

  He kissed her, and then kissed her fiercely. They stumbled backward, fell on the bed, and ravished each other.

  3

  Their emotions spent the winter in sunlight and in storm
.

  Sometimes Sam and Paloma talked for hours at the dining table, and felt as much intertwined as two human beings in love can be. Sometimes they spent days barely speaking. Sometimes they had loud, passionate sex. Sometimes they slept on opposite sides of the bed. Their best times, often, were riding the countryside on bright winter days, drawing the cold air into their lungs and gazing at the snow-and-sun-spangled Sangre de Cristo Mountains, or riding on the mild, spring days, seeing the cottonwoods bud and leaf and the wildflowers blossom. Often they raced their mounts wildly, splashing through creeks, tearing through meadows, leaping gullies. Paloma was absolutely reckless, and for the first time often beat Sam and Paladin. She whooped and hollered when she won.

  On quiet days she made her plans. She decided to make the long journey to see the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. She would leave in the spring with the trading caravan led by Hannibal MacKye. For the last several years Hannibal had trekked livestock from the ranches of New Mexico to the mining towns of the Sierra Madre, bringing back the kinds of goods manufactured there and in the city of Chihuahua. Paloma chose this trading outfit not only because Hannibal was a friend, but because he did not trade in slaves. Virtually all the caravans, or conductas, did.

  She insisted from the beginning that trip was hers alone. In the spring she would travel to the mining regions, and during the summer, with a caravan carrying copper and silver, to the national capital. Unspoken—she hoped to live long enough to reach Ciudad Mexico.

  Once Sam hinted at a miraculous cure and a return to Santa Fe.

  “I seek only to pray before the Virgin,” she answered, “and ask her to give succor to my soul.” She said nothing of her body.

  She willed Rancho de las Palomas to her sister.

  When he was alone, Sam roamed through the rooms of the main house, thoughtful. Most often he sat in the library. Five years ago he had learned to read and write English mostly in this room, and to read Spanish. From English at first he got practical advantages like being able to make a list of trade goods he was taking to rendezvous. Later he came to love the plays of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega and the poems of Lord Byron. In Spanish his favorites were Don Quixote and the love poetry he and Paloma read to each other in bed. Sam admitted to himself, now, how much books had come to mean to him, how much learning to read helped his life to open.