Snow Mountain Passage (28 page)

He sits up and finds his bedroll covered. Is it frost? He touches it. Snow has fallen and covered the encampment. And snow could fall again, it’s that cold. Too cold to sleep.

With scavenged kindling someone stacked inside a shed, he builds a fire and sits beside it. There is half a moon. Under its feeble light he sees that the plain below is also snowy, as well as the mountains to the east, across the bay. It strains belief. Another dream. Just now, what was he dreaming? He can’t remember. He remembers the early snowfall seen from Sutter’s Fort, while looking eastward toward the farther peaks, ominous and unwelcome. How long ago was that? And has the same snow followed him to the Bay of San Francisco, to remind him again of the families still waiting? If it pains his hands to gather kindling here and strike a flintstone, what must the cold be like for them, after all these weeks? And when he wants to be there, why is he perched here, waiting for the day to melt this crust of white?

What an odd sight, this milky stillness under the humpbacked moon. What an odd prologue to the day he feels approaching, and to this year that comes so suddenly upon them all.

Is it 1847 now?

He tries the number on his tongue. How curious it feels. What an unlikely ring. Where has the time gone? How can a century be so far advanced, already near its halfway point? Where has his life gone? It occurs to him that sometime in the past few weeks a birthday came and went. Somewhere on the trail to Bear Valley, or while trekking back from Bear Valley, he turned forty-seven. My God! He too is near the half-century mark, while these men sprawled around him, in their damp bedrolls and in their tents, they are in their thirties. Some are in their twenties, young enough to be sons of his, men half his age, who can drink twice as much, and spoiling for a fight. At their age Jim, too, was spoiling for a fight, enlisting in the Indian wars and chasing bands of renegade Sauk and Fox up the Rock River Valley clear into the Wisconsin wilderness. How long ago it seems. Another time. Another world. And he was another man. Back then. A single man. With just himself to care for. He had thought that was warrioring enough for one man’s life. Nowadays the trail gets longer, the saddles get harder, the foe more and more elusive. He wonders how much longer he can keep this up.

The mountains to the east are moon-white down to the shores of the bay. What are they called? The Diablo Range? Maybe there’s some truth to that name after all. Some say the devil’s realm is fire. Some say ice. Under the winter moon the slopes and peaks are carved of ice. On such a night this entire land seems devilish. Maybe Valentine is right. Maybe it needs some kind of purging. And maybe, yes, maybe he wouldn’t mind another skirmish, one more go-round. A man needs some satisfaction. Sometimes any enemy will do. If he can’t catch up with Hastings, if he can’t get his hands on those cowardly accusers who sent him into exile, he may as well take whatever foe comes toward him, and when the fighting’s done, when the way is cleared, who then will listen to those small voices from the past …

The night’s deep silence is broken by the crunch of boots. He turns and sees a figure with a hat pulled tight and a long leather traveling coat around his shoulders. He waits. It’s Valentine.

“I saw your fire.”

“The snow woke me.”

“As it woke me too.”

“Then warm yourself.”

Valentine hunkers next to him, breathes puffs of steam, gazing into the flames.

After a while he says, “Do you believe in omens, Reed?”

Jim looks at him, expecting the sardonic leer, but sees something else, something unprotected.

“I think we all do, though many claim they don’t.”

“This district is famous for its mild winters, you know. Snow is seldom seen. You think it’s a sign? Coming on a night like this? A day like this?”

“Depends on the kind of day you think it is.”

Valentine’s voice is almost a whisper. “The day we meet the dreaded foe. You’ve heard the news.”

“Maybe I haven’t.”

“During the night, another report came in. They’re not far from us, not far at all, sighted at a rancho this side of San Jose. No soldiers seen. But many horses, and rancheros bearing arms. Day by day their numbers grow, according to the scouts …”

“You say no soldiers?”

“None reported. But what difference does it make? They have the hostages. They’re farther south than anyone expected them to roam. How they got past us, I still don’t know. But they won’t get much farther. We’ll cut them off before they reach the pueblo. I can taste it now, can’t you?”

“Something’s in the air.”

“They can’t be far, and it won’t last long, once we flush them out. I know these people. You may have heard that I once rode with the Californians.”

“I have heard that, yes.”

“What have you heard?”

“Sooner or later, fellows talk about everything.”

“Let me tell you something, Reed.”

Again Jim waits. This is not an order. It is an offer. Or a plea. With a stick, Valentine stirs the fire, and new flames leap up.

“We once had a gobernador from Mexico. A prissy and bureaucratic man, liked by no one. A war was fought to send him back and you could side with him or you could side with those who wanted to be rid of him. But you really had no choice. The Californians made me a captain. We were comrades in arms, you see. When the fellow and his lackeys finally fled we drank many toasts to his departure. The new gobernador—a man from California, not from Mexico—gave me a bit of land, as they will do, to show appreciation. But the times changed. Times always change. My comrades had a new adversary and again they summoned me to join their cause, this time to take up arms against men like you, Mr. Reed, against Los Americanos.”

Jim wants to be wary of this tale, but something needful and naked in the voice compels him to listen. It has the sound of a confession, or of a last letter home on the eve of battle.

“I had a close friend, an officer at Monterey. When I refused this offer, he was insulted. You are a citizen here, he told me. You accepted land. I told him the Americans would not be stopped. I could see the future coming. I spoke friend to friend. Make peace while you can, I said, spare the blood of your soldiers. As you might expect, he hated me for saying this. We are traveling south in search of reinforcements, he said, and you are coming with us. He could not forgive me for refusing to serve in their army, and so they took me prisoner. We ran short of horses, and they made me walk. I had to walk along behind a horse at the end of a rope like a goat led to the marketplace. The rope was new and lashed around my wrists and made wounds kept open by the blazing sun. Would you like to see them? Here. Even now they throb.”

Valentine pulls off one leather glove and shoves back a jacket sleeve to expose the welts, red and shiny as if still bleeding. Jim stares at the wounded skin. Under his hat brim his own welts seem to throb, though they have nearly healed over now, itching from time to time as hair grows back around the tender edges. His fingers push in under the brim to touch the welts and the new hair. He lifts his eyes from the wrist and sees that Valentine has turned away, as if scanning distant terrain. It could be an actor’s theatrical show of grief, but Jim wants to believe this story now. The wounds persuade him. The voice grows softer, somehow lighter, with a blaming in it that Jim knows well.

“We passed Los Angeles, then moved out across the desert, bearing east almost to the Colorado, where they set me loose. They were running low on food, you see, and weary of feeding me. I was worth nothing to them, even as a hostage. They cut my ropes and left me while they rode on, claiming they would return with cannons and a thousand men. Then I saw the true nature of their character. A man I had once called comrade left me alone in the midday sun with no horses, no weapon. I had to make my way on foot, back across the southern desert. It took many days to reach a town. I can’t recall how many. You can imagine what this journey was like. It stole away my strength. My body shrank. I fell into a fever and passed an entire month half blind. To this day I have spells of fever and my mind begins to reel …”

He turns and looks hard at Jim. “But today my mind is clear.”

Valentine rises from his crouch and opens his hands toward the faint rim of light along the snowy ridge tops across the bay.

“Believe me, Reed. Beware of the Californians. They are not like us.”

Around them the mud-stained camp has begun to move, as men wake to pee and splash water on stubbled faces, boil their coffee, munch biscuits and molding jerky strips, and marvel at the snow. One man moves with more deliberation, picking his way among the soggy bedrolls and sagging tents. When Valentine stands up, he quickens his pace and calls, “Señor.” It is Carlos, back from a predawn reconnoiter. Beside the fire he speaks quietly, in rapid Spanish.

Valentine nods. “Ah, good. This is good indeed.”

Very early, he explains to Jim, an armed patrol left from the rancho, but not toward San Jose as had been feared. They were soon followed by a larger group evidently bound for an open plain some five miles from here. “They’re gathering up,” says Valentine with zeal. “They’re going to show themselves at last.”

Carlos also likes this news. His eyes are very keen for so early in the day. Jim sees that he too is spoiling for a fight. “He does not like the greasers,” Valentine once told him, “any more than we do. He’d rather ride with us, and that blue bill cap he wears at such a jaunty angle is his badge of honor.” Carlos won it fair and square, Valentine has said, arm-wrestling a young marine from Baltimore, a fellow half again his size.

As they stand by the fire, reaching toward the flames for one last bit of warmth, Jim sees that the scout’s hands are large and thick, look to be made of leather. Beneath the serape his shoulders are wide. His hawk eyes seem to miss nothing. As Carlos walks away, it occurs to Jim that in stance, in stride, he is much more alive than the sentries who plod back and forth in front of John Sutter’s double gates. Jim doesn’t envy the young marine who lost his cap to Carlos. He would not want to tangle with him one on one. He is glad they’re on the same side today, yes, glad they’ve found a common enemy, he and Carlos and Valentine and all the others assembled here to right old wrongs, to fight their many fights.

As they saddle their horses and mount up and begin their descent out of the foothills, Valentine’s story still moves through his mind. Jim has known that kind of treachery, expelled into the desert without a weapon, forced to make a lonely crossing, suffer wounds that would not heal. His scalp welts throb again, and he is ready for whatever comes.

At sea level the snow has melted. A crust of frozen mud beneath the snow has melted too, adding new moisture to the slush. They push southward, and reports come one upon the next. More troops were sighted here! An armed party was sighted there!

“How many?” asks Valentine.

“Hard to tell,” says one excited scout, “the way they snaked along.”

“What do you mean, ‘snaked’?”

“Like they was skulking in and out of the trees.”

Shouting commands, Valentine rushes off to see for himself and soon comes galloping toward them from a grove of stately oaks.

“We’ve spied the entire force!” he cries. “A mile from here! Form up! Form up!”

Somewhere beyond that grove the enemy waits, as if finally prepared to step out into the open and take a stand.

“But why?” one man wants to know. “Why here?”

“Why now?” asks another. “Why have they waited so long and led us in such a circle?”

Valentine seems delighted by these questions, delighted by flurry and chaotic swirl. “It is in their nature, man! Expect no rhyme or reason!”

U
NDER COVER OF
the spreading oaks the pueblo Volunteers fan out along a wide left flank. The Yerba Buena units hold the right, while four dozen musket-bearing marines take the center. They see nothing until they leave the grove and step out into a broad and muddy plain, half covered with stands of water. Three creeks wander through it. From a quarter mile away a swarm of mounted men are watching, as if positioned there for days, for weeks, expecting the Americans to track them down. Ponds of water shine like mirrors in the midday sun. Patches of snow still show on the nearest hills, while off to the south a bell tower can be seen, an incongruous relic, rising from what remains of another Spanish mission.

A few riders prance out away from the waiting throng and begin to turn, to wheel, in a circus show of horsemanship that causes the advancing troops to slow their pace. Uncertainly they gaze, amazed at the skill, the lifted hooves and whirling lariats, wondering if this is the prologue to a charge.

They see horsemen standing in their stirrups as they ride, or leaning low as if plucking objects from the ground. Some brandish what appear to be long lances. They wear serapes of many hues, high-crowned hats, the split leggings of the vaquero. Their horses lift and rear and turn, race back and forth as if in competition. But are they going to charge?

“They are cowards!” cries Valentine. “They are staying out of rifle range! Advance! Advance!”

The Volunteers move ahead, and Jim is as eager as Valentine, until he’s stopped by swampy weeds. His horse sinks to its knees. Nearby marines are also trying to advance, but the first ranks flounder in mud and pools of glistening overflow, and now the eight-pounder has rolled to a halt, bogged down crossing one of the creeks. Ten men are dispatched to wrestle the cannon and its yoke of oxen onto firmer ground.

Seeing this, a few dozen prancing horsemen are emboldened to make a scattered charge, splashing through the puddles and bogs with shouts of “Viva California!” Some hold swords or lances. A few fire pistols wildly as they ride, a damp and motley regiment, still two hundred yards away, firing into the air or straight ahead—
pop, pop, pop
—while Americans hunker down to return the fire.

At last the cannoneers get off a round of grapeshot, then another, which sinks the carriage wheels deeper into the creekbank, but these rounds take the charging horsemen by surprise. With shouts and threatening blades held high, they wheel and splash back the way they’ve come.