Crossing Purgatory (21 page)

Later that afternoon Upperdine called for Benito and Thompson to fetch the ox head from the cold shed. They loaded the head onto a handcart and wheeled it to the pasture where Upperdine had supervised the digging of a large pit in which he had built a fire. The men stood around the fire, watching the wood burn down until John signaled and Benito shoveled out the coals and Upperdine and Thompson lowered the steer head into the pit and covered it with several inches of dirt. They lit a large fire over it and hung a kettle on a tripod and boiled the innards from the butchered animals. The heart, liver, and kidneys went into skillets to fry over smaller side fires. The Indians kept off to themselves, but John divided time between the two groups with equal hospitality. The white men sat on their haunches telling stories of the past and speculating on the future and cutting lengths of intestines from the pot with their long knives. One trapper, Ezekiel Pence, had come west from Kentucky in '28. Grizzled, scraggly-bearded, he'd known John Upperdine in the old days, and he told stories in snatches.

“Rode down the Green River in a bullboat, faster than any horse could run,” Ezekiel told them. “High in the mountains, snow deeper than a full-growed elk. Run into Ute bucks wearing strings of seashells around their necks. Seashells.”

“Snow that deep?” Thompson asked.

“Had to hole up in a lean-to for the better part of winter. Like a bear. Couldn't move, lived on beaver plew.”

“Pelt? You ate the pelt?” someone asked.

“Boiled in water, a little flavor leached into the water and I gnawed the skin. Imagine. Plews going for three dollars. I'm masticating away my fortune.”

They toasted Ezekiel Pence's lost wealth.

“Them days gone forever,” Pence lamented. “No beaver, no market. Now, it's buffalo they favor. Have to go east, into the flatlands. But I don't set much with barrens once mountains got to my blood. I'm quit of it.”

“If it's mountain life you crave,” one of the traders broke in, “you may still have a future. Gold. Trail's thick with prospectors. Most of them green, poor fitted, and full of bluster.” The trader cut a slice of beef kidney and offered it to Upperdine with the tip of his knife. “Saint Louis papers say there is not a doubt but that riches await for the claiming. They say a man with experience, a man what knows the mountains, fortune is his for the price of a pick and a shovel. I aim to see about it.”

Upperdine chewed the kidney and shook his head. “It's seldom anything comes free and easy.” He pointed toward the tepees near the grove of cottonwood by the river. “Arapahoe say white men are setting up diggings over their winter camping grounds. On the Platte, near where it joins Cherry Creek. They know what gold is, know the white man values it, and say there is little to be found there. They laugh at the whites who've arrived. Most have no buffalo robes for winter and the few that have horses don't guard them well.”

“Disclaiming the presence of gold would serve their purpose,” one of the traders said.

“They worry about having their grounds overrun. I see no good to come of any of this,” Upperdine said.

“Still, the tide of emigrants flows, and no savage can stem it.”

They talked on, eating and drinking as night fell and a chill set in. The fire died down and they banked it and sat a while longer. John intended to keep hot embers over the pit that entombed the steer head until the following day. Finally Thompson rose and stretched and backed away from the coals. Benito followed and they walked to the placita in the dim light of the waning moon. They passed the Indian camp and Benito raised a hand to an old man squatting by the fire and the old man raised a hand in return.

“Indians are nomads, best I can tell,” Thompson said. “I don't see how they get a notion that they own camping ground along the Platte.”

“They have no notion of owning land,” Benito said. “But, they claim rights over hunting territories.”

“I don't understand how a man could not wish to own land,” Thompson said.

“You've stated you have no wish,” Benito said.

“I have a wish, but no right, and little means,” Thompson said. “But here, there is such abundance it makes me reconsider, some days.”

“I see no sin in coveting land if for honorable intent,” Benito said.

“And what do you consider honorable?”

“For family, for livelihood. Not for power. Not for empire.”

Thompson left Benito at the placita gate and went to his shack on the bluff. From his overlook, he watched the fires glow along the streamside and from the meadow. Captain Upperdine seemed energized with the company. Even Benito and Genoveva appeared to relish visitors from outside the valley, fresh news and different faces. But Thompson felt no curiosity about the world outside his range of vision, no need for companionship. The field below seemed uncomfortably crowded. He turned from it and looked out into the black night.

Forenoon the following day, Thompson rejoined the meadow assemblage. The Indians were there among the white men, and relations seemed guardedly cordial. They'd gathered to unearth the ox head and determine the merit of Captain Upperdine's handiwork. John directed the exhumation. The head came out of the pit looking like a great charred gargoyle, clouded eyes staring accusingly.

“Captain, I believe you've created a monster,” one of the mountain men gibed.

“There's beauty below the surface,” Upperdine said. “Wait and see.”

Upperdine untied the flap of skin at the neck and slit it toward the head, exposing roasted meat so tender it barely hung from the bones. He pulled the meat from the neck and cheeks with tongs and piled it high on a large serving board and he removed the tongue and sliced it into thin strips. They passed the board and sampled the meat and ate and talked as the morning wore on. Noon passed, the light weakened, and clouds crept in from the northwest, bringing flurries. They stoked the fire and pulled buffalo robes around their shoulders and continued to eat and to talk and to smoke. Thompson grew impatient with the idleness and excused himself from the gathering. Benito stood and together they walked out into Benito's field. The acequia complete, Benito demonstrated the workings of the floodgate and, as they walked the length of the ditch, how to cut the water into the field with a spade once the rows had been furrowed and the seed cast. There was not sufficient flow in the stream to actually irrigate his field, and the time was not right, but Benito wished to give Thompson some initial instruction.

“Over the winter, the acequia will collect debris. It must be cleared before we irrigate. And early spring grass burned off.”

“I can handle that,” Thompson said.

They continued together to the placita and sat under the overhang outside the living quarters as the day ebbed. Snow fell through a luminescent sky, thin clouds, unsubstantial, lighted from above by the rising moon. Thompson extended his arm past the shelter of the eaves and watched as the flakes melted on his open palm.

“They say rain follows the plow,” Thompson said. “I believe no such thing.”

“Makes a good story,” Benito said. “If only it were true that plowing disturbs the balance between earth and sky so that rain followed.”

“Speculators luring folks from the east with promises of easy cultivation,” Thompson said.

“Si
, I believe so.”

“They are bound for disappointment.”

“Yes.”

“You know this land,” Thompson said. “What will take, what won't. How much a chunk to carve out for crops. You've set out your boundaries.”

“The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places,”
Benito said, remembering a line from his Book.

“Psalm sixteen,” Thompson said.

Thompson had spoken so softly Benito asked him to repeat what he'd said. Thompson was unaware he'd spoken aloud.

“You remember your scripture,” Benito said.

“My father,” Thompson said. “An Anglican priest.”

“Ah, yes.”

“I was wondering,” Thompson said, “the irrigation ditch. You have planned for fifteen acres. They will produce well, I predict.” Thompson rose and began pacing under the eaves. “But if for fifteen, why not for thirty? Sixty? A full section? There's more bottomland that can benefit from the irrigation scheme.”

“And who would dig the acequias? Who would work those acres?”

“Well,” Thompson paused, forming his thoughts. “Men. Field hands. We … You could hire field hands.”

“I've heard this before, grand plans, a head full of dreams.” Benito answered. “Peons to work the fields, tend the flocks. But peons also require attention, nursing and clothing and feeding. I'm no patron. I don't want the responsibility for workers, for large herds. I want only enough. No more.”

“I'm not envisioning an empire,” Thompson protested. He couldn't appreciate Benito's reasoning. “Just working the land to our greatest advantage. Realizing its full promise.”

Something in Thompson's voice, a firm conviction, perhaps, caused Benito to stand also. “Let me tell you something,” Benito said, stridently. “This soil is stingy, and temperamental. Sometimes she is generous, more times sparing. She will spurn you on a whim. Pamper her with water and plant crops that do not tax her greatly and she may smile on you. Demand too much, and she'll reject you like that, poof.”

Benito now also was excited, walking rapidly to the end of the overhang and back. “Wait here,” he said, ducking into the house. He returned and opened his palm to Thompson and pointed. “Peppers, corn, beans, some melons. This is sufficient.” He tossed the four seeds at his feet, and looked across the plaza to the coop. “Some chickens. A few goats with hillsides to forage. In time, a few churros for wool.” Benito spread his arms out before him. “This is enough. If greed outweighs respect for the land, if you attempt to enslave her, bend her to your ambitions, you become the one enslaved. What you believe you own instead owns you.” Benito had come near and pointed his finger in Thompson's face. Thompson felt scolded, and embarrassed. He stepped back. Benito started to say something more but did not. He smiled weakly, shrugged, and retreated indoors.

Thompson collected one of the seeds from the courtyard and studied it as if he were assaying the worth of some precious gem. He'd not heard Benito string together so many words in the time he'd known him. Benito had struggled to convey his feelings and Thompson struggled to understand, but could not. Benito's relationship to the land seemed so alien to his own, so subservient. As with mountain men and Indians, to Thompson's thinking, Benito's ways belonged to a past age. But, it was none of his concern.

A
FTER MORNING CHORES
, T
HOMPSON WALKED
to the pasture and found it vacated by Captain Upperdine's guests, smoldering fire rings, ovals of matted grass, the grooves of tepee poles dragged across the damp riverbank the only sign of recent occupation. He turned from the rendezvous site and followed the river upstream at a leisurely pace, enjoying the new day and the renewed solitude. Snow had ended sometime during the night and had not accumulated in the fields. A trace in the hollow of a cottonwood trunk, a patch of white between shadowed boulders, scant evidence of winter's first calling. But the morning was brisk, his breath frosted, grass crunching beneath his boots. A sword of mallards exploded off a quiet river pool, southbound, a ruckus of wings and repetitive, rasping squawks. Thompson stood in the naked field watching, clouds burnished orange by the early sun. The birds disappeared behind a stand of cottonwoods, rose into view farther downriver, climbed into the sky, wings a blur of motion, and slowly shrunk from sight. Benito came up behind Thompson and they stood together.

“Feels like a day for travel,” Thompson broke the silence.

“It does,” Benito replied.

Thompson felt the urge. He wondered where the old trapper, Ezekiel Pence, was off to and where the Indian band had set course. Unlike Upperdine, he was a man by nature bound to the land. Yet on mornings like this he felt the pull of the trail, could understand Upperdine's restlessness. He stood with Benito and watched the ducks and inhaled the cold morning into his lungs. His stroll had taken them close by the patch of ground Thompson had sown in wheat.

“Come look,” Thompson said, and pointed out the new growth carpeting the cleared section. “Sprouted early last week.”

“I don't see how it can survive winter,” Benito said.

“Lies quiet, they say. Sets to again when the ground warms.”

Thompson knelt and took a shoot between his thumb and finger and felt its suppleness. Alive and green and ripe with promise.

“With good fortune, a start for Hanna and Joseph.” Thompson said. “It shouldn't prove too burdensome for the boy to tend this plot.”

“You do not plan to stay through summer?” Benito asked.

“I don't know,” Thompson said. He hesitated, but went on. “Working this section,” he motioned with his arm. “It was hard. When the blade first bit into the earth, I felt like I was reclaiming something I'd lost. But memories came, slowly, and then in a rush, and I almost abandoned the plow in the field.”

Benito did not ask what memories could be so powerful, and Thompson was glad about that.

“Eventually you'll figure your course,” Benito said. He blew into his cupped hands and rubbed warmth into them. “Come. Let's see if Teresa has made coffee.”

Approaching the door to Benito's rooms, they stopped short at the sound of conversation from within. Harsh tones. Genoveva and Teresa talking, a loud exclamation from Paloma followed a sharp retort from Teresa and Genoveva's soothing murmurs, placating and conciliatory.

“I don't understand the language,” Thompson whispered. “But I get the idea now would not be the most opportune time to inquire about breakfast.”