Snow Mountain Passage (25 page)

T
HE CABALLADA RODE
on toward Monterey where U.S. Marines were bivouacked in the long adobe barracks called El Cuartel, restless young men from Salem and Providence and Allentown, eager for news. They welcomed the Volunteers. That night in the cantinas they all sang patriotic songs and lonesome marching songs—“Yankee Doodle,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me”—and swapped stories, rumors, gossip, lore: The Mexican ships are close to Santa Barbara…. Eight or ten, they say, each with a hundred fighting men aboard…. They’re going to land just south of here … or maybe north of here, at Santa Cruz, and march overland to Yerba Buena…. Who knows, they might sail clear into San Francisco Bay…. And the thieving Californians, they are forming up close by, you can count on it, to come at us from the flank … unless we stop them first … and by God, THEY WILL BE STOPPED!

It was a night of drink and wild vows and toasts to each of the twenty-eight states, while weapons were fired into the fog that had descended upon the cannons and the cypress trees and the whitewashed customhouse. The Volunteers fell asleep and woke in foggy dampness.

Now they ride groaning out of town, hunched over their pommels, to loop inland again, heading north. Bloodshot eyes scan the hills, the arroyos, the borders of the road, for a sign or signal that hostile troops have passed this way.

Though Valentine did no drinking, he is in a darker mood than any of his men. Having come so far and seen nothing, he is despondent. He needs something to show for these long days of riding. In a foul humor, he spews out orders the men only half respond to, since it’s clear to all but Valentine, and perhaps to him, that there is no campaign to wage in this unthreatening terrain. Though they wouldn’t mind a skirmish, no one believes an enemy lurks anywhere within striking distance. Something has changed. They all feel it, though none will voice it.

They let him shout his vain commands, as if these tirades will call forth the enemy he needs. And finally it seems to work. The next morning, an hour before noon, a patrol comes loping back from a wooded notch between two folds of the Coastal Range. They escort three mounted Californians and a small herd of horses.

Valentine regards the three with disdain. They wear high-crown hats and leather chaps. They are not soldiers. They are vaqueros, a rancher and two sons of perhaps twelve and fifteen years, hoping they would go unnoticed in a grove back there until the Volunteers had passed.

In Spanish Valentine demands to know why the father carries a pistol.

The man shrugs. With a careful smile and a glance at the crowd surrounding him, he says these are dangerous times.

Does he know it is against the law for all but United States forces to carry firearms?

Yes, he says, surrendering the pistol, he knows that.

Valentine the interrogator wants to know what he is doing with so many horses?

Moving them to higher ground, the father says, in case of flooding along the river.

Nonsense. You are taking them to the soldiers.

There are no soldiers.

What do you mean?

They have gone.

You are lying.

They have fled to the south.

Some have fled. Some are coming back. This we know.

The father shakes his head.

You lie! cries Valentine. Tell us where you take these horses, or you will all be killed. We will hang you from that oak!

Hang us, then, the father says, sitting taller in his saddle. We were moving them to higher ground. There are no soldiers now. We have been abandoned. They are cowards. They have fled to the south, the officers, all of them. They will not be coming back.

This man too is despondent. He speaks with a cynicism that Valentine recognizes and begrudgingly trusts. On this expedition there will be no glory. Once again he will have to settle for plunder. He looks over the herd, all sleek and healthy, in better shape than the animals his men ride now. He orders the Californians to dismount.

Desperation shows in the dark eyes of the father. We need our horses, he says. Without them how can we work the ranch?

We too need them, Valentine says, for protecting the pueblo.

He cocks his rifle. Other Volunteers follow suit, pushing in closer to the three surrounded men. It is three against thirty.

Jim speaks up, Jim the lieutenant. “Should we give them a receipt?”

Valentine jerks toward him as if a weapon has been fired.

“A receipt for what?”

“So he knows he gets his horses back when it’s over.”

“I’ll decide that!”

“Otherwise, how does anybody know where they went?”

Valentine’s eyes burn with anger and alarm. “Whose side are you on, Mr. Reed?”

Jim eyes burn too. “You know whose side I’m on!”

“You soft on greasers?”

“We just can’t be stealing horses!”

“You feeling sorry for these boys?”

“Goddam it, Valentine! Don’t you shout at me!”

“This is wartime! You forget about that?”

“Even Fremont gives receipts. He gave a bunch to Captain Sutter …”

Valentine’s laugh is forced and empty, ringing across the glade.

“Sutter says anytime you conscript animals …”

“Captain Sutter is also under house arrest, Mr. Reed! So what difference does it make?”

With an accusing eye he watches Jim, who stares back in consternation, but says nothing more. As if the skirmish they’ve all been hoping for has at last been waged and won, Valentine calls to the others, “Round ‘em up!”

Fifteen horses are added to the caballada, leaving the Californians without a weapon or a lariat or a saddle or an animal to strap a saddle to. Valentine knows this is an insult perhaps worse than hanging.

The father’s lean, weathered face strains against his anger. Do you expect us to walk? he says. Our corrals are half a day from here.

Don’t complain, says Valentine with a satisfied grin, or we will also ask for your boots and your sombreros.

The father and his sons stand in the grass, furious, humiliated. The sight titillates several Volunteers, who take sweet and secret pleasure in having someone at their mercy. As the caballada moves north again, the yearning to pillage sends five men riding off to visit a nearby rancho. Sometime later they return with cocky grins and six more horses. They brag of this adventure and laugh at the helplessness of a Californio woman and gray-bearded grandfather who tried to block their entrance to the house and barns, where bridles and saddles had been hidden away, and inside some saddlebags a pair of handsome pistols.

Jim listens to their tale of conquest, still thinking about Valentine’s outburst. He has not let the matter go. What right has Valentine to challenge his loyalty? Or was that a challenge at all? Maybe it was another scene, performed at Jim’s expense. He grows weary of the posturing. He grows weary of this vain man who lets bullying run unchecked and always seems to be onstage, prancing along now like a military hero homeward bound.

Jim is remembering Lewis Keseberg’s saddle style, prancing and disdainful, on that evening so long ago when they met beside the Platte. He was right to part ways with Keseberg in the middle of Nebraska, and he should never have let him rejoin the party. Think how differently things might have gone. Maybe the time has come to put some space between himself and Valentine. How has he ended up in this cavalcade of strangers, in hot pursuit of an enemy none of them has seen? He should be riding out of here. He should leave today. Yes, he should. But then what? Where else is there to ride to? Where else to go if Yerba Buena itself may soon be under siege? Jim has seen what lies this side of the Sierras—Johnson’s Ranch, Sutter’s Fort, abandoned missions, adobe villages, endless miles of open land, all of it wet, with winter coming on, and getting wetter, a pueblo, a presidio with cannon barrels rusted shut …

Valentine interrupts his silent debate.

“I know you’d rather be somewhere else, Mr. Reed. But don’t give up on me just yet.”

It is the mellow voice of the intimate companion, the confidant who seems once again to be reading his mind. Valentine rides next to him. Their knees almost touch. He inclines his head, speaking so softly Jim can barely hear the words.

“You are right, of course. About the receipts. In this interim time of martial law, it is the policy of the Northern Department. But it only applies to Americans and other foreigners whose possessions must be put to military use, wouldn’t you say? Among these Californians, a receipt for livestock would be meaningless, since none of them can read. They don’t deserve receipts. Their ignorance is appalling. Matched only by the vastness of their lands. They have no clear knowledge of what they own, or where it may begin or end. I imagine that fellow back there has more horses than he can count. And most are running loose. These ranches, you know, they have no boundaries. In the great valley to the east, there are horses beyond number, horses that belong to no one. They run wild by the thousands. Plucking one of these horses is like plucking a blade of grass from the floor of the valley. You and I should not be disagreeing about such trivial details.”

A slanting hat brim covers his brow. The eyelids droop with conspiracy and comradeship. Jim knows he is right about the wild horses. For the rest of it, he tells himself he’s too new in this country. In such times it’s better to be safe than sorry, and so he rides a while longer with Valentine, who led him to the orchards and now leads him back toward San Jose de Guadalupe.

By late afternoon they are heading for the courthouse moat. The Volunteers are boisterous with shouts and rearing horses. Townspeople appear cautiously, one by one, to see the source of such commotion. Women leave their cooking fires. Men step out of the cantinas. A priest stands in the door of the church, and children gaze at the ragtag band of mounted men led by Valentine, with Carlos at his side in flat-top bill cap and leather jacket, while behind them and around them men wear greatcoats, carry powder horns and Bowie knives, their trousers made of buckskin or homespun or military wool, some with hats, some longhaired and hatless, wearing rolled bandannas, Apache-style. As if they might be in the mood to attack this island stronghold, the dusty, bearded riders and their frothing herd make a full turn around the courthouse and its bemused guard of curious marines.

Ahead of them, on the far side of the plaza, a gang of young men on horseback seem to take no interest in this display. Their eyes follow one of their own number, who comes galloping out of an alleyway at full speed, as if in a race, though he is alone. He swings his body down until his hand nearly touches the earth. A live rooster has been buried to its neck in the spongy dirt. Without slowing, he grabs the rooster’s head. As the body pops free, the liberated wings flap frantically. The lad’s excited yank has nearly torn the head loose, but tendons still connect it. He swings the bird like a lariat, as he hurtles toward the Volunteers.

Shouting “Bienvenidos, mi capitano!” he snaps his wrist, so that the body flies free over ducking heads. A few coats and shirts are spattered red before the bloody carcass meets the upthrust hand of Carlos, who rises in his saddle to make an astonishing midair catch.

The young rider has crossed the plaza, picking up speed as he sprints along the King’s Highway. His laughing allies scatter, disappearing among the sheds and heaps of cattle bones. With a battle cry, Carlos whirls in galloping pursuit, hunched over the mane, until he is close enough to hurl the rooster. It strikes the young vaquero squarely between the shoulders, a perfect shot that propels him toward the edge of town. The Volunteers are cheering, all but Valentine, who brushes at his hat and spotted waistcoat.

“Sonofabitch will pay for that,” he mutters. “They will all pay dearly.”

In a corner of the plaza the rooster flops and squirms, then lies still. Townspeople drift away, and the scouting party drifts toward the cantina. Having seen nothing, they nonetheless have much to report, already telling one another stories that will swell into the saga of their fruitless expedition.

“Ol’ Valentine, he cracks the whip. He worked us day and night. But by God we stayed the course …”

“Never seen fog so thick as what rolled in at Monterey. Might as well had your head inside a gunnysack. For all we know, them Mexican ships snuck right by us in the night …”

“I know they’re out there. We flushed up a gang of greasers runnin’ horses for the army. You think they wasn’t scared? I had me a bead on one of ‘em. If he’d a moved a muscle …
ka-pow!
”

L
ATE DECEMBER NOW
in Santa Clara Valley, getting close to Christmas, when dark falls early and the evening air is cold, drawing forth a steamy ground fog from flat pasturelands where the longhorns have grazed all autumn. Low ranges east and west are black lines against a blue-black sky, while to the north a faint light, the memory of afterglow, still hangs above the vast waters of the bay.

Smooth, unruffled water stretches past the long peninsula, where deer will gather at the shoreline to lick at patches of salty residue. The water stretches north to Yerba Buena, where the U.S. fleet waits just inside the channel John Fremont named “the Golden Gate,” and stretches farther north, past seal pods fishing for dinner off Alcatraz and Angel Island, to the village of Sonoma, beyond the water’s northern edge, where thirty men overran the garrison last June, raised the image of a grizzly bear above the plaza and launched the season of turmoil that now is nearly done.

In Sonoma Bill McCutcheon, still sweating in the night, waits for some word, any word, having found two men who might—just might, if the price is right—ride with them back into the mountains to help bring out their wives and children … Mac at one end of the bay, Jim at the other, and they’ll both have to wait a while longer, since the returning Volunteers have been greeted with a fresh report, delivered today by yet another launch sailing up the river that winds inland from the bay.