Snow Mountain Passage (32 page)

A
CIVILIAN ONCE
again, Jim rides alone between timbered foothills and the glassy bay. He has thrown away the buckskins he wore last summer and through the fall while they crossed from Laramie to Sutter’s Fort. He wears Mexican boots, homespun trousers, a government-issue jersey shirt. His rifle hangs in its scabbard by his leg. His Spanish hat has a round, stiff brim. His dark beard and moustache are recently trimmed. A jacket is strapped behind his saddle. In the middle of the day it’s too warm for a jacket. A very unwintry winter sun—a molten gold piece in the southern sky—warms his shirt, moistens his chin, makes his beard itch. He reaches up to scratch it, thinking, Strange weather.

In such uncanny warmth the place itself seems coated with a foreign light, though it should be familiar to him now. This is country the Volunteers crossed in driving rain—broad and open, with grand oaks standing singly and clumped in groves as far ahead as he can see. Their zigzag branches angle out over rolling lawns of new grass. The oldest trunks are checkered gray, with bark broken into rows and tiny blocks, like sleeves that have been shattered yet hold tightly to the trees. In front of him two elegant blacktail deer leap from an unseen gully and spring across the trail. Hawks float above the trees. Jim would like to linger here, lie back in the new grass and watch the hawks, let the sun bathe his face and neck, and ponder the mystery of flight, the mysteries of climate and unaccountable change. He cannot linger. Time is running out. Time presses down upon him and pushes from behind him like a posse on the trail of a fugitive.

Did he stay too long in San Jose? No. No, he had to stay. In the northern towns the trouble was over, yet no one knew what had happened farther south, whether Fremont’s battalion had retaken Los Angeles, or had arrived at all. What if they’d stalled again for lack of horses? They had four hundred miles overland to cover. What if they’d been cut down by hordes of Mexican regulars who had landed at Santa Barbara or somewhere farther down? And if they’d lost the south, what then?

For two weeks Jim waited. By boat he sent a letter up the bay to Bill McCutcheon, hoping it would find him in Sonoma or Napa, to tell him everything depended on the outcome of the southern campaign, but if all went well they could meet again within the month.

One afternoon a courier came clopping up the Monterey road and into the plaza, an exhausted fellow who’d been riding day and night. At the courthouse moat he slid from his horse. The marines revived him with whiskey while a crowd gathered to hear his parched and jubilant voice announce that Colonel Fremont had accepted a final surrender from the rebel Californians. Los Angeles had been reoccupied. American warships controlled the harbors.

Men fired their pistols at the sky, shouting, “Hallelujah!” and “Glory be to God!” as they headed for the cantina to toast the conquest, to brag, to dream of statehood. Both north and south the insurrections had been put down. Once again the United States had full control of the ports and towns, and this time they would not let it slip away. At the long, murky bar men outdid one another drinking to a nation that soon would spread from coast to coast.

The next day Jim took his discharge from the Volunteers. He has it in writing, tucked away among the papers in his flat leather pouch. A set of keys is in there too, the elderly keys to the gate at St. Joseph’s mission, presented to him by the Alcalde, who quickly granted his request to lease and work those fields.

Riding north, he nears the end of the long peninsula and stops for water at another mission, the one called Dolores, named for a stream winding toward it from the west. A salty edge is on the air. The stream winds past a cemetery and broken-down corrals, and flows on through wetlands and tules toward the Bay of San Francisco, two miles off. Jim dips his cup into the stream and drinks. He dips his canteen in and lets it fill and looks at the chapel, whitewashed adobe with a tiled roof. Round white columns frame its entry and support a fragile balustrade. Around it, sheds have fallen in. Where workers lived, the low walls are eaten away by rain and fog. The columns have a Roman look, reminding him of courthouses back in Illinois, though there is something lonesome about four Roman pillars out here in such a windswept place, something odd. To the west, beyond the chapel, two matching conical peaks stand against the sky.

A few emigrant wagons are parked near the mission. Here and there tents are pitched. Jim chats long enough to find out where they’re from, what news they bring. Several are Mormons who arrived last year by ship from New York, hoping to found a new community in the far Far West. One cantankerous fellow says that with the last gobernador they had a clearcut understanding that the whole of Alta California could be theirs. He is blaming the United States for starting a war and spoiling their negotiations with Mexico.

These Mormons, Jim thinks, they are always blaming the United States, always eyeing enormous parcels of uncharted land they can lay claim to. He has heard their men take several wives at once, though why anyone would choose to do that is beyond him. They set themselves apart, call themselves “Saints.” Yet this man’s face doesn’t shine with a purer light. His tent is just as porous as the next fellow’s, his cooking pots blackened with the same soot. Jim is glad he reached Santa Clara Valley ahead of the Mormons, glad to hear this fellow say California may already be too far gone, already tainted and no longer worth his precious time.

He rides on, thinking of the Mormons, thinking of “his” valley, and of Valentine too, of the money he might have made selling horses. It would have been easy money, the first of many lucrative schemes, according to Valentine, on the night the pueblo celebrated the final conquest, when they drank together one last time. Yes, it would have been easy to scheme and laugh with him and ride out on one more escapade. Drinking with Valentine was like being single again. He drew you in, made you a comrade, made you remember an old recklessness still yearning to be let loose. But Jim looked into Valentine’s blue and glittering boyish eyes and knew he had traveled far enough with a fellow who so delighted in plunder and seemed entirely untroubled by the enemies he made.

Why should Jim share the many enemies Valentine gathered in that last campaign? It is too great a risk. Someday he will return to the valley of Santa Clara and to the Mission of St. Joseph. He can’t say when. But someday. The sooner, the better. He carries a piece of paper signed with the Alcalde’s flourish. He carries the heavy iron keys. Pressing his hand upon the pouch, he feels the keys outlined against his ribs.

He follows a well-worn wagon track that cuts through scattered scrub oak, tangled thickets of wild currant, gooseberry, rambling rose. He sees cattle grazing, a far-off adobe ranch house. Three miles beyond Mission Dolores he tops a hillock. Ahead of him the cove called Yerba Buena is a little crescent scooped from the inside edge of the peninsula. Thirty or forty buildings hug the crescent, upslope from a narrow beach. The slope rises toward a bare dome that protects the cove from hovering fog. There are no piers, no fortifications. From all Jim has heard, from all the talk of “imminent danger” and a headquarters for “the Northern Department,” somehow he expected more. Compared to this shoreside village, San Jose is a metropolis. A bay so broad and long, he thinks, deserves a bigger town.

Out beyond the cove, the navy ships and merchant ships and schooners rest at anchor on placid waters. From this vantage point they could be toy boats floating in a tub. Between the cove and the ridges of the farther shore, out beyond the ships, there is a rocky island capped with what looks at first like new-fallen snow. Centuries of seabirds have left their droppings, countless wild geese and pelicans and cormorants and gulls. They swarm around the island, lifting off in great flocks, landing together on white escarpments, to flap and squawk and scan for prey, and soar away again.

THE MAYOR
’
S OFFICE
is a two-room adobe that joins one of the hotels, a block uphill from the beach. When Jim walks in, Bartlett pushes his chair back and reaches a hand across the polished desk. A wide grin lifts all the planes and angles of his carefully barbered muttonchops and handlebar moustache.

“Welcome, Mr. Reed. I’ve been hoping we’d meet again.”

“It’s good to be here at last.”

“Can you beat this weather? I’ve never known a day in February to be so warm.”

“I’m starting to think a fellow needs two sets of clothing with him, year in and year out.”

“The hotel bartender says tomorrow or the next day there could be hail.”

“Well, it’s good to see you indoors for a change, with a bit more than an oak tree over your head.”

Bartlett laughs a hearty laugh. “We did get wet, now, didn’t we, Mr. Reed?”

“Not as wet as the Californians.”

They both laugh. Bartlett offers Jim a chair.

“They’re not as frightful as some would make them out to be, you know. During my captivity one fellow taught me to twirl a lariat.”

“So you’re a vaquero, too.”

Bartlett’s eyes glint with youthful well-being, perhaps with mischief. Above his head he turns an invisible rope. “I believe I could be, with a little practice.”

He is a small man, stoutly built, with the posture of a good cadet, though he wears no navy braid or brass. He was appointed to the post last summer, when the Americans first claimed the bay. Once ashore he stored his lieutenant’s uniforms and adopted the look of a prosperous banker. A tailored coat hangs over the back of his chair. He wears a ruffled shirt, a vest of maroon satin, with sleeve garters to match. He enjoys these clothes. It is like a costume. He enjoys the job. The town is small, a village, and his duties are light now that the insurrection has been put down. In the next room there are more chairs and another polished desk, where he hears cases and settles complaints from local citizens.

“You know why I’m here,” Jim says.

“Indeed I do.”

“The men in San Jose have forwarded a petition on my behalf.”

“So I’ve heard. The Commandant received it yesterday.”

“And he’s the one I need to meet.”

“I’ve already told him I expected to be seeing you.”

“For that I am most grateful, lieutenant.” Jim lifts the flaps of his leather pouch. “I have other documents, you know, that might support my plea …”

Bartlett waves his hands as if the room is filled with smoke. “My goodness, Reed. No more documents. I have paper enough to last me several years. Everyone knows your name by now and why you’re here. Everyone knows you were with us on the plain at Santa Clara. It’s just a matter of finding the best way to go about this.”

“The best way?”

“We’ll start with the Commandant, of course. This time of day he should be at the customhouse.”

Bartlett drops his voice, glances through the door, as if an eavesdropper might be lurking. “He has a good heart, Reed. But be forewarned. He is not known for his boldness of approach. This job of mine is heaven, compared to being on board certain ships under the command of certain officers who shall remain nameless. Later on we’ll retire to the hotel saloon, just you and I. We have some catching up to do.”

As they step out onto the porch of the mayor’s adobe, Bartlett spots the Commandant heading toward them from the beach. He has just come ashore. Jim watches him with high anticipation. For two months he’s been trying to reach this man, and here he comes, plodding up the hill as if called to an appointment made long ago.

He looks to be about Jim’s age, give or take a year, a lean man, tall and very thin, his neck a wrinkled tube. His cheeks are high and hollowed out. His naval jacket hangs loosely from narrow shoulders. He walks as if his shoes pinch, planting each foot, lifting it before it bends.

When he reaches them at last, Bartlett makes the introductions. The Commandant shakes Jim’s hand but will not look at him for long. The weary eyes graze Jim’s face and swing toward the water. He seems glad to have a reason to stand still.

“Yes. Yes,” says the Commandant. “Good job, Reed. You’ve found us. Excellent. Excellent. As you can see, we’re settling in. Bartlett here, he’ll bring you up to date. He’s a busy fellow. But then we’re all busy, aren’t we, Bartlett? Busy as beavers. At this very moment I’m on my way to the customhouse. A bit of business there. Come along, Reed. Perhaps we can find a place to sit and talk things over, though the accommodations leave a great deal to be desired. It’s rustic. Exceedingly rustic. Before we dropped anchor here I had no idea what we’d be in for. The skies are lovely, as I’m sure you have observed. Those hills we see across the bay are called the
contra costa,
‘the other shore.’ Last evening as the sun set, the color there was quite astonishing. Still, one sometimes feels we have arrived at the very ends of the Earth. Will you be long in Yerba Buena?”

“No longer, sir, than I have to be.”

Again the Commandant glances at him. Jim sees his eyes are filled with fear, though fear of what is hard to say. It’s also in his voice, a deep and practiced voice, round and resonant, yet lacking in conviction. If he speaks deeply enough—this voice seems to say—he will believe what he is saying. As the Commandant steps out across the plaza he pats his hands up and down his jacket front and upon the seat of his trousers.