Heaven Is a Long Way Off (7 page)

A
S THEY RODE
to Monterey, Sam thought,
I need to get my daughter to her country, Crow country.

To the music of Paladin's hoofs he walked through the dark door of memory and looked at the unbearable past. Meadowlark died of childbed fever. Sam had a daughter and no wife. He buried her at the mission in Monterey. After the friars had said their words, he spaded the dirt back onto her coffin, thunk after thunk after thunk.

Then the handsome son of Don Joaquin Montalban arrived, asking for Señorita Julia Rubio. With a cunning smile, he extended his false invitation. Would she care to visit an old family friend at their rancho?

Julia understood what was going on. These old family friends were in league with her father, who had spread word that his runaway daughter was to be found and returned. So she answered firmly: “My husband and I will gladly receive the don this evening at the mission.”

The young don looked contemptuously at the Indian who presumed to be the husband of the beautiful youngest daughter of the great Rubio family of Rancho Malibu. He looked at their rough fur trapper companion, Sam Morgan. “Not possible,” he said. Then he gave his bodyguards orders to seize the señorita.

In the fight the young don died, two of his three bodyguards died, and his carriage driver fled.

Now Sam looked at Coy, trotting beside Paladin. He was envious. “You don't remember,” he said to the coyote.
At least not in the haunting way that I do.

Sam ran the pictures through his mind over and over—the surprise of the bodyguard when Sam's belt buckle turned into a knife. The slash of glinting blade, the kick of foot, the spout of blood, the fall and roll, the lifetime of events that spun themselves out across a minute or two.

The deaths.

His indifference, his utter indifference to everything.

And now Don Joaquin or other agents of Julia's father had kidnapped Julia. And her husband, Flat Dog. And Esperanza.

All Sam wanted to know was whether they were dead or alive.

He had advanced beyond indifference. Revenge bubbled in his throat like lava.

 

F
ROM THE SUMMIT
of the Santa Lucia Mountains the Pacific stretched before them to a horizon where sea misted into sky. Sam's dad's voice sounded in his mind—
Forever.

Monterey Bay itself was a small dollop of ocean cupped by pincers of land on the north and south. Near the southern pincer lay the presidio, the arm of the Mexican government, and farther south the mission, the arm of the church. The presidio was a stockade a couple of hundred yards long. Originally, all secular intruders into this Indian land had lived within the fort. Now buildings leaned against the outside of the stockade, and a town was springing up nearby, a few adobe homes forming a plaza, and other adobes and thatched huts on the hills above. Compared to the mission, all of it was rough and tumble, dirty, and crowded.

The mission where Meadowlark died, far from her home…

Where my daughter was born, far from home.

Sam jerked himself back to the present. He looked at Coy and touched his spurs to Paladin.

He had ridden for three and a half days chewing on one question:
Are they alive? Has Montalban killed them?
He didn't speak of it to Hannibal. They rode in silence. But he obsessed about it. Sometimes he told himself he knew: Flat Dog had been murdered, mother and baby spared.

Two brothers. Blue Medicine Horse went with me to the Sioux villages and got killed. Flat Dog went with me to California and got killed.

He did not let himself think consciously of Meadowlark.
The family will despise me.

Walking Paladin down this slope, he felt a chill.

“No way to know what we're coming into,” said Hannibal.

“Let's be careful,” said Sam, “and head for the mission.”

As they approached Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, Sam felt its enchantment. The buildings were elegant adobe structures in a Moorish style, with arched walkways, red-tiled roofs, and a handsome central quadrangle with a fountain. These sun-struck adobes were an ideal of beauty to Sam. The church was even more impressive, built of dressed stones and adorned with bell towers.

They passed the barracks and Sam kicked Paladin to a trot. Soldiers made him edgy.

Sam's eyes roved the mission. He loved it and hated it.

“How many soldiers?” asked Hannibal.

“Not enough to control the Indians.”

“So priests enslave their souls.”

Sam and Hannibal put their horses in the corral.

Then, by unspoken consent, they walked to the small cemetery. Sam stood by the small, grassy mound, hat in hand, Hannibal behind him. Coy curled up in the grass at Meadowlark's feet.

Her grave was marked with a simple oblong of wood.
MEADOWLARK MORGAN
, it read, 1808–1827,
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
.

Sam hadn't seen the marker before. He and Flat Dog had been obliged to leave in a hurry, after the Montalban trouble.

He took thought now. “The Indian converts are buried here.”

Hannibal looked at him questioningly. “This is consecrated ground. But she was not a Christian.”

Sam just looked at the grave. He hadn't understood at the time. There was a lot he hadn't understood.

“This must be the kindness of the priest. Those Latin words, they mean, ‘Rest in peace.'”

Then the feelings swelled in Sam like music, a sorrow inexpressible in words. He swam into the sounds, a depth and breadth of loss beyond comprehension. Tumbling feelings, pictures of Meadowlark, brushes of her flesh, hints of the smell of her skin. In exquisite pain he held her. She felt warm. He loved her. Then she felt cold, as on that day. He loved her. He hated living without her.

He forced himself to the surface of consciousness. He told himself once more, as he had many times—so commonplace, a fever after childbirth. So commonplace. Dead.

Coy yipped.

“I am sorry to interrupt,” came a voice behind them. Sam turned and saw Padre Enrique, the brown-robed head of the Franciscan mission. In decent English he said, “Sorry, Sam. You have no idea what danger you are in. Come with me.”

 

S
AM FELT SURE
he would never forget the picture before him. In the mission library at a table sat Flat Dog, reading a book.

Flat Dog jumped up and braced Sam by both shoulders and shook Hannibal's hand.

“Reading?”

“Father Enrique is teaching me.” He gestured at the book-lined walls. “There are two thousand volumes here.”

The priest set down a flagon of wine and four glasses. “I regret to interrupt, but we must make plans. Trouble will come.” He sat at the big table and motioned for his guests to sit.

The padre poured. Sam didn't particularly favor wine, but out of politeness he drank.

Padre Enrique was a tall, thin priest with a huge, hooked nose and enormous brown eyes filled with intelligence and kindness. He moved jerkily, like a marionette. Sam had not been surprised, four months ago, to discover that the priest could lead a large enterprise successfully, hold hundreds of Indians in sway, run huge herds of cattle and sheep, and manage vineyards, orchards, and fields of beans and corn. He had been surprised by the kindness.

“I'm sure you have…apprehended what happened. Don Joaquin gave out word that anyone who found the so-called murderers of his son would be rewarded handsomely. The manager of the farmhouse where Flat Dog, Julia, and Esperanza went for help, he betrayed them for the gold.”

Flat Dog put in, “Julia is with her father at Rancho Malibu.” The deadness in his voice chilled Sam. “Esperanza too.” Then his face changed somehow, streaks of hope and bitterness. “She's carrying our child.”

“Child!” said Sam.

Flat Dog managed a sort of smile. “Yes, child.”

“Let's go get her.”

The priest said, “Flat Dog is here under arrest.”

“Arrest!” said Sam.

“They let me out of jail during the day to study Christianity.”

“Flat Dog is an excellent student,” said the Franciscan.

“My marriage vows were to become a Christian.”

Sam looked to see if Flat Dog's eyes were merry, but his friend kept his face blank.

“We are making the progress daily,” said Father Enrique. “Literary and spiritual.”

Sam couldn't believe it.
Flat Dog is learning to read before me. Is he really becoming a Christian?
Then Sam remembered that he himself had become a Crow for Meadowlark's sake.

“Why in jail?” said Hannibal.

“He is charged with the murder of Agustin Montalban y Romero, son of Don Joaquin Montalban y Alvarado.”

“And two ruffians,” said Sam.

“Yes.”

“Why haven't they hanged him already?” asked Hannibal.

“Because I intervened. I told the governor that I saw the fight, and Flat Dog acted in self-defense. Also Montalban is not pushing for a quick trial.”

“Why not?” asked Sam.

“Because he is using Flat Dog as…a bait to lure you here.”

“You, amigo,” mocked Flat Dog, “are the real killer. You snatched out your belt buckle and cut a man's throat. You sliced his faithful servant from his collarbone to his balls.”

“So we have stepped in the dung,” said Hannibal, “and good.”

“Yes.” The priest's eyes grew intense. “Sam, your white hair is a flag. The stable hands saw you, others saw you. Soon the whole mission will know, and soon, possibly this evening, certainly tomorrow, Montalban will know.” It was already late afternoon.

“Then?”

The priest shrugged. “Perhaps I can protect you for now. I can arrest you and jail you. If that works, in eventuality, Montalban, he forces a trial.”

The priest sipped his wine and considered. “Already I have spoken a falsehood. I said I saw what happened and that both of you acted in self-defense. In fact, I didn't see it, and cannot give that testimony officially. Therefore conviction and execution.”

“You have kept Flat Dog alive…why?”

“Justice,” said Father Enrique. “I believe in justice.” The Franciscan smiled a little to himself. “And I want to save his soul.”

Sam's spirit spun like a dervish.

“So Sam and Flat Dog will hang,” Hannibal said.

“I doubt it. Why would Montalban wait for a trial?”

Sam and Hannibal studied each other.

“Do you…?”

Father Enrique said, “Yes, I have suggestions. For the sake of justice I will help you.”

 

H
E OFFERED THESE
suggestions over dinner. Huge, steaming platters of food were served, enough to fatten up men starved by the desert—three kinds of meat, beans, corn, squash, and huge loaves of bread, pudding, plenty of wine and water. Other brown-robed priests set to with a will. Sam couldn't imagine how Father Enrique stayed so skinny.

The father had permitted Coy into the dining room, and everyone tossed him scraps. Sam wondered how the padres treated the slaves who served the food. Indians, he noticed, and curiously one black. They padded about invisibly.
Slaves,
Sam thought to himself, a skeptical eye on Father Enrique.

“Why do you imagine Montalban will exempt you from his wrath, Señor Hannibal?” asked the padre.

“Haud facile me interficere.”

“What?”

“You know Latin.” He translated for Sam and Flat Dog. “I'm hard to kill.”

“You look like an Indian,” said the Franciscan.

“I am Indian. One who intends to stay in possession of his soul.”

Avid curiosity flushed the padre's face, and Hannibal had to explain to him that his father was a professor of classics at Dartmouth College and his mother a Delaware, a student at the college. “I grew up speaking English and Delaware, and reading Greek and Latin.”

“Amazing!”

Sam pitched in. “Don't get ideas about sailing him to Europe with a sign that says, ‘
WHAT CIVILIZATION CAN DO FOR THE RED MAN.
'”

“Of course not,” said the priest.

That's exactly what you were thinking.
Sam covered the thought by turning away and feeding Coy.

“Padre, guide us,” said Hannibal.

“I want to put you on El Camino Real at first light,” said the priest.

“El Camino Real?”

“The trail that runs from mission to mission, called the King's Highway. You will go south, toward Rancho Malibu. Is that not what you wish?”

“Damn right,” said Flat Dog.

“A long journey, more than a hundred leagues.”

“More than three hundred miles,” translated Hannibal.

“There are nine missions, counting the one nearest Malibu. I will give you a letter of safe passage for the heads of the missions. I am the ecclesiastical head of all the California missions—they will give you whatever you need.”

“Sounds sweet and easy,” said Sam. That wasn't what he was thinking. His mind was thrumming,
Another long journey the wrong direction.
But he couldn't go home to Crow country until he had Esperanza.

The black slave slid a pudding in front of Sam with what seemed to be a flourish. He wore a pancho with a hood.

“It is not easy. It is a very long ride. You have enemies. And that hair of yours.” The priest touched it. Coy mewled. Sam tossed his head, flicking the hand away.

“And your outfits. You would be easily identified as foreigners, even at a distance.”

“What will we do?”

The priest leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile. “We'll dress you in disguise,” he said. “And we'll take care of that hair.”

“How?” said Sam.

An oratorical voice came from behind them. “With the help of a master of disguise and deceit.”

Sam started.
Who the devil…?