and closer. Scratch held up his arm and instructed his loved ones to halt with him a safe distance back as the soldiers approached.
The packhorses were clattering to a halt beneath a thick wreath of their gauzy breath smoke when Titus suddenly stared at that snapping flag—completely dumbfounded. Why, if he didn’t know better … damn, if there weren’t red and white stripes. And that broad field of blue dusted with four rows comprised of twenty-seven gilt stars. He had seen such flags, the last one many years ago above the wide double gate of Bents Fort. These soldiers, were they countrymen?
“Americans!” he cried out loud as the leaders came within hailing distance.
Now he could see these wool-wrapped horsemen weren’t Mexican at all—they had American faces and dark blue American uniforms, leather belts strapped across their shoulders, gaudy red sashes tied around their winter coats. Emblazoned on the arms of those blue wool coats were gaudy stripes of gold.
“American soldiers,” he repeated, but this time in all but a whisper as the first of them streamed past.
The eyes of every dragoon turned momentarily to regard Scratch’s strange procession, even though the soldiers’ heads never moved. All of them stiffly facing front as they headed south for Santa Fe—
From the village came the surprising peal of a solitary bell, its first loud clang drifting across the snow and sage, pinon and cedar. After it rang twice, a second bell joined in with a faint chorus. Back and forth the two iron bells clanged in concert for a half dozen heartbeats, then faded into the sunny midday light as silence replaced their joyous, jarring song.
“W-what was that, Popo?” Magpie asked, her voice a bit tremulous in fear.
Bass saw the surprise and apprehension in Flea’s eyes too. He grinned to show them there was no reason to fear. “Among the Mexicans—sometimes the Americans too—they have a place where they listen to their holy men. It’s called …” and he searched for a Crow word to call those buildings. There was none. He had to speak that one word in English. “In my language it’s called a
“That sound is a ch-herch?” Magpie did her best to mimic the word.
“No, the sound is a pair of big bells,” he explained. “You have small bells of your own. I have bought them for you children ever since you were babies.”
“Bells?” Jackrabbit repeated.
“Yes,” Titus said, turning to him. “But these are big bells, son.” He held out his arms wide. “Big,
“They make that much noise?” Flea inquired.
“Giant bells, up there in those two tall …” and he was stumped for a second time, searching for how to describe a steeple or tower. Instead, he explained, “The white man builds a tall house for his holy men. And at the top of each tall house is a bell. This Taos
“Must be midday,” Waits suggested.
“The beautiful lady is right,” he responded with a wide grin, a shiver of anticipation shooting up his spine. “Come on. Let’s go find Josiah Paddock.”
As they set off, he led them onto the road the dragoons had taken in the opposite direction.
Waits-by-the-Water came up to his side, riding knee by knee. She said, “I wonder how many children Josiah has given his wife.”
Looking at her with an evil grin, Titus asked, “I haven’t given you enough with these three already?”
Waits returned his gaze from beneath those thick lashes. “Perhaps there are more babies for us to have, you handsome American.”
He winked at her as they reached the western fringes of San Fernando de Taos. Into the mouth of a narrow street their horses clattered over the frozen, rutted ground compressed between two rows of low-roofed mud buildings, their fading, whitewashed walls like prairie skulls pocked with narrow wood-doored nose rectangles and empty eye sockets of tiny, lightless windows. Snarling at every inquisitive dog, Ghost and Digger drove off the Mexican curs with their tails between hind legs. These new arrivals reined this way and that around every crude, wooden-wheeled
Titus drank deep of the air—light and dry—as only winters in the Rocky Mountains could be, filled with the sharp tang of another snow soon to follow on the heels of last night’s. On that air his nose recognized the fragrance of burning pinon and the heady perfume of cedar—each clear and distinct in the cold that brought a rose to their burnished cheeks.
As his heart rose to his throat in anticipation, he suddenly found himself worried—brooding that something could surely go wrong. Josiah might have pulled up stakes and lit out. Why didn’t he think of that before? After all, it had been four years since Mathew Kinkead described just how successful Paddock had become.…
Don’t fret, he scolded himself as they approached the
The end of the street they were on disgorged them onto the crowded town square where their animals clattered to a halt in the midst of adults and children, burros and dogs,
An empty cart stood nearby, resting at the corner of an adjacent street, its stubby double-tree plowing up a pair of short furrows in the frozen, snow-crusted earth. He tapped Waits on the forearm and pointed at the
“We’ll tie up the horses over there,” Bass explained. “Then go looking for some word of Josiah.”
Minutes later she was walking behind him, clutching Jackrabbit’s tiny hand, while Magpie and Flea both held on to their father’s hands as they melded into the bustling cacophony of the market square, where Indians from the nearby pueblo rubbed shoulders with straw-hatted peons, farm laborers, and house servants too. In this rigid society built upon a strict adherence to separation of the classes, the wealthy landowners and their bold, leather- clad vaqueros strutted and preened like nobility, parting those of lower stations as they moved from vendor to vendor.
In those first moments as he struggled to take it all in at once, Scratch saw how the dark eyes of the Mexicans or blanketed Pueblo Indians were trained their way … how quickly those hostile stares turned away as the strangers ebbing and flowing around his family went back to what had occupied them before they had noticed the newcomers in their midst.
Stopping at the center of the square, Titus turned round and round again, gazing upon it all, a riptide of memories battering him suddenly: a journey here with Hatcher’s outfit and their pursuit of Comanche raiders, recollections of that tiny booth Bill Williams set up to sell off his extra trade goods, memorable visits here with Asa McAfferty … and that fateful visit to Taos thirteen winters gone now.
His gaze was drawn to his daughter, perhaps seeing her with new eyes in this moment—recognizing how tall she had grown, how much older she appeared now that he realized she stood on the verge of womanhood.
Suddenly Bass reached out and grabbed the arm of an older man with a kind, furrowed face—clearly a poor
With frightened eyes the man glanced down at his elbow. Titus let him go. “Paddock?” he repeated the name with his Mexican flare.
“Si,” Scratch replied, sweeping his arm in a half circle around the market square.
This time the old man’s face softened, and he took hold of Bass’s elbow, turning him a quarter circle, leading the American trapper two steps toward that side of the square.
“There—that is the store of Josiah Paddock,
“A st-store?”
