Comanche Dawn (33 page)

He traded his strike-a-light and his bow and arrows for pemmican, dried meat, and a water container made from the bladder of a buffalo. He slipped away from Quivira in the moonlight, following the back trail of the
Inday
who had seen the Metal Men. The trail was easy enough to see, for the tall grass was yet pushed down where the
Inday
dogs had pulled their pole-drags.

By the third day of travel, however, Jean had lost the trail, as it seemed the grass had risen again where it had been pressed down a few days before. Now he simply wandered southwestward. He traveled at night, so he would not be seen by strange people, and so that he could keep the Light-Which-Stands-Still over his right shoulder. He ran out of food. He came to a flat country devoid of streams where he might fill his water vessel. Finally, he stumbled upon a trail made by horses with shod hooves. He tried to follow the trail, but it was old, and he was exhausted.

Realizing that he was in danger of thirsting to death, Jean fell down in the sparse shade of a thorny bush and lapsed into fearful dreams. The next thing he remembered was the pain of something lashing his face. He awoke to find himself bouncing along on a travois. The whip he had felt was the tail of the horse who pulled the travois. He covered his face with his hand and focused his eyes on the scowling face of a friar clothed in a tattered black robe.

“What are you?” the friar said in Spanish.

Having grown up in Petit-Goave, Jean was conversant in Spanish as well as French. He understood, but he did not answer. He pretended to go back to sleep so he could think about his response. He feared the Franciscans and the Holy Office of the Inquisition would take issue with his heathen tattoos.

Later, when he opened his eyes again, the friar asked the same question: “What are you?”

“Water,” he said in Spanish.

The friar gave him water and it felt good running down his throat.

“What manner of man are you? Tell me!”

“I am a child of God,” Jean replied, using his first language, French.

The return to civilization was slow, but uneventful compared to his former travails. He was taken to El Paso del Norte, then to the City of Mexico, where he was questioned. The Inquisition authorities tried in vain to get Jean to admit to some heresy, and he claimed the
Indios
had forced him to submit to the tattooing, which, Jean said, had no religious significance whatsoever. He sang the praises of Father Membre, denounced heathen witchcraft, and recited his Hail Marys flawlessly. These were Franciscan friars here on New Spain's northern frontier. Jean did not trust them as he had Father Membre and the Jesuit brothers.

The viceroy and various military authorities questioned him at length, wanting to know all about the French menace in the east. When they learned that Jean had been with La Salle at Fort St. Louis, the Spanish officers shook their heads solemnly and informed him that a Spanish expedition had been dispatched to oust La Salle, but had found only the aftermath of a great massacre where the Fort had stood. This was how Jean learned of the death of Father Membre.

Next, he sailed across the Atlantic as a prisoner-of-war to convene with officers of the Royal Court and the Council of the Indies. He was grilled about his knowledge of inland America, its terrain, its riches, its natives. Finally, he was given the opportunity to swear allegiance to the Spanish Crown, and he readily accepted, knowing his former countrymen would surely hang him for cooperating with the Spanish.

From his Spanish captors, Jean had learned the fate of his friend, Goupil, the mapmaker. That intrepid frontiersman had actually managed to walk all the way to Quebec! It seemed that after the murder of La Salle, Henri Casaubon murdered the treacherous valet, Minime, in his sleep, over a leadership squabble among the Malcontents. Then Casaubon murdered the German, Hein.

Terrified by the libertinism that had swept over the remnants of the expedition, Goupil had fled, fearing he might be murdered next. He had walked northeastward, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of native guides. It was told to Jean that Goupil's adventures on this great journey—recorded in his diary—were as harrowing and as fascinating as the travels of Marco Polo.

A few of La Salle's Loyals also managed to make their way back to Quebec, and, desiring a scapegoat upon whom to lay blame for the failures of the expedition, singled out Goupil. He was hanged for conspiring in the murder of La Salle, when Jean knew him to be wholly innocent. Hanged! One of the most intrepid explorers and mapmakers ever to venture into the wilderness of the New World.

This, more than any other factor, convinced Jean that he could never again be French. Of course, his tattoos and the stares they attracted from civilized folk helped him decide that his place was on the frontiers of New Spain, where tattooed natives were not considered so freakish. A plan began to form in his mind. He knew he could move with ease among the Raccoon-Eyed People of the plains, known as
Jumanos
to the Spaniards. If he could forge links with other nations through the
Jumanos,
he could establish himself as a plains trader on the frontier and perhaps earn enough to survive.

Besides this, Jean found himself longing for the wilderness. He missed the sensation of peering across far slopes without a village in sight, while great herds of buffalo surged across the grasslands like rivers, their shores teeming with bunches of elk, deer, and pronghorn. At night, wild wolves would moan and coyotes would sing, lions would scream like the tortured souls of wanton women, and birds of the darkness would echo one another's calls.

He pledged his loyalty to the King of Spain and sailed back to Mexico. In the year of 1693, at the seasoned age of twenty, Jean L'Archeveque joined the Spanish effort to recolonize New Mexico. The various nations collectively called Pueblos by the Spaniards had revolted and succeeded in driving the Metal Men out thirteen years before. Jean rode northward out of El Paso del Norte, a militiaman with the reconquest. The trail was tough, but the Pueblos had been weakened by infighting and put up no resistance at first. When the Spanish force pushed into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Jean began to absorb a sensation peculiar to him. It was the feeling that he belonged.

The day he rode into the reconquered Spanish capital called La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco, he knew he was home. The cool pine-scented air, the timbered mountains, the sage, the adobe walls—all felt somehow familiar though he had never been near the place before. Santa Fe seemed to embrace both civilization and the wilderness at once, as Jean himself had learned to do.

Some of these northern Pueblo peoples resisted the return of the Spaniards, but after a few campaigns, the new colonists subdued the
Indios
and reconquered the Kingdom of New Mexico. Jean became a merchant, a trader, and a freighter. He found that his tattoos and his experiences among the natives indeed allowed him to trade successfully with the wild nations termed vaguely
Norteños
by Spanish authorities.

As he established himself as a landowner and a man of wealth, he made the fortuitous acquaintance of Maria. Newly widowed, she was able to see beyond Jean's gaudy facial markings, and soon fell in love with him. They were married, blessed with sons, and then, the fever. The wretched fever. Maria was gone after only three years of happiness.

Still, Santa Fe remained Jean's refuge. In a way, he was a man without a nation—a Frenchmen among Spaniards, a Raccoon-Eye among Pueblos. He was a white man shunned for his tattoos, an
Indio
scorned for his whiteness. He was a Christian who had seen heathen visions. But in another way, he was all that Santa Fe had become: partly civilized, partly wild; a product of the plains, the mountains, the desert; the result of strange cultures clashing, yet tenuously coexisting. Here, they would not even call him Jean L'Archeveque, having Hispanicized his name to Juan Archebeque.

But Jean knew who he was, and he knew he was home.

30

When Jean reached the
stable, he found that Paniagua had saddled his best stallion and was holding the reins for him to mount. The stallion, a noble chestnut of eight years, bore the features of hot Arab blood—the flaring nostrils, the arched neck, and the pointed ears. The stable man, upon hearing that his employer would dine at the
Casas Reales,
had chosen the fine polished saddle with fire-breathing lions and tangled vines carved and dyed into the sprawling leather skirts. He had bridled the stallion with the fancy headstall decorated with silver conchos all the way down to where it looped around the rings of the spade bit.

Paniagua was from Picuris, making him a
Tiwa.
He had supposedly converted to Catholicism and apparently enjoyed living among the Spaniards and working for Jean. He had even taken a Christian name of sorts, calling himself Paniagua. Jean was not sure whether this name stemmed from
pan y agua,
Spanish for bread and water, or from
paniaguado,
which was a Spanish term for a favored servant. Either way, the name probably did not mean much to the stable man. Jean knew Paniagua still worshiped the
Tiwa
gods and attended secret ceremonies in the kivas of the
Tiwa
pueblos. Not that it bothered him. Jean's heart possessed a touch of heathenism, as well.

He slipped his boot into the iron stirrup covered with the ornate leather
tapadero
whose tips reached lustily for the ground. “I will be late, Paniagua. Don't concern yourself with my return. I'll take care of the stallion myself.”

“Thank you, señor,” said Paniagua, as he handed the reins up to the rider.

Jean held the stallion to a fast walk as he left his hacienda. Santa Fe lay two leagues to the northwest, on the road from Pecos. After the first league, he let the steed lope, passing a herd of sheep in the cool twilight, a field of oats whose irrigation laterals glistened like ropes of silver, a pumpkin patch dotted with big orange
calabazas.
It was almost dark when he cantered among the torch lights of the adobe outpost of Santa Fe, letting the stallion walk the rest of the way to the plaza.

Shadows had engulfed the sprawling walls of the
Casas Reales
by the time the rider arrived. Jean considered the collection of adobes, almost a century old, more venerable than any building the Spaniards had managed to erect and maintain in the Kingdom of New Mexico. Yet, compared to some of the
Indio
buildings—most notably the two fine and ancient ones at Taos—the
Casas Reales
were mere parvenus. As he rode up to the gate and dismounted, he could see that several fires were burning inside the walls where the soldiers quartered, for the flames silhouetted the weeds and grasses growing on the dirt roof of the governor's residence on the southeast corner.

A guard recognized him and let him enter. A stable boy took his mount. Jean proceeded through the garden to the rudely appointed hall where he had often dined with the governor and other important functionaries. He was always invited as a militia captain and member of the
cabildo
—the citizens' council—but everyone knew that his true value to the colony was as a trader and negotiator among the
Indios
and an expert in French affairs.

“Welcome,
Capitán
Archebeque!” said Governor Del Bosque as Jean entered the hall through an arched doorway in an adobe wall as thick as a horse was broad.

“Good evening,
Capitán-General,
” he replied, addressing the governor by his military title. He vigorously shook the hand of Antonio Del Bosque, for he considered the governor a wise man, a good friend, an intrepid politician, and a capable administrator.

Passing the governor, he let his iron spurs ring against the tile floor, and glanced across the room to see with whom he would dine tonight.

Beside the governor stood Captain Lorenzo Lujan, commander of the Santa Fe
presidio
—a good soldier, tough as a badger, but still just a soldier. “
Capitán,
” Jean said, shaking the officer's hand.

“
Señor,
” Lujan returned. He refused to address Jean by his rank of captain in the militia, for Jean was not a regular soldier and didn't deserve a military title in Lujan's opinion.

Across the dining room table stood Fray Gabrielle Ugarte, father-custodian over all the missions in New Mexico and the friar who had discovered Jean in the wilderness a dozen years ago.

“Hello, Padre,” Jean said, with a smile.

“Juan,” the priest replied, with a somber bow of his head. No typical friar, Ugarte possessed the will of a lion and the physical strength of a bull. Many of the Franciscans in New Mexico had been sent here almost as punishment for lack of ambition or some other perceived shortcoming. Fray Ugarte had
requested
this assignment. His only cause was to save souls from perdition: to reduce heathen savages to Christianity. He hungered always for the next expedition into the wild. He seemed to like danger, and he did not care if he had to capture, whip, chain, or starve a barbarian in order to effect a conversion.

Sitting at the table, enjoying a large gulp of wine, was the
alcalde-mayor
of Santa Fe, a likeable civilian appointee named Manuel Durazno, who had no authority, and knew it, and furthermore did not care. Durazno had once been an employee of Governor Del Bosque, but had been appointed
alcalde-mayor
and ordered to take over most of the functions of the civilian
cabildo,
which Del Bosque thought had grown far too powerful.

“Please, remain seated, Manuel,” Jean said, jokingly, seeing that the
alcalde-mayor
had no intention of getting up.

“If you insist, my friend.” Durazno replenished his clay cup from the chipped glass bottle, many times refilled and recorked in this land where even glassware had to be hoarded like gold.