Crossing Purgatory (25 page)

During his hesitation, Teresa had pulled on her coat and wrapped her head and face in a long woolen scarf. As she started for the door Thompson felt a flash of anger at her, at Benito, at the situation.

“Wait,” he said. He drew the blanket more tightly around his shoulders, thrust his bare hands into a pair of Benito's mittens and pulled on one of his hats. It fit tightly. Taking a rope from a hook beside the door, he stepped past Teresa into the blizzard.

Again, Thompson followed the wall to the gate and around the outer perimeter until he came to the goat pen. Some of the herd had been caught in the hills and would have to fend for themselves but nannies with their kids had been left in the pen and Thompson could make them out huddled in the near corner, does sheltering their kids, backs to the wind, snow covering their flanks like a layer of fleece. Their bleating sounded muffled and distant in the dampening snow. He leashed what he thought to be the dominant nanny. She allowed him to pull her along, and the others followed, nose to tail. Looking back, he noticed two of the kids lifeless in the snow, on their sides, legs stiff. He opened the pen, and immediately one of the trailing does led her twin kids out into the field and in less time than it took to call out to her they had disappeared from sight. The remainder followed the lead nanny through the placita gates. Thompson herded them into the living quarters.

While he shivered by the fire, the others took blankets and flour sacks and rubbed down the goats. Thompson watched, taking inventory. Four nannies and five kids. One-half the newborns and a nanny lost to the storm. Six goats unaccounted for somewhere in the scrub. Last year's crop decimated, Benito's herd threatened, his family hungry, would the Ibarras hang on? Could they? Even if Benito and Paloma survived, would their will be broken? Thompson recalled passing the crumbled ruins of Bent's old adobe fort on the Arkansas and imagined the Ibarra placita a weathered and abandoned skeleton and inexplicably found himself saddened by the possibility. What was their loss to him? What was his stake?

T
HE STORM DEPARTED AS QUICKLY
as it had arrived. The following morning Thompson stepped out into a pre-dawn morning as quiet as a meditation. The wind still, the morning star hanging low in the east. Spread out before him, a silent, white world. He trampled a path to the water trough, broke through a half-inch of ice, and led the goats from the living quarters out to water and to feed on coarse fodder he spread on the snow. Although the storm had blown in with ferocity, it lacked the mass and endurance of a winter blizzard, and in open spaces where the wind had not banked the snow against wall or hillside, less than a foot had accumulated. The storm would not live in the memory as anything extraordinary. But it had posed grave peril for one caught in the barrens unaware or ill-prepared.

After seeing to the goats and chickens, he encouraged Teresa not to worry, and he broke a path to his shack above the river. He hastily collected his woolen coat, mittens, and spare hat, pulled on high boots, and continued on to Upperdine's homestead.

Captain Upperdine was already afield when Thompson announced himself from the front porch. Genoveva called him in and poured him coffee.

“John was up at first light,” she said. “Saw to the animals, then rode west to high ground, to search for sign before deciding where to begin,” she explained.

“When were they due back?”

“They were a day late even before the storm hit.”

Thompson finished his coffee and Genoveva began to pour a second cup, which he waved off. “The Captain will not start out directly?” he asked.

“Not unless he catches something in the distance through his glass. He said as much.”

Thompson went to the corral and saddled a horse, mounted, and nudged it forward, following the first set of hoofprints in the new snow. Still an awkward rider, he bounced in the saddle. Two miles out, he met Upperdine returning from reconnaissance.

“Any sign?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we should gather what we can in our saddlebags and set out directly.”

“Set out for where?” Thompson asked. He could not imagine hunting for a single cart in so vast a wilderness.

“They shouldn't be far,” Upperdine said. “Benito told me his route. He planned to be out only a day or two, collecting deadfall upstream from the ford.”

W
ITH FULL SUN CAME THE
glare. After only a few hours of riding, Thompson's eyes stung and became irritated by his constant rubbing. Determined not to slow Upperdine, he kicked his horse forward even though his vision filled with starbursts. Snow like sun reflecting off a mirror. Upperdine rode ahead and Thompson followed his trail, but had constantly to correct his course because of his blurred wandering. Shortly, Thompson felt a tug on his reins and became aware of Upperdine pulling beside him, bringing their horses to a halt. Upperdine retrieved two woolen scarves from his bag and handed one to Thompson.

“Wind it tight around your eyes,” he demonstrated. “Two turns. Now, create just a slit to see through.” Thompson followed Upperdine's instructions and the two continued on. The pain in Thompson's eyes eased a little. They came to the ford and crossed to the north side and slowed the horses to a walk and looked for tracks until darkness prevented them from searching further. The horses began to stumble from fatigue and slick footing. They made camp beside a patch of brittle grass that had been shielded from the brunt of the storm by a thick stand of willows. They build a smoldering fire that provided only the memory of warmth and ate a cold supper that Genoveva had packed for them. They ate in silence. Upperdine seemed perplexed and withdrawn, and Thompson was unwilling to give voice to his own misgivings. He wondered, not for the first time that day, why he was here, why he had felt compelled to join Upperdine in the search. What assistance could he possibly provide that Upperdine alone could not? He served only to impede progress. And to what end? Benito should not have wandered afield with his daughter during this unsettled season. He knew better. But he'd gone nevertheless. Some overwhelming desire to repair his daughter, to restore balance? Whatever irritations Benito stirred in Thompson, his motives seemed rooted in family, and for that Thompson held grudging admiration.

Unused to long rides, Thompson's legs could hardly boost him into the saddle the following morning. Thankfully, a thin cloud cover lessened the glare and provided relief to his eyes. They encountered no one on the trail nor did they discern any evidence of recent use. The snow melted through the day, and the trail slogged. A thin layer of mud glazed still-frozen ground. In the cold aftermath of the storm, the earth had become an inhospitable, primeval ruin.

“Snow, and now the melt,” Upperdine observed. “I don't think any sign at all is left.”

“Could they have come this far?” Thompson asked.

“I doubt it.”

Midday, they watered the horses from the river. The ground was clear, in places, snow remaining stacked on the windward banks, the prairie a stark, piebald mix. Thompson could scarce imagine a less inviting land, and he wondered again about the constitution of a man who voluntarily searched out such a place to stake his future.

“We'll ride another hour,” Upperdine said. “And then backtrack.”

Around a wide turn in the river, they came upon a rough lean-to extending from a hollow gouged from the riverbank. Two men stood by a narrow side stream that emptied muddy water into the Arkansas. One shoveled gravel into a cradle-like contraption, while the other agitated it with a rocker arm. A third man lay wrapped in a wool blanket on the ground beside the lean-to. To the side, a burro grazed on stubble around his picket.

The two prospectors looked up from their work as the riders approached and the four of them took measure of one another. Thompson judged them to be green and not long on their own, younger than him by more than a few years. Farm boys out to seek their fortune. Upperdine reined his horse and nodded to the boys and they nodded back.

“Storm hit you hard?”

“Some. But we had shelter.” The one holding the shovel extended the haft in the direction of the dirt cave. “Didn't much bother us.”

“Any movement on the trail since it blew over?”

“Just you.”

Upperdine's eyes scanned the boys' camp. “This don't seem a likely claim if its gold you're looking for.”

“Our thought was to follow the river upstream, into the foothills,” the boy at the rocker arm said. “We just killing time here until our pard is fit for travel.”

Upperdine looked over at the man lying on the ground.

“Poor health?”

“Got hisself bit on the hand by a raccoon a while back. Never did heal right. Festered up.”

“How in hell did he manage to get bit by a raccoon?”

“Varmint scrounging around camp for scraps couple weeks back. He set his mind to feed it, missed his hound back home. Seemed tame, that coon. But it up and took a chunk out of his hand.”

“Canine fever, I expect,” Upperdine said. “I've seen it before.”

“What's to be done for him?”

Upperdine studied the man in his blanket, his blotchy face, glazed eyes. One leg twitched convulsively. “You might consider shooting him when it gets too bad.”

The two boys looked up at Upperdine to see if he might be joking, and one started to say something, his mouth opened, but then he pursed his lips and sucked at his teeth, and they both looked off away from him.

“Save him considerable suffering, if the time comes,” Upperdine said.

Thompson looked at the boy on the ground. Sixteen, seventeen maybe. Life over before it got a good hold. He looked about, a stark and desolate place to die. Would the boy call for his mama when the time came? Had his own boys whimpered for their papa? Thompson involuntarily shuddered.

Upperdine raised his hand to the two men and turned his horse and Thompson followed.

“That's a harsh pronouncement you made,” he said to Upperdine.

“Do no good to coat the words with molasses,” Upperdine said. “The boy is set for bad times, and the others ought to prepare for it.”

“What if you're wrong?” Thompson challenged.

“Good for them,” Upperdine said. “They'll cuss me for causing them worry and pass the jug around.” They rode on for a minute, and then Upperdine said “But I ain't.”

After covering another quarter-mile, Upperdine abruptly reined, cussed under his breath, and turned back toward the prospectors' camp. He approached the miner cradling the river gravel.

“That burro,” Upperdine said. “How'd you come by it?” They both looked over at the burro.

“It's ours.”

The second man came around the machinery and stood with his partner, both fists wrapped around the haft of his shovel. Upperdine casually let his hand drop to the grip of the pistol tucked into his waistband.

“I did not inquire about ownership. I know whose property it is. My question is, how'd you come by it?”

Thompson rode up with his rifle resting across his lap, unsheathed and at full cock. The two diggers stood silently, eyes darting between the two riders as if assessing their options. Thompson had no heart for this. The two prospectors seemed innocents, young men in search of a fool's dream, bumpkins unfit for this land, and he was certain the two at least would soon return to their family farms in South Carolina or Georgia, or wherever, provided they survived long enough to be shed of their wanderlust. But Upperdine had recounted story after story of shallow graves filled with unwitting boys who let misunderstanding escalate into argument. He stood guard, prepared to do whatever he must. The horses shuffled and snorted and pawed at the loose gravel of the streambed.

“It wandered into camp,” the boy with the shovel finally said. “We fed it.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. All drawn out. We fed it.”

“What direction did it come from?” Upperdine asked.

“Downstream,” the boy said, pointing. “From the south bank.”

Upperdine reached into his greatcoat and drew out a silver coin and tossed it to the boy. “For your trouble.”

The boy nodded. “All right. That seems fair.”

Upperdine led his horse to the burro and took up its tether. He turned his horse and looked back over his shoulder at the boys standing by the stream, wet, mud-caked, fagged out.

“If you stay here long, best move camp up slope. Your dugout will be washed out within the month by the spring floods. You may have little notice.”

“Obliged,” one of the boys answered.

Again, Thompson and Upperdine took leave, and with the burro in tow, forded the river where a wide bar and gently sloped banks allowed easy footing.

“Benito changed his plans and crossed the river,” Upperdine said. “I should a knowed when we didn't come across his sign.”

“But where?”

“I'm guessing close by,” Upperdine said. “If they'd been near the junction, the burro would have made for the placita.”

They retraced their route, except this time from the south bank. In places the land rose beside the river into steep bluffs, and thick brush near the water obstructed their views. Twice, Upperdine fired his musket, hoping for a return signal. He knew Benito did not carry a musket, but something, a shout, smoke from a stoked fire. Nothing came. They moved slowly, dismounting and clamoring down embankments to search the thickets and the backwaters. They moved downstream almost to the ford and back again. The shadows lengthened and at full dark, fearing they might miss some evidence of passage, they stopped. Cold seeped beneath Thompson's coat, the icy stars, darkness a malevolent presence. Upperdine walked along the river, and returned. They ate tortillas, jerky, slept little, and at dawn were mounted. To Thompson, Upperdine seemed indecisive now, confused, often turning in his saddle and looking back from where they'd come. His shoulders slumped; his eyes squinted into the distance. Forenoon, he reined his horse.