Heaven Is a Long Way Off Read Free Page A

California,” Diah told Sam.
    After more sips of coffee, Sam told the captain no.
    â€œThat’s a relief.” Jedediah wanted the California beaver country for his own company, Smith, Jackson & Sublette.
    â€œFrancisco says the trapping outfit took beaver from the Colorado and didn’t want to pay for it. They quarreled and split up here. Some of them went up the Colorado River. He doesn’t know where the others went.”
    Now Diah indulged one of his real passions. He got out the notebook where he wrote his journal and his maps. In the sand he drew the Colorado as it came down from the north to these villages. He got Francisco to draw it farther south, to the mouth of the Gila. The Yuma Indians lived around the mouth of the Gila, Francisco said, and Jedediah made a note. Then the interpreter drew the Gila coming in from the east, and where the Salt River flowed into it. But he didn’t know where either river headed up. He said the Colorado emptied into the ocean several sleeps below the mouth of the Gila.
    Jedediah copied the information from the map in the sand into his notebook and closed it with a smile.
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    T HAT NIGHT THE men were boiling for a dance.
    On the long trip south from rendezvous Sam had found a new musical partner—Polly Labross was a peach of a fiddler. A black man from Montreal and once a voyageur, Polly knew French-Canadian songs. Sam had learned to pipe the melodies on his tin whistle, and had even learned some lyrics in French.
    The trappers moved up to some flat ground near the huts. When Polly started tuning the fiddle, Mojave women gathered to watch. Polly scraped out a verse of “Ah, Si Mon Moine Voulait Danser,” and a dozen women crept close.
    Sam played a second verse and chorus while Polly double-stopped harmony. Polly looked like a sly old dog, his hair mottled gray and his beard black, with a shape that seemed almost Chinese. His soft eyes hinted at a wisdom that embraced thousands of secrets he wouldn’t tell.
    â€œLet’s go,” hollered Bos’n Brown. He grabbed Gobel’s arm and set out jigging. Gobel was Goliath, Bos’n a small and lithe David. Bos’n was a sassy fellow, quick with a quip. Now he took the woman’s role—he hopped, he bounced, he swung his bottom like a girl’s, he even jumped into the air. Gobel swung him ’round. They had a big time.
    The Mojave women, remembering last year’s affair, started dancing in place. The dance style of the fur men was nothing like their own, but they liked it.
    Sam sang in a light, clear voice over Polly:
    If my old top were a dancing man
    A cap to fit I would give him then
    chorus:
    Dance old top, dance in
    Oh, you don’t care for dancing
    Oh, you don’t care for my mill la, la
    Oh, you won’t hear how my mill runs on
    As Polly explained it to Sam, it was a tease. The dancers were asking a monk to join them. In every verse they tempted him with something different, a cap, a gown…
    If my old top were a dancing man
    A gown of serge I would give him then
    In the next verse they tempted him with a Psalter, then a rosary, and so on, but the monk never danced, and they hooted at him.
    No one gave a damn about this story, but the tune was lively.
    Now Bos’n spun away from Gobel and held out his hand to one of the women. She grabbed hold, and around the circle they went, the woman…
    It was Spark! She followed clumsily but eagerly.
    Well, Sam reminded himself, he’d told Bos’n that she danced with several men last year, and went to the bushes with at least one, Red Shirt.
    Polly jumped faster into the tune, and Sam took a break.
    Other Mojave women joined in, and several men. Among them—surprise! Last year two teenagers had tried to steal Paladin, Skinny and Stout, Sam called them in his mind. He had gotten her back only by chasing them halfway across the river, and one nearly drowned under a cottonwood log beached on a sand