Dancing with the Golden Bear - Softcover

Blevins, Win

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765344831 ISBN 13: 9780765344830

Publisher: Forge Books, 2006

Synopsis

Young Sam Morgan, the Pennsylvania runaway and now a seasoned Rocky Mountain trapper, joins a brigade led by Jedediah Smith, greatest mountain man of them all, heading west for the Mexican province of Alta California.

With Sam on this dangerous mission into unexplored territory are his beloved Crow wife Meadowlark and a polyglot host of multi-national fur hunters, Ute and Shoshone Indians. The journey south to the Colorado River and across the Mojave Desert is harrowing: game rare or nonexistent, water a rarity, strange bands of naked Indians, the hammering sun, all in a godforsaken land of sand and scrub.

Sam Morgan's life changed unalterably when the pregnant Meadowlark falls ill as the brigade makes its way through Mojave country. In an emergency push west he is able to bring her safely into the California coastal town of Monterey but there faces the greatest crisis of his life - the death of the only woman he has ever loved.

About this title

About the Author

Win Blevins, an authority on the Plains Indians and fur-trade era of the West, is author of Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Stone Song, his prize-winning novel of Crazy Horse and many others including his Rendevous series that began with So Wild a Dream.

He lives in Utah with his wife Meredith, also a novelist.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Dancing With the Golden Bear
Part OneINTO THE UNKNOWNOneWe Los DosCAPTAIN JEDEDIAH SMITH sniffed the steam rising off his black coffee. Sam and Flat Dog passed the jug back and forth. Though Diah didn't drink, he was accustomed to being the only man who didn't.Meadowlark touched her twenty-two-year-old husband's white-blond hair. He looked into her face, lit by the last embers of the fire. The eyes of the two honeymooners made promises. "Soon," he murmured. He handed Flat Dog the jug and said, "Kill it."As though the whiskey had loosened his tongue, Jedediah said, "Sometimes I wonder what it all means.""What?" Sam tossed back, grinning."Life.""Means?" asked Flat Dog, hoisting the jug, also grinning."Yes.""That's what I thought, Captain," said Sam. "Sometimes you're funny."Jedediah gave him a peculiar look. "Funny?"Flat Dog gurgled long on the whiskey. Meadowlark watched it run down her brother's neck. He lifted the jug high, and the last few drops plopped into his mouth. "There!" he said, and slammed the jug down, as though he'd had his say.After the brigade left camp tomorrow, whiskey and coffee would be only memories until next summer and next rendezvous."Isn't it worth asking?" said Jedediah."My father taught me," Sam said, "that when a bird is on the wing, all that's on its mind is flying. And he does best to keep it that way."Flat Dog slapped his brother-in-law on the back. "Coy sees it like that too." Coy was Sam's pet coyote, which lay as always at his feet."When we're about to head out," Diah said, "I get thoughtful."Sam shrugged. "What's on my mind is, there's a new place to go, and my heart is big to see it.""Where are we going?" asked Flat Dog.The captain had told all his men that the brigade was headed south and west looking for new beaver country. But he'd told Sam and Meadowlark more."I think you know," Diah said."California," said Flat Dog."Don't spread it around," said Diah.The Crow nodded. The word "California" hardly meant a thing to him. Adventure meant something. Whiskey did too."I want to see the ocean," said Meadowlark.Sam grinned at her. His bride, who had spent her entire life in the Yellowstone country, was clear about that one thing. She wanted to go to the big-water-everywhere. Sam wondered what was between here, on the shore of a creek in the northern Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific shores. He remembered what Diah had said. When the mapmakers didn't know what was in a big empty space, they sometimes filled in, MONSTERS THERE BE HERE."California," said Jedediah.Sam smiled, stood up, and offered Meadowlark a hand. "Bedtime," he said. Her eyes softened, and she took his hand. 
 
"WE'LL CAMP HERE," said Jedediah.The place looked good to Sam. It was in a bend of the river, a fair way below the Utah camp. Never a good idea to camp too close to Indians, who thought of horse-stealing as a sport. He would stake Paladin right by the tipi."Capitan!" cried Manuel. He was a trapper out of Taos, new to Jedediah's outfit. "This place ... We go somewhere else. We must no camp here."A score of men and their several women stopped dismounting and unloading. They gawked at the Mex who dared to tell the captain where to camp.Jedediah looked at Manuel and around at his men, all waiting for orders. He studied the man's eyes. "What are you scared of?""Two years ago on this place, exact this place ..." Manuel's face was loose with panic. He couldn't go on."Set up," the captain told the men.Manuel's story didn't come out until the men had grouped into cook fires. He told it, at Diah's request, while Sam, Meadowlark, the captain, and others were sharing a supper of fresh deer tenderloin.Two summers before, in 1824, Manuel had been trapping with Etienne Provost's brigade out of Taos. They held a parley with a village of Shoshones right where the Utah village was now.The men knew that both Shoshones and Utes, who hated each other and fought at every chance, liked to camp and hunt here on the shores of Utah Lake."Bad Left Hand, Shoshone capitan, he ask all men, Indio and trapper, they should leave their weapons at a distance from the council lodge. His medicine, he say, it forbid that metal, it come near the sacred pipe."Manuel watched his companions register this information. Setting down your rifle, your pistol, your butchering knife, even your patch knife, and any hidden knives, that would go hard. Sam thought, I wouldn't put down my hair knife. He had a blade disguised as an ornament holding back his long, white hair."Provost, he say yes, all right, do this. Trapper and Indio, we watch each other. Slowly. Slowly, we lay down guns, knives, tomahawks, all. Us Taos men, eighteen or nineteen, and maybe twenty-four, twenty-five Indio, we all set down weapons and go into council lodge. Everyone nervous."Then pipe is smoked," Manuel went on. "Probably there is a secret signal. Suddenly them Indio, they draw knives and tomahawks from under the blankets and the shirts and attack."A knife, it dive at mi corazón, my heart. I shoot out hand and knock it away maybe half. The knife, it bites me here." He tapped the point where his shoulder joined the neck. He bore a jagged scar. "Same time the cuchillo, knife, it bites me, BLAM, Indio who attacks me is knocked backward big, how you say, ass over teacups."Mi corazón, it jump. I see that Provost, he is a big man, very powerful and very quick, he toss one Indio straight over my head and onto the fire. Sparks fly. Indio, he scream."Provost, he grab tomahawk out of the burning hand. I grab hand of knife that bite me and twist fierce, seize knife--I slash wild, wild everywhere."All is, how you say, like whirlwind. Bodies, they spin. Men crash to ground. Screams cut at my ears."Provost, he kick one Indio in belly and knock him into two other men, red and white, behind. All go down."I leap on the back of Indio and sink knife deep into the belly."Provost, he holler, 'Get out! Get out!'"I ride dead Indio like horse. He fall, I run. Last thing I see is Provo, he throw Indio into mob and sprint one step behind me."We two, we los dos, charge like bull through darkness, we hack knives at anyone get in the way."One hundred yards, maybe, we get to horses. The men we left to hold the horses, they have no idea of trouble."The four of us, we ride like hell."According to the rest of Manuel's story, los dos and one more man escaped Bad Left Hand's trap. Fifteen of their comrades died in that council lodge."Me too die there for sure, muerto, but Provost he save mi vida, my life.""That was then," said Jedediah."And those were Shoshones," said Sam. He'd always had bad luck with Shoshones.Manuel gripped Sam's wrist and spoke urgently. The whites of his eyes flashed in the flickering firelight. "This terrible thing that happen, it still goes on here. Evil deed, it happen over and over, it keep happening always. The evil, it becomes a curse."Jedediah let the words sit for a minute and said, "I don't put stock in curses."Copyright © 2005 by Win Blevins

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0765344831
• ISBN 13: 9780765344830
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304