A Long and Winding Road

Chapter 1 A wedding procession delighted Santa Fe as much as anything except, maybe, a fandango. Old men and women, young boys and girls, courting teenagers, couples with the responsibility of families, the sober, the drunk, people who were happy, or habitually unhappyeveryone turned out to see the bridal party parade toward the church. People lifted their flasks and cried "Hola!" The town was celebrating. In that spirit Sam Morgan breathed in the clear autumn air, looked around at his fellow riders, hoisted his jug, and took another swig. He knew it was too early to get swoopy, but this was a great day. He reached from one jouncing horse to another and handed the Taos lightning back to Pegleg Smith. Kit Carson grabbed the jug from Pegleg, gurgled deep and long, and passed it on. Smith, who seemed to be drunk every day, growled at him. Carson answered by glaring back comically. "Coy!" said Carson. "Bite that man's peg leg!" Coy, Sam's pet coyote, gave Carson a disgusted look. Pegleg had a reputation for fierce and wild. Once when he got wounded, the man cut off his own leg. Now he wrenched the whiskey away from someone and chugalugged. Then he fired his rifle into the air and roared, "I am a one-legged, whiskey-drinkin', woman-chasin', alligatin' son of a mountain lion and a grizzly b'ar!" Coy barked. Sam often wondered what the coyote's commentary meant. "Ye-e-e-ha-a-w!" whooped Hannibal MacKye. Hannibal liked to act drunk when he wasn'ta safer way to go, he said. For good measure he fired his rifle into the air. KA-BOOM! All the boys fired their rifles and hollered. Carson pulled his pistol out of his belt and shot the handgun off too. Sam grinnedboth weapons were now empty. "Kit," said Sam, "if the Comanch hit us now, you got no pecker in your pants pouch." "Then piss on 'em," said Carson. The boys laughed loudly and roughly. Coy yipped. Sam looked back to make sure Paloma wasn't close enough to hear the rough talk. He wouldn't have talked like that if he wasn't a little light in the head. There was no danger of Comanches hitting, not here on the narrow, twisty river road that ran between Santa Fe's adobe houses, and certainly not on this warm autumn midday when the mountain men were leading the bridal party in a fine procession to the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the plaza. Eight or ten mountain men headed the parade on their horses, colorful in their beaded buckskins and bright sashes, looking rough with their beards and wind-whipped faces. One of them had switched professions, and looked it. Sumner, a black man turned professional gambler, wore a tailored suit of lilac wool. In his opinion gambling was a much better job than standing in cold creeks and skinning stinky beaver. Close behind walked the two brides and two grooms, dressed in the best clothes they could borrow. Paloma had improved the teenage brides' outfits with every piece of lace, embroidery, and fine fabric she could find. Lupe wore a full-skirted dress in broad bands of violet and white, with butter-colored lace on the bodice. Rosalita's bodice was emerald, above a flaring skirt of light green and gold, each broad stripe pointed at the bottom. The brides had also tied rosemary to their sleeves, a traditional herb used to spark love. All four of the betrothed were former slaves, stolen in Chihuahua and brought to this far northern province of MexicoBlevins, Win is the author of 'A Long and Winding Road', published 2007 under ISBN 9780765305770 and ISBN 0765305771.