“Best you go at it slow this time, Scratch,” Kinkead warned. He stood before Titus like a jolly monolith, his arm wrapped securely around Rosa’s shoulder.
“This here stuff is pure-dee magic, Matthew!” Bass replied, licking his lips as he refilled his clay cup with the ladle. “I’ll be go to hell if it don’t beat that Monangahela rum I was broke in on back to the Ohio country.”
“Bet this here wheat brew of Workman’s does pack a bigger wallop too!” Hatcher declared as he stepped up to get himself a refill at the table placed a’straddle the corner of the long sala, the parlor where valley folks had begun to arrive and all was gaiety beneath the huge fluttering candles and smaller mirrored lanterns.
Besides that fermented grain beverage manufactured by William Workman at his new distillery west of the village, Governor Mirabal and his wife, Manuela, were serving what was variously known among the American trappers as “Pass brandy” or “Pass wine”—given that name from the fact that this grape product was routinely brought up from Chihuahua through the “pass” in the mountains, those fine spirits transported as far north as Santa Fe and Taos in oaken kegs and earthen jars.
“Scratch—just you be careful that Taos lightning don’t whack you in the back of the head when you ain’t looking!” Caleb cried as he held out his cup for another ladle of the heady concoction.
“Aguardiente I hear it’s called,” Bass declared with an expert roll of his r.
“Ah-wharr-dee-en-tee! Listen to this here nigger spit that out so smooth!” Hatcher snorted. “Picking up on the Mex talk, he is.”
“Only a little,” Scratch admitted.
“Maybeso just enough to get yourself hunkered atween the legs of some purty senorita,” said Solomon Fish as his eyes studied those comely maids moving about the room.
Quickly gazing over the small knots of dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked young women, Scratch wagged his head and replied, “Maybeso this child’s gonna learn enough of their Mex talk to dig hisself down into one helluva lot of trouble!”
Slipping his knife from its scabbard hung at the back of his belt, Titus plunged the narrow tip of it into the open clay crock sitting on the table among stacks of clay cups, huge basket-wrapped jugs, and crystal bowls. Spearing some clumps of coarse brown sugar on the flat of his blade, Scratch dumped the grains into his cup, stirring a bit before he licked both sides of the knife and returned it to the scabbard—then took himself a long drink he let lay on his tongue, savoring the hearty burn.
Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! If that Mex way to drink this here liquor didn’t make his sweet tooth shine!
Back at Workman’s place that first night in the valley more than two weeks before, Rufus Graham had introduced him to the way many Taosenos sweetened and softened the locals’ favorite potion. As strong black Mississippi River coffee became a dessert with heapings of cane sugar, this Mexican aguardiente went down all the smoother after a man sweetened it with a coarse brown sugar transported all the way north from Mexico’s southernmost provinces.
As new as these villages in northern Mexico might be to gringo traders from the States, the Taos valley had been settled well before the arrival of the first English to the eastern shores of North America. From the time the Spanish first ventured north to the Rio Grande country, the simple people of this valley had celebrated the annual tradition of the Taos Fair in late July or early August. Drawn by the prospect of riches, traders of many colors flocked to this high land locked beneath the dark snowcapped peaks of the Sangre de Cristos.
To Taos came merchants from the Spanish provinces far to the south, their poor carretas piled high with the treasures of Chihuahua and beyond. Other traders laid out wares brought on tall-masted schooners to the coastal cities of Mexico all the way from Spain: cutlery of the finest Toledo steel, butter-soft leather goods, perhaps bright tin objects to dazzle the eye, or those large silver coins so valued as ornaments by visiting Indians who be-jeweled themselves in grand fashion. From all those remote provinces of New Spain came hundreds of traders who sought the riches to be bartered at these fairs. While some might bring Spanish barb horses to trade, others brought the handiwork of faraway native craftsmen—everything from earthenware and furniture to saddles, harness, and tack. Upon their trade blankets many displayed the shiniest of finger rings, bracelets, and objects to enhance the slender throat of any woman.
And when those traders came to this land of the Pueblo dweller every summer, so came the more nomadic tribes from the surrounding region: Arapaho, Kiowa and Navajo, Pawnee and Ute, even the more warlike Apache and Comanche bands. Perhaps it was the presence of the other tribes, perhaps even the desire not to be counted out in this annual fair, that kept a secure lid on the powder keg—suspicion and hostilities suspended for a few days of merriment and bartering. Instead of raising scalps and seizing captives, the warriors had to content themselves with growling and trading, blustering and bartering. By a long-standing tradition, each of them held to a temporary truce despite the bloodiest of intertribal wars, despite their uninterrupted depredations on these same Mexican villages.
But for that brief time at the height of summer, the tribes brought their hides: huge, glossy buffalo robes; the silklike chamois of antelope and mountain goat; the luxurious pelts of wolf, badger, and fox. And they brought slaves. Human misery, so it seemed, had become a staple of this annual trade with the Indian bands at the Taos Fair. With their prisoners stolen in raids made on rival tribes, the visitors traded their captives for trinkets, blankets, kettles, beads, and weapons … and always the Indians traded for their share of the Mexican’s alcohol.
For more than two hundred years they had come here like bees to the hive—both the suspicious Mexican from Chihuahua and the wary warrior from the Llano Estacado—forging an uneasy truce while they took what they needed most from the other.
Everyone knew the warrior bands would return to the killing soon enough. Would return to Taos for the sheep and horses, for the women and children soon enough.
Although Don Fernando de Taos was the village’s proper name, some of the Mexicans themselves had come to call this sprinkling of whitewashed adobe huts and walled compounds by the name Don Fernandez de Taos. Still others corrupted it further to San Fernandez or San Fernando de Taos. No matter what expensive two-dollar name the Mexicans chose to hang on it … to the mountain trappers who learned of its existence—the breed who flocked here come the brutal winters raging farther north in the Rocky Mountains—this place was known simply as Touse.
Here the residents were far more willing to trade with the Norte Americanos who brought their wares from back east in Missouri all the way down the Santa Fe Trail than they were to trade with the trappers for their pelts. After all, the trade goods came from elsewhere—items that could not be had anywhere in Mexico. But those beaver hides … now, those might well have been pulled right out of Mexican waters! So though most Taosenos enthusiastically tolerated the American traders who came with their wares, traded them off for specie and mules, then turned around for the States without lingering, these trappers were something quite different altogether. They arrived late in the autumn and stayed on until winter itself was retreating from the high country.
Which meant that most of this reckless breed of unwashed, crude characters were underfoot and causing trouble for the natives of this sleepy village until the prospect of trapping prime beaver plews eventually lured the foreign interlopers from the valley once more.