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    Valley of the Eagles, Microfiction from Old New Mexico: Old New Mexico
    Valley of the Eagles, Microfiction from Old New Mexico: Old New Mexico
    Valley of the Eagles, Microfiction from Old New Mexico: Old New Mexico
    Ebook75 pages47 minutes

    Valley of the Eagles, Microfiction from Old New Mexico: Old New Mexico

    By Loretta Miles Tollefson

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    About this ebook

    Forty-two micro-stories set in Old New Mexico, each less than 500 words long, and many based on actual people or events. Includes:

    Rattled. On the Santa Fe Trail, two men dispute a rifle's origins.

    Trapper in Love. A language barrier comes between a trapper and his woman.

    Edward and Augusta. The future warden of New Mexico's first Territorial Prison takes a wife.

    Decision Point. Word of the Elizabethtown gold strike reaches Denver.

    Thicker n' Snot. Miners from around the globe adjust to the Sangre de Cristo mountain climate.

    The Lost Soul. A young man defies his community's expectations.

    Darker Than a Wolf's Mouth. A settler fails to heed his wife's warnings.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPalo Flechado Press
    Release dateOct 5, 2018
    ISBN9781386408307
    Valley of the Eagles, Microfiction from Old New Mexico: Old New Mexico
    Author

    Loretta Miles Tollefson

    Loretta Miles Tollefson has been publishing fiction and poetry since 1975. (She’s not old--she started young!) Growing up in foothills of the Olympic Mountains in the log cabin her grandfather built and her father was born in led naturally to an interest in history and historical fiction. When she retired to the mountains of northern New Mexico, writing historical fiction set there was a logical result. The Moreno Valley Sketches books are the first in many planned books set there. Before turning to historical fiction full time, Loretta wrote Crown of Laurel, a novel set in Seattle in the recession of the early 1980's. Loretta holds a B.S. in Bible Education from Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon. This background informs her poetry collections Mary at the Cross: Voices from the New Testament and And Then Moses Was There: Voices from the Old Testament. In the mid-1980's, Loretta and her husband suffered the loss of their first child in the fifth month of pregnancy. Her poetry collection But Still My Child came out of that period and is designed to help others deal with the pain of miscarriage. Loretta holds M.A.'s in Communication and in English Literature from the University of New Mexico. Most days, you'll find her researching New Mexico history in the 1800's and writing furiously. She publishes short historical fiction every week at LorettaMilesTollefson.Wordpress.com.

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      Book preview

      Valley of the Eagles, Microfiction from Old New Mexico - Loretta Miles Tollefson

      A Note about Spanish Terms

      Most of the stories in this collection are set in northern New Mexico and reflect as much as possible the local dialect at that time. Even today, Northern New Mexico Spanish is a unique combination of late 1500s Spanish, indigenous words from the First Peoples of the region and of Mexico, and terms that filtered in with the French and American trappers and traders. I’ve tried to represent the resulting mixture as faithfully as possible. My primary source of information was Rubén Cobos’ excellent work, A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish (University of New Mexico Press, 2003). Any errors in spelling, usage, or translation are solely my responsibility.

      A Good Arrangement

      As the man on the ridge watched, the herd of elk below suddenly broke and pounded across the icy stream toward the cover of the trees. Three wolves, two grays and a black, chased after them, then slowed and sat, watching them go. A young bull elk with a limp had lagged behind the herd, and the wolves appeared to be studying him. A raven cawed overhead.

      The man smiled. The wolves had identified his target for him. He reached to lift the bow from his back. It was a good arrangement, he mused as he slipped down from the ridge and began circling to get downwind of the straggling bull. When he had finished with the elk, the wolves and ravens would attack the remains.

      We will all eat well tonight, he murmured.

      Which was good, because the elk herd would move more swiftly tomorrow, without the lagging one to slow them.

      The Trapper

      The trapper studied the beaver pond carefully. Directly across the pond, on a small slick of mud, lay several short thin willow pieces, recently cut, carefully peeled. The lodge lay to his left, a four foot high mound of mud and sticks surrounded landward by a thick stand of whip-like coyote willow. Water gurgled over the dam beyond it.

      The trapper slipped away from the pond and headed upstream, then waded into the icy water and back to the pond. Staying close to the bank, he moved to within a few feet of the peeled sticks. He unslung the beaver trap from his shoulder and scraped at the muck in the bottom of the pond with his foot. He positioned the trap firmly in the mud, carefully set and baited it with castoreum[i], then retreated well upstream before climbing out. He headed back to camp to dry out. Now it was just a matter of time.

      ~ ~ ~ ~

      Sure enough, there was a beaver in the trap the next morning. But it had lunged for shore, not deeper water, so it was still alive, one hind leg clenched by the trap. The animal bared its orange incisors[ii] and hissed aggressively as the trapper studied it from the bank.

      You were supposed to drown, damn you, the man said. He pulled his tomahawk from his belt. The beaver lunged at him. As the trapper pulled sharply back, he slipped on the muddy bank. One buckskin-covered leg went into the water. The beaver lunged again, growling. The trapper brought the tomahawk’s blunt end down hard on the back of the animal’s head, and it jerked and fell lifeless into the water.

      I gotta eat, too, the trapper muttered as he hauled trap and carcass out of the water. He held it up. A big one, he said admiringly. A thick winter pelt, too.

      Winter Stop, Moreno Valley

      There was no grass visible, covered as it was by three feet of snow. Clouds obscured Aqua Fria Peak, meaning there’d be more snow in the night. The lower branches of the aspens were scraped raw from the teeth of hungry deer and elk, no doubt with wolves shadowing their flanks.

      The old trapper cut branches for the two pack mules and created a feeding pile. They came eagerly to investigate.

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