After Eden

by Joyce Brandon

  “Yes, ma’am.” Johnny allowed his eyes to move from Judy to the slender, feisty blonde. Tía smiled at him. He had never seen so much frankness and innocence in one female in all his life—except in Judy, and then only when it pleased her. God help them all if Tía Marlowe was another Judy Burkhart.

  Judy and Andrea walked into the coolness of the hotel. Johnny stepped between Tía and the others.

  “Can yuh ride?”

  “I ride well,” she said firmly.

  “Stayin’-on well or fallin’-off well?” he drawled.

  “Staying on.”

  Grinning in spite of himself, Johnny put on his hat. He should let her go so he could see about that horse, but there was something infectiously appealing about Tía. He was enchanted by her small, pretty face surrounded by that blaze of golden curls. Freckles appeared and disappeared with the pulse of her blood, probably to show him she was a real female—not a porcelain doll dredged out of a weeks-old memory.

  Tía pretended to search the faces of the riders passing on the wide, dusty street; she squinted into the glare reflected off the tin roof of a building catty-corner from them. She heard Johnny turn and walk away and glanced in that direction.

  His tall form was lithe and surprisingly energetic looking, once he actually moved. She knew she should go inside and find the others, but Judy and Andrea, with their love of sparring, made her want to stand clear of the fireworks.

  The sun felt as if it would bake the life right out of her in a matter of minutes, but she preferred it to them. Besides, Andrea didn’t need her. She had cut her teeth on Mama and the rambunctious women of Tubac. Awake, Andrea was perfectly capable of handling anyone or anything, even Judy Burkhart.

  Tía wiped her damp forehead and scanned the faces of the people on the boardwalk across the street. An old Mexican man in baggy pants and a voluminous serape walked with an oddly familiar gait. Idly scratching his chest, he wore a wide-brimmed, high-crowned sombrero. Shaggy white hair, wild and matted beneath the tattered sombrero, and bushy white beard and eyebrows…

  On the stagecoach Mama had confessed many things, including the fact that she had lied about Papa being dead. She warned them of disguises Papa used to travel unnoticed in the white man’s world.

  Once Tía had seen that old man leading a donkey into Tubac only an hour before she’d ridden home and found Papa there. She had watched for the old man every day but had never seen him again. At the time she had thought it odd that an old man would show up and disappear the same day. Usually any prospector lucky enough to make it to town enjoyed himself for a while before walking into the desert again.

  It might be Papa! Her heart lurched into an uneven rhythm. Gladness, confusion, and fear mingled and vied for supremacy. She had to tell Andrea! She turned and walked smack into Johnny Brago’s outstretched arms.

  “Rein in,” he said softly. “You know that old man?”

  “I thought you’d left…” How long had he been watching her?

  “I forgot to ask what kind of saddle you ride. You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Tía started to protest, but she had never been good at lying, and Johnny sounded truly concerned. The intent look in his black eyes made her forget about the old man who could be Papa.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked gently, putting himself between the old man and her.

  “Tarantulas, sidewinders, and black-eyed men who can’t remember their tethers.”

  “Now what makes you think I can’t remember my tether?”

  “I s’pose you can, when the one holding it is right in front of your face.” She stepped back, brushed off her skirt, and started around him toward the hotel. “I ride astride,” she said. “I can’t abide a sidesaddle.”

  “Maybe I better walk you inside.” Looking at her critically, he paused. “You worried about paying for dinner? Is that why you didn’t want to go inside?” He had seen how eagerly she’d accepted the job Judy offered. “If that’s what’s bothering you, don’t worry about money. You’ll be Judy’s guest. She takes good care of people she likes.”

  “Thank you,” she said firmly. “I’m fine.” The old man could be Papa, but he also could be just an old man, belonging to nobody.

  “What were you afraid of?” he repeated. She was putting on a good act, but he knew fear when he saw it, especially in eyes as easy to read as hers. She’d covered it right away, but that didn’t fool him into thinking he hadn’t seen it.

  “I get a little testy with men who keep me standing in the hot sun,” she said pointedly.

  Johnny nodded. She was a little stubborn, too. But he didn’t mind that. He was a little stubborn himself. “I’ll see about that horse now.”

  But he didn’t move away or let go of her arm. Surprised, Tía looked up into his face. A quiet look of hunger in his dark eyes caused her to remember the feel of his mouth on hers. Without wanting to, she also noticed the warm, adhesive tingle where his hand held her arm. She was getting a little tired of the way her body took off on its own. It had started this unruliness in Tubac when Johnny had kissed her, and it was quickly becoming a habit she wanted to break.

  “You’ll see about my horse now?” Was that really her voice sounding so satiny and unfamiliar?

  “Yeah.” Still he did not move away or release that warm pressure on her arm.

  Tía swallowed around the unaccustomed tightness in her throat. She should say something to show him that she did not appreciate being held on to, but her mind, usually so quick, was curiously unresponsive.

  “Well! So here you are!” Judy’s voice startled Tía. The pressure of Johnny’s hand on her arm diminished and dropped away as he turned with her to face Judy.

  “Shame on you, Tía Marlowe! Flirting with my fella! I told you now, Johnny’s mine,” she chastised, ignoring the scowl on Johnny’s dark face. “And you, Johnny Brago. Behave yourself! Tía is too young and innocent for your shenanigans.”

  Before Johnny could think of a suitable reply, Judy took her by the hand. Tía let Judy lead her inside. At the hotel door she caught one last glimpse of Johnny, staring after her, his dark eyes strangely vexed.

  Chapter Seven

  Tía disappeared into the hotel, and Mateo Lorca resumed his ambling, uneven gait. Slowly he shuffled toward the corral at the end of town. No one paid any attention to him. At last, cramped and irritable with his chosen role, he stopped in front of the store. Leaning against the wood railing to rest, he caught sight of a tall man in the long brown cassock of the padres, and he sighed. At least that had not gone wrong.

  Horsemen and buggies passed on the street, but no one appeared to notice them. Mateo straightened his back for the moment. “Buenos días, Esteban,” he said to his cousin’s son.

  “Buenos días, mon general.”

  “You have news for me?”

  “Good news. It gives me great pleasure to carry news that should benefit all of us in the fight to regain our lands.”

  A surge of hostility choked him at the phrase “to regain our lands.” Mateo Lorca turned away from the young messenger. After seeing Teresa and knowing that Rita would not be far away, the news would have to be good indeed.

  Clenching his fists, Mateo allowed his gaze to follow the flood of tents that flowed like a dirty white river out into the ravines between the hills that encircled the town. Tombstone grew daily. It had since April of 1879 when that idiota Schieffelin filed his first claim, announcing to the world that he had found silver in the Tombstone Hills. Soon there would be ten thousand gringos living here—most of them under canvas. The greedy ones did not take time from their frenzied digging and drunken revels to build decent shelters.

  To his furious eyes, the gringos and their tents were like a fungus—an ugly white fungus that would cover its host with a decomposing stench until the host died. Only then would this fungus move on to a fresh host. All his life he, Mateo de Mara Garcia-Lorca, had been victimized by that pallid white ugliness that devoured everyt
hing in its path.

  All this land, as far as the eye could see, from the barren Tombstone Hills to the bountiful Sulphur Spring Valley, had belonged to his family since 1771, when his great-great-grandfather accompanied Juan Bautista de Anza from the mission of San Xavier del Bac. Francisco Garcia-Lorca, himself a close friend of Captain Anza, personally financed the long trek from New Spain, outfitting the wagons, recruiting the peón families, providing supplies and domestic animals. When their party reached the north end of the Sulphur Springs Valley, the spot with which he had fallen in love, he had personally financed the building of the chapel for the missionaries, providing everything needed to take over the Apache-dominated valley. The Garcia-Lorcas had owned and controlled that land for almost one hundred years. Until the gringo soldiers stole it from them, they had ruled with fairness and compassion.

  Mateo straightened his cramped shoulders. In the years since that time, his life had changed a great deal. Fortunately his appearance had not. He was blessed with his father’s aristocratic bloodlines and boundless good health. He did not grow lazy and fat as these stupid gringos did. He and his men rode hard, fought well, and still protected the poor peónes, mestizos, and Mescaleros from the dishonest practices of their oppressors. Because he, of all men, knew what the yoke of oppression felt like. Twenty-nine years ago, at the age of sixteen, he had learned all he’d ever needed to know about gringos.

  He and his cousin, Antonio Amparo—the father of this young man who now posed as a Padre—had been returning to the Garcia-Lorca casa grande after a hunting trip to the Sonora Mountains.

  Their horses, fine sleek animals from the Garcia-Lorca stables, were draped with mountain goats. They had been gone a week, and the solitude of the mountains had settled on both of them. They were tired. It was almost noon, and they looked forward to sleeping in a real bed again after seven nights on the cold hard ground.

  They rode out of the hills and stopped on an outcropping of granite. Mateo’s eyes narrowed as he looked north, up the long sweep of the Sulphur Springs Valley. A haze of smoke drifted low, close to the ground. The imposing adobe casa grande he had been born in would be there, behind that far stand of cottonwood trees. Was his father curing meat?

  “Let’s go, Mateo, my cojónes ache from sitting too long on this damned horse!” Antonio complained.

  “Your cojónes always ache,” Mateo said idly. Antonio complained about everything. His cojónes, his parents, his teachers, but most especially about the stupidity of the young girls who resisted his clumsy advances.

  They reached the cottonwoods in two hours. The roofline of the casa grande did not jut imposingly as it should have from behind the trees. Mateo spurred his horse forward.

  Antonio yelled after him, “Are you loco? Slow down! I am too tired to ride fast.”

  Ignoring him, a great fear growing in his chest, Mateo raced forward. Always before, from this point, the heavy tile roof had been a sturdy, welcoming sight.

  Clearing the last obstruction, Mateo halted his horse, stunned. His heart was a heavy ache in his chest. From here he could see all that he needed to see.

  What had once been whitewashed adobe was now black and smoldering. The entire second story had toppled into the first floor and become rubble. One corner of the casa still supported a small piece of the roof. His mind refusing to accept the evidence before him, he rode the last mile in a daze.

  Smoke drifted around the ruins. Close up, the acrid smell burned his nostrils. Mateo walked his horse slowly around the scorched, crumbled walls. A large sign, posted to the trunk of a blackened tree, beckoned him.

  GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. KEEP OUT BY ORDER OF ANDREW R. ROUNDTREE, LIEUTENANT COLONEL OF THE U.S. ARMY, WILLCOX, NEW MEXICO TERRITORY.

  Government property? Disbelief and anger were slowly submerged by fear—for his parents, his sisters, his aunt and uncle, the servants. Where were they?

  Searching now for any sign of life, Mateo rode quickly around the charred remains of the house. The earth was torn by the hooves of shod horses. Many hooves.

  “Mateo! Mateo!” Face white with realization, Antonio rode up beside Mateo.

  North of the house, the chapel bell began to ring. Gesturing for Antonio to wait, Mateo urged his tired horse toward the chapel several hundred yards away.

  The interior looked deserted. “¡Hola!” Mateo shouted, walking toward the belfry. His words echoed in the empty room. Halfway, the belfry door opened and Tía Andrea staggered out, her thin face working with joy at sight of him.

  “Don Garcia-Lorca! ¡Madre de Dios! Praise God you have come!”

  “Tía Andrea, what has happened to my family? Where are they?”

  Her eyes filled with a mixture of pain and pity.

  “All dead,” she croaked, her voice breaking.

  Mateo’s mouth fell open. “All?!”

  Tía Andrea crossed herself, sobbing.

  “How?” he croaked.

  Her eyes were bright with the hard shine of tears. Throat working, her thin, wrinkled lips trembling, she looked away. “The soldiers,” she said as if she still did not believe it herself. “They came…a great number of them. They said they were looking for a fugitive, a Mexican boy who had stolen an army horse. Your father greeted them and offered them water and shelter, but the colonel in charge, a large man, muy gordo, with a red face and blond hair, muy rubio, demanded that your father surrender the boy. Patrón explained that he had seen no such boy. Your father is very brave, very polite man—”

  Breaking, she dragged in a shuddering breath. Mateo stroked her thin shoulder as if she were the child and he the adult. At last her strength returned, and she sighed. “Then…then the fat colonel said he would not tolerate such disobedience. Give us the boy or we will take him! he shouted. The man was very angry. Too angry for such a small offense.

  “Then your father began to be angry, too. A more courteous, honest man did not exist on this earth, but he was not one to tolerate disrespect. He was a proud man, a good man, and this…this animal, a disgusting fat pig, no man—”

  “Please, Tía Andrea,” Mateo whispered, urging her to continue.

  Reaching out, she patted his hand. “A thousand pardons, patrón, but much pain comes in the telling…”

  Mateo led her to one of the pews and helped her to sit. So hard and yet so delicate, her bones were protected by the thinnest covering of skin. He had never noticed how slight she was until now.

  Crossing herself, she began again. “Your father remained polite in spite of gross provocation. He was a saint. He informed the fat colonel that he was mistaken and asked the man to leave. But the colonel turned to one of his men and told him to arrest the patrón since he refused to cooperate.

  “The soldiers dismounted, two of them, but before they could reach your father, your uncle appeared at one of the upstairs windows with a gun and ordered them to step back and leave at once. The colonel’s face flamed with rage. He shouted for his men to shoot. At first they were reluctant, so the pig pulled his own revolver and shot at your uncle and then at your father. The poor patrón staggered inside and closed the door. There were guns in the house, but only your poor father and uncle to use them. They fought bravely, patrón, muy bravo, but the soldiers were of too great a number. They set fire to the house, and Don Garcia-Lorca, good man that he was, asked mercy for the women…” Shaking so hard that her body seemed to vibrate, she sobbed quietly. Filled with helplessness and dread, Mateo patted her thin shoulders. Shuddering, sighing, she continued at last.

  “But the fat colonel was muy devious. He granted the patrón’s request, and the patrón sent the women to the chapel, but the soldiers…” Sobbing, she leaned against Mateo. “The soldiers…it was a trick…they dragged them outside…and…oh, your poor father! He saw what they intended to do. He saw them stripping your poor mother…stripping his wife, his daughters, his sister…He was like a madman. He ran from the burning house, firing with two guns, but they shot him down like a dog…”

 
Now she cried in earnest. Gathering her into his arms, too stunned to feel his own pain, Mateo held her close. “And the women?” he asked thickly. “Are they all dead?”

  “All dead…all dead…after they…”

  He did not truly hear the words. There was no need. A great sickness grew in him. The thought of his mother, usually so serene, so filled with gentleness, being humiliated in front of his father by fat gringo pigs. His sisters, who giggled and teased about holding hands, who had never even been kissed except when they were tucked into their beds at night…

  A rage too deep for words seethed within him. “Where are they now?”

  She moaned. “I was digging a grave. To bury them, patrón, but it is so hot, and I am so slow…”

  “Where are they, Tía Andrea?” he asked gently. The woman was in shock, dazed by so much death. Her eyes stared at him as if they could still see the horrors she had recounted.

  Forcing her eyes to focus on the present instead of the past, she pointed to a door off the main room of the chapel. “In there.”

  She pointed to the padre’s quarters, when there had been a padre. He had been gone for two years. Another sign of the times.

  Clumsily Mateo patted her hand. “You have done well. Where are the others…the servants?” He was reluctant to see his family.

  A look of shame blurred the pain in her eyes. “They knew,” she whispered. “My own husband knew, and he did not warn the patrón.”

  “Knew? Knew what? The servants?” he asked dumbly.

  “My own people!” Her lips curled with contempt. “They disgust me! They ran away, leaving the patrón when he needed them. I was in the stable. I started back to the house, but Pedro would not let me go. He watched like the thing without honor that he was. I have much shame, patrón.”

  “Was?”

  “He is gone. They are all gone. If I had the power I would have killed him, though he was my husband for twenty years.”

  Mateo found Antonio in the rubble, stumbling about, half-mad, his dark eyes glazed. Mateo led Antonio to the shade of one of the trees that used to keep the blistering sun off the red tile roof of the casa grande. Pacing, Mateo told Antonio the story, then left him crying while he went to see the bodies of his family. He could not delay any longer.