He entered the cool store, enjoying the redolence of leather and fabric and coffee beans.
Larrimer approached. “They let you out, Brother Childress, eh?” he said, coldly.
“Mr. Larrimer, I am in dire need of some boots, or at least shoes, and you have some ready-mades, I believe?”
“Show me some cash and I’ll show you some boots.”
“I haven’t a cent. The Apaches made off with everything.”
“Even your habit, I see. Unless you’ve renounced your orders and taken up with some woman.” Larrimer’s thick eyebrow shot upward.
“I regret announcing that I was a monk; I was desperate,” Childress said.
“You might have won some sympathy by saying so. But not now, Childress. Not ever.”
The Colonel knew he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he tried a new tack. “Mr. Larrimer, I have a fine trading outfit on the Arkansas River, just across the international boundary. We do a business with the Utes especially. Childress and McIntyre, sir. I only regret that whatever I say will meet with skepticism because of my previous indiscretions. But it is so. And I would most eagerly give you a chit for merchandise from our stores in exchange for boots. In fact, sir, merchandise worth ten times the price of your boots.”
The odd thing was that Larrimer did not laugh.
“Well? My goods are, what, a hundred miles distant? I’ll add something for transportation.”
“What’s there?”
“Blankets, kettles, axes, hatchets, knives, saws, a few rifles, flints and steels, bed ticking, flannels, calico, salt, molasses, pure grain spirits, tobacco in plug and leaf form, vermilion, beads, awls …”
“I suppose you’ll want some boots for Skye, too. What’s his size?”
“I don’t know,” Childress said, marveling at the man.
“You’ll want some ready-made duds for him, too, I suppose. Shoes or sandals, and some clothing. Weapons, powder, food, gear …”
What was this? Childress could scarcely fathom it. “I can draft an agreement, Mr. Larrimer.”
“How will I know your subordinates will honor it?”
“The monkey’s paw, sir. I press it into an inkpad, and press it onto the document. It’s our sign and seal, the paw of Shine.”
“What is the total worth of your stock?”
“Why, Sah, given that I haven’t been there for some little while, I can’t say. But perhaps three thousand at wholesale.”
Larrimer grinned, and not kindly. “All right. You sell me your goods and the premises, and I will outfit you and Skye up to three hundred.”
“But … but …” Larrimer would profit tenfold.
“I know it’s there, Childress. You don’t have to persuade me. Childress and McIntyre Traders. Several travelers have reported the place to me. I even know what prices you charge, how many men you have, and what tribes are camped there. I’m willing to gamble.”
“Ah, would you keep my help employed?”
“Your Texas pirates? No, I’ll send my own man to operate the place. He’ll take inventory … and if there’s trouble, be warned: I have my means.”
“Mr. Larrimer, Sah, done!”
Larrimer grinned sardonically.
thirty-three
The padre’s young woman seemed less and less friendly as the next day wore on. She raged at Victoria and Standing Alone, which only left Victoria bewildered. She couldn’t understand a word. But the woman’s displeasure was plain to her.
One moment the woman would be snapping; the next moment she would pantomime what she wanted: Wash those cloths and clothing in a wooden tub of water, pound and squeeze them on a ribbed board, rinse, and hang them on a line. Fetch more water.
“Agua! Agua!” the woman cried, pointing at the water.
Victoria knew that. She knew many words of this tongue even if she could not put them together.
Make the fire hot: this involved a device new to her, a lung of leather that blew air when the handles were operated. Victoria made the air come out, and the fire began to crackle. Standing Alone watched carefully. They were both studying ways to escape, ways to defend themselves.
This day the walleyed padre wandered about in his long brown robe, gazing strangely at the Indian women, his giant head lolling this way and that to see them. Maybe he could see only things that were far away, the way many old men see. His soft brown eyes studied them, the gaze poking and probing until Victoria thought she couldn’t stand it. Sometimes the gaze seemed to lift her skirts, and then she looked right back at him and he looked away.
She wished he would go away, do his priestly things, but this day he hovered in the great kitchen, watching them as they scrubbed vegetables or stirred the great black pots. He had plans for them; that she knew. Maybe that was why his woman was so snappish this day. She was his woman, all right, and showing the signs of a baby, now that Victoria studied her.
Then the padre’s woman took them away from the big kitchen and into the quiet bedchambers and made them broom the floors, empty pots into a smelly cistern in the garden, and shake the blankets. The padre’s woman was more relaxed now that they were all away from the padre. But he hadn’t left; he was there, watching.
Victoria and Standing Alone had been given no time to rest, and were fed very little at dawn, a thin oat gruel before the sun brightened the morning. They hadn’t been allowed to talk, either; whenever she and Standing Alone tried to communicate in their own sign language and vocabulary, the Mexican woman started bawling at them.
Was this the future? Victoria knew that if the time came, she would fight, ferociously, no quarter, for her freedom. She would steal a knife and hide it as soon as she knew where to secret it, and one for Standing Alone, too. There were some in the kitchen; big, crude ones with dull blades, but all the better for a fight. She knew Standing Alone was thinking the same thing: sometimes they looked at a knife or a long fork and their gazes met. She knew!
A wave of contempt for the Mexican woman flooded through her: what sort of petty tyrant was this person whose strength was not her own, but the padre’s? Could she not even take care of this man’s dwelling place?
Victoria found reasons to head into the walled garden, always to look for the Little Person perched on the high adobe wall, but she did not see him, and her spirits sagged. For some reason, that little creature, the very one she was so darkly hostile toward at first, was her salvation. But she saw nothing, and no succor offered itself. Had that animal not taken her medicine bundle to the fat man? Didn’t he know she and Standing Alone were here, behind great walls?
Then, late that afternoon, a Mexican man was admitted, and this man was dressed in a black suit coat and an open shirt, and had oily straight hair that fell away from his face. He talked with the padre for a while, and then the Indian women were summoned with a languid hand.
Victoria stared at him, wondering what this rumpled brown man would do.
The man in the suit coat addressed Victoria:
“Madam, it is I speak zoom English, and it is I am bring here to tell you zum things. For we know you habla, speak, this tongue, and do no comprende what is your mistress be saying.”
Mistress? Victoria nodded, not giving the man the satisfaction of a reply in Skye’s language.
“Mañana, tomorrow, a carreta, wagon, it comes and it carries you to a rancho grande, the Estancia Martinez, which is owned by the hermanos, zee brothers, of zee blessed padre Martinez. Four thousand sheep. There you will be employed for the good of your souls and bodies, and the love of Jesu Cristo.”
“I think we would like to stay here in Taos.”
“Stay? This place? No, no, woman, that is not possible.”
“Then maybe we refuse employment, eh?”
He stared solemnly, and shook his head. “No, you cannot refuse. You go.”
“Why?”
“Because zis is require.”
“I am married. You must not take me from my husband. So is she.”
He blin
ked, and shook his head. “No, not married in Mejico. What parish? Where are zee records, zee sacrament? No, no, it is without force, like nada.”
She pointed at Standing Alone. “She has a man. And children too.”
“No, not in Mejico. It be no good, no good.”
She pointed at the priest. “Is he married? He has a woman.”
The oily-haired man glared at her.
“I heard the padre say there is no slavery in Mexico.”
The man’s big brown eyes blinked once, and again, as if he were careful with the words he was preparing. “Little woman, you owe much for your care. Zees things, the comida, food, the casa, the clothing on your backs, this is muy, very costly, yes, you are much in debt. So you must vork, eh? Vork!”
“So, when can we pay off our debt?”
He shook his head. “Sometime. Your vork not very valuable, si? You onnerstand, si?”
“What if we won’t work?”
“Ah, pity, dolor, you taste zee whip.”
“What if we go away, eh?”
He shook his head. “Do not even think of it, comprende?”
She understood and laughed at him. He seemed to puff up and withdraw into himself. Standing Alone understood little of it, and looked at her blankly.
Victoria simply laughed, the scorn in her dark features rising upward and bursting out upon the kitchen.
“Bastard,” she said.
“Silencio!” bawled the padre.
She took her time. The oily man in the suit coat decided it was time to leave, and the padre showed him out. Victoria watched them at the big plank door, and she tried to understand how to work the iron mechanism that would let them out. She had seen these things before in St. Louis, but not anywhere else.
The padre’s woman looked amused.
Victoria’s fingers flew, and in swift gestures and their small stock of words she conveyed their fate to Standing Alone, who drew herself up proudly, unbent, unbowed, and stared at their mistress.
So she would be taken away from Skye, farther and farther, and placed into a life of grinding toil, probably worse than this light labor she had suffered this day and the day before. Tonight. Now or never. At dawn the distance between Skye and herself would stretch farther, and farther, and things would get worse, and worse …
Tonight.
The Mexican woman put them to work again, and set Victoria to collecting piñon wood from a large bin located at the alley wall of the patio and stacking it beside the several beehive fireplaces. She walked out there, through the serene patio with its quiet peace, past the herbs that grew in a special plot, and a lordly agave, to the place where the woodcutters stacked wood.
She plucked up a piece, and another, and then she saw the low wooden doors beyond, doors that opened on the alley, doors used by the woodcutters when they unloaded the wood from their burros and stacked the sticks within the wall for the householder. She turned and looked behind her; no, no one was watching. She stepped deep into the shadowed woodbox, and lifted a small bar. She pushed the door, and it swung a little, creaking as it did. Frightened, she peered over her shoulder, and edged the door back in place. Her heart tripped as she plucked up the sticks for the evening’s dinner.
Out.
And even as she carried the load in her arms toward the kitchen, she spotted the Little Person perched quietly on the high adobe wall, watching her with bright eyes. She nodded at the fiend and continued inside, unloading her wood before the beehive fireplace.
She walked out into the garden again, and hovered around the woodbox while the little creature watched her. Then, suddenly, it vanished, and she wondered whether it understood. As soon as this household quieted, she would lead Standing Alone to this place, and they would crawl over the stacked wood, and crawl out of the walled patio.
Oh, if only the Little Person might understand. Was there anything she had failed to understand? Any message? Any sign? She saw nothing, even as she gathered a few more pieces of piñon pine for the fireplace. Anxiously, she watched the sun dive toward the horizon. Fretfully she watched the padre eat and drink and take his leisure. In agony she listened for sounds from without. Then, as dusk settled and she and Standing Alone were cleaning dishes, she beheld the Little Person named Shine on the wall again.
Her heart hammered, but there was nothing she could do, not yet, not until this house had settled, not until a great darkness could cloak them as they slipped through the house, the garden, and the woodman’s gate. Sometimes she saw the monkey, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she heard the soft clop of horses beyond the high wall, sometimes only a terrible and lonely silence. Once, a carriage wheel groaned outside the walls.
But at last the priest vanished into the darkness, and so did his woman, and Victoria and Standing Alone lay quietly in the storage alcove that had been their refuge.
Now, as the stars lit up the sky and the last blue light faded in the west, far beyond the Rio Grande, she heard the chittering of Shine up on the wall somewhere in the murky night, and she arose, and took Standing Alone with her, and crept through the garden toward the little wood gate.
thirty-four
The woodcutter’s door squawked, but Victoria paid no heed. She crawled over the stacked wood, with
Standing Alone right behind, and soon they found themselves standing in a dark alley with nothing but starlight to illumine the way. She peered about, seeing nothing.
“Mrs. Skye, my dear, this way.”
That voice belonged to the trader, Childress, but she could see nothing.
“I shall send Shine.”
Almost before the words had escaped the man, she felt the Little Person tugging on her skirt.
“Aiee!” She didn’t really trust the animal.
But she let herself be led, and soon they came upon a conveyance of some sort.
“What is this damn thing?” she asked.
“It is a carriage, a calash, to be precise. Do climb in.”
“Where’s Skye?”
“That’s a long story. First we must make haste to escape here.”
She boarded the creaking carriage, barely able to see. No light shown in the streets and no moon lit the way. But she could see that it had facing seats, and that Childress was perched on a raised front seat behind some black horses, and that a sort of hood rose at the rear, making a safe black cavern there. She settled into a soft leather seat, pulled Standing Along beside her, and instantly the faint snap of the lines over the croups of the horses started the carriage on its way.
They didn’t talk and her mind teemed with a thousand questions. Where was the red cart? Where was Skye? Where did this come from? Whose was it? Where were they going? But she waited impatiently, knowing that silence was necessary just then, as the conveyance rumbled softly through the shrouded clay calles of Taos. They rolled around the west side of the plaza where a few lamps lit a few windows, and treacherous light caromed off the ebony carriage, and finally onto the camino leading south into open country.
“Ah, that’s better,” Childress said. “We’ll go down as far as the church and wait for the moon. I’m told the road grows rough and dangerous beyond there, and we’ll need the lamp of heavens to guide us.”
They proceeded through a vast and cloistered darkness, and Victoria marveled that Childress would drive two horses at all upon such a night. But with each passing moment, they were rolling farther and farther from Taos, and the imprisonment there, and she felt light-headed with relief.
And worried about Skye.
She discovered the Little Person sitting beside Childress, and then felt the evil thing come sit between her and Standing Alone, as if to welcome them to this vehicle.
At last the towers of the great adobe church of San Francisco de Asis at Ranchos de Taos rose ghostly in the starlight, and Childress tugged his team to a halt.
“Now then, my dears, on the seat in front of you is a large package that contains some dresses, hats, and slippers. Ladies, please remove you
r present outer clothes and put these on. It’s important.”
“What is this?”
“You are about to be transformed. These are fine silk gowns, worn by ladies of the highest caste.”
She explained this to Standing Alone, and they groped about, finding the package.
“I shall be looking straight forward, ladies, and in any case the hood behind you plunges you into perfect obscurity.”
She pulled out slippery things, trying to fathom what all they were, and then began to struggle with her clothing, tugging and yanking to lift her dress over her head. But her mind was on other things. “Where’s Skye, dammit?”
“On the way to Santa Fe, guarded by soldiers, to stand trial as a Texas spy. Perhaps they will execute him.”
“What? How is this?”
“Madam, when we were both prisoners of the prefect, I took great pains to betray Skye, informing the Mexicans that they had nabbed a saboteur and operative of the rebel state of Texas. Of course they placed him under close guard, even as they released me to do as I choose.”
“Sonofabitch!”
“Exactly. I refer to myself in just such terms, madam.”
A terrible grief welled up in her. Skye in grave danger. This man the cause of it.
“Where are we going?” she asked, darkly, wrestling with clothing she didn’t understand.
“Why, we’re heading for Santa Fe to rescue him.”
She had her dress off, and was rotating a slippery one she could not see, looking for a neckline. Standing Alone was having trouble too.
“We can’t see a damned thing. What’s the front of this dress?”
“Ladies, that is beyond my realm of competence.”
The Deliverance Page 18
