by Carla Kelly
“Marco?” she said, her voice quavering.
I cannot shield her from this, he thought. “Come here.”
She did as he said, her reaction the same as theirs. It changed quickly as she knelt beside the man. “Pobrecito,” she whispered. “Pobrecito. What can we do?”
She was looking at the physician. They all were.
“Nothing. I cannot help him. I wish I could.”
I believe you mean that, Marco thought, surprised. “Isn’t there something, anything?”
“Of course there is,” Paloma said, taking charge. “Marco, get the sheet in our tent. We don’t need it. Let us at least cover his nakedness. How cold he must be! Toshua, can you tell him we will take care of him?”
“You, señora, are out of your mind,” Antonio snapped.
“No, I’m not,” she said quite calmly. “I just decided that I can forgive these people. Don’t get in my way!”
Antonio looked at Marco with a pout, almost like a petty child wanting a reprimand for a bully. Marco could only sympathize. “Médico, when she speaks in that tone of voice, I do what she asks.”
“Oh, Marco, you do not,” Paloma scolded gently.
He brought the sheet to her. To his amazement, when he returned, she already had her arms around the dreadful sight that used to be a man. Even Toshua stared in disbelief.
I will never be worthy of Paloma if I live to be an old man of sixty, Marco thought as he draped the sheet around the dying man and tucked it under his wasted body. He smelled as foul as he looked; thank God it was winter.
“Can we give him something to drink? I remember feeling so thirsty,” she said, looking at Antonio.
“You can try, but good luck to you.”
“You can do better than that!” she snapped back.
Without another word, the doctor poured some wine into a tin cup. He knelt beside her. “Hold his head higher,” Antonio said. “He won’t be able to drink it, but he will taste it.”
Paloma did as he said, sighing when the wine just dribbled out the sides of his mouth.
“His throat is clogged with pox. That is the best he can do,” Antonio said. Tenderly this time, he dabbed at the man’s chapped lips.
Marco squatted beside his wife, close enough so their shoulders touched. He felt the tremble in her body that seemed to come from some deep core, and knew how terrified she was. He stared, transfixed, as the Comanche opened his eyes and looked around, obviously startled at what he saw. Paloma patted his chest and he sighed so long that Marco was certain it was his final breath.
But no. He looked at Toshua with something close to recognition, Marco thought. He spoke and Toshua nodded.
“He cannot sing his death song,” Toshua told them. “I will sing mine for him.”
Toshua began to sing, high and unearthly and weird, similar to the chorus of songs Marco had last heard when Governor de Anza and his soldiers—Marco among them—cornered Cuerno Verde and his Kwahadi at the Rio San Carlos nearly three years ago.
Marco felt the shivers travel up and down his spine, remembering. Toshua sang with his eyes closed; he sang with his whole heart.
“Please stop,” Paloma said, her voice soft, but cutting through the song. Toshua did as she asked.
“I think it is not good for you to sing your own death song, pabi,” she said, and began to sing a different song, one so familiar to Marco. She graciously took the burden from her adopted brother with a hymn of her faith. O God we praise thee; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
He already knew how sweet and pure her voice was. She had sung to him a time or two, late at night when no one else was listening. “Te deum laudamus,” she sang, “te dominum confitemur.”
In the cold and snow of a feeble fire that gave off little light and no warmth, his wife sang praise to God with a dying Comanche in her lap. Marco joined her on the “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,” and then hummed with her when she was too teary-eyed to sing anymore.
When they were finally silent, the Comanche opened his eyes again, but only partly.
“His shoulders aren’t quite so tense,” Paloma whispered to Marco. “I wish we could do something.”
“You just did, my love,” was all he could manage.
The Indian spoke again to Toshua, who nodded and unsheathed his knife. Paloma looked at him in alarm, but Marco was already tugging her gently away.
She let him pull her from the dying man. He picked her up and carried her to the edge of the light, where she shuddered as Toshua released the Comanche from terrible suffering. Marco kept his back to the fire until he heard the sound of a body being dragged into the darkness it had come from. When he set Paloma down, she sagged to her knees, then stood upright, hanging on to his belt.
“This is a terrible journey, and we have only begun,” she said.
How could she sleep? She did, finally, huddled so close to Marco that it was a wonder the man could breathe. When Paloma made some sleepy remark about that, he just chuckled and kissed her forehead.
First light brought another terror, if not worse than the one the night before, at least as frightening. She left the tent first, hoping to have a tiny private moment before the men were up.
There before her, as far as she could see, was a carpet of the dead. She went to her knees again in absolute terror, then scrambled to her feet and backed up toward the tent.
“Marco!” she called, wondering if he could even make out his name, because it sounded like a gargle to her.
The tent flap flew open and her husband gasped. “Dios mio!” he exclaimed, his voice sounding no better than hers. He stood by her side, his arm around her. That wasn’t enough, so he put both arms around her, pulling her close to his body that shivered along with hers.
Others had seen their puny campfire, crawling from … somewhere. No one moved. One pox-covered person—man or woman she could not tell—must have frozen to death with one arm raised, begging for help. Paloma started to count the bodies, then stopped, because she was just saying “uno, dos, tres” over and over again like a lunatic.
“Are we at the gates of hell?” she asked, her face turned into Marco’s chest.
“Somewhere very close.”
Rubbing his eyes, Antonio crouched out of his tent, then said something harsh in English. Toshua followed, staring and shaking his head, probably as stupefied as Paloma felt, if his expression told the truth.
He stared a long time, silent, then said, “There is nothing we can do except eat, break camp and give the wolves time to work.”
They did precisely that, mounting and riding in record time, all of them desperate to get away from their unseeing audience. Paloma tried to ride with her eyes straight ahead, but she couldn’t help noticing how Toshua rode among the dead, looking. She thought once he was going to dismount, with his leg half over the saddle, but he must have changed his mind. Who do you know here? she couldn’t help thinking.
“Ten dead people,” Marco said, when their horses, shying and skittish, had picked their way through the dead. “Toshua, where were they going?”
The Comanche shrugged.
Antonio spoke up. “In their delirium, they probably didn’t know what they were doing. Just following a leader. Toshua, think of the days when your mind wandered from the cut on your arm. Paloma?”
She nodded, keeping her face resolutely toward the plains before them, not willing to see the dead frozen and unburied. “I probably did some strange things, too.”
Marco chuckled. “Ah, yes. I had no idea I was married to a woman who liked to dance on tables.”
“I didn’t!”
“You tried.” He laughed, and the sound seemed so out of place, until she realized how badly they needed to laugh. The other men laughed and Paloma patted her warm face. When they were silent, she leaned closer to Marco. “I didn’t really do that,” she whispered.
“You did.”
Paloma shook her head, embarrassed, but relieved that for at least a few minutes, she was
n’t thinking of death.
For three days, they rode across a barren plain that soon began to look the same color as the leaden sky. It was gray everywhere, no matter what direction she looked. To her relief, there were no more dead bodies.
“Where are the buffalo?” she asked Toshua on the second day. He had been riding ahead and by himself for two days since they left the camp of death. She knew him well enough to understand his long silences, even though she had questions. Marco and Antonio were talking, so she rode closer to the man whose life she had saved several times, noticing how much longer his hair was now. She remembered how mortified he had been when they were forced to cut his hair because of lice.
But now she just wanted to talk to him, to have him reassure her that he knew where he was going. How to begin? “Where are the buffalo?” she asked again, when she rode beside him.
If he was irritated at her presence, he didn’t show it. “Farther south.” He looked around. “Not even animals like this Llano Estacado, as you call it. You know how little water there is, when we have to melt snow to drink.”
“What do The People call it?”
“Big empty.”
She didn’t know if he wanted her company, so she asked. He nodded, which gave her courage to ask the question on her mind since the terrible night with the dying man.
“You … you knew who he was, didn’t you?”
He gave her a look of something close to admiration. “You were watching me. I cannot say his name, because he most certainly wanders with the restless spirits now, and I don’t want to call him back.”
Paloma shivered. “I don’t either. But … you knew him.”
He turned in his saddle and propped his leg across his horse without his horse faltering. “He was one of the men who had me thrown from my band because my wives complained.”
“So … those people back there. Was that your band?” She didn’t think she made an exclamation but she must have, because Marco called, “Qué es?” She shook her head at him.
He watched her a moment, wary, then returned to his conversation with the doctor.
“I recognized them.”
He couldn’t have been more evasive. “Why did your wives complain?” She had wanted to ask before, but it was a nosy question, maybe even a rude one, the kind of question her cousin Maria Teresa might ask. “Oh, if I shouldn’t ask ….”
Toshua shrugged. “I think it was the young one, or maybe that wife of the Spanish settler. They had their eyes on another man.” He made a cutting gesture across his abdomen. “Shaa! I would have let him borrow them, if he wanted.”
She had heard that about Comanches before. “Just like that?”
“Certainly. We People share everything.”
“If Marco tried either side of that coin, I would murder him,” she said with some feeling.
He gave her a kind look then, as if he wanted to help. “If he had another woman, or maybe two, he might have children.”
Sick at heart, Paloma turned away. In another moment, Toshua tugged her bridle and turned her horse toward him again.
“I should not have said something that wounds your heart,” he told her.
Paloma nodded. It was her turn to ride ahead, not out of sight—she feared the Big Empty—but ahead far enough to wonder why, in all her helping of others, she could not help herself.
Chapter Twenty
In which the sky is no friend and the chase is on
Paloma knew Toshua did not mean to hurt her feelings; he was a practical man offering a practical solution to a problem. She told herself not to dwell on the matter because they had larger challenges at the moment: the horses were thirsty and there was no water anywhere.
“I suppose this is one reason game is sparse here,” Marco said as they walked back to camp that afternoon after gathering buffalo chips for a fire. Her apron was weighed down and she walked slower and slower.
“I’m a dolt,” he said and stopped her, lifting her cloak to untie her apron, which he gathered together and slung over his back. “Better?”
She nodded and started moving, but he stopped her again. “Is it too much, Paloma?”
“Yes, but here we are. I just wish I had a little privacy.”
“It’s the journey, dearest,” he said. “Remember two Octobers ago when we came to Valle de Sol from Santa Fe? No privacy then.”
She nodded. “We had our mountains then and not this … this endless plain. I miss our mountains.”
“I do, too.” He looked around. “There is no protection here.”
The sun had gone behind clouds and she was unsure of any direction. She fought down the panic, reasoning that her husband thought he had married a grown woman, and this was no time to show him otherwise.
They ambled slower toward the two tents, hobbled horses neighing from thirst, and the tiniest pinprick of a fire—the smallest speck in the immensity of the Staked Plains. She couldn’t help her sigh.
“What was that for?” Marco asked.
“To return, we have to cross this again.”
“But only once more.” He looked at the night sky so rapidly darkening. “I will never travel this far from my mountains again.” He put his lips close to her ear. “Between you and me, the Comanches can have it, and with my own Te Deum.”
She gave him her sunniest smile, and surprised herself by meaning it.
They walked slower, maybe both of them reluctant to return to a doctor who complained about everything, and a Comanche who knew more than he was letting on. Paloma tugged on her husband’s hand, and he stopped.
“Toshua knew those poor people.”
Marco nodded. “I thought so, too. I tried to get him to talk, but he was silent on the subject.”
“I tried, as well. Why does he say nothing?”
“Comanches don’t speak of the dead. Maybe he cannot say more.”
She tugged on his hand again, pulling on it until he leaned down. She put her lips next to his ear this time. “Don’t ever be that way with me. Be free to speak your mind.”
“I already do. And you?”
Paloma nodded, then shook her head. She took a deep breath and told him Toshua’s solution to her barrenness. There. Call it what it was, she was barren.
Marco winced. “A Comanche solution, not a Spanish one! Maybe I was not entirely forthcoming, either. When I rode with the médico this afternoon, I did tell him our … our … well, I asked if he had any suggestions. He’s a doctor, after all.”
“Did he?”
Marco shook his head. “He asked me some embarrassing questions, then he sighed, and said he wished he could see inside our bodies.”
“Dios, that could get him in trouble with the Inqusition!” Paloma said, her eyes wide. Then she chuckled. “I’m the dolt now! He’s not even Catholic. See inside our bodies? Imagine such a thing.” She leaned closer, maybe thinking a priest would materialize there in the middle of absolutely nowhere. “Then I say it is too bad he cannot.”
They continued in silence to camp.
Anthony Gill knew he was not, by nature, an envious man. Envy required some thought, some observation, and here he was, observing. Maybe it was boredom. He looked around the little fire, watching the Mondragóns, actually watching them, Paloma so pretty, even though her nose and cheeks were red. He had never seen a more graceful woman. And there was Marco, a broad-shouldered fellow with a handsome, long Spanish face, and a close beard now, after only a week. Anthony knew it would take him a long time to grow even that much.
True, that face under the beard had reddened considerably as he had answered such probing questions that afternoon, reminding Anthony all over again that people of Spanish origin were, on the whole, shy. Anthony looked at Paloma again, wishing he could actually examine her. He thought of the surgeons he knew back in Georgia, those men who shaved and cut hair, and sometimes probed within the body. At least he could inoculate. He should be content with that, even as he wished he could help Paloma Mondragón.
Dinner was more of the dreadful pemmican and far-better wine. Anthony laughed to himself, watching Marco sweet talk Paloma into finishing her portion. Afterwards, Paloma went into their tent, and Marco spent some time with his hobbled horses. Anthony thought he even prayed among them, a rancher unhappy about no water for the animals that served them.
Determined to become a better observer, Anthony noticed that Toshua spent some time looking at the night sky. Was that how he knew how to navigate this sea of winter grass? Surely not; there was no daytime equivalent, unless it was the sun, itself.
He looked up, too, enchanted with the stars that seemed so close. He recognized Orion, that harbinger of winter, a man-god with a sword. It was the middle of February, and Orion dipped a bit lower. In a few months, he would make his exit and spring would come. Why did it seem so far away right now? That was the dilemma of February.
Later, in the tent he shared with Toshua, Anthony smiled to himself, amused as the Mondragóns tried to make love quietly in their own tent. Marco was less successful at silence, which made Anthony chuckle.
“I always wish them joy with each other,” Toshua whispered.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“No, no.”
Antony heard Toshua turn over in the tight space. “I had a good wife once. I liked her more than the other two.” His voice turned contemplative. “I wonder why she decided to listen to those witches.” From contemplative to harsh—“Now those witches wander these plains forever, burning, freezing, scratching at their running sores.”
Good Godfreys, were your former wives among the dead by our camp? Anthony asked himself. Frightened, he pulled his blanket higher, wondering just whom he shared this tent with. Thank God he did not believe such nonsense. Still, he also knew he would not stick his head outside this tent until morning; it paid to be careful.
“Señor?”
Marco groaned. He had no earthly desire to leave his warm little cocoon of two blankets and Paloma. The sun was barely up.
