by Carla Kelly
“Diego!” Maria implored, “he is dead! Stop, I beg you!” She grabbed the uninjured arm and tugged on it. He looked at her with glazed eyes and dropped the scarf. Cristóbal fell forward into the white paint that covered the floor.
Diego drew a ragged breath and slumped down next to his dead brother. His hand went to his bleeding arm, and he looked up at Maria.
Without a word, she lifted her skirt and ripped off a large swatch of petticoat. Working quickly, she bound the bloody strip around his arm, holding the flap of lacerated skin tight against the wound. “What do we do now?” she asked, wiping Diego’s face with her dress and smoothing back his dark curls.
He looked at her again. “Since I never considered the possibility that I would live through this, I have no idea.”
“I recommend that we dispose of Cristóbal.” She stood up and brushed her dress off, the same automatic gesture that made Diego stare at her. “If you can take hold of his feet, Diego, I propose that we pull him underneath the buffalo robes. Then I recommend that we join him there, at least until nightfall.” Suddenly she burst into tears, great wracking sobs that shook her entire body. Diego wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her until she was silent. He wiped her nose on his one remaining sleeve and stood up, swaying a little. “Come, Maria, take his arms.”
Breathing deeply, she grabbed the dead man under his arms. Diego picked up the legs and they carried the body to the corner of the workshop where the buffalo skins were stacked. Maria pulled aside the hides and Diego pushed the body into the corner and dropped the skins over the corpse. By the time he finished, his face was white, and he had to sit down with his head between his legs.
“Diego, you have lost so much blood,” she said.
“There is no remedy now,” he answered, his voice muffled.
She looked around the room. There was blood everywhere—on the wall where Diego had been pinned, on the buffalo-hide santos, and smeared with the paint on the floor, where it had turned the color of a pink sunrise. Her little San Francisco was smashed on the floor, both arms broken off. She thought of Erlinda and closed her eyes.
Diego raised his head slowly, cautiously. “Let us join Cristóbal,” he said. “Help me to my feet, querida.”
She pulled him to his feet and led him to the corner where his brother lay, buried under the mound of buffalo skins. Maria pulled back the hides, turning her face away from Cristóbal. Diego found his dagger and lay down next to the corpse. Maria took a small deer hide and smeared it over the bloody floor to erase their footprints. She arranged the skins around Diego, then lay down, pulling the hides on top of her.
The weight of the skins was suffocating, claustrophobic. She fought a strong urge to throw back the hides and run screaming into the plaza below. And why not? Their chances of survival were almost nonexistent.
She thought of the children in their cave by the acequia. “Diego, what will become of Luz and Catarina?”
He was silent a moment, arranging his wounded arm carefully around her. “Querida, they may be safe there. I am thinking that the Indians have burned all the haciendas between here and Santa Fe, and probably north to Taos, too, and are going to march on the capital. If this is so, they are probably safe where they are—or safer than anywhere else.” She felt, rather than heard his small laugh. “Safer than we are, anyway.” He kissed the side of her head. Soon his breathing was regular and deep. Maria rested next to him, her head on his arm. The weight of Diego’s arm around her was comforting, even though his hand still held the dagger and it was only inches from her. She tried to ease the knife out of his grasp, but his fingers were as tight as death around the handle.
She slept then, lulled by the close air under the hides, the warmth of Diego, and the fact that she had not slept for two nights. Reason told her to be watchful, but she could not stay awake.
She woke hours later to the sound of footsteps. Diego was awake. His hand was covering her mouth, so fearful was he that she would awaken with a scream or sudden movement. She kissed his fingers to let him know she was awake, and he moved his hand only far enough to grasp his dagger again.
She lay absolutely still, listening to the footsteps prowling about and the boom of her heart. It was as loud in her ears as thunder. The beating of her heart joined with the pounding of drums in the plaza as the Indians danced out their victory over murdered women and children.
The voices of men were loud in the next room, and for one wild, irrational moment, Maria thought they were rescuers. But they spoke Tewa, and she knew there was no help. They were two isolated people in an ocean of blood. Maria reached for Diego.
The footsteps entered the santero workshop, pausing for a long time in the doorway, the unseen prowler taking in the pillage and blood. The Indian moved around the room, kicking rubbish here and there. Then he walked toward the buffalo skins.
Maria closed her eyes. The blood in her veins ceased to run when the Indian began removing skins from the pile, one, then two, another skin, and another. Then the drumming in the pueblo stopped, and the unknown figure stayed his hand. Maria could almost hear his breathing now, and she held her own breath. She was drenched with her sweat and Diego’s.
One of the buffalo skins flopped back, and they heard the sound of someone dragging the other skins from the room. Diego was silent for a long moment, not relaxing his grip on the dagger. After a time, he let go. “Let us pray he does not come back to steal again.”
Maria cried then, her tears turning to mud under her cheek. She felt Diego’s tears on her neck. His body was hot, and she knew he had a fever.
They stayed under the buffalo skins through the long day. The drums pounded again, the same monotonous, hypnotic rhythm she had heard before in the kiva and in Father Pio’s desecrated church. She could feel the vibrations of many feet stomping out a pattern of celebration. The trillings and songs were muted, but unrelenting.
Maria dozed off and on through the hot day. She could hear Cristóbal’s body making wheezing, gaseous noises. Diego moved closer to her and whispered in her ear, “Before God and all the saints, Maria, he is cold. Such a coldness I have never felt.” He shuddered now and then, whether from fever, or from some primitive reflex of fright, she did not know. The drums in the plaza were soothing her back to sleep.
When she awoke, the plaza was silent. The quiet was so enormous that it hummed in her ears. By some sense, she knew that darkness had finally come. “Diego,” she whispered, “are you awake?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“The Indians?”
“I think they have gone. We will wait a little longer.”
Diego was so warm. She felt his face. He was burning with fever, his skin hot and dry. And yet he shivered off and on, his body exhausted by shock and loss of blood.
After another endless hour, Diego shifted and groaned softly. “Chiquita, my arm is asleep. Can you pull back the hides?”
Slowly she wriggled out from under the weight of the hides, her body nearly as stiff as Cristóbal’s. The room was dark, but the moon shone through the small door and window, casting its bright reflection on the gypsum paint smeared everywhere. The particles of gypsum sparkled on the floor. She began pulling the hides off Diego. When she reached him, he turned over on his back slowly and held up his good arm. She tugged him to his feet only to have him collapse on the santero’s workbench.
“You look terrible,” she said.
His eyes flickered over her. “You don’t look so good yourself,” he replied. Both of them were stiff, sweaty, and covered with white paint and blood. “We look like kachina clowns,” Diego said, patting his wounded arm with his fingers. “Ay de mi,” he muttered.
She touched his arm. It was swollen and hot. “I can loosen the bandage,” she offered, her fingers already on the knot.
“Not now, Maria. Let us leave this place first. Cover up Cristóbal.”
She stared down at the body. Diego got up from the workbench and knelt by his brother. Tentativ
ely he reached his hand out and touched Cristóbal. Maria’s heart turned over as he began to cry.
She laid her hand gently on the back of his neck as he sobbed, his tears wrenching her very soul as she remembered Erlinda’s similar outpouring in the chapel after the Apache raid.
She wiped his eyes with her hand. He sighed and was silent, kneeling by his dead brother. She covered up Cristóbal and made the sign of the cross over him.
Diego watched her. “Did you love him?” he asked softly.
“In some ways I did. Just as you did.”
Diego got up and went to the doorway. She followed him, looking over his shoulder. The plaza was littered with the remains from the church, which still smoldered. Smoke was heavy in the air, mingled with the odor of cooked flesh.
The ladders were already pulled up, but the pueblo appeared to be deserted, or caught in the grip of exhausted, satiated slumber. Maria looked at Diego, a question in her eyes, and he shrugged. Motioning to her to remain where she was, he tiptoed to the edge of the terrace and looked down. He waved for her to join him, picking up one side of the ladder and indicating that she take the other.
She shook her head. “Wait, Diego. Take off your boots.”
“You are right. If anyone should see Spanish boot prints, they will track us.”
Her eyes went to Emiliano, his corpse lying where she had first seen it early that morning. She knelt by his body and removed his moccasins. “Here. They are probably too small, but it would be safer.”
Diego sat down and tried to remove his boots. He looked at her and shook his head, and she tugged them off, carrying them back into the santero workshop and stashing them under the buffalo hides.
“They almost fit,” he whispered when she came out. “Now, let us be away from here.”
They picked up the ladder and inched it over the edge of the terrace. When it was in place, Diego handed her his dagger and climbed down the ladder as quickly as he could. She followed him, grabbing up her skirt, stiff with blood and gypsum. When she was down, Diego took her arm and hurried across the plaza. He paused in the shadows to look around.
“There aren’t even any dogs here,” he said.
“It is as if everyone has packed up and gone to ...” she stopped.
“To Santa Fe,” he finished.
They reached the shelter of the cottonwood trees lining the river, Maria helping Diego, who staggered as he walked. She put her arm around him and curled her fingers under his sword belt, supporting him.
They took the old Taos road out of Tesuque, walking in the tall brush at the edge of the stream and avoiding the road itself, which looked as deserted as the pueblo. When they had gone some distance, Diego stopped.
“I have to sit down, chiquita,” he said. He sounded drugged.
She pulled him down to the water’s edge and he collapsed on the ground. “No, no,” he said, “don’t touch me. Just let me lie here.”
She went to the small stream and ripped off another hunk of her petticoat, dipping it in the water until the gypsum was rinsed out. She laid the cloth on a rock and leaned over the stream, lapping the water like an animal. She drank until her stomach felt tight, then wet the cloth again and went to Diego. She pulled his head into her lap and dribbled water into his mouth. When the cloth was only damp, she wiped his face with it, then kissed his forehead, pulling him to her breast. He closed his eyes and slept.
She leaned against a rock and shut her eyes. After the heat of the buffalo skins, the cool air felt like lotion on her skin. She breathed deeply of the familiar smell of juniper. Listening to the water murmur over the stones, she bowed her head over Diego and slept.
When she woke, the sky was beginning to lighten around the horizon. The familiar bulk of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains shielded the valley from daylight, but it was coming.
Diego still slept, so she gentled his head on the grass and inched away. She stood up and stretched, her eyes on the stream. The area was familiar to her. She had gathered gypsum not far from where Diego lay. After another look at him to make sure he was sleeping, she walked north toward the gypsum wall. With her fingernail, she peeled off flakes of gypsum. Perhaps it would be possible to make a poultice for his arm. She knew it would harden quickly when mixed with water. Her skirt was still stiff with the gypsum and blood from the santero’s workshop.
She held her skirt out in front of her, and with one hand peeled off handfuls of gypsum from the cliff wall. When she had enough, she walked carefully back to Diego.
She had nothing to put the gypsum in, so she piled it by the stream and scooped out a shallow depression in the mud by the bank. When it was deep enough, she put water into the hole with her hands and waited for the mud to settle. While it was clearing, she took Diego’s knife and ripped through her dress, taking the material off at her knees.
Diego jerked awake at the sound of the tearing cloth. He groped for his knife, then sat up, watching her. She handed him his knife, then took the long strip of cloth to the stream where she washed the material, soaking the blood, dirt and gypsum paint out of the fabric. The water was cold on her legs and she was soon shivering.
Maria anchored the material in the stream with a rock and turned back to her makeshift basin of water, where she dumped in handfuls of gypsum, stirring it with a stick and trying not to mix up the mud on the bottom. When the water was white and thick, she retrieved the material from the stream and laid it in folds in the gypsum water.
Diego understood what she was doing. He began to work at the knot on his bloody bandage. His fingers were unsteady, and with an oath he looked at her, his arm extended.
She sat down next to him and made him lie with his head in her lap again. She worked the knot out of the drenched fabric and gently unwrapped the dirty, blood-encrusted bandage, biting her lip as Diego groaned and closed his eyes. The wound looked even more ghastly in daylight, long and ragged where he had struggled against the knife. The bone was laid bare, the muscles torn.
She paused for a minute. Diego was shivering uncontrollably. “I am sorry, querida,” he managed, “but I cannot help myself.”
“Shh, shh, Diego,” she answered, her voice a murmur like the stream. “I will try not to hurt you.”
When he was still, lying with his eyes closed and sweat pouring off his face, she dipped a small square of her skirt in the river water and cleaned the wound, wiping gently around the lacerated edges. Then she leaned over to her basin of gypsum water and slowly pulled out the coated fabric. Working as quickly as she could, she wrapped the gypsum-coated material around Diego’s arm from shoulder to elbow. The blood quickly soaked through the first layers, but by the time she finished, the bandage was already beginning to harden.
Maria leaned back against the rock and looked at Diego. He opened his eyes and smiled. “Now tuck me in bed with a hot rock and I will be fine in a day or two.”
“Of course,” she replied, a smile of her own playing around her lips. “And I will fluff your pillows and bring you hot chocolate and tortillas. With or without cheese and onions?”
He considered the matter as she wiped his face. “No onions.”
“Ah. Will you be a good patient?”
“Probably not. Why should my convalescence make me any different?”
Without a word, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. His good arm went around her waist and he kissed her back until he started to laugh.
Maria sat up straight, her face on fire. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her eyes wide. He lay back with his head in her lap, laughing softly and wincing every time his shoulder moved.
“Oh, Maria, Maria,” he finally gasped, “how strange! We’re probably the only two paisanos left in all of New Mexico, we’re going to starve to death before noon, and I require Last Rites, but all I want is for you to kiss me again.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said, her hands on her red cheeks. “Whatever was I thinking?”
“I am sure I do not know,” Diego re
plied, “but perhaps you can show me sometime when I feel better.”
“I would not dare!” she said, lowering Diego’s head to the grass again and getting to her feet. He stared at her legs with a smile on his face, and she tugged at her shortened dress. “I only did it for you,” she muttered, grateful she still wore his Apache moccasins that laced to her knees.
“Gracias, señorita,” he murmured.
She looked around her. The sun was over the mountains now, although shadows were still heavy in the valley and the grass was wet with dew. She knew they were less than a mile from the Masferrer cornfields. They had to reach shelter of some sort. “If I help you to your feet, do you think you could walk to the cornfields? We might be safer there.”
In answer, Diego held out his hand and she pulled him to his feet. He sank to his knees immediately and she hauled him to his feet again, her hand tugging at his sword belt. He managed to straighten up, and they walked slowly along the streambed.
When they came to the point where the stream crossed the trail, she made him sit down in the shadows while she walked to the old Taos road. Maria knelt by the side of the road in the tall grass and watched to the north. Indians were coming down the road on horseback. She had never seen Pueblo Indians riding before. They must have taken the horses from the dead landowners around Taos. She knelt in the grass, her mind finally registering the enormity of yesterday’s revolt. She watched their approach in stunned silence, then backed down the slope to Diego.
“Well?” he asked, sitting there with his eyes half-closed.
“Many Indians. They are all mounted, Diego. All of them.”
He contemplated some distant-scene beyond her vision. “I wonder how many dead men, women and children have paid for that ride!” He struggled to lie down in the weeds and Maria lay down next to him, watching the road.
