by Carla Kelly
“No,” he said when he could speak. “Don’t. Leave it the way it is. We will remember.”
She nodded slowly. “And I will remember what Emiliano the saintmaker taught me.”
“It is well. I believe that is what he intended.”
With a grimace that stabbed at Maria’s heart, Diego put his arm around her and started walking with her toward the Castellano’s little corner. “Do you still have that needle and thread?” he asked suddenly. Her eyes flew in alarm to his shoulder.
“No, not that. My pants are ripped. It’s my only pair.”
She patted his stomach and laughed.
“Ay, I am a wealthy man, Maria,” he said. “I have a wife, a mother for my future children, and my own saintmaker. But I do wish you could keep from ruining all the dresses I give you. Did you stay at that rifleport all day?”
“Of course,” she said.
“ ‘Of course,’ ” he echoed. “How could I have thought otherwise? I fear you will lead me in a merry dance, Señora Masferrer!”
After a quick meal of jerky and hardtack and a long, long drink from the acequia, Diego rested with his head in Maria’s lap. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep.
“Take a good look around.” he said.
“What are you saying?”
“After we rest for a couple of days, we are leaving. Walking south to try to find the rest of the colony at Ysleta, around the lower river.”
“And then?”
“We will continue south. Perhaps to El Paso del Norte, the crossing. ”
“That is a long walk, Diego mio.”
“You are equal to it, Maria La Formidable. Maria La Afortunada. Maria, Daughter of Fortune.”
She kissed him. “And when we get to the crossing, what then?”
“We will start over again there. Perhaps when we are strong enough we will return to take this place back. If we want it.”
“Do we?”
He smiled. “That may depend on what we have learned.”
She looked toward the north where the Indian campfires still burned as brightly as ever. “Will they let us go?”
“Yes. After today, yes.”
He closed his eyes and Maria leaned against the wall, cradling his head in her arms. “Maria, one thing more,” he said, long after she thought he was asleep.
“Qué es esto, my heart?” she asked.
He opened his eyes and looked at her shrewdly, a calculating expression on his face. “What if I had not come back?”
She considered his question and what the answer meant to him, to her. “I would have managed here, even without you,” she said simply, pausing to let that sink in. “I probably would have remarried and raised your sisters.”
“But you would have stayed with the colony,” he persisted.
“Oh, yes. I belong here. It has nothing to do with you.”
Her words sounded hard, but he knew her as well as she knew herself now, and she was not surprised at his smile. It had nothing to do with him, although he was the dearest part of her life. It had to do with her only, and she could tell that he was glad.
He stirred and sat up, resting on his elbow. He kissed her, then rested his head in her lap again, content.
She was silent then, too, looking up at the Indian campfires. The smell of smoke and death would be in her nostrils for days, weeks to come. She knew she would wake up many nights, shivering with nightmares, but she knew that Diego would be lying beside her.
She looked down at him. His eyes closed even as she watched, and his neck and shoulders relaxed against her thighs. He sighed and slept.
Maria touched her finger to her lips and then to his cheek. He stirred but did not waken. She settled back against the wall, prepared to spend the night holding him in her arms.
It didn’t matter to her that the cloth had been of Diego’s making. She had cut the cloak, and it fit.
Epilogue
They left four days later, Diego and Maria Masferrer, Luz and Catarina, walking south to El Paso with the other defeated survivors of the vanquished colony of New Mexico. There were many deaths on the long, hot, and hungry journey to the crossing of the river more than two hundred miles away. They arrived at the northern crossing of the Rio Bravo and established the village of San Lorenzo, called in painful Spanish remembrance after the martyred saint on whose nameday the uprising had begun.
Not until thirteen years later, in 1693, were the colonists able to regain their lands in New Mexico. A man of thirty-two, Diego Masferrer and his oldest son Emiliano returned with the army of the conquering governor, Don Diego de Vargas.
Six months later, Maria followed with a month-old boy and four other sons and daughters. She left behind Luz and Catarina, Luz in a convent in Sonora and Catarina busy with husband and children of her own. Maria took with her the remembered skills of Emiliano the saintmaker.
She also took her San Francisco—a saint still armless and covered with fading gypsum, a reminder of other, darker days.
Maria Masferrer found many more saints in the woods by Tesuque, much subdued now, and Las Invernadas, rebuilt to be even more strong. The holy ones had waited patiently in the wood for thirteen years. The saintmaker knew them when she saw them, and they, her.
A well-known veteran of the romance writing field, Carla Kelly is the author of twenty-six novels and three non-fiction works, as well as numerous short stories and articles for various publications. She is the recipient of two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Regency of the Year; two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America; a Whitney Award for Best Romance Fiction, 2011; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times.
Carla’s interest in historical fiction is a byproduct of her lifelong interest in history. She has a BA in Latin American History from Brigham Young University and an MA in Indian Wars History from University of Louisiana-Monroe. She’s held a variety of jobs, including public relations work for major hospitals and hospices, feature writer and columnist for a North Dakota daily newspaper, and ranger in the National Park Service (her favorite job) at Fort Laramie National Historic Site and Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site. She has worked for the North Dakota Historical Society as a contract researcher. Interest in the Napoleonic Wars at sea led to a recent series of novels about the British Channel Fleet during that conflict.
Of late, Carla has written two novels set in southeast Wyoming in 1910 that focus on her Mormon background and her interest in ranching.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
