“He ... yours?” To Grip.
“Not that I am aware of.”
The man gives a sort of laugh, quickly stifled as Grip remains still. He glances between the boy, Grip, and Ivy, perhaps hoping for invitation to sit. Grip only stares back. Ivy avoids looking at him at all. He soon takes the hint, nodding and moving on.
The little boy whirls back to Grip. “¿Qué dijo?”
“Aprende Inglés.” Grip shoves him with his knee, encouraging him to go.
The boy hops back onto the bench on his right side so Grip has to turn his head to see him with the good eye.
“Sé Inglés.” He holds out his little hands in an expansive gesture. “Sé, ‘How are you today?’ ‘Yes, please.’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘What is your name, please?’ And ... and....” Screwing up his face. “And, ‘No account son of a bitch.’” He beams up at Grip.
“Does your mamá know you know all that in English, Buen?” Grip pushes back his hat.
Buen? Doesn’t that mean something?
The boy frowns.
Grip repeats the question in Spanish.
Buen nods thoughtfully. “Ella dice que mi Inglés es bueno.”
“Only because she does not speak it well herself.” Grip looks around as another man steps up to them. Though young, he looks haggard, older than his years, even at a glance.
“Deje tu tío en paz,” the newcomer says to the boy.
Grip shrugs. “He’s not bothering me, Mateo.”
Mateo lifts an eyebrow.
Chattering at one or both, Buen stands on the bench, trying to see what rests on the plate Mateo carries.
“What has he eaten?” Mateo asks Grip.
“Churros.”
Buen scowls. “Me comí todo.” He holds out scrawny arms as if to take in the whole of the gathering. He reaches for the pastry of his affection on the edge of Mateo’s plate, but Mateo lifts it over his head.
“What happened yesterday?” Mateo’s voice is soft.
Grip shakes his head.
“You really fought Adair Gordon?”
The boy clambers down from the bench when he cannot reach the plate, Grip watching him rather than the other man.
Mateo glances over his shoulder as someone calls him from the crowd and Buen dashes to tables. With the boy gone, Mateo speaks rapidly in Spanish. Ivy catches Rosalía’s name and a question at the end.
Grip still will not look at him. “No más de lo normal.”
Mateo frowns. “Grip—” He is summoned once more and stops, watching Grip, then hurries away.
Ivy’s sparse plate is almost clear. Finding the churro difficult to cut with the side of her wooden fork, only mangling dough, she finally picks it up in her fingertips.
When she next looks up, a girl stands by Grip at the end of the bench. Not tiny like the others, but eight or nine years old. Her smooth black hair cascades about her face and shoulders, framing a solemn expression and chocolate eyes which seem too large for her delicate face. She wears a white cotton dress with lace at the neck and even shoes—one of the only children Ivy has seen in New Mexico Territory doing so.
Gazing at Grip, chin low but eyes fixed on him, she wordlessly holds out a plate of beef tacos in both hands.
Grip regards her in equal silence. After a pause, he touches the brim of his hat with two fingers and takes the plate.
The girl smiles, lighting up her face and somber eyes. Her demeanor remains shy as she clasps her hands behind her back, then dashes off.
Grip watches her return to the group and a boy of about the same age.
“Who were they?” Ivy asks, also watching the children. She has never seen such a place as Santa Fé for lack of introductions.
Grip rests the plate on his lap to lift a taco in his left hand. “That was Araceli. Before her, my brother Mateo and nephew Buenaventura.”
“Excuse me?”
“Buenaventura. Buen. Pig-glutton of a child.”
“And the girl?”
He chews, swallows. Takes another bite. Swallows that. “Niece. Different parents.”
“Winter was looking for you. I don’t see her now.”
“Nor do I.” He sounds relieved.
“Where does Rosalía keep her horse?”
He glances at her. “Why?”
“Because someone must talk to her.” Ivy brushes her hands together to dust away cinnamon.
He glares at tacos while she stands, looking for somewhere to leave her plate. She waits beside him in silence, as close as she can without touching him, aware how particular he is about his space.
Finally he mutters, “A piece out back, past Íñigo’s goat pens.”
“Thank you,” Ivy says cooly before leaving.
Heading toward corn fields behind the house, she soon finds a timber loafing shed and rail fence forming a compact corral.
Inside, a black and a chestnut eat from hay nets along the fence. Below shade of the shelter, Rosalía sits sideways on a saddle tree. Her seal brown horse’s head rests against her chest. Volar chews, swishing his tail to ward off flies as he turns his head into her scratching fingers.
Rosalía does not look up as Ivy approaches.
Ivy leans her arms on the top rail, realizes what she is doing and withdraws, brushing down her dress to stand politely.
“Would you like lunch?”
Volar twists his ears at the sound of her voice.
Rosalía does not move. “Later. Thank you, Ivy.”
Ivy finds the gate to let herself in, waving off flies as she goes. No more saddle trees, but a barrel which must contain oats or molasses stands against the back wall of the shelter. After making sure the surface is not sticky, Ivy carefully sits down.
Volar turns to examine her, sniffing her hat, then huffing down sleeves to hands to see if she brought him anything. He shakes himself against flies before snorting mucus in her face and turning for his own net.
Rosalía watches him go while Ivy hunts a handkerchief in her bag. Instead, she finds a linen napkin with a monogramed ABC.
“I am sorry for what happened yesterday,” Ivy says.
“It’s not your fault.” Rosalía rubs her hands together until black and tan horsehair puffs off them.
“I do not....” Ivy wipes her brow. At least not as bright in this half shelter, though her head still pounds. “What ... did happen yesterday?”
For the first time, Rosalía glances at her. “It’s all right, Ivy. None of this is your responsibility.”
Ivy frowns at the napkin as she folds it back in her bag. What does that mean? Is Rosalía telling her to go away? Or is Ivy supposed to ask for more, coax her into sharing her troubles? Only fair since Ivy spewed a good deal of her own troubles. But Ivy does not know Rosalía well enough to guess at her real meaning. Kitty would have wanted Ivy to press, beg her to talk about what happened. Kitty often needed a shoulder to cry on. Rosalía avoids people when upset and talks to her horse. She even skipped church. Antisocial or someone longing to be reached out to?
“I understand that,” Ivy says after a pause. “And I don’t mean to make matters worse. It’s only ... there is a great deal which goes on in Santa Fé, in the West, in the behaviors of my own ... companions which I do not understand. Not something I am accustomed to in my previous existence. I never knew a man who would be furious if someone saved his life. I never knew a woman who could shoot a handgun two blocks away and strike her target. For my sake, as well as yours, I only wondered why you are both so upset? Most times you shout at each other, I haven’t any idea what it is about. None of my business, I suppose....”
Rosalía squints across the turnout. “I didn’t, really. I aimed at his shooting arm. Used to aiming low with the carbine. That was Papá’s old Winchester. Getting his leg scarcely touched him fast enough to interrupt his aim.”
Ivy says nothing for a long time, yet Rosalía seems finished. She picks at a thread on her crimson skirt, the one she tore last evening.
“I am sorry a
bout what happened with Grip.” Rosalía looks around, opening her mouth, but Ivy hurries on. “I know it’s not my fault or responsibility. I’m still sorry for you. He should not speak to you like that.”
Rosalía returns to thread plucking.
So bright and hot. And her poor head. If Rosalía wished to discuss her troubles she could have by now. Ivy looks back toward the house, to fragments of unfinished protective wall in the opposite direction, to her friend.
“Is it true?” Ivy asks. “What you said about him being most angry because it was you who helped?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. They wouldn’t have helped. Mateo keeps clear of such troubles. Íñigo can scarcely shoot at all. He was having a lesson with Zamorano the day you rode back in and the gun went off. Zamorano and Brownlow and Thurman are trying to drum up guards. But Íñigo raises livestock and weeps for days if he has to slaughter a hog.” She glances up from her moody picking. “Don’t tell him I said that. It’s ... kind of private.”
Ivy smiles. “I won’t mention it.”
Rosalía gazes back at her skirt. She sighs. “Of course Darío never would have helped. He abided by the same code.”
Ivy watches her, wondering about the past tense. “I just, sort of, met Mateo. Is he the one with the talkative little boy?”
“Buen? That’s Mateo. He’s the third. Darío, then Grip, Mateo, me, then Íñigo is little over a year younger than me.”
“Where is Darío?”
“Dead.”
Ivy says nothing for a moment. Rosalía flicks a thread with her forefinger. Volar shakes himself once more, dust and flies puffing around him.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy says.
Rosalía nods, still flicking.
Ivy waits. The barrel is most uncomfortable. Now her back hurts with her head. She needs shade of a parlor. She needs another bath. A cool bath this time. Winter will be out at the “luncheon” for a long time yet. She must have spotted Grip hiding on the bench by now. She won’t mind. Ivy smiles to herself, recalling the gravity of the moment only when Rosalía shifts on the saddle tree.
“It’s been like this for years,” Rosalía says. “Almost three. We blow up at each other and he won’t speak to me for days or weeks. In truth, I did plenty wrong.”
“I don’t believe that. If you are speaking of you riding and shooting and your family’s feelings about it—”
Rosalía shakes her head, her voice soft. “That’s small matter compared to Darío and Raúl.”
Another one. Ivy is having trouble keeping these people straight—especially since the lack of introductions goes on when speaking of the persons in question.
“It started because Everette—” Rosalía stops. “No, with the four of them....” She bites her lip, glancing around.
Ivy tries to smile at her. The bath can wait a few minutes. “What’s the beginning?”
“It started ... with Grip....”
Forty-Fourth
The Four Horsemen
“His parents survived the Great Famine many years back,” Rosalía says. “By the time the country began trying to recover, all his father’s family were dead or immigrated to America. His mother still had people and meant to remain, but even on a farm laborer’s wage—and drinking much of that away—his father saved enough for passage in the end.
“Grip was seven years old by the time they boarded the ship to New York City. You can’t hear Ireland in his voice now, but he remembers his first home; song of the mistle thrush, how stone walls caught sunlight after a frost. You should hear him talk about it. Only ... he doesn’t talk about it anymore.
“They lived in the city the better part of a year before his mother got the two of them out. She worked her way west, helping homesteaders, cooking and washing, in return for passage among them. They reached Denver, but found more work only by continuing south.
“I hardly remember meeting Grip, I was so young. Íñigo little more than a baby. But I remember Ciara and how he looked beside her. She was so ill by the time she reached Santa Fé, she could scarcely stand, much less travel. The trail was unkind to her. And she had been on the trail since her husband bought those tickets and took her from a land she never wished to leave.
“Mamá found them—the doctor telling her it was hopeless and he had no beds anyway. Darío and Mamá spread out all the hides and blankets we had. She lay so still, so pale, sweat soaking her body until she looked like she had just been pulled from the Rio: dress tangled about her, a dozen scars visible on her arms and neck and face. Just when I would think her dead, she thrashed her head about, eyes wide open, saying, ‘You won’t forget. You promised.’ He sat in the corner, holding her burning hand, telling her, ‘I promise.’
“They terrified me. I spoke English already from my father. That was not so strange. But the look of them. Her on the floor, the boy crouching with his right arm in a hemp sling and fresh, red scars on his face, across his right eye, the eye streaming, swollen shut.”
Rosalía closes her own eyes and swallows. “‘I promise.’ Again and again. When she died, he kept saying it, holding her hand.
“After that, he was ... around. My parents acted as if Irish boys become semi-orphaned in their front room every day. I can’t remember getting to know him or even talking to him early on. Just another big brother before long, like Darío and Mateo. Darío was his favorite. He didn’t speak a word of Spanish and would hardly look at the rest of us. But he stayed with Darío, trying to learn, figure us out. Mamá’s English is bad, but he wouldn’t go anywhere near Papá when he could help it. If Papá even lifted his voice to call in Darío and Mateo, the new boy would run to hide under their bed. If he saw a beer bottle in the house, or smelled it on any man’s breath, he cowered behind Mamá or Darío. They didn’t have to be drunk to terrify him.
“The boys spilled half a bag of flour all over the floor one day. Papá walked into the kitchen as it puffed everywhere, Darío and Mateo racing around, saving what they could. That was our tortillas for weeks and Papá was about to give them a talking to. He hadn’t even opened his mouth before the Irish boy was in a ball at the back of the pantry—arms over his head, shaking like the last leaf of autumn. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Like the promise, again and again, nearly sobbing. I remember feeling almost as scared, holding my father’s knee, looking around for what may be descending upon us.
“It took him a long time to realize all men do not brutalize their children and wives. Do not mutilate faces with broken bottles. Do not drink away every penny while their families live on frozen streets under shelter of newspapers, eating rodents cooked in fires built from garbage. It took him a very, very long time just to look my father in the eye.
“By the time he’d been around years, we stopped thinking he was anything special. He learned Spanish rapidly. His wounds healed as much as they ever would. Mamá used to rub aloe vera or castor oil into the scars on his face and back, always singing.
“People were often coming and going through Santa Fé then. On the Santa Fé Trail before the rail opened at Raton Pass, or up from the south for more opportunity in a big city. One after another, Winter, Everette, and Raúl arrived. Then circumstances changed for us again.
“Mr. Night was a teacher, determined to educate all us poor, backward mountain folk. He didn’t know how to do it—not speaking Spanish, not knowing a rattler from a worm, and not having the respect of a single child here. But he had a will and enthusiasm which I expect would have won him through in the end if he had not perished with consumption a few years after he arrived. He taught my brothers to read English, for which I am grateful. They passed it on to me, though girls were, of course, not admitted.
“Winter was thirteen or fourteen when he died—younger than Grip, older than me. He was riding with Darío, Raúl, and Everette by then—the four of them already stirring up a reputation for thinking themselves excepcional.
“Everette came in on the Trail as part of an outfit from the States, but he was a
lone among them. A runaway from South Carolina. The War had not gone well for his family and he’d been adrift for many years. He seemed to find his brothers again in Grip and Darío.
“Then Raúl—his father a vaquero from south Texas, driving all over the nation. When his uncle struck into mineral mines up north in the mountains, he telegraphed back to Texas for Manuel and Raúl to come up through Santa Fé, mine with him, make them all rich. Raúl took sick on the way and his father left him in Santa Fé for a month with doctor’s care. Raúl stayed in bed that first week, then he was out seeing who were the best riders and biggest showoffs.
“Younger than Grip and Darío and Everette, but they were so impressed with his riding, roping, and shooting skills learned from his father, he was part of the gang before Manuel even came back to check on him. Raúl had them all wanting to be lawmen or bounty hunters, telling stories from his father of the trail, of outlaws and strange places which fascinated them.
“I know those stories because I followed them every chance I got. I eavesdropped while they practiced fast draws or stunts on horseback or tried to come up with the best way to tie a wanted man so he couldn’t wriggle out. They caught me many times, Darío ashamed I would run about after them like a boy, Grip angry, but Everette laughed and Raúl ... Raúl never laughed or grew angry. He would sweep off his hat and bow and ask if he could have this dance before he led me home. Unless they had the horses with them. Then he’d pull me up behind him and ride away, shouting that the shootist had kidnapped the lady.
“First I followed from curiosity. Soon, I followed because of Raúl. He brought me flowers every time he visited to find Darío and Grip. He taught me to be a better rider and did not shudder at the idea of me riding astride. He said, ‘You want to ride like a vaquero?’ And I said, ‘Better.’
“They had a chance to show their grit in public when the mill burnt down that summer. Only two people were trapped inside: the miller and the girl who took pies and lunches around to local bachelors for a few pennies. Darío helped the miller clear, but the girl collapsed in smoke and Grip carried her out.
Lightfall Three: Luck, Lost, Lady (Lightfall, Book 3) Page 10
