“Be careful,” she told him, serious.
By the time he climbed aboard Sunfisher, he had already begun to discover that things were done a little differently south of the Río Bravo. Much like courting a woman, a rodeo down here followed circumspect rules.
“Their spurs may jingle louder than mine,” he told Aurelia, “but otherwise, a cowpuncher is a cowpuncher and a rodeo is a rodeo, no matter what you call it.”
Santos slapped him on the back. “Ride easy, compadre.”
“Can’t do otherwise.” He polished his badge with the palm of his hand. “Ranger honor, and all that.”
Don Rodrigo Fraga took charge of the visitor, while Santos and Aurelia found places as close to the front of the arena as they could.
The show began much as the bullfight had the day before with what Carson called a grand entry.
“The paseo,” Don Rodrigo told him, leading the way into the ring.
Aurelia clasped her hands in her lap to keep from wringing them. “I wish we had the governor’s box today,” she told Santos, “so we could sit on the front row. But I don’t suppose the governor comes to events like this.”
“Don’t know why he wouldn’t,” Santos responded. “He looked like a down-to-earth sort of hombre. It’s our relatives who wouldn’t stoop to attend a charriada.”
Aurelia watched the fifty or so performers ride single file around the inside of the ring. The judges took their places in the middle, ready to signal the start of the first event.
“There he is.” Standing in place, she waved her handkerchief to Carson when he passed. “He can’t find us,” she whispered. He rode straight and tall in the saddle, his Stetson dwarfed by the large brims of the sombreros that surrounded him.
“How will he keep his hat on?” she worried.
“Texans don’t tie a strap under their bottom lip like we do,” Santos told her.
“Won’t his hat fly off?”
“I’ve ridden many a mile with him, Relie, and I have yet to see the man lose his hat.”
She settled down when the first event began, the cala de caballo. Each horseman entered the arena at full gallop, bringing his mount to a halt inside a rectangle drawn on the ground with chalk. As soon as the animal stopped, the rider turned him in a circle within the rectangle, first to the left, then to the right. The event was finished by the rider backing his horse out of the arena.
“His horse isn’t trained for these events,” she worried. “He should have ridden the bay.”
Santos teased her when Carson scored the highest possible number of points. Several charros scored as high, however.
“After the way you goaded him into performing,” Santos teased, “I expected you to show a little more faith in the man.”
“But he has never done this before.”
“He has worked cattle most of his grown life, Relie. A man uses the same skills in the cala de caballo as he does in cutting cattle out of a herd from daylight to dark.”
Carson located them before the next event got under way. He lifted his hat and she stood again, waving in return.
Neither he nor Rodrigo participated in the following events, and word finally reached Aurelia and Santos of a one-on-one contest, a mano a mano between Don Rodrigo Fraga and Carson Jarrett of Texas. Her heart flipped.
“Why did he do that?”
Santos laughed. “First you goad him into entering, then you whet his appetite with the prospect of winning Rodrigo’s Arabian horses, now you want him to withdraw?”
“Not withdraw, just…well…He isn’t doing this for me, Santos, no matter what you think.”
“I know that. He’s doing it for himself. Watch him, Relie. He’s enjoying the hell out of it.”
While Santos spoke a steer burst from a gate, and Carson spurred Sunfisher after it. Riding alongside the animal, he suddenly hefted himself from the saddle and dropped his body onto the steer, throwing his right arm around the animal’s neck and grabbing its nose with his right hand. With his left hand on the steer’s left horn, he plunged himself downward, twisting the animal’s neck, bringing it to ground.
By that time, no more than ten seconds, Aurelia had wrung her handkerchief into a wrinkled scrap of linen.
Santos patted her hands. “It’s all right, Relie. That’s called bulldogging.”
“It looks dangerous.”
“How else do you propose to get an animal down to brand its ornery hide?” he questioned. “Besides, I wouldn’t consider bulldogging half as dangerous as robbing trains.”
That shut her up for a while, but she still gripped the handkerchief in wet hands.
Don Rodrigo took the next steer, but he didn’t look nearly as proficient as Carson, a fact that lifted Aurelia’s spirits considerably.
When the second event of the mano a mano was announced, a roar went up. The coleadero was always a favorite of the crowd, but today she sensed they tasted blood.
The blood of a Texan.
Don Rodrigo went first, as Carson had done with the bulldogging, to show the technique. The bull charged from the chute into the arena, with Rodrigo pressing his mount close behind. When he came close enough, he reached over and grabbed the animal’s tail, jerking it hard, pulling.
She knew the intention: to wrap the end of the bull’s tail around the pommel of the saddle, while at the same time turning his horse in such a manner as to throw the bull off balance and roll him over. Don Rodrigo performed the event with grace and skill.
The next bull belonged to Carson, and it was all Aurelia could do to watch. Her hands trembled; she raised them partway to her eyes and ended up with her knuckles in her mouth.
Carson caught hold of the bull’s tail. Santos cheered. Carson pulled. The crowd roared. The section of tail Carson held suddenly came off in his hand, and he toppled sideways in the saddle.
Aurelia covered her eyes with her hands.
Santos pulled her hands away. “Watch him, Relie. He won’t fall off that horse.”
“But?…”
“Carson Jarrett is as good a horseman as any charro out there. Do you think I would have let you goad him the way you did if I hadn’t known it would be a great contest?”
“But the tail?…”
Santos shrugged. “The breaks. Bulls’ tails come off like that all the time, you know that. No reflection on Jarrett.”
The crowd was on its feet, cheering. She stood on wobbly legs.
“They know it, too,” Santos was saying, clapping loudly for his friend. “He’s game; they respect him.”
By the final pair of events in this duel of charro versus cowboy, Aurelia found her knees weak and her heart tired. She knew what the final event always was.
“They wouldn’t?…”
“Why not? It’s as much a part of range work as the other events.”
Across the arena she watched Carson and Don Rodrigo twirl their lassos, limbering their roping arms.
Don Rodrigo went first, again obviously to show Carson the technique. Afoot, he walked to the center of the ring, twirling his rawhide reata in flourishes to either side of his body, above his head, even stepping through the loop. Three riders entered the arena, driving a wild horse in front of them around the edge of the ring.
After a couple of passes, Don Rodrigo stepped to within ten feet of the arena fence, directly in front of the section where Aurelia sat. He glanced up, saluting her with his sombrero without dropping the loop of his twirling reata. Then he turned to face the oncoming wild horse. Suddenly, he jumped through the loop and immediately afterwards tossed the loop to the ground in front of the running horse, who stepped into it with his hind legs.
Don Rodrigo expertly jerked his reata to tighten the noose, twirled his body, dug in his heels, and dropped the surprised horse to the ground.
The hushed crowd came to its feet once more. Don Rodrigo bowed to Aurelia, sweeping the ground with his sombrero.
Then it was Carson’s turn.
“He can’t.”
Instead of walking to the center of the arena on foot, Carson rode Sunfisher. And instead of stopping there, he headed straight across the ring, guiding his horse at a leisurely gait, sitting tall and straight in the saddle. His left hand rested lightly on his thigh; in his right hand he held the reins in a loose grip. He drew up in front of the section where she sat.
Tipping his Stetson with a flick of his forefinger, he lifted the reins, and without further prompting, Sunfisher buckled his front legs at the knees to kneel before her. Carson stared into her eyes, still sitting tall and straight, that familiar wry grin tipping his lips.
Her hands flew to her heart, which gave warning of stopping altogether. All she could do was smile back.
“A trick horse,” she muttered.
“That sonofabitch,” Santos mused, nodding his head in appreciation. “He’s become a regular Bill-show cowboy.”
“A what?”
“Buffalo Bill, the Western showman. Truth is, Jarrett’s been working with that horse since it was a colt. Not much else to do in a Ranger camp after you clean your rifle. And you can clean your rifle only so many times.”
With as much grace as he had entered the ring, Carson turned Sunfisher back to the center, shook out his lariat, and nodded to the men who held the chute closed.
The same three riders burst forth, driving another wild horse. Carson sat Sunfisher in the center of the ring, casually twirling the rope in a loop beside him. He turned his mount by degrees, watching the bronc hug the arena wall. After the second pass, he nudged Sunfisher. They approached the wall, with Carson still twirling his horsehair lariat in an offhand fashion.
The end came like lightning. The bronc approached. Carson twirled the lariat above his head. The bronc drew even. Carson tossed the lariat.
Not at the animal’s head but at its feet, drawing up suddenly, tightening the loop, wrapping the rope around the small pommel of his Texas saddle.
Sunfisher dug in his hooves, much as Don Rodrigo had dug in his heels before him. The bronc tumbled, stunned, surprised, but otherwise unharmed, to the ground, all four feet caught in the loop.
Again the crowd jumped to its feet.
Aurelia ran down the aisle, leaned over the fence.
Dismounting, Carson released the bronc and watched it bound to the far end of the arena, while he coiled the lariat. After remounting, he trotted Sunfisher up to the fence beside her.
His warm eyes teasing, he leaned forward, grasped her about the waist, and pulled her over the fence and onto the saddle in front of him. Her red skirt fanned like a blanket of roses on the winner of a horse race.
He hadn’t won it all, of course.
The judges ruled it a tie. And Carson considered himself lucky to have been given that much, since he came away with only the tail of the bull.
Back in the corral, he apologized to Santos. “Hope you didn’t mind. I know a lady isn’t supposed to be made a spectacle of, but…well…” He winked at Aurelia where she stood rubbing down Sunfisher’s lathered back. “I had to show I won the girl.”
Santos laughed. “Under the circumstances I figure she got off light, seein’ how she goaded you into this.”
The music had already started behind the corral in a large outdoor arena, where dancing would go on well into the night.
“The jarabe tapatío,” Santos informed Carson. “The national dance of charro country.”
Carson watched Aurelia dance about the stall. “Wondered why she came dressed like that.”
Out back the charros had laid their camps in and among a vast grove of liveoak trees. Smoke from their fires wafted through the autumn air, redolent with the aroma of roasting cabrito. Jugs of tequila circulated freely.
Don Rodrigo materialized again, taking charge of Carson, who was the hero of the day, dragging them from camp to camp, where they were obliged to eat plates of succulent cabrito rolled in flour tortillas and wash it down with tequila produced on first one rancho then the next, as group after group toasted Carson and the Texas Rangers and Don Rodrigo and the charros.
When the dancing began, Carson was the first to admit that the flashing steps of the jarabe were a little much for him after the other events of the day.
Aurelia led him in the steps, but his eyes were drawn to her swishing skirts and glimpses of her shapely calves, and his thoughts roamed to the picnic by the river and the feel of her calf in his hand.
And to so much more.
He gamely tried to learn the dance, though, after watching Don Rodrigo spirit her about the packed-earth floor, and he promised he would brush up on his technique by Santos and Pia’s wedding.
As he told them earlier he would, Carson spent the night at the stables, while Santos and Aurelia returned to the Reinaldo mansion, arriving at a late enough hour to avoid an encounter with their relatives.
They tarried only long enough the following morning for Aurelia to once again apologize to her uncle for her unacceptable behavior, at Carson’s instructions.
The morning sun found them on the road to Catorce. They stopped by the stables for Carson and their horses, then by the Plaza de Toros to pick up their vaqueros and those of the Mazón bulls that had not met their fate in the blood and sand the day before.
“Can’t use them for fighting after they have been exposed to men on foot,” Santos told Carson, “but they make good breeding stock, since we cull all except the best long before they reach this age.”
It took four days and three nights to reach Catorce. They passed through the outer fringes of the Mazón range on the way. Santos and Carson talked of Rangering and cowboying, and Carson learned many things about the raising of fighting bulls and fine working horses.
“So you didn’t win Rodrigo’s Arabians?” Santos mused around the campfire the third night out.
“Nope.”
“Kind of hate that,” Santos continued. “I know Relie was sure countin’ on it.”
“I was not,” she objected, wondering why Santos pursued a subject she had already explained to him.
“I bought a few head off him, though,” Carson revealed.
“You what?” she asked.
“I bought a few head of those Arabian horses. A stallion and three mares.”
“Where are they?” she demanded, startled.
“Didn’t have the money on me,” he commented. “I’ll wire Austin for it when we get back to Catorce, then after we get ol’ Santos married off, I figure to ride down and pick ’em up.”
“The money?” she questioned.
He laughed. “You know, the stuff your papá coins at his mint.”
“But where would you get that kind of money?” No sooner had the words left her mouth than she saw a frown crease his forehead.
“I didn’t rob a train.” His jesting tone turned serious. “I may look like nothing more than a footloose cowpoke who hauls all his worldly possessions in his saddlebags like a turtle in his shell, but that isn’t sayin’ I don’t have a dime to my name.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Rangers make decent pay, Relie,” Santos explained. “They don’t get rich, but if they save their money instead of squandering it on women and such, it adds up. Oftentimes they save enough to buy a good-sized piece of land, build up ranches, herds of cattle, that sort of thing.”
“I never did,” Carson stated simply. “Always intended to, but I never found a place that tickled my fancy enough to cure the itch in my feet. My gold’s in the bank down in Austin.”
“I didn’t mean I thought you were…”
“Down-and-out?” he questioned. “Don’t much blame you, seein’ how you found me in jail and all.” He scratched his three-day growth of beard, eyeing her in a teasing manner. “Speakin’ of which, I sure could use a shave.”
She had been cleaning the skillet, packing the utensils they used for supper when he said the last. Their gazes locked; remembrance ran hot between them, bri
nging a flush to her cheeks.
In defense, she threw the dish towel at him. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, of course. They both knew that. But again they crawled into separate bedrolls.
That night she dreamed of horses. Arabian horses. Herds of them roaming the Texas prairie. And of Carson and herself and their children.
How many children? She awoke while counting.
Chapter Seventeen
They rode into Catorce with the problem at Mina Mazón foremost on their minds—that and Aurelia’s safety, which worried Carson most of all.
“Until we nail down the difficulty,” he told them after they emerged from the tunnel onto the brick-lined main street of Real de Catorce, “I think we had best keep everything we have learned between the three of us.”
“You mean everything we have not learned,” Santos corrected.
“Hmm.” Carson exchanged glances with Aurelia. “And everything we have planned…and not planned.”
“Carson–?”
Before she could object further, he explained. “We can’t afford to rock the boat. Your parents wouldn’t believe any of this right now, anyway. Wait until we have proof.”
“That makes sense, Relie.”
“In the meantime, it’s best if—I can’t believe I’m telling you this—it will help if you keep up appearances with Enrique.”
Her chin went up. “No.”
“If we call their hand too soon, they may go into hiding,” he argued.
“How long?”
He shrugged.
Her eyes pierced him. “Tía Guadalupe is determined to announce my betrothal to Enrique at Santos and Pia’s wedding reception.”
Carson held her gaze steady. “We’ll solve the mine difficulties before them.”
“The place to start is at the mine,” Santos suggested.
Carson shuddered. “That place gives me the all-overs.” He glanced sheepishly at Santos. “No offense, partner, but I don’t see how a man stands working inside a mine day in, day out.”
At Santos’s amused expression, he hurried to explain. “That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to go through with this thing. I’m ready to put it behind us.”
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 27
