by Diego Vega
Bernardo nodded, agreeing, and Frying Pan brayed.
3
THE PUEBLO
AFTER SEVERAL HOURS’ RIDE across the plain, they were glad to see the buildings of the Pueblo de los Angeles.
It was a prosperous pueblo. It had several streets, a few real stores, dozens of houses, and the workshops of skilled craftspeople. It even had an inn. Out here on the edge of the world, Los Angeles was—at least to its settlers—a promising bud of civilization.
Friends called out from the porches and doorways of the thick-walled adobe buildings. Perhaps three hundred Angeleños lived around the pueblo. A few hundred lived out on the ranchos. Another four hundred neophytes, Indian workers who had converted to the Catholic church, lived near the mission. All told, only about a thousand souls, so there was no reason not to know everyone. Like many places on the edge of the world, it was friendly.
Diego and Bernardo tethered their animals in the shade of some oaks and walked toward the plaza. Bernardo tipped back his thumb and little finger in a drinking motion.
“Me too. I could do with some agua fresca after that ride.”
They crossed the dusty road toward the trees and benches of the plaza. Suddenly a troop of horsemen thundered around a corner. They were dressed like vaqueros bound for a fiesta, but they were just boys, not much older than Diego and Bernardo. They were the young dandies of the pueblo, the idle sons of rich hidalgos looking for a scrap of excitement. Silver conchos winked from their saddles and hatbands. Their big-roweled spurs gleamed, and their quirts snapped at their horses’ flanks. The leader of the band turned straight for the two boys in the street.
Both boys stood still, knowing that horses won’t willingly ride over a basket, much less a person. With wild cries and cracking whips, the gang of boys galloped down on them. Bernardo grasped the hem of his loose shirt.
When the riders were only a few horse lengths away, Bernardo gave a piercing whistle and pulled his shirt up, inside out, over his head. To the horses he appeared suddenly seven feet tall, white, and unfamiliar. The horses panicked, skidding to a halt. Some reared and stumbled, some slid and clambered. All but two of the riders were dismounted, thumping into the dust.
They picked themselves up, cursing. They were no longer imaginary dons and grand vaqueros; they were just dismounted boys slapping away the dust and dung from their embroidered costumes.
The leader, Rafael Moncada, older than the boys by five years, leaped up in a cloud of dust. “Fools! What do you mean by frightening our horses?” he demanded. “Someone could have been hurt. These horses are fine racing stock, not broken-down wagon pullers.” He mounted and pointed to Bernardo. “Even an idiot Indian like this should know better.”
The leader raised his quirt to lash Bernardo. Before he could bring it down, Bernardo ducked under his horse’s belly and tapped its far-side jaw so it leaped sideways. One of the dandies howled with pain as a heavy hoof stamped on his fancy boot. At the same moment, Diego leaped at the leader, now hanging halfway out of the saddle. Though he was stockier and years older than Diego, the wiry boy jerked him down into the dust and pounded on him like a cat. No one could dare to whip Bernardo in front of Diego!
One of the leader’s gang raised his own quirt, butt first, to club Diego. Bernardo toppled him into the dust as well. In the white cloud, boots clattered and bits of gravel flew. Another gang member saw his chance when Diego was on top of Moncada, pinning him: the sharp toe of a boot caught Diego in the ribs and rolled him to the side.
Diego breathed heavily, wincing in pain as Moncada stumbled to his feet.
“You insolent half-breed!” Moncada shouted, reaching clumsily for the sword hilt at his saddlebow.
But a voice, sounding as deep and powerful as the archangel Gabriel’s, stopped him. “Señor Moncada! Take care for your immortal soul!”
The voice didn’t come from the heavens, but from behind a fig tree in the plaza. Fray Feliipe Mendoza, leader of the mission friars, stepped out into the sunlight. “I think you have embarrassed yourself quite enough, young Moncada. You will have the sin of pride to confess before Sunday’s mass. In another moment you might have burdened yourself with heavier sins. Give thanks, young Moncada, and go your way in peace.”
Moncada seethed with frustration. He was about to say something to maintain his puffed-up dignity, but the padre was not in an indulgent mood. “Keep your tongue still, boy,” he said quietly.
“And you,” he said, pulling Diego and Bernardo to their feet with two powerful hands. “Fighting in the street like stray dogs. Shame!”
Mendoza turned to the others. “You’ve raised enough dust to make my teeth grit. Walk these horses out of the plaza and get back to your mothers. Tell them to wipe your noses. Go.”
Moncada mounted and spurred his horse viciously. It leaped once, making some of his gang fall back, but he jerked the reins hard. The quivering horse stopped against the iron bit with a moan, its eyes crazy. Pulling his reins cruelly tight, Moncada rode away. The rest of them walked their horses away from the plaza, eager to be out of sight. The boy whose foot had been stepped on clung to his saddle for support, limping painfully.
Mendoza frowned and clucked his tongue at Diego and Bernardo, still holding them by the scruffs of their shirts. He let them go, pushing them toward the shade of the tavern’s patio. He looked back after the retreating dandies and shook his head. “Young toughs. Proud Spanish blood.” He laughed once. “They wouldn’t have lasted long out here in the early days, back when your father was making this place safe, Diego.” He almost growled, then brightened.
“Have you had enough excitement, then? Come, hijos, sit with me in the shade. The day grows warm, and we’ve had enough exercise. I’m working on a plate of beans and chiles that is much too big for me. Come help.”
The padre sat down with a sigh. Only rarely did they remember that he was an old man, past sixty. Priests and monks might grow fat in Spain. But out here the padres taught their neophytes to ride and rope and brand, tan hides, plough, and build. The sun had burned Mendoza almost as brown as his robe. His fringe of white hair partly covered a missing ear from the battle in which Diego’s mother led her people in an uprising against the Spanish. The padre was no soft psalm singer but was as tough as sandal leather.
“What brings you into the pueblo, hijos?”
“Partly you, Padre. My mother has sent you letters and gifts for your brothers.”
“God bless Señora Regina. Sometimes”—he nodded his head toward the street where the gang of boys had made trouble—“sometimes I am tempted to despair. But we have been blessed in this place. Look,” he said, pushing the plate of food toward them, “here are the beans and chiles. Grab a tortilla and bless yourselves.”
He was right. It was too much food for one old padre. They rolled up fresh tortillas and scooped up the tangy beans and peppers. They drank mugs of agua fresca—cool water mixed with fruit juice and spices.
“Padre,” Diego asked, “how can Rafael Moncada hate our Indian brothers? For him, the Indians who raise his crops and herd his cattle are no more than dogs.”
Bernardo shook his head angrily.
The old monk turned a rolled tortilla in his fingers, examining it as if it had an answer. “Only God can look into our hearts. Rafael Moncada has his own demons that claw at his heart, making him hate. Hate is its own punishment, hijos.” The old man dug into the beans and bit into his tortilla.
“Padre, have any ships come in recently?”
“Only a Boston merchant. No official ships have arrived for months. No mail, then, but there may be packages from Acapulco or Panama. If you mean to be back at the rancho by dark, you need to get along. I, too, must remount my mule and ride down toward the almond orchards. I am concerned that several of my farmers and tanners and carpenters are missing. It’s curious because they are good, steady men. This morning Señora Pedernales came to me looking for Paco.”
“Sí, Padre. My father asked about Señor
Pedernales. How many are missing?”
“Perhaps a dozen, and they are all skilled men. In a little place like our pueblo, we need everyone’s skills. I can’t understand how or why they’ve dropped out of sight.”
“We’ll keep our eyes sharp. And, Padre, is the mission’s herd missing any cattle?”
The old man looked up quickly. “My vaqueros tell me we’ve lost a few hundred head. I had passed it off as poor counting before the apartado, but why do you ask?”
“Papá tells me we are missing about the same number, but we don’t know why. Bernardo thinks it may be a cattle sickness.”
The monk shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’d see sick cattle, and we’d find dead cattle. What evil things are happening in our pueblo?”
“I believe the Devil himself has stolen the people and the cattle to ask them, ‘Who is this wise and holy Padre Mendoza?’”
“Ah, Diego, you have almost too much flattery in you. You will go far. Probably as far as jail, but far.” He grinned. “Vayan con Dios, hijos.”
Diego and Bernardo picked up the new branding irons at the blacksmith shop: big de la Vega Vs. The pottery shop was just down the street.
They watched from the doorway as Señor Porcana, a small man with big arms, sat at his pottery wheel. He kicked the heavy lower wheel around and around; the vertical shaft spun its upper wheel. He raised a head-sized lump of wet clay, then thumped it onto the spinning center with a loud “Ha!”
His hands held it steady, and the boys could see his thick forearms straining. The hair on his hands and arms was spattered and clotted with clay. His eyes were focused on the whirling mass. His thumping leg kept the wheel spinning. He dipped his hands into a bowl of water. When he touched them to the clay, it gleamed wetly. He leaned into the clay, one hand plunging into the center, one holding the outside. The hands worked against each other, drawing the brown clay up and around. It was like magic: a perfect shape appeared out of plain wet mud. It was as if the shape had always been there, waiting for him.
The wheel slowed. He plucked a wooden tool from a rack beside the wheel and touched it to the soft clay once, twice, again. It made parallel lines on the pot’s outside. Now he picked up a piece of string. He tossed a loop over the spinning pot, let it settle around the base, and pulled it straight. In a blink the string cut through the soft clay. He dropped the string and, before the pot could wobble, he lifted it in his fingertips.
Diego clapped, applauding his skill.
“Humph!” Señor Porcana said, responding to the compliment. “Any good potter could make this pot. Maybe not as well”—he held it up and turned it this way and that—“but it would probably hold cornmeal.”
“Señor,” Diego began.
As Porcana stepped down from the wheel carrying the pot, he interrupted Diego with a list: “Six large plates with acorn decorations, six dessert plates, same. Six big bowls and six little bowls. Also ten mugs. Who’s breaking all the mugs in your hacienda? Three platters, big enough for roast piglet. Or a small boy, roasted.” He squinted at the boys as if he were measuring them for a platter. Too big, he decided.
“Packed in straw and wood chips. Wrapped in sacking. By the back door. Ready to be carried away. And carefully!” he said, frowning back at them as he perched his fresh pot on a drying shelf. “You see that pile of ruined pots? You know what they’re for?”
The boys shook their heads no.
“They’re for throwing at boys who break my pots by galloping around with them! No broken pots! They leave here perfect; they arrive perfect. Now pack up and off with you! I’ve got too much to do, and I’m in a bad mood!”
The packages had odd shapes, some big, some small. They tied them to the wooden packsaddles, weaving a web of cords until they were secure.
When they were half a mile from the pueblo, Diego wondered aloud, “How could we tell if he was in a bad mood? He’s always in a bad mood.” As if reading Bernardo’s mind, he added, “Yes, he’s an artist. Yes, he does beautiful work. But why must he be so crusty? Perhaps his mother was bitten by a dog. Now he barks.”
4
THE HARBOR
THEY RODE INTO THE cheerful mess that surrounds every dock—stacks of lumber, ruined barrels, abandoned anchors, wrecked boat hulls, odd ends of rope, and plain trash.
Their mounts were tired and hot. They tied them in the shade and fetched pails of water from a stream.
Thump, thump, thump. Matthew Stackpole came stumping along the dock on his peg leg. “I thought I saw you riding in.” Matthew was from Boston and, though he spoke Spanish, his accent was horrible.
“Hola, Capitán Stackpole,” Diego greeted him. “I trust the day smiles on you?”
“Not so bad as being hit with a log on the head,” he said. “And with you?”
“With us the day is like a lark singing. We are content. What boat is in the harbor?”
“A boat from my home, Boston. The Two Brothers. I know the captain. A good sailor, even though he’s a Nantucket man.”
The boys didn’t know what a Nantucket man was. It sounded awful.
“I’ve asked him in to visit, just to hear the Boston in him. Come sit and share a biscuit.”
They walked out along the dock with him. Stackpole had one good leg and one whalebone leg. He’d been left on shore years ago by a whaling ship after a shark took off his leg at the knee.
United States vessels called at San Pedro occasionally. It was officially illegal to trade with non-Spanish vessels, but here on the edge of the world, rules were sometimes overlooked. Stackpole had become a kind of harbormaster. He sold marine supplies, made small boats, and repaired local fishing boats. He wasn’t exactly part of the pueblo, because he wasn’t a member of the church. Apparently people from Boston had their own kind of church and were particular about it. People from Boston were, the boys had learned, particular about nearly everything.
“Where’s that pest Trinidad?” Diego asked. It was obvious, despite his words, that he liked her.
Stackpole waved out toward the water. “Yes, my pet mermaid sailed out to the Two Brothers. She’ll be back in and complaining soon.”
Stackpole opened a tin of biscuits and poured some tea into tin cups.
Trinidad Somoza was a half-wild homeless girl a bit younger than the boys. She lived in a shack near the boat shed, and Stackpole watched after her as well as he could. He made sure she ate and found her warm clothes when the weather turned.
He pointed with a biscuit to the little boat just leaving the Two Brothers. “She meets every boat coming in,” he said, sighing, “and she asks if there’s a message from her mother. Not much of a mother, really. I hear she lives in a fancy house in Acapulco. She sends a bit of money sometimes. Never writes. But Trinidad always thinks her mother is coming soon.”
Bernardo remembered his mother’s face and her arms around him. He was angry with a mother who stayed in Acapulco.
The little boat’s sail rose, flapping at first. Then it perked up tight and filled with wind. The boat turned and surged over the water. They could hear the smack of its flat bottom against the waves.
Then they could see Trinidad at the tiller. Her head bobbed up and down—up at the sail, forward at her course—totally focused on making the boat go. If Diego and Bernardo were half horse, she was half boat.
Clinging to the mast of the boat was a man in a blue uniform and cap. He looked nervous as Trinidad threaded her boat through buoys and pilings and other boats. Her red, frizzy hair was streaming back, and her teeth were white in her tanned, freckled face. She was one of those chirpy, tough little girls you had to like.
It looked like she was about to plow into the beach, but she freed the mainsheet, the line that controlled the sail. The sail swung out, and she spun the boat around. It stopped a handsbreadth from the floating dock. She leaped out and tied its docklines. Trinidad jumped aboard over her passenger and lowered the flapping sail into a quick, expert bundle. She was running up the slanting ga
ngway while the Nantucket man was shakily climbing out of the boat.
“Bernardo! Diego!” She slapped the boys on their shoulders and threw herself onto the bench, seizing a tin cup. She poured herself tea and laced it with molasses. Bernardo made a sour face: molasses in tea?
“What’s wrong with you, sourpuss? It’s sweet and good for you. You could use a little sweetening up, Bernie.”
Bernardo frowned. He hated her breezy nickname for him.
“Diego! How are things up on the rancho? When are you two coming to dive for some abalone with me? What have you got on all those packsaddles? Are you looking for packages for the rancho? Captain Carter has two for you. You have room on those mules?” She shot up and skipped to the side of the dock to peer at the pack mules. “Plenty, you’ve got plenty of room. Just lash ’em down and let the mules complain.”
Diego had opened his mouth twice to answer her. He stuttered once, trying to tell her to mind her own business, and then gave up. It would be easier to saddle a bull than to shush Trinidad.
Stackpole grinned. He put up with her every day. Let someone else try for a change.
“Trinidad! Slow down!” Diego said. “We’ll see to our own mules.”
Trinidad sulked, but her mood changed quickly. “Who wants to have anything to do with your smelly livestock? Hey, y’want to see the new fishing boat we’re building?”
She was hopeless, but there wasn’t a bit of meanness in her.
Captain Carter made his way up the gangway and sat down with them. He nodded politely and barked something in his clipped, strange English.
Stackpole translated, “He introduces himself: Captain Caleb Carter, master of the brig Two Brothers, out of Boston, Massachusetts.”
Stackpole introduced the boys. At the name “de la Vega,” the captain brightened.
“He asks if you are kin to Don Alejandro de la Vega.”
Diego, charged with the honor of the house, rose and bowed to the captain, shaking hands. “Perhaps you will tell him that I am Diego de la Vega, the son of the house. Please extend to him my courtesies and my father’s respects.”
