Scent of Tears

by M. Juan Knecht

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning, I expected to wake up content that I had the strength to refuse Lucinda’s offer of gratitude. Instead, I arose with a dripping nose and a cough. It wasn’t bad when we broke camp. I even managed to look around the creek bank. I found some moccasin tracks, which answered the question of what happened to the rifle. The excitement of finding out my rifle was stolen by Indians quelled my coughing and sneezing for a moment. However, by mid-morning, I was having trouble breathing and my head was swimming.

  We came to a bridge around noon. Bridges were few and far between. Most were toll bridges, so the builder could recoup his investment. Several roads converged at this bridge. Perhaps that created enough traffic to justify construction. I didn’t care why it was there if it kept me from ending up neck deep in cold, swirling water. The trouble was, this crossing looked too narrow for cattle. I left the crew to hold the cattle while I rode downstream to see if there was another crossing. The three mile ride did not reveal a better place to cross. In fact, the undergrowth was so thick along the creek, it would be hard to drive the cattle through to get them to the water. It would be difficult to push the heifers across the bridge, if it could be done at all. Cattle raised in the brush weren’t used to walking on wood planks.

  The two vaqueros and the boy moved around the cattle, pushing them to the start of the bridge, hoping one cow would become curious and step on the planks. So far it hadn’t happened. If we all took a run at the bunch standing closest to the bridge, there was a better than even chance the rest of the cattle would escape back down the road creating a delay. I sat off to the side wondering what to do. Lucinda rode up to the head of the herd and uncoiled the tightly braided rawhide riata she carried. She built a loop but held it down at her side. Standing along the edge of the herd, was a calf that had been born the night before. The calf had traveled for half the day and was about done. Lucinda side-passed her horse quietly to where the calf and her mother stood. With a gentle, sweeping movement of her arm, she twirled the loop, backhanded, and threw it over the little calf’s neck. Taking a dally around the saddle horn, she spurred her horse toward the bridge, dragging the calf behind her. The calf bawled loudly and the other cattle ran toward her with their noses held low, curious and concerned. Lucinda started her now-spooked horse onto the bridge. The horse momentarily balked at stepping on the boards, until Lucinda drove her large roweled spurs into its ribs. The horse leaped forward, dragging the calf along. I thought the horse might balk when his hooves hit the planks, but he dropped his head and moved forward. First the calf’s mother, then a few of the other heifers started across. With the enthusiastic urging of the crew, we got the rest of the cattle to cross. Everyone in the crew raised their hands toward Lucinda in a salute. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to go swimming if it could be avoided.

  I didn’t talk to Lucinda all day. I spent my energy trying to stay upright in the saddle and paid attention to where the trail led. By nightfall, I had a fever. I saw Lucinda looking at me, questioningly.

  “Are you sick, Charlie?” she asked in alarm. I didn’t answer.

  She looked up into my face and studying my eyes closely, put her hand on my cheek, then immediately pulled it back.

  “You idiot! Your face is hot enough to fry an egg,” she said, shaking her head.

  I broke into a fit of coughing.

  “How does having a fever make me an idiot?”

  “Your pride made you sleep on the cold ground last night. If you had slept with me in the tent, you wouldn’t have caught cold. What did you think was going to happen from sleeping in wet clothing? You didn’t even move your blankets near the fire. You’re ignorance makes me very angry.”

  “It isn’t your concern.” I said and tried to keep from coughing without much luck. She put her hands on her hips and glared at me until I quit hacking.

  “I am not taking these cattle up north alone. Tonight you sleep in my tent.”

  “What about my virtue?”

  “So you’re going to make me sleep outside? There are four women for every hundred men in this part of the country. None of them look like me, yet Charlie Horn is going to demand I sleep outside.”

  She sounded so serious I started to laugh. After trying to maintain her glare, Lucinda started to laugh as well. My laughter was replaced by a racking cough. With surprising strength, Lucinda grabbed my arm and marched me into the tent.

  At her insistence, I took off my hat and neck scarf. Struggling, I finally wrestled my still-wet boots off. Lucinda insisted I take off my pants, saying no one could get restful sleep wearing pants and a belt. I took them off and lay down on the doubled over blankets that served as her mattress. Even through my clogged nostrils, I smelled a slight trace of the perfume she sometimes wore.

  “If you sleep with me, won’t you get sick?” I asked.

  “If I sleep near you, you mean. You missed your chance to sleep with me last night. Tonight, I am no longer in the mood. I am showing you another kind of care because without you the Castro brothers will go back to Monterey and leave me, God knows where,” she responded and adjusted the bag, full of clothes she used as a pillow.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “What, you are suddenly a man of the world and my kindness toward you is a trifling thing?” she replied.

  “My heart stops when you look at me. I have been that way since we were children. I don’t deny that. I also don’t need to worry about you getting pneumonia.”

  “You are being silly because you are ill. You should have noticed by now, that I am stronger than you. I won’t catch your cold. Still, keep your distance.”

  I silently thanked her and turned away. Eventually, I fell asleep. That is where it would have ended, except that around midnight, I started shaking with violent chills.

  I awoke, shivering, chilled to my bones. My teeth were chattering so loudly it woke Lucinda. She turned to me and brought her body against mine. Still, I could not stop the uncontrollable shaking. She held on harder.

  “Dear God, Charlie, you are going to shake to pieces,” she said as another spasm racked me. I wanted to tell her I was sorry but couldn’t get the words out through my clattering teeth. After a moment, Lucinda removed her robe and pressed her naked body tightly against me. I could feel the comfort and warmth of her skin. She murmured that it would be fine and whispered my name. Eventually the shaking stopped and I lay still.

  “When you wake up and the first thing you see is my face, you will be cured of your illness. Do you believe me?” she asked. “My sisters say I’m a witch.”

  I felt her warm breath against my eyes. I smiled as I thought of Lucinda’s sisters calling her a witch.

  “Are you sure they said witch?” I asked. She told me to shush.

  I pressed my open palm against her back and held her to me until I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke to the light of the morning, Lucinda was lying propped up on her pillow staring at me. She was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes and, as she had predicted, I was cured. If not cured, at least well enough to saddle my horse and continue the drive North.

  That day, Lucinda insisted we stop early. She had the men pitch her tent on a flat spot under a spreading Oak tree and ordered me to lie down. I told her that every day we missed getting the cattle through the mountains was another day we risked losing livestock, as well as fingers and toes to the cold. She looked so sternly at me and my body felt so tired, I gave in and lay down in the tent. I didn’t wake until just before dawn. Lucinda was awake watching me when I came to. She had a gourd of liquid she held out to me. I took the gourd and raised it to my lips.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I boiled some meat last night and made a broth for you. It will keep your strength up,” she said.

  “I didn’t shiver?”

  “No, but you snored like a pole-axed ox.”

  “I see snoring doesn’t make your robe come off like shivering does.”<
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  “Drink your broth,” she said.

  “You were right. I did feel better when I woke up and saw you,” I said. Lucinda shifted around until she was sitting up. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead and gave me a somber look. I reached out and touched her hair with my fingers only to have her knock my hand away.

  “Keep your fingers out of my hair. My hair gets greasy enough as it is.”

  “The snoring must have really annoyed you,” I said.

  “Ours is a business relationship.”

  “So I am back to being nothing more than a servant of your family?”

  She reached over and put her hand on my shoulder.

  “You are not a servant. We are in this together. I have been thinking. If I don’t want more children, then I must follow my mother’s advice and keep my knees together.”

  “Who said anything about children?”

  “If a woman plays with the trouser snake, it results in a swollen belly. It isn’t that you would make a bad father. I simply don’t want more children. I suspect that is unnatural, but it is how I feel. My sisters want to have a child for each year they are married. They have leaking breasts or a teething child’s spit or a runny diaper to deal with every waking hour. Something wet and smelly, every minute of their lives. I don’t want to get fat and quit riding horses or going to dances and having adventures like the one we are on now. People think I am a bad mother. My mother calls me a shameless slattern because I want to go to a dance unescorted. I am not even nineteen and everybody but me wants my life to be over. Can you understand that, Charlie? Think how different we are. I like the gaiety of dancing and parties. You are serious. Horses and cattle are your whole world. You would want me to live in a cow camp deep in the foothills. There is nothing wrong with that except that it’s not for me. To me, cattle are animals that turn grass into shit.”

  Lucinda stared at me, then blew air out of her mouth like she was trying to cool hot coffee.

  “Don’t look at me like that. My father wants you as his son-in-law. My sisters think you are handsome with your curly blonde hair and your green eyes. You are a good man, but being with me would be the end of you.”

  I tried to keep my head up.

  “My father loves you Charlie, and in my own way I am fond of you but you need to quit hoping I will ever be your wife,” she said.

  Finally, anger rose up in me.

  “I never thought of you as my wife. That was your father’s doing,” I said.

  “Things are not as complicated for us as they would be if I welcomed you into my bed. You said as much last night. You would become jealous and get it in your head that you could control me.”

  “Do you often have these conversations with yourself, because you have no reason to talk to me this way,” I asked, but was ignored.

  “Don’t you realize that every time you are around me, you nearly die? You fell out of a tree in Monterey, you fell off your horse at the Chualar, you plunged into the creek to save me and came down with pneumonia. You are a man and naturally stupid about things, but even you must realize I am bad luck for you,” she said.

  It seemed pointless to agree. Even if I could have thought of a retort, I doubted I could draw in enough breath to speak.

  Scent of Tears