Owen Family Saga Box Set: Books 1-3

by Ward, Marsha

  At the back counter stood a man with a large nose and a green visor over his eyes. He looked up and cleared his throat. “We don’t serve Mexicans,” he said, sniffing through his nose.

  “She goes where I go,” James answered.

  “Then take your business out of here. I don’t like greasers.”

  That fine, proud feeling left James, and he clenched his teeth to stifle a hot retort. He could feel muscles bunching along his jaw, down his neck, and through his chest to his belly. Despite the tightness of his body, an oath got through his teeth, and he grabbed Amparo’s hand and hurried her along as he stalked down the aisle.

  “This town must be full of Yankees,” James muttered. “You don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

  As he stepped from the door, several gunshots brought him up short, and he moved sideways to shield Amparo behind him. He couldn’t see who had fired, due to the stinking gray cloud of smoke that drifted over to them, but there were no more shots, and soon he saw the results of the gunplay lying crumpled in the street.

  The drunks from the front of the store lurched to the edge of the boardwalk to stare down at the body, and James turned to block Amparo’s view. “This town is roaring,” he told her between his teeth. “There’s no safety for us here.”

  He helped Amparo to mount, then untied the animals, swung into his saddle, and gigged the sorrel to a trot.

  Chapter 14

  The cold clamped down on James and Amparo as they climbed the grade toward Ratón Pass. Evening would soon catch them, and James kept his eyes open for a place to build a fire for the night.

  There was a chill in his bones, and he didn’t know if it was from the patches of snow along the road and up under the junipers, or from the trial they’d been through in Trinidad. Then too, gray clouds scudded across the sky, and the possibility of a snowstorm worried him.

  Not too long after they passed through Uncle Dick Wootton’s tollgate, James felt like talking. It didn’t seem to matter that Amparo didn’t know what he said. He started telling her about the first time he’d been through Ratón Pass.

  “My pa took us boys down to Texas to buy cattle. We were all mighty green in the ways of the West when we started out, but by the time we got home, I reckon we’d been down the river and over the mountain.” James glanced at the girl. She was listening real hard; maybe she could pick up a word or two. “We bought trouble that trip. An outlaw and his pals trailed us back to the Greenhorn—that’s the mountain where we live—and stole my sister and...my girl.”

  Thinking about Ellen brought a lump to his throat, so he stopped a moment to swallow it down. “We buried those rowdies in a cave,” he continued, breathing kind of ragged. “We lost a good cowhand ourselves, and near lost my brother.”

  James rearranged a few strands of his horse’s mane, anxious to see how he felt when he thought of Carl. Holding his breath, he found himself wondering if Carl had mended good. Carl had been shot up a fair bit. The pain he felt was for his brother, not for himself, and he whistled at the discovery.

  Looking back over the wide, misty plains below them, James continued, “Anyway, it was a warm spring day last time I came through here. I’m glad I made you that cloak. I reckon this high country isn’t so pleasant in winter.”

  At the end of their day’s travel, James chose a spot near a close-grouped stand of oak trees for their campsite, making a shelter against a rocky ledge. A wind blew through the clearing, chasing the temperature down. Even though James built a reflecting fire with firewood stacked up to send the heat toward the bedding, he knew he would suffer from the cold that night, alone in his one-quilt bed.

  As he got to his feet, James glanced at Amparo. She had taken off her cape so she could use her arms freely, and she shivered as she clapped her hands around a mite of cornmeal, fashioning it into a tortilla. James found the cape, brought it to her, and placed it over her shoulders.

  “The weather’s right nippy up here, girl,” he said. “You need to keep covered. Tomorrow, God willin’, we’ll get through the Pass and down the road off this mountain.” He looked through the trees toward the gray clouds covering the sky. “God willin’ and the snow don’t fall.”

  After supper, Amparo sat among her blankets, close to the fire, while James checked the animals. When he returned, he threw more wood on the flames, then sat down near her.

  “I don’t know why I feel like talking so much. I reckon I need to hear somebody’s voice, since you an’ me don’t chat back and forth the regular way.” A strange thought came to his mind. “Tarnation. I reckon I miss my family.”

  “Fa-mi-ly? ¿Familia?” Amparo turned her head away, and her words came back muffled. “No tengo familia.”

  “There’s so many of ‘em, it never was quiet at home.”

  James scraped the ground bare in front of them with his hands, took a slender stick from the pile of wood, and drew a small circle on the rocky ground. He put a hat on the circle and traced a stick figure beneath it.

  “Look here, Miss Amparo. This is my pa,” he said, and she turned to watch his moving stick. He made another body figure beside the first. “Here’s Ma.” He added hair and a skirt. Then he made another man’s figure below the couple.

  “Rulon’s my oldest brother. He has a mujer and two young’uns.” More figures joined Rulon.

  “Niños,” Amparo said.

  James nodded. “Niños. Then Benjamin.” He drew a figure and crossed it out. “Es-ta muer-to. And Carl.” After he drew another figure he tapped Amparo’s ring with his stick. “He got wed a while back.”

  Slowly he drew a woman figure beside Carl. “That’s his mujer, Ellen. She was pledged to me.”

  Amparo’s chin jerked upward, and she stared at James. “¿El-len?” she said, choking. “¿Elena es la mujer de tu hermano? ¡Santa María!”

  James looked beyond the fire for a long time before he drew another figure and covered it with an x. “Peter. Then me, James,” he said, adding another man, then slapping his chest.

  “Che-mes,” she said.

  “That’s close. Try it again.”

  Amparo put her head to one side. “Che-mes,” she repeated.

  “James. And this is my twin, John.” He crossed out John’s figure. “Es-ta muer-to, too. Then there’s my sister, Marie. Then Clayton, Albert, and Julianna.”

  “¡Qué cantidad de niños!” the girl said, and stopped his moving stick. “Dáme el palo.” She took the stick from his hand. “Amparo,” she said firmly, and added a woman figure alongside the drawing of James. “Amparo,” she repeated.

  Her way of saying the name is so different from mine, he thought, with two a’s just alike and a little roll of the r. I wish I could say it like that. Then he realized what she’d done with the stick.

  “Yes,” he agreed slowly. “Amparo. Till Santa Fe.”

  She looked at James with those great huge eyes, then slowly turned to look at the fire, and her shoulders slumped. He bit his lip, tasting ashes in his mouth.

  James put a hand on her arm. “Don’t take it so hard. I’m sure your ma will be glad to see you.”

  Amparo shook her head. “Madrastra. No es mi mamá. Y es una mujer sumamente malvada. Le odio.”

  “Hold on there,” he said, lost among so many new words, but knowing bitterness when he heard it.

  She tapped the stick on a log sticking out of the fire, and James knew she was impatient that he didn’t understand. She was angry, too, but somehow he didn’t think her anger was directed toward him.

  Then “¡Ah!” she said, and sat upright. Amparo smoothed out James’s family and sketched a man figure. “Ésto es mi papá.”

  “That’s your pa.”

  “Cierto. Y ésta es mi mamá. Ella murió.” She put an x on the woman she had completed.

  James chewed the inside of his cheek. “Es-ta muer-to?”

  “Sí, está muerta. Y mi papa se casó de nuevo.” She drew another woman beside the first.

  “This is you,
Miss Amparo?”

  “No.” She showed the ring. “Otra mujer se casó con mi papá. Otra mujer. Ella es mi madrastra.”

  “O-tra mujer? That’s your pa’s wife, but your ma is dead. Six little beans! She’s your stepmother.”

  Then tension went out of Amparo’s body with a rush of air. “Sí. ‘Madrastra’ es ‘stepmother’.” She spit out the word.

  “But she’s a widow woman, according to Tom O’Connor. Your pa es-ta muer-to?”

  “Sí.” She put a fist to her mouth and turned away again.

  “Amparo?” The straight name came out so easily, in such a natural manner. James laid his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry about your pa,” he said.

  Amparo turned to nuzzle her face against his neck, and he heard a choked little sigh, and something wet slipped down inside his collar.

  He held her against him for a long time, whispering her name, rocking her like a baby in his arms, watching the fire die and smelling smoke in her hair as her tears watered his neck inside his coat. He hoped his comfort eased her grief and loneliness, because suddenly he knew her state of mind mattered to him, more than just her being a sad little stranger in a place far from home. Whether he liked it or not, he was growing feelings for her, stirrings beyond his manly needs, and confusion took root next to resolve.

  After a long spell she got quiet, and James figured she’d gone to sleep, so he pulled her blankets over them both, and lay down with her in his arms. Being so close to her soft curves, a hunger rose in him, but he beat it back with his newfound sense of protecting her, and lay still with her head nestled under his chin. Then he listened to the wind moaning through the branches above them on the lonesome shoulder of the mountain.

  ~~~

  Amparo lay quiet for what seemed like hours, bound to the Anglo’s side by his encircling arms. When he finally moved in his sleep, releasing her, she eased herself to her knees and pulled her mother’s rosary from her skirt pocket.

  After she had said her prayers, she whispered, “Holy Mother of God, I miss my papá so much. The Anglo is kind, though. He was sad when he learned of my sorrow. Blessed Virgin, I know his name. It is Che-mes.” She sighed. “And the name he cried out in the night, it belongs to a woman he must not love. It is the name of his sister-in-law. Holy Virgin, you must not look down with horror. I think she is but recently wed to his brother. Perhaps he travels to flee her memory, and the pain and anger it brings to him. Most Favored Mother, smile upon me. Let me have power to soothe his pain. Let me be the haven where he can forget Elena.”

  The girl waited a moment with bowed head, then replaced the beads in her pocket and slipped beneath the covers. James sighed and rolled from his back to his side, facing her, and she scooted against his coat-clad chest. My gentle Anglo, Che-mes, she thought. Will you not touch me again? Will you not find solace in my arms?

  ~~~

  James yawned awake the next morning when the night sky lightened to gray. An insect was tiptoeing through his beard, and he stuck a hand out from under the blankets to bat it away. The bug didn’t scare off, for it was Amparo’s hand. She was awake and playing with his whiskers.

  She laughed as James caught her hand, and he turned and tickled her on the ribs, chuckling to see the surprise in her eyes. She squirmed and giggled, then snuck her hand under his coat to get him back, and they teased like a couple of seven-year-olds for a while, messing up the bed and enjoying the frosty morning while the dog romped around them, barking and wagging its tail. When they had made an untidy heap of the bed, they lay there panting, getting back their breath and their age, while the dog licked their faces.

  “Chemes,” Amparo said.

  James lay on his back, sprawled out as he breathed deeply, and when the girl said his name, he raised up on one elbow and looked down at her. She swallowed, and he watched the action of her smooth brown throat.

  “Chemes,” she repeated. “Creo que te amo.”

  He didn’t know what she said, but he sure liked the way she said it, along with the tender look she gave him. Before he knew what he was doing he was stroking her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her lip, and bending down to kiss her mouth.

  While they shared the kiss, it came to James of a sudden what he was up to, and he raised his head and shuddered.

  “Amparo, don’t do this to me,” he pleaded as he got to his feet and backed away, his chest heaving with the pain of leaving her. One look at her stricken face and he gave himself a lecture: James, don’t do it to her, either. He turned and grabbed his hat, and fled from the camp.

  As he gathered in and saddled the horses, he repeated to himself, “I made a vow, Ma, I said I’d get her home. God help me, I’m a man of my word.”

  After that, as they journeyed through the Pass, off the mountain, and down into New Mexico Territory, James didn’t dare share Amparo’s bed. He did the best he could to keep warm alone, moving the fire to one side come bedtime so he could make his bed on the hot ground, then heaping wood on the fire all night.

  Shortly after twilight one night, near the end of the trail, James lay in the cold darkness, biting his lip, biting back the yearning that stirred his belly—the yearning to lie in the bed on the other side of the fire, with Amparo held close to his heart. Cicadas whirred in a mesquite tree nearby, and the old dog snuffled in its sleep. James turned his head and his eyes caressed the girl’s outline under her blanket. He tried to swallow the lump that almost closed his throat.

  Ma, you always taught me to keep to a task I gave my word to do. I never figured it would be this hard. Ma, I wish the mountains could swallow up Santa Fe!

  Chapter 15

  “Hush. Look at that sky!”

  Light passing through the clear air above Santa Fe made the colors of the ridges and peaks surrounding the village brighter than natural. James had never seen such a blue expanse of the heavens. He looked to the left as he and Amparo rode from the south toward town. Sunset encroached upon daylight like a powder burst from the mouth of a crimson cannon—orange and gold ribbons shot forth to wage a battle against the clouds. The western horizon was obscured by a glow like a living thing. Such a sight on another occasion would have brought James joy, but his soul had an ache to it like black rot in a back tooth.

  “I reckon we’d best get a hurry on if I’m to put you in the hands of your stepmother tonight.” James held his body straight in the saddle, for the keen blade of loss lay in his belly, and if he was cautious, he could keep it from stabbing him.

  He looked back over his shoulder at Amparo. Even though she had dark half circles under her eyes from the strain of traveling long and hard, her chin was up, and pride in her strength and will fingered his heart. Then he said, “We’re nearly to the end of the trail.” He had to swallow before he went on. “Here’s where I stop being your ‘marido’.” His eyes lingered on the curve of her shoulders under the homemade cape.

  She looked from the sky to him, and something too tender to bear was in her eyes as she urged the horse forward to come up even with him. James looked away—not daring to face her—and remembered some of the blacksmith’s words.

  “Tom said ‘Amparo’ means shelter,” he muttered. “You’ve been a shelter and a refuge, like a house made of stone where I could hole up and heal.” He inhaled sharply, dragging the crisp, cold air of twilight into his lungs. “I reckon you made a wounded boy into a whole man.” He breathed out sharply, then swallowed. “You helped me forget I wanted a certain red headed gal, but I won’t ever forget you.”

  Amparo tilted her head to one side, and he knew she didn’t understand him, but it eased his hurting to talk to her.

  “Chemes.” The name was never so gently spoken as by her lips. He looked at her. “Sé feliz, mi marido,” she said.

  James wrenched his eyes away. “Where do you live? House. Where’s your casa?”

  Amparo pointed down the narrow streets toward the square. “Vivía al otro lado de la plaza. Mi padre nació en la misma casa.”

&n
bsp; “You take the lead.” James reined in his horse and motioned the girl to go before him.

  “Está bien.”

  As Amparo urged her horse to the front, the head covering James had made fell back, and he watched as the light of a passing torch gleamed on the twists of her braids.

  Hair to be touched, he thought. Tarnation! He looked at his hand—fingers threaded through the reins—resting on his thigh. I’ve done my touching, and now I’m left with the recollection of that silk wrapped around my fingers.

  Amparo led the way around the plaza and beyond, and James followed to a house similar to others they had passed: square and earthen and blank faced to the street.

  “Ésta es la casa de mi papá,” she said, and stopped her horse.

  He dismounted and approached the door, an unexpected tightness binding his chest. His throat burned, and he cleared it as he stood there, staring at the carved wooden figures that stared back at him. He shifted his foot, then turned back toward the girl, his girl, his wife, chest heaving like he was on a bucking colt.

  A little crease showed between Amparo’s eyebrows. “¿Qué pasa, Chemes?”

  “I can’t leave you here.” The battle deep in his gut was worse than hand to hand fighting. “You’re not her girl any more. You’re mine.” His mouth was open, gulping air. “I’ll knock, and tell her we’re wed, then say ‘goodbye’.”

  James turned to the door. It shuddered under his fist as he thumped it. No one responded to his first knock and he tried again, shook his head, and looked at the toes of his boots.

  After a moment he turned to speak to Amparo, and a sliver of light fell on her face. He heard “What is it?” and turned to the door.

  “You speak English,” James blurted to the small, white haired man who stood in the doorway.

  “Of course. I was born in Ohio. What do you want?”

  “I reckon I’ve got the wrong place. I’m looking for Catarina viuda de Garcés. Can you point out her house?”