by Win Blevins
“Impossible. It is a club, and I am a member. If they catch him, they will return him.”
“Worse for the wear,” said Sumner.
“Beaten,” said Paloma.
“If he has headed down the Chihuahua Trail,” said Hannibal, “someone will put shackles back on him.”
“Absolutely. And if he goes to a pueblo, the same.” Paloma added, “Though it is a soft kind of slavery there.”
“If he’s hiding somewhere?” asked Sam.
“In this rough country,” said Hannibal, “he can’t hold out long.”
“He’ll come back hungry. That’s probably our best hope,” said Paloma. She shooed the three of them out through the kitchen. “Go. Find Tomás. Tell him I will help him.”
Sumner looked at Pedro, who was now squatting against a wall near the kitchen stove. The boy’s hands were shaking.
Grumble handed Sumner a deck of playing cards.
Sumner grinned. “Hey, Pedro,” he said. “Come here. I got something to show you. It’s fun.”
The boy edged as near as the archway.
Sumner waterfalled the cards. “Look here, see these pictures.” He held them up to Pedro. The boy came close enough to see.
“See this card in my hand? It’s called the king. Whoops! It isn’t there. Look, both my hands are empty.” Sumner showed the boy his hands, palms up. Then he reached up to Pedro’s ear. “Look, here it is.”
Pedro gaped his mouth open.
“Now it’s gone. Where did it go?”
“¿Donde?” said Pedro, the first word they’d heard him say this morning.
Sumner reached into the waistband of the boy’s pants and drew out the king.
Pedro giggled.
Paloma nodded at Sumner and Grumble in gratitude.
“Pedro is ruined for life,” said Grumble.
NO ONE HAD seen Tomás. No horse gear was missing from the stable. Flat Dog, the best tracker, could find no signs along the riverbank. “There’s no sense in looking for sign on that road,” said Hannibal.
“Not with the traffic on it,” Sam agreed. Coy mewled.
With Paloma they inventoried the house. The blankets the boy slept in were missing. Juanita said a bowl of atole was eaten and the bowl left on the counter, some leftover tortillas taken. That was all. She opened a couple of drawers, looked, and closed them. “Looks like he took my cleaver too.”
“He’s on foot,” said Hannibal, “he has something to keep him warm at night. He took a little food, not much. Maybe he wanted the cleaver for self-defense.”
“But why?” said Sam. “Why would he leave, with nowhere to go?”
They interrupted Sumner’s card tricks to quiz Pedro. “Did he say anything about going anywhere?”
The boy shrugged, eyes on the floor. “No, señor.”
Sam, Hannibal, Flat Dog, and Paloma looked at each other in frustration.
“So up the road or down the road?” said Sam.
“Up,” said Hannibal. “He’s damn well not planning to walk all the way to Chihuahua.”
The miles upriver to Santa Fe revealed nothing. The town itself revealed nothing. They asked a dozen people along the main road—hell, they asked a score of people—but who would remember one Indian-looking boy out of so many? And it was impossible to ask everyone in a town of six thousand people.
Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog wandered around Santa Fe. They checked with the priest at each of the churches. They had lunch outdoors on the plaza where they could see. They rode up and down streets at random. They looped back on themselves, and circled back where they came from. When Coy looked at them quizzically, they ignored him.
Just before dark they trundled into Rancho de las Palomas discouraged.
Paloma stood in the doorway, blocking it. “Suppose you’d been captured and your parents killed and been hauled six hundred miles to be sold as a slave. Suppose you could get away for a day or two. What would be on your mind?”
“Kill Cerritos,” said Sam.
“Then he’s gone to Armijo’s place,” said Paloma.
She handed Sam a bundle of warm tortillas wrapped in cloth.
They ran for their horses.
Sixteen
TOMÁS GUERRERO, a boy from an insignificant village on an unimportant stream flowing east from the Sierre Madre Occidental, had one strength. He knew absolutely what he had to do.
His father had taught him the meaning of the name Guerrero, warrior. Now the men of this family grew corn, beans, and chiles in their fine irrigated fields, and the children looked after their few goats. It was a good place, and the men of this village had for generations defended their families and their village against many enemies. With bow and arrow, with spear, with club they had acted when necessary as men, as guerreros, warriors. That was the blood that coursed through the body of Tomás, and through his mind and will. At this moment he bore a warrior’s courage, a warrior’s determination, and a warrior’s fierceness.
He was waiting only for complete darkness. He had walked most of the day. He followed El Camino Real for a mile or two so that his tracks would be indistinguishable from others, and then walked through the sagebrush, through the trees, across rock, wherever he would be hard to track. He didn’t know who was more likely to come after him, the men who would make him a slave again, or the foolish woman who would make him into a household servant or a farmboy. He was determined to elude everyone until he fulfilled his purpose. He kept the cleaver stuck down the back of his pants, covered by his loose shirt. He didn’t want anyone to know he was bringing trouble.
At midmorning he made a wide circle around the city of Santa Fe. No city was important. What mattered was carrying himself as a man.
Once this afternoon he stopped to ask directions. He found himself uncertain which road led along the plateau to the rancho of the don, the man who arrogated to himself the power to own other human beings, to subordinate their desires to his own, to use them as his playthings.
A simple man who was cleaning an irrigation ditch told Tomás, “The road is there, beyond those fields and across the creek.” The way to the rancho of the powerful man Tomás despised.
Later, when he got to the top of the rise and looked down at the rancho, he saw that it would be hard. First Tomás observed, noting everything and memorizing the arrangement of buildings, tracks, and gates. Then he crawled to the creek, concealed himself in the willows, and waited. When he saw a clear chance, he sprinted to the back side of a building. Then he crept behind a wagon. He slipped into a corral with some horses. At last he got into the barn and up into the loft, where he could see into the casa. These movements took him all afternoon, but he was very, very patient. His father had taught him that the first strength of a warrior, as for a hunter, is patience.
He was frustrated. From the loft he could see into the courtyard and through windows into the kitchen, the dining room, and even the room where rich people sat prettily and received their guests. He had seen two such houses in his lifetime, yesterday and today, but he was smart and able to put the layout firmly in his mind. He would be able to find his way around this one in the dark. His stomach was sour with contempt for the rich who lived in high style while others plowed their fields, planted, and did all the other labor that supported the ricos.
He was burning with two questions: Where was this particular rico now? And where was the human being he intended to make his slave?
In the rooms Tomás could see from this perch, he got no hint of an answer to either question. And now that the sun was down, the sky fully dark, and the house lit only by candles, he could see less.
On the other hand, the darkness would make it possible for a warrior to approach undetected, and to enter in stealth.
He climbed down the ladder and padded softly between the stalls. He inhaled the musty smells of straw, dung, and hay, and looked at the dark shadows of the necks and heads of the horses sticking over the stall doors, peering at the intruder.
The n
ight was brighter than the barn, even though the moon was dipping toward the western hills. He moved quietly and told himself he had the confidence of a warrior. No one would be stirring now, unless the cook came outside. The don was probably at his meal in the dining room—with her, Tomás supposed. Even wicked men liked the company of a pretty woman.
Otherwise, probably, the don was alone. The children must be grown and gone. All afternoon he’d seen no family members at all, only the cook and a serving woman near the house, and elsewhere just field hands. He wondered if they were slaves. He hadn’t seen the don, or her. It drove him mad to picture how they were probably spending the hours.
Already he had decided how to make his approach. The house was two long wings that made an L, and the two walls of the courtyard completed the square. He ignored the front door, far to the front left. He tiptoed past the gate into the courtyard, which gave access to the door that led to the kitchen. He treaded quietly along the wall outside the courtyard, where he had seen ovens, a well, and at the far end a fountain and ornamental plantings of cholla and chamisa. Facing the courtyard where the two wings met were several windows. He wondered what that room was—where the master slept, with a view of his garden? He circled around the back of the house to the far corner and tiptoed all the way to the back corner, where the two wings joined. He was only guessing, but…
Yes, there was a small door here.
He slipped the cleaver out of his waistband and held it high. From now on he must be totally alert and completely ready. If he came on an enemy unexpectedly, he knew what to do. His father told him over and over.
“When I was a boy, or barely a man, fourteen,” his father said, “we fought the Apaches. They came to steal our families, many of them. They rode into the village in the middle of the day, when the men were working in the fields. They rushed into our houses and seized our women and children. If the men ran in from the fields in time, they killed them. Even the boys my age, if we tried to fight, they killed us.
“My older brother, not yet married, he had walked into the village to get food for the men. When the Apaches came, he was stepping out of the door of our house. He threw down the food and fought with his knife. I grabbed a cleaver from the kitchen and rushed to fight beside him. He screamed like a madman and swung his blade in every direction. I did the same, I became a loco. By that fighting, I learned a great lesson. The Apaches shot their arrows at us and threw their spears, but we stood untouched, warriors. As a result they did not go into our house. We were too much trouble. They stole children from the neighbors instead. So if ever you must fight, Tomás, do it like a loco. In his madness, a loco, he is protected by the saints.”
Tomás took off his sandals and set them down. Barefooted would be quieter. He squeezed the handle of the cleaver and gently opened the rear door. He stood outside a moment, listening. Nothing.
He eased his head in the opening and peered down the corridor straight ahead. Nothing that he could detect, but the corridor was dark. He slipped through the doorway and stood very still, looking down the other corridor. There warm candlelight flowed through two open doors, making the hall a checkerboard of darkness and light.
Good, thought Tomás, probably I will find them in the dining room. He breathed deep. Like thunder and lightning I will fall upon him, and I will bless her like a warm rain.
He glided along the inside wall, his back to it. When he came to the first door, he stopped, waited, and quieted his heart. Slowly, he craned his neck into the entryway. To the left his vision was blocked by the door, which stood half open. In the middle of the room there was a long table, apparently for dining. Against the wall at the far end stood a high cabinet with glass doors and full of plates, bowls, cups, and glassware. Tomás felt a spurt of disgust for people who owned many sets of dishes, while a family like his had to eat from cheap bowls of clay.
Suddenly, the kitchen door swung open and a serving girl walked briskly through, carrying a covered dish. Tomás jerked his head back. He didn’t know whether she’d spotted him, and his heart pounded.
By her footsteps he could tell she walked to the left end of the table, the one hidden from view. Words were spoken—“Here you are, sir” in a female voice, and in a man’s, “Gracias.” He let out a huge sigh. Evidently, the girl hadn’t seen him. The footsteps tick-ticked again, her figure appeared with her back to him, and she disappeared into the kitchen. From there an older woman’s voice said something sharply, and the younger woman’s gave a clipped answer.
I am within a few steps of her now. He pictured her sitting meekly next to the old man, answering meekly when spoken to, obeying when instructed. She had been obeying since they were stolen from their home, which drove him mad.
Yet at the same time he loved her.
Can I do it?
He crossed to the outer wall. Then, facing the dining room, he crabbed sideways across, visible to anyone who might raise their eyes in his direction.
No one was there to look. He couldn’t even see the don and his sister at their places at the table.
He slid swiftly to the far door to the dining room. This door also stood ajar. And he found a blessing—he could peer through the crack between the door and the facing.
At the head of the table sat the don, alone. Where is she?
He slumped in his chair, picking at his food without interest, staring at the dark windows that bordered the courtyard garden. His sallow complexion looked even more yellow in the candlelight.
Diablo, where is she?
He scoured his memory of the other long hall, the one on the left.
He half ran back down the hall—foolish speed, he knew. He sped by the other dining door without hesitation. Not before the corner at the end of the hall did he slow down.
He glanced down the hall and jerked his head back. Nothing but gloom. The first door stood partly open, and moonlight pooled on the floor. The far end of the corridor was inky.
He walked silently to the open door and peered in. The window facing the courtyard let in enough light to see. A small, plain bed, a table, a wardrobe, nothing more. Pole rafters held a flat ceiling. Candles stood in their wall holders, but he had nothing to light them with.
He slipped on to the next door, closed. Slowly, quietly, he pushed down on the flat handle. When it stopped at the bottom of its turn, he waited. The mechanism had been silent.
He eased the door open, waited. No one shouted, no one rushed at him.
He poked his head in. The room was identical to the other. Neither appeared to be in use. He closed the door and went on. Maybe the don lived alone in this big house.
He stepped quietly to the last door on this hall. He’d guessed that this was the large bedroom, for the master and his…woman. He reminded himself that he didn’t know.
He palmed the handle, turned it, and held it down. After a deep breath in and out he opened the door and stepped in.
And glimpsed a figure. In front of the big window on the opposite side, aglow in the moonlight, hung the nude body of a woman.
Tomás weaved the few steps forward. He looked up at the head, and the cord that suspended her from the rafter. He reached out and touched the hand. Cold.
That cold coursed through him, pumped by his own heart.
“¿Maria?”
A voice in the corridor!
“My dear?”
The horror.
Tomás jerked his head around and saw the glow of candlelight. He froze.
Two candles came into view, each held by one hand. Behind them in the soft aura of light was the face of Don Emilio.
Aghast, Tomás turned back to his nude sister. Her head was crooked forward and her small feet dangling above the floor. The breeze from the window made her black hair stir against her limp forearm.
“Maria!” screamed Tomás.
As he screamed, he whirled to Don Emilio. Two faces, stunned, glared at each other.
“Murderer!” bellowed Tomás.
All of h
is rage at life raised the cleaver straight over his head and with both hands Tomás swung savagely down onto the don’s skull.
Seventeen
HE SIMPLY MATERIALIZED in the doorway. One moment Sam saw an empty rectangle, the next a space filled with the dirty, skinny, bloody form of Tomás.
Paloma rushed to him and embraced him. Then she threw a look at the dining table that quelled everyone there: Do not ask this child any questions, not yet. Quickly she pushed Tomás through the dining room into the kitchen. “Scrub this boy in hot, soapy water,” she told Juanita the cook, “and bring him right back to the table. He’s probably starved.”
Tomás gave Rosalita and Lupe, the serving girls, a funny look. They giggled, probably at the idea of him being stripped down and washed vigorously. Juanita, with her grandmotherly age and sergeant style, would be perfect for that.
In a few minutes Paloma got things arranged. She dispatched Flat Dog, Julia, and the infants to their casita. Pedro tagged after them. She reheated the stew of pork and green chiles herself and popped the tortillas into the warming oven.
Tomás sat, clean and in a robe of Paloma’s. Juanita took his clothes, dirty and speckled with blood. His eyes darted from Paloma to Sam to Hannibal. Sam was sure the boy felt outnumbered. Which was good.
“All right, Tomás,” said Paloma, “what has happened?”
Sam watched Tomás decide how to play it. He decided on defiance. “I killed the diablo.” His lips curled as he said the words.
Rosalita put food in front of Tomás, and he pitched in.
“Killed who?” said Hannibal. They had ridden to Armijo’s rancho, had talked to Cerritos, and knew the slave trader was in disgustingly good health.
“The one you call Don Emilio.”
The adults flashed their eyes at each other. Why Emilio?
Tomás ate enthusiastically and gave them a weird, quivery grin.
Sam looked at Tomás and thought, This attitude isn’t going to last long.
“I killed him with the cleaver.” Tomás picked up the big knife and threw it flat onto the dining table, where it clattered, quivered, and grew still. The blade was caked with dried blood.
