Paloma and the Horse Traders

by Carla Kelly

  Not this trip, Marco decided. Toshua never said much, but Joaquim Gasca had proved to be a remarkable conversationalist.

  Marco had a question for Joaquim first. “You said that there was one thing I could do to make the Double Cross safer. Care to divulge it?”

  “With pleasure,” the private/lieutenant of royal engineers, or whoever he was, replied. “If you erect two stone bastions diagonally located on two corners of your parapet, they would offer your best archers an unparalleled view of two outside walls, without exposing themselves.”

  “Why not one on each corner?” Marco asked as they rode along.

  Joaquim shrugged. “Why bother, unless you are a slave to symmetry? I’ll design it for you when we return.”

  “What will I owe you in exchange for your service?” Marco asked, contemplating the waste of a talented man, busted down to a private in a shabby garrison, all because he could not keep his breeches buttoned.

  “Simple, señor: Use your influence to get me out of the army, where I am utterly useless. Or at least get my rank back.”

  “I haven’t that much clout,” Marco replied, both impressed and amused with the working of Joaquim’s nimble mind.

  “You have that much, and more,” Joaquim replied promptly, which suggested to Marco that the man had been thinking about the matter for some time. “Just think: when we return with Great Owl’s scalp, and all sorts of firearms and ammunition that the French tried to sell to him, Governor de Anza will let you do what you want.”

  “You mean the mythical French traders?” Marco asked.

  “No myth,” Joaquim said, with something of command in his voice now.

  What a poor private you must have made, Marco thought. “How do you know this?” he asked.

  “I pay attention, Señor Mondra—”

  “Just Marco. Tell me more.”

  Joaquim needed no encouragement. “I took it upon myself to keep Sergeant Lopez’s desk tidy, which mostly amounted to throwing out wine bottles,” Joaquim explained. “I, um, happened to see a directive about rumored French traders from far to the north, selling guns to tribes as they drifted south.”

  “Sergeant Lopez never mentioned that to me,” Marco said, wondering what else the poor, stumbling-drunk sergeant had never mentioned.

  “Between you and me, I doubt he will be alive when we return,” Joaquim told him.

  Marco crossed himself. He thought about Joaquim Gasca and his obvious ambition. Joaquim, my wife would tell you that anyone can change, he thought. “If what you predict is true about the sergeant, how would you run the garrison? It will never be an important presidio.”

  “No, but it can be disciplined and orderly, with troops riding out on regular patrols, even if only five or six soldiers at a time.” He smiled at nothing in particular, as far as Marco could tell. “See there, maybe I like order and symmetry, too.”

  “Then I will see what I can do, Joaquim.”

  They followed the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains some distance, then crossed the range on a Comanche trail, according to Toshua, who told them stories of raiding parties as they sat close together around small evening fires.

  “Do you miss that life, Toshua?” Joaquim asked one night after the wineskin had been passed around one time too often.

  God knows Marco would never have asked such a question, but he did want to know what Toshua would reply.

  “I admit I wouldn’t mind a good raid, now and then,” Toshua said, after another swig. He held out the wineskin and gave it an owlish stare. “This is worse that tizwin. But I like to have my wife nearby, and I like to be near Paloma. You, too, Marco. Sometimes, anyway.”

  “Only sometimes?” Marco teased.

  “The way I see it, I can solve a lot of your problems with Valle del Sol people, if I can torture them and kill them. But no, you won’t let me. You will never know the satisfaction of drawing a knife around a squirming man’s head, and yanking off his whole scalp, plus ears. Rip. Squish.” He yawned.

  Marco and Joaquim stared at each other. Marco put the wineskin away.

  Another chilly night and warm day followed. Toshua shot a deer, and they gorged until their bellies were full. Lazily over that night’s campfire, they argued the merits of packing along the rest of the raw meat, or leaving it some distance away for grizzlies. The grizzlies won.

  “We are an army with no ambition,” Marco said the next morning as they saddled up and continued trailing close to the foothills. In the distance was Mount Blanca, still with a trace of last winter’s snow on top. Marco doubted it would last the week.

  Toshua stood with his hands on his hips, gazing at the mountain. He pointed with his lips. “See that smoke?”

  Marco strained his eyes. “No.”

  “Utes. The village of the man you seek, Rain Cloud.” He stared again. “Or maybe not. Rain Cloud is usually to the north by now, hunting the buffalo, getting ready for winter.” He shrugged. “We will see. He should not be here.”

  They set out across an empty plain of short-stubbled grass, brown after furnace blasts of summer sun, even at this high elevation. Hawks swooped and glided on air currents, looking no more filled with purpose than the men riding far below them.

  Marco sensed that something had changed. Toshua rode ahead now, alert, his head on a continuous swivel. A few times he patted his quiver, as if to assure himself it was there, and full of arrows.

  Joaquim didn’t seem to notice. He breathed deep of the clean air and chewed on a piece of jerky.

  Or maybe he did have concerns. “Marco, how is it that you don’t seem a little apprehensive to be approaching a Ute camp?”

  “They allied with us when Governor de Anza took his soldiers and settlers like me to track Cuerno Verde and kill him, back in ’79.”

  “I was still dallying with the colonel’s wife in La Havana,” Joaquim said. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “I know Rain Cloud,” Marco said, his eyes still on Toshua, even farther ahead now, having kneed his horse into a gallop. Marco tapped Buciro with his spurs and quickened his own pace, deeply aware how wide this open valley looked and how vulnerable they really were.

  “I was wounded in that first battle,” he explained, looking over his shoulder at Joaquim. “A lance in my ass, if you must know.”

  Joaquim laughed. He had put spurs to his horse, too.

  “Rain Cloud got an arrow in his leg, a bit more dignified. We were laid out side by side in camp. That’s a good way to get to know someone,” Marco said.

  “You speak Ute?”

  “Enough. His Spanish is pretty good.” Marco stared ahead at that visible smoke that he knew was more than a morning campfire. He dug his spurs into Buciro, aware that his faithful horse would require no more encouragement to break into a run. He stopped Buciro alongside Toshua, who was waiting for them.

  “There is trouble in the Ute camp. If it is Great Owl trouble, I am not riding in first, to face angry Utes,” Toshua said.

  “Toshua, you can do anything,” Marco said.

  Toshua gave him a look, the one that made him wonder if Toshua was deadly serious or toying with him. “Now and then, I wonder why Paloma married you.”

  “So do I, Toshua. Wait in that clump of trees. I’ll go alone.”

  Mount Blanca loomed to the north now, but he knew the little pass because even though wounded himself, he had escorted Rain Cloud and other injured warriors home after the second battle and Cuerno Verde’s death. Rain Cloud had told him this was a favorite place, with a spring and sheltering cover.

  He heard voices before he saw the camp, and knew the Kapota women were slashing their arms and screaming their sorrow. The keening began low, then grew higher and more frenzied until the screams reverberated inside his skull. He came closer and sucked in his breath to see the aftermath of the raid. The brush shelters were smoldering mounds now. Untended children cried because their mothers had been slung over horses and carried away, probably as Graciela had been abdu
cted four years ago.

  He turned away at the sight of older women dead in terrible ways. One struggled in her death throes, her feet digging into the ground. His glance fell on Rain Cloud, squatting in the dirt by one of the women.

  Her face was battered beyond recognition, but Marco remembered a kindly Ute woman who fed him, too, when she came to care for Rain Cloud. A husband shouldn’t have to see such things, he thought, filled with a wrenching combination of anger and grief. Why in God’s name do I live here? he asked himself, not a new question. God must be weary of hearing him whine.

  Their faces menacing, other Utes started to gather around him. Marco prudently dismounted and squatted close to Rain Cloud. He swung the light cloak he had been wearing from his shoulders and covered the naked body before them.

  “Great Owl did this?”

  Rain Cloud nodded, his eyes bleak. “We came back from hunting elk, Marco.” His eyes welled with tears. “We had enough meat to get us through the winter.”

  “Has Great Owl molested your village before?”

  Another nod, this one slower, as if it took all of Rain Cloud’s energy. The old man put his hand on Marco’s arm. “It is time for us Kapota to move toward the setting sun to other mountains. The bears have left us behind. It is an omen and we must follow our brothers the bears.”

  “I have two men with me, one a soldier and the other a Comanche—Toshua, a Kwahadi, but my friend and brother. May I motion them in, if they will be safe here?” Marco asked.

  “We have heard of your Comanche.” Rain Cloud spoke to two of the mounted warriors. “They will go with you to escort them in. Three of you? Only three?”

  Marco nodded, dread sinking lower into his stomach like sour beer. “We are a very small army, aren’t we?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  In which Claudio remains a perfect gentleman, so Graciela does not stab him

  Two riders in a large and lonely valley, Claudio and Graciela continued to hug the western slope of the Cristos. The absence of buffalo suggested that Utes or Comanches had been hunting and scattered the herd. Claudio wasn’t too proud to scare away buzzards from one carcass that had been shot to eat right then on the hunt, probably while other hunters raced on to overtake and shoot more. The best parts were gone—the heart, liver and haunches—but they salvaged enough back meat for a good dinner that night, one that made Claudio hold up his hand in protest when Graciela tried to offer him another chunk.

  “Is this how you eat, when you are with the horse traders?” Graci asked.

  He had built a small, hot fire in the shelter of a cliff overhang, probably a cutbank years ago when the river had reached much higher. The Rio Bravo was as changeable as a woman who hears bad news and edges away, not for days or weeks until the pout is over, but for years.

  “Yes, we eat like this. Javelina is the worst.”

  Graciela made a face. “Have you eaten skunk?”

  “Tastier than you might think.”

  The slave put down the small bone she had been gnawing on. He had marveled to himself that anyone could look ladylike gnawing on a bone, but Graci did. “Did you like that life?”

  She had never asked him a question so personal, and it touched him. In their brief time together, Paloma had asked such things, but she was his sister. Graci had no particular reason to be interested, but she was. Outside of Paloma and Marco, he couldn’t think of anyone else who cared.

  “I thought I would always trade horses.” He paused at the look on her face. “All right, then! Steal horses sometimes. Lately, I am not so certain.”

  “Señor Mondragón seems like the kind of man who would offer help,” she said. “I know that la señora doesn’t want you to leave.”

  He knew it, too. Head against his saddle, he lay back and considered the stars, neutral observers of the human drama that played out beneath them. It struck him that he used to be a neutral observer. Now that he had found his sister, there were decisions to be made, the possibility for heartache, responsibilities. He suspected these were just the irritations that some men ran away from, because life alone was surely simpler. But was it as much fun?

  He glanced at Graciela, pleased that she didn’t seem to mind listening. “Funny, isn’t it, how life seems to plod along, one day much like the one before, until we get to thinking that nothing will ever change? Then it does.”

  “Here we are, on an empty plain,” Graciela said, staring at the stars, too. “I wonder … how far ahead do you think the others are?” She pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders and shivered.

  “They had two or three days on us,” he said. He watched her as she clenched her jaw to keep from shivering.

  Claudio looked away, ready to roll into his blanket and tough it out until morning, as he had the night before—in fact, as he had on most nights of his life since the raid.

  He made the mistake of looking back at Graciela, with her tense jaw and squinting eyes. He had seen the fear in them when he doused their little fire, but she had said nothing.

  He couldn’t credit what he did next to any particular show of benevolence, since that was not his nature, in recent years. He looked at Graciela, saw someone cold and took his chance.

  “Graci, you can sit there and shiver until daybreak, and I can do the same thing, but that makes us foolish.”

  “Wh … what do you mean?” she asked.

  “Just that.” He stood up and shook out his blanket. “If we put our blankets and … and ourselves together, we’ll be warm. That sounds pretty good to me.”

  He waited. He saw the fear in her eyes, and her rapid intake of breath. Best be straightforward. “If I had wanted to take you, I could have done that our first night on the trail. I’m bigger than you are and I’m stronger.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide, but the fear receding, replaced with wariness.

  “It may come as a surprise to you—and maybe to me, too—but I’m a gentleman,” he told her. “For too many years I forgot I was, but that’s what I am. That’s how my mother and father raised me, same as they raised Paloma to be a lady.”

  A long silence followed. He was about to call it a bad business and wrap up in his blanket again when Graci cleared her throat. “Only if we lie back to back,” she said.

  “Suits me, Graci. I’m tired of being cold.” And alone, and broke, and hopeless, he wanted to add, but he didn’t. He had some dignity remaining.

  Graci stood up and held out her blanket. Businesslike, he told her to lie down again and face away. She did, and he lay down beside her, spreading both blankets around them, which felt like heaven on earth. For one small moment, he wondered why Paloma hadn’t given them more blankets. Marco had ridden out with two blankets, plus he wore a serape over his wool shirt.

  He pressed his back against Graciela’s and tucked the blankets around him. He heard Graciela do the same. He started to chuckle. If I get back alive, I am going to ask my little sister if she gave us one blanket each on purpose, he thought, even though he was pretty sure what Paloma would say.

  “What’s so funny?” Graciela asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said and faked a yawn. “Too tired now.”

  He lay there beside the slave, a woman he would have taken without a qualm only a few weeks ago. He was conscious of the tension in every muscle of her back. She sighed, and the tension lessened. In a few minutes, she slept, her breathing even and deep. He listened, closed his eyes, and slept, too, finally warm in body and heart.

  In the morning, Claudio thought Graciela might shy away from him, but he underestimated her. After he built another small fire, she deftly shoved more buffalo chunks on last night’s toasting stick, cooked it until the meat was hot and smoking, and gave him more than his share. He tried to protest that she should divide it equally, but she narrowed her eyes and dared him.

  To top it off, she rummaged in her saddle bag and pulled out two linty lumps of honey candy, giving him the larger piece. He brushed off the lint.
/>   “From where did this appear?” he asked.

  “Señora Mondragón made some candy to placate Soledad,” she said, popping her piece in her mouth. “I stole some.”

  “Paloma told me you weren’t stealing tortillas anymore,” he said, enjoying the rare treat, but willing to tease her.

  “No tortillas.” She shrugged. “This was different.” She laughed, a soft sound muffled by her hand covering her mouth. “And what do you know, I forgot I had it. I forgot.” She said it again, with wonder in her voice, as if she understood, for the first time in a long while, that she had enough and some to share. She was wealthy.

  He saw it all in her pretty face and smiled back. They were two conspirators now, not just a beaten-down slave and a battered horse stealer, dragging sins and misdeeds on chains he could not see. The knowledge warmed him as much as the blankets and her body heat.

  After another day of riding, mostly in silence, they ate what remained of the buffalo meat, drank from a river that anyone else would have called a stream, and bundled up together.

  “Tomorrow we will be near a favorite camping area for Rain Cloud,” she said, when Claudio thought she slept. “It is a place he likes to leave the women and children while the warriors hunt the valley for elk and deer, sometimes buffalo.”

  “Great Owl’s camp is near, too?”

  “Over the mountains, toward the Staked Plains. I will show you and Señor Mondragón, when we find him.”

  “It will be safer if you draw a map and remain with Rain Cloud’s women,” he said.

  “Oh, no. I am coming with you.”

  He turned around until he was facing her back. She heard him move and turned around, too.

  “It’s too dangerous. Marco will just send you back.”

  She started to cry, weeping silent tears, the kind of tears he understood. He had cried enough of them, after the Comanche raid, when he found himself in the hands of rough men who would only tease and humiliate him.

  “Graci?”

  “I have a daughter in Great Owl’s camp,” she managed to gasp out before another wave of sorrow covered her. “I have to find her.”