Teresa

by Les Savage, Jr.

  The ace of swords came up first on the top layout. Three miscellaneous cards followed. The noise died down; the crowd pushed in, watching avidly. Amado looked at Teresa. She put a peso on the ace.

  Amado turned the deck up. The gate was the ace of cups.

  The crowd went wild. They danced in each other’s arms and their shouting filled the plaza. In all the tumult, Amado sat on the saddle, studying the gate card. Teresa felt the breath gag in her throat. The ignorant peons would not know how to read the markings. But a man like him—

  A new tone entered the shouting. A man thrust his way through the crowd. “General,” he shouted. “Governor Carbajal has left Santa Fe and is marching on us with his army.”

  Amado dropped the cards and rose. Gathering his cloak around him, forgetting Teresa immediately, he plunged through the mob toward his headquarters, shouting orders. The only man remaining beside Teresa was Pablo, the rancher who had won with her help. He squatted like a bullfrog over his heap of winnings, grinning slyly up at her.

  “Fortune smiles upon you, señorita. If he had found you were cheating, I think he would have you shot with Lieutenant Perea.”

  8

  From spies and scouts Amado learned that Governor Carbajal had camped with his forces at Pojoaque, some eighteen miles north of Santa Fe. The rebel army, over a thousand strong now, marched before dawn of August 8th. They moved through the country south of Santa Cruz—a land of sequestered valleys interlaced with irrigation ditches and bearded with peach orchards.

  Nicolas Amado rode at their head on a prancing black barb. Muffled to his chin in the cloak, shivering in a pre-dawn chill, with the sullen mutter and clatter of the marching army all about him, he sought to rekindle the fires of courage and zeal that had consumed him during the frantic excitement of the preceding days. He had always idolized General Lopez de Santa Anna, savior of their people and ruler of all Mexico. Was it always this way with such a great man—these nagging doubts, these insidious fears that came in the dark hours before battle? What was there in himself, Amado wondered, that held him back, that kept him from knowing the heights of blind and unquestioning courage that had sustained Perea when he had faced the mob with that empty pistol? Was that what made for true greatness in a man? Or were the giants tormented as he was by the devils of caution and skepticism constantly whispering in the ears?

  His reverie was broken off at the clatter of hoofs behind him. He turned to see Gomez riding up. The man was wrapped to the chin in a handsome serape. His eyes were feverish, red-rimmed, filmed with the vague frustration Amado had seen before in this man when he was tired and his cynical defenses were down.

  “Dawn soon,” Gomez said. “Any word from the scouts?”

  Amado’s chin sank into his cloak. “None.”

  Gomez glanced closely at him. “Some of the men are grumbling about Lieutenant Perea being spared.”

  “The rest are with me,” Amado said. “They recognize a brave man when they see one.”

  Gomez chuckled. “That Teresa Cavan seems to have a strange power over you. Did you know her before?”

  “Yes,” Amado said absently. “Before—”

  His eyes lost focus, as if staring into some great distance. The question had taken him into the past. His first meeting with Teresa had been a curious affair, almost a predestined thing. So many of the events of his life seemed to have guided him toward that one point in time. There was the matter of the ring. If he had not worn it he would not have lived to know her. And yet it had been with him since his birth.

  Amado would never know the exact date of that birth, or the exact location. He only knew that sometime in the first decade of the nineteenth century a squalling baby had been found on the doorstep of the poverty-ridden Amado family near Albuquerque. He was given their name and raised in the squalor of their household as one of them. His Indian blood soon became evident, in the thick lips, the jet-black hair, the coppery skin. Mama Amado said he was Apache, Papa thought he detected a little Comanche. Yet Nicolas refused to accept the evidence.

  For there was the rubrica.

  This was the ring with the ancient seal inscribed on its face, left with him when he was abandoned. The seal was not known in Mexico, yet such a ring could come only from an honored and ancient Spanish family.

  This rubrica surrounded Amado with an aura of mystery and romance which he did everything to perpetuate and expand. To himself and all the world he was the illegitimate spawn of some clandestine romance between a mysterious Spanish grandee and an unknown woman of Albuquerque. As soon as he had been old enough to wear it, the rubrica was slipped on his finger, never to come off. It was with him when he and his foster-brother, Innocent, became shepherds for one of the great ranches outside Albuquerque. It was on his hand as they drifted north to Santa Fe, where Amado found a ripe field for his assorted talents. A nimble-witted sycophant, he ingratiated himself into the circle of minor politicians at the capital and was soon appointed to the customs office. His duties often took him to Taos or El Paso and it was on one of these tours, barely a month before, that he had met Teresa.

  Returning from El Paso, he and Innocent were on the Chihuahua Trail, thirty leagues south of Albuquerque, when they came up with half a dozen creaking two-wheeled carretas loaded high with trade goods. It was the retinue of Pepe Rascon, on his annual trading conducta to Santa Fe. Amado had met the old man several times before in El Paso, but had never seen his young wife.

  While Rascon walked beside his lead cart, prodding the sleepy mules with a sotol stalk, the woman rode on a heap of Indian blankets inside, a year-old baby in her arms. Amado bowed gallantly at Rascon’s perfunctory introductions. Her green eyes, the curling mass of her red hair and the succulent ripeness of her red lips made a picture of rare and vibrant beauty that set his whole body tingling. But she merely nodded at him and turned her heavy-lidded eyes back to the child.

  Rascon was grateful for the added protection of their company, so they agreed to travel with him the rest of the way to Santa Fe. They camped by the river that night. Two of Rascon’s six drivers climbed the bluff as sentries while the others sat around the fire with their master, eating a silent meal. The woman did not join them. She sat against the great solid wheel of one of the carts, her baby in her lap. Rascon made no move to fill a plate for her so Amado took one over. She accepted it without thanks. For a moment, as she began to eat, she looked across toward her husband. Her eyes were lit by the coals of a smoldering resentment. The whole story was in that one glance. A young woman, yearning for love and romance and youth, chained to a belching old goat like that.

  “There is so much sweet wine to be tasted,” Amado said. “It is a pity life has withheld the jar from your lips.”

  She did not look at him. “I have tasted. It was not sweet.”

  Her complete indifference to him struck at his pride. He could not quite fathom her. On the surface she revealed the subjection and resignation seen in so many of these peon women. Yet for a moment in her eyes he had seen that flash of spirit, that smoldering rebellion.

  In the middle of the night he was awakened by the gobbling cries. The coals of the fire still burned low and the ruddy light revealed them, coming in out of the night like the shadows of doom. A dozen riders, a score, a hundred—he never knew. As he rolled out of his blankets he saw Pepe Rascon and his drivers jumping to their feet.

  Three feathered shafts struck Rascon at once, two in the belly and one in the chest.

  At the same time Amado saw Teresa crawling from beneath the cart under which she had been sleeping, the baby in her arms. Shouting his war chant, an Indian headman wheeled his horse toward the cart out of the darkness. Teresa was just coming to her feet in front of him and his horse knocked her back against the wagon. The baby was torn from her arms, falling to the ground. The Indian turned his horse, trampling the child underfoot. Another rider cir
cled in from the darkness and they both swung off to grab the screaming Teresa.

  Vale mas estar tomado por valiente que serlo.

  Following the dictates of his favorite axiom, Amado did not run toward the battle but turned from his pallet on the edge of camp and ran into the darkness.

  The earth trembled beneath him with the pound of following hoofs. He turned in time to see the horse behind, to see the war club descending. He rolled with the blow and it missed his head, but it knocked him to the earth and the fall stunned him. The Indian wheeled back and jumped down, kneeling to scalp him. It was the rubrica that saved Amado.

  These Indians were not the peaceful, sedentary Pueblos from the villages along the Rio Grande who were later to follow Gomez and Amado in revolt. These were Navajos—hereditary enemies of the Pueblos—nomads and warriors who for centuries had fought the Spaniards. Yet these centuries of conflict had provided enough contact to super-impose the language and some of the customs of the Spaniard upon these Indians. Most of them spoke Spanish, many had Spanish names. During the short periods of peace between the intermittent warfare some of the men frequented the towns along the Rio Grande. There they could see rubricas such as this on the hands of the aristocrats. As the Indian grabbed Amado’s hair, the ring must have glittered in the feeble light from the distant fire. The man bent to stare at it, then called to the others.

  The headman soon came. The ring made them think Amado was a hidalgo—a man from a family rich enough to provide big ransom. He lied, telling them his name was Pino, the name of the most famous family in the department. They finally agreed to send Innocent with a message. The payment was to be in sheep, more golden than pesos to these Navajos, and was to be driven to this spot within three weeks.

  The Navajos released Innocent and then overturned the wagons, spilling the goods out. On their horses they loaded the powder and arms, the Pass Brandy, trade kettles, blankets, and what else was valuable to them. To the rest they set fire.

  With hands bound behind them, Teresa and Amado were put on horses and driven ahead of the Indians. He would never know how far they went. That night and the next day and the next night in the saddle without rest. Finally they halted and slept all day in the lee of a mesa. In the evening Amado was awakened by drunken chanting. Some of the younger warriors had broached the Pass Brandy. On empty stomachs it was dynamite.

  The camp was soon the scene of a drunken debauch. The young bucks dressed up in gaudy blankets and fancy Spanish shawls, covering themselves with the rings and bracelets, the necklaces and other gew-gaws they had found in the carts. They danced wildly around the fire, chanting of their triumph to their gods, reeling drunkenly, laughing and howling in primitive abandon.

  Teresa sat a few feet away from Amado. Her hair was matted with dirt and brush, and her face was so caked with dust that it looked like a gray mask. Her body began to stir, from side to side. It took him a while to realize what she was doing. She had found a sharp ledge of rock behind her, and was sawing at the rope.

  “Señorita,” he hissed. “Do not antagonize them.”

  She did not answer. She kept sawing. After an interminable period she gave a jerk and he saw the frayed rawhide drop from her wrists. Then she let her glance move across the trade goods littered on every side. At last her eyes stopped. The tip of a Toledo dagger, finely damascened, glittered beneath a taffeta dress.

  Teresa edged over, inch by inch, till she could reach her foot out, hook it around the knife, and draw it to her. She got it in her hand, then swiftly put it behind her. Amado saw why. Lurching, chanting huskily, the headman was coming toward them.

  Amado pleaded. “You would be a fool. Let them use you as they will. It is the only thing that will save our lives. Fight them and they will kill us.”

  Her lips, compressing, made a thousand tiny cracks in the dust-mask on her face. The headman almost tripped, stumbling through a heap of dresses and blankets. Then he stopped, swaying above her. She looked up at him with wide eyes. The utter hatred in those eyes stopped Amado’s breath.

  The headman was too drunk to see it. With both hands behind her, it seemed she was still bound. The Indian let his air out in a wild gust, grabbed her by the hair, and dragged her toward the trees.

  She made no sound. Limp as a rag doll, hands still rigidly held behind her, she suffered herself to be dragged like a sack of meal across the rough ground, into the trees, behind a screening thicket of mesquite.

  Amado realized that his whole body was soaked with sweat. He could see nothing now save that dark screen of mesquite. There was no sound from there, utterly no sound. All he could hear was the crazy chanting of the other drunken Indians about the fire.

  Then she appeared. Like one in a trance she walked to the edge of the timber and stopped there. The Toledo dagger was in her hand, bloody to the hilt.

  The implications of what she had done filled him with a sick breathlessness. For a moment he could not get beyond it with his comprehension, could only react numbly to the world of horror embodied in her figure swaying there, her zombie eyes staring fixedly into some distant hell. Then the spell faded and he realized the peril of his own position. When the Indians found the headman they would murder both of them.

  “Señora.” It was a bleating whisper. He had to call several times before she reacted. Like one rising from a trance she moved her head. He jerked his bound arms. “Please, there is only a minute.”

  Finally she moved. She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled in behind him so that her movement would not catch the attention of the Indians when she came out of the darkness into the light. She cut him loose. Together they crawled back into the darkness. The Indians had made a corral by turning their horses into a box canyon and stretching a rope across its mouth. Teresa cut the rope and they used two pieces for bridles. Each on a horse, they drove the rest of the animals out of the canyon ahead of them. They drove the herd before them as far as they could, until the horses began to scatter and break up. Then they headed for the Rio Grande.

  Near noon the next day they were met by a party of ranchers Innocent had raised from the villages south of Albuquerque. Under their protection, Amado and Teresa were taken to Santa Fe, where he had left her at Don Biscara’s.

  A friend found him before he reported to the Palace of the Governors, telling him that he was on the list of those ordered under arrest by Governor Carbajal. According to the reports, Amado had been making diligencia a little too freely. It was a type of graft indulged in by most of the officials in the corrupt town, and Amado was no guiltier than a dozen others who remained free. But with the threat of revolt growing, the government had to make a show of cleaning out the corruption, and Amado was one of the unfortunates chosen for sacrifice.

  Knowing the treacherous politics involved, he had fled with Innocent to Taos, hoping to find a haven with the disaffected Mexicans there. And during those hectic days, whenever he remembered Teresa, he had the picture of her—the one he thought he would never forget—standing in the shadows with the Toledo dagger in her hand, bloody to the hilt….

  * * * *

  Dawn seeping over the edge of the world brought Amado back to the present. He was with the rabble army again, marching to do battle with the governor who had ruined him. He saw that Gomez had dropped back to join his cavalry on the flank of the marching men. All about Amado the cotton shirts of the ragged host bloomed like great white moths in the first pearly light.

  Rabbit brush and ragged Apache plume seemed to leap out of the ground at Amado’s feet. Ahead he saw sandy flats and the Pojoaque river. The horizon was turned to a crouched and broken monster by the outlines of Black Mesa. Amado’s scouts splashed through the river and reported to him that they had sighted the enemy near the mesa. As far as they could make out there were only two or three hundred men under Governor Carbajal. Most of them were Indians from the Pueblo of Santo Domingo, st
ill loyal to the government, and there was hardly a full troop of regulars. This was heartening news to Amado, but he sent the scouts forward again without telling anyone else. Then he halted the army and sent for Gomez and Villapando.

  The Indian was mounted on a bareback, snorting pinto. He was stripped to the waist, his broad muscular torso smeared with greasy stripes of red and yellow paint. He carried a buffalo lance and had a machete and a pistol in his belt. Amado told them the battle was at hand, without disclosing the actual number of the enemy. Villapando answered fiercely.

  “Let us spread our force across the plain and drive the governor against Black Mesa.”

  “Would you treat an army like a rabble?” Amado said. He saw the Indian’s eyes flash with anger. “War is a science, my good Villapando. We will divide our forces. Gomez and I will circle the mesa with the cavalry and come upon the enemy from behind. When you hear the diguello you will attack their force on the front.”

  Something near surprise fluttered through Gomez’s jaded eyes; then, watching Amado quizzically, he said, “I must admit that sounds best. I will gather my men. We will be ready to ride in ten minutes.”

  The heart of the cavalry was composed of about twenty ricos—the large landholders who had declared for the revolt with Gomez. These were fierce, hard-riding men, born to the saddle, inured to the hardships of the buffalo hunt and the cruelties of the incessant Indian warfare carried on by the outlying villages. Each of them had brought with him a score or more vaqueros from his ranch, superbly mounted and well armed. Added to this were other Mexican horsebackers from the towns, and several hundred Pueblo Indians who had obtained mounts.

  As they circled the mesa, Amado sent an oblique glance at Gomez. He knew the man’s politics. Gomez, though he had risen from the peasantry, was now a rich landholder, and did not have the full confidence of the rabble. That was why he had chosen Villapando as a figurehead, hoping to control things through him. Such a man, who preferred to manipulate things from behind the throne, would logically favor the same tactics in battle. It fitted nicely into Amado’s own concept.