by Carla Kelly
Silent himself, Marco held his limp son close to his chest, listening for the smallest breath, for anything to indicate that there was still life within. He felt a little flutter. “Breathe, my son,” he whispered.
In another moment Toshua stood beside him, his hand on Marco’s shoulder. The firm pressure slowed Marco’s own heartbeat to manageable levels again. They watched Eckapeta rush through the kitchen garden and into the house. In mere seconds, Sancha came out, gesturing to Marco to follow her.
Holding his son close, he ran to his housekeeper and understood immediately what she was doing. Hadn’t she told him only yesterday morning that one of his laborer’s wives had given birth last week?
One knock and she hurried into the little house built against the stone back wall. Marco followed her and stopped, embarrassed and out of breath. Pia Ladero lay in bed, nursing her new baby. Wordless, Marco dropped to his knees by the bed and held out his son. Her eyes widened, questioning him silently for only a moment, before she gestured him to come closer.
In a moment she had shoved aside the fabric covering her other breast, engorged and deeply blue veined as Paloma’s had been when her milk first came in. Don’t think about Paloma, he told himself as he handed her his son. Don’t think about anyone except Juanito.
With Sancha’s help and the aid of a pillow, she draped Juanito across her lap at an angle to her own infant. “There now, there now,” Pia crooned as she tickled Juanito’s cheek with her nipple. Marco held his breath as he begged in some silent father’s language for his exhausted son to suck.
Pia pressed against her breast just above her nipple. Marco held his breath and watched as Juanito’s tongue came out and tasted the milk. In another moment he was suckling the kindest, most generous woman in Valle del Sol. Tears rolled down Marco’s cheeks as he watched his baby pulling so deep that his cheeks sank inward. The baby tried to raise his hand to touch Pia, but he hadn’t the energy. He sucked and sucked and Marco bowed his head and sobbed.
He felt that strong pressure on his shoulder again. He knew it was Toshua and he steeled himself for a Comanche rebuke and reminder to be a man. None of that happened. The pressure on his arm turned into an embrace, two embraces, as Toshua and Eckapeta held him close.
Eckapeta spoke, her voice low and soothing, close to his ear. “We found that carriage belonging to the man who loves numbers. The mules were gone, the driver dead, and there was your son.”
“No Paloma? No Catalina?” he managed to say. His nose ran and Eckapeta gently wiped it with her fingers.
“There was no sign of violence,” Toshua told him. “We knew we couldn’t waste time in getting your son back here. We’ll go tracking as soon as we can.”
“You will,” Eckapeta said as she turned to look at Juanito, who continued his struggle to nurse. “I have children to look after here.”
Marco nodded and got to his feet, helped by Sancha, who so kindly let him lean for a moment against her shoulder. “I leave it to you to make arrangements for Juanito. Do as you think best.” He came closer to the bed and kissed Pia Ladero’s forehead, which made the woman chuckle. How often did a landowner and juez de campo kiss a laborer’s wife?
“Pia, I will never forget your great kindness to me and my family,” Marco said. “I am in your debt as long as I live.”
Pia smiled down at her son, and then at Marco’s son, whose eyes were starting to close. She looked Marco in the face, with no hint of deference because there was no need. “I know from my heart that if the matter were reversed, Señora Mondragón would do no less for me.”
Marco bowed his head, unable to meet her glance as a wave of terrible emotion washed over his whole body. He knew she was right, but in God’s name, why was this happening to him? To his children? To Paloma herself?
“Thank you,” was all he could manage without more tears.
He left the small home, already thinking that Andrés Ladero, a hard-working herdsman, probably needed a larger home, now that his family was growing. There was room inside the wall for one more house. As soon as the spring planting was done, he would direct his carpenters to begin. Or, if peace came, outside the wall.
With Toshua and Eckapeta on either side of him, he went to his office and told the auditor everything he knew. “I assure you, señor, we will find your daughter,” he finished.
“Will you find her alive?” Señor Ygnacio said, his eyes anxious but his voice steady. Marco knew he was looking at a man well-acquainted with adversity, maybe even a man with more steel in his spine than any of them suspected, including the auditor himself.
“They are alive,” Toshua said. “I saw no sign of foul play.” He paused then continued, his voice firm, “From Indians or colonists.”
“How can you tell me that?” the auditor said.
Toshua gave a snort, and Marco’s misery lifted for a moment. You’re a cool one, he thought. And a bit too proud of being Comanche.
“No one among the People would leave a baby behind,” Eckapeta explained. “They have been abducted by idiots.”
“Name me a self-respecting Comanche who wouldn’t have scalped that dead man,” Toshua added.
“I’m relieved,” Señor Ygnacio said, sounding anything but. “White men did this?”
“Stupid ones,” Eckapeta added.
Someone knocked on the open office door and Marco jumped. Eckapeta’s hand on his arm steadied him as he turned around to see Emilio, followed by a familiar face. He left the office and nodded to one of the many countrymen who earned a modest living in a holding hardly big enough to feed a family of field mice, let alone a wife and three or four children.
“Francisco, what can I do for you?”
“I’m returning this mule,” the paisano said, gesturing toward the horse barn. “I think he was part of a team.”
“Yes, he was,” Marco said, as his heart tried to crawl out of his throat again. “How did—”
“Two nights ago during that big rain, this fellow showed up in my little barn. We fed him and meant to bring him by yesterday, but what with planting …” his voice trailed off as he suddenly noticed the Comanches.
If you had brought back my mule yesterday, we would be a day ahead, Marco thought, and forced the bitter words to stay inside his head. Marco took in the man’s anxious look and knew that although he could bite his tongue, he couldn’t control his expression.
“I did something wrong, didn’t I, señor?” the farmer asked quietly.
“No, you did not,” Marco replied. “Thank you for taking care of this animal. I know you had to plant yesterday, just as I did. I would have done the same thing.”
He turned to Emilio, who had listened to this whole exchange with his own worried expression. “Give Francisco a generous supply of grain. I know how much my mules eat, and I would pay him back for returning this glutton. And please tell Perla to prepare him a meal before he leaves.” He inclined his head toward the paisano. “Thank you. Please excuse us now. Emilio?”
The paisano made his own bow to the juez de campo and followed the mayor domo to the horse barn. Marco let out a sigh. “I don’t even know where to start,” he admitted. “I suppose I should tell the children.”
“No,” Eckapeta said. “We will find Paloma and the skinny one and have them back here before two weeks have passed.”
“And what will Claudito and Soli think when we walk into the house with Juanito?” he asked, adding, “God willing.”
A shadow crossed over Eckapeta’s face. “I see that we must.”
“I don’t know a time in my life when I have dreaded anything more than telling my children their mother is missing,” Marco said, his voice no more than a whisper, because he felt another wave of misery wash over him. He put his forehead against Eckapeta’s and her arms went around him. They stood that way until he had the strength to raise his head.
“I will ride with you to search,” Marco said.
“Ah, no,” Toshua said. “I came here today to take you
with me.”
He took a good look at Toshua, the man he knew had returned to Río Napestle. What was afoot? “Why are you even here?” he asked.
“Everything has changed,” Toshua said, his eyes not wavering from Marco’s face. “There is a war faction led by a man named Toroblanco. He told me if I did not return with a Spaniard with some authority to speak, he would begin a rampage through your settlements.”
“I don’t care. My wife is missing and my son might not live through the night.”
They stared at each other, neither man yielding. “You promised me,” Toshua said, his voice so soft, but filled with iron purpose. “Everything hangs on your visit. The People will see a white man with me, or all this talk will go nowhere.”
Marco turned away. He put his hands over his eyes, wanting to shut out everything for a moment. The I cannot in his heart ran smack into the You must in his head.
He raised his head and looked around the courtyard. From the guards on the parapet, to Sancha coming closer with his son cradled against her bosom and Lorenzo beside her now, to Perla standing in the kitchen garden, to Emilio by the horse barn, everyone watched him.
He suddenly didn’t want one more second of the crushing responsibility that had been his alone since his father’s death. He wanted to search for his wife, the jewel of his heart. He wanted to ride in all directions at once, calling her name.
And here was Toshua, a man as good as or better than a brother, who had never asked him for anything before. Standing there, knowing all eyes were on him and hating every moment of it, Marco forced himself to think rationally. Since the death of Cuerno Verde five years ago, Governor Anza had used his most eastern juez de campo to cautiously court the Kwahadi Comanche. He couldn’t count how many times the governor ended his letters with, “We must have peace, Marco.”
He looked up at the sky, wishing there were a way out of this corner he had boxed himself into, because he was a loyal, though distant, son of Spain, child of the New World, reliable man and devoted husband to a wife in a million. Something had to yield, and Marco knew what it was. Goddamn him, but he knew.
“Very well, brother,” he said quietly to the Comanche standing beside him. “Obedezco.”
“I don’t know that word, Marco,” Toshua said in his fairly good, workaday Spanish.
“No one wants to,” Marco replied with a touch of humor in his voice, even as his heart broke. “It means, ‘I will bend to your will.’ ”
Toshua was a quick study. “Even against your own will?” he asked.
Marco nodded, not trusting his voice. He took a deep breath, and then another, and turned to Lorenzo. “Ride to Santa Maria and bring back Joaquim Gasca and two or three soldiers.” He paused. “No. Just Joaquim.”
Lorenzo ran to the horse barn. Marco looked into Toshua’s eyes and saw sympathy, but he saw something else, too. He saw duty and honor. Marco could do no less.
“My friend, we will ride to Río Napestle tomorrow. God help me.”
Could dread pile itself on top of more dread? Every Spaniard in New Mexico knew Río Napestle, where some fifty years ago a swarm of Yupe Comanches had obliterated a tiny Spanish army of exploration camped near Casa de Palo. The mutilated bodies had been found by an even smaller detachment from Santa Fe. They had buried what they could gather together; then the commander had sowed the killing field with salt, so no Spaniard would ever return.
“No one goes there,” Marco told Toshua. “I do not want to either.”
“You promised me when I last visited you,” Toshua reminded him.
If no one here can find Paloma, what do I have to lose? he thought, of all men the most miserable. Paloma’s brother and sister-in-law will raise our children.
“I did promise,” he said, after another glance around. “Emilio, you are in charge in my absence. We leave tomorrow.”
Chapter Nineteen
In which Marco’s heart takes another beating
Marco steeled himself for the tears he knew his children would shed when they heard the news about Paloma and Catalina, but he wasn’t prepared for the silence.
He and Eckapeta had taken them into his bedroom to break the news, because he knew the sala was the wrong place, if not for them than for him. He didn’t want to see Paloma’s sandals hanging on the wall, just a little lower than the crucifix—the sandals he insisted be placed there to remind him of what a brave woman will do to get a silly yellow dog back to its owner, a reminder of what love looked like.
He didn’t want to see the sandals ever again, not if Paloma was gone from his life. Besides, the sala had been the room where his papa took him if a lengthy scold was warranted. He wanted the warmth of his own room, to be sitting on his bed with his children close by when he broke the bad news.
After he told them what had happened, and that everyone would soon be looking for Mama and Catalina, his little ones looked at each other in disbelief, then looked at Eckapeta. Claudito’s lip quivered, and he turned away from the Comanche woman who loved him as fiercely as a real grandmama would have.
Marco glanced at Eckapeta, too, wondering. He understood at the same time she did, and reached for her as she rose so silently.
“Eckapeta,” he called after her, “please stay.”
“No. Your children fear to grieve because I have taught them a terrible lesson,” Eckapeta said and left.
Her sorrow bit deep into his heart and he asked himself, What have we become? Have we worked too hard to erase all emotion from our little ones so they will not cry out or weep out loud? Is this lesson too hard? God forbid.
He pulled his children closer. “Cry with me,” he said simply.
The floodgates opened and they wept together. He pulled them down beside him, one on each side, tucking them close, yearning for Paloma with his whole heart, might, and mind. In the early years of their marriage, he had told himself that if something happened to this second wife, he would not keep living.
How wrong he was. He had to live and function and carry on and ride away from the Double Cross with Toshua, leaving the search to others. He reached over Claudito for a stack of handkerchiefs Paloma scrupulously kept beside their bed and handed one to each child.
“Blow your nose, and I’ll blow mine,” he said. “There is more you need to know.”
Dutiful children occasionally, they did as he said, then settled beside him again, even though his shirt was wet with their tears. “First you must know that your little brother is alive and with us here at the Double Cross.”
Soledad put her hands on his face and pulled him toward her in that imperious way that he loved, at least under better circumstances. “I want him here with us right now!”
“Soli, he is staying with a kind woman who can feed him, as we cannot. He is in very good hands.”
“But not ours,” she said mournfully.
For the first time since the awful news of hours ago, Marco felt his heart lift. How wrong she was. He had known for years that every soul on the Double Cross was his responsibility. For the first time in his life, when his need was so enormous, he understood the other side of that coin, because he knew he was a good master—his servants and artisans were looking out for him now. He had seen it in every glance and action today, and now he understood it. They had probably been watching out for him ever since the awful day he returned to find Felicia and the twins dead and buried. He hadn’t understood then, but he did now.
“Our hands are the hands of everyone on the Double Cross, Soli,” he told her. “I’ll explain it better some day. We are being carefully tended by everyone on this estancia.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“I didn’t either,” he said quietly. “We have both learned something good today.”
She nodded, not understanding, he could tell. Maybe it took years and trials and right living to understand what he knew now and what was going to put the heart back in his body, once he had a night’s sleep. “We’ll talk about that later. T
here is something else you need to know.”
“Is it bad, too?” she asked, her eyes fearful. Claudito looked at him with the same frightened expression.
What could he say? His heart, that traitor organ, yearned to stay with his children. His head dictated otherwise. “It will seem so,” he said.
“We’ll be all alone?”
“Never!” He thought quickly, remembering another resource he had forgotten. “Everyone will be here, and I will summon your Uncle Claudio and Graciela, if need be.”
Soledad heaved a sigh that speared his mangled heart. “All right then. Tell us.”
“Do you remember when we sat with Toshua a few months ago and he told us how the People were gathering to discuss a treaty with this colony we live in?”
Both children nodded. Even though it had been past their bedtime, he and Paloma—Don’t think about her right now—had allowed them to listen to what their Comanche friend had to say about peace and better times for the People and the settlers.
“Remember how I told Toshua I would go with him to the canyon at the right time and speak for our governor?”
Claudito nodded, but Soledad frowned. She was older and maybe even quicker than his son, and she knew what was coming. Marco swallowed and plunged ahead.
“This is that time,” he said quietly, looking her right in her beautiful Paloma-eyes, because her own mother’s eyes had been blue, too. “I must leave with Toshua tomorrow.” No need for them to know of even more distant Río Napestle. God Almighty would not mind an occasional omission to avoid greater distress.
“But who will find Mama and bring her back?” Soledad asked. “Papa, no!”
She tried to distance herself from him, but he pulled her back and held her firmly. “No, Soli,” he said. “I have to do what I have promised, but Eckapeta and Joaquim will find your mother and Catalina and bring them back.”
“You don’t care about Mama?” Soledad whispered, even as she burrowed closer to him.
“I love her so much that my heart is tearing into tiny pieces,” he assured her, determined not to shed another tear. “My love, there are thousands of lives at stake and I must go.” He gently pulled her on top of him so she could see his face, and held his hand under her chin so she had to look at him. “I would not go if I thought Eckapeta and Joaquim could not find her. I trust them. You must trust them, too. And me.”
