Marco and the Devil's Bargain (29 page)

It hadn't begun well. Marco should have known better than to give Antonio Gil the stage, once everyone was settled around last night's fire. It didn't surprise Marco that the Comanche chuckled and jostled one another at the man's poor Spanish. Even with Toshua translating, for those who needed it, everyone got lost in Antonio's explanation of small cuts and scabs, a waiting period and then illness. Marco could see that the little doctor was doing his best, but it was no way to talk to The People. Marco was at a loss until Toshua dismissed Antonio with a decisive chop of his hand. The little doctor sat back on a log, unsure of himself, the last thing Marco needed.

Toshua began to speak. Marco could follow only one or two words, but he understood Toshua's intensity. He caught the words “Cuerno Verde,” the Kwahadi leader cut down in 1779 by Governor de Anza, and then “Señor Muñoz,” the man who had enslaved him, Toshua—the Comanche who pleaded before them now. Trust an Indian to begin a story in precisely the right place: far from the beginning.

Toshua gestured of an evil wind, and people dropping and dying, which earned him nods and grunts from his audience. He gestured toward the doctor, then took Paloma by the hand, gently urging her forward.

Paloma looked at Marco, then handed him the baby, the last thing he wanted her to do, because he knew without a doubt that he craved the child as much as she did. He held the baby up against his chest, treasuring the feel of the little head as it turned this way and that, then found that comfortable spot just south of his neck that his twins loved, too.

He inclined his head toward the baby as Toshua traced the scar on Paloma's forearm, then pantomimed drawing a thread through something and applying it to her arm. A few swift circles, and he wrapped her arm with an imaginary bandage.

Paloma amazed Marco. She held out her hand with five fingers spread wide, then began to stagger and press her hands to her cheeks. As he watched, as fascinated as her Comanche audience, she drooped and languished, shaking her head from side to side and pulling at her clothes as though she burned with fever. After a long pause with her eyes closed, a wonderful approximation of time passing, she held out her hand again with five fingers spread, took a deep breath and smiled. His eyes on her, Toshua interpreted her actions and pleaded.

When she finished, Toshua gently touched her face and turned it toward him, so The People could see the row of smallpox scars trailing from her ear to her neck. His arm went around her as he kept talking and gesturing. When he finished, Paloma took his arm and pointed to his inoculation scar, going through the motions he had just described for her. Then she waved Marco forward. He looked at her, puzzled.

“
Your turn,
juez
,” she said. “Show off your inoculation scar.”

She took the baby from him as he removed his doublet and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it off his shoulder so they could see his own scar high on his biceps.

He buttoned up as someone asked a question. Toshua translated and Paloma started to laugh, that hearty sound he relished, even though he knew he was about to be embarrassed.
Dios mio
, who knew being a
juez de campo
would be this much trouble?

“
Do I have to show them my pox scars?” he asked them both, and they nodded.

With a sigh, Marco unbuttoned his breeches and dropped his pants, pulling down his smallclothes just enough to show off the smallpox scars on his hip. The women whooped with laughter, probably the first thing they had laughed at in weeks, and even the warriors smiled. Eckapeta spoke up then, gesturing between her legs, and the women looked at him with wide-eyed respect.

“
I won't show
that
off,” he declared, which made Paloma put her hand to her mouth, her eyes lively.

When everyone had settled down again, Toshua continued. Marco sat cross-legged next to Antonio, Paloma beside him, lowering herself gracefully because she held the sleeping baby. “What is he saying, do you think?” she whispered.

“
Probably asking for those who have not previously suffered smallpox to come forward. Say a prayer, Paloma.”

“
That is all I have done since we left the Double Cross.”

As he watched, Ayasha stood up, her face serious, her eyes showing great determination. Paloma sucked in her breath. “Ayasha has been helping our doctor. Eckapeta said she had no one.”

“
Then you should inoculate her.”

Others stood, looking around at each other, uncertainty on their faces. The warrior who had hunted with them stood up and spoke to Toshua at length. When he finished, Toshua looked at Marco, who came to his side.

“
His wife Kahúu has already been visited by the Dark Wind, but he has not. He is his family's protector. If The People are inoculated and fall sick for many days, are they weak when it is done?”

“
Alas, yes,” Marco said.

“
He wants to know, can they still travel to that place where the Kwahadi gather? Many warriors have assembled there, and he would feel safe for his family then.”

“
That's precisely where we want to go.” Marco looked at Antonio, who came forward eagerly now, probably tired of being ignored. “What do you think?”

“
Can we put them on travois?” Antonio asked.

Toshua frowned. “We don't use travois.”

“
Your friends the Kiowa do,” Marco pointed out. “I know my packhorses are used to travois. We can carry those who are recuperating that way, and the rest on horseback, if they ride with someone else.”

Still Toshua hesitated.

“
And how much longer will we find deer in this part of the canyon?” Marco asked. He couldn't help his stern look, this
juez
. “And I mightily suspect that you have quite a few of our New Mexican cattle, the farther into this canyon we go. I
know
what good eating they are.”

Toshua threw up his hands. “We will do it your way.”

A
nthony Gill had never been particularly impressed with Spaniards, for all that they had offered him refuge when the colony of Georgia turned him out. He saw them as a superstitious, lazy lot, more inclined to put things off. After casting his lot with the New Mexicans, mostly against his will, he had been revising his opinion. The speed with which Marco and Paloma organized the inoculations fairly amazed him.

He didn't think Paloma would consent to put down that baby, but she did, handing the child to Eckapeta as she hurried into the tipi for her medical kit. Marco wasted not a minute in securing lodge poles from the pile of unburned ones someone had spared when they destroyed the tipis of The People stricken with disease. He called for rawhide and was soon weaving a platform for that space between the poles.

“
We needn't hurry,” Anthony said.

“
We had to go quite a distance to find those deer, and tomorrow Toshua and I will hunt again, probably even farther afield,” he said, continuing to twist and knot the rawhide. “Meat is scarce and we need meat. I'll begin this today, so I can hunt with good conscience tomorrow.”

This Spaniard could also do two things at once. As he worked, he called to Toshua and Eckapeta and they sat with him as he told them to organize the healthy to help those who would soon be inoculated.

“
There are not so many strong ones,” Eckapeta reminded them.

“
Then Paloma and I will do all we can.”

Anthony shouldn't have been standing there idly. He also shouldn't have thought for a single minute that Toshua's woman was slow.

“
Why are you doing this, little man?” she asked him point blank. “I doubt you have any love for The People.”

Anthony took his time telling her about Pia Maria, and how she had been kidnapped near Los Adaes, in the Louisiana territory. He thought it prudent not to mention the shocking death of Catalina Gill; Eckapeta was quite capable of drawing her own conclusions.

He wanted to see some compassion in her eyes for his plight, but there was none. Kidnapping small children was obviously part of her world she did not question. Why, he did not know; weren't there enough ready-made Indians? But she was looking at him for more explanation.

“
The Dark Wind has been blowing strong across Texas. I proposed to the
juez de campo
that he accompany me to your lands where others have told me the child has been taken. In exchange for her release to me, I will inoculate The People against this dread disease.”

He knew better than to glance at Marco Mondragón, the man he had coerced into this scheme. As it was, the
juez
cleared his throat impressively and turned slightly away.

Why did the woman have to be so smart? She looked from him to Marco, studying them both.

“
You think the Kwahadi who have this daughter will release her to you?”

“
If they want to avoid the total annihilation of The People, they will.”

After conferring with Paloma, they decided on the open air as their medical bay. He asked Ayasha to roll the fallen log he had sat on earlier toward a taller tree stump, pleased with her willing help. He noticed that her pretty eyes had lost some of their desperation. Ayasha smiled at him, and he felt the heat rise to his face. She smiled at Paloma next, who rested the back of her hand briefly against her cheek.

You would think Paloma liked these savages, Anthony thought. I will never understand women. Still, Ayasha was helpful.

Enough of this. “I don't have any cloth for bandages and don't suppose these assassins do, either,” he complained.

Paloma froze him with a look that unsettled his insides.

“
I mean—”

“
I know what you mean,” she said, her words clipped and disapproving. “I brought along an extra skirt and bodice. Ayasha and I will rip them into strips.”

He hoped no one had witnessed that little scene, but as in most of his life, his hope went unfulfilled.

“
Whatever she said to you, I suspect you richly deserved it,” Marco said, speaking from across a distance as he continued to weave the rawhide. “
Ay caray!
I hope I never see that look aimed at me!” He chuckled and went back to his business, a man secure in his affections.

“
She said she is ripping up her one clean skirt and bodice for bandages.”

“
I thought she might.”

So offhand, so casual. Anthony watched him, envious not so much for Paloma now, but envious that any one human being should have such trust in someone else.
He has led a charmed life
, he thought.
Nothing has even gone amiss for Marco Mondragón.
Logic told him that couldn't be true, but logic had never been a consideration in his messy life.

It was as if the Lord God Almighty, that fearsome Being who was thundered about from pulpits all through the colonies, had suddenly decreed that he, Anthony Gill, humble himself. This humbling took place less than an hour later in a hardscrabble Indian encampment in the middle of nowhere. As he considered the event later, Anthony decided that
humble
wasn't the right word. What happened before the inoculations began convinced him that a man could still learn, if he wanted to.

True to her word, Paloma ripped the material into serviceable bandages. When the ripping sound began, every single warrior in that camp—Marco included—whirled around, hand on knife. They all chuckled when Paloma looked up, startled, at their reaction, then continued. Ayasha's task was to roll each strip into a neat cylinder, then put them in another leather bag.

Paloma's tidiness in the face of mud and melting snow touched him. She was one of those rare women determined to improve her surroundings, no matter how filthy. Anthony wondered what it would take to discourage her, and decided that he would probably never find out. Paloma Vega de Mondragón seemed to be a flowing well of kindness. He looked at Ayasha, who watched Paloma, too, ready to imitate the woman who probably had no idea of her admiration. Smiling inwardly, Anthony remembered what she had said about Marco making him a better person, the longer he was in their company.
Do you ever take a thought to your own influence?
he asked himself, even as he doubted it supremely.

When Anthony signaled his readiness, Toshua and Eckapeta went to each tipi in turn and summoned the now less than willing patients. He had done this so many times now, but Anthony couldn't help but sigh to see how few there were. He remembered the frozen caricatures of the dead carpeting the plains and the burned tipis in this noisome camp. The People had suffered; he could not deny it.

But business was business. “Have someone begin, Toshua,” he said to the Comanche. “Time's a-wasting.”

Toshua gestured. No one moved. The Comanche walked toward his friends and fellow conspirators in making life miserable for white men; they backed away.

“
Hellfire and damnation,” Anthony swore in English. He hadn't the slightest idea what to do. This nonsense was putting more time between him and Pia Maria.

Paloma had been sitting beside him, ready to assist. She stood up.

“
Good luck,” Anthony muttered in English.