Carlota (7 page)

"The travelers arrived in Los Angeles with this word," Don Saturnino said. "They report that the army is small, not many more than a hundred gringos, but it is an army with rifles and cannon."

"More rumors," Dona Dolores said. "If it is true, which I doubt, what difference will an army make? We may never see it."

"An army devours all the countryside," Don Saturnino said. "It will ruin Dos Hermanos. Burn our buildings, kill our cattle, steal our horses."

"What do we do?" Dona Dolores was calm. "What?"

"We oppose the gringos."

"With what? Rusty muskets? A few lances? What miracle has taken place that permits us to fight an army when before we could not fight a few wandering bandits?"

Don Saturnino went to the window, where he stood with his hands clasped behind him. "We will oppose the gringos," he said, "so long as our weapons last."

"It is pride that speaks," my grandmother said. "It leads you down a dangerous path. It is best that you do not ride out to confront an army, even a small one. It is better that you remain here on our lands, attend to your own business, and pray for God's protection."

Don Saturnino made a loud sound in his throat.

"You will find that our neighbors agree that caution is wise."

"Caution!" my father shouted. "Cowardice!"

The words hung in the air. My father began to stride back and forth, his iron spurs clinking on the beaten floor. Suddenly he stopped and raised clenched hands.

"Beware!" he cried. "Beware!"

With this threat he left the room, slamming the heavy door behind him. He went at once to the armory, and there he remained for the rest of the day. I brought him dinner, which he did not eat. And supper, which he treated likewise. My heart went out to him. The gringos had come like summer locusts. Dos Hermanos would change. Our lives would change, whatever we did and however we felt. This was what most of our neighbors believed and I believed also. An army of gringos was a new danger, but my father, one Spaniard, a hundred Spaniards, could not stop them. It was only pride, as my grandmother had said, Spanish pride that blinded him.

She also said, while the two of us were sitting at the supper table, "If Don Saturnino persists in this folly, one day soon we shall be eating our soup with a fork."

The next morning my father gave orders to dig three pits. Into them the Indians threw collected refuse from the barnyard and the house.

"It will be a month until the pits yield saltpeter," he said. "We have ample supplies of charcoal and sulfur, but without saltpeter we cannot make good gunpowder. Therefore, we may need to rely upon the lance. First, however, we attend to the muskets. The gringo carries a rifle. It shoots straight and far. As you will remember from the morning on the trail. Thrice as far and many times as accurate as our musket."

We spent the next two days in the armory.

There were four muskets in the racks, but all of them were in poor condition. We cleaned the barrels with a wiping stick wrapped in a rag that had been soaked in deer fat. Then my father showed me how to adjust the triggers and set them to a feather touch.

In the side of each musket stock was a brass lid. Inside the lid was a patch box, which held twenty small pieces of linen. These we took out and carefully cleaned. Next we cleaned the powder flasks, which were made from black buffalo horn shaved thin as glass so you could see through them. Then we examined the flints and replaced several. The lances were oiled and the points sharpened with a stone.

While these preparations went on, and we waited for further news of the gringo army, many ranchers came to Dos Hermanos to talk to my father. Most of them thought that it was wise to remain quietly on our lands, to do nothing to goad the enemy. I hoped they would persuade my father against committing a rash act. But their advice he did not heed.

"We will give the gringos a lesson," he would say over and over.

I was greatly disturbed, for he wished me to feel as he did, as my brother Carlos would have felt, and I could not betray his trust.

Winter was early that year. The first cold came in November and killed our gardens. On the day of the cold, word came that the American Army was marching up from the desert and would soon be in the mountains.

The word was brought by one of the sheepherders, who had been tending our sheep there in the Oriflames. We sent the flocks with him every year when the grass grew thin at Dos Hermanos. While he was cooking his breakfast, he looked down into the pass that snakes up from the desert and saw something move through the tall mesquite. He watched closely and made out that it was a company of horsemen carrying rifles across their saddle horns.

We were out at the pits early in the morning, my father and I, turning over the refuse to see if the crystals of saltpeter had begun to form, when the sheepherder rode up. He had left the sheep with his son in a meadow two hours' ride from Dos Hermanos, and hurried on to bring us the news.

"How many horsemen did you observe?" my father asked him.

The sheepherder could not count. Instead, he made a wide gesture meaning many. "They came in a long line, señor, one following the other. Many of them, on thin horses. They also carried a flag."

"Not Spanish."

"Of blue and white and red."

"On the trail that leads to the hot springs?"

"Yes, on that trail, señor."

"Where they will camp, no doubt."

"It seems possible, señor. At the springs."

"While you watched them climbing the trail that leads to the springs did they observe you?"

"No, señor. I lay on my stomach among the rocks and watched with great caution."

My father sent the sheepherder back for the flock and rounded up three of our vaqueros. He gave one of them a message in writing to take to Don César Peralta.

"Go with a fresh horse for your return," he said to the vaquero. "And return without fail before night."

The other two vaqueros he also sent off with messages and fresh horses to the ranches of Don Baltasar Roa and Don Pedro Sanchez.

"Bring me their answers by tomorrow's dawn," he said. "Also without fail. We prepare a surprise for the gringo."

We went to the armory and again saw that things were in order. We had found little saltpeter in the pits, so there was no chance now to make powder for the muskets. Nor could we borrow any in the countryside, for none existed.

"It is no disaster that we cannot use the muskets," my father said. "The lance will not fail us. You and I are acquainted with the lance, are we not?"

"We are," I said.

"It is especially you who are familiar with the lance. I started you young with the lance; indeed, as soon as you could ride without holding to leather. At six, as I remember. You could have won at the wedding had you wished."

I stood holding tight to my favorite willow lance tipped with Toledo steel. I put it away in the rack and turned around to face my father.

"You intend for me to be with you against the gringo?"

He seemed surprised that I could ask the question. "Where else would you be at a time such as this?"

"What will the men say? Don César and Don Baltasar and the rest?"

"It does not matter what they say. We fight for honor and our lives, not for their plaudits. We will need every lance we can muster."

The lance to me had been something for use in games, in mock battles on horseback against friends, not for use against an enemy, even a gringo enemy. Besides, it angered me that my father thought that my life was his to direct. But I held back my feelings.

"What was the message you sent?" I said.

"The message was brief. I told them what the sheepherder reported. To meet here tomorrow night. To bring their weapons."

"What if they do not come?"

"There is not one who will not come."

"We do not know for certain whether there is an army at the gate," I said. "The sheepherder could be wrong. Or the horsemen he saw could be a company of fur traders."

"Fur traders do not come in great numbers with rifles across their laps and a flag flying. And that many Spaniards are not on a journey."

Then we went to breakfast, but I wasn't hungry. "My
cuera,
my coat of bullhide, is not in good shape," I said. "It needs stitching."

"Then I will have it stitched and an extra layer of hide will be added. I notice that you do not eat."

"I have no hunger."

"Many times I feel that way myself," my father said. "Without hunger. The last time was when I went in pursuit of the Piutes. We rode to the big river and hid our horses in a cottonwood thicket and poled out to an island in our bull boat. We made a fine fire of driftwood. We had roasted venison over the coals on willow sticks we had peeled, when Don Cesar said, 'Indians.' Just that: 'Indians.' I looked up and there they were, in war feathers, on the riverbank. They had come from somewhere and found our horses in the thicket. They were sitting on the horses now, watching us. I had a piece of venison to my mouth, ready to bite, and I dropped it in the sand. Suddenly, I had no hunger."

My father helped himself to a dipper of frijoles and peppers. "But fear, if you live, you get over. If you do not live, it does not matter." He looked up and smiled. "Now eat your frijoles, Carlota. They are tasty with the peppers."

I ate the frijoles but still I had no hunger.

The Peraltas, father and son, answered my father's message. They came that night and we talked until late. The next morning Fernando Soto came. Then that afternoon a vaquero rode in from the Sanchez ranch, which was near Los Angeles, with the news that Señorita Rosa María Sanchez planned to marry a young man named John Harper, a gringo. The vaquero brought the regrets and good wishes of her father, Simón Sanchez.

Don Saturnino groaned at this news and struck his forehead and walked around in a fury, but a little later that afternoon two young men came from the Montoya ranch, leading fresh horses and carrying lances. Though we had never seen them before, we had heard their names. They brought news that Americans were camped in the Oriflame Mountains. One of their vaqueros had made a count; there were one hundred and ten of the enemy. They were camped in a meadow beside a spring and were feasting on roasted sheep.

"We have nine lancers altogether," Don Roberto said. During our talk the night before, Don César and Don Saturnino had placed him in command of our party.

"He is a fine horseman, though not so good in the saddle as you, Carlota," my father had said. "He is also brave. We will require both."

That afternoon another ranchero rode in from the coast, bringing with him two of his vaqueros. When we left the ranch at dusk there were twelve of us with lances.

My father said nothing to Doña Dolores about the gringos camped at the springs. Nor did I. She was in the
sala
and Rosario was kneeling in front of her when we went to say farewell. She did not look up. She was making one of her cigarillos. She took her time and folded the husk lengthwise and filled the crevice with tobacco. Then she spread the tobacco evenly and made a dimple in the center and used both her thumbs to tuck in the edge of the husk.

Only then did she glance up at my father, holding the half-rolled cigarillo in her hands. She gave Rosario a nudge with her toe and he ran to fetch her a coal. Only when she had licked the edges of the cornhusk and lit the cigarillo did she speak.

"Go," she said, "and get yourselves killed, you and your iron-headed daughter. I would not prevent it if I could."

"Señora Doña Dolores," my father said, "we accept your blessings with gratitude. In return we extend our blessings to you."

He started to back out of the room, but Rosario jumped up and shouted, "Take me with you.
Por favor,
I—"

"No," my grandmother cried. "Never! They go but you stay. I need you."

Don Saturnino said to Rosario, "It is your duty to take care of the eagle and Señora Doña, in that order."

He left the room quickly and I followed him. I don't think my grandmother was as angry as she appeared to be, for when we rode away she stood at her window and waved us goodbye. I think she was as confused as I was. It was my father who lit the flame and kept it burning, out of anger and Spanish pride.

The war was really over. And in California it had never been a real war. In other places, but not here among the Californians. We all hated the men who ruled us from Mexico City and we would have revolted against them if the gringos had just left us alone to go our way. But now, as we were to learn later, General Kearny and his soldiers did not know that the war in California was finished. It was a misfortune that they didn't know.

The twelve of us took to the trail at dusk. There was an early moon and we rode by its light until we came to Aguanga, which is a small Indian village about five leagues from the springs where the gringos were camped.

Here we ate our supper of jerky and yucca cakes. The night before, the chief of the Indians told us, gringos had come looking for horses and had driven off a dozen of his
mesteños.

"They are getting ready to go somewhere," he said. "They have been resting at the springs, eating much, gathering horses. We have watched them. They will go soon, perhaps tomorrow."

Late that night, while we were sitting by the fire and talking, a party of rancheros rode in. They had gathered at San Juan Capistrano two days before. They had heard that we were on the trail and had followed us. Their leader was a lithe young man named Andrés Pico, the son of the Mexican governor of California, Pío Pico. There were twenty-one in his party and each man carried a lance.

It was agreed between Don Roberto and him that we would remain two parties, but that Pico would be in command when we met the gringos.

While we were sitting by the fire, off to ourselves and talking, my father said, "All of the men in our party know you. And the new ones, those who have come now with Pico, have heard of you. Do not worry, therefore, about this business, about anything."

I was wearing my deerskin trousers and jacket. My long hair, braided and held with iron pins, was bound in a black handkerchief and pushed up under my hat. I looked like a boy but I didn't feel like one.