Daughter of Fortune (3 page)

She had to get the mirror. Slowly she turned and
crawled to the edge of the bushes. The Indians were not looking in
her direction, but if she leaned out far enough to snatch the
mirror, they would notice.

For the first time, she cried, her face in the dirt
until the soil under her cheek turned to mud. She dug her fingers
into the ground, running the loose dirt through her fingers. Then
it came to her. By tossing the dirt beyond the bushes, a pinch at a
time, she could cover the mirror until its betraying reflection was
buried.

The first handful only camouflaged the tiniest
corner of the mirror. Cursing her vanity of yesterday, Maria
grabbed another fistful of dirt. She scraped the dirt off the
surface of the ground, fearing that the darker earth underneath
would attract attention. When she had a dry handful, she tossed it
gently toward the mirror.

For an hour Maria threw dirt on the small mirror.
Whenever one of the Indians glanced her way, she froze, her face in
the earth, her arm outstretched and still. As she lay there she
imagined footsteps behind her and waited silently, almost
gratefully, for the arrow biting deep into her back, the hands on
her waist, the knife on her hair.

By the time the sun was high over the rim of the
Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the mirror’s sparkling eye was covered.
Maria’s arm ached from the slow and steady motion of hundreds of
tiny particles of dirt thrown. Her muscles throbbed with a life of
their own as she lay in the shade of the bushes and rubbed her arm,
watching the Indians.

They showed no disposition to leave their kingdom of
burned wagons, dead animals and men. They crouched by their fire
silent and watchful.

Her eyes never leaving them, Maria slowly pulled her
legs up under her dress and inched toward the tall underbrush. She
eased her way among the sheltering foliage and curled up in a tight
ball. The chill of the late February morning penetrated her body
and she shook until she feared her teeth would rattle and reveal
her hiding place. Or was it simply the chill of fear? Yesterday on
the wagon she had not been cold.

Her mind was curiously devoid of thought. For the
first time in her life, there was nothing. All she could do was
huddle in the grass, her teeth chattering, and watch the Indians
less than 100 yards away. Her mind took in every detail of their
dress and attitude, but it did nothing with the information. So
intent was she on survival that every breath she drew, every blink
of her eyes, was concentrated on the effort of getting through the
day. For the moment she had no energy to waste on memory or
speculation, pain or sorrow. For Maria Espinosa de la Garza, lying
by the clump of trees, there was nothing but those Indians. She
would have thought of other things if she could have—her parents,
the silver necklace her father had given her on her fourteenth
birthday, the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross—but she could not
think beyond the enormity of the Indians before her. Her mind
refused to go forward or backward. She sat there watching them
until her eyes closed and her head fell forward on her chest.

She was yanked out of sleep by the sound of a horse
grazing. It was the horse of one of the caravan guards, cropping
grass only inches from her legs. The animal showed no alarm at her
presence. She had petted, fed and cried against him at odd moments
on the six-month journey. Often she had given him small scraps of
food when she couldn’t stomach the taste of one more lump of
hardtack. And here he was now, nuzzling her leg as she tried to
draw deeper into her miserable refuge. The animal snorted when she
moved, so she stayed where she was, more alert than she had ever
been in her life.

If only he would move off. She forced herself to lie
where she was, sweating despite the chill that still lingered in
the air. Perspiration rolled down her face and made her nose itch,
but she did not dare raise a hand to scratch.

What she feared most happened. One of the Indians by
the dying fire looked up and called to the horse, which continued
to graze, practically nibbling her leg. When the animal did not
move, the Indian rose and started toward the grove.

Maria stared at him in terrified fascination. His
hair was long and black, his legs bowed, his eyes half-closed in
the perpetual squint of one who has spent a lifetime resisting the
sun’s glare on the desert he roamed. His high moccasins came up to
his long loincloth, which hung to his knees and was dark brown with
the blood of his slaughter. He did not look like the Pueblo Indians
whose adobe villages the supply caravan had passed through in
recent weeks.

Still he came closer. Maria could only stare at him,
mouthing the words, “Saint Francis, Saint Francis,” over and over.
Her lifetime of familiarity with the saints had evaporated and she
could remember only the name of the saint of Santa Fe. She had no
way of knowing if he enjoyed any power over Indians, but she said
his name and made it her prayer.

She wanted to run, but she knew that her only hope,
growing slimmer with each footstep, was to lie still. She tasted
blood on her mouth, saw it drip onto the front of her dress, and
realized that she was gnawing on her lip. Her hands were cold and
wet, her feet numb. She no longer had the power to move.

When he was less than ten yards from the grove, the
Indian squatted suddenly and scooped up a handful of small rocks.
He stood and lazily pitched stones at the animal. The horse shied,
but would not stop eating. The Indian said something to himself and
walked closer. He threw another rock that hit Maria squarely in the
middle of her forehead. She let out a gasp. The animal’s ears
pricked up, but then his head dropped again to the tall grass he
was cropping. The Indian gave no sign of hearing.

The blood trickled down Maria’s forehead. She
watched it drop onto her dress. She had to do something to stop the
Indian from coming closer. When she saw the man draw his arm back
to throw another stone, she kicked the horse in the nose.

The animal’s head jerked up and he snorted and
backed away, shaking his mane. The Indian, apparently satisfied
that his stone had done its work, stood there until the horse
ambled back to the other horses grazing by the river. Then he
turned back to his fellows. They were rising and stretching. While
one of them kicked the embers apart and brushed dirt over the
coals, the rest walked toward the caravan horses.

As Maria watched, she realized there were no native
ponies. The Indians must have made a surprise attack on foot. They
possessed no horses of their own—until now.

With the greatest leisure and two fights among
themselves, the Indians loaded the horses with their booty. The
Indian wearing Father Efrain’s habit passed a cord between his legs
and tied up the long fabric so he could mount. When the last of the
horses was bridled, the Indians mounted and rode off slowly, laden
with spoils, leaving behind destruction. The ground, littered with
great mounds of rotting human and animal flesh, was white with
flour from ripped bags. Above the smell of smoke and death, Maria
sniffed the sharp fragrance of cinnamon and. cloves. The Indians
vanished as suddenly as they had come, into the vastness of the
empty land to the west of the river.

Maria raised her hand and felt her forehead. The cut
from the rock was not deep. She packed a pinch of dirt in the wound
and the bleeding stopped.

She did not leave the shelter of the tall grass and
trees, though she saw no sign of the Indians. What if one of them
rode back for another look? What if all of them rode back? She
would wait where she was.

The sky filled with the flap and squawk of countless
buzzards. The black birds circled and swooped, coasting along on
the wind currents above the desert floor, then dropping like stones
onto the carcasses cooking in the midday sun. Awkward on land, they
waddled among the bodies of oxen and men, fighting with each other
over the most tempting morsels, reminding Maria of old women in
Mexico City’s great bazaars, squabbling over ribbons and lace. Here
it was not ribbons but intestines, deep purple now and puffy with
death, and not lace but lung tissue, filigreed and black from
exposure.

All day the buzzards flocked to the massacre until
the whole ground around the burned wagons was a moving mass of
black feathers. The earlier arrivals attempted to fly off but they
were so gorged with the flesh of dead men that they could not rise
in the air. They lurched along the ground, croaking and flapping
their useless wings.

As the hours dragged by in her sheltering grove,
Maria’s thirst grew. The last moisture that had passed her lips was
the wine in the goatskin bag that Miguel the freighter had offered
her yesterday afternoon. She wanted to run down to the river, fling
herself into the water, and drink the Rio del Norte dry, but still
she feared to move. She spent the long, dreadful afternoon leaning
against a tree watching the buzzards, her mind neither moving
forward nor back. She had nowhere to go and her thoughts took no
flight.

Finally, after the sun reflected its blood red rays
on the flanks of the distant Sangre de Cristos and sank below the
western horizon, she slept. The air was colder than the night
before. Her teeth chattered and she hugged her knees to herself,
burrowing farther down in the slight sheltering ridge of the bank
of dirt. The earth was still warm from the afternoon sun and she
pressed her cheek against it and closed her eyes.

She dreamed then, restless dreams filled with groans
and shrieks and deadly silences. Carmen de Sosa crawled on her
hands and knees among the weeds and grass, calling “Maria! Maria!”
over and over in a thin, whining whisper and patting the ground
before her, searching for her scalp. And there was Father Efrain,
smiling at her, then taking off his head and tossing it in her
lap.

Maria sat up and screamed. The buzzards roosting in
trees and on the flat ground rose in a turgid cloud, then slowly
settled back, quarreling among themselves.

Maria sobbed. She forced herself to look down in her
lap, but there was no grinning head. She drew her legs up tight
against her body and leaned against the ridge, pressing herself
close to the earth, which by now was cold.

She slept again for several hours, and Carmen de
Sosa reappeared, patting the ground with bloody fingers and
whispering Maria’s name. She came closer and closer, searching for
her hair. She patted Maria’s leg.

Maria leaped up, screaming. She stepped backward and
fell over the ridge of earth. All around her were buzzards. The
ones that could not fly had crept into her grove, seeking warmth
from the night’s chill. They had been crowding close to her as she
slept, their feathers tickling her legs.

The smell of them made Maria gag. They stank of
death and putrefaction, nameless diseases and all the horrors of
the centuries. They were legion and she could not escape them.

Maria stood on the flood plain by the Rio del Norte,
unutterably alone and surrounded by death in unimaginable forms.
She stood there clenching her fists against her breasts, crying.
She took a few steps toward the river and the buzzards waddled out
of her way, muttering as they scuttled off, still too gorged to
fly.

She took another tentative step, then drew back
quickly. She had trod on someone’s hand, the fingers curling around
her bare foot as though still alive. She shrieked and raced to the
river, scattering buzzards as she pounded toward the water that
glimmered in the starlight. All the ghosts of the dead men pursued
her. She screamed “Saint Francis!” and leaped into the water.

The shock of the freezing river woke her completely.
She sank to the sandy bottom up to her knees. The water was frigid
and fast moving, but it was clean. She took her hands away from her
face and spread them over the surface of the water in a benediction
of her own. She leaned forward and drank.

She drank until her stomach gurgled, then she washed
her face, scrubbing at the dirt and dried blood. With numb legs she
forced herself to leave the water and struggle up the
riverbank.

There were no buzzards at the water’s edge, but no
sheltering protection of trees, either. Instinct told her to go
back to the trees and tall grass, but she knew nothing could ever
force her to enter that grove again. If the Indians returned, then
they would find her.

Maria slid back down the riverbank and crouched by
the water again. The bank offered some shelter and she leaned back
and stared at the stars. Sleep was far from her, but even if her
eyes did grow heavy, she kept them open. The terror of her dreams
was too real to chance again in this lonely spot.

She willed the sun to come up and hours later it
did, slowly topping the hulk of the mountains. She reminded herself
that somewhere over there in the shelter of the Sangre de Cristos,
her sister and other citizens were now rising, lighting kitchen
fires, preparing for morning prayers.

How far away were they? Could she walk there? Would
people begin to suspect the supply caravan was overdue? Or did this
community function like all the other small villages in King
Carlos’ domain that they had plodded through on their tedious
journey, the villagers moving slowly through the pace of ordinary
days and nights, not suspecting that caravans ever came in any
fashion except late.

She must have slept then, hugging the side of the
riverbank, shivering in the cold that rose off the water. The sound
of a fish leaping woke her hours later and she sat up with a start,
nearly sliding into the river. She dug her feet into the sandy soil
and crouched, watching the water. Another fish jumped and fell back
with cascading sparkles that reminded Maria of jewels.