Paloma and the Horse Traders (42 page)

“
Do this for us,” Rain Cloud
ordered. “If you see only Comanches, ride fast and warn us so we
can flee. If you see victory, stay with your own people. Graciela,
too.”

“
Shouldn’t Graci decide whether to
stay with you?” Claudio asked, looking at the woman and her child
sitting alone.

“
With a Comanche child, she has no
place among this people. Go now.” Rain Cloud gave him a little
push, not a cruel attempt to drive him off, but a firm reminder to
hurry along.

They backtracked through the pass, Graciela
holding her daughter on her lap, bound together with a wide strap.
He rode beside them, glancing at the little girl, who finally began
to smile at him, then giggle and turn away.

The trail was easier to follow in the daylight.
He led the way, motioning Graciela to fall back as their hidden
trail over the mountain joined the larger trail to the plains, the
one Great Owl’s warriors had taken.
I cannot just wait at the
mouth of the pass
, he told himself.
My brother-in-law is
down there. Paloma would never forgive me if I did
nothing
.

“
Stay here. I am going
down.”

“
But Rain Cloud
said ….”

He ignored her, his mind clear of everything
except his love for Marco Mondragón and Paloma Vega—the one still
new to him, the other loved and lost, and found again. If Marco lay
dead on the field, Claudio would fight his way back to the Double
Cross and help his sister carry on. He had thought only a few days
ago that family ties were a nuisance bent on suffocating a man.
What a fool he had been.

His thinking had changed because he loved
Graciela Tafoya. She was as bruised and battered by life as he was.
She might not even want him in her bed for a while. He smiled to
think of his mother’s favorite
dicho
: “Patience, and shuffle
the cards.” Mama had said that often enough when he was young,
impatient, and quarrelsome, picking fights with Rafael and Paloma
until they ran off in tears. He hadn’t understood that irksome
dicho
then, but he understood it now. Time was all he had,
besides love. If love couldn’t walk hand in hand with patience,
what was it worth?

He looked back at Graciela standing there with
her arms folded and anger in her eyes at being left behind. He blew
her a kiss, something Paloma did each night before she closed the
door of her children’s room. He looked closer. The angry look was
gone, but her arms were still folded.
Patience, Graci
, he
thought.

He rode out of the pass and into sunlight
already beginning to soften as afternoon shadows lengthened. Hardly
breathing, Claudio stared at a mound of bodies on fire. The
surrounding field was burned black. He rode through weeds stinking
of smoke, counting the living.

That new patient heart began to beat again when
he saw Marco, and then Joaquim, and even David Benedict, a man
Claudio thought would never survive such a day. There was Lorenzo,
leaning on a shovel. Claudio looked for Rogelio, his tired mind
finally comprehending that Lorenzo and the shovel told their own
tale.

He stopped his horse as two Comanches rode
toward him, lances ready. He held up his hands. “Marco Mondragón,”
he shouted. “Help me here.”

Deer Bones was closer. He signed to the
Comanches. They lowered their lances and turned away, loping back
to the main body. The Ute gestured for him to come
closer.

“
You’ve won a great battle,” Claudio
said, looking around. He watched some of the Comanches ride east,
their lances dripping with bloody scalps. Looking closer, he
thought he saw Toshua, and was that Eckapeta?

“
My father? Does he live?” Deer
Bones asked.

“
Rain Cloud is well and so are the
others. Some found their wives and children,” Claudio told him. “Do
you—”

Deer Bones shook his head. “All dead. My father
will lead us west now, and we will begin again.” He looked over his
shoulder. “Tall Grass has gone singing bravely to his ancestors,
but two of my friends and brothers remain. We will ride to Rain
Cloud.”

He leaned closer and touched Claudio’s arm.
“This was a good work. Your brother is a brave man.”

“
He is, Deer Bones. When you reach
the mouth of the pass, you will see Graciela Tafoya. Tell her to
ride down here.” He chuckled. “She wasn’t happy when I left her
there, but I think she will come.”

Deer Bones raised his hand in farewell. Claudio
watched the three Utes until they were out of sight. Still he
waited, hoping to see Graci. No Graci.

He came close to the battered wagon with empty
crates still scattered around it. Joaquim and David tossed
sabotaged muskets on the fire, which caught and crackled and soon
became unrecognizeable.

Hands on his hips, Marco smiled at him. His
face was blackened with gun smoke, which made his teeth a brilliant
white. Claudio looked closer. His brother-in-law was missing a
tooth, but that wasn’t all; his eyebrows were gone, probably singed
off in what must have been a desperate struggle to stay
alive.

“
All is well with Rain Cloud?” Marco
asked, after Claudio dismounted and grabbed him in a fierce
embrace.

“
As well as any man can be, who has
lost so much,” Claudio said.

Marco clapped his hand on Claudio’s shoulder.
“Come home with me?” he asked.

“
If you want me to,” Claudio said.
“I trust you will not put a noose around my neck.”

“
No noose. In fact, let me make a
proposition.” He looked beyond Claudio. “You found your little one,
Graciela? Give thanks to God.”

Claudio turned around to see Graciela riding
toward them.
God is good
, he thought. Perhaps he should also
apologize to God for thinking Him callous and uninterested in the
ways of man. Paloma could advise him about such matters.

Graciela nodded, eyeing Marco with wariness.
Claudio walked to her side and held out his arms for Cecilia, who
surprised him by holding out her own arms. He held the child,
wondering what Marco would say, but not wondering too hard. He was
beginning to understand the
juez de campo
.

“
She has beautiful eyes, Graciela,”
Marco said. “Please tell me that Soli and Claudito will have a
little friend. Think of the fun!”

Graciela let out a sigh that went on and on.
She dismounted with Marco’s help, and threw herself into Claudio’s
arms. To his surprise, and then complete gratification, Claudio
Vega discovered that he could hold a child and a woman at the same
time.

They spent the night camped as far to the south
of the Two Brothers as they could travel before complete exhaustion
ruled. Marco insisted that Graciela and her daughter sleep in the
wagon, and Claudio told his brother-in-law that would do for him,
too.

“
So that’s how it is?” he asked
Claudio when the two of them moved away from the fire for final
relief.

“
I believe it is,” Claudio told him.
He finished his business and buttoned his trousers. “Marco, I’m not
so certain what to do now.”

“
Get in the wagon with them, as you
so boldly said.”

“
She is still irritated with me for
leaving her alone in the pass.”

Marco buttoned his trousers, laughing softly.
“It’s a cold night and she only has one blanket. Get in the
wagon.”

“
I finally know good advice when I
hear it,” Claudio said to Marco, who slapped his back. “You should
congratulate me.”

He crawled in the wagon. Marco was right; the
night was cooler. Probably in the morning there would be a film of
ice on the water bucket. He yawned.

“
I only have the one blanket,” he
heard from Graciela. He tried to gauge the frostiness level in her
voice. He knew he was still a babe in the woods where women were
concerned—the kind of women that a man didn’t pay for, leave before
daybreak, and worry about catching diseases from.

“
Would you share your blanket?” he
asked.

“
Yes, if I can put Cecilia between
us,” Graciela said. “It’s a cold night for September.”

“
Yes, last year it was warmer at
this time. Maybe there will be an early winter.” He lay down,
disgusted with himself because he was talking about the weather.
Ay caray!

Graciela spread her blanket over the three of
them. Cecilia was already asleep, folded up like a little flower.
She might be Soledad’s age, or a little younger. There would be
dresses for her at the Double Cross, and maybe secrets to share in
the years to come. They would gang up on poor Claudito, so Claudio
hoped Paloma’s next baby was a boy. He smiled into the dark.
I
am making plans
, he thought.

Graci had made no comment, but at least she was
facing him. He hoped she would speak, but the silence lengthened
until he heard her even breathing. Maybe tomorrow night. He closed
his eyes.

“
Graci, I have absolutely nothing
but my horse and the clothes on my back. I left my blanket with one
of the Ute women,” he told her sleeping form. “I have bad dreams,
and even Lorenzo says I do not talk enough. There are days when all
I have is a beating heart.”

“
That is all you need, really,” she
told him.

Claudio sat up in surprise, then lay down
quickly, because he was letting in the cold air on Cecilia. Had he
really said that? Surely he had simply thought it. He nerved
himself to look at Graci. Her eyes were open and he saw no fear
there. He wasn’t certain what else he saw, except that he had seen
that same look in Paloma’s eyes, when she sat with Marco. Maybe it
was love, and maybe he was tired and wandering in his
head.

“
We … we’ll need to think about
it,” he stammered.

“
If you still need to think about it
then do so,” she replied, generous and patient at the same
time.

Cecilia lay between them, but Claudio stretched
his arm across the child just to touch Graci. She must have had the
same idea, because their hands met in the middle. They twined their
fingers and rested them on the sleeping child.

Claudio knew he would never go to sleep now. He
closed his eyes and slept.

In
which matters are settled to nearly everyone’s satisfaction; no,
everyone’s

W
hen had the ground become
so hard?
Marco asked himself as he stretched and groaned, the
morning sun in his eyes. Two more nights with his bones on the cold
ground, and then there would be Paloma. He had lost his sense of
adventure. All he wanted was his wife and children and a good pot
of
posole
.

His memory also wasn’t what it used to be. “I
must be getting old,” he told Claudio, as they squatted together
around a pathetic fire that Joaquim had started. “Last night I
started to tell you about a proposition. Remember?”

“
Barely,” his brother-in-law
said.

“
It’s a simple proposition. Governor
de Anza has been too busy to assign anyone to the land grant that
used to belong to Alfonso Castellano. It is more than that: no one
has been brave enough to willingly settle in Valle del Sol. Don’t
know what they’re afraid of.”

He heard Claudio’s laugh, touched in his soul
because Paloma and Claudio were so much alike, left too young to
struggle on their own through desperate circumstances. They had few
wants and made no demands, because harsh life had instructed them
not to expect anything. He reminded himself again to get red shoes
for Paloma.

“
I have to go to Santa Fe in a
month, as part of my duties as an officer of the crown. I want you
to come with me and claim that land grant for your own.”

Claudio stared at him, his mouth open. “You’re
serious?”

“
I never joke about land and cattle.
Yes or no?”

“
Yes, but—”

So like Paloma
, Marco thought. “I know,
I know: you have no cattle, no sheep, no horses, no house, no
servants.”

“
That about covers it. At the moment
I don’t even have a blanket.”

They had reached the wagon. Marco leaned
against it, tired even though the sun was barely up. “I have all
those things in abundance and I will share.”

Marco would have given the earth right then for
Paloma to see her brother’s face. A host of emotions crossed it.
Marco said nothing, only watched and held out his arms, his heart
full. Claudio grabbed him in a fierce embrace. “Marco, your sister
told me not so long ago that I overthink matters. Maybe it is a
man’s bad habit, because you do, too.”

Claudio nodded. Before Marco could stop him, he
knelt and kissed Marco’s hand. Marco raised him to his feet and
took him by the shoulders. “No more horse trading, no more
thieving. Marry that woman in the wagon and allow Paloma and me to
help you.”

“
I had better,” Claudio said simply.
“Graci has the blanket.”

Having come from the north, Marco Mondragón’s
ragged little army passed through Santa Maria first and not the
Double Cross, and learned of Sergeant Lopez’s death. Wielding
powers he suspected he did not possess—but which he also knew the
governor would not dispute—Marco informed the leaderless
soldados
that El Teniente Joaquim Gasca was their new
commander.