Paxton and the Lone Star (39 page)

And at last Tuesday. Excited, True rose, and dressed in the finery Estimo had arranged for him. When he finished, he looked at himself in the mirror and decided that except for his hair and skin color, he might have passed for a
vaquero
in his burgundy waistcoat, crimson sash, tight burgundy trousers worked with silver filigree, shiny black boots, and flat-brimmed hat. He was too nervous to eat. So much depended on this one interview. So much land, so many lives, so many dreams. He doubted if he could heal completely the rift that had grown between the colonists and the government, but if he could start the process by assuring Santa Anna of his sincerity, the moderates might be given a little more time to cool the passions fanned by the hotheads on either side. A little more time.
Any
time. Blood need not be spilled, was his message. There are many, many of us who do not want to see the earth run red.

One o'clock. He took leave of the Sanchez family, climbed into the coach, and, with the well wishes of his host ringing in his ears, rode away toward the
Plaza Central
and the president's palace. The ride through the city left him unmoved, for he was deep in reflection, still uncertain, after his long wait, of how to counter the lies Luther O'Shannon had spewed about the colonists around San Antonio. He must prove that rebellion against the Mexican government was in no way the intent of the settlers who had signed the petition he carried.

The coach jolted to a stop. True looked out to see a massive walled structure, at whose base lay a motley arrangement of makeshift shelters teeming with ragged, unwashed children playing in refuse. “Hey!” True called to the driver. “This isn't the palace.” His Spanish was broken, but he was sure he could be understood, and equally sure he wasn't mistaken. He'd seen the palace the week before on a drive with Don Raphael. This was someplace else. Somewhere he instinctively knew he didn't want to be. He climbed out of the coach and shouted up at his impassive driver. “I'm supposed to go to the president's palace. The palace!”

The children shouted. A half dozen women emerged from the shacks and ran toward the gates as they groaned open, only to be battered aside by five soldiers and an officer who marched toward the coach.

“What the hell?” True asked, confused and reverting to English.

“A close approximation, Mr. Paxton,” a voice said from behind him. Recognizing the voice, True whirled about in time to see Luther O'Shannon, bristling in the gold and silver braid of a Mexican officer, step around the coach and salute. He was not smiling. “My compliments, Mr. Paxton. And welcome to Ciudadela Prison.”

True lunged. A musket stock cracked against his skull. He hit the ground face first, tasted dirt, heard the racket of the coach as it drove off. Only dimly aware of what was happening, he saw his blood upon the earth, and then the clear blue sky as a booted foot dug into his side and rolled him over. A roaring sound filled his ears and the sky began to spin. High over him, bending lower, Luther O'Shannon's face loomed, and he was vaguely conscious of the critically important petition being plucked from his breast pocket. He tried to speak, but his voice faded as the face receded and he slipped into the abyss of unconsciousness.

“What did he say?” the officer asked.

“Elizabeth,” O'Shannon replied, remembering in time to revert to Spanish. “I believe he said, ‘Elizabeth.' His wife.”

“Ah …” the officer replied knowingly. “A wife. Another wife to join the others. Always they come to wait and beg for news. They give themselves to the guards for carrying messages and food to their husbands inside. His wife will come also, to offer herself, no?”

“Perhaps,” O'Shannon said, his eyes narrowing with anticipation. “Perhaps, Captain. But not to the guards.”

Chapter XXVII

On the sixty-sixth day after True left, toward the end of May and with the late spring sunshine warm around her shoulders, Elizabeth carved another notch in the corner gate post of the corral. Sixty-six, she repeated to herself. Two months and six days. There was some hope in the number. He had been gone one week longer than Don Raphael had estimated; with luck he would return before too many more notches had been carved. A muffled curse and a jingle of harness from the stable told her that Firetail was saddled and, in retaliation, had probably tried to take a bite out of Hogjaw's leg or rear. Elizabeth smiled and ran back to the cabin to put away the knife and close up.

“Mule marrow! If this horse were mine, he wouldn't be for long!” the mountain man shouted, emerging from the stable.

“Now, Hogjaw, you just need patience,” Elizabeth called back. She adjusted her bonnet, closed the door after her, and checked once again to make sure the coins she carried wrapped in a kerchief were safely pinned in her pocket. “Firetail will grow to like you.”

“No, ma'am. No, he won't. And I won't grow to like him, neither. That way we understand each other right from the start.”

Hogjaw had been furious when he returned from his buffalo hunt with the Mackenzie boys and learned True had undertaken such a fool venture as going to Mexico City without him. That night he had prowled the streets of San Antonio and looked for someone to fight, but finding a scarcity of volunteers, had decided to hie himself out to the farm where he could build a shelter and camp out until True returned. After all, it might be a Comanche spring. One never knew. That no such trouble had come along didn't matter. There had been work enough to keep him occupied. He'd finished the stable True had started and built a smokehouse from scratch. Now, faced with the prospect of totally rebuilding the outhouse if he didn't want to go crazy with boredom—a one-armed man and a woman should have gotten help in the first place—he was damned well ready for True to get back. Ever optimistic, he shaded his eyes and inspected the semicircle of trees where the San Antonio River looped back on itself.

Hoping for a second that Hogjaw had spied True emerging from the shaded distance, Elizabeth looked also and saw nothing but the willows and a hawk carving lazy circles in the still sky. “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I guess I'm about ready.”

Hogjaw spat to one side, handed Firetail's reins to her. “Reckon I'll ride with you, if you don't mind,” he said.

“Of course not. Is something the matter?”

“Should there be?” he snapped in return.

“No,” Elizabeth answered, taken aback by his anger. “I just—”

“Ah, hell, Elizabeth. I'm sorry. Edgy, I reckon.” He sniffed the air like an old buck antelope searching for trouble. “Too damned quiet! Seems likely we ought to have some unfriendly visitors or somethin'. Makes me nervous when things go right for too long.” The mountain man disappeared into the stable and came out a few moments later with the pack horse and the long-eared, narrow-faced Mama, the mule he had ridden farther in the past five years than most men rode in a lifetime. “Damn good thing I'm along,” he grumped, slinging his rifle over his shoulder before mounting. “Little girl like you ridin' unarmed—it's plumb loco. Well, you comin' or not?”

The day was beautiful. High cumulus clouds bloomed across a sky that was blue beyond imagination. The land was dappled with vibrant colors: red Indian paintbrush, dusky blue-bonnets, bright yellow prickly pear blossoms alive with bumble bees, and everywhere the green of spring-lush grass. As always, Elizabeth experienced initial delight, and then a steadily increasing tension as she neared Lottie's place. The conflict and tension between them had never been resolved, rather lay festering like an old wound that refused to heal. The two sisters were careful to be polite to each other, but if Elizabeth had ever hoped their relationship would reach beyond the obligatory support required by the frontier setting in which they lived, she was soon disabused of the notion. The most recent example involved Joseph's daily ride to check on Elizabeth. Lottie had accompanied him on the fourth day, and her resentment was obvious. Elizabeth almost pointed out that True hadn't left simply to inconvenience Lottie, but held her tongue. There was no sense in arguing. True was a natural leader, and she was quickly learning to put up with the occasional jealousy and bad feelings that leadership naturally engendered.

Joseph and Lottie had built their place some two miles north and east of True and Elizabeth. Slightly hillier there, their homestead lay off the trail in a shallow valley through which ran a small but ever-running spring-fed creek. As the trail dropped into the valley, Elizabeth found herself reigning Firetail to a stop. Joseph and Lottie's cabin had been built at the base of a bluff that protected them from the north wind. A stable and corral lay fifty yards to the west, the smokehouse and another small outbuilding to the east along the bluff. Hogjaw's help notwithstanding, each of them looked more complete and finished than Elizabeth's buildings, the result, no doubt, of True's broken arm and then his absence.

“We goin' to San Antone or not?” Hogjaw asked.

“Wait.” Elizabeth glimpsed movement in the open doorway of the cabin and shaded her eyes against the morning sun. A moment later Lottie, her belly distended with child, stepped into the yard and moved toward the garden she had planted between the house and the smokehouse.

Suddenly, the antagonism between the two of them seemed to Elizabeth more like the dull ache of a deep bruise that one wished, more than anything else, would go away and leave one in peace. She was tired of the uncomfortable chance encounters, the awkward unexpected meetings. She was sickened by their childish, petty bickering. She was ashamed of her own apparent inability to understand and forgive and love. And she remembered how frightened Mildred Thatch had been of having her baby in the wilderness. Lottie probably felt the same way, but was too proud to take the first step or ask for help. And Elizabeth had been too proud to offer.

“Well?” Hogjaw asked, startling her.

Elizabeth spurred Firetail, caught up with the mountain man, and reined in. “Here's the money and the list of things I want,” she said, handing him the knotted kerchief. “You'll get them for me, won't you? I was just looking for an excuse to see if there was any word from True or Don Raphael.”

Puzzled, Hogjaw scratched beneath his cap. “I don't understand. Where are you gonna be?”

“Where I should have been a long time ago.” She smiled, and briefly rested her hand on his arm. “You know how it is between Lottie and me, Hogjaw. Maybe it isn't too late, though. I'll be with her, and I'll watch for you on your way back this afternoon. Just give a yell.” She wheeled Firetail. “Or come sit,” she called over her shoulder. “We'll have fresh coffee for you.”

Hogjaw watched her go, at last gave Mama a nudge and started her down the trail. “Come on, old lady,” he said. “People are comin' to their senses back there. Be nice to see for a change, but we'd best leave 'em to their privacy.”

Far behind him, Lottie heard the horse approach and looked up as Elizabeth brought Firetail to a halt at the edge of the garden. “Good morning,” Lottie said guardedly. Smudged dirt tracks, the paths of tears, streaked her cheeks. “You need something?”

Elizabeth didn't answer immediately, rather dismounted and looked around. The wagon was gone, which meant Joseph was either out hauling wood or had gone to town. A faint column of smoke rose from the cabin chimney. A cow and her calf stood silently in the corral. Slowly, Elizabeth climbed through the fence and stepped across the rows of onions and carrots and turnips, then stood staring down at her sister where she bent over the soil. Lottie started to speak, caught her breath as the child in her womb kicked. She gasped, clutched at the earth, and turned her face to hide the new tears that welled in her eyes. Suddenly, Elizabeth knelt at her side and put her arms around her.

And then they were both crying.

Lottie had cleaned house, bathed, and fixed lunch by the time Elizabeth finished in the garden. “You never could bring in a garden,” Elizabeth chided, dumping a double handful of baby carrots and onions she'd thinned from the thickly planted rows onto the drainboard. “Vegetables have to be coaxed from the ground. It's like getting a young'un to take his castor oil, it takes patience and coddling,” she added, recalling one of her grandfather's axioms.

“That may be true,” Lottie said, laughing. She pulled an apple pie out of the oven and held it under Elizabeth's nose. Juice bubbled up through the slits in the golden crust. “But you never could bake.”

Elizabeth sniffed. “Mmm! Touché.” She watched as Lottie placed the pie on the windowsill to cool. “I'll forgive you your garden if you'll forgive me my pies. Even Stephen?”

Eyes bright with happiness, the two sisters embraced. “Even Stephen,” Lottie said. “Darn!” She stepped back, wiping the tears from her face. “You've got me started again.”

“Nothing that a little food won't help,” Elizabeth said, walking to the sink and tipping some water into the wash basin. Working the lather under her nails, she began to scrub her hands. Lottie had added lilac to her soap. The scent reminded Elizabeth of the Pennsylvania farm and the sachet their grandmother had kept in her linen closet. “However did you get lilac?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Joseph found a bush growing next to the foundation of a house he ran across up in the hills. Earlier settlers, we think.” Lottie dished out stew for both of them, reheated some cornbread left over from the night before, and poured two glasses of buttermilk. “It was either razed or else it just burned down by itself. We're going to try to plant some here. It'll look pretty out front, don't you think? Or maybe,” she said laughing, “I'll put it all around the outhouse.”

They both ate ravenously. The buttermilk was tart and refreshing, the cornbread delicious, and no stew ever tasted better. Best of all, between eating and washing dishes and making coffee, there was time to talk. Talk of memories of childhood, talk of the new world they'd found, of their husbands in particular and the foibles of men in general. Talk to fill in the six-month gap of their lives as sisters, and to forge, at last, a closeness they had never felt before.