The Shadow Man (12 page)

“The hacienda was built around a spring. It comes out of the ground in the main patio, then flows out under the wall in a channel too small for a man to crawl through. Beyond the wall, the water irrigates the garden in the summer season.”

Tamarron saw the garden, a large one, full of dead vegetation from the previous year's vegetables.

“How many families live here?” Jacob asked.

“There are six vaqueros with wives and children. With Father and Mother and Conrado and Julian, and counting you and me as one, there are nine families. And, of course, there are
las viejas,
the old ones who are the mothers of the vaqueros. The women's husbands have died and are buried in the cemetery behind the hacienda.”

“Nine fighting men. If we knew danger was coming and had time for everyone to get inside the hacienda, we could hold off a sizable force. When was the last time you had trouble?”

“We lose sheep and cattle to Indians all the time. But they don't take many at a time. However, there was a bad time for Apache attacks five years ago. We had to leave the hacienda and drive much of the livestock north to Las Vegas. All summer we couldn't return home because of raids. Twenty-two years ago was the worst time of all. The Navajo Indians were making war. My grandfather was killed, and many other people wounded.”

“Is that when you were hurt?” Jacob asked.

Petra nodded. “I was caught outside when the Navajo came screaming up from over there.” She pointed to the edge of the bluff overlooking the Pecos. “El Vado means ‘the ford.' The Navajo had crossed the ford of the river in the night. At daybreak they attacked. I was leaving with grandfather and riding to the north to check water holes. An arrow struck me in the face. The Indians cut me off from the house, so I whipped my horse around and rode into the woods. I hid there for two days. The Indians looked and looked for me, but I stayed hidden and they finally gave up and left. They had killed Grandfather.”

Jacob pictured the frightened and wounded girl hiding from the Indians. How had she managed not to be discovered by such skilled trackers? One day he would ask her for more details. But the expression on Petra's face said that now was not the proper time.

“There are plenty of people to help unload the wagons, so come and let me show you the hacienda,” said Petra.

Jacob heard the pride in Petra's voice and knew it was well earned. The house was a magnificent accomplishment in this remote place.

With Petra leading, they entered the cool, dim hacienda by a wide, covered passageway as deep as a room and barred with heavy wooden doors secured with massive iron locks. The walls were two feet thick and made of adobe, mud mixed with straw for strength. The ceiling beams were peeled pine poles, and over that peeled saplings had been laid in a herringbone pattern.

A score of doors and windows sheeted with gypsum or small panes of imported glass opened onto a large patio. Heavy, carved wooden shutters hung from iron hinges. Each wooden panel had a gun port cut through it. A roof, supported by wooden pillars, also handsomely carved and with scrolled
cochels,
extended four feet out over the patio.

To one side of the main patio was a smaller one. Petra explained that it was the oldest, having been part of the original construction. The large patio had come into being as the hacienda expanded to accommodate the growing population of the rancho.

There was a chapel with a bell from Mexico in a short belfry at the corner of the old patio. It was a plain room with an altar. A crucifix of dark wood stood between two tall candlesticks. A statue of Christ, carved to show his agony, with drops of blood in relief and painted red at brow and hands and feet, was suspended above the altar.

She showed him the
sala,
the great room of the hacienda, which was large enough for a dance. The walls were whitewashed with gypsum plaster. Over the walls were hung cotton cloth to protect clothing from the easily removed whitewash. The furniture was made of wood covered with velvet and leather. Several candelabra and oil lamps sat about. A wide, deep fireplace was at each end of the room. Iron fire tools sat on the wide hearths, and big mirrors hung beside each fireplace.

Petra guided Jacob through a dark storeroom hung with beef, mutton, and wild game. In another room there were dried fruits, vegetables, wheat, and corn in jars, and nuts in cloth bags.

The kitchen was broad and sported a long table. A fireplace for cooking, copper kettles, and an iron oven occupied one end of the room. At the opposite end a huge wooden cupboard held dozens of plates, dishes, cups, tumblers, and a pot for melting chocolate. The floor of the hallway to the kitchen was slightly concave, worn down by the treading of countless feet.

They peered into the living quarters of the vaqueros and peons, located around a patio in the northern part of the hacienda. Jacob noted loaded muskets hanging on racks, high up above the reach of children, in many of the rooms. He had seen similar ready armaments in the part of the house used by the Solis family. These people were prepared to defend their isolated home.

The entire house faced inward, and there were no windows in the outer walls. Thus they were solid against danger from Indians or
banditos
. The only openings were small strategically located gun ports with thick wooden covers that could be locked over them.

Outside the main house were chicken pens, a milk shed, a small corral, and the blacksmith area with its forge, anvil, and leather bellows.

Jacob and Petra halted their tour of the hacienda and returned to the wagons. Every man, woman, and child was working. Emmanuel and Señora Solis held positions between the vehicles and the buildings of the rancho. As the people came by carrying their load of food, medicines, tools, iron for the forge, building materials, and dozens of other things, Señor or Señora Solis directed them to the proper place for storage. Jacob saw that the aristocratic Solises had changed, becoming hardworking man and wife with a huge rancho to operate.

Petra climbed up into one of the wagons and removed a small package that was carefully wrapped in a thick blanket. “These are the four panes of glass for our new house,” she told Jacob.

“It won't be long before we need them,” Jacob replied. He watched Petra gingerly transport the precious sheets of fragile glass away for safekeeping.

He didn't go to help with the unloading, for it was nearly finished. Instead he watched the hustle and bustle of the people and recalled all the things he had seen during the tour of the house. A pleasant, comfortable feeling rose within him. Belonging to this tiny tribe of people might not be so bad. Yet the Rio Pecos country was a hostile, savage land.

Jacob rode with Emmanuel, Conrado, and the vaqueros across the gray, grass-covered hills lying west of the Rio Pecos. They searched for cattle and sheep that had been driven and scattered by the fierce winds of winter. In the cold months, the animals ate snow for the water they needed to survive. When the snow melted the moisture had collected in shallow, temporary pools. Soon those ephemeral supplies would be gone. To prevent the death of much livestock from thirst, the men worked from daylight to dark driving the beasts to the river or permanent springs.

Often the riders slept on the range where darkness caught them. They would stake out their mounts on the ends of long lariats to graze. Then, wrapped in sleeping robes, they lay upon the hard ground. Jacob often thought of Petra in those gloomy hours.

Near the end of March the flooding waters of the Rio Pecos subsided. The riders crossed the hard rib of stone that made El Vado, the ford, and rode for several days gathering sheep and cattle on the flat land of the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains.

Jacob saw small herds of buffalo and the big white wolves that always trailed and fed upon them. The truly large herds of thousands of buffalo were a hundred miles east. Now and then, bands of antelope appeared. Once a band of fifteen Indians sat for more than an hour on their mustangs beyond rifle range and watched him round up a flock of sheep and shove it toward the Pecos. The Indians vanished, riding to the east. Jacob saw the tracks of unshod mustangs again two days later and knew the Indians were spying on the Solises' riders.

One morning as the men saddled their mounts at the hacienda, Emmanuel came to Tamarron. “Come and ride with me for a couple of days, Jacob. There is something I want to show you.”

“Sure, Emmanuel,” replied Jacob. “I'll have Petra pack us some food.”

“I have already had
mi esposa
make us ready,” Emmanuel said. He lifted up a pack and tied it behind his saddle.

With a mellow rumble of hooves the two men left at a comfortable, rocking-chair gallop to the southeast. An hour later Emmanuel pulled rein and halted by a large boulder on the bank of the Pecos.

“See that big chipped mark on the rock, Jacob?” asked Emmanuel.

Jacob nodded. The mark was not new.

“My father and a Spanish government official put that sign there many years ago, in 1794. That boulder is the corner of the El Vado Land Grant that the king of Spain gave my father. The eastern boundary extends fifteen miles along the Rio Pecos. From here”—Emmanuel pointed to the west—”the boundary goes thirty-five miles in that direction, then fifteen miles to the north, then returns straight back to the Rio Pecos. The grant encompasses three hundred and eighteen thousand acres.”

“That is a very large rancho,” said Tamarron.

“It is indeed large. However, land on the Pecos is not nearly as valuable as on the Rio Grande. There's much more danger here from Indians and
banditos
. Because of that, all the area surrounding the grant is federal land, and open and free for our use. Actually we benefit from grazing our livestock on half a million acres or more. The Solis brand is on ninety thousand sheep and twelve hundred cattle. Now, let us ride the full length of the borders of the land, for I want you to know where they are located.”

As the two men rode westward across gently rolling hills, Jacob carefully evaluated the characteristics of the land lying outside the El Vado Grant. He searched to find a suitable homeside for Petra and himself, with water, wood, and grass. Before the fall arrived, he wanted a house and corrals built. Then he would purchase a base breeding herd of sheep and cattle from Emmanuel. When he had accomplished that, he would know that the direction of the rest of his life was set.

A night camp was made in the evening on the shore of a shallow lake of twenty acres or so. Emmanuel told Jacob that the lake was called Laguna de los Terreros. They sat before a fire of crackling mesquite and ate leisurely.

“Jacob, I know you desire your own rancho,” Emmanuel said. “That is a worthy ambition, and there's plenty of land for that. You are married to a Spanish woman, or I should say a Mexican woman, now that the revolution has happened. It would be easy for you to become a Mexican citizen. Then you could buy the land you want.”

“I have thought of becoming a citizen,” replied Jacob. “But I don't know if it's a good idea. We may go to war, Mexico and the United States. I could be of more use to the family as an American.”

“I have also considered that possibility. I agree with what you say. Until that matter is resolved, you could simply devise a brand for yourself and graze your livestock on the open federal land. Or graze them on El Vado, for there's surely ample grass for more animals.”

“Thank you for that generous offer,” Jacob said. He sensed the friendliness in the elder Solis. Recently even Conrado had spoken a few words to him. Jacob felt his growing involvement and attachment to the Solis family and the other inhabitants of the rancho.

He looked to the far north where the Sangre de Cristos Mountains rose as a dark blur on the evening horizon. The primeval mountains, often harsh and cold, but at times incredibly splendid, seemed now very far removed, and he heard no call from them.

* * *

The day was only a lighter shade of gray in the east when Jacob and the other men left the hacienda and assembled near the corral. Petra had followed him outside and now stood by the corner of the house. Jacob positioned himself so that he could see her dim form and at the same time listen to Emmanuel. Jacob was anxious for the work with the Solis riders to be finished so that he could go about his own business.

Emmanuel said, “The wool buyers from Chihuahua will be coming here with their wagons. An army patrol will escort them. All of this was arranged last autumn. That gives us two weeks to do our shearing. I have five skilled men coming from Las Vegas. They should arrive here today. You three”—Emmanuel gestured at the vaqueros—”will also shear. Even with eight of you working, we can only shear a small portion of all the sheep we have. But that will be enough to fill the wagons from Chihuahua. The wool buyers have also agreed to buy fifteen thousand sheep and take them to the markets in the south.

“Conrado and Jacob will herd the sheep to you.” Emmanuel looked at Jacob. “That is, Jacob, if you will work with us until the wagons arrive?”

Tamarron tried to see Petra's face. But in the deep morning dusk he couldn't tell if she wanted him to agree or to decline the request. For many days she'd been quite busy at some task at the hacienda. Probably making something for their new home, thought Jacob. The spring was still young, so he might as well give her additional time for the project.

“Certainly I'll help you a few days more,” Jacob told Emmanuel.

“Then it's settled. The shearing corral will need new willow stems added to repair the walls. You men who are shearers work on that this morning so everything will be ready. Conrado and Jacob will begin to bring the sheep in. Keep the corral full so that the shearers won't have to wait.”

The days passed, each one cresting at a temperature warmer than the one before. Hundreds of sheep were thrown to the ground and shorn of their long wool. The men labored, sweated, and cursed the contrary, kicking animals. As the mound of gray-white wool accumulated, it was crammed into a huge wooden press, compacted into dense blocks, and tightly bound.