A Lady Bought with Rifles (18 page)

What had Felipe tried to say about Trace? Would Trace care a little when he heard what had happened to me? Glancing around at the desperate little band, I wondered what
would
happen. They had spared me because I had helped Sewa, but if food ran short, if I became a danger—We rode for the mountains, grim and desolate in the distance.

As the shock of the massacre was dulled by growing weariness, thoughts trailed wispily through my mind. Perhaps we could persuade this band to leave us with Cruz? But if he had a sworn enemy in the group, that would imperil him. Or what if Court Sanders would pay a ransom? The Yaquis needed money for buying weapons in Arizona. Court might prefer to play Reina's game, of course; she'd probably pay him well to leave me in Yaqui hands. But he
might
help. There were no certainties left, only mights and maybes and ifs. I put the crucifix around my neck. It was not valuable and no one seemed to care.

We paused once and I was given a swallow of water from a skin. In halting Yaqui I asked Domingo if he didn't want to ride now.

“I can walk.” He shrugged. “I am strong. It is not far.”

We rode through a narrow defile. It opened into a valley that twisted between fierce, gaunt little hills that looked as if the sun had baked them, like unglazed pottery, into their present shape without giving them time to grow. We came to what seemed to be sheer rock wall. I hoped we would stop here, but Lío rode to the end of the barrier, where, hidden by an overlapping cliff, there was a passage just broad enough for a horseman.

Above us was a fissure of sky, dazzling with just the edge of the sun. Numbed, inert, I longed to rest, but also dreaded the time when we would, for then life would start again, the need to think, decide, act. While we journeyed everything else was suspended. Already I could scarcely remember where we had begun—the fat woman and her skinny man, the young married couple, the half-split-open American. It was a flash of nightmare, not experienced enough to believe. And what lay ahead I could not even guess. It was as if I'd been born to ride with these silent people through the narrow canyons of their hidden fastnesses, never looking back, never arriving.

“Here.” A voice jarred me from the haze. Domingo gave me a hand down. My legs buckled and I stumbled against him. He braced himself and let me lean against him till blood tingled in my feet and my mind cleared from the hypnosis of shock and exhaustion.

We were in a high basin ringed by palisades and shallow caves. Six ramadas extended from cliffside depressions and what seemed about a hundred children, women, and men hurried out to greet the raiders and exclaim over their booty.

“Food!” cried one seam-faced old woman. “We need flour and beans more than clothes and jewelry.”

“True,
mama grande
,” placated Lío. “We brought the food on the train, but there was not much of use that could be carried. We can exchange the jewels for food, though, and for guns and ammunition.”

The horses and mules were unloaded and left to graze at the far side of the basin. Clothing was piled up and a feast prepared from what had been salvaged from the train kitchen: ham, loaves of bread, preserves, cheese. But remembering Felipe and the others who would eat no more, I only drank water and forced down a little bread.

Sewa sat by me near a rock outside a ramada and Domingo joined us. He was fascinated by Ku or Sewa or both, and I was glad someone near her age was being friendly. Several of the older people came to speak with the child about her slaughtered family.

The old woman, Camilda, embraced Sewa and told her she was ceremonial kin to one of Sewa's dead uncles. She offered to let Sewa live with her and an astonishing collection of relations by blood, marriage, and ceremony, but when Sewa asked if there was room for me, Camilda's wrinkled face tightened.

“We are too many now for one ramada,” she said, and went back to the feast.

“You would think her thatch was a bishop's palace,” scoffed Domingo. “Stay in my cave, lady.” He pointed to a grotto some-distance from the others. “There is room for all three of us and your Ku bird, little Sewa.”

She laughed. The sound and the sparkle of her eyes was a marvel and wound to me after what had happened that day, but I had to remember she was back with her people after what had amounted to captivity, no matter how I cherished her.

“We will be a family,” she said, grasping my hand and hugging Ku. She hesitated. “But, Domingo, your parents—”

“They are dead.” Pain convulsed his young mouth for a second before he stilled his face. “Tula is my sister, but I do not live with her. I was better alone. Till now.”

A fire was lit as twilight settled. From the discussion of the men I gathered that three of them would take the money and jewelry. One would buy as much food as possible in a village a day's ride away and the other two would travel to Arizona for guns and ammunition.

Summoning my courage, for my impulse was to remain unnoticed as long as it was allowed, I straightened my clothing and ventured into the shifting glow of light. Tula sat near Lío and I spoke to her in Spanish, for though I was understanding more Yaqui, I couldn't say anything very complex in it.

“I think I can only be a problem for you. You know the Mina Rara?”

She nodded, ruddy light defining the angles of her face, accentuating her smoldering gaze. “We know it. Some of us have relatives there.”

“The superintendent, Court Sanders, knows me. I think he would pay if you would let me go.”

Tula threw back her head. Laughter pulsed from her throat. “And then you could tell the soldiers and
rurales
where we are and that we killed the train passengers.”

“I would not tell.”

Tula rolled a corn shuck around black tobacco, lit it at the fire, and deliberately blew smoke at me. “I do not believe you.”

“But you can't keep me here forever!” I cried desperately.

“
I
would have left you at the train,” she said, and there was no mistaking what she meant.

“Please.” I loathed begging but feared what might happen if I didn't force a decision now. “I swear I will not betray you. I am sorry for what is happening to your people. The money Sanders would pay for me could buy many guns.”

Lío stirred himself, staring at me through eyes that were narrowed slits. “Sanders' woman?” he asked in halting Spanish.

I shook my head, flushing with embarrassment. “My father owned the mine.”

Lío really sat up. “Don Jonathan?” he asked slowly. “Your father was Jonathan Greenleaf?”

“Yes.”

“And you helped the child Sewa.”

“I could not do much.”

Lío pondered a moment, shoulders hunched in a bull-like posture that made him seem solid and lasting as the boulders around us. “You shall go to Mina Rara and not for money,” he said at last.

“Lío!” blazed Tula, catching his arm. “She will tell where we are! If it's known we did the killing today, we will be hunted more than ever and already we live in fear of our lives, stealing enough grain to survive!”

“She is Don Jonathan's daughter. I accept her word.”

“And what was this Don Jonathan, this Englishman, to you?” the woman sneered.

Lío spoke heavily, a bull trying to elude a stinging fly. “My father worked at the mine and was hurt in a fall. Don Jonathan had a doctor for him, gave him his house and enough to keep our family till I was old enough to work.”

“A man preserves his beasts of burden,” said Tula.

“No. Don Jonathan kept us alive, in decency, for five years when there was no man working and six children to be fed. We were not beasts to him. We were people.”

“You are a great fool, Lío!”

He shrugged. “Nevertheless.”

“At least get money for her.”

“My father had the money many years ago.”

She got up and walked away with an angry swing of her rounded hips outlined by my divided skirt. “In a few days,” Lío told me. “In a few days I will send you to the mine.”

“Sewa? May I keep her with me?”

He scowled, leaning his chin on his knee, and sighed. “Let me think. She may need you now and she would be safer with you, but can we let her forget her people?” I would have spoken but he waved me off. “Let me think,” he repeated. “And let me set your mind at rest on one point. My men might kill you but they won't rape.”

Back at the grotto, Domingo had made a large communal nest for us, two straw mats beneath, a horse-and-smoke-pungent serape, several shawls from the train pillage, and a ragged tarpaulin. It was cool now in this higher region, and we soon arranged ourselves, Sewa in the middle, Ku at her head under a protecting ledge. Stars winked above the palisades and talk went on in the other ramadas and around the fire, but we were soon asleep, sharing our warmth, joined by the rising and falling of our breath.

Three men left next morning with jewels, watches, and money. The pair bound for Tucson wouldn't be back for weeks, but the one sent to buy food in the village might return next day. He was also carrying such clothing as was not needed by the people in the basin to give a Yaqui group hiding out in another canyon. Lío had told me to select a dress and I'd found one of my own in the pile, so I no longer needed Tula's rags.

There was coffee from the train for breakfast, and old Camilda gave us some tortillas. Domingo went off hunting with some of the men. Most of the women were busy altering and devising garments from those looted from the train, though they did carry water from a spring to the squash, corn, bean, and melon patches in the center of the basin. They watched me curiously and a few talked with Sewa, but we were mainly left to ourselves.

“I wanted to stay with you,” she told me. “Will Señor Sanders permit it?”

“The question is, will Lío?”

“I am lame,” she said matter-of-factly. “And this band has enough children. He will let me go.”

“I hope so,” I said and turned to greet Camilda, who had come to ask for the third time all the details of the destruction of Sewa's family.

I diverted the old woman's attention by asking how long the band had been in this basin. “Since spring,” she said and went on to tell how they were remnants of several
rancherías
that had been raided and the strong adults sent off to Yucatán as slaves.

“I had a good house,” she lamented. “My two sons and their families lived with me. They were farmers and hunters. We always had enough to eat and could even hold
fiestas
. Where are they now, my daughters, my strong sons-in-law?” Weaving her gnarled hands together, she swayed and intoned her answer. “Antonio they shot, and my daughter, too, when she clung to his body. Chepa and Pablo were marched away with their oldest son. The two small children were given away like pups or cats, I suppose, to be brought up as Mexicans or slaves. May God damn these devils for what they do to us.”

As the day wore on and I met other women, I heard variations, over and over, of the same story. There was not a person in camp who hadn't lost family in the government raids, not a person who didn't burn for vengeance. But they were facing the fact that they'd have to live indefinitely in the wilderness and were beginning to build homes for the winter—adobes, not the traditional mud and wattle or airy cane houses sufficient in the frost-free valley. Soldiers had come near them many times, but the solid-appearing rock wall had so far deceived their enemies.

Lío, Tula, and the men had struck at different Mexican ranches, stealing all the food they could get, terrorizing these intruders on Yaqui land. Any time they saw a military force that wasn't vastly superior in numbers, Lío devised a way to ambush it. In the past four months, the band must have killed five times their number of soldiers. If only they had enough guns. That was the refrain.

Though Lío was the acknowledged leader, he was not despotic. Camilda scolded him for snoring the night before, and he spent the afternoon consulting with Tula and the men about a proposed expedition against Mexicans who had taken up land of deported Yaquis along the river of the Eight Sacred Pueblos. Even so, he found time to admire Ku and teach Sewa a new tune on the flute. Tula didn't like this, scowled from a distance, and finally called him.

That night one of the men played a yucca fiddle and Tula sang with a wild sadness that stirred the blood, watching Lío, making it an intimate plaint. When Domingo, Sewa, Ku, and I settled to rest, it seemed we had been together a long time.

Lookouts were posted at various points, both for defense and to spot possible sources of booty and any groups of soldiers or
rurales
the band could hope to vanquish. “We nibble like ants at a carcass,” Lío had said the day before. “Yet I have seen many a bull or stallion stripped to the bone by the little warriors.”

Several days passed uneventfully. I hoped Lío would send me to the mine soon but feared to press. Then one morning we woke to a flurry in camp, saddling up, horses whinnying. “Do you want to go with us, young one?” Lío called to Domingo. “There are a dozen well-equipped Mexicans riding past the canyon, and most have good rifles, Paco says. We can keep their best horses and slaughter and eat our worst ones.”

Domingo looked at Sewa, who had waked and was watching him with fatalistic knowledge that was terrible to see in so young a face. What lay ahead for these two who had already endured horrors that most people seldom even hear of? I hoped to protect Sewa, but what could become of Domingo, hiding and fighting till the inevitable final crushing of his people?

As Domingo hesitated, Tula strode over. “Up!” she told him. “Have you become a girl child?” She thrust a tortilla into his hand. “Eat and get your horse.”

Domingo sighed. His hand brushed Sewa's cheek. Yesterday's leisure with Sewa and Ku must have been like an echo of his lost childhood, sweeter for being irrevocably lost.