A Lady Bought with Rifles (41 page)

I had told him as I helped him dress that Caguama was showing us the way to California because I couldn't agree with Papa that he should go away to school.

“Papa will be angry,” Jon remarked.

“Yes, he will, but I don't think he has the right to make such a decision.” A sudden thought struck me and I caught his hands. “Would you rather do what he says, Jon? Are you afraid to go with me?”

“Caguama's going?”

“Yes.” Court would be furious to know that a Seri led him in his supposed son's affections.

Jon hugged me hard. “I want to go with you, Mama. Don't worry, I'll take care of you. Maybe we can kill a shark with my harpoon.”

“Gracious, I hope not. Here, stamp down hard in the boot.”

Ruiz's killing and the need for immediate action had dispelled my slight tipsiness. The air was cool and the summer heat wouldn't become formidable till late morning when it should be safe enough to rest. The full moon washed rocks, brush, stunted trees, and cholla with luminous silver. We seemed to move in a dream across an eerie landscape that stayed remarkably the same, exchanging one line of small jagged hills for another as we kept to the passes or high plateaus.

Yet, though the surroundings seemed unreal, that sense of awakened life after years of mechanical functioning permeated every tissue of my body and brain. I breathed deep; my blood tingled, objects stood out in sharp relief. Could it make so much difference, acting from my own will rather than Court's?

It seemed to. I was excited and eager more than afraid. Jon perked up and chatted with Caguama for a while, demanding to hear tales of the country we would traverse, before he nodded off to sleep again, secure on the back of his beloved
burro
. That reminded me of Cascos Lindos' first owner, Sewa. Strange to think that a leader of warriors had once doted on a little donkey called Ratoncita, shot by Reina and replaced by the sturdy animal clopping surefootedly along.

Did Sewa remember those days? How did she think of me? In my rush of revived feeling, I ached to see her and wondered if that could ever be. If Court divorced me and lost his legal authority over me, it would be possible to return to Mexico, possible, perhaps, to find Sewa again. If she wanted to be found. Was she truly La Grulla?

But that lay far ahead. I walked till my feet hurt, rode till my thighs ached, then walked some more while the Big Dipper swung slowly around and the Polestar glittered. Out here one was very conscious of the sky.

At last I had to call a halt. Caguama could probably have walked till this time tomorrow night, but I mustn't exhaust myself and be a hindrance later. We ate and drank sparingly, rested a half-hour, and started on, paused again at sunrise, took off the animals' packs, and let them browse for an hour. I worried about their water, but Caguama said there was a seep-filled spring halfway through the next defile, and anyway the
burros
could last for several waterless days.

It was by this little water hole nestled between steep canyon walls that we made our long stop shortly before noon. The
burros
sucked up water and rolled in the sand, meandered along the valley, browsing off trees and shrubs. Even after six years in Mexico, I couldn't believe how animals subsisted, and wondered what they'd do if they were miraculously set down in a lush English meadow.

Wetting a cloth in the seep, I washed Jon and told him to lie on the blanket Caguama had spread under a rock outcropping shielded by an ironwood tree. After I had cleaned off my own top layer of dust and perspiration, I wrung out the cloth in more water and stretched it over Jon's forehead. He was flushed and there was no breeze at all.

I poured some of our drinking water on the dried fruit to soften and swell it. Caguama said that the seep water, though drinkable, could give us stomach cramps and that we should use our own supply since we'd reach sweet water in two days and could refill our bags then.

I looked at him with great respect and thankfulness, laughed ruefully. “Caguama, it's good to know there's water two days from here, and that you can find it. If you hadn't come with us, I'm afraid that right about now is when I'd decide that I mustn't risk causing Jon's death and I'd turn back.”

“But I am I here,” Caguama pointed out. “And my people have lived along this coast since the world was set up, when the great turtle raised up the land on her back. We know what we must know to stay alive.”

We ate softened fruit and chewed the leathery dried meat. “Sleep, lady,” urged Caguama. “I will rest down the canyon a little way so that I will hear anything approaching.”

I scrambled under the ledge beside Jon, made a hollow in the fine silt for my hip, and was asleep before I could feel uncomfortable.

It seemed only minutes before I roused to the muffled sound of the
burros
' feet. They were drinking again. Lifting Jon, I gave Caguama the blanket to go into a pack and helped Jon get on his boots. The sun was still too handbreadths above the horizon, but the grilling heat was over till next morning.

Freshened by his nap, Jon peppered Caguama with rapid-fire questions. How far was the sea? Would we meet Caguama's family? Would he make a boat? Where were the sharks? To this flood of queries Caguama responded with patience, promising that when we reached the sea we would feast.

Cabrilla, pompano, pargo flamenco, blanquillo, ronco, sardina, salema, corvina
—hundreds of kinds of fish whose names made a song; lobster, turtles, and there were clams to be picked up, scallops pried from rocks in the sea.

“We never understood why people bother with cattle and plowing when there is so much to eat in the sea,” said Caguama, grinning. “Ever since the Ancient of All Pelicans flapped his wings, there have been sea and sky. It was only later that the giant sea turtle heaved up from the sea to make land.” He added, being fair, “Of course, along the coast there is not much for cows to eat and the land is not good to farm. Those who want herds and crops must go inland, where they can't watch the sea.”

The note of longing made me say, “You must have missed it very much, Caguama.”

“Yes. I was taken by the Army while I was working for a rancher near Caborca, saving for a bride. Brides are expensive. I thought to pay in silver rather than by working for her family for many years.”

“Do you think she will still be unmarried?”

“For sure she is gone by now. But I have saved most of my wages. If I go back to my people one day, I can have the prettiest girl to be found.”

“You won't go back soon, Caguama?” beseeched Jon. “I'd be lonesome without you, especially since we've left Mina Rara.”

“Jon, don't be selfish,” I admonished, but Caguama grinned pleasedly and gave Jon's head a caress.

“I will stay till you no longer need me,” he promised. “The sea will wait. But it will be good to smell the water again and eat what we'll catch in my net. I'll show you how to cast it, Juanito.”

Jon gave a wiggle of excitement and I was glad he had the promise of adventures to help him endure the relentless traveling we must keep to for at least a few more days.

We rested that day in a cave hollowed by the elements in the side of a craggy mountain. Down in a wash Caguama dug in the silt till he reached wet sand. Gradually it filled with water, and the
burros
could drink.

“It's the rainy season,” Caguama explained. “Water runs off fast, but some sinks down and it's not too hard to reach it now. In dry time—” He shrugged expressively.

When Jon and I woke, a breeze was stirring the heat, breaking its suffocating intensity, and there was something else different, a tantalizing odor of a fragrant mesquite fire.

Jon sprang up, sniffing, and would have made for the small fire over which browning meat sputtered on a wood spit if I hadn't hauled him back to put on his boots.

“Didn't you sleep?” I reproached Caguama, pulling on my own boots and pushing back my hair. How stiff and dirty it felt! When we reached that good plentiful water promised for tomorrow, I would wash my hair and bathe. I had brought two bars of perfumed soap.

“I set a snare,” He laughed. “It took a rabbit while I dreamed of harpooning turtles.”

Very good rabbit it was, flavored with wild herbs, and we had dessert, too, for after we started out we found wild fig trees, roots white and gnarled as their trunks, exposed for a hundred feet down the side of the cliff. Caguama scaled up and brought down several handfuls of small figs. We munched some and saved the rest.

We had a rifle, but Caguama didn't want to use it for fear of attracting attention. “Wild pig is good meat,” he said. “But not worth using a rifle and I don't have a bow.” He touched the ironwood mallet with which he'd killed Ruiz. “I might kill pig with this, but they are mean and have very wicked teeth.”

“We have plenty of food,” I comforted. “Besides, won't we soon be eating those wonderful fish?”

Next day, when the noon heat was making Jon look alarmingly flushed and my lips were so cracked and sore that I could scarcely move them, we ascended a ravine that dropped away into a small high amphitheater of rocks. Strange formations reared among clumps of real grass and several large mesquite trees cast inviting shade. Most delicious of all was a series of small pools scattered in rock hollows and fed from a spring in the cliff.

The
burros
slanted their ears and made for the water. Jon pulled off his boots and clambered into a small pool, willing to be clean if it meant cool. Caguama sloshed water over his face and arms. So did I, promising myself a bath and shampoo later. We all drank, cupping our hands and catching up the laughing crystalline water flowing out of grim rock. Only those who live in the desert can value water at its true worth. After this journey I would always perfer it to any other drink.

After we'd eaten our water-softened fruit and tough dry meat, Jon and Caguama lay down under one big mesquite and I luxuriated in soaping my hair and naked body in the lowest pool, rinsing off as new water tumbled down the haphazard incline. There were many tracks around the pool; deer, coyote, others I didn't recognize. We wouldn't keep the wild creatures from their water long and I was glad Caguama didn't want to use the rifle. It seemed unfair to kill animals coming to drink, thirsty as we had been thirsty.

I dried in the sun, tossing my hair in my hands till it was only faintly damp. Then I lay on the blanket Caguama had spread for me under another mesquite, reveling in the pleasure of being clean and comfortable. We slept till the sun was down and all of us, including the
burros
, were sorry to leave the clear water, trees, and grass.

As we journeyed in the trancelike moonlit hours, the country began to alter. The ground was flintier, crumbled disconcertingly; cardones were much larger than any tree; ocotillos were thorned, graceful, small-leaved fountains shooting from the ground, rippled in the breeze. Some kinds of cholla seemed furred with silver while others resembled many-pronged stag antlers or massed grapes drooping from overburdened limbs.

The breeze was almost chill. There was something different in it, a stinging tanginess. Caguama stopped, breathing long and deep.

“The sea.” He might have been called a loved one's name. “I feel it again, smell it. We have almost reached the sea.”

His home. I was glad for him, glad that Jon gave him an ecstatic hug. But at the same time I wondered if my son and I could find a home, ever, anywhere, without Trace. There would be places to live, of course, and in time I hoped we could return to Las Coronas. But without Trace, at least for me, there would be no true home.

We rested for a while, traveled on, and when the sun rose from hills on our right, it glimmered on the sea, vast, still, and turquoise, the very shade of my one love's eyes.

19

We traveled through small hills and piled sandstone cliffs above the sea, and the
burros
found what they could. We still rested in the heat of the day, but we also slept at night, relaxing the grueling pace of the first days. Most of our day stops were spent along the beach and each brought the waves' bounty. It seemed to me we ate scores of kinds of fish, broiled over coals till they were crisp and golden.

Jon was disappointed that no huge turtles appeared for him to harpoon, but he learned to swing a small net and grew skillful with the small harpoon Caguama made for him to replace the one left at Mina Rara.

I loved to wade in the tide pools, admire shells of all sizes and shapes gleaming against the rocks and moss. Sand dollars and sea urchins, sea cucumbers, starfish, and red, white, yellow, and green seaweed washed in, too; I found it endlessly fascinating to perch where the waves churned up and admire what they left behind. My favorite shells were the small white spirals, worn away to ivorylime hollow ornaments. I felt myself rather like a bit of driftwood or clean-rinsed shell that rested on the sand after a wild storm.

One day we came upon dozens of brown sea lions basking on white reefs. They barked at us and dived into the water. Caguama laughed. He sang to them, high and sweet and deep and low, and they played and cavorted, coming up to Jon as he splashed gleefully among them, as curious about him as he was about them.

That was the same day we saw a whale spouting and scores of dolphins leaping into the air. There were nearly always dolphins or porpoises, which Caguama said meant that no sharks were in the area. There were many kinds of whales, he said, and numerous sharks. Stingrays had to be watched for and jellyfish could give painful stings.

Sometimes, while we rested, Caguama taught us the songs he sang to seals and whales and told us how in the beginning all animals and people could speak together and lived in peace.

“In the evenings, they would all come in to the campfire—the badger, raccoon, puma, bighorn, deer, coyote, wolf, birds, too, and seals, while whales and dolphins and even sharks swam close in the waters to hear and tell stories. The great sea turtles still know our language, and when one lets herself be caught, she is brought to camp, her shell is painted, and she is entertained with songs and dancing and games for four days before she is eaten.”