DC03 - Though Mountains Fall (28 page)

“
So
much evil.”

Chapter 23

C
aleb brought the Hostetler boy home from Agua Nueva the next day, his jaw wired shut, splints on his hands and a bandage over his left eye. Rachel watched her dat drive slowly down the main road to the Hostetler place, watched him escort Joe into the house and watched him get back in his buggy and drive home. She knew what was coming and waited for her father alone in the kitchen garden with a hoe in her hands. There, no one would hear what was said.

———

“Tell me,” her father said, “did they do to her what I think they did?”

Rachel watched her hoe mechanically chopping weeds from between the tomatoes—she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Dat, I promised I would not tell.”

The lines in Caleb’s face deepened. “I see. So it is true. Do Atlee and Jemima know?”

Rachel looked her father in the eye. “No. Only me. Even Joe doesn’t know for sure, because he was unconscious through most of it. Please, Dat, Saloma feels bad enough. I warned her
that you would ask, and that I would not lie to you. She wanted me to make you promise that you would tell no one.”

He nodded slowly. “I understand. I will not speak of it to our people, but someone has to go have a talk with Captain Soto. This kind of thing can’t go unnoticed, unpunished. Something has to be done or none of our women will be safe.”

“It has to be
you
,” she said. “Please. You must not tell the bishop, or Atlee.
You
must go and talk to the federales.”

Caleb sighed. “I really don’t like that little captain, and I am weary of cleaning up Atlee’s messes for him. But you’re right. I’m the one.”

Caleb found Captain Soto in front of the church—or what used to be the church. He was watching from the portico while one of his lieutenants paraded a squad of soldiers back and forth in the open ground in front of him. Caleb climbed the steps with his hat in his hands, determined to give the captain the respect due his office, whether the
man
deserved it or not.

Soto ignored Caleb for a few minutes, shouting orders at the lieutenant, berating his men. He seemed in a foul mood until he turned to Caleb and grinned cordially.

“Good morning, Señor Bender. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“We have to talk,” Caleb said. “About a couple of your men.”

“Which ones? At present I have seventy-four in my command.”

“I only know the first names, and one is a nickname. The little one was called Melky, and the big one Toro. Do you know these men?”

Soto’s eyebrows went up. “Sí, of course I know them. I know all of my men—that is my business. Melquiades Chavez is a
corporal, and the one they call Toro is a new recruit. Those two are always up to some kind of mischief. What have they done now?”

“They beat up two teenagers from our settlement. I took one of them myself to the doctor in Agua Nueva. His fingers are broken and his jaw had to be wired shut. He won’t be able to open his mouth for weeks, and he almost lost an eye.”

“Ahh, they were fighting. Señor Bender, surely you understand that soldiers need to let off a little steam now and then. Fighting is not uncommon when they are—”

“It was not a fight,” Caleb said. “It was an unprovoked beating, pure and simple.”

Soto’s head tilted. “How can you know this? Were you there? The boy might have—”

“There was a girl, too. She was beaten nearly as bad as the boy.”

The grin disappeared from Soto’s face. He shouted one last order to his lieutenant, then took Caleb’s arm and walked him down the steps and around the side of the barracks. “We should discuss this in private,” he said, and didn’t utter another word until they were inside the little house that used to be Father Noceda’s rectory. The front room held a desk with a set of bookshelves behind it, but there were no books—only piles of papers and files. There were half a dozen chairs lining the walls, and a sawhorse on which rested a saddle that Caleb presumed belonged to Captain Soto because of the fine workmanship.

Soto dropped his hat on the desk and sat down, running his fingers through his hair. Caleb stood in front of the desk like a penitent, his hat still in his hands, waiting.

“They beat a girl?” Soto said.

“Sí. Very badly.” Caleb shifted his feet, undecided about
bringing up the other thing. He wanted to protect Saloma’s privacy if he could, but he would wait and see how things went.

“Still,” Soto said with a shrug, “it is possible the boy started the fight, and the girl only wandered into the middle of it.”

“No. You don’t understand. Our people don’t believe in fighting. This boy would never start a fight or take part in one.”

Soto leaned back in his desk chair now, eyeing Caleb suspiciously, tugging at the corner of his thin little mustache.

“Your people don’t fight?”

“No.”

A little grin crinkled the corners of the captain’s eyes. “This is what El Pantera told me the day we captured him, but I didn’t believe him. And I thought the
Catholic
superstitions were strange. So this is true? You don’t fight? At all?”

“Never.”

“But what about that young man of yours?”

“What young man?”

“The one who was there when I hung El Pantera. He was with you—the one El Pantera said killed one of his men.”

“You mean Jake Weaver.”

Soto leaned forward and pointed at him, warming to a debate. “You were there, Señor Bender, in the churchyard. I remember, El Pantera said this Jake surprised his man from behind while he was unarmed and strangled him with a chain. Is this not true?”

Caleb shifted uneasily and gave a shrug. “Sí. It happened, but not without reason. The man was attacking my daughter, and Jake pulled him off of her with his chain. He never meant to kill the bandit.”

“Oh, I see. He didn’t
mean
to kill the bandit, but he did fight. So how do you know this boy in the alley didn’t do something to provoke my men? Did he tell you how the fight started?”

“No, he still can’t speak, but the girl told my daughter. She
said two drunken soldiers jumped them in an alley, without provocation. The teenagers were looking for their father, Atlee Hostetler.”

“Ahh, I know this Atlee. A strange little man who comes to town and drinks mescal with my men—and tequila, when they have it. It was
his
children who were beaten?”

“Sí.”

Soto sat for a minute with his chin in his palm, staring out the window. Finally he turned back to Caleb with a sigh. “Well, I don’t doubt that what you’re saying is true, señor, but if you were not there and didn’t see what happened you have only the word of these two about what really took place, and my men will undoubtedly tell a different story. Perhaps you should tell this Atlee not to let his children wander the streets at night alone.”

Caleb could see how this would go. It was Saloma’s word against the soldiers. Those two monsters would simply lie and walk away. Nothing would be done to control the soldiers, and then what? What would happen next time? Caleb saw that he had no choice; he was going to have to raise the stakes.

“I
have
spoken to Atlee, for what it’s worth,” Caleb said. Then he leaned his fists on the front of the desk and looked the little officer cold in the eyes. “But it seems to me it would be the responsibility of the officer in command to see that his men don’t roam the streets at night, raping innocent girls.”

Soto’s head backed away and his eyebrows went up. “
Rape
? You did not tell me they raped the girl. Did she tell you this?”

“She told my daughter. No one else knows. It’s not the kind of thing we talk about.”

“You should have told me this from the beginning. A little fun, a little drinking, maybe a good-natured fistfight—these things are to be expected from off-duty soldiers in
any
army. But I cannot allow my men to rape civilian women. It stirs resentment
among the local people, and we must live with them. You are sure about this? It is a very serious charge.”

Caleb nodded. “Es verdad.”
It is true
.

“Can the girl identify the men?”

Caleb took a deep breath, let it out. “I would not want to put her through that. She is very hurt, very fragile.”

Soto gave this a dismissive wave. “No matter. In a case like this there are ways I can persuade Melky and Toro to tell me the truth. I will not have my men doing such things.” He rose from behind his desk and straightened his tunic. “Leave the matter to me, Señor Bender. I will get to the bottom of it, and when I do I will let you know the outcome. Buenos días.”

Driving home, it seemed to Caleb that Captain Soto had been extraordinarily civil, almost sympathetic. Perhaps there was a decent side to the captain after all. Maybe all it took was a little respect.

But we will see,
he thought. Soto’s actions would reveal far more than his words.

Three days later, as a squad of federales passed through the valley on their way home to El Prado after their daily patrol, one of them split off from the others and rode up Caleb’s lane. Caleb saw him coming and met him in front of the house.

The soldier looked to be about seventeen years old. A frayed secondhand uniform hung on his thin frame rather loosely so that he looked almost as ragged as the swaybacked paint he was riding.

“Señor Caleb Bender?”

“That’s me. What is it?” Caleb braced himself, expecting the young recruit to pilfer some vegetables from Mamm’s kitchen garden, or eggs, or a sack of oats. But he was wrong.

“Captain Soto wishes to see you,” the boy said. “At first light,
mañana
.”

Caleb nodded. “Tell him I will be there. Is this about the men who beat up the boy and girl?”

“Sí, I think so. My captain said to tell you that he wishes to make a gesture of goodwill.”

“Then tell him I will be bringing two other men with me. They have an interest in this matter.”

———

The next morning Caleb hitched his buggy before daylight and picked up Bishop Detweiler from the old Coblentz place. The house was now finished, a shiny new tin roof on it. The whole settlement had pitched in to finish the house for him, perhaps devoting even more time and building materials than they normally would have. He was, after all, their bishop. They were acutely aware that he had not yet
bought
the Coblentz place and that his family had not yet joined him.

“The house looks good, and your corn is coming up thick,” Caleb said as they drove down the road in the purple half-light toward Atlee’s place.

“Jah, you sure told the truth about the soil here, Caleb. Paradise Valley is as fertile as any place I ever seen.”

“So I guess now you’ll be bringing the family down?” It was June, and though Bishop Detweiler had been in the valley since late March he still had not made any clear commitment. Both men understood that Caleb’s question was a discreet way of asking for one.

“Well,” the bishop said, stroking his red beard, “I don’t know for sure. Maybe by harvest, if all goes well. I surely miss Sarah, and my boys are old enough now to be a big help. Be good to have them here at harvesttime.”