Golden Roses (21 page)

It was hot and still, and Amber felt sweat trickling from her forehead and burning into her eyes. There were deep arroyos that filled with rushing water after the infrequent rains, but were now dry, leaving only sand and gravel. And dust, endless dust.

Eventually they reached the mountains, which were covered with chaparral, pine, and firs that managed to grow in the rocky soil. Behind them lay the yucca, paloverde, and century plants of the dry washes. Willow and cottonwood trees shaded the saltbushes of the alkali sinks where once there had been water.

The higher they went, the cooler the breezes among the firs. But then, as the land dipped downward, the air was stifling again. Tall, steep cliffs ringed each side of the trail.

“And you said it was only a few hours’ ride.” Amber sighed.

Dolita smiled sympathetically. “You are not as good a rider as you thought, señorita, and you are weak. We are moving slowly, for I have seen how tired you are. But do not be ashamed, for those of gentle birth seldom learn to ride well.”

“Then I will just have to learn,” Amber retorted with an unladylike snort. Gentle birth, indeed!

“I just hope we can get word to Cord,” she said after a while. “How much farther is it?”

“Just over that ridge.” Dolita pointed.

After a few more minutes, they topped the ridge. Below them sprawled a dozen small clay and stone buildings. Rickety wooden fences surrounded each. Cactus spotted the wide span of sand, and a desert breeze blew balls of dancing tumbleweed down the trail before them.

They had been spotted long before they topped the ridge, and word had spread. Indian men stopped working in the fields beyond to stare curiously, and small, dark-skinned children with wide eyes peered out from behind their mothers’ skirts.

Amber stared back, taking everything in. This was truly another world. Thank heaven Dolita could speak their language.

Dolita spoke, reining in her horse. “You have no reason to fear these people. They are peaceful.”

“The women are dressed so beautifully,” Amber mused, more to herself than to her companion. “I suppose I expected buckskin and feathers.”

Dolita smiled, pleased. “Both the Cora and Huichol tribes believe that a fine costume raises one’s standings with the gods.”

They rode on slowly down the slope to the village. Chickens scattered in front of them as they moved down the main street of the little village. Hogs rooted in the yards, and goats and cows milled about.

A soft sobbing sound caught their attention, and they looked to the right, to where a group of children were gathered in a circle. The sobbing came from the middle of that circle, rising above the taunting shouts of the other children. Amber pushed through the cluster and found a little boy about seven down on his hands and knees, face streaked with tears and mud. His filthy clothes were hardly more than rags. He looked up at Amber, first in fright, then with hostility, as his eyes became darker, angrier.

Amber held out her hand to him, but he continued to regard her warily. “Okay,” she said to him gently.

She looked at the children, admonishing them with her gaze, assuming they did not understand Spanish but asking anyway, “What were you doing to him?”

Amber didn’t even ask herself why she had gone toward the circle of children, or why she refused to watch the little boy being taunted. Perhaps it was the haunting presence of Armand, so recently gone, so cruelly killed. Perhaps it was Allegra’s bravery before Valdis. It was probably all those feelings gathering around her, forcing her to take the child’s hand in a firm grip and lead him away from the others.

By the time Amber seated herself on the ground, a few feet from her horse, the boy had lost his hostile look. But he was wary, watching her carefully, never taking his gaze from her face.

Dolita hurried over. She gasped. “Señorita. What are you doing with…with the bastard?”

“What are you talking about?” Amber asked stiffly, holding the child tightly. “Can you find his mother, Dolita?”

Dolita suddenly looked frightened. “He has no mama,” she answered quickly, nervously. “She died in birth. It was just as well, for she was treated much worse than this little one. She brought much disgrace upon the tribe.”

Amber looked at her hard. “You mean to tell me this little boy has no mother? Who takes care of him?”

Dolita bit down on her lip, and, for an instant, Amber thought she was going to cry. Avoiding Amber’s gaze, she murmured, “The padre looks after him when he can, but he is old and sick. The boy sleeps in the mission. He is given food. You must not concern yourself with him, señorita. He lives with his shame. He knows this.”

The child tried to pull from Amber’s grasp, but she held him tightly as she stared up at Dolita and cried, “That is the most barbaric thing I have ever heard. How can the padre allow such a thing to go on? It isn’t this child’s fault he was conceived out of wedlock. Who is the father? Does he even know he has a son?”

Dolita turned tear-filled eyes upon her. Amber had never seen the girl so overwrought. Gesturing wildly with her hands, she said, “His father is dead. We must go now. You must not concern yourself.”

“Dolita, what is wrong?” Amber searched her face for some clue. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

Dolita whispered, “Señorita, we must leave. Do not interfere with custom. You will only bring more trouble for the boy.”

Then, so suddenly it caught Amber off guard, Dolita screamed at the boy, waving her arms wildly. He bolted, running away, disappearing around a nearby shed.

“Oh, why did you do that, Dolita?” Amber got to her feet, trembling with fury. “What is wrong with you? I have never known you to be cruel!”

Dolita lifted her chin in defiance. “There are things you do not understand. Come, please. I want you to meet my uncle, señorita. I have tied our horses behind his hut.”

Amber followed silently, vowing to ask Dolita more questions later.

Dolita’s uncle was polite to Amber, respectful and distant. When he and Dolita had established that the two women could stay in his home, he bade Amber a polite welcome and the two left him. When they were out of his hearing, Dolita said, “Valdis was here some years ago…and two of the children disappeared. My uncle is afraid. The rest of the village will be afraid of us too, of our being here, for if Valdis finds us here, it will go hard for them. They know this. Valdis is well known for a great distance around.”

Amber sighed. Until Cord could be reached, they would have to stay here. But she hated bringing danger to these people.

“Tell your uncle I don’t wish to bring trouble,” Amber said quickly. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary. Make him see that.”

She stared into the gathering dusk. No, she did not want to be here long. Cord Hayden would help. He had to.

Chapter Seventeen

Dolita looked up at the ominous black clouds, moving like giant hands to consume the azure sky. “I do not like it,” she said worriedly. “Flash floods through these deep arroyos can be deadly.”

“We had to go today,” Amber told her as their horses picked their way along the rocky trail. “We’d been there for almost a week. I have to know what’s going on, whether Valdis has been arrested, and if I can get a message to Cord.”

“I know, I know.” Dolita sighed. “But I wish you had waited one more day. I do not like the looks of those clouds. Let us hurry. I will leave you on high ground while I go down to see if Señor Mendosa’s housekeeper is still living in his house. If anyone would know where Señor Hayden is, it would be Jualina.”

They rode for a ways in silence, and then Amber spoke sadly, “I just can’t get over the way that child is treated. Why would his own people be so cruel?”

Dolita was silent, and Amber turned to look at her. “Dolita, I have the impression you are hiding something. I’ve felt that way since I saw the child.”

“No, no, señorita,” Dolita said quickly.

There
was
something going on. Dolita was frightened, and Amber was determined to find out why.

Dolita finally murmured, “The boy does not speak. The elder ones say he is cursed.”

“You mean he can’t talk? I thought he was just scared of me.”

Dolita shook her head. “No one has ever heard him.”

Amber persisted. “But surely, there is some medical reason. He might be cured, and—”

“Oh, señorita, I wish you would not concern yourself. You do not understand the ways of these people.”

“Then perhaps you would like to explain ‘the ways,’” Amber said, bristling.

After a long silence, Dolita nodded. “I will try to explain to you. As you probably know, Mexicans are a new race, offspring of the conquistadores who bred with the Indian women so very long ago. The Indians were Aztecs or Mayans or Tlaxcalans. The conquistadores just took what they wanted. The sons they sired grew up to hate them—as did their mothers! The conquerors looked on their mixed-blood offspring as worthless animals. They bragged of their own, pure Castilian blood. As the years passed, the offspring also began to brag of their Spanish blood, dismissing their dark Indian skin as the stain of the tropic sun. Those of Spanish blood, born in ‘new Spain,’ scorned the lowly mestizos.”

“Very well, I understand about the Spanish blood.” Amber was exasperated. “But what does all this have to do with that little boy being persecuted? It sounds as though there were a great many bastards in the days when the conquistadores were raping women.”

“I am coming to that,” Dolita said sharply. “But we must move faster. The first drops of rain are starting. There is a cave up ahead. We may have to seek refuge there, for it is not safe to be in the arroyo if it rains hard.”

They urged their horses onward, finally reaching the safety of the cave in a jagged cliff near a deep arroyo. Just as they got inside, the sky opened and rain began falling in torrents.

“It is going to be bad,” Dolita said as they sat down in the cave. “I have seen these storms, and when they come so quickly, they are bad.”

Amber leaned back against the cool earth wall. “There is nothing we can do about the weather, so please finish your story.”

“Very well.” Dolita sighed. “You see, señorita, with so much mixed blood, it has become great pride to any tribe to remain pure, free of Spanish blood. The village of Cora Indians are such a group of people. It is their law that neither man nor woman mate outside their race. Condina, the little muchacho’s mama, broke the law. She was not a whore. She only loved someone not of her people. I know this because my uncle told me the story. But her love broke the law, and it was a shame on the Coras.”

“So why didn’t she marry the man if she loved him?” Amber wanted to know.

“He was of another race. Mexican.”

“But Mexicans are actually a race originally mixed with Indians,” Amber cried incredulously. “So he was part Indian, wasn’t he?”

“Not by Cora code,” Dolita said. “The Coras consider themselves to be pure. The Mexican race is not pure.” Amber looked exasperated, but Dolita merely shrugged. “It is the way people think, señorita. As the story was told, Condina did not tell her lover she was going to have a baby. He had never come to her, she had always slipped away to see him. He must have known—as she did—that their union could never be, and when she did not go to him anymore, he probably thought she had fallen in love with one of her own, and thought it best.”

“So her people hated her?” Amber felt so tired. How she hated rigidity, customs that caused misery. “They probably let her die in childbirth.”

“No, no,” Dolita remarked quickly. “Her heart broke. That is what the shaman said.”

“And what is a shaman?” Amber didn’t mask her contempt, for she suddenly found herself disliking anything to do with Indian ways.

“The shaman of any tribe is very important, because he has a knowledge of sickness, sickness of body or soul. The Cora shaman was with Condina at her time, and said she died of a broken heart before her baby was born. The baby had to be cut from her body, and he almost died too. It would have been better if he had,” she said matter-of-factly.

“But where is the father? Wasn’t he told? Why didn’t he come and take the baby? Was he married? Or was he ashamed because he had fathered a baby by an Indian?”

Dolita was silent for a long time, and there was no sound except for the relentless pounding of the rain. Finally, she decided a hedging reply was better than none. “If he knew, then he also knew the Coras would not allow him to take his son. If he knew, he did the wise thing by staying away. The Coras are peaceful people, but they might have become violent had he tried to take the baby.”

“Oh! They would keep the child and torment him rather than give him up? I don’t think I have ever seen a group of people who needed educating more than they do!”

“I think,” Dolita finally said after watching her warily for a time, “you should forget about the boy. He is used to his life. He expects nothing more.”

“Well, he is going to
get
more,” Amber said with more fiery determination than she had ever felt before.

Dolita was silent.

After a time, she said, “The rain is slowing. There has not been enough to cause a flood, and I think we can go. We may still get wet, but it is better than spending the night here. This cave may be a shelter for wild animals.” She and Amber walked back to where the horses had wandered, farther back in the cave.