Marco and the Devil's Bargain (6 page)

“
Teresa, there is nothing to fear,” she said, wondering at so much terror for no reason. Her cousin had missed the whole crisis, and look at her. What harm could one dirty man and an Indian cause, in a hacienda full of Luisa's guards and all the guards who had come with the other women?

Before Paloma could defend herself, Teresa darted forward and grabbed her hair, loose around her shoulders. She yanked on it, jerking Paloma away from the stranger and the Comanche. Paloma's eyes filled with sudden tears from the pain. She tried to grab Teresa's hand as her cousin's fingernails dug into her scalp. Why was she doing this?

“
Teresa, he is harmless! So is Toshua. Please let go,” she pleaded. “You're hurting me.”

Her cousin gave her hair another yank, which sent Paloma to her knees, her hands clutching Teresa's fingers, trying to lessen the pain. Toshua dropped the stranger in the dust and unsheathed his knife in one smooth movement, his eyes intent upon the hysterical woman. Paloma felt strands of hair pull loose from her scalp as she reached for Toshua—now to stop him. “No, Toshua, no!”

Teresa screamed again, looking around wildly as her audience gaped at her. “You see? You see? Paloma's Comanche wants to kill me! I have witnesses!”

“
He wants you to let go of Paloma's hair,” Luisa said as she finally grabbed the distraught woman. “What is the matter with you, Señora Castellano?”

To Paloma's relief, Teresa let go of her hair. She sank back, patting her head where it hurt the worst. “There is nothing to fear,” Paloma said, wondering how to reason with this cousin whose torments she had endured for years, this cousin she thought she knew—unkind and vengeful but essentially harmless.

“
My dear, you should lie down,” she said, wishing she did not sound so timid. This was not the voice of a
juez de campo's
wife. Maybe she was foolish to think she could borrow some of her husband's power.

“
You
would
say that!” Teresa shot back. “I let down my guard and this Comanche devil murders us all! You would like me to lose this baby, would you not? This is your fault. You are barren and you are jealous of me.” Her cousin looked around again, as if to seek approval from people already turning away in disgust. Two of the braver women—older women who had lived their entire lives on the edge of danger in Comanchería—had helped Anthony Gill to his feet and were leading him inside.

Paloma saw the sympathy in their eyes, but all she felt was shame that Maria Teresa was a relative, and horror that her cousin thought her capable of such meanness. “You know I would never even consider such a thing,” she said, keeping her voice soft as she sought to reason away her cousin's lunacy.

“
You planned this whole thing!” Teresa clutched her belly and backed away from Paloma. “Rodrigo! Saddle my horse!” she shouted to her only guard, who stood there as stunned as everyone else. “I will tell Antonio how dangerous you are and he will pay a visit to your husband!”

“
That is enough,” Luisa said. She tightened her grip on Maria Teresa. “Let us gather your possessions. You should leave.”

“
You cannot reason with a crazy woman,” Toshua told Paloma, helping her to her feet. For good measure, he turned to stare at Teresa as her hostess dragged her inside. Whimpering under his glare, Teresa hurried ahead of Luisa. “I could ride ahead and kill them both before they were a league away. Just say the word.” His face hardened. “I doubt even her husband would mourn her.”

“
No, Toshua. That will not solve any of my problems,” Paloma said firmly.

The Comanche shrugged. “It would solve the main one.” He looked around. “We are all tired of Señora Castellano.”

“
Just let her go and do no harm,” Paloma said. Her head ached, but it was nothing compared to the ache in her heart
. Tell the world that I am barren
? she asked herself, wretched.
The world already knows
.

They stood together in the courtyard, nearly shoulder to shoulder, waiting while Rodrigo, looking like the most put-upon of men, saddled his mount and Maria Teresa Castellano's horse. He kept his head down as the other guards teased him, making whooping noises that turned Toshua's expression sour.

“
My People do not sound like that,” he muttered to Paloma.

No, you don't,
she thought, remembering the day the Comanches rode through the open gates of her father's hacienda near El Paso, silent, painted men sitting so carelessly on painted and masked horses, careless because the men in the field—her father and brothers among them—were already lanced and scalped. She glanced at Toshua and looked away, uneasy even after more than a year of his presence on the Double Cross.

When she didn't say anything, he turned away. She looked toward the open gate, yearning for her husband with a fierceness that surprised her, even though only a day had passed since they kissed goodbye in Santa Maria. She knew he would sit her on his lap until she was calm. It was what he already did every four weeks when she went to the storeroom and returned with her monthly supplies and tears on her cheeks. “Patience,
chiquita
, patience,” he used to tell her. Now he just held her in his arms. She wanted him right now.

Maybe Toshua understood. “She said some unkind things to you, Paloma,” he said, his voice softer now. His eyes never left Maria Teresa's outrider as he led the two horses into the courtyard. “Hard words.”

“
Just words.”

“
Will she cause you trouble?”

“
If she can.” Involuntarily, she stepped even closer to Toshua as Maria Teresa hurried from the hacienda, her satchel in her hand and yarn trailing behind her. It would have been a funny sight, except that Paloma saw real terror on her cousin's face.
I doubt she has a single easy day in Valle del Sol
, Paloma thought, wondering at her own pity for her cousin.

Maybe her cousin misinterpreted her expression. Maria Teresa glared in her direction and Paloma steeled herself. All her cousin did was shake her finger. Maybe Toshua standing so close had something to do with that.

Maria Teresa threw her satchel at the guard, who made a face as he turned away to tie the bundle behind his saddle and stuff the yarn in here and there while the other men laughed. When none of the idlers in the courtyard offered to help her mount, she shrieked at her guard for being dead to duty.

“
How terrible a thing to work at the Castellano ranch,” Toshua said. “I hear that Señor Castellano cannot keep men on his property.” He gathered the reins and stood there, indecision on his usually impassive face.

“
Perhaps you should return to the Double Cross,” Paloma suggested, feeling uneasy, because Toshua never appeared indecisive. He had the look of a man who had just realized something unpleasant. What, she did not know.

“
I have four guards,” Paloma reminded him gently.

“
I wish you had not touched the stranger from the east.”

“
You needed my help,” she said, puzzled now.

“
All the same ….” He turned away with his horse toward the horse barn, where the other guards moved far away from him. When he was close to the barn, he turned around again and mounted, riding his horse to Paloma, no indecision on his face now.

She stood her ground as he halted the big bay directly in front of her and held out his hand. “Come with me to the Double Cross. I fear I have done a bad thing in taking this stranger within Señora Gutierrez's walls.” He gestured with his fingers, edging closer, coaxing her. “Do you trust me?”

It was the question Paloma had asked herself for months now. Her mouth felt strangely dry. She looked into his eyes, still seeing the honest man through all the layers of her own fear.

“
Please, Paloma. Just drop everything here.”

“
The yarn. My stockings. Luisa.”

He shook his head and leaned closer, his arm extended, ready to gather her onto his horse.

She stepped back. “I do not trust you, Toshua. God help me, but I do not.”

There was no disguising the hurt in his eyes, which brought tears to her own, as she tumbled into the dust whatever trust they had so tentatively forged. He leaned down, and she backed farther away until she was under the shelter of the portal and practically in the doorway. “I do not,” she whispered. “God forgive me if I am wrong.”

The guards of the hacienda were edging closer, themselves, sensing a threat to Paloma that she knew was not there.
This is a matter between me and Toshua
, she wanted to tell them, but she knew they would not understand. Someone made a move toward the open gate. “Please leave, Toshua, before you cannot,” she begged him.

He edged closer. “Do this and do not doubt me. Stay far away from this man I have brought here and probably should have killed.”

Paloma nodded, not able to look at him, because she was already feeling remorse so deep that there probably wasn't a word for it. “Ride, Toshua.”

H
er hands to her mouth, Paloma watched Toshua wheel his horse and dig his heels into the animal's flanks. The guards had gathered closer, some of them as indecisive as she was, and others with their swords already drawn. Another began to run toward the open gate, where a small boy stood, pushing against one of the massive doors, which slowly began to shut.

Dios, what have I done?
Paloma asked herself as her heart thundered in her breast. In a few seconds Toshua would be trapped and surrounded. She knew he would fight, but there were too many.

She watched in horror and then amazement as Toshua, guiding his horse with his legs, reached for an arrow behind him, fitted it to his bow in one motion and shot at the boy.

The child wore a loose-fitting poncho. The arrow slammed into the fabric and nailed him to the gate so he could not push. His mouth opened and closed in terror as he tugged on the poncho, the gate forgotten.

As soon as he had loosed the arrow, Toshua dropped to the far side of his horse, away from the hacienda's guards, until only his heels could be seen. They had no target, and the boy at the gate was powerless to trap him. One second, two seconds, and the nearly invisible Comanche raced through the gate and vanished. Even his horse's hooves seemed to be silent.

Paloma sagged against the doorframe. She put her head down in shame, knowing that she would see the hurt and disappointment in Toshua's eyes in her dreams.
What have I done?
she asked herself again.

She dragged herself inside the hacienda, her misgivings multiplying with every step she took.
Don't show it
, she ordered herself, as she looked in the
sala
where the women had tidied themselves after a hasty awakening and were beginning to knit again. It would have been easy to skulk down the hall and hide herself in Luisa's room, but she could never do that to Marco Mondragón, the husband she adored.

She stood in the doorway, her hands clasped in front of her, as her mama had taught her. “I deeply apologize for any disturbance that my cousin may have caused,” she said, holding her head high, looking around the room at the ladies who had suddenly given her all their attention. She looked for meanness and found none.

One of the Borrego twins—she must learn to tell them apart—put down her knitting and patted the empty space beside her. “You have been too busy to knit socks for the
juez
,” she said. “Sit here and knit, or he will have bare heels this summer. Is that your yarn over there? Fetch it, Dolores,” she asked her twin.

Ah, then this was Chaca. “Thank you, Chaca,” Paloma said and sat down, her heart full. She smiled her thanks at Dolores and continued where she left off.

“
Paloma, take it from me,” said an older woman, someone from an outlying hacienda she did not know. “A year and few months is no shame or crime. You will yet give the
juez
a child or two.”

“
Or three,” said Cecilia Chávez, from her seat closest to the fireplace, as suited the oldest among them. She looked around at her friends. “Some say the water from Rio Santa Maria explains why there are so many children here, but we do not think it is the water.” The other ladies chuckled, the crisis of Maria Teresa over. “As for your regrettable cousin, too little cannot be said about her.”

Paloma winked back her tears in the face of such kindness.
And the Comanche who thinks he must protect me? How do you feel about him?
she wanted to ask, but hadn't the courage. She turned her attention to the mohair stocking. If she couldn't be wise, at least she could be diligent.

She began to relax as her fellow knitters returned to idle conversation and laughter, and marveled how much more cheerful everyone seemed, now that Maria Teresa Castellano had left.
She will probably whine and cry and nag Alonso until he pays a visit to my husband to complain about me or Toshua, or the cold weather, or the axis of the earth, or some other imaginary slight
, Paloma told herself, as she dropped stitch after stitch. She put her hands in her lap, telling herself to stop her crazy-making thoughts.

It seemed that the only thoughts she had were ones determined to send her walking up and down in the
sala
, if only she dared. She was not certain if she had angered Toshua or saddened him. “Just go back to your plains,” she whispered, barely moving her lips. “That's all I want.”