Paloma and the Horse Traders (10 page)

Diego had already started for the traders’
wagon. “She told me to go with God. No one has told me that in
years. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Diego Diaz was as good as his word. Before the
sun was much higher, he knocked on Marco’s door. Graciela was
huddled in the corner of the room, her knees drawn up to her chest.
Diego looked at her first and frowned.

“
Did these men hurt you?” he asked,
giving Marco a look that even Toshua could not have bettered in his
foulest mood.

She shook her head.

“
It might be a while before she
trusts anyone,” Marco said. “My wife will make things good.” He
shouldered his parfleche and his blanket roll. “She always
does.”

“
I already paid the bill.
Caramba
, so much!”

“
No one trusts a Comanche,” Marco
said, his eyes on Toshua, who grimaced. “I had to pay more. I will
add this to the bill for the horses.”

“
I told the innkeeper that I could
sleep in the stable, but he didn’t like that, either,” Toshua said.
He shrugged. “Maybe I will return and steal some horses, just to
show him that he shouldn’t be so rude.”

Marco sighed and held his hand out for
Graciela. She hesitated.

“
I don’t have time to wait here,”
Marco said, snapping his fingers. “The lady who will be your
mistress needs us and I dare not delay. Come, please.”

Still she hesitated, looking from one man to
the other as if wondering which one would abuse her
first.

Diego lifted her to her feet. “You wouldn’t
know friends if you saw them, would you?” he asked her, his voice
kind. “Come along, and give me no grief. We haven’t time for
it.”

The sun was warming the adobe shops and houses
when they rode out of Taos. Marco rose up in his stirrups and
looked back. Some of the Indian trading partners had left, perhaps
concerned that the Comanches were still not to be trusted, even
with the Truce of God. He noticed more soldier presence in the
plaza and briefly wished he had political clout. Valle del Sol
deserved better than the useless soldiers garrisoned
there.

His first worry that Graciela wouldn’t be able
to keep up vanished the moment he helped her onto the bare back of
one of the carriage horses, after apologizing for not having an
extra saddle. He had made a bridle out of a rope and she held it
with ease.

“
Never mind, señor. I have no love
for Comanches,” she gave a sidelong look at Toshua, who stared
back, “but they did improve my riding skills.”

Marco had to admit that she sat the lovely bay
with the grace of one of The People and not their captive. Her
ragged deerskin tunic rode up to her thighs, and he noticed Diego
admiring her legs. He reminded himself that he might have done the
same, during those bad years after Felicia’s death.

Diego had made a point of buying tortillas and
several handfuls of dried cactus fruit before they left Taos.
“Since no one here has any money except me,” he said to the air, as
they rode east toward the mountain passes.

A trader he may be, but he is still just a
pup
, Marco thought as he rode beside Toshua. He knew his own
life was a hard one, but he wondered how difficult it must be to
negotiate with people who could lift your hair from your head or
excise parts of your body if they weren’t happy with the trade. He
thought of the little dead boy in the plaza and crossed himself,
grateful beyond measure that his son was safely in the care of his
mother.

By unspoken agreement, Marco and Toshua rode
first, so they were downwind of the trader. Marco didn’t think his
pabi
was particular about odor, but he had noticed his
Comanche friend bathing in broad daylight in the
acequia
, so
maybe civilization was rubbing off on him a little. That he bathed
only when Sancha or one of the maids were hanging clothes out to
dry or working in the garden wasn’t lost on Marco, either. And it
was only when Eckapeta was not there.

“
You just do that to embarrass
them,” he had told Toshua once, after watching his friend air-dry
himself and strut back to Marco’s former office next to the horse
barn.

“
Why else would I take a bath?”
Toshua had asked.

“
To clean up?” Marco had said,
knowing it was a feeble argument that he had already lost, without
even understanding why.

He smiled to think of the conversation. Funny
what a man will drag through his mind to stay awake in the saddle.
Thinking about Paloma always worked for a long while, so he
wondered all over again at his good fortune at finding another wife
as sweet as Felicia. He loved the way Paloma’s normally expressive
face went slack after rigorous lovemaking and she relaxed into a
boneless form that told him precisely how much she trusted his
protection. Valle del Sol wasn’t a place where relaxation trumped
extreme caution, at least not yet.

In our bed you are safe, beloved wife
,
he thought. He chuckled as he remembered another time in their
bedroom when she had stood straight up, hands on hips, splendidly
naked, and asked, “Marco, do you think about me in bed with you
twenty-four hours a day?”

Of course he did; he was a man. He had taken
too long to reply, apparently, because she threw a pillow at him.
And then another, and then sure enough, they were back in that bed.
“No, only when I am awake,” he admitted when they were cooling
down. No reply. She was already asleep.

He leaned over to make some comment to Toshua,
but stopped, struck by the intensity of his friend’s gaze as he
looked toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the first of many
passes—beautiful and smelling of lemon thistle in high summer but
treacherous and avalanche-prone in winter.

“
What do you see?” Marco asked in an
undertone.

“
It’s what I feel,” Toshua said
simply.

In
which Marco gets his wish and travels fast

T
hey moved slowly into the
canyon. Without a word spoken, each of them began a casual,
continuous sweep of his head, looking right and left, and then up
as the pass deepened, searching for something out of place,
something not quite right.

Before he even knew it, Marco had placed an
arrow against the bow now resting in his lap. Out of the corner of
his eye, he saw Diego hand a knife to Graciela.

Marco listened for the birds. Nothing. The wind
wasn’t even ruffling the piñon pine. All he heard was the
clop
clop
of their horses’ hooves.

When an eagle screamed he jumped, then looked
around in embarrassment, only to notice the others doing the same
thing. They all managed a weak laugh, then stopped to watch a
golden eagle tuck its wings and swoop down, as swift as
la
llorona—
the crying woman used to frighten children into good
behavior.

Marco watched as the beautiful bird picked up
speed and came so close to the earth that he knew it must slam into
the ground, only to snatch a squealing rabbit in its outstretched
talons and soar for a distant peak where babies probably waited,
mouths open.

And that was it. The tension left the canyon as
quickly as it had blown in. Small birds began to twitter again, and
even the stream seemed to resume its flow.

“
What happened?” he whispered to
Toshua.

The Comanche shrugged. “The bad medicine
decided to leave brave warriors alone. How can we tell? I do know
this: Great Owl and his men are ahead, between us and the Double
Cross.”

Marco felt his heart thunder in his chest.
“Maybe they will move north,” he said, even though it sounded like
a big bucketful of wishful thinking to his own ears. He wanted to
bend low over Buciro and urge his mount into a three-league stride
that would leapfrog them across peaks and valleys and bring them to
his home, his wife, and children by tomorrow morning.

“
Our women will know what to do,
won’t they?” he asked Toshua.

Toshua pushed up the sleeve of the heavy cotton
work shirt he wore and bared his forearm. Marco looked at the
crisscross of scars and what appeared to be a bite. It was a scar
he had wondered about.

“
When I was much younger and not so
smart, I tried to corner a lion and her kittens in a cave,” Toshua
said. He rolled down his sleeve. “Chaa! What a fool. I didn’t
understand how hard mothers fight to protect their young. Let me
add grandmothers, for such Eckapeta is, whether you like that or
not.”

“
I do like it,” Marco said. “Thank
you. I should not worry.”

“
Worry all you want,” Toshua said
with a shrug. “I won’t tell Poloma.”

After dark they made a fireless camp. Marco
sniffed the air for campfire smoke from other fires and found
nothing. Toshua set two snares. “If Little Rabbit sees our plight
and offers himself to feed us, we will skin him and cook him in the
morning, when a fire is not so noticeable,” Toshua said.

Diego passed around his tortillas, followed by
the dried cactus fruit. When Graciela started to shiver, the trader
pulled a blanket from his pack, shook it out—the stench made Marco
turn away—and generously offered to share it with the young woman.
He knew she must be cold, because she made no objection.

They sat close together, the canyon wall at
their backs, lances at the ready, bows and arrows close
by.

“
Let us talk softly,” Marco said. “I
would know something about you, Graciela. I think you must be Ute,
from the cloud land to the north.”

She nodded. “My mother, yes. My father was a
garrisoned soldier in Milagro,” she said, naming an outpost to the
north, abandoned now, that Marco knew had been even more isolated
than his own Santa Maria. “When I was seven or eight, the soldiers
were sent to Isleta, farther south.”

“
Did you go, too?” Diego
asked.

She shook her head. “The soldiers were told to
leave behind their country wives and children. Mama and I returned
to the cloud land.” Her voice hardened. She looked at Toshua. “That
was where the Kwahadi Great Owl and his warriors found us nine
years later, along with horses.” She turned that same look on Diego
Diaz, a look so hard that Marco was grateful he had done nothing
except rescue her. “If it wasn’t Comanche raiders, we could count
on New Mexican traders to do the same thing. The Utes of the cloud
land were greatly weakened by smallpox, and we were preyed
upon.”

“
How long were you with the
Kwahadi?” Marco asked.

Her long, long sigh told him all he needed to
know; he wished he hadn’t asked. “Four years,” she said. “How is it
that time can go so slowly?”

“
And your mother?” he
asked.

She shook her head. “She was big with child and
could not keep up. They violated her and killed her.”

“
I saw something like that once,”
Diego whispered. “A baby ripped out and stuffed back in, once the
men had finished with the mother.” He got up and left the
circle.

“
Not so tough as he looks,” Toshua
commented. “All that beard and stink hides a younger man, I would
wager.”

Graciela nodded. She looked from Marco to
Toshua, and lip pointed to Diego. “Tell me now: which of you is it
to be tonight? All three?”

She swallowed and looked so brave that Marco’s
heart cracked around the edges.

“
None of us,” he said softly. “I
told you, I bought you for my wife and children, and because I
didn’t want you to die. You will help my wife, because she is with
child again. If I know her, and I believe I do, Señora Mondragón
will teach you how to manage a household, as well. I can promise
you your freedom and a small dowry someday so you can marry, if you
will help her now.”

Graciela’s eyes filled with tears. “No man will
mount me?”

“
Not unless it’s your idea, too.”
Marco swallowed his own tears, thinking how badly things could have
gone for his beloved wives, because women had so little say about
anything. “I expect him to be an honorable man, whoever he might
be.”

“
It will
never
be my idea,”
she muttered.

“
People change, Graciela,” he said.
“Let us leave it at that. You have heard my conditions.”

She said nothing. Marco sensed that she wanted
to trust him, but trust wasn’t in her yet; he could tell that from
the bleakness in her eyes.

“
All I require is that you help my
wife and children,” he repeated. “If you prefer field work, I have
no objections. Perhaps you can help the beekeeper.
S
í
o no
?”

“
I will help
la señora
,”
Graciela whispered. She reached for Marco’s hand and kissed
it.

“
Very well,” he said, relieved that
he would not come home empty-handed to Paloma. “You will come to
love my wife; everyone does.”

“
Will I?”

Marco looked around to see Diego standing there
quietly.

“
You, señor, will be at the Double
Cross long enough to receive money for your horses and the inn,”
Marco said firmly.
So you are a cheeky fellow?
he thought.
I shall tell you what I think
. “I can tell you this, Señor
Diaz: strong smells are a little hard for my wife right now. I
doubt you will even see her.”