Paloma and the Horse Traders (12 page)

Buciro did as he was told and stayed still as a
rock until Marco was back in the saddle. The high pommel prevented
Marco from actually stretching the man across his lap, but he knew
Buciro would not react to a strange object lying against his
neck.

Graciela circled around them, her eyes
big.

“
Go now!” Marco shouted. “I’m
following. When you get to the gates, shout, ‘Santiago.’ They won’t
recognize you and you need the password.”

Graciela strained to look ahead toward the
clump of trees by the cliff. “What gate? I don’t …. What
gate?”

“
Follow me then,” Marco ordered,
wishing she were in front of him, but grimly pleased that she could
not see the gray stone walls that blended into grove and cliff.
Silently he thanked his great grandfather Victorio Mondragón, the
stone mason from Jaén, España, who had insisted on such walls.
Maybe if Paloma had another boy, he could be named
Victorio.

Marco turned around once to see too many
Indians following Toshua, who rode so low across his horse that
they blended into one object. He had seen the enemy and he did not
look back. No matter how many years Marco had fought Comanches, the
sight could still turn his bowels to water—one more complication he
did not need.

“
God be praised,” he whispered to
see the reassuring walls and the gate closed. His guards were
watching from the parapet. “Santiago!” he shouted as the night
settled around them. “Santiago!”

He could hear the Comanches now, warbling their
peculiar cry that was half death song and half unalloyed terror to
anyone listening. He glanced at Graciela’s frightened face. Perhaps
she was wondering what would happen to her this time if she fell
into the hands of the same Indians who had sold her to a
paisano
from the eastern side of the colony.

The gates opened too slowly to suit him, but no
one was at fault. Graciela and Diego raced through, the bay
following. Marco waited at the gate for Toshua.

The Comanche’s horse looked riderless, but
Marco knew better. Toshua was not a tall man, and given a bit to a
paunch, as others of his nation. On horseback, however, there was
nothing as elegant as a Comanche, and Toshua was no exception. He
was flattened against his horse, his hair streaming behind
him—loose as he liked to wear it. He flashed Marco a smile and made
an obscene gesture as he rode through the gate.

Marco followed and the gate slammed shut. He
didn’t dismount until the massive beam fell into place in its iron
holders and the Double Cross was as safe as anywhere in Valle del
Sol.

Emilio met him in the courtyard, and called
over a servant to help him drag Diego from Buciro’s
back.

“
Careful of that arrow,” Marco
warned. He took a better look at Diego, who had lapsed into
unconsciousness—a wise choice. The arrow protruded from the
trader’s shoulder, always a pesky place to doctor. The arrowhead
was well dug in, which would make it a trial to remove.
What
would Antonio Gil do?
Marco thought, remembering that enigmatic
and grouchy surgeon who had inoculated all of the residents of the
Double Cross and Santa Maria as well as many Kwahadi Comanches,
then melted into the Texas plains. He would grumble, Marco knew.
Still, his quarrelsome presence would have been a blessing just
then. There was nothing to do but turn Diego Diaz over to the rough
medicine of a talented servant.

“
Carry him inside and put him face
down on the bed in that room across from mine,” he ordered. “Gently
now. I’d like him to live.”

Graciela required no orders to follow the men
as they obeyed. Marco stood a moment in gratitude to an all-knowing
Father in heaven who had not forgotten his devoted followers
managing a precarious living in a place on the edge of
Christianity. He crossed himself and went in search of
Paloma.

She will be in the kitchen
, he thought,
and I am so hungry
.

She was not in the kitchen. In fact, no one was
in the kitchen. The great fireplace hadn’t even been lit. He felt
the cold logs, trying to recall the last time he had seen the
fireplace with not even warm ashes. “Paloma? Paloma?” he
called.

No answer. She had to be in the children’s
room. He ran down the hall, ignoring the groans coming from the
bedroom where Emilio was just now cutting around Diego’s bloody
shirt. He yanked open the door to the children’s room, thinking
that Paloma would scold him if they were asleep and he had wakened
them.

No one. “
Dios mio
,” he whispered, as a
rush of heat and then extreme cold spread from his head to his feet
and back. His heart seemed to pound in his chest and he started to
gasp for breath.
This is not going to happen to me twice
, he
thought.
God Almighty would not do that to me
.

Marco leaned against the doorframe because he
was suddenly dizzy. No one had lit any lamps, and no fires burned.
For one terrible moment, he was back in his house eleven years ago,
sitting in the dark, rocking back and forth and wailing because his
wife and twin sons had died and been buried while he had been away
on a brand inspection trip.

His legs wouldn’t hold him, and he sat down
with a thump, knocking over a vase of dried flowers that Paloma had
been fussing over before he left for Taos. The thistles and cone
flowers spilled onto the floor as the vase teetered on the edge of
the table he had jarred. Silent, he stared as it shivered then fell
on the tile floor with a crash.

Emilio looked out of the room where the trader
lay, groaning louder now. Puzzled at first, his
mayor domo’s
eyes softened. “Hold him still,” he called into the room, then came
to Marco, squatting beside him.

“
Señor, señor! Now where do you
think your dear ones would be, during a time of crisis?” He touched
Marco’s neck, then rested a warm hand on his shoulder, giving him a
little shake, recalling him to 1784, and not eleven years earlier.
“It is a precaution we all agreed on. Go to them, señor. We can
take care of this rancid fellow. Take a deep breath now, then
another.”

Emilio helped Marco to his feet, then gave him
a little push in the other direction. Marco stood a minute, unsure
of his balance, as he breathed in and out. Embarrassed, Marco
looked at his
mayor domo
, that patient man who had been
through so much with him, the man who had buried his first family.
He looked for derision in the old fellow’s eyes and saw
none.

“
The … the …
chapel?”

Emilio nodded. “She told me to watch for you,
because she did not want you to worry, but,” he looked back into
the room, “we were busy, no?”

Marco nodded. “I am sorry for my foolishness,”
he began, but the old man took his arm and gave it another
shake.

“
You care and you love. That is
all,” Emilio said. “When you are not here, we watch them as you
would. Go now.”

Marco ran to the chapel. With no hesitation, he
folded back the rag rug in front of the altar, grabbed the candle
snuffer, and lifted the ring in the floor. The wooden flooring came
up smoothly and silently. The stairs his great grandfather had
built were wide enough to walk down, facing out. He felt the
tension leave his body as he saw the soft glow of lamp light and
smelled Paloma’s good
posole
.

He continued along the brief passageway,
following more lights as it widened into a room tall enough to
stand in. And there they were, Paloma with Claudio on her lap, her
eyes closed, her lips in his dark hair. Exhaustion seemed to
radiate from her like heat. Or was it something else? Had she
missed him as much as he missed her? The knowledge that she had,
covered him like a benediction.

Eckapeta held Soledad, who looked up and saw
him. She clapped her hands and leaped from the Comanche woman’s
lap. “Papa!”

As much as he adored Soli, Marco had eyes only
for his wife. As he watched, she opened her eyes, blinked in the
gloom, then let out a sigh. “Marco, my goodness but I have missed
you.”

With a sigh of his own, he sat beside her, Soli
on his lap, closing his eyes in pleasure and relief. He leaned
against her breast, relishing the softness of her. She was the
heart of his home, his true star in the meadow.

She kissed his head. “I hope you did not worry
when I did not meet you at the door.”

“
I did. I am a fool,” he
whispered.

She kissed his head again, pressing her lips
down more firmly. “You are no fool. We just aren’t much good
apart.”

Soli curled up in his lap and he leaned on
Paloma. In a few months he would be able to put his hand on her
belly and feel the next Mondragón. After Paloma’s earlier troubles,
Claudio had seemed like such a miracle, and yet here was another
proof that God loved them. He was dirty, tired, and frightened at
his own irrationality, wondering if the Comanche Moon would rise
tonight, and here he sat under the church in his hacienda,
grateful. Who could understand God’s tender mercies?

“
I have a smelly trader upstairs
with an arrow wound that must be tended,” he said finally. “I spent
all my Taos money on a captive girl for you, because if I had not,
the Comanches who brought her in would have killed her.”

“
Are you the only good man in this
entire colony?” she said seriously.

“
I might be,” he said, not so
serious. “Anyway, the youngest trader, Diego Diaz, has brought back
the two matched bays I want, and I will pay him here, since I spent
it all there.” He nuzzled the back of his head against her breast
and she laughed. “Come to think of it, we could have left him
behind to die. I wouldn’t have to pay for the horses.”

“
And you would be sleeping in the
sala
forevermore,” his sweet wife told him. “Will we be safe
above ground? We are heartily tired of sleeping down
here.”

“
I believe we are safe enough. My
guard is good and Toshua and I will take turns on the parapet
during the night.” He set Soledad aside and helped Paloma to her
feet as Claudio slumbered on. “Let me carry him up the stairs and
put him to bed. You might want to look in on the
trader.”

He raised the trap door, but stopped as a
scream cut the air and wavered on, before dropping into a whimper.
Paloma clapped her hands over Soledad’s ears. The anguish came from
the room where the trader lay. More than likely, Marco’s most
proficient
curandero
had just cut out the
arrowhead.

Marco held out his hand for Paloma. When she
was upright in the chapel, he enveloped her in a tight embrace. She
clung to him, her hands splayed across his back as if she wanted to
feel him everywhere and assure herself that he was home and alive
and not lying down the hall in pain.

Emilio waited for him. Marco patted Paloma’s
hip and whispered for her to take Soledad to bed. He held his
sleeping son.

“
The guards are mounted,” the old
man said. “Keep the trapdoor open, in case the women and children
need it tonight. I think you will sleep well enough.” He glanced
back into the room and Marco looked, too, wincing to see Graciela
dabbing at Diego’s wounded back with its gaping hole, now that the
arrow was gone. Blood filled the basin she held and dripped on the
floor.

“
It’s not his first wound,” Marco
said. “Someone shot one arrow. Only one. Why was he the
target?”

In
which Paloma is certainly his better half—no surprise to
Marco

S
ancha and Perla wasted no
time in building a fire, and soon the clean scent of piñon filled
the hacienda again, and stew bubbled in the hanging pot. The babies
were asleep, and Paloma was already deep in conversation with
Graciela, who had done all she could for Diego. The slave stood
trembling in the hall, putting her hands over her ears whenever
Diego cried out.

Marco watched the process from the doorway,
wincing when Diego moaned. Paloma came up behind him and put her
arms around his waist. She reached lower and patted him. He
chuckled and tickled her, his eyes on the men in the room who were
concentrating on the patient and not the randy owners of the Double
Cross,
gracias a dios
.

“
I can smell the poor fellow from
here,” she whispered, her hands properly clasped in front of her
again. “And look how long and greasy his hair is! I cannot see his
face, but isn’t he bearded?”

“
Extravagantly so,” he whispered
back. “I doubt he has seen a comb or a pair of scissors in years.
But he does have blue eyes. Almost as blue as yours.”

“
Poor fellow. Look there on his
back. He has so many scars. Someone has used him cruelly.” She
sighed, perhaps thinking of her own scars, when her aunt took a
hairbrush to her. She had told him those stories early in their
marriage, but even now they made his heart sad.

When the servant finished stitching, he
carefully wiped around the wound but did not bandage it. “Let the
air get to it, señor,” he said, as he left the room with a basin of
bloody rags.

Marco tiptoed to the bed and leaned over.
“Would you like something to eat?”