Paloma and the Horse Traders (14 page)

Smoke poured from the direction of the Calderón
hacienda. The holdings were too far away to see flames, but smoky
blackness filled one quadrant of an otherwise beautiful morning.
Trouble had come to Valle del Sol again.

“
We’re going to have to settle this
with Great Owl, aren’t we?” he asked Toshua. “If we don’t, all the
goodwill we have earned from Kwihnai will be worth
nothing.”

“
You have no army, only useless
soldiers in Santa Maria, and Kwihnai and his warriors are far to
the east,” Toshua reminded him. “You know you will not take one man
from the guard here, not as long as Paloma and your children
inhabit the Double Cross.”

“
True. Sometimes a very small army
is better than a large one.”

Toshua nodded. “Only say the word.”

In
which the trader makes a discovery

“
J
ust a
crisp tortilla with a little salt on it for me,” Paloma said to
Perla in the kitchen.

“
That is not enough to feed a baby,”
Perla scolded.

“
It will do this morning,” Paloma
replied, touched by the way the servants bullied her when they knew
she was with child. The same thing had happened when she and Marco
returned from their adventure in the sacred canyon to the east, and
she was pregnant with Claudio. Perla and Sancha had bullied her to
eat more, scolded her to sleep more, and chided her to put her feet
up and rest, until Paloma could only surrender to their
ministrations. It was beginning again, and their rough love brought
tears to her eyes. Tears, too? So soon?
Ay de mi
, she
thought with some dismay,
my body is not mine alone anymore
.
Funny how that notion should make her grin through her morning
sickness.

And here was Graciela in the kitchen doorway,
shy to enter, even though she had already been such a help to
Paloma. Paloma patted the space on the bench beside her. “Do sit
down. We have been too upended to give you the welcome you
deserve,” Paloma said.

“
I am just a slave your husband
bought,” Graciela said. “
Dama
, Señor Mondragón just threw
that money pouch at Great Owl, so he would not kill me! He …
he didn’t even take out just some of the coins and toss them. It
would have been enough! He gave him the whole pouch.”

“
I would have been ashamed if he had
done any less,” Paloma said quietly.

“
I blush to say this, but your
husband could have done anything to my body that he wanted to, but
he didn’t!”

Paloma couldn’t help but smile, even in the
face of Graciela’s anguish. “I would have been ashamed if he had!”
she declared this time, which brought a slight smile to the slave’s
lips.

I am looking at someone much like I was
,
Paloma thought, as she regarded the young woman seated beside her,
dirty and wearing a deerskin dress so ragged that it was only fit
for the burning barrel.
And what would I have wanted more than
anything in the horrible household of my Uncle
Felix?

She knew. Without a word, and to Perla’s
shocked surprise, Paloma pulled Graciela close to her. She felt the
slave’s initial resistance, then felt her melt into her arms.
Whatever terrors Graciela had suffered at the hands of the
Comanches stepped aside, and for a moment she became just a girl
again.

“
I am grateful to you for helping
that poor trader. All I ask of you in this house is that you help
me with my children. I am with child again and I need you,” Paloma
said, smoothing down Graciela’s tangled hair. “There now.” She held
Graciela away from her, seeing in her mind’s eye what the young
woman could become. “You will tell me about yourself, and I will
tell you about me, but first, come with me.”

Paloma took Graciela’s hand and led her out the
kitchen door and into the garden. They walked past the beans and
peppers, and tomatillos, and beyond the corn. Paloma pointed to the
acequia
and the empty canal that led into a wooden shed
close by.

“
Marco had this made for me alone a
few years ago, because I was too shy to bathe in the
acequia
after dark during the summer,” she explained. “I will raise that
little wooden dam, and water will flow into a metal tub inside the
shed.”

“
How clever,” Graciela said. “Do you
bathe your babies here?”

“
They are still small enough for the
wooden tub in the laundry room beyond the kitchen. Perhaps that
will be one of your chores. Here now, when the tub is full, you
lower the dam again.”

Paloma walked to the
acequia
, but one of
the guards was already there to raise the dam. She thanked him, and
walked along the plank-lined ditch as the water moved toward the
shed and under the wall. Graciela hurried ahead and opened the
door. They watched the tub fill with clear, cold water from Rio
Santa Maria. When it was nearly full, she sent Graciela running to
close the dam.

“
See here? You build a little fire
under the tub. Blow it out when the water is warm enough.” She
chuckled. “Wait a bit so you don’t burn your bum, then you can lock
the door and soak. Towels there, soap there.”

“
I have no other clothes,” Graciela
said, bending down to start the fire with flint and steel. In a
moment, she had a small fire, which she blew on until it caught the
kindling. “All I have is this deerskin.”

“
It’s going in the burn pile, like
it or not,” Paloma said. She went to the door. “Watch the fire, and
I’ll find you something far better to wear.”

“
Thank you,
dama
.”

Humming to herself, Paloma went into the house
and to the storage room, where she took out an apron, petticoat,
skirt and bodice and put them over her arm. Marco had wondered
about her decision to stock the hacienda with simple clothing for
the servants, or someone else in need. “My mother had a room like
this,” she told her husband. “She never turned anyone away.” He
questioned her no more.

Marco was leaning against the wall, watching
her, when she came out. He hefted the money pouch in his hand. “For
horses and expenses at the inn, and general acknowledgment of my
stupidity. Is it enough?”

He handed her the pouch and she lifted it. “You
left enough in your strong box for those shoes with red heels you
promised me, and a silk nightgown?” It was an old joke between
them, and she could tell he needed to laugh.

He obliged her. “
Especially
that silk
nightgown! Maybe this will do for now.”

From behind his back he took out something soft
wrapped in cotton and tied with twine. “I got it for you in the
Taos market. It’s for those nights coming up when you’re in bed
nursing our next one, and your shoulders get cold.”

With a cry of pleasure, Paloma handed Marco the
clothing for Graciela and opened the package. “My goodness, it’s
lovely,” she whispered, holding the shawl up to her
cheek.

“
Mohair and merino wool, knitted by
one of Felicia’s cousins in the pueblo,” he said. “You don’t mind
if the red shoes wait for a while?”

She kissed his cheek. “They can wait. And we
don’t really need silk nightgowns.”

They walked outside and Paloma saw that the men
still stood and looked to the north. “Someone else?” she asked. “Oh
please, not Pepe Calderón!”

“
Toshua and I just returned from
there. They lost a few sheds outside the hacienda, but they were
forted up.” He crossed himself.

“
I think all of us will be more
careful now. For a while,” she replied.

He walked with her to the door of the
bathhouse. “Will she do?” he asked, tipping his head toward the
door.

“
Time will tell,” she said, then
shooed him away.

She knocked, heard no answer, but opened the
door a crack. Graciela sat in the water, her hair damp and
shielding her face. Her shoulders shook, and Paloma knew she was
crying. Paloma knelt by the tub and did nothing more than scrub her
back.

“
It’s been so long,” Graciela said
when she could talk. “I worked so hard for Great Owl’s
women—carrying water, tanning hides, skinning buffalo. All they did
was beat me.” She shook suddenly. “Then at night, it would be one
man or another.” She grabbed the washcloth from Paloma’s hand and
stuck it in her mouth, her eyes wide with terror.

“
Those days are over,” Paloma said,
grateful to every saint she knew of that as hard as her lot had
been in the house of her uncle in Santa Fe, no man had violated
her. She gently removed the cloth. “That is our pledge to you.” She
stood up. “Finish washing and try these clothes. I do not have any
shoes for you, but when it is safe to go to Santa Maria, there is a
cobbler.”

She left the bathhouse, shaken to her heart’s
core and wondering at the great cruelty in the world. Her taste of
it had been bitter, but not as bitter as Graciela’s.

Marco stood by the
acequia
now with
Emilio. He didn’t carry the pouch, but he didn’t look at peace or
relieved.

She jumped right in. “Did you pay Señor
Diaz?”

“
I did. He is feverish, but the
wound seems to be healing. No red streaks.” He leaned toward her to
create their own private moment in a busy hacienda plaza where a
farrier bent over a horse’s raised hoof, and the stone grinder
rumbled as a small boy fed corn into it. The wind had picked up,
setting ristras of chilis chattering as they hung by the kitchen
garden.

“
Check on him, will you?” Marco
said. “He thinks he will be well enough to travel tomorrow, but I
told him that was crazy.” He gave a little laugh. “I took away his
leather trousers. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“
Did you—”

“
Apologize?
Por su puesto que
s
í
. He just shrugged. You are right, my love: there
hasn’t been much kindness in his life.” He patted her shoulder.
“Toshua and I are going to the Calderóns again, to see if they
might feel safer here, and offer our hospitality.”

“
Just the two of you?” Paloma
couldn’t help her alarm.

“
You think we would take
one
guard from this place?” he asked, faintly amused. “Paloma,
sometimes you are a goose.”

She couldn’t help the tears in her eyes, which
made him look at her in a husbandly kind of way that told her
without words not to fret. “Two is better than many, at times. This
is one of those times.” He made a small sign of the cross on her
forehead, and another on her belly, gave her a pat and strolled to
the horse barn, where Toshua was already waiting.

She was weeding around the peppers when
Graciela, dressed and smelling faintly of lavender, knelt beside
her and started weeding, too. “Mama had a small garden in the
garrison, before Papa left us,” she said, her eyes on the hanging
peppers. “She had another one in the Cloud Land, but The People
trampled it with their horses.”

“
They won’t trample this one,”
Paloma said. She stood up and dusted off her fingers on her apron.
“Finish this row for me, then please come inside. I will tell you
about my children.”

They spent a quiet afternoon in the
sala.
It was a room not used as often in the summer as the
kitchen, but it provided a quiet place for conversation. Paloma sat
Claudio close to her on the floor as they sorted pinto beans from
speckled Anasazi beans. Soledad joined him and sat with her ankles
carefully crossed and her dress tidy, like her mother. Shy at
first, Graciela joined them, and they all sorted beans. When the
children lost interest and retreated to the other side of the room
where a stack of colored blocks beckoned, Paloma quietly told
Graciela her own story.

“
My dear husband insisted on hanging
those sandals over there to remind him that I was brave when I
didn’t have to be.” She pointed to the two crossed brands, one the
Double Cross, with its elaborate M and two crosses, and the equally
grand star and V for
vega
, or meadow. “That is my family’s
brand, Star in the Meadow.” Paloma ran the beans through her hands.
“It’s a story for another time.” Paloma got to her feet and picked
up the bowls of sorted beans. “Stay here and play with them. Get to
know my darlings.”

Leaving the beans in the kitchen with Perla,
she went down the corridor to the room across from her room. She
knocked, wasn’t sure if she heard a muffled acknowledgment, and
went inside anyway.

The smell of the man struck her first, so she
left the door open, the better to air out the room. He still lay
with his back to her. “Diego? Señor Diaz? I am Señora
Mondragón.”

“
Just Diego,” he said finally. “And
really, you do not need to be in here. In fact, I am strong enough
now to go to the horse barn maybe. Anywhere but your
hacienda.”

“
Don’t be absurd,” she told him.
“When you feel better tomorrow, I will have one of the men help you
to the bathhouse. You can wash, and someone will cut your hair and
trim your beard. We have new clothes and—”

“
I don’t need to be a bother!” he
said with more force. He tried to move, and only
groaned.