Paloma and the Horse Traders (32 page)

“
Do you like to ride, Graci?” he
asked the slave.

He liked how she dimpled up simply from his
little nickname. “I do,” she told him. That was all. She was not a
talkative woman.

Something about her suggested real
intelligence. He discounted her complete dread of Comanches,
because only fools would not be afraid of The People, and Graci was
no fool. He needed an ally on this trip. He looked at her, so
pretty in that deerskin dress, and decided that he also needed a
friend. He couldn’t even remember his last actual friend. Probably
it had been Rafael, his younger brother.

There in the horse barn, he pulled out a
rudimentary map that Paloma had drawn, indicating which of the
passes through the Sangre de Cristos Marco had said they would
travel. He knew the massive San Luis Valley well enough, but he
wagered that Graci knew it better.

He beckoned her closer and she came toward him,
slightly hesitant at first. Maybe on this little trip she would
understand that he meant her no harm. Or maybe she would always be
wary of men.
Every experience changes us
, he thought,
wondering if his own experiences had changed him for the better. He
doubted it supremely.

“
We’ll travel along this western
slope of the Cristos,” he said. “We’ll hang close to the sheltering
trees and brush. When can we reasonably expect to see the Kapota
Utes and Rain Cloud?”

She pointed close to the large X Paloma had
drawn, which he knew was La Blanca, a hulking mountain that seemed
to rise out of the valley floor, but which was really just a jog in
the Sangre de Cristos.

“
That’s scarcely more than a pass
away from where Governor de Anza first encountered Cuerno Verde
five years ago,” Claudio said. “Marco told me he was wounded there,
three days before the final battle.”

“
The Kapota will be near there, or
maybe a little north,” she said.

“
On the eastern slope, we might see
Comanches,” he said. “I have never doubted Ute bravery, but that
seems so close to danger, especially with women and children. Why
there?”

“
It’s good land with many deer and
elk,” she said. “And no, you should not doubt the bravery of my
people.”

Well, I’ve been told
, he thought,
pleased the slave was not so beaten down that she had no spark left
in her. He had seen too many hollow-eyed women discarded by
Comanches.

Paloma had divided the food into two pouches.
She handed one up to Claudio and the other to Graciela, who smiled
her thanks. A blanket apiece came next, followed by bow and arrows
given to the slave.

“
I’m not good with these,” Graci
said, as she accepted them.

“
Then carry them as extras for me,”
Claudio told her as he put his arms through the loops for his arrow
case and slung his bow. “Do you want a knife?”

She did, which Eckapeta furnished, tucked in a
beaded sheath and strung on a deerskin belt. Graciela nodded her
thanks, still wary of the Comanche woman, and tightened the belt
around her middle.

There was nothing left to do but blow a kiss to
Paloma as she stood by herself at the open gate.

“
Two years ago, I would have ridden
with you,” his sister told him. She patted her still-flat belly
gently, which told him she had already established a rapport with
the latest Mondragón within. “Too many other responsibilities now.
Still, give Marco a kiss for me.”

“
I will, but not on his lips,”
Claudio teased.

“
Oh, get going,” she said in a gruff
voice. “And go with God.”

If He can keep up
, Claudio thought. He
motioned to Graciela, and they began their journey to find Marco,
or maybe French gun dealers, or maybe Great Owl himself. He avoided
thinking about the sketchiness of his plan.

“
We’re going to keep moving off this
plain,” Claudio told her. The sun was high overhead and it was no
time to start a journey, but he felt a gnawing uneasiness, knowing
that Marco, the damned Comanche, and the foolish royal engineer
were out there somewhere between catastrophe and trouble, and he
owed his sister for her kindness to him.

“
The Palo Fechado Pass will bring us
out near Taos and—”

“
You don’t want to go there,”
Graciela said. “I know a better way.”

“
A Comanche way?”

She shot him a venomous look and he knew she
hated The People as much as he did. “A Ute way! We are no strangers
to these mountains. Follow me. We’ll camp high tonight. Is your
horse surefooted?”

He could have objected. He could have
protested. He could have said that women like Graciela Tafoya
didn’t know anything, but he was a smarter man than that. Besides,
when she rode ahead of him, certain of a trail he could barely see,
he liked the way her hips swayed in the saddle. A man couldn’t see
that, if he led.

She wasn’t fooling. They left the main
trail—the tried and true way to Taos between towering mountains—and
angled through a series of low foothills. They didn’t seem to be
rising at all, just weaving back and forth among tall grass and
then hills. The air grew cooler, and he found himself breathing
heavier.

He watched the slave ahead of him. She rode
with casual grace, her back straight but her hips loose, blending
with her horse. The rise and fall of her shoulders told him that
she was not breathing heavily. The weight of his own mortality
struck him. What was he now? Twenty-eight?

“
How old are you, Graci?” he called
ahead, the first thing he had said in hours.

She turned around and put her hand on her
horse’s cruppers. “Twenty-two,” she said with a slight smile.
“Maybe you should ride into the mountains more often to strengthen
your lungs, and leave the horse thieving to your
compadres
.”
She returned her attention to the miniscule trail she
followed.

I think I’ve just been insulted
, he
thought with real amusement. “Why does everyone think that Lorenzo
Diaz is a horse thief?” he asked. “Now and then he does true
business.”

He saw her shoulders shake, and knew he needed
to hang around with better people.
Caramba
, maybe even
Lorenzo knew it. Hadn’t Lorenzo brought Claudio back to his sister
with a noose around his neck?

An hour passed, then another. He was hungry,
thirsty, and needed to piss in the worst way, and still Graci
continued her slow, steady climb into low hills that were turning
into more challenging heights.

“
Stop a minute,” he said finally,
and she did. She dismounted with such considerable delicacy that
she revealed nothing to anyone who might be curious. Not him, of
course.
I am still a bit of a gentleman
, Claudio thought, as
he took only a tiny look.

Without a backward glance, she walked to a
clump of bushes. He turned away and took care of his own business,
dousing some rabbit brush and finding great relief in so simple an
act.

“
Some wine?” he asked when she
returned to her horse, smoothing down her deerskin
dress.

“
For me, too?” she asked, and he
remembered she was a slave. He had forgotten, watching her sure
movements and the way she took command—a slave bought by his
brother-in-law.

“
Yes, for you,” he replied quietly,
handing his wine skin to her. “Graci, we’re partners here. You are
saving me from going miles out of the way.”

She drank her fill, then handed it back. “May I
have some tortillas?” she asked.

“
You don’t even need to ask.
Carne seca
, too.”

She took what he handed her, ate, and didn’t
ask for more. “Just tell me when you’re hungry,” he
said.

She nodded, but he knew she would never say
anything. As they continued on the trail, winding higher now, he
thought of what Marco had told him about Paloma, how even now, she
never asked for anything. With a start, Claudio realized that he
never did, either.

They continued long after dark, guided by
Graciela’s sure sense of direction. He hinted that they could stop
at any time, but Graci only ordered him to go a little farther.
“There is a small meadow soon, and a stream,” she told
him.

She was right. Claudio dismounted gratefully,
stretching his good arm above his head and gingerly rubbing his
other arm.

Like the good horsewoman he knew she was, Graci
tended to her mare, leading her to the stream for a long drink,
sitting beside her until she was done. She led the docile animal to
the best patch of grass and hobbled it there. She didn’t leave the
horse right away, but stayed and chatted, nose to nose, so softly
that Claudio could not hear. Of course, he wasn’t intended to be
part of the conversation.

Claudio cared for his mount while Graciela toed
the grass until she found a comfortable place for her blanket. She
plunked her saddle next to the spot and just sat there until he got
the food from the leather bags. As before, she took what he offered
her, shook her head over any more, then walked into the bushes for
a moment. After she returned, she went directly to her saddle and
blanket, rolled up in it and lay there quietly, her knees drawn up
close to her chest.

The next day was much like the first, with
Graciela leading the way until they reached the highest point in
their passage and started down. He made no attempt to ride beside
her on the narrow trail, grateful for her calm
competence.

They regained the valley floor in the dark, but
he knew precisely where they were. Graciela had saved them two days
of travel and kept them away from Indians and settlers alike. He
doubted she had said six words.

Her silence had ceased to bother Claudio. He
wondered what she had been like around her mother and brothers, and
tried to imagine her as a laughing young woman, with ideas and
dreams of her own. He wondered about his own dreams, not even
certain when the last one had guttered out like a spent candle and
left him in the dark.

They were riding side by side now through the
scrub brush and stunted trees, so common a sight in New Mexico. The
day had been warm, and the piñon resin gave off its familiar odor.
The moon had risen, but he was tired down to his bones. Maybe he
could stay awake if he talked. Of course, that would only work if
someone answered him.

“
If you could do anything you wanted
to, Graci, what would it be?” he asked.

She gave him a squinty look, her eyes nearly
disappearing, as though she disapproved of his question.

“
Just curious,” he mumbled, feeling
like an idiot.

“
I have no answer,” she said.
“That’s not something you think about, with Comanches.” She gave an
involuntary shudder.

She must have felt she owed him more
conversation than that. “Wh … what about you?” she
asked.

Up until that very moment, he had no answer,
either. A few times at the Double Cross, he had tried to imagine
himself as a
hacendado
like Marco. His thoughts had dribbled
off into nothing, because he had no idea what that meant. Life was
trading or stealing horses, hurrying away to stay unfettered by a
district
juez de campo
, hanging around the edge of a trade
fair or even a horse sale, watching the oily-tongued Lorenzo make
his deals. Life was having enough to eat, finding a warm spot in a
snowstorm—a barn if they were lucky—and once in a while paying for
a woman.

He had watched Marco and Paloma tease each
other, laugh, cuddle, play with their children, or just sit in the
sala
, Paloma’s feet usually in her husband’s lap so he could
massage them. An outsider, he had still felt the warmth of their
devotion to each other, and truth be told, their affection for any
unsuspecting houseguest who happened to wander by—him, for
example.

“
I don’t have any plans either,” he
told Graciela, even though it was a lie. Sitting there in the
growing cold, a blanket around his shoulders, he knew he wanted
more. More of what he wasn’t certain yet, but more of what had been
his lot, so far.

He found the camping spot and lay awake a long
time after he thought Graciela slept, staring up at the familiar
planets and constellations, a traitor to his words. He had assured
Paloma that he preferred being outside, and not hemmed in by rooms
and high walls. He stared at the stars, cold and unblinking and
huge at their high altitude.

“
I want a roof over my head, kind
people around me, good work to do, a family,” he whispered, secure
in the certainty that Graciela slept.

“
I do, too,” he heard her say most
distinctly, from the distance of her own blanketed
burrow.

He closed his eyes in embarrassment, kept them
closed, and soon he slept.

In the morning, she made no mention of his
drowsy conversation, but neither looked the other in the eyes. They
had reached the end of their dried beef and tortillas, but there
were cactus chunks to chew on. Tonight he would make a snare for
rabbits, or watch for unwary deer. Failing that, snakes weren’t so
bad. He could dig a hole against a boulder—plenty of those—and
shield a small fire from any other riders.