Paloma and the Horse Traders (40 page)

Juaquin translated his instructions for David
Benedict, who appeared as intent and serious as the others. Toshua
shook his head. “I have heard sillier plans, but I do not recall
when that might have been.”

“
We are working with what we have,”
Joaquim said with a smile.

David Benedict raised his hand. He spoke slowly
and in earnest to Joaquim, who pursed his lips and then nodded.
Turning to Marco, Joaquim said, “Is there any powder left in your
parfleche?”

Marco lifted the flap, now powdery with black
residue. “Several good-sized handfuls. Why?”

“
David wants to sow it in the field
like grain, just beyond the farther of the Two Brothers. A
well-placed shot will set it on fire. Think of the added
confusion.”

Marco handed the parfleche to David. With a
nod, the man started down the hill. They watched him walk with a
purposeful stride toward the plain.

Toshua motioned to the Utes to start down the
hill toward the sumac bushes. He looked back at Marco, then walked
toward him. Marco watched him, remembering the desperately thin man
tethered in the henhouse of a madman, so close to death but saved
by Paloma. He thought of the Comanche brave stepping in front of
him when they reached the wintering quarters of The People in the
sacred canyon, protecting him and Paloma from sure death. His heart
full, Marco thought of Toshua sitting cross-legged on the buffalo
robe in his old office by the horse barn, singing to little Claudio
and Soledad. All of a sudden he wanted to grasp every fleeting
moment and hold it close for just another second or two.

“
I don’t want to die today,” Marco
said frankly.

“
I don’t, either. We are close to
some sort of peace between your people and mine. I feel it. I’d
like to see it, same as you.” Toshua put a gentle hand on Marco’s
shoulder. “But we will die bravely, if we must.”

Toshua was not a tall man. Marco bent down and
kissed his forehead, then each cheek. “Go with God, my friend. May
you always have a horse to ride.”

He had never seen tears in Toshua’s eyes
before. As Marco watched in silence, his heart too full to speak,
Toshua wiped the tears spilling from his eyes and touched their
wetness to Marco’s forehead like a benediction.

“
And may Paloma and your children be
forever with you.”

Marco swallowed. He clapped Toshua’s shoulders
and gave him a little push down the hill. Toshua gave him a
backhanded wave and joined the Utes.

“
Look there!” Joaquim said, pointing
to the first of the Two Brothers on their left.

Marco took a deep breath. Lorenzo and Rogelio
bounced along in the wagon carrying the faulty firearms, right on
schedule. Marco looked down at the sumac bushes. Nothing. The
Indians had vanished.

By now, David Benedict was back beside them,
breathing heavily, the empty parfleche in his hand. In silence,
they each loaded their two muskets, and made sure the flints were
securely in place. Marco rested the muskets on his shoulder and
picked up the
bomba
. Joaquim pointed down the hill to the
last sheltering trees.

Without a word, Marco moved into place. He sank
down, making himself as small as he could, and watched Joaquim,
that worthless soldier, and David, an agent for a foreign power,
settle themselves at equal distance from each other.

A million doubts ran through his tired brain,
tugging on his mind like little impatient children dancing about,
demanding and whining. What if this doesn’t work? What if Rain
Cloud is already dead? What will I tell Paloma if Claudio is dead?
Who will tell my darling if
I
am dead? What if Great Owl
chose a different rendezvous?

He leaned against a tree and looked across the
valley. Lorenzo and Rogelio had stopped the wagon. He watched them
get down and stretch, then look around. Marco knew they would never
see the Indians by the sumac bushes. He prayed they would know
everyone was in place, then he turned the matter over to God and
San Miguel. He had done all he could. The faulty and foolish plan
was ready. He settled down to wait, keeping his eyes on the low
hills to the south, knowing that sooner or later, Great Owl and his
warriors would come out of a pass—which one Marco did not know—and
the dance of death would begin.

The sun reached its height and began a slow
descent, with no sign of Great Owl. Marco felt his heart plummet
into his boots. He leaned forward to see Lorenzo and Rogelio
lounging in what shade the wagon provided. Toshua and the Utes were
still invisible. For a small moment he felt alone and afraid. The
terror passed; perhaps Paloma had just said his name out
loud.

The smile died on his lips. He took a deep
breath and watched Comanches, so many Comanches, file out of a
pass. Even from the distance, he saw Great Owl’s headdress. “Good
God,” he whispered, and started counting. He stopped at twenty, but
there were twice that number. His face went cold and then hot and
he felt a great pain beyond anything he had ever known.

“
Paloma, if our baby is a son, name
him after me, and tell him I was a good man,” he whispered to the
ground that he knew would soon claim him. “If a daughter, name her
Maria Rosa, because I like it. And you? Oh, Paloma. No red shoes.
Forgive me.”

He took another deep breath and the panic
passed. He looked at the sky, then at the aspens farther up the
slope. He would like to have heard water flowing one final time. A
hawk wheeled high above and he thanked God for one last pretty
sight.

“
Thy will be done, Father,” he
prayed.

In
which there is singing

F
eeling like a man standing
outside his own body, Marco watched the long line of Comanches
cross the plain toward the wagon and the horse traders. He saw
Lorenzo tip the beret of the dead Frenchman at a rakish angle.
Marco wished Sancha could see what a brave man looked like.

Great Owl and his men made a slow progress from
the pass to the rendezvous. Marco said one final prayer, thanking
God for his life, and asking for a miracle similar to loaves and
fishes, where the few multiplied into many. He made himself small
in the grove and rested his first musket against his raised
knees.

He watched the trade, the little figure of
Lorenzo opening one of the musket cases and taking out one firearm
after the other. Great Owl made a gesture, and Lorenzo prepared the
musket to fire. The bang echoed between the Two
Brothers.

Marco sucked in his breath when Great Owl made
the gesture again.
Please, please, no more demonstrations
,
he prayed, knowing the only useable flintlock left was Lorenzo’s
own personal weapon that he kept behind the wagon seat. He closed
his eyes when Great Owl made the gesture a third time.

A third time, the sound reverberated across the
plain, but Lorenzo must have aimed in a different direction. Marco
opened his eyes and sucked in his breath. Lorenzo had to have fired
his own personal weapon, and was now defenseless. He had also aimed
right at the field David had sowed with black powder. Flames roared
into the air between the Comanches and the route to the
pass.

Holding his breath now, Marco watched as Great
Owl flung something at Lorenzo. He sighed with relief when Lorenzo
caught Marco’s own money pouch, tossed more than a month ago across
the plaza in Taos to save Graciela’s life. He leaned forward to see
Great Owl gesture again, this time to his warriors, who swarmed the
wagon, grabbing weapons from the open box and pulling out the other
crates, as the grass fire spread closer. “Get your guns and move
away,” Marco whispered.

The grass of late summer was paper-dry, but
there was not much of it. The flames that had sprung up in a
terrifying whoosh burned out quickly. It seemed like ages, but
surely not more than a matter of minutes before the crates were
empty, and the deceptively full powder keg and metal box filled
with lead bars to melt into bullets were also in Great Owl’s
possession.

Everything fell apart.

As Marco watched in horror, one of the milling
warriors yanked poor Rogelio off the wagon seat and skewered him
with a lance. Lorenzo dived under the wagon seat as the horses
reared and bolted, running in a tight circle until the wagon tipped
over.

Two warriors fell from their saddles as Toshua
and the Utes began their silent work with bow and arrow. Whatever
surprise gained ended quickly as other braves started up the slope
toward the sumac bushes.

Just as quickly, David stood up and threw his
bomba
, which exploded right over the largest group of Great
Owl’s warriors. Marco couldn’t help his smile at the screams of
terror from Comanches, those fearsome Indians who usually made
others scream. He struck flint to steel and lit his own
bomba
, felt a flash as his eyebrows singed off, and lobbed
the missile directly at Great Owl.

Wincing from the pain, he watched as the rum
bottle turned end over end, then exploded high in the air. More
braves screamed as the glass shards cut deep into their flesh.
Crazed, three horses ran back toward the pass, stopping to buck and
whirl until not even their profoundly skilled riders remained on
their backs.

Calm now, Marco steadied his rifle and willed
the black smoke to blow away from the scorched land. He took
careful aim and fired. He was no musketeer, but he watched in grim
satisfaction to see a man suddenly grab the space where his arm
used to be.

There were still too many warriors and now they
turned their attention on their clump of trees, throwing themselves
from their horses and crawling up the slope. Marco fired his last
musket just as Joaquim lit the final
bomba.

Instead of throwing it, Joaquim rolled
la
bomba
down the hill, where it exploded with a roar just in
front of the Comanches on the slope. Marco pulled all his arrows
from their quiver and set them in front of him. He let loose one
after another, silently thanking his long-dead father, who had
insisted Marco practice and practice until he was in tears and his
arms ached.

Still they came. He shot his final arrow and
took out his knife. “Paloma, I have loved you,” he whispered, ready
for the final stroke before everything ended. He prayed only that
he would not mind the pain when whatever warrior grabbed him,
circled his scalp with a knife, and yanked off his hair before he
died.

He crouched behind the tree and waited for
death. The shouts and yips of the Comanches filled his brain and he
waited in the black smoke.

And waited. Even though his ears rang, he knew
his overheated imagination told him the sound was retreating. He
shook his head to clear it, and listened.

He heard other shouts and yips, but from a
direction that puzzled him. He stood up and swatted at the smoke
like an idiot, desperate for a clear view of the plain.

God granted his wish. God blew and the smoke
whooshed past him. He took a deep breath and coughed until one more
cough would have expelled his lungs. He dropped to his knees at the
sight before him.

More Comanches filled the plain, but they were
riding in hard from the east, riding into Great Owl’s warriors and
striking them with an audible smack. He looked to his left to see
both David and Joaquim on their feet, staring, too. Farther down
the slope, Toshua rose. He looked up at Marco and made a wide and
elaborate sign for horses, his hand vertical followed by his other
hand forking the vertical hand.

“
Claro, claro
,” Marco shouted
in understanding, and gestured to Joaquim and David to follow him
up the hill. They pounded up the slope to the larger tree line,
where they had tethered their mounts. He swung onto Buciro and
gathered as many reins as he could handle, leaving the rest to
Joaquim and David. Starting down the slope, he leaned far back to
stay in his saddle and realized that old Kwihnai and his Kwahadi
warriors had ridden to their rescue.

Marco watched in silence as the Kwahadi
Comanche methodically decimated Great Owl’s renegade Comanches. He
felt strangely at war within his heart to see the Comanches fight
each other. Part of him rejoiced, the part that had seen the
suffering of settlers, including Paloma and Claudio. Another part,
hopefully the part he listened to the most, made him yearn for
peace to come from this battle. True, the Spanish were interlopers
upon the land that The People had ruled for years, but even the
Comanches had come from far to the north and driven out other
tribes living on these plains. What belonged to whom?

Surely there comes a time when peace begins to
make more sense than continual warfare.
Is this the time?
he
asked himself.
Let it be the time, dear God in
heaven
.

Tall Grass lay dead behind a tiny sumac bush
that wouldn’t have hidden a chicken, stretched out and staring at
the sky with eyes that saw nothing. Marco noted with fierce
satisfaction that he still wore his hair. Deer Bones was even now
reaching for his own horse, as were his remaining
companions.

Holding his breath, Marco stared hard for
Toshua to materialize, to rise up and raise one eyebrow and then
the other in a way that Paloma called creepy. He would have given
the earth to see his friend. He looked around, determined that no
enemy would take Toshua’s scalp.