River to Cross, A (11 page)

The Next Morning

As usual, Father Lorenzo rose before dawn
and went to the window. It would soon be light.

After lunch yesterday, when he’d recovered his composure at having three heavily armed Texas Rangers and an American senator’s abducted daughter in his monastery, he set about getting the weapons out of sight. “Forgive an old man,” he told them, “but they make me uncomfortable. And, I suspect, probably the brothers, as well.”

Jake hadn’t hesitated. “I understand completely. Where would you like us to put them?”

“Leave them here in my office until you’re ready to leave. They won’t be touched. No one uses this room but me.”

Immediately three men unbuckled heavy holsters, slid rifles off their shoulders, pulled out knives, more revolvers, and two sticks of something that looked like dynamite. They laid them on a table by the window. Each one of them, however, had a small revolver tucked out of sight, inside a pocket or boot or under an arm.

Father Lorenzo looked at the weapons, then at the three Rangers standing in his office. “Our souls, unfortunately, have no such armor. All they have to defend themselves—and us—is faith.”

He extended an invitation to attend mass that evening, if they were so inclined. To his delight, his message got through. Coming out of the abbey after Vespers that evening, he saw Ranger Gus Dukker and hurried to catch up with him.

“I’m so pleased to see you,” Lorenzo said. “What made you decide to come?”

“Guilt, Father,” Gus mumbled.

“Why guilt, my son?”

“I haven’t been to mass in five years. Got to thinking maybe my soul could use some of that ammunition you talked about.”

Father Lorenzo smiled and said, “Welcome back.
He
missed you.”

Lorenzo carried his coffee to the window to watch the sun come up. This was his time of the day, a gift from the Lord.

The jagged peaks of the Sierra Madre rose nearly two miles high into a purple morning sky. The eastern horizon glowed, lit from below. Crimson and corals streaked upward, blushing the snowcaps, the clouds, and reddening the sky itself.

Lorenzo took a long, thoughtful sip of his coffee. If the old saying was right, bad weather was on the way.

Rain coming.

From watching them all these many years, he’d come to know what the cloud shapes and height and their changing colors meant. From years of observing, he now knew that when his eyesight sharpened and he could read without his spectacles, the barometer was falling, and he’d better take his umbrella. One of the advantages of getting older was the ability to read the small signs in life of what lay ahead.

This killing of another Texas newspaper editor by Mexicans—the second in five years, and only a few miles from the first—would go badly for the government. Added to that was the kidnapping of the editor’s sister, the daughter of a prominent American senator. The combination of those two events might finally topple General Diego. Especially after what Lorenzo had recently learned. Spread open on the desk behind him was Lloyd Madison’s
Grande Examiner
, revealing Diego’s takeover plot.

Lorenzo stared at the sky, trying to read it—or read between the lines, if there were any—as to which way it would all go.

In another couple of days, all Mexico would know what was happening—unless General Diego could catch the Americans before they crossed the Rio Grande.

And that must not happen.

Father Lorenzo looked at the mountains and the crimson skies behind them, and breathed a prayer that the Texas Rangers could get Señora Evans and themselves out of Mexico before it was too late.

“Elizabeth, you all right?”
Gus called.

Jake hipped around in his saddle. “Why? What’s wrong with her?”

“Looks like the altitude’s getting to her. I feel it some myself,” Gus said.

Jake chided himself. He should’ve been watching her closer. But that morning they’d all been rushing, pushed along by an uneasy sense that time was running out.

When Maria showed up on horseback at San Miguel at the usual time for her class that morning, two monks were waiting for her. They took her horse to the stables and watched the doors while three Rangers and Elizabeth unpacked the saddlebags and reloaded them into the bags on Elizabeth’s new horse, purchased from the monastery a few hours before. Her original little Mexican horse had a brand and a serial number, and would be easily identified if they were stopped. As soon as they were loaded, they left San Miguel and rode all day. Occasionally they broke into a gallop for a change of pace for a mile or two to make up time.

Jake hoped to reach the Rio Grande tomorrow morning and cross over before noon. Now, he dropped back and reined his horse alongside hers. Eyes narrowed, he studied her. Mountain sickness—headache, out of breath—the first signs.

The first time he’d looked at her photograph, he thought he had her pegged. A senator’s daughter, classy and rich and spoiled. Yet he was wrong. She wasn’t spoiled. Not once had she complained about anything.

“You look pale. How do you feel?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Have a teeny little headache, that’s all.” She let out a breathy laugh.

A week ago, that might have fooled him into thinking she was all right. Now he knew her better. Physically, and probably emotionally as well, she was on the edge. But her pride wouldn’t let her show it. Jake pulled out his canteen and passed it over to her, watching her swallow. She was used to sea level, not riding and working a horse at eight thousand feet elevation. Because she was on the small side, so was her bloodstream, and it simply couldn’t carry enough oxygen to support her.

He regretted that they’d come up to this height so fast, partly because she’d enjoyed those little gallops. She was turning into a decent rider.

Climbing fast was why she was so out of breath and tired.

He stretched and grunted. “We’ve gone far enough for one day. Suppose we look around up here, find some wood and water, and make camp.”

When she gave a sigh of relief and turned away, he knew he’d made the right decision.

They followed a rocky trail that wound around a sheer cliff rising on one side, the face wet with trickles of mountain snowmelt. Jake suddenly reined to a stop and seized her arm.

The men exchanged glances. They all smelled it.

Smoke.

Keeping Elizabeth behind them, the Rangers slowly began walking their horses. Ahead lay a wide clearing, hemmed in by low reddish orange cliffs cut with openings, a honeycomb of caves. A faint haze drifted across the ridgeline. The smoke must have come from cookstoves within the mountain.

“
Gitanos
,” Jake said. Gypsies.

The trail ran through the center of their camp, past the caves. Tents and shacks dotted the area, along with Gypsy vans and decorated wagons—
vardos
. The men sat in the tent openings and wagon doorways and watched a group of children fighting and playing among themselves. The children rushed around them, begging for money, pulling at their saddlebags. One boy snatched Jake’s hat off, but Jake shot a hand out and snatched it back.

A teenage girl darted in and grabbed the scarf off Elizabeth’s head. The loose braid tucked under it came apart and long hair fell out. Elizabeth made a swipe for the scarf, but the girl ran away, laughing at her.

Near the trail, a man approached the horses, clapping his hands and whistling to the animals. He seemed displeased to see strangers in the camp. His face hardened as the four riders pulled to a stop.

“
Buenas tardes,
señor
,” Jake said. “We’re not here to make trouble. We are just passing through.”

“You
la policía
?” the man asked.

Jake and Fred both laughed. “No, no,” Jake said. “We are not police.”

The man grinned. “Then I guess you must be running from them. Buenas tardes! I am Laszlo. Please don’t mind the children, señor—they were just playing.”

Gus slid off his horse and said in Romani, “
Sastipe, sar sal?
” Hello, how are you?

Laszlo said, “You speak Romani?”

“A little. My grandmother’s Romani.” Gus stuck his hand out. “
May buchhov
Gus Dukker.”

Laszlo stepped forward with a smile, a flash of white teeth in a swarthy face. He pumped Gus’s hand. “
Bor
—you are one of us.”

Gus laughed. “Almost.”

Laszlo nodded to Elizabeth and translated for her and the others. “
Devlesa avilan
—It is God who brought you here,” he said. “You are safe here. Like you,
Comandante
, we have no love for the police or the army or Diego and his death squads.”

“You know who we are, then?” Jake asked.

“
Sí
. They are looking everywhere for three Rangers and a woman. Your enemies call you
El Oso Amarillo
, the yellow bear. When your hat came off and I saw your hair, then hers, I knew it was you.” He extended his hand. “Welcome,
mi amigo
, El Oso Amarillo. Tell me, why have the Rangers never talked to us? We Gypsies can find out things that might be helpful.” His face darkened. “Our allegiance is to ourselves, not to the government or to anyone else. But we will do you the courtesy of listening.”

Jake looked at him and blinked. Talking to Gypsies had never occurred to him. The Mexicans despised them. As a result, Gypsies stayed alert and had developed a talent for discovering facts and information others often missed. For them, it was a means of self-preservation.

“You’re right—we should have talked to you long before this,” Jake said. “But if all goes well, we won’t be needing your help. If it does not, then we’ll be back soon. That’s a promise.”

Laszlo clapped him on the shoulder and led them all toward a blue and yellow vardo, warning them about the soldiers on the roads. Although his vardo was small inside, it was divided into two rooms: the kitchen-living room and the sleeping quarters.

With the windows open, it was remarkably airy and cool inside and spotlessly clean.

A dark-haired woman with a baby on her hip stirred a blue-enameled pot on a small stove. With a smile, Laszlo introduced them all.

“Gracias, señora,” Jake said, nodding to Laszlo’s wife, Nadia. In English, he told Elizabeth, “On the way over, her husband said the road north is crawling with Mexican troops. He invited us to stay the night, said they’ll find a place for us. They know who we are.”

“Great,” Elizabeth said. “I’m so hungry, and she’s cooking something over there in that pot that smells heavenly.”

Humming to herself, Elizabeth sat down at the little folding table in the kitchen. Knees and shoulders touching, she, Jake, Laszlo, Nadia, and their two children all crowded together. Fred and Gus sat cross-legged on the floor, plates in their laps. Six adults and two children squeezed into the five-by-ten-foot space.

Nadia had fixed a
cocido
—a pinto, black, and garbanzo bean stew with chunks of rabbit, corn, potatoes, and any other vegetables she found in her kitchen. A flat, salty corn cake and a pitcher of wild-tasting goat’s milk finished off the menu.

“Delicious. I’ve never tasted goat’s milk before,” Elizabeth said, licking her lips. She raised an eyebrow at Jake who, after one tiny sip, carefully set his glass down.

Elizabeth smiled at his expression. She leaned over and patted his hand. For a few hours at least, life had returned to normal.

They took turns, passing the nine-month-old baby from lap to lap and feeding her with their fingers from their plates.

Elizabeth looked over at Jake as he let the baby lick his fingers. His face was different, soft and half smiling, the cleft in his chin deepening. He leaned back in his chair and gave Elizabeth a long, bored look.

Liar
, she thought. Reaching out, she rested her hand on his forearm and felt the muscles tighten beneath his shirtsleeve. Despite that easy, casual attitude, he was as tense as she was. She wondered if she’d ever understand a man whose eyes told her one thing but whose lips said something quite different.

He acted as if he were three different men rolled up into one.

His public image was that of the dedicated Ranger—in control, determined, a man with all the charm of a wolf about to spring on its prey. That one strode into a roomful of men and held a gun on them, brazenly taking charge. That one raised the hair on the back of her neck.

Then there was the serious man who smiled easily when around friends, as comfortable with judges and abbots as he was with cowboys. An officer who joined the Rangers and took up the cause for justice because nobody else would. If he stayed in the Army, he’d probably wind up running it.

And finally—her throat tightened—there was the private Jake Nelson, the man she’d only caught glimpses of when he momentarily dropped the mask. The toughness disappeared then, replaced by a gentleness no one knew he possessed. That one had kissed her with such exquisite tenderness she’d nearly wept.

Who was he now? she wondered.

As soon as the meal was over, they all followed Nadia outside, dragging their chairs and cushions with them and arranging them in a semicircle around the front of the vardo.

When Nadia went back inside for another pillow, Elizabeth said softly to Jake, “Do all Gypsies live like this?”

He nodded. “Most of them. They’re treated like pariahs everywhere, here and in the U.S. No one trusts them; they can’t get jobs.”

“Ever have any work for you?” she asked, watching the open door of the vardo for Nadia.

“Not in the Rangers.”

“Why not?”

“Mainly because they can’t qualify. To join the Rangers, you must own a good horse, saddle, the best weapons. That all costs money, which most Gypsies don’t have. Also, they have a reputation as being the best thieves and pickpockets in the world. I don’t know as I believe it—I never wanted to take the chance. But now I think I would.”