Young Zorro (5 page)

M
OST VAQUEROS WERE YOUNG
men in their twenties. But there were older men, too. A few of them had learned their trade from the old padres, starting as Gabrieleños who had hardly seen a horse. It was a hard trade to learn, but there was a swagger to it like no other. Vaqueros were proud men.

The old hands woke stiff and wrapped their aching knees and elbows in flannel rags to warm them before the sun came. They hobbled to the cook fire for porridge and hot chocolate.

Diego awoke stiff and sore. He rode every day, but he didn't herd cattle on cow ponies: this was another kind of riding that used a new set of muscles. And every one of those muscles was aching. His eyes were crusty and his tongue felt like a saddle blanket.
Bernardo brought him a mug of chocolate and pointed toward the horses. Most of the vaqueros had saddled their first mounts of the day.

“I'll be ready in a heartbeat,” Diego said.

 

Later they stopped their first mounts at a little stream to wash their faces. As they knelt in the sand, Bernardo pointed to a patch of soil nearby. There was a big print in it, still moist and clear.

“St. Bernard's bees!” Diego whispered, then looked quickly around for danger. “That's one big grizzly bear! I don't want to meet him, and for sure not in a gully like this. Let's get out of this streambed.”

They splashed another handful of water on their faces and mounted up. Then they heard the roar and the squeal.

It was a deep, throaty rumble, as loud as a landslide. The squeal was from a horse in pain. Diego's horse sidestepped nervously, but he touched the flanks with his spurs and got up the slope.

A stone's throw away they saw a massive grizzly bear, as big as a haystack. His brown, loose fur quivered and shook as he roared again, one massive paw on the neck of a downed horse that was kicking feebly, screaming in pain. Some of the camp's tethered horses had pulled
out their stakes and were galloping away, trailing their tethers between their legs. Some of the stakes held. The horses tied to them reared and screeched, their eyes almost all white in terror.

Diego was frozen, so frightened he couldn't move. He could see Bernardo in the corner of his eye, just as terrified by the awful spectacle.

Over the earsplitting roar, they heard whoops and drumming hooves. Scar, Juan, and most of the crew galloped almost right up to the grizzly. It was difficult for Diego to understand, but they seemed delighted.

The grizzly's rubbery nose was turned up, and his lips pulled back to bare his teeth as he stood his ground. He wasn't giving up his prey. The bleeding horse whimpered; the tethered horses continued to scream.

The vaqueros circled, their reatas whistling above their heads. Scar's was the first to dart out, tightening around the bear's thick, shoulderless neck.

The bear swiped at the reata, sending a jerk along it that jolted Scar and his pony, but they held firm as Juan's loop folded around the bear's head over Scar's. Both men dallied and backed down their ponies. The loops tightened.

The grizzly's roar rose. He wanted to swat these new
creatures with the snaking vines, but their vines choked him. Angrier than ever, he rose on his hind feet, bellowing defiance.

Mesmerized, the boys leaned back in unison. A grizzly on all fours was big. A standing grizzly was huge, taller than a man on a horse. They had only heard of elephants, but they couldn't be any bigger than this!

The bear dropped down on all fours to make a charge, but as soon as his hind leg rose for another step, a third loop from Pedro Cinque caught it. Another loop caught his neck. Another snagged his forepaws as he swiped the air. The circle of ponies backed down unsteadily, straining at the live load. The grizzly toppled to the grass, bawling and flailing.

Diego's mind was working at an incredible rate. He saw everything sharply, in the same way that ideas and solutions sometimes came to him. The grizzly's claws were as big as boot knives. He could see the wet, quivering nose, the big pouchy cheeks, the tiny eyes set deep.

The vaqueros were excited. This was their own grand sport. Spaniards could talk about bullfights with their fancy
matadores
, but let them come to California and see a real contest! Here a few vaqueros and their cow ponies made sport of tying down the biggest,
strongest predator anywhere.

Juan Three-fingers sang out a long, excited yelp. “Keeeee-yi-yi-yi! Look at this big fellow! He is bigger than a mountain! He could eat a ship! And angry! This big, hairy fellow wants to eat all of us for lunch! Be careful there, Bernardo! You are just big enough for this bear to pick his teeth with!”

The crisis wasn't over. If any one of these reatas broke, there would be big trouble.

Pedro, one of the young vaqueros, was jumping with excitement. “This big
oso
will make a good fiesta spectacle. We can put him in a ring with some bad bulls and watch them fight it out! It's not far to the pueblo, Jefe,” he called to Scar. “Let us drag Señor Oso to the mission stock ring for the fiesta.”

Diego and Bernardo had seen bull-and-bear fights. They didn't like them. For some it was a fine spectacle, letting brutes fight each other. They were both dangerous enough. Rampaging bulls and surprised bears had killed a few
Angeleños
, true enough. But it was a messy, sad show. There was no real point. The bear always won, killing bull after bull. Sometimes it tired and was gored by a fresh bull in the end. It was a cruel thing, taunting something wild.

Scar sat on his straining horse. He shook his head no.
It was too far to the pueblo, all day to drag and tease a bear to the mission's stock ring. That was too much danger for his men and their horses. And for what? Still, this big raiding bear couldn't be allowed to eat the rancho's horses whenever he wanted a meal.

“Diego!” he called. The boy rode around the circle of vaqueros and reatas to Scar. “My horse,” he said. Diego leaned down and took the reins of Scar's horse.

Scar swung down from his saddle, taking the short musket, the
carabino
, from behind his saddle in the same movement. He checked the flintlock, looking at the priming powder before he walked into the circle, approaching the bear. He brought the musket up, cocking it, steadied its aim, and fired. There was a double ball of white smoke, one from the musket's flintlock, one from its muzzle. The big bear quivered, grunted once, and sank to the ground like a tent with its pegs knocked out. No one moved for a long moment.

“Stay away from him,” Scar said. The dead didn't rise, but the dead weren't always dead. He walked back to his horse, the only person not looking at the bear. He took his powder horn and bullet pouch from the pocket of his saddle's
mochila
and quickly reloaded the musket. Then he waited a few more minutes.

No one slacked his reata yet.

It was quiet for a time. Juan Three-fingers had stopped the grunting and labored breathing of the injured horse with his boot knife. The scene had become almost peaceful.

Scar approached the bear from behind and prodded it with the muzzle of the
carabino
. Nothing, no movement. He nodded. Now the reatas slacked and the vaqueros stepped down to loosen their loops and coil them. Juan opened the jaw of the bear and shook his head with a little shiver, looking at the yellowish-white teeth, terribly big.

“Juan, round up those horses.” Scar pointed in the direction they had bolted. “Esteban, Julio, Carlos, Arturo—keep working these next valleys.” They mounted and galloped off in their excitement.

Bernardo looked at Scar and waited.

Scar nodded, as if to himself, then glanced back at the bear. “Big fellow. Big enough for a rug,” he said. “Pedro!”

The young vaquero stepped down from his horse.

“You and the boys skin Señor Oso out. Drag his carcass over to that ravine and put some brush on it.”

Scar was a mestizo. His mother had been a Gabrieleño. The bear was a sacred animal, part of the human family. It was well known that the most power
ful sorcerers, perhaps even White Owl herself, had at least one bear parent. They were respectful of bears, even in death.

Pedro nodded.

“Then back to work.” The vaquero nodded again.

“Bernardo, Diego, you wrap up the bearskin tight and cut out a good pony.” He gestured to the horses Juan was rounding up. “Pack the skin on the pony and ride up to White Owl's village. Give her the horse with my compliments. Ask if she will have some of her women prepare the hide and the head for a rug that will go in the hacienda, yes? The horse should be enough payment for curing the hide and bringing it down later this week.” Scar looked up at the sun's place in the sky. “You can be up in the village before dark and join us down near the river by late morning.”

Pedro tied his horse to a sapling and took off his jacket, hat, shirt, and sash. The boys did the same. It would be a long, bloody afternoon.

B
Y LATE AFTERNOON
D
IEGO
and Bernardo were up out of the grasslands and into the forest. Mile by mile they rose into the cooler air of the mountains. The trail was narrow but well worn. It followed a streambed that tumbled out of the peaks in a long, singing series of little waterfalls.

Late in the afternoon, they began to see charms hanging from the trees—a doll made of tied grass, a bird skin spread on a forked stick, quartz rocks in a little net. These bits of local magic announced the presence of a shaman, a sorcerer, so that evil spirits would stay away from the village. Perhaps it worked, because White Owl's village was almost always a peaceful place.

Now they saw the red ocher paintings on boulders
framing the trail and knew they were entering the village.

Entering a Gabrieleño village was not like riding into a pueblo. It didn't start with corrals and buildings and shops. Except for the charms and the markings, it didn't seem to start at all. The village was a kind of living circle for spirits. It was not just where the homes were, but a larger place for things that could be seen and things that could only be imagined.

Smoke curled through the trees ahead. They smelled the sweet, pitchy pine smoke from the sweat lodge fire. Then they heard whoops and loud, happy voices. As they came into the clearing, half a dozen voices called to them, “Diego! Bernardo!”

A shouting knot of thrashing runners, their sticks clattering against one another, rushed past them. They had ridden into the middle of a lacrosse game. The leather ball shot out of the crowd, and an out runner seized it with his netted stick. Everyone ran after him.

A boy at the edge of the pack spotted Diego and Bernardo. He yelled to his teammates, “Now we'll beat them. We take Bernardo.”

“Not when we have Diego,” another boy replied.

Diego held up his hand as if holding them back. He replied in Shoshone, “If we don't pay our respects to my grandmother first, she'll turn us into cockroaches.”

Snow Wren, the wife of their friend Otter Tooth, was watching the game as she sewed a deerskin bag. Bernardo spotted Light-in-the-Night seated beside Snow Wren. She barely raised her eyes from her sewing, but in the brief exchange of a glance, Bernardo's heart pounded.

“I like to hear boys show respect,” Snow Wren said. “And good sense. We'll see you later at the fires, then. Your grandmother is fixing a meal for you.”

Diego shook his head and looked back at Bernardo. It was a little annoying that they couldn't make a surprise visit to the village. One way or another, the village always knew they were coming.

They walked their horses into the neighborhood of houses. It was a parklike area of cleared ground under trees. A few of the homes were simple brush lean-tos, but most were high domes thatched with rushes. A few larger lodges were near the center of the village, decorated with colored rushes woven into the thatch.

The very heart of the village was the holy circle, the
yovaar
. White Owl stooped out of a tight little beehive-shaped house beside it. “There you are, finally,” she said gruffly. “I haven't seen you for weeks. You don't pay much attention to your grandmother.” But they could tell she was happy to see them.

The boys walked to her and bowed their heads so she could place her leathery palms on them as a blessing. “Well, it's good you're here safe,” she said. “Give me your horses. I'll put them near some grass. I've laid out clean things inside so you can take a bath before we eat. You're filthy.”

“Grandmother,” Diego said, “we have an errand from our
mayordomo
, Scar.”

“A good, decent man,” she said, as if most of the people living on the grasslands weren't.

“He sends you this horse and asks you a favor. We were forced to kill this angry bear.” He put his hand on the pelt slung over the packhorse's back. “We don't think it was anyone in disguise or a sorcerer. Just a bear grown tired of his own place in the forest.”

“Sometimes a bear is just a bear,” White Owl conceded. The Gabrieleños thought that she and her fellow sorcerers could turn into bears if they wished. Diego didn't think it was likely but knew that his grandmother wouldn't argue about it.

“Scar believes it will make a good rug for the hacienda. He knows that the tribe has some skillful tanners. Could they prepare it and bring it down to the rancho later this week?”

She ran her hands through the thick, dark bear pelt.
“My daughter will approve. There is some power in a good bear rug,” she said. “Scar is a good man. But impatient,” she said. “He wants everything yesterday. We will prepare it in the time it takes to prepare it well. This is all I will promise him. And the horse is a good trade.” The boys nodded. “Now get those filthy things off and sweat yourselves clean. I have made something for you to eat. Not much. A few scraps.”

As she walked off with the horses and the pelt, Diego said, “The worse she talks about her cooking, the more she's worked at it. I wonder what she's made us?” Bernardo smiled, thinking how hungry he was.

A few minutes later, wrapped in rabbit-fur blankets, they walked to the sweat lodge.

As always, a happiness came over them in the village. It was like no other place. Every villager knew them. But it was more than just knowing their names: they knew their mothers and their grandfathers, their family histories, and the long lines of ancestors many generations back. Though the village was made up of many clans, it was one ritual family. What Diego and Bernardo felt here was acceptance, a loving embrace.

A sure thing about Gabrieleños: they were either taking a bath or thinking about taking a bath. When they weren't eating or thinking about eating. They
were a humorous, comfortable people, and part of their religion was staying clean. Next to Gabrieleños, the pueblo vaqueros were pigs in the mud.

Outside the sweat lodge, they hung their robes on pegs driven into a pine trunk. Naked, they poked through the hearth embers next to the lodge. There were still some hot rocks. They picked them up with wooden tongs and carried them into the lodge. They dropped the rocks onto the inner hearth and sprinkled a bit of water onto them, then sealed the door again.

They sat in the hot darkness. Their eyes began to accept the dim light from cracks in the mud-plastered rushes. Diego didn't speak, because the sweat lodge was a place to think and turn inward. They sat in the sweltering air, their labored breathing making a companionable whisper.

The sweating cleansed their skins like nothing else. But their time in the heat and darkness was an important meditation, too. Diego found himself remembering his tribal initiation rites when he wandered the forest in a kind of trance, searching for his special spirit guide. He had found his totem animal—the sharp-eyed fox—
el zorro
—with its clear sight and wily ways. The fox was surely a part of his soul. Bernardo found the horse—strong, reliable, loyal, and brave.

After a time, the heat became too intense. Just as they burst out of the sweat lodge, ready to leap into the sweetly cold water, Light-in-the-Night emerged, quietly disappearing like a shadowy forest creature. Bernardo found it hard to breathe, but Diego pushed him in the water. Soon they were diving and splashing and dunking each other. Diego loved being with Bernardo in his grandmother's village. His milk brother seemed freer, more playful here, as if some invisible cloak of sadness were lifted from his body.

They waded out of the pool, dried off, and walked toward White Owl's hut wrapped in their furs, glad for the warmth against the evening chill.

 

If White Owl cooked something wonderful, it would be impolite to make it only for her boys. So they ate with Trout Spot, the
tomyaar
, both of his wives, and his family in the
tomyaar's
big lodge beside the holy circle.

They ate tender little quail stuffed with piñon nuts, sage, and acorn meal. There was a hot soapstone bowl of cattail roots, wild onions, rosemary, and berries. A bowl of herb tea was set out, and little pots of tangy sauces. They ate from White Owl's best dishes: big, gleaming abalone shells, their holes closed with carved wood plugs and pitch. They ate with lip smacking and
grunts of pleasure. These were polite noises of appreciation.

“White Owl, you are a true sorceress. You have made these quail sing in my belly,” the
tomyaar
said. “You are an argumentative old woman and a pain in my hip, but you have your moments.”

This was the kind of nipping tease that Gabrieleños enjoyed.

“I don't know how you can tell good food from bad food,” the old woman said without looking at him. “You drink so much corn beer that you could be eating horse dung.”

Everyone laughed, including the
tomyaar
. He and White Owl were old adversaries, but they respected and needed each other.

When everyone had eaten and washed themselves, the rest of the village began to arrive. This was why the
tomyaar
had a large house. There were games and songs, many old jokes, stories, and gossip.

White Owl was gathering up her abalone shells. Diego motioned to her and to the
tomyaar
. They sat against the wall with Bernardo, a little outside the celebration.

Diego said, “There is some serious business in the pueblo. High on the hill here, you see a long way.
Sometimes you know things about the pueblo we don't hear or see.”

“I'm a shaman; I see everything,” White Owl said.

“Not everything,” Trout Spot growled.

“I'm getting old,” she said. “I once saw everything.”

“I'm sure you did,” he said, but he didn't sound convinced.

“Someone is stealing cattle, and someone is stealing people,” Diego said. “The rancho is missing hundreds of cattle. So is the mission. And many skilled workers have disappeared. Men with families. Men of trust who wouldn't just leave.”

“What does your father make of it?” White Owl said. She had great respect for Don Alejandro, perhaps because he had tamed her wild warrior daughter—something she had never managed to do.

“He's puzzled. His best guess is that someone or some group is trying to set up a colony. They need craftsmen to make the colony self-sufficient. The don worries there may be some kind of slavery going on.”

“So where does my son-in-law think these colony makers are going?” White Owl asked.

Diego shrugged. “He doesn't know. He knows only that if they are kidnapping these men, it can't be a legal colony.”

“And where are all these cattle going?” Trout Spot asked. “We'd be fatter if they were coming here.”

“No one knows. Cattle rustling is one thing, but slavery is an evil matter.”

The old woman and the
tomyaar
nodded strongly.

Trout Spot opened his palms as if he were laying out a plan. “Many animals or people must be moved by sea,” he said. “The roads are bad, and it would be too easy to spot them or track them on roads. I'll ask some of our coast brothers. They are on the water at all hours. If something moves, they'll see it. And I'll ask our brothers in the mountains behind us, in case I am wrong about moving by sea.”

“Too often wrong,” White Owl said, poking him in the ribs.

“They killed a man,” Diego said, “our potter, Señor Porcana.” This news left a silence after it.

“Wicked!” Trout Spot said. “Slavery and murder. Tell Don Alejandro that the tribes are with him in this thing. We will be watching.”

 

White Owl slipped out quietly a little later. When Diego and Bernardo walked back to her hut, she had their reed mattresses laid out beneath her raised bed shelf. Their vaquero clothes were neatly laid out for the
morning, and their rabbit-skin blankets were folded down, ready for them.

The fire in her hearth was never large, and now it was little more than a few embers. The house was dim, and White Owl was taking the horn pins out of her white hair.

“Grandmother,” Diego said, sitting down on her high bed beside her, “I love being with you.” She gave a little shrug as if it was fine for him to say this, but she really didn't care that much. Bernardo sat down on her other side. They put their arms around her and she put her hands over theirs, so that the three of them sat and rocked quietly for a few minutes.

When she had crawled into her sleeping platform and pulled the deerskin curtains around it, Bernardo and Diego lay down on their mattresses with just their heads pushing out from under the platform. The domed house had a smoke hole open to the stars. White Owl's shaman tools hung on pegs with many other things: a cloak of feathers, charms and rattles, bound bunches of herbs, skulls of animals, baskets, deerskin bags. It smelled smoky and herbal and familiar.

“You like Light-in-the-Night. I see the way you look at her,” Diego said.

Bernardo kicked his milk brother and rolled away on his side.

“Hey!” Diego complained.

“Hush,” White Owl barked above them, “or I'll wet the bed.”

The boys giggled, pulled the rabbit blankets up, and closed their eyes.