“Lupe!” cried Socorro. “Quickly! Run in and get my big, new white bedspread so we can wave it!”
Running in, Lupe picked up the bedspread and hurried back out. Together they waved the big, hand-woven cloth, and he saw them. He reared up his stallion, waving at them again, and then he was off, going over the rim of the box canyon, through the break made by a falling star.
Every day was a lifetime for Lupe with her truelove gone. By the fourth day, she was at her world’s end. Coming home from school one afternoon, Socorro saw Lupe’s long face and she took pity on her.
“Lupe,” she said, “please come in here.” She patted the bed next to her. “I have something to show you.”
Lupe came into her room and sat down on the bed. Socorro brought out a small box made of dark wood and shiny metal. She opened it. It was full of beautiful pictures of her husband and herself and of their days in Mazatlán when they’d first met.
“Oh, my God!” said Lupe, taking a picture and looking at her Colonel standing with his wife by the seashore. “This is wonderful!”
Socorro saw the young girl’s joy and her heart was moved. They spent the afternoon like schoolgirls, looking at the pictures and talking together.
That night, Lupe slept well for the first time since her truelove had left. And in the morning when she awoke, she decided that someday she, too, would have a little secret box of her own so she could keep all her treasures, including her Colonel’s card. Oh, how she just loved running her fingertips over her Colonel’s name, letter by letter, feeling so close to him.
It had been two weeks since her Colonel had left. Lupe asked her mother if she could go up to the high country above their canyon.
“I think my Colonel might be coming back today. I’d like to meet him,” she said.
Doña Guadalupe saw her daughter’s eyes and felt sorry for her. “All right,” she said, “but you better take Victoriano’s dog with you and be careful. A jaguar was seen up there several days ago.”
“I will,” said Lupe.
Lupe packed some peaches and a tortilla with fresh goat’s cheese and started up the pathway from the house with her brother’s little brown dog. Mounting the main road above their home, Lupe followed the road around the canyon above the village toward the American enfencement. She turned left off the road and took the new zigzagging trail that her Colonel had built. She climbed fast and steady through the oaks and boulders, and her legs never cramped. Like all the children of the village, walking and climbing were such a large part of her life that she could carry a large load of laundry or wood up and down steep trails without tiring.
Within an hour, Lupe came to the short new pines that had grown after the white pine forest had been burnt by the meteorite. The sound of the waterfalls were devastating. Carefully, Lupe continued through the young white pines and went out through the loose rock break on the north rim of the canyon. Her legs were so strong and her heart was so full of love that she’d climbed out of the canyon as fast as a quick-footed little mule.
Suddenly, passing through the break, the whole world opened up. She was above the mountain peaks and flat mesas piled up for hundreds of miles in every direction. There was beauty to the left, beauty to the right. Beauty surrounded Lupe. This was the high country of northwest Mexico, unmapped and uncharted. Some fingers of the canyon of La Barranca del Cobre ran deeper than the Grand Canyon of Arizona.
Following one of the little waterways, Lupe crossed the meadows of tightly woven wildflowers of blue and yellow and red and pink. It was quiet up here without the waterfall’s terrible roar. Her brother’s little dog flushed out deer and mountain quail as they went along.
Crossing a tiny creek, Lupe saw the fresh tracks in the cold mud of the terrible jaguar. The little dog’s hair came up on his back. Lupe petted him, looking around carefully, but saw nothing. Jaguars, after all, were fairly common, and so people were more respectful than afraid of them just as they were of any other natural force.
Up ahead, by a scattering of yellow and pink wildflowers, Lupe found a small formation of rock piled up like a stack of tortillas with a twisted little pine tree on top of it. The little high country pine tree was no more than eight feet tall, fully grown, and Lupe could see where its roots had split the rock, looking for soil. These high country pines were entirely different from the big, tall, handsome white pine trees that grew on the uppermost sides of their protected canyon.
Climbing the formation of the tortilla rocks, Lupe took hold of a strong lower branch of the twisted little pine and pulled herself into the sturdy little tree. From up here, she could look to the west and see the shorter mountains stepping down into the jungles of the lowlands and then, way over there in the distance, a flat shiny mist which she had been told was the Sea of Cortez. Oh, she’d hoped so much to see her truelove riding across the high country, leading his men, mounted on his great stallion of glistening orange-red fire. But no matter how much she searched, she saw no one.
She leaned back against the trunk of the little tree. She saw an eagle circling in the distance, sweeping down across the wind-worn smooth rock and clearings of dazzling bright wildflowers. She brought out the card that her Colonel had given her and read it aloud, “Colonel Manuel Maytorena,” as she ran her fingertips over the large, dark letters. Tears came to her eyes. She listened to the wind, the father of the high country, whistling, singing, talking to the rocks and flowers and little scattered trees.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Lupe brought out her lunch and began to eat. She breathed deeply. “Dear God,” she said in a soft, gentle voice, “I need Your help. My truelove, Colonel Maytorena, is in danger. I just know it. So I want You to please take care of him and bring him back to me safely.
“I ask You in the name of the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe. After all, dear God, remember that it was You who made my perfect love for me up in heaven, so please protect him for me.” Saying this, Lupe looked out on the beautiful country, feeling so close to the Almighty.
Going down, Lupe’s heart felt heavy and her body tired quickly. The hope of seeing her truelove had propelled her up the steep mountain with power. But coming back down, she felt so sad of heart that she tripped and fell several times.
Lupe and the little dog were just entering the new white pines when the dog stopped. Lupe turned and saw that the little brown dog was looking nervously toward the waterfall. Here, the water was falling through space in silent sheets of glistening white spray before it crashed with thundering sound into the rock pool far below. She quickly remembered the jaguar’s tracks that she’d seen earlier.
“What is it?” she asked, petting the little dog. He turned and looked at her and then took off, cutting across the rock, through the pine trees toward the falling water.
Lupe didn’t know what to do, but she decided that it was best to stay near her brother’s dog in case the jaguar was, indeed, nearby. Running through the rock and pines, Lupe caught glimpses of the little dog racing off in front of her as he dodged through the trees and rocks. But then he disappeared and Lupe stopped and glanced around, suddenly feeling that she was in grave danger. She began to hiccup, moving cautiously toward the place where she’d last seen the dog.
The roar of the waterfall was tremendous. It was just a few hundred feet beyond her, crashing into the pool below.
Reaching the first oak tree, Lupe put her hand on the tree trunk as she came around it, little by little holding onto the oak’s rough bark. Suddenly, she gasped, gripping her chest, because there below her, in a deep break to the left of the waterfall, she saw Old Man Benito and her brother Victoriano. They were helping her mother over a boulder, pointing to something not far from the pool below the falling water. Swallowing her hiccups, Lupe wondered what her mother was doing up here. But then, suddenly, she knew everything. Her brother and Don Benito had found gold; that was what they’d been whispering about with her mother for several months now.
Then the little brown dog came out above them, and Lu
pe barely had time to get back behind the oak tree before her brother glanced up the hillside. Closing her eyes, Lupe hugged the oak tree’s huge trunk. Then, quickly, carefully, she started to back around the tree so they wouldn’t see her.
Suddenly she felt a dark presence behind her. She turned and there was Don Benito’s huge, black dog on a rock, growling as he crouched to leap on her. She screamed. The black dog had a terrible reputation. His teeth were bared and his eyes were bloodshot with hate. But then a stick came whirling down on the dog. “No, Lobo!” yelled Victoriano, leaping from behind a tree. “Damn it, Lupe! What are you doing here?” he shouted above the waterfall’s roar.
Lupe had never heard her brother curse at her before.
“You are alone?” he snapped.
“Yes,” she nodded.
“All right, then, come on,” he said, putting down his machete and giving her his hand.
Lupe took his hand and quickly followed him. And what Lupe saw next, she could never have imagined even in her wildest dreams. Why, there was her mother and Don Benito, just this side of the crashing water, standing in a pocket of gold the size of a room, glistening bright-wet in the soft sunlight coming in through the misty spray from the thundering water.
“But when did you find this?” shouted Lupe above the noisy waterfall. “You never told me!”
“So you could tell your Colonel and have him steal it from us?” yelled Victoriano.
“Cálmate,” said their mother loudly. “Lupe’s no child! She can understand our situation!”
The waterfall was no more than two hundred feet away, and they were getting soaked in a fine, cool mist.
“But, Mama, you’ve seen how she is when he’s around!” continued Victoriano. Lupe had never seen her brother so upset with her. “She’ll never be able to keep anything from her thieving Colonel!”
“But, Victoriano,” said Lupe, “why are you talking like this? My Colonel isn’t a thief!”
“You’re right,” said Old Man Benito, getting close to Lupe so he wouldn’t have to shout. “He’s a fine man, querida. But understand this: he needs guns to continue his useless war against Villa, so he’ll take our gold away from us in the name of the Revolution if he finds out about it!”
Lupe looked from Don Benito to her brother and her mother, and she felt her heart wanting to break. Why, they all hated her Colonel, and he was the finest man God had ever created. Her eyes filled with tears.
Doña Guadalupe motioned both men away so she could be alone with her daughter. The two men climbed out of the pocket.
“Come here,” said Doña Guadalupe, taking her daughter in her arms as they sat down on a wall of gold.
“Oh, Mama,” said Lupe, “they just hate my Colonel and he’s been so good to everyone.”
“No, they don’t hate him, mi hijita,” said her mother. “It’s just that your brother and Don Benito have been searching for gold for so long that they’re very frightened. Look around, mi hijita, and understand that they’ve found a fortune and so they have every right to be nervous, especially after Don Benito lost his last mine to the americanos.”
She stroked her daughter’s long, rich hair. It was shiny-wet from the spray. “What Don Benito said is true, mi hijita, your Colonel can’t be trusted. He’s a fine man, but as sure as God lives in the heavens, he’ll take our gold away from us and give it to the Americans for guns and supplies if he finds out about it.” She took a big breath; she could feel her daughter’s little heart pounding wildly.
Lupe didn’t know what to think. She just didn’t want to believe that what her mother was saying was true.
“Oh, no, Mama, you’re wrong!” she said. “Over and over my Colonel has told me that he’s fighting this Revolution for us, the people of Mexico, and so he’d never steal our mine away from us and give it to the americanos, Mama.”
“Lupe,” said Doña Guadalupe, “listen to me. I know how you love this man and you think the heavens revolve around him. And I don’t blame you, because your father left when you were very little. But, mi hijita, you’re six, so it’s time for you to see this short dream we live here on earth as a woman. And a woman, above all else,” she said, “must keep both of her eyes open when it comes to matters of the heart or she will come to ruin. No man, no matter how wonderful, is to be put before a woman’s first loyalty, which is to her family.”
She gripped Lupe, holding her at arm’s length. “Do you understand?” she asked.
Lupe shook her head. “No, Mama. I’d always thought that true love came first.”
“Oh, mi hijita,” said her mother, “you’ve just been listening to too many stories of princes from your sisters. True love might be blessed by heaven but, believe me, it’s not made there. And besides, this Colonel isn’t part of our family. He’ll be gone as soon as his job is done here. So understand, you’re not a child, and you must see that your first loyalty is to your brother and sisters and me—la familia.”
Lupe nodded, eyes brimming with tears. “Yes, I understand. But when I marry, won’t my husband be part of our family and then my loyalty will be for him?” she asked, feeling so confused.
“I hope so,” said the old woman, taking a deep breath. “But unfortunately, as a woman with both eyes open, you can’t depend on that, either.”
Hearing this, Lupe’s whole world was shattered. All her life, she’d heard her sisters reading books of love and romance. She’d always assumed that one’s family revolved around the man you married and that each marriage had been blessed by God, Himself, in heaven.
Lupe squeezed her mother close, burying her face into her warm, good body. She cried and cried. Her brother and Old Man Benito came back and saw her sorrow. Victoriano picked up a stick and broke it with his hands. Oh, how he’d hated the day the Colonel had come to live with them. Who did he think he was, anyway, talking to them so wonderfully each night? He wasn’t their father.
Don Benito saw Victoriano’s anger, but he said nothing. Bringing out his paper and tobacco, he rolled a cigarette and sat back, lighting it up. He smoked and stroked his dog’s thick mane with his calloused bare feet. Don Benito was half Tarahumara Indian. The big toe of each foot was huge, powerful and separated from the rest of his toes like the thumb from the fingers. His big toes had become so big from going barefoot through the rock that they could grip the earth like the split hoof of a deer.
“All right, mi hijita,” said Doña Guadalupe, “no more. You’ve cried and I’ve held you; now you must put away the things of a child. You’re almost seven, a responsible human being, and so I know that you can keep our secret.
“Now come, Don Benito and Victoriano,” she added, “and let us all pray together for guidance, giving thanks for this miracle of gold that God has given to us.”
They all knelt down on the smooth rock at the bottom of the pocket of gold and began to pray. The sunlight played in and out of the treetops, giving colors of red and orange and yellow to the stone all around them.
Selecting a few gold nuggets, Doña Guadalupe put them in her leather pouch and started down the steep slope with Lupe. Don Benito and Victoriano stayed behind to cut down trees and hide their find.
CHAPTER THREE
And so Saint Peter closed the flood gates of heaven, and the rainy season ended, and everywhere the birds and the bees and the wildflowers began to make the courtship of love.
For the next two days, Don Benito and Victoriano hammered the rich ore that they’d brought out, then they gave it to Doña Guadalupe for her and her daughters to grind in their dark stone metates until it was as fine as sand. They didn’t want anyone to see the raw ore. They wanted the gold to look like they’d found it in one of the streams below the town.
“Well,” said Doña Guadalupe after the miners had eaten and gone to work, “I think it looks good. What do you think?” she asked Don Benito.
Inspecting their little pile of ground-up gold, Don Benito nodded. “It looks as fine as if we’d just panned it from a stream
,” he said, smiling grandly. “So let’s go sell it!”
And so he and Victoriano took the gold down to Don Manuel’s store in a soft, deerskin pouch.
“So you found a little color,” said Don Manuel, putting the pile on the scale.
“Yes,” said Don Benito, “we got a little lucky. You know how it is after the rains.”
“Oh, yes,” said the mayor, “all the Indians get rich in the area for a few months. I hope your luck lasts a little longer.”
“I think it will,” said the old man, winking at Victoriano.
The mayor paid them for the gold, asking no questions, and Don Benito and Victoriano rushed back up the hill with the money. Victoriano could hardly keep from shouting to the heavens. It was over a hundred pesos, and half was for their family.
Lupe had never seen her brother filled with such pride as when Don Benito handed their mother the money.
“Dios mío,” said their mother, “why, this is more money than we could save in five years with our little restaurant.”
Tears came to her eyes, she was so happy. The whole family joined her, crying, too. They had to keep their voices down so Socorro, who was asleep in the next room, wouldn’t overhear them.
“And this is for you, mi hijito,” said their mother, handing Victoriano some money.
“But it’s five pesos!” shouted Victoriano, forgetting himself and talking too loudly.
“Sssssh!” said Doña Guadalupe, pointing toward the next room with her chin. “Go on, it’s for you. Buy a new hat or whatever you want,” she whispered.
“Really?” said Victoriano. He’d never had any money before in all his life. And five pesos was a fortune. It was more than Flaco or Manos, who were big shots at the mine, made in a whole week.
“But, Mama,” Victoriano said, “I don’t need this much.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said, “but take it anyway.”
His eyes shone like stars, he was so excited. “All right,” he said, “I’ll do it! And I’ll get myself my first professional haircut!” Saying this, he kissed his old mother and then took off, catching up with Don Benito who had already started down the hill to go to town to get a scented bath.
Rain of Gold Page 6