by Carla Kelly
“That is all I have done since we left the Double Cross.”
As he watched, Ayasha stood up, her face serious, her eyes showing great determination. Paloma sucked in her breath. “Ayasha has been helping our doctor. Eckapeta said she had no one.”
“Then you should inoculate her.”
Others stood, looking around at each other, uncertainty on their faces. The warrior who had hunted with them stood up and spoke to Toshua at length. When he finished, Toshua looked at Marco, who came to his side.
“His wife Kahúu has already been visited by the Dark Wind, but he has not. He is his family’s protector. If The People are inoculated and fall sick for many days, are they weak when it is done?”
“Alas, yes,” Marco said.
“He wants to know, can they still travel to that place where the Kwahadi gather? Many warriors have assembled there, and he would feel safe for his family then.”
“That’s precisely where we want to go.” Marco looked at Antonio, who came forward eagerly now, probably tired of being ignored. “What do you think?”
“Can we put them on travois?” Antonio asked.
Toshua frowned. “We don’t use travois.”
“Your friends the Kiowa do,” Marco pointed out. “I know my packhorses are used to travois. We can carry those who are recuperating that way, and the rest on horseback, if they ride with someone else.”
Still Toshua hesitated.
“And how much longer will we find deer in this part of the canyon?” Marco asked. He couldn’t help his stern look, this juez. “And I mightily suspect that you have quite a few of our New Mexican cattle, the farther into this canyon we go. I know what good eating they are.”
Toshua threw up his hands. “We will do it your way.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
In which Antonio works more willingly
Anthony Gill had never been particularly impressed with Spaniards, for all that they had offered him refuge when the colony of Georgia turned him out. He saw them as a superstitious, lazy lot, more inclined to put things off. After casting his lot with the New Mexicans, mostly against his will, he had been revising his opinion. The speed with which Marco and Paloma organized the inoculations fairly amazed him.
He didn’t think Paloma would consent to put down that baby, but she did, handing the child to Eckapeta as she hurried into the tipi for her medical kit. Marco wasted not a minute in securing lodge poles from the pile of unburned ones someone had spared when they destroyed the tipis of The People stricken with disease. He called for rawhide and was soon weaving a platform for that space between the poles.
“We needn’t hurry,” Anthony said.
“We had to go quite a distance to find those deer, and tomorrow Toshua and I will hunt again, probably even farther afield,” he said, continuing to twist and knot the rawhide. “Meat is scarce and we need meat. I’ll begin this today, so I can hunt with good conscience tomorrow.”
This Spaniard could also do two things at once. As he worked, he called to Toshua and Eckapeta and they sat with him as he told them to organize the healthy to help those who would soon be inoculated.
“There are not so many strong ones,” Eckapeta reminded them.
“Then Paloma and I will do all we can.”
Anthony shouldn’t have been standing there idly. He also shouldn’t have thought for a single minute that Toshua’s woman was slow.
“Why are you doing this, little man?” she asked him point blank. “I doubt you have any love for The People.”
Anthony took his time telling her about Pia Maria, and how she had been kidnapped near Los Adaes, in the Louisiana territory. He thought it prudent not to mention the shocking death of Catalina Gill; Eckapeta was quite capable of drawing her own conclusions.
He wanted to see some compassion in her eyes for his plight, but there was none. Kidnapping small children was obviously part of her world she did not question. Why, he did not know; weren’t there enough ready-made Indians? But she was looking at him for more explanation.
“The Dark Wind has been blowing strong across Texas. I proposed to the juez de campo that he accompany me to your lands where others have told me the child has been taken. In exchange for her release to me, I will inoculate The People against this dread disease.”
He knew better than to glance at Marco Mondragón, the man he had coerced into this scheme. As it was, the juez cleared his throat impressively and turned slightly away.
Why did the woman have to be so smart? She looked from him to Marco, studying them both.
“You think the Kwahadi who have this daughter will release her to you?”
“If they want to avoid the total annihilation of The People, they will.”
After conferring with Paloma, they decided on the open air as their medical bay. He asked Ayasha to roll the fallen log he had sat on earlier toward a taller tree stump, pleased with her willing help. He noticed that her pretty eyes had lost some of their desperation. Ayasha smiled at him, and he felt the heat rise to his face. She smiled at Paloma next, who rested the back of her hand briefly against her cheek.
You would think Paloma liked these savages, Anthony thought. I will never understand women. Still, Ayasha was helpful.
Enough of this. “I don’t have any cloth for bandages and don’t suppose these assassins do, either,” he complained.
Paloma froze him with a look that unsettled his insides.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she said, her words clipped and disapproving. “I brought along an extra skirt and bodice. Ayasha and I will rip them into strips.”
He hoped no one had witnessed that little scene, but as in most of his life, his hope went unfulfilled.
“Whatever she said to you, I suspect you richly deserved it,” Marco said, speaking from across a distance as he continued to weave the rawhide. “Ay caray! I hope I never see that look aimed at me!” He chuckled and went back to his business, a man secure in his affections.
“She said she is ripping up her one clean skirt and bodice for bandages.”
“I thought she might.”
So offhand, so casual. Anthony watched him, envious not so much for Paloma now, but envious that any one human being should have such trust in someone else. He has led a charmed life, he thought. Nothing has even gone amiss for Marco Mondragón. Logic told him that couldn’t be true, but logic had never been a consideration in his messy life.
It was as if the Lord God Almighty, that fearsome Being who was thundered about from pulpits all through the colonies, had suddenly decreed that he, Anthony Gill, humble himself. This humbling took place less than an hour later in a hardscrabble Indian encampment in the middle of nowhere. As he considered the event later, Anthony decided that humble wasn’t the right word. What happened before the inoculations began convinced him that a man could still learn, if he wanted to.
True to her word, Paloma ripped the material into serviceable bandages. When the ripping sound began, every single warrior in that camp—Marco included—whirled around, hand on knife. They all chuckled when Paloma looked up, startled, at their reaction, then continued. Ayasha’s task was to roll each strip into a neat cylinder, then put them in another leather bag.
Paloma’s tidiness in the face of mud and melting snow touched him. She was one of those rare women determined to improve her surroundings, no matter how filthy. Anthony wondered what it would take to discourage her, and decided that he would probably never find out. Paloma Vega de Mondragón seemed to be a flowing well of kindness. He looked at Ayasha, who watched Paloma, too, ready to imitate the woman who probably had no idea of her admiration. Smiling inwardly, Anthony remembered what she had said about Marco making him a better person, the longer he was in their company. Do you ever take a thought to your own influence? he asked himself, even as he doubted it supremely.
When Anthony signaled his readiness, Toshua and Eckapeta went to each tipi in turn and summoned the now less than willing pat
ients. He had done this so many times now, but Anthony couldn’t help but sigh to see how few there were. He remembered the frozen caricatures of the dead carpeting the plains and the burned tipis in this noisome camp. The People had suffered; he could not deny it.
But business was business. “Have someone begin, Toshua,” he said to the Comanche. “Time’s a-wasting.”
Toshua gestured. No one moved. The Comanche walked toward his friends and fellow conspirators in making life miserable for white men; they backed away.
“Hellfire and damnation,” Anthony swore in English. He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. This nonsense was putting more time between him and Pia Maria.
Paloma had been sitting beside him, ready to assist. She stood up.
“Good luck,” Anthony muttered in English.
She gave him that look again—Good God, twice in one day—then walked to Toshua. They spoke; he argued; she shook her head; he yielded.
“Señor Gil, inoculate me again, so The People can watch it actually happening.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said. It came out louder than he intended, because everyone stared at him.
“I have never been more serious,” she replied. “They are afraid, and I don’t blame them. Inoculate me again while they watch. It can’t possibly do me any harm.”
He opened his mouth to voice all kinds of objections, but couldn’t think of any of them that made any sense. It wouldn’t hurt her; she was already immune. Even more than that, she had such a fire in her eyes that he knew if he objected, she would probably do it to herself.
He glanced at Marco, who was paying attention now. Maybe her husband could straighten her out.
Damn the man. All he did was roll up his sleeve. “Do us both,” he said. “There is not a Comanche alive who would admit to being less brave than a white man.”
Anthony swallowed and did as they asked, Paloma first, while the women and children clustered around, and then Marco, for the benefit of the warriors. After that, they couldn’t line up fast enough.
He probably should have felt a stab of envy when Paloma had more Comanches in her line that he did. The first warrior who came her way got a good ribbing from his compatriots, but she did have a knack.
“They prefer her to me,” he remarked to Marco, with just a twinge of jealousy.
“So do I,” he replied, which made Paloma cover her mouth with her hand and laugh.
When they finished, The People still squatted there by the fire that someone had built up again. The warmth felt good on his face. Antony watched them look over their bandages, holding their arms high, as Toshua had done weeks ago when it was his turn. He tugged on Toshua’s fringed shirt and he turned around.
“Just … just remind them that in five days or so, they won’t feel so good.”
“I will.” He nodded to Marco, who stood up and raised his hands.
“Toshua and I will hunt tomorrow. You must know that deer are scarce. You should make snares, for I have seen rabbits. I know you are weary but we all have to do our best.”
The People nodded, looked at each other, and quietly left the campfire ground, “each to his own vine and fig tree,” as Anthony remembered from a particularly windy sermon in Savannah. He stayed where he was, pleasantly tired now, pleased in a way he had not felt in years. He and Paloma had done the work. Pray God it would take. It was time Pia Maria went home.
* * *
Trust Paloma to think she needed to apologize because she had not figured out how to get the blood and brains from her skirt. Long ago Marco had decided that was one of the many interesting things about women—sometimes they had trouble deciding what mattered and what didn’t. He thought he might tell her so, but his prior experience as a husband warned him that she would not appreciate his observation.
Besides, he enjoyed just lying back against a mound of buffalo robes with Paloma’s head resting against his stomach. He was full of venison, and knew she was bound to hear some disharmony as the venison meandered through his system, but she was used to him. He yawned, which made Eckapeta scold and call him ill-mannered.
Paloma laughed, a tired, satisfied laugh that told him worlds about her state of mind. His wife was oceans and mountains and deserts away from the timid woman he had first laid eyes on in Santa Fe, stuck in her uncle’s house, barely more than Felix Moreno’s property. Marco hoped he had also undergone some improvement since their marriage.
Eckapeta cleared her throat in that polite way that meant she wanted to talk, but only if he did, too. In a few short days, Marco had learned to recognize the language of the tipi, and how inhabitants remained civil to each other in tight quarters.
“Yes?” he asked.
She began in such a deferential way, but he already knew that Indians took their time getting to the point, even Comanches, who had low tolerance for folly. He listened for the gist of her remarks, and realized that she was a shrewd woman, a worthy match for Toshua, who lounged beside her.
“There is more to the little man’s story,” she said. It was a statement of fact, but he could answer or not.
“Much more.”
She took her time, coming at the matter in leisurely circumlocution. “You are a wise man.”
“I like to think so.”
More time. “A wise man would never consent to travel to the secret canyon of the Kwahadi because he wants to do good to his enemy.”
“No, I would never,” he said, resting his hand on Paloma’s head now, because she had stiffened. Probably as long as they lived, what he had bargained away to keep her safe would be a sore spot with her, because she thought more of him than herself.
“What did he hold over you, señor?”
Such a direct question. Wondrous how The People could circle around and around, then go for the artery.
“If I wanted him to protect Paloma against the Dark Wind, I had to promise to take him into your stronghold. If I would not agree, he would not protect her.” He wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but he couldn’t think of how to improve a devil’s bargain.
Eckapeta’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed. “We should probably just kill him now,” she said, as calmly as if discussing beadwork. “Paloma can do what he does.”
“No! He has a daughter.”
Paloma had joined the conversation. Marco couldn’t help wishing she was less kind. Eckapeta’s idea was sound to him. Ay caray! That made twice he had married sweet women.
“He thinks he will bargain with the Kwahadi who holds this Pia Maria?” Eckapeta asked so thoughtfully.
“I believe he does.”
A long sigh from Eckapeta. “He will probably succeed. I want my people to live, but why does a man that evil win?”
“He is not so evil. I believe his trials have been tall mountains to him,” Paloma said softly. She lay down again, then sat up, glancing at him shyly, then at Toshua and Eckapeta across the fire.
“My dears, you know I am a modest woman.”
They nodded.
“It is this: could you two give us some time alone here? I want my man, but I am shy about it with others.”
Marco knew if he had false teeth like Father Francisco, he would have swallowed them.
Eckapeta did not seem even slightly surprised. She stood up and held her hand out to Toshua, who bounded lightly to his feet, his expression less inscrutable than usual.
“Well, then,” Paloma said when the tipi flap closed, her fingers on the clasp to that skirt she couldn’t get clean.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In which Paloma becomes a new woman
Marco and Toshua ranged even farther afield for deer the next day, returning with only two scrawny ones, ripe for winter-kill with almost no fat on them. Marco should not have worried. Newly energized, The People had been busy with snares and presented rabbits and mice to their tired hunters. It was all worth it to watch how Paloma eyed with vast suspicion a stew of mouse, then downed it with nothing beyond one heave of he
r belly.
She carried the Kwahadi baby everywhere, claiming that Kahúu needed rest from tending two infants. He knew it was true, having been through twins, even with a hacienda full of servants. He wanted to warn Paloma, remind her that the Kwahadi would never let her take one of their own. He didn’t, because he enjoyed holding the infant when he could pry her from Paloma. Maybe baby smells were universal, because the memories flooded back and made him happy in ways that even Paloma could not touch.
When they weren’t hunting, Marco worked on his rawhide lacing for the travois poles. One afternoon he came back discouraged from the hunt, with only one deer, and noticed that the lacing was nearly done. He looked around. The only Comanche in sight was the old man that Paloma and Eckapeta had fed from their own mouths. If not warm, the last two days had been less frigid, and he had seen the old man in front of his tipi, his ravaged face to the sun. Knowing the man spoke no Spanish, Marco just pointed to the lacing. With a dip of his thumb and forefinger, the Indian signed yes. Thank you, Marco signed back, his heart full.
They endured ten days of cold and hunger as the sickness took hold, worsened, and then passed. The sweetest moment came when Kahúu—her breasts showing evidence that even rabbit and mouse stew brought milk—asked him if he would allow Paloma to wear the cradleboard her sister had made, instead of just carrying her tiny niece.
Dios mio, are we part of The People now? he asked himself as he gave his consent. To his surprise—although why it should have surprised him, he couldn’t say—Paloma agreed, apparently without even a thought or a backward glance at the great horror of her childhood.
She must have known what he was thinking. That evening before they slept, she whispered to him that she had let go of that terrible sorrow. “This is my adventure, my life,” she said, her lips close to his ear. “Would I change things if I could? I honestly do not know. If those other Comanches had not destroyed my family, which left me at the mercy of my relatives in Santa Fe, would I have met you?”