by Carla Kelly
It was certainly the question of the century. Paloma put her arm around Marco’s waist, pleased that there wasn’t a tremble in his entire body. Or hers, now. They were in so deep that there was no need to fear. What happened was in God’s hands.
Marco glanced at Toshua, indicating without words the necessity that every sentence be translated correctly. Toshua nodded. He stepped forward and put his arm around Marco’s waist; he, too, was committed.
“I am the man who lives behind stone walls. You know of my place. I have fought you, it is true,” Marco began simply. “I do not lie. I only wish to live in peace in Valle del Sol. This is where my loved ones are buried. I never want to come here again, even though your canyon is beautiful. It is your land. Can we not divide our lands and live in peace? Why is this hard?”
“If you help us, you would like us to leave you alone?” the chief asked.
“It would be a beginning,” Marco answered. “All I ask is a chance.”
Paloma heard Antonio clear his throat loudly, interrupting the mood. The war chief frowned.
“There is another reason, and our little medicine man reminds me,” Marco continued. “Once we have satisfied you by showing you that we cannot get the Dark Wind and we mean what we say, we will tell you.”
Kwihnai nodded and gestured to the older warriors. They gathered around him, leaving Marco, Paloma, and Toshua on the outside.
“You could have mentioned Pia Maria,” Antonio began.
Marco grabbed his shirt, lifting him off his feet. “I am doing the best I can to keep us alive,” he whispered. “Little by little.” He shook the doctor, whose eyes were starting to bug out.
He started to say more, but the crowd of warriors separated and surrounded them again. Kwihnai had made his decision. Marco released the doctor.
Kwihnai gestured toward the distant tipis. “Go there tonight. If you are alive in the morning, we will let in the Dark Wind.”
Silent, wordless, Paloma, Marco and Antonio started toward the three tipis. Antonio rubbed his throat, but wisely chose to remain quiet.
Could you develop some wisdom fast enough? Marco thought.
“You know it takes more than one night with la viruela to cause symptoms,” Antonio began finally.
Perhaps I hope in vain, Marco thought, weary of the man.
“The point is, The People don’t know that,” Paloma told Antonio, much kinder than Marco could ever be. “Incubation is not something even Toshua understands.” She managed a small laugh. “I barely do.” She leaned against Marco’s shoulder as they walked, noticing that The People had fallen way back. “What will we find ahead?”
“That which we have seen before,” Marco replied. “Be brave a little longer.”
His dear one nodded. “You will owe me red shoes and a coral necklace when we are home.”
“I was thinking more in terms of emeralds and rubies. Perhaps you can bathe in mare’s milk like Cleopatra.”
They laughed together, which made Antonio stare at them.
“Wait up there, my children.”
Marco turned around, touched to see Toshua and Eckapeta walking toward them. Ayasha held Eckapeta’s hand. She carried trade blankets and a buffalo bladder full of water. Their arsenal of medicaments was puny, indeed.
“We cannot really do anything,” Marco reminded them gently.
Trust Ayasha. When she spoke so softly, he prayed that someday he would have a daughter like her. “We can do as you say, señor. We can begin here.”
Chapter Thirty-One
In which Antonio wins and loses
This night in the tipi with the dead and dying was not Paloma’s worst night, by any means. She knew it was not Marco’s. As she looked at the others, she knew it was not their worst night, either.
To her astonishment, Antonio took charge and assigned them each to a tipi. He went about his work more quietly and efficiently than she had seen at any point in their acquaintance. She could call their association nothing more than acquaintance, even after several months. She knew he was a man desperate for his daughter, and she understood that. She also knew she never wanted to know more about him; he was that kind of person.
Still, Paloma reminded herself that Ayasha had no trouble helping Antonio. She had observed them on the final part of the journey to the Gathering, watching how they rode together, each so aware of the other. She even thought Ayasha was teaching him the language of The People. Paloma herself was certainly more proficient in sign language now, even more than Marco.
She spoke about Antonio to Marco while they cleaned the dying as best they could and tried to give sips of water to those beyond water. “He is a complete mystery to me, but if Ayasha likes him, then he must have qualities I am not aware of.”
“Poor Antonio,” Marco said, many minutes after her comment, long after she thought he would respond. “Some people are just not well-liked, no matter what, and then when they are, it’s a shock.” He managed a wry smile. “Truth to tell, Alonso Castellano is a man like that. He has few friends, but you know, I always liked him and would like to be his friend again.”
“I do not think even my cousin is his friend,” Paloma said. “I wonder how they have fared, and the people of Santa Maria.”
“Does it seem to you like they all belong to another world?”
She nodded, too tired to say more.
By dawn, it was done. One pobrecito remained alive in their tipi, but only just. When she and Toshua looked in, Eckapeta shook her head. Worried what she would find in the third tipi, Paloma was touched to see the order Antonio and Ayasha had created there. As they watched in sympathy, Antonio sat back on his heels finally and told Ayasha to stop. “We can do no more,” he said simply, and Paloma agreed with him.
Weariness itself, Toshua beckoned Marco and Antonio for a conference. They squatted outside the tipi while the women drew closer to each other. Their words were soft, until Antonio stood up and declared, “I cannot,” and left the two men.
“You know what they will do,” Eckapeta said.
“I know,” Paloma said, her eyes on the men when they drew their knives and went into one tipi and then the other. There was no need of their merciful services in the third tipi. Antonio and Ayasha stood together, silent, until Antonio walked away from them.
“I did not know he had a tender heart,” Eckapeta said, her eyes on the solitary figure.
“He didn’t when we started this journey,” Paloma replied.
Too tired to move, they huddled close together in the cold morning air, waiting for someone to come by—not too close—and see that they lived.
Marco was as comforting as ever, opening his generous embrace to Ayasha, as well. “A man has two sides, after all,” he said, kissing one on the head and then the other.
They sat in silence, listening to the small birds and the lowing of cattle, stolen from one rancher or other in Texas or New Mexico. “I should copy the brands,” Marco said idly.
“With what?” Paloma asked. “Don’t be a juez de campo now, because I would just about give my right arm—no, your right arm—for a piece of beef cooked just so.”
He laughed softly at her little joke.
When the sun’s rays finally struck the broad meadow surrounded on all sides by towering canyon walls, Kwihnai and two of his elders walked toward them. Toshua stood up immediately and hurried to them, but not too close, on the little doctor’s advice.
“He’s telling them to send a man who has a pockmarked face to check inside the tipis and see what we have been through. He’s also asking for new clothes,” Marco explained. “I told him to do that. We need to burn everything: the tipis, the dead and our clothes.”
“I wish I could keep this dress of Kahúu’s sister.”
“I wish you could, too, but on the bonfire it goes.”
The warriors left, sending back an old man with a ravaged face, and Buffalo Rut, also scarred. They carried with them an armload of clothing and a torch. Eckapeta, Ayasha,
and Toshua stripped and threw their clothes into the first burning tipi. Paloma retreated behind the second with Marco. She took a long look at her beaded dress, sighed and threw it into the tipi as Buffalo Rut applied the torch. Antonio changed alone.
Paloma watched Marco, quite practiced now, adjust his breechcloth. “I could almost start to think you enjoyed dressing like this.”
He grinned at her, the first genuinely pleasant smile after their long night. “There’s a certain freedom,” he told her, “a nice swing to the jewels. Ay de mi! Paloma, leave me alone!”
She blushed when she heard Toshua laugh from the other side of the tipi that was now a bonfire.
I could sleep a week, Paloma thought, as they walked to the encampment. Smoke curled from tipis and the dogs growled over scraps. She heard women talking, horses neighing. Once the little médico explained his terms, The People would line up for inoculation and their work would be done. Antonio would retrieve his daughter and they could go home.
Eyes nearly closed, Paloma sat with Eckapeta and Ayasha, women apart now, because they had powerful medicine against the Dark Wind. Had they not survived a night with the disease? Antonio Gil spoke and Toshua translated his feeble Spanish, just in case Kwihnai didn’t understand everything.
By now Paloma knew a little of the language, but she knew more of human nature. The look on the war chief’s face could have mirrored Marco’s a few short months ago, when Antonio explained his devil’s bargain. But there it was; as Antonio Gil had bent Marco to his will, so he trapped and cornered the war chief: inoculation for The People in exchange for his daughter. Antonio gestured the height of a small child, touched his own light-colored hair, folded his arms and sat back with less triumph on his face this time, maybe even some doubt.
The chief rose and spoke to other men, who went among the tipis. Paloma cried out to hear women shrieking and moaning and knew that someone’s heart was breaking. True, the child had been stolen from the doctor and his wife, but during the intervening years, Pia Maria had become part of someone else’s family.
“I know Antonio wants his daughter, but that means another woman must suffer,” she said, turning her head into Eckapeta’s sympathetic shoulder. “I cannot bear this much sorrow!”
She closed her eyes, opening them when she heard Marco gasp, “Dios mio! ¿Qué es esto?”
Paloma stared as she felt the blood drain from her face. “Two? Good God, there are two!”
She hurried closer, but no quicker than Antonio and Marco, as the war chief dragged two crying girls forward, both obviously blond, even through the grime she associated with the Kwahadi, and both of similar age. She glanced at Antonio, watching in horror as his mouth dropped open. He simply stood there, looking from one weeping child to the other. The mourning of their Indian mothers made Paloma want to cover her ears.
She clutched Marco’s arm. Still Antonio did nothing. Surely he knew his daughter. As she looked from the doctor to the girls, both crying and struggling now, Paloma suddenly understood a greater evil. “Marco, he ….”
Her husband had reached the same terrible conclusion. “He doesn’t recognize either child,” he said, his voice strangled, as though the words were so wrong they couldn’t be uttered. “Good God, Paloma.” Marco clutched her shoulder now, his grip nearly painful, as realization struck him as it had her. “That beaded medical bag. Didn’t you say—”
“It was for someone taller.” Paloma could barely say it.
She could not stop the bitterness welling inside her, as two women in the encampment and their relatives raised a huge lamentation for their adopted daughters, standing there in tears, clutching each other. She relived their own terrible journey, and all for what? Before Marco could stop her, she darted forward and slapped the back of the doctor’s head, counting coup.
When she struck him, he assumed that subservient crouch she had not seen in weeks. She gasped to see it, and pulled her hand back, fearing contagion of another kind. At least he turned around to look at her, his eyes bewildered.
“Well? Well?” Kwihnai demanded, struggling to contain the little ones who wanted their Indian mothers.
“I do not recognize either of these children,” Antonio said. “My daughter is not here.”
He turned away, his face calm now.
Paloma raised her hand to strike him again, but Marco grabbed her. “Who are you?” she asked, leaning forward. “In God’s name, who are you?”
The answer would have to wait. Shocked, Toshua grabbed the crying girls under each arm and returned them to their Indian mothers, who snatched them and ran. He exchanged a long look with Marco, a warning that the juez was quick to heed. Paloma may have been paler than a ghost herself, but they had to act. “Get your medical bag and begin. Quickly. Eckapetha ….”
Her face calm, a woman well-acquainted with disaster, Toshua’s wife was already lining up children and mothers who needed inoculation. A glance from Paloma to Kahúu sent the Kwahadi mother flying to her tipi for the medical bag she had taken for safekeeping yesterday, when the adventure in the encampment began.
Marco watched his wife will herself calm in that masterful way he could only envy. She found a place to sit and someone brought up a small table that must have come from some ranchero’s house. Ayasha ran up with a cloth, probably from another unfortunate hacienda, and the inoculations began. All was silent. Ashen, shaking, Antonio tried to join her, but she shook her head.
“Wait until you are calmer, you dreadful man,” she said quite distinctly. He turned away.
His heart in his mouth, Marco sat cross-legged with the war chief, Toshua next to him, their shoulders touching. He could not have said which of them needed more reassurance.
“Just tell him that the doctor’s child is not here. That is all we know, and it is no reflection on the Kwahadi,” Marco said, when he had gathered his composure around him like tattered clothing.
The war chief nodded philosophically and offered them strips of beef—stolen from someone’s cattle herd and dried against the long winter. In turmoil, Marco forced the food to stay down. Kwihnai finally took his turn in the line. By now, Antonio had begun to work beside Paloma, but not too close.
They finished within the hour. The chief requested another rendition from Paloma and Toshua of what would happen next. They provided it, to the general amusement of the camp, even though Marco could see that his wife had unraveled the final thread of her equanimity. She went through the playacting, then sat down, stunned. He put his arm around her and she turned her face into his shoulder.
“Five suns,” the war chief said, his good humor evident. “You may leave now with the little man who shakes and crouches like a slave. Toshua and Eckapeta will know what to do when the Dark Wind needs to escape.”
Marco nodded. “We will do as you say, Kwihnai, but may we ask for an escort across the Llano Estacado? It remains a mystery to me.”
Kwihnai nodded, a generous man, now that he knew his people were safe. “I will provide one, and you will promise me never to return.” His eyes were kind as he looked at Paloma. “Your woman is tired and your eyes are heavy, too. Sleep first.”
Marco looked at Antonio, who could not meet his gaze for long. “The little man who shakes will share a tipi with us.”
“I—”
“Now, Antonio. Now.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
In which a scoundrel does a noble thing, perhaps for the first time
In the privacy of a tipi, Paloma lay with her head in Marco’s lap, too weary to keep her eyes open, her nerves so tightly wound she knew she would never sleep again, not ever. She could not bring herself to look at Antonio Gil. Toshua and Eckapeta joined them, Ayasha close behind.
“Who are you?” Marco demanded of the man who stood before him. Out of the chief’s commanding presence, Antonio had regained his eerie calm. “Tell us!”
She had never heard his official voice so stern. Heaven help the man who lied to this husband of hers.
“Leo Flynn. Señor, I—”
“I will ask and you will answer. What have you done with the doctor?”
Paloma opened her eyes when Antonio—Leo now?—shrieked. Quicker than a finger snap, Toshua had sliced a strip of flesh from the doctor’s cheek, only a small strip, but peeled with such precision that Paloma vowed never to ask him another question about his life before she met him.
“That should be enough, pabi,” Marco said, striving to keep his voice conversational, even though Paloma knew Toshua had startled him. “Anto … Leo … Where is the doctor?”
“Dead somewhere in Texas.” Leo Flynn started to cry. “I’m going to bleed to death!”
“Not before you tell us the truth.”
Her eyes troubled, Ayasha handed him one of the cloth scraps left over from the inoculations.
“Begin and do not stop until I tell you to,” Marco commanded.
Leo Flynn’s story came out in fits and starts, how he had come from London to Georgia, a colony for debtors, under an indenture. “I was to work for Dr. Gill seven years; then I would be free,” he explained.
“How odd,” Marco said. “Keep going.”
The story he told was much as he had related earlier, how Dr. Gill ran afoul of the British and was forced to flee to Natchitoches eventually, on the Texas frontier with his wife Catalina.
“And you followed him?”
“Had I a choice?” Leo replied, with a flash of irritation that made Toshua pull out his knife again. Leo gulped. “We ended up in Los Adaes, a Spanish possession, as I am certain you know. Pia Maria had been born in Natchitoches.”
Paloma thought Marco could have been kinder when the poor man asked for a drink of water and the juez ignored him. Looking injured, Leo continued with a tale of increasing drunkenness and desperation as Dr. Gill, damn his hide, gathered enough money to hand over to land speculators without a single credential to recommend them.