Safe Passage

by Carla Kelly

  He settled himself against a sun-warmed boulder, Addie close by, but not too close. He told her about sleeping in the deserted stables on Hacienda Chavez, claimed by General Salazar now and destroyed by one faction or another. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the discarded ladies, not when she had suffered her own brush with the cruelty of war on women.

  “What happened to the owners?”

  “Serena told me some of them were probably dead in the burned-out hacienda.”

  Addie digested that. “I remember Hacienda Chavez from your company books. You knew them, didn’t you?”

  He nodded and told her about his last visit, and the lovely women on the porch. “One of them was Graciela Andrade. Remember her?”

  “Of course I do! You and all the other boys in our class were in love with her. Evangeline used to complain all the time that none of them even looked at her when Graciela was around.”

  “Did that bother you?” he asked, his eyes starting to close.

  “Why would it?” she asked in turn. “I was never in her league, or Evangeline’s, for that matter.”

  You were always better, he wanted to assure her, but sleep took over.

  B

  He woke up to rain, the kind of cold rain in early autumn that he always welcomed because they lived in a parched land. It didn’t feel so welcome now as it dripped off his nose and chilled him to the bone. Addie had kindly covered him with one of their blankets and wrapped herself in the other, but her teeth chattered.

  There was too much rain to build a fire. The only thing to do was ride, even though it wasn’t full dark. They had passed occasional ruined buildings as they cautiously followed General Salazar’s line of march. Maybe there was one set back from the road that had a roof left, and they could find shelter there. He could hope.

  He was starting to worry about Addie, who shivered continuously now when he saw what he knew must be a chicken coop. Some of the locals dug below the ground to build coops cool enough to shelter chickens during Chihuahua’s scorching summers. The level above ground generally housed more hardy animals or was used as storage space.

  The structure was set well back in the trees. Blanco shied and stepped around as they approached, so he dismounted and left Addie by the coop. He led Blanco beyond the building and down to the trees by the river, where the gelding seemed to settle down.

  By the time he returned with his saddlebags and weapons, Addie had already crouched her way into the coop, pulling the potato sack with her. The chickens were long gone, but the odor made him wrinkle his nose.

  “Be it ever so humble,” Addie said doubtfully.

  He could barely see his hand in front of his face, much less his wife, but at least the coop was dry. He looked around when his eyes accustomed themselves to the dark. At least they weren’t sharing the space with anything except moldy straw and an egg better left uneaten.

  “We’ll stay here the rest of the night, and probably tomorrow.” He sat down and leaned against the wall. Addie was just the barest outline now, but he held out his arms, hoping she would accept the invitation.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she did and sat on his lap. He put his arms around her as she continued to shiver. The rain was noisy on the roof above and dripping through in places. Without any comment, Addie took off her sodden skirt and spread it out on the floor. She sat on his lap again and wrapped her blanket around them both.

  “That skirt will never dry,” she said through chattering teeth.

  Ammon put his finger to her lips, listening. Above the sound of the rain, he heard something stirring on the floor above them. It was just a little rustle, like an animal circling around to find a better spot, probably the equivalent of a human turning over a pillow to find a cooler place.

  “What’s wrong?” Addie whispered.

  “Nothing. Some animal. I hope it’s not javelinas, because they stink.”

  “So do we,” she pointed out, then put her hand over his mouth in turn when he started to laugh.

  Ammon held Addie in his arms, relieved when she finally stopped shivering. Her head grew heavy against his shoulder as he listened and then slept too.

  B

  He woke before she did. The rain had stopped and silence was everywhere now. He listened. Nothing. He let out a quiet sigh of relief. Javelinas could be nasty if cornered. No wonder Blanco had been so jumpy.

  It suited him to just lie there, hold Addie in his arms, and remember better times. He could see her distinctly because it was daylight and the rain had stopped. Her lips were chapped from the eternal dryness of their high desert climate. He used to get beeswax from Brother Odegaard just for her. She added a little vanilla and was so sweet to kiss.

  He wanted to kiss her again. Maybe if she was deep in sleep she wouldn’t know. When he moved a little closer, his stomach started to growl. Her eyes opened and she watched his face. She always came awake so peacefully, another part of her serenity he hadn’t discovered until they were married and shared the same bed. She was ordinarily such a busy person, active all day, that this new facet of her personality was a tonic to him. It had remained so, he discovered, holding her in a foul-smelling coop in Nowhere, Chihuahua.

  He couldn’t tell by her expression whether she wanted him to continue what was probably pretty obvious to her. He sat back, choosing to err on the side of discretion. He really wanted to watch and see if she was disappointed, but his courage failed him.

  His stomach rumbled again and Addie sat up. She colored slightly, looking down to see her one petticoat up around her knees. “I hope my skirt is dry,” she said in her rusty voice of early morning.

  Ammon reached for it as she stood up. “Dry enough,” he told her, his voice as rusty as hers. He might have been more thirsty than hungry. It was easier to remedy the thirst when he went to the river to check Blanco and kick himself a few times for being an idiot. His hunger was starting to require more than food; he wanted Addie more than he wanted a real meal.

  She pulled on her skirt, smoothing down its stained folds much as he remembered her smoothing down her best Sunday dress. He almost expected her to do the little twirl in front of her floor-length mirror in their bedroom that she always did. Too bad the mirror had been carted off to someone’s casa, and the house was a burned-out shell with horse manure in the kitchen.

  She pressed her middle and winced. “I don’t know about prickly pear,” she said. She picked up her shotgun. “See? I’m going to remember this from now on.”

  “Wait for me, Addie.”

  “Nope.” She shook her head. “I have to … uh … evacuate.”

  He grinned at that. His wife was so proper. “That’s not what I call it.”

  She gave him a pointed look and shook the weapon at him. “I know,” she said. “Am, at some point, I think I’ll just be happy when you say … say … cow dung instead of, well, you know what you say!” She crouched her way from the coop.

  He watched her go, almost holding his breath. What she had said implied there might even be a future. Maybe he’d have to try out dung instead of you know. He heard a sudden, familiar sound and looked up, quiet now and listening. He hadn’t heard anything earlier, but there it was again, not javelinas but something bigger, something that purred but was far from domesticated.

  “Addie,” he called. “Cuidado. Vuelva a mí.” He slapped his head. In English, you fool, he thought. “Be careful! Come back!”

  THIRTEEN

  HE COULDN’T HAVE put a sequence to what happened next because it happened so fast. The noise was almost directly overhead, so he jerked open the trapdoor above him to stare into cat eyes, smell a cougar’s breath, hear a snarl, and feel a swipe that just caught the tip of his nose as he reared back.

  He yelled and put his hand to his bleeding nose. The puma, as startled as he was but much quicker, settled into a quivering crouch only seconds from launch when the door on that upper level slammed open.

  “No, Addie!” he screamed as the couga
r sprang, her shotgun went off, and the animal collapsed on top of him, half in and half out of the trapdoor. He felt the heat of the cougar’s blood as it dripped onto his face. The cougar gave another half-hearted swipe that hooked into his neck. The claws flexed in and out, then the animal dangled there, dead.

  Ammon shook his head to clear it, wiping cougar blood from his eyes, fearful it was his at first. He felt no pain except for the sting on his neck and nose, which hurt less than the last time someone had aimed that shotgun his way. His ears rang with the close range percussion, and he yawned to relieve the unpleasant pressure.

  Addie. He leaped away from the dangling cougar and scrambled out of the coop, calling her name. She sat slumped in the doorway, the shotgun in her lap, her head down. Fearful, he touched her shoulder and she toppled over in a dead faint, probably as startled as the cougar had been.

  He cradled her in his arms, holding her until she regained consciousness. Her eyes fluttered open and she gasped. He had forgotten about the cougar’s blood all over his head. Her eyes started to roll back in her head again, so he patted her cheek, crooning to her, “ Sweetest little feller,’ ” because it was the only song he could think of, what with his pulse still racing and his ears ringing now.

  “Addie, I’m fine. That’s not my blood,” he told her. “You saved my life.”

  “Don’t shout so loud,” she protested, then burst into tears, clinging to him.

  He held her close. When her tears tapered off into a sniffle, he pulled up her skirt and commanded her to blow into it. She blew her nose, then just shivered in his arms.

  “I did what you said,” she told him finally, her voice still breathless. “I kept my eyes open and held my breath.”

  “Worked, didn’t it? Addie, let’s get out of here.”

  She made no protest as she stood up, staggered, and let him hold her close until she could stand on her own. She looked in the upper room again, her eyes huge, her mouth open, to see the cougar she had killed, probably while it was pouncing.

  “I did that?”

  He heard the amazement in her voice, mingled with something that sounded like pride, which made Ammon want to shout hooray. “No one else did it. You saved my life.”

  She leaned against him, her arm around his waist now. He could tell himself that maybe she was still having trouble standing; he could also think that she wanted him close. He decided to believe that.

  “I didn’t even think it was loaded. I was going to rush in there and bash him over the head, but I thought I should try the gun first.”

  He closed his eyes and thanked Heavenly Father she hadn’t done that. “Addie, you’d have died.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again. “But he was going to pounce on you!”

  What a woman, he told himself, amazed at her courage or foolhardiness or whatever it was that made a little greenhorn like Addie ferocious enough to take on a mountain lion. Maybe, just maybe, she still liked him a little.

  He kissed her cheek. “I loaded the shotgun yesterday morning.”

  “You might have told me,” she accused, giving him The Look, which pleased him more than he could say, because she sounded so wifely again.

  “Yeah, I might have.” He looked around, wondering just who might have heard that shotgun blast. “We’re going to get out of the area as soon as we can. No telling who that gunshot may have alerted. There might be other deserters around, or an army over the horizon, and we don’t need that.”

  She nodded, businesslike. She ripped off a section of her petticoat and went to the river, returning to wash his face, going gently around the gash on his nose, and frowning over the puncture marks in his neck. He let her, sitting on a rock in the sun, happy to be fussed over. When she finished, he went into the coop and came out with the saddlebags, blankets, potatoes, and his rifle.

  When he brought up Blanco from the river, the horse shied again. “You were certainly smarter than we were last night,” Ammon told the gelding, patting him into calm.

  Addie was inside the coop. He peered inside, amused now to see her, hands on her hips, looking at the dangling cougar. “You know what I wish, Am?”

  “That I could skin it and make you a rug?”

  “That would be nice, but no. Where would we put it? I wish I had my Kodak Brownie so you could take a picture of me standing by this monstrosity. Can you imagine what my friends in Utah would think?”

  Ammon shook his head, amazed. He had no plans to inform her that as cougars go, it was on the small side. Also, when he had taken a closer look while Addie was at the river, he noticed that although the claws were formidable, the cat’s teeth were worn down or missing. The old gent must have just wanted a refuge from the rain, same as they did. He hoped that as the years passed, if they lived to get out of Mexico, she would tell the story to their children and the mountain lion would get bigger and bigger.

  He took her by the hand. “You were going to beat that lion to death for me.”

  She matched him serious for serious. “I guess I was.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Let’s vámonos. That’s Spanglish for …”

  “I know.”

  As Ammon boosted her into his saddle, he turned around to see two young boys and a woman watching them, their eyes wide. They turned and stared into the shed.

  “My wife killed that cougar,” he told them.

  “Oh, Am!”

  Ammon took the reins. Not trusting the road or even the tree line right now, not after both noisy barrels, he led Blanco into the water, which only came up to his knees. He walked down the Rio Papigochic, wanting to leave no tracks. After a short distance, he stopped and looked back. Two paisanos with wicked-looking machetes were approaching the chicken coop now while the little boys danced around and pointed inside.

  Addie looked back too, her eyes troubled. “We don’t know who is friend or foe, do we?”

  “We don’t. That’s why we can’t trust anyone.” Except each other, he thought. Trust me always, Addie. He looked into her eyes and felt the gentleness of her gaze in a way that made him swallow and look away, suddenly shy around this woman he knew pretty well. She looked like she was thinking that exact thing.

  He continued down the river another mile, hunting for a good place to hide and finding nothing. They were losing their tree cover as they left the sheltering mountains. He knew the Rio Papigochic would continue its leisurely journey across open land better traveled by the light of the moon. He looked ahead and saw what he dreaded—a cloud of dust that had to be someone’s army, heading south as they were. He didn’t know what to do. Please, God, he prayed.

  “That’s an army, isn’t it?” Addie asked.

  “I’m afraid it is.” He looked behind them, wondering if they should go back. As he stood there in the river, he noticed an ox pulling a two-wheeled cart that had probably never known the silence of greased wheels. An old man walked alongside the beast, keeping pace. He appeared to be singing, but who could tell, with the noise from the wheels? The wheels had caught his attention for another reason; they were bright red, and the wagon bed was blue. Ammon knew that cart.

  He let his breath out. “We’re going up on the bank now,” he told his wife. “Hang on. I’ll help you off, and I want you to just stay here with Blanco in the shade of the trees.”

  She nodded and gripped the pommel, her face serious, unable to hide the fright in her eyes. In a moment Blanco stood on the bank, shaking himself. Addie held out her arms to Ammon and he lifted her down. “Just stay here.” He touched the frown between her eyes, knowing how much she did not want to be left alone.

  Taking his time—this was Mexico, where only criminals hurried—he walked in the tree line paralleling the road and prayed he was right. With a deep breath, he stepped out from the protection of the trees as the cart made its slow way toward him. He nearly went to his knees in gratitude at the sight of a familiar face, a round one with a white beard that he used to think was Mexico’s San Nicolas. He raised his arm
and waved.

  The old man spoke to his ox and the cart stopped. He peered closer with eyes that Ammon knew were growing milky, then walked toward Ammon, keeping his staff in front of him. A few more feet, and then he laughed, put down the staff, and raised his arm too. If Heavenly Father hadn’t sent Pablo Salinas to them, Ammon decided he didn’t know much about Heavenly Father.

  “Hello, my son! I have not seen you in a while. I was afraid the armies ran you out of our country!”

  “Not me! As you say, it is my country too.” Ammon grasped the old man’s extended hand, then found himself in a warm abrazo. Pablo Salinas smelled of wood smoke and old age and wet wool.

  Pablo Salinas stepped back and took a good look, shaking his head. “Are you injured, my son?” he asked, the concern in his voice warming Ammon even more.

  “No, no. This is a mountain lion’s blood. My woman killed it.”

  Pablo took another step back in surprise, his eyes as wide as a child’s. “I have come from Ildefonso—I know, I know, a grandiose name for such a poor village—and what do I hear but a story of a dead mountain lion in a chicken coop. Your woman did that?”

  “She did. She wanted to save my useless hide.”

  They laughed together, husbands.

  “Where is this magnificent woman?” Pablo asked, looking around.

  While the old man leaned against the big wheel and the ox stood patiently, Ammon told him what had happened. “So you see, my friend, we are in need of a place to hide today. We travel at night, and we are trying to get to San Pedro.”

  “Better you should go the other way,” Pablo warned, reminding Ammon of Joselito, who had the same advice.

  “I know. This woman of mine made a promise to help another woman, and she will keep her word.”

  Pablo nodded. Ammon knew that he had a woman much like Addie, the conscientious kind. He chuckled when Pablo shook his head.