Safe Passage

by Carla Kelly

  “Señor ’Ancock, why do men like us marry women like that?”

  It was a good question. They looked at each other with understanding.

  “We dare not travel any more today, not with an army so close. Pablo, I throw myself on your mercy,” Ammon said. It sounded more elegant in Spanish than English, and hopefully contained just a hint of the desperation Ammon felt. He had a lot of faith in the Spanish language.

  Pablo looked away and thought a long moment, perhaps weighing the rules of friendship against his own safety. Ammon looked away too, so he would not appear to be pleading. Even in dangerous times, men had to be brave.

  Pablo looked back. He touched Ammon’s arm. “We will find a place for you and a woman who kills mountain lions. A little boy said she used her bare hands! Follow me. We will cross this river and take a safer way to my home.”

  Addie’s eyes were big with fright as the two of them walked toward her in the sheltering trees. As they came closer, the killer of mountain lions dropped the rock in her hand.

  He introduced them, and Pablo bowed in that effortless way of Mexican men who like the ladies. “I’ve known Señor Salinas for years,” Ammon told her as Pablo nudged his ox into the river.

  “He’s so poor. You couldn’t possibly ever have freighted for him,” Addie said as Ammon steadied her in front of him in the saddle.

  “No. I helped him once with a load of corn, after a wheel came off his cart.” He smiled when she leaned against him. “To hear him tell it, it was pouring rain, and there were Apaches circling his cart and wolves nipping at his ox. Mexicans do like to work over a good tale and make it better.”

  She chuckled. “You really did freight his corn?”

  “I did, all the way to Namiquipa. He swears I got him a better price because he came in such style. We had the wheel fixed and I returned him to his ox and cart.”

  She nodded. When she spoke again, her voice was serious. “Will we be putting him in danger?”

  “Probably. He has a broken-down barn, and we will sleep there. We’ll take turns keeping watch.”

  “No mountain lions, please!”

  B

  The sun had passed its zenith when they arrived at Casa Salinas, an adobe structure that had probably seen better days a century ago but which appeared to be standing upright out of sheer habit. They were greeted by a genial dog not much younger than his owner, and a little woman almost as tall as she was round. With an exclamation of delight as though she had been waiting for him for years, she grabbed Ammon and shook him from side to side, which made Addie laugh.

  “Addie, this is Maria Salinas, Pablo’s better half.” He leaned closer. “She’ll grab you too.”

  “I want to be grabbed,” his kind wife said. Maria put her hands on Addie’s shoulders, looked in her eyes, said, “Pobrecita,” burst into tears, and hugged Addie to her generous bosom.

  When Addie was tight in the circle of her arms, Maria glared at Ammon. “You don’t feed her enough,” she declared. With Addie firm in her grip, Maria turned and walked her into the little house that stood up from force of habit, crooning to her. The genial dog followed after giving Ammon a reproachful look too.

  I’m in heaven, Ammon thought. He looked at Pablo. “Can you find a good place for this horse of mine while I get the yoke off your ox?”

  The biggest meal of the day came in the middle of the afternoon—tortillas and beans, with just a hint of pork from an elderly rind that Maria must have used many times. Old or young, the food was delicious. Addie ate wholeheartedly, unaware that the three of them were watching her: Ammon out of gratitude that she had a meal; Maria as determined as a mother hawk; and Pablo pleased to help his friend, el gringo Señor ’Ancock.

  One tender moment came when Maria asked Ammon, “Where is your child?”

  Addie looked at him to translate, as he had translated all the conversation around the small table. He had to tell her. “The last time I saw these two dears, you had just told me you were expecting,” he whispered, afraid to look in her eyes. “They were delighted at our good news.”

  She nodded, her face composed. “Tell them we have known sorrow,” she whispered back.

  He told them, then held his breath with the beauty of the moment as Maria took Addie’s hand and kissed it. “We leave it in God’s hands,” she said.

  Touched, Ammon started to translate, but Addie shook her head. “I understand what she said. Gracias,” she told Maria and pressed Maria’s hand against her cheek.

  Maria and Pablo nodded as Ammon told them of their need to sleep now and then ride when it was darker, to avoid the army. “If you will just let us sleep in that shelter behind your house …”

  Maria shook her head, her expression mutinous. “We have a bedchamber.”

  “We must, my dear,” Ammon told her. “We could never put you in danger by sleeping in your house.”

  She shook her head again, her lips in a pout that would have made him laugh, except that his heart wanted to break with her kindness to him and his woman who had killed the enormous mountain lion. I love these people, he thought, my countrymen.

  “Please, señora,” he began, but Maria wasn’t listening.

  Discussion over, Maria took Addie’s hand and led her into the other room in the house.

  Pablo grinned and watched them go. “My friend, if you want to sleep with your woman you had better do as Maria says.”

  “Pablo, I can’t take your—”

  The old man’s hand caressed his shoulder. “Maria and I will watch while you sleep.” He shrugged elaborately. “And if you want to do something besides sleep, we are both hard of hearing.”

  “Pablo, I—”

  “Eh?” he asked, cupping his hand behind his ear.

  After Maria left the little room, giving him a militant look that would probably have frightened General Salazar into silence, Ammon joined Addie in the small space and closed the door.

  “She’s impossible to argue with,” he said. “Addie, if you’d rather I slept somewhere else …”

  “For heaven’s sake, Am, what have we been doing this past week? Don’t be silly. Just because it’s an actual bed with clean sheets …” His wife the lion killer pulled back the sheet.

  He shed his outer clothes, including his fox stole, the one Joselito was certain contained magical powers. “Why in the world am I still wearing this?” he asked out loud.

  Addie laughed. “Because that Indian would be disappointed if you didn’t! Besides, I think it becomes you.”

  “Knothead.”

  He had expected the mattress to be noisy corn husks, but he sank and sank into feathers. “My goodness, Addie, this is magnificent. I would never have guessed.”

  He straightened out his arm and she came close, resting her head on his chest. The sun went behind clouds, darkening the room. He wanted it to rain again and thought he heard thunder. He raised up on one elbow, alert. It was artillery, not thunder.

  Addie, bless her, pressed her hand against his chest and he lay down again. “There’s nothing we can do about what is going on out there,” she said, her voice as serene as he remembered from their best days together. “I believe we have to leave this in God’s hands too.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes, worn out and ragged, but he had to talk. “Addie, what would you have named our baby?”

  He said it softly, not knowing what she would say, so uncertain, even though he had wondered. She was silent a long while, and then he felt his arm grow damp where her head rested. He pulled her closer. When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft to hear.

  “I would have wanted you to name our baby, if it were a boy. Maybe after our fathers.”

  “I thought about that,” he told her. “David Thomas or Thomas David?”

  She nodded, silent. “I wanted Betsy for a daughter. Just Betsy.”

  “Do we know any Betsys?”

  “Do we need to?”

  He chuckled. “Nope. I would have liked Betsy too. Bets
y Hancock. That’s good, because when she married, she wouldn’t have too many names …” What was he saying? “Addie, I am so sorry.”

  She nodded again. “All I wanted was for you to be with me, and you weren’t. I went a little crazy.”

  She was baring her heart, exposing so much pain that she shuddered with it. He held her closer, both arms around her now.

  “I was freighting logs in the Sierra Madres,” he began. “You know the contract, because I remember that before I left you said it would make our fortune. The loggers were shorthanded, so I was helping. Some help! One of the logs rolled on my leg. You could hear the crack all over camp.”

  She said something inarticulate, which he took as consent to continue. “I … I don’t remember anything after that. The doctor told me later that two days passed before he got there. The bone was sticking out. He didn’t know why infection didn’t set in.”

  “Heavens,” she murmured.

  “He actually had some chloroform, so he put me out so he could set it and stitch me up. I started home as soon as I could, but it was two weeks.”

  No need for her to know how he cried from the pain, wailing out loud to the empty forest as he gave his horses their head and let them take him home to García. “All I wanted to do was get home to you, because I knew you would make it better,” he concluded simply. “Addie, as God is my witness, I had no idea.”

  “I know you didn’t,” she said finally. “Papa told me he sent a telegram, but since the war began, telegraph service is so poor.”

  No need for you to know that your father forgot, he told himself. I can leave that one alone.

  “That’s quite a scar on your calf. I … I noticed it at the river.”

  He smiled, relieved. He knew that tone of voice. “Ah-ha. So you were admiring my manly physique!”

  “Guilty as charged,” she said, amused. She sighed then, and it turned into a barely masked sob. “Too guilty.”

  “Guilty of what? Being human? Feeling sad?”

  “I wanted to call you back. I wasn’t brave enough. Too proud, too upset—I can’t explain it.”

  “I should have tried harder,” he said, remembering all the letters he had sent. Any fool could put a stamp on a letter. “I should have planted myself on Grandma Sada’s side porch and stayed there until you felt like seeing me.”

  “You had a business to run.”

  Heavens above, she was excusing him. “You should have been more important to me.” Ammon raised up on his elbow again. “Addie, I’ve made a hash of this rescue. We’re going to find that doctor’s wife, toss the money at her, and run for the border.” He sighed. “Except …” He just couldn’t say it.

  She knew. God bless her heart, she knew. “Except you just can’t quite leave Mexico, can you?”

  “I’m not sure I can.” He sat up. Addie rested her head on his lap and his fingers twined in her hair. “Sit up and look at me.”

  She did as he said, her face just as serious, her eyes boring into his.

  “I want you safe, so you’re leaving this country.” He put his fingers gently on her lips when she tried to speak. “My turn! We both have to do some heavy thinking. The middle of a war is no time to make a snap decision and eternity is a long while.” He touched his forehead to hers. “Your turn.”

  Addie lay down, pillowing her head on him again. “I’m afraid, and I’m lonely, and I’m weary of being afraid and lonely. I’ll do what you say, Ammon, because you’re right. The Mexican Revolution is no time to solve our problems.”

  He nodded and slid down beside her. “Agreed.” He closed his eyes, weary in his heart. “Go to sleep. We have to ride tonight.”

  “You weren’t listening,” Addie the lion killer said. “I said I’m afraid and I’m lonely. I’ll probably be afraid until I cross the border, but I don’t have to be lonely right now, do I?” Tentative at first, she ran her hand up his leg, pausing on his scar but not for long.

  He was no dunce. Besides, Pablo had assured him that he and Maria were hard of hearing.

  FOURTEEN

  THEY WERE FOUR days at Casa Salinas, because the war refused to move, or maybe because the bed was soft and Pablo and Maria the perfect hosts. By silent consent, they took turns sleeping and watching. Pablo moved Blanco into an arroyo farther back from the river, along with his valuable pig and two goats. Once while Ammon and Addie hid under the bed, a detachment of federales stalked through the house, eventually liberating the not-so-valuable pig and slashing the feather bed. The rooster’s indignation at losing his harem ended when the rooster, silenced, joined the trio headed for the stewpot.

  “He’s a scrawny rooster,” Ammon said, as the four of them surveyed the feathers from the bed fluttering around the house like soft snow. “Why are you so serene about this, my friend?”

  Pablo only shrugged. “Rulers have been stealing from the poor since the time of Moctezuma.” He nudged Ammon. “Besides, I have more hens and another rooster in an arroyo just beyond your smart horse and my cerdo gordito.”

  Although the killer of the largest cougar ever shot in Chihuahua watched her husband anxiously, Ammon and Pablo made their own reconnaissance on the second day of battle. He laughed when she made him wear the fox stole over his serape.

  “Your woman worries too much,” Pablo said, when they were out of sight of Casa Salinas. “Is she with child again? They get that way when they are broody.”

  Heavens, I don’t think so, Ammon thought and felt his face grow warm. “She likes to worry,” he said, which didn’t satisfy him at all.

  Pablo just shook his head. “When you two are married as long as me and my woman, she’ll shove you out the door!”

  All good humor ended as they came closer to the sound of heavy artillery. They stopped at the crossroads that led to Encarnación, the town under fire. To the west was the great Rancho Guadalquivir, owned by a wealthy man who lived in the state of Sonora. Ammon had hauled grain to Guadalquivir only one month ago; he doubted he would haul there again, since he stared, shocked to see four American cowboys hanging on the elaborate crosspiece of the ranch’s entrada. He came forward slowly, looking around, wondering if he knew them. Attached to each man’s chest with a spike was a placard announcing “Americano.”

  “Do you know them, Señor ’Ancock?”

  Even after several days in the sun and frequent visits by buzzards, he did. “I know their boots. Pablo, let us cut them down.”

  The old man shook his head. “We dare not. One side or the other would take offense and all around here would suffer a similar fate.” Pablo crossed himself. “Do you see why I want you to take your woman and ride to the border?”

  “I see all too well.”

  They topped the next rise and flattened out in the lee of the hill to watch the fight in the distance, the shelling loud enough to make Ammon’s ears hurt. He glanced at Pablo, who was shaking his head as he watched the carnage.

  “Do they do this in the United States?” the old man asked.

  “They did fifty years ago, and many died.”

  “Was it worth all that death?”

  “I doubt it.”

  They retraced their steps.

  He tried not to look so concerned when Addie met him at the gate with the genial dog who had taken a shine to her. She saw right through him, so he told her about the dead American cowboys. She turned away and took a deep breath.

  “And you want to stay in Mexico?” she asked quietly, then returned to the house ahead of him.

  Pablo whistled through his teeth. “I don’t know what she said, but you will probably be sleeping in the other room tonight, my friend.”

  “We’re riding tonight, so it doesn’t matter.” He looked at Pablo. “How can I get her out of this country now?” he asked in English, knowing his friend had no answer in either language.

  Unhappy with himself, Ammon went in the tiny kitchen, no more than a lean-to on the adobe house, where he couldn’t even stand upright. Addie tried to smile at
him. Maria held out a plate of misshapen tortillas.

  “Your wife made these,” she announced. “If she stays with me a few more days, she will be an expert. Try one.”

  He did, after Maria shook a little precious sugar and cinnamon on it and rolled it up. “Buen sabor,” he said.

  Addie’s smile was genuine, reminding him all over again how eager she was for his approval, even in the worst of times. “You mean it?”

  “I do.” It was tasty. He put his arm around her shoulder and led her into the backyard. “Pablo thinks the fight will end soon. Let me take the money to the woman in San Pedro. I know I can convince Pablo to take you the other way toward the border.”

  She looked at him a long time, as if he wasn’t measuring up and she didn’t want to disappoint him with that knowledge.

  “¿Qué es, Addie?” he asked finally.

  “You trust someone besides yourself to get me to the border?”

  It was a simple question, but it told him worlds about her. The only answer he could give was the truthful one, the frightening one.

  “No, I do not,” he said. “You’re riding with me.”

  She rested her forehead against his chest, and his arms went around her.

  After two days of silence in the distance that meant both victory and loss, they left Casa Salinas. Maria cried and Pablo crossed himself again and insisted on putting the sign of the cross on their foreheads with ash.

  “Between that and my fox fur stole, I think we’re covered,” Ammon joked to his wife as they walked to the arroyo where Blanco, patient horse, had been stashed.

  “Not yet.” Addie stopped when they were out of view of the house.

  He knew what she meant. They knelt together and took turns praying for their safety. It touched his heart when Addie included Pablo and Maria Salinas, the two boy-soldiers, Serena Camacho, whom she had never met, Joselito, the poor people in Encarnación where the fight was, and the doctor’s wife, whoever she was.

  “Are they getting under your skin too, honey?” he asked her when she finished and just stayed on her knees, as though there were others to pray for, in the whole immensity of Chihuahua, but she didn’t know their names. All she could do was nod.