A Lady Bought with Rifles

by Jeanne Williams

  “Food!” cried one seam-faced old woman. “We need flour and beans more than clothes and jewelry.”

  “True, mama grande,” placated Lío. “We brought the food on the train, but there was not much of use that could be carried. We can exchange the jewels for food, though, and for guns and ammunition.”

  The horses and mules were unloaded and left to graze at the far side of the basin. Clothing was piled up and a feast prepared from what had been salvaged from the train kitchen: ham, loaves of bread, preserves, cheese. But remembering Felipe and the others who would eat no more, I only drank water and forced down a little bread.

  Sewa sat by me near a rock outside a ramada and Domingo joined us. He was fascinated by Ku or Sewa or both, and I was glad someone near her age was being friendly. Several of the older people came to speak with the child about her slaughtered family.

  The old woman, Camilda, embraced Sewa and told her she was ceremonial kin to one of Sewa’s dead uncles. She offered to let Sewa live with her and an astonishing collection of relations by blood, marriage, and ceremony, but when Sewa asked if there was room for me, Camilda’s wrinkled face tightened.

  “We are too many now for one ramada,” she said, and went back to the feast.

  “You would think her thatch was a bishop’s palace,” scoffed Domingo. “Stay in my cave, lady.” He pointed to a grotto some-distance from the others. “There is room for all three of us and your Ku bird, little Sewa.”

  She laughed. The sound and the sparkle of her eyes was a marvel and wound to me after what had happened that day, but I had to remember she was back with her people after what had amounted to captivity, no matter how I cherished her.

  “We will be a family,” she said, grasping my hand and hugging Ku. She hesitated. “But, Domingo, your parents—”

  “They are dead.” Pain convulsed his young mouth for a second before he stilled his face. “Tula is my sister, but I do not live with her. I was better alone. Till now.”

  A fire was lit as twilight settled. From the discussion of the men I gathered that three of them would take the money and jewelry. One would buy as much food as possible in a village a day’s ride away and the other two would travel to Arizona for guns and ammunition.

  Summoning my courage, for my impulse was to remain unnoticed as long as it was allowed, I straightened my clothing and ventured into the shifting glow of light. Tula sat near Lío and I spoke to her in Spanish, for though I was understanding more Yaqui, I couldn’t say anything very complex in it.

  “I think I can only be a problem for you. You know the Mina Rara?”

  She nodded, ruddy light defining the angles of her face, accentuating her smoldering gaze. “We know it. Some of us have relatives there.”

  “The superintendent, Court Sanders, knows me. I think he would pay if you would let me go.”

  Tula threw back her head. Laughter pulsed from her throat. “And then you could tell the soldiers and rurales where we are and that we killed the train passengers.”

  “I would not tell.”

  Tula rolled a corn shuck around black tobacco, lit it at the fire, and deliberately blew smoke at me. “I do not believe you.”

  “But you can’t keep me here forever!” I cried desperately.

  “I would have left you at the train,” she said, and there was no mistaking what she meant.

  “Please.” I loathed begging but feared what might happen if I didn’t force a decision now. “I swear I will not betray you. I am sorry for what is happening to your people. The money Sanders would pay for me could buy many guns.”

  Lío stirred himself, staring at me through eyes that were narrowed slits. “Sanders’ woman?” he asked in halting Spanish.

  I shook my head, flushing with embarrassment. “My father owned the mine.”

  Lío really sat up. “Don Jonathan?” he asked slowly. “Your father was Jonathan Greenleaf?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you helped the child Sewa.”

  “I could not do much.”

  Lío pondered a moment, shoulders hunched in a bull-like posture that made him seem solid and lasting as the boulders around us. “You shall go to Mina Rara and not for money,” he said at last.

  “Lío!” blazed Tula, catching his arm. “She will tell where we are! If it’s known we did the killing today, we will be hunted more than ever and already we live in fear of our lives, stealing enough grain to survive!”

  “She is Don Jonathan’s daughter. I accept her word.”

  “And what was this Don Jonathan, this Englishman, to you?” the woman sneered.

  Lío spoke heavily, a bull trying to elude a stinging fly. “My father worked at the mine and was hurt in a fall. Don Jonathan had a doctor for him, gave him his house and enough to keep our family till I was old enough to work.”

  “A man preserves his beasts of burden,” said Tula.

  “No. Don Jonathan kept us alive, in decency, for five years when there was no man working and six children to be fed. We were not beasts to him. We were people.”

  “You are a great fool, Lío!”

  He shrugged. “Nevertheless.”

  “At least get money for her.”

  “My father had the money many years ago.”

  She got up and walked away with an angry swing of her rounded hips outlined by my divided skirt. “In a few days,” Lío told me. “In a few days I will send you to the mine.”

  “Sewa? May I keep her with me?”

  He scowled, leaning his chin on his knee, and sighed. “Let me think. She may need you now and she would be safer with you, but can we let her forget her people?” I would have spoken but he waved me off. “Let me think,” he repeated. “And let me set your mind at rest on one point. My men might kill you but they won’t rape.”

  Back at the grotto, Domingo had made a large communal nest for us, two straw mats beneath, a horse-and-smoke-pungent serape, several shawls from the train pillage, and a ragged tarpaulin. It was cool now in this higher region, and we soon arranged ourselves, Sewa in the middle, Ku at her head under a protecting ledge. Stars winked above the palisades and talk went on in the other ramadas and around the fire, but we were soon asleep, sharing our warmth, joined by the rising and falling of our breath.

  Three men left next morning with jewels, watches, and money. The pair bound for Tucson wouldn’t be back for weeks, but the one sent to buy food in the village might return next day. He was also carrying such clothing as was not needed by the people in the basin to give a Yaqui group hiding out in another canyon. Lío had told me to select a dress and I’d found one of my own in the pile, so I no longer needed Tula’s rags.

  There was coffee from the train for breakfast, and old Camilda gave us some tortillas. Domingo went off hunting with some of the men. Most of the women were busy altering and devising garments from those looted from the train, though they did carry water from a spring to the squash, corn, bean, and melon patches in the center of the basin. They watched me curiously and a few talked with Sewa, but we were mainly left to ourselves.

  “I wanted to stay with you,” she told me. “Will Señor Sanders permit it?”

  “The question is, will Lío?”

  “I am lame,” she said matter-of-factly. “And this band has enough children. He will let me go.”

  “I hope so,” I said and turned to greet Camilda, who had come to ask for the third time all the details of the destruction of Sewa’s family.

  I diverted the old woman’s attention by asking how long the band had been in this basin. “Since spring,” she said and went on to tell how they were remnants of several rancherías that had been raided and the strong adults sent off to Yucatán as slaves.

  “I had a good house,” she lamented. “My two sons and their families lived with me. They were farmers and hunters. We always had enough to eat and could even hold fiestas. Where are they now, my daughters, my strong sons-in-law?” Weaving her gnarled hands together, she swayed and intoned her answer. �
�Antonio they shot, and my daughter, too, when she clung to his body. Chepa and Pablo were marched away with their oldest son. The two small children were given away like pups or cats, I suppose, to be brought up as Mexicans or slaves. May God damn these devils for what they do to us.”

  As the day wore on and I met other women, I heard variations, over and over, of the same story. There was not a person in camp who hadn’t lost family in the government raids, not a person who didn’t burn for vengeance. But they were facing the fact that they’d have to live indefinitely in the wilderness and were beginning to build homes for the winter—adobes, not the traditional mud and wattle or airy cane houses sufficient in the frost-free valley. Soldiers had come near them many times, but the solid-appearing rock wall had so far deceived their enemies.

  Lío, Tula, and the men had struck at different Mexican ranches, stealing all the food they could get, terrorizing these intruders on Yaqui land. Any time they saw a military force that wasn’t vastly superior in numbers, Lío devised a way to ambush it. In the past four months, the band must have killed five times their number of soldiers. If only they had enough guns. That was the refrain.

  Though Lío was the acknowledged leader, he was not despotic. Camilda scolded him for snoring the night before, and he spent the afternoon consulting with Tula and the men about a proposed expedition against Mexicans who had taken up land of deported Yaquis along the river of the Eight Sacred Pueblos. Even so, he found time to admire Ku and teach Sewa a new tune on the flute. Tula didn’t like this, scowled from a distance, and finally called him.

  That night one of the men played a yucca fiddle and Tula sang with a wild sadness that stirred the blood, watching Lío, making it an intimate plaint. When Domingo, Sewa, Ku, and I settled to rest, it seemed we had been together a long time.

  Lookouts were posted at various points, both for defense and to spot possible sources of booty and any groups of soldiers or rurales the band could hope to vanquish. “We nibble like ants at a carcass,” Lío had said the day before. “Yet I have seen many a bull or stallion stripped to the bone by the little warriors.”

  Several days passed uneventfully. I hoped Lío would send me to the mine soon but feared to press. Then one morning we woke to a flurry in camp, saddling up, horses whinnying. “Do you want to go with us, young one?” Lío called to Domingo. “There are a dozen well-equipped Mexicans riding past the canyon, and most have good rifles, Paco says. We can keep their best horses and slaughter and eat our worst ones.”

  Domingo looked at Sewa, who had waked and was watching him with fatalistic knowledge that was terrible to see in so young a face. What lay ahead for these two who had already endured horrors that most people seldom even hear of? I hoped to protect Sewa, but what could become of Domingo, hiding and fighting till the inevitable final crushing of his people?

  As Domingo hesitated, Tula strode over. “Up!” she told him. “Have you become a girl child?” She thrust a tortilla into his hand. “Eat and get your horse.”

  Domingo sighed. His hand brushed Sewa’s cheek. Yesterday’s leisure with Sewa and Ku must have been like an echo of his lost childhood, sweeter for being irrevocably lost.

  “See if you can teach that ugly raven how to sing,” he told the girl.

  Sewa clung to his hand. “Come back,” she said. “Please be careful.”

  He laughed. For a moment I caught a glimpse of how he would look in ten years, if he lived. “I shall grow very old, mama grande says. She dreamed she saw me with long yellow teeth like a mule’s.” He croaked in Ku’s offended face, tweaked Sewa’s braid, and ran for his horse, cramming the tortilla into his mouth.

  The group, led by Lío and Tula, rode out of the basin. I was torn by sympathy for them, affection for Domingo, and distress over the probable fate of the Mexicans they planned to swoop on, probably men like Felipe or Emilio or Enrique.

  Sewa was morose that day, in spite of Camilda’s telling jokes and stories. Later that afternoon, I found her sobbing, Ku hopping about in frustrated curiosity as he tried vainly to nestle under her arm.

  I sat down and took her in my arms. “What is it, darling?”

  She wept in real earnest, rubbing her face against my shoulder. “I—I don’t want Domingo to die. But I don’t want him to kill anyone either. Oh, Miranda, can he stay with us at the mine? Would Señor Sanders let him?”

  The same thought must have been working deep in my mind, for I felt a sense of relief when she asked it. “It’s not so much a question of Sanders,” I explained, stroking her hair. “If he accepts us at all, he’ll do what I ask. But Lío needs men and Tula—Well, you saw what she did today.”

  Sewa’s hand crept into mine, so trustingly that it wrenched my heart. “Lío reveres your father. It is possible he will do this thing for you.”

  “I’ll ask,” I promised. “Now why don’t you pay some attention to Ku? He’s about to turn somersaults!”

  She laughed and I gave her a bit of tortilla to feed him. Just before sunset, when the palisades glowed crimson and the sky was a shout of glory, Lío’s troop rode into the basin.

  In their midst was a woman, hands lashed to the saddle horn, blindfolded, garments ripped, but head held high. As they halted, she swore at her captors and the last sun gilded her hair.

  It was Reina.

  9

  I ran forward, forgetful of everything except that my sister was a captive and might be hurt. A man hauled her from the saddle and removed the blindfold. She stumbled, bound hands hampering her, and I kept her from falling.

  “Reina!” I caught her arms, steadying her. “Are you all right?”

  Her head snapped back, her green eyes flashed. “You!” her raw voice grated between cracked lips, but after an impotent reaching of her hands, she screwed up her mouth and spat.

  Too astonished to dodge, I felt spittle strike my cheek.

  “So this is where you went!” she hissed. “Hiding out with these devils. No doubt you’ve had the lot between your legs, you with your prissy English rearing.”

  “Didn’t you find the train?” I asked. “Felipe?”

  “We found it, decided bandits had taken you away, and good riddance, too!” Disgust hoarsened her tone. “I never dreamed that even you would become a woman of these Yaquis. I was doing my duty, hunting for you, when this band attacked us.”

  “Your men?”

  “All dead.”

  Dread squeezed my heart. “Enrique?” I asked. “Ramón?”

  “Were they your lovers, too?” she sneered. “Ramón is dead. Enrique didn’t come.”

  Lío, with his bowlegged stride, had come over, observing us. “You know this redheaded one?”

  “She is my sister.”

  He stared at her, shocked, then gave a shake of his massive head. “You mean she is the child of the Mexican woman. She is not Jonathan Greenleaf’s daughter.”

  “No, but we had the same mother.”

  “She spat on you.”

  “She is still of my blood.”

  “It is a difficulty then. I learned today that three of our men are captives in Torim. The commandant might barter their lives for that of this hidalga. I have sent a messenger with the offer. If the commandant refuses, I have sworn to send him the broken body of a woman.”

  “Won’t that only cause more reprisals?”

  Lío shrugged. “My people are being killed and deported for no reason. And just as this woman is your sister, the three men in the Torim guardia are my comrades, valiant fighters.”

  “You could have bargained with me.”

  His grizzled head moved slowly. “No, I could not.”

  “But I must ask you to. Let her go and use me to win your friends’ liberty.”

  He spread his thick callous hands. “They may not go free. And I keep my oaths. If they die, so must a highborn woman of the Mexicans.”

  Slowly I said, “I wouldn’t expect you to break your word.”

  His lips broke against his teeth in a rueful grin
and he rubbed the back of his head with a big hand. “It would be hard for me to keep it—but I would. You believe that?”

  “I believe it.”

  “Why will you not go to safety tomorrow? It is clear this one hates you, sister or no.”

  “Our mother loved us both.”

  “You are not your mother.”

  “No, but she is in me. I don’t love my sister, but our mother in me cannot leave her, maybe to die.”

  “Well, I cannot argue.” Lío shrugged. “If you understand that you stand in this woman’s place and accept her fate, she can go.”

  “I would rather stay!” Reina blazed, standing very straight, gazing around as if to imprint the basin and every person there in her memory. “I don’t want to owe my life to this whore.”

  Lío struck her face with the flat of his hand. She staggered against Domingo, who had come to listen, pushed away from him, and smiled on Lío with bloodied lips.

  “You are a man of oaths, and for that blow, if I live I swear that I’ll see the birds peck the eyes in your severed head.”

  He bowed slightly. “You are brave, lady, but I do not like you. Perhaps I cannot, in justice to my band who depend on me, let you go. I can risk my own head and eyes, but I have no right to risk the others.”

  “Your head will do,” Reina said slightingly. “God knows it’s ugly enough.”

  He eyed her, considering. “You promise not to hurt my people if they fell into your hands?”

  She shrugged in her turn. “I can’t help what my vaqueros do if they meet your men in open fight. But you know I’ll try to find you.”

  “And if you do?”

  “Your head. Yours only.”

  He laughed hugely in a great bull bellowing. “Yours if you can get it, lady! But if you come into my hands again, I will rape you till you do not talk so merrily of lopping off heads. Come now and eat. When you have rested, I will send you away.”

  Tula sent Reina a glance of pure hatred and I wondered if Reina would have died, had Lío kept her. “That is a she-dog,” Domingo muttered as we went to Sewa, who was waiting with her heart in her eyes. “It is a crazy bargain, lady. Lío will do as he says.”