THIRTY-TWO
I FELT FREE as the wind as I rode away, the léperos shouting curses and death threats behind me.
They were dirty baggage that I no longer wanted to pack. Hopefully an army patrol would find them walking on the road and string them up at the nearest tree.
Before light fell I made camp by a river and took a bath, washing the stench of the léperos from my own body. I ate tortillas and salted beef and then lay on my bedroll and stared up at the stars, feeling the slash on my face.
The bleeding had stopped, but I would be left with a scar an inch or so long. It didn’t bother me because even the sting I felt at the moment brought the young woman into my thoughts. She had left a mark on me, not just on my face but in my heart, that I would not forget. Her vivid green eyes still burned in my memory.
I looked at the brooch I had found in the seat where the wildcat had sat. Opening the clasp, it revealed an ivory cameo of a woman’s face. I was certain it was her mother because of the resemblance.
The brooch’s casing was gold and encrusted with gems, making it very valuable. But any instinct on my part to sell the brooch was quickly extinguished because it was unlikely that she would have carried a memento of her mother if the woman was still alive.
Not having had a mother and remembering her only holding me against her warm, soft bosom, I knew the brooch must be very precious to her. If I could, I would return it to her.
I didn’t know all the paths the good Lord had set out for me or that el diablo would trick me onto, but I knew I would never see the girl again because our worlds were too far apart. Even if I did, she’d quickly have the constables on me. The brooch would be my only memento of her, and I would not sell it, even to save my hide.
Putting it on a cord, I hung it around my neck.
Ahhh … As much as I wanted to think about the green-eyed young woman who had ignited in me feelings I had never experienced before, I had to put aside thoughts of her, daydreams and idle wishes that were as practical as imagining the king of Spain knighting me.
For the first time in my life I contemplated about what my life might be in the years to come.
I did not want to continue as a highwayman. The road between Vera Cruz on the coast and Xalapa on the plateau where the Valley of Mexico lies was well traveled and frequently patrolled. Inevitably, a bandido would someday fall into the hands of a patrol of soldiers who hang them or the vigilantes who crucify them.
Besides, I was tired of moving to a different campsite every night and never daring to go into any town for fear I would be recognized by someone I had robbed.
It had been a long time since I worried about being wanted in Oaxaca. The town was a month’s journey and felt lifetimes away. I was no longer the stable boy who fled on a stolen horse. I now dressed like a vaquero and rode Rojo as if I was born to the saddle.
My first love was horses, and I dreamed of owning a small ranchero where I could raise and train them. The notion had been in my head from that day I met the léperos.
Eh, a small ranchero with a good stock of horses, a lovely señorita to share it with, what more could a man want?
There was only one problem. It took money to buy a ranchero. And I was not going to find it robbing people on the road.
For a certainty, although my heart was no longer in being a bandido, stealing was still going to be a part of my life because it was the only way I knew how to survive.
Pilfering from those who had too much in order to provide for myself who had so little didn’t bother my conscience. But my heart was not in robbing people. At least not face-to-face.
I needed money to buy the land, build a house and corrals, and stock the ranchero with horses and cattle.
The solution was obvious to me. I would get the money the best way I knew how—by stealing horses.
I didn’t really consider it stealing, anyway, because I would never have stolen a man’s personal mount. But horses that are raised in pastures on big haciendas and sold to the highest bidder were another matter. They didn’t care who owned them as long as they were fed well and not mistreated.
THIRTY-THREE
THE NEXT MORNING I sold the mules to the indios of a village, charging them only what they could afford because they existed under the harsh penalty of an encomienda tax.
Indios who were better off sometimes owned a donkey, but few had a mule, so they were happy to get the animals.
I would not have sold the mules to a Spaniard. As old as they were, the mules would have been packed with heavy loads until they dropped. I knew the indios would treat the animals as treasures, caring for them as well as they cared for themselves.
As I passed the horse pasture at the hacienda of the encomendero who collected an encomienda “tax” on the village, I saw a mare grazing away from the rest of the herd in a fenced pasture. She would have been set apart to keep her from getting pregnant because the owner had a particular stallion in mind, probably one that was better than any he owned.
She perked up when she saw Rojo, and I felt the stallion tense beneath me.
Mi Dios! The poor mare could be attacked by a jaguar or a pack of wolves. It was my Christian duty to protect her.
I started humming as I took down two log rails and led her out and left the rails on the ground so the hacendado would not know whether the mare was stolen or had wandered away.
Besides, his vaqueros will be busy rounding up the rest of the herd that would follow the mare out of the pasture. I didn’t take more than one because that would have caused a major hunt to track them.
That night as I rubbed down Rojo and the mare I realized this was the beginning of my quest for a ranchero. Before I sacked out on my bedroll, I felt a little lightheaded and even blessed. Like a priest who had saved a soul.
VERA CRUZ
Believe me, amigos, when I tell you that Vera Cruz is a hot ember that has been kicked out of hell, a place where the fiery tropical sun and fierce el norte winds turned earth to sand that flayed the flesh from bones.
—Cristo the Bastardo Gary Jennings, Aztec Blood
THIRTY-FOUR
MEXICO CITY WAS called the queen of New Spain and Vera Cruz the whore, but as a man selling stolen horses and seeking the loving arms of a woman—even paid affection was better than no affection—a Jezebel city was exactly what I needed. And being a harlot was not the worst thing that could be said about the colony’s chief port.
Since ninety percent of what came and went from the entire colony passed through the town, including people whose business it was to relieve the weight of a man’s purse with dishonest fingers, it was a busy whore.
While the merchants owned the boxes of goods, bales of cloth, and barrels of sugar that would be shipped to Spain, the streets belonged to prostitutes, smugglers, and gamblers—all of whom would have starved if there were not sailors and other fools like me who arrived in town with coins jingling in their pockets and eyes too filled with the sheer color and variety of people, clothing, and activity on the streets to perceive that there were thieves and scoundrels much more ruthless and talented than a backwater horse thief like me.
The many inns that served wine and beer and pulqueras with their cheap indio concoction had in common not only drunken patrons and games of chance, but a backroom or upstairs where sex was sold not by time with a woman but up to the ejection of a man’s honey. After that, you were quickly hustled out the door to make room for the next customer.
Fortunately, a muleteer I’d camped with the night before I arrived in Vera Cruz told me the secret to get my money’s worth. Demonstrating with a pumping action with his hand, he said, “Before you go in, give your own self pleasure.”
But it wasn’t just to take the edge off of my lust and the velvet off my pene that I had come to the city with a notorious reputation for being open to about anything.
Selling stolen horses was easier when you dealt with horse traders that didn’t ask too many questions. Vera Cruz was the perfect place for that type
of trader, though the one I was dealing with today was curious about why I sold so many young horses.
“How is it all the horses you sell are weanling foals?” a horse trader looking over my small herd asked. “You must have had a whole herd of pregnant mares.”
A foal is a horse less than a year old, and a weanling foal is one that had recently been weaned from its mother’s milk. And there was a simple reason I had so many weaned foals: I stole mares that were either pregnant or would be as soon as Rojo did his job.
Stealing mares and having Rojo impregnate them not only gave me fine-looking foals, but ones without a brand. With no mark of ownership and mixed-breed foals because I stole whichever ones I found available, it was impossible for even the finest judge of horseflesh to identify the foal’s parents.
It had been a slow process because the gestation period for a mare is nearly a year, and it takes close to another five or six months for the foal to be weaned. I had been at it for three years, stealing and breeding, selling a few foals or altering a brand on a grown horse to get enough money to keep myself in tortillas and my horses in grain until I had enough foals to take to Vera Cruz. I sold off the rest of the mares cheaply because of the brand problems and herded my foals to town.
The young horses were fine-looking animals all, and I sold them for the gold that jingled in my pocket.
Those dull yellow coins bearing the round features of our good king of Spain Philip II, master of the greatest empire in the world, were the price of the ranchero I dreamed of owning. So far I had worked with just a corral and small pasture hidden away in the mountains, but now I would be looking for a real piece of land where horses and a family can be raised.
It would not be a big hacienda, but I am now a master breeder and have a sire capable of turning out champions. When I left Vera Cruz I would be heading for the Nueva Galicia, where the town of Guadalajara has been established. A couple of weeks travel northwest of the capital, it is not only a long ways from Oaxaca, but because much of the region beyond Guadalajara is wide open and unsettled, its inhabitants are ready to welcome newcomers without asking questions.
Who knows—perhaps the itching in my feet for new territory will take me even farther, to that northern region beyond the great deserts where there were few Spanish and where horses were still magical beasts to indios?
Ayyo! A man with a small herd of good horses would be both a king and an esteemed teacher in such a place.
I would spend one more night in Vera Cruz, this one relaxing instead of bargaining, playing some cards, drinking some fine Jerez brandy, and rubbing down some flesh that is softer and smoother than the coats of horses that had occupied my time for the past several years.
I stabled Rojo in the best stall in town and warned the stable boy that I would cut off his ears if he did not feed Rojo the ripe corn, oats, and apples I selected. I left the saddle and other tack inside the stall with Rojo, knowing that it would be there when I came back to get the horse—along with the trampled body of anyone who tried to steal the silver-studded saddle and harness I bought for Rojo as his prize for performing his manly art so well.
For myself I rented a “stall” in an inn on the waterfront, choosing the place because I heard that it caught a little breeze after sundown, stirring the hot, heavy air in town that smelled like the breath of the dead.
After watching a card game and shaking off a couple of harlots who looked as if they had been providing pleasure to sailors since before I was born, I took my bedroll up to drop in my room so I could return and find myself a card game and a woman that appealed to me.
I kept the gold coins in my front pocket, where I could feel the reassuring weight of my “ranchero,” then headed downstairs, where food, drink, cards, dice, and matters of the flesh were arranged.
Ordering Jerez brandy, when the bartender asked me how much, I pointed at a beer mug and said, “That much.”
Ayyo! I only got down half the mug before I gasped, lost my breath, and fought back choking. The brandy hit me with the kick of a mule, burning all the way down my throat, sending a shock down to my toes, and coming back up to fry my brains.
I was used to pulque, the cheap, white-colored indio beer made from the tall, spiked maguey plant. Pulque tasted like sour milk; the Spanish brandy like sweet liquid fire.
I stood shaky for a moment, getting my breathing back, wiping the sweat on my forehead.
The bartender laughed at me. “Not used to the fine brandy gachupins drink, eh mestizo?”
That hit me more than the brandy. Locking my knees, I picked up the mug and swigged down the rest of the brandy. It went down easier because my throat was already fried. I wiped my mouth, smothering a cough as I did.
A sailor to my side leaned over and said, “Amigo, brandy is taken in little doses. Drinking it from a mug will blow your mind and knock you on your ass.”
I tapped the side of my head. “I carry the blood of two great civilizations in me. Brandy would never take my mind.” I slammed the mug down on the counter. “Another.”
THIRTY-FIVE
I DOWNED THE brandy and slammed the half-empty mug back on the bar as a whore snuggled up close to me.
“Señor, let me show you pleasures like you have never experienced before,” she sang in my ear.
The brandy I so proudly gulped down was hitting me. My face was stiff and my tongue knotted, but I had enough sense left to know that the hand being slipped into my front pocket wasn’t searching for my cojones.
I grabbed her wrist and pulled the hand out. “I’m not a fool.”
But of course I was a fool or I wouldn’t be in a position where I could pass out and have my gold stolen. I had just enough sense to know I had acted with more bravado than brains. I had never been drunk before but I had watched men make themselves helpless and open to robbery because they drank too much. On more than one occasion on the streets of Oaxaca I had had my own hands searching for coins in the pockets of a drunk.
I pushed away from her and headed for the stairs. If I was going to be drunk on my ass, I knew I better do it in my own room, lying against the door to keep out the vultures who had guessed what the bulge in my pants represented and would slit my throat to get it.
They probably thought it was just silver. Had they known it was gold, my throat would have already been cut.
My room was three floors up, on the top floor. As I came up the stairs to the third-floor landing a man was trying to push his way into a room while a woman was attempting to shut the door.
“Go away or I’ll scream!” she yelled.
“I just want some loving for my money,” he slurred.
I could see the woman was no whore. It was obvious from her gown, hair, and lovely features that she was a Spanish lady of fine breeding and quality.
The two backed away from the door and into the corridor grappling, the man holding on to the woman as she tried to pull away and get back into the room.
A drunk molesting an innocent woman! Not when Juan the Ranchero was present.
I came up behind the man and stuck my foot in the crook behind his knee, sending him off balance. As he stumbled backward, I grabbed him by the back of his coat and directed him to the stairway and gave him a hand falling backward down the stairs.
He tumbled and rolled over on his side. I hesitated on the landing, teetering a bit myself, wondering if I should step down and kick him in the head to make sure he didn’t pull a knife and come back at me, but there was no fight in him. Instead, he started sliding down steps on his rear end without even looking back.
“Thank you, señor,” the woman said, “I would have come to great harm if not for you.”
“My pleasure.” I attempted a sweeping bow and wave of my arm and fell forward a little. “Sorry, a little brandy.”
“A man deserves a little relaxation,” she said.
Her voice purred as soft as a kitten. I was instantly in love—or at least in lust.
“I worked hard and now
I’m going to buy a ranchero.”
I padded my pocket that had the bulging gold. It was safe boasting to such a lady, eh? This woman of quality would have had the price of a dozen rancheros in her jewelry box.
“You must come in before that terrible man comes back.”
She took me by the arm and pulled me into her room. Being close enough to smell her fragrant scent added to my lightheadedness. No flower I had ever smelled had the intoxicating bouquet that she radiated. She smelled like a goddess, not of cheap wine like the women downstairs.
She poured brandy from a fancy ruby-red bottle into a fine goblet and handed it to me.
“You must join me in a toast of your courage. No knight of the realm acted with more courage and gallantry.”
“I—I—” Telling her I had too much brandy already would make me look like a fool, so I took the goblet and raised the cup in a toast. “But you have none.”
“A lady doesn’t drink. I am the Countess Isabella del Castilla y Aragon, newly arrived from the court at Madrid.”
Nobility! I had never spoken to a noblewoman, except for the time I told a marquesa to hand over her earrings when I was robbing her coach.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t intervened. To tell you the truth, I believe the man was sent here by another man to threaten and rob me.”
“Tell me the scoundrel’s name, and I will cut out his heart.”
“It’s actually a former lover. There, I’ve shocked you, I know, but I feel I can tell you the truth. I am a widow. My dear departed husband owned a hacienda and silver mine, but I’m afraid he was so old that the only thing he could give me was everything that money could buy. But not that tender caress that every woman needs.” She placed her hands demurely just below her throat. “Oh, my, you must think I am a terrible person, but I assure you, I was not this way before I was joined into marriage with an old man.”
“I will cut out his heart, too.” I realized he was already dead, but that was the brandy talking.
Aztec Revenge Page 11