by Diego Vega
Scar, the padre, and Don Alejandro talked quietly on the veranda.
The boys stood with them for a time, but they were tired. They walked around the hacienda toward their sleeping porch.
“Bernardo,” Diego said.
Bernardo stopped and looked at him.
“What is happening to all these reliable men who disappear?” Diego mused aloud.
The two boys pondered this mystery as they drifted off to sleep.
6
“APARTADO”
BERNARDO WOULDN’T RIDE A mule this day. Before dawn he and Diego rode out of the hacienda on experienced cow ponies. Behind them they trailed their remuda, a picked string of extra mounts.
The fortune of the pueblo was on the hoof. Every hidalgo, padre, and neophyte depended on cattle. Hides, tallow, and meat were the only wealth Angeleños had. Everything from the distant world was bought with stacks of cured hides, bags of beef-fat tallow, barrels of salted meat. Blacksmith, potter, baker, carpenter—every life in the pueblo was somehow tied to cattle.
In the next week, the boys and men of Los Angeles would live in the saddle. Three or four times a day, each would return to a moving camp and step down from an exhausted horse. Each would shift a big-horned working saddle to a fresh mount, then return to the herd and dust and hard riding.
By mid-morning the de la Vega vaqueros had made their first sweeps of foothills, steep ravines, and wooded bluffs on the northern edge of the rancho. They combed out cattle and calves—along with white-tailed deer and some ill-tempered wild pigs.
The boys stayed near Scar and the crew of Juan Three-fingers as they rode in and out of dense scrub brush, up and down canyon slopes.
To town riders the vaquero outfit might look merely colorful. But townsmen didn’t ride through brush like this. The vaquero’s short rawhide chaps and leather leggings slid through thorn and branches that would have taken the skin off an unprotected rider. Even so, the caballeros were often hung up in vines. They cut themselves free with the straight-bladed knives tucked in their leggings.
It was noisy work. Whooping and calling, chucking and whistling, they drove the cattle south toward the open country. When they emerged from a canyon with half a dozen or twenty head of cattle, another crew would drive them toward larger herds farther south. The first crew would move to the next section of rancho to coax de la Vega stock into the open.
The boys had worked up a streambed and were trying to move one stubborn beast.
“How can anything be as stupid as a cow?” Diego demanded.
Bernardo shook his head: No, nothing is as stupid. He whistled and slapped with the coil of his reata—his lasso—against his chaps: Get moving!
“Out of there!” Diego shouted, but the frightened creature was backed into a corner of rock and trees with branches above.
Bernardo made a loop and a good toss with his reata. But it caught on the branches. Nothing to do but get down from their ponies and push the stupid cow out, probably getting a foot stomped for their trouble.
Juan Three-fingers rode up and leaned down to look at the situation. “A stubborn one, I see,” he called amiably. He reached behind the cantle of his saddle and uncoiled a black whip. Bernardo and Diego backed their ponies out of the way. Juan tossed the whip out behind him, where it lay like a sleeping blacksnake. Then his wrist twitched forward.
Pop! The tongue of the whip cracked just behind the cow’s flank like a pistol shot, and the cow shot from the corner like a cannonball. Juan smiled after it. “Stubborn? I’m more stubborn.”
He nudged his pony with his knees and rode away, coiling his whip.
“Saints and cats and little fishes,” Diego said to Bernardo. “That’s something we’ve got to learn!”
The cattle were just naturally stubborn. If they were herded in one direction, they wanted to go in the other direction. On foot the situation would have been hopeless. Only the ponies made it possible.
“Cow ponies are just a little smarter than cattle. Only a little,” Scar had told them, indicating a tiny amount with his gloved fingers, “but it’s enough.”
Enough made for some fancy riding. When a cow pony confronted an unwilling cow, the rider’s job was mostly to stay in the saddle. He might give an occasional hint from his knees or the reins as to which direction the cow should travel. The rest was up to the horse. Dancing this way and that, the pony anticipated the cow, breaking into a few dainty steps, whirling to meet a new rush back toward the brush. The rider’s work was to swivel and sway on top, just a passenger, while the horse danced the cow into frustrated obedience.
But too often the slab-sided, square-faced, bloody-minded, sharp-horned creatures broke away for a long run back to the brush. Then a vaquero took over. Diego leaned into his pony’s turn as a big bull made a run. His hard-braided leather reata whistled above him a second or two, then flew ahead of the bull with coils unfolding behind it. The bull ran into the loop, which tightened around its neck. Diego’s hands flashed as he dallied—took turns of the reata around his saddle’s big horn. The cow pony skidded to a stop and waited with its legs braced. Surprise. The slack popped out of the line, and the bull’s momentum jerked him back and up into a backward bull somersault. He landed with a meaty thump and a puff of dust. Diego backed his pony and the bull rose, unsteady at first. It moved in the direction Diego was pulling it, deciding that this was a fine direction in which to travel. As the re-educated bull trotted past, Diego flipped the reata free of his horns and coiled it, ready for another cow and another lesson.
Scar tried to keep one of the old hands working near the boys. Bernardo soon found out why. A younger bull passed them, trying to get back to the brush.
Bernardo took off after him, whirling his reata, coming closer and making a good catch. He dallied, hurrying to get turns of line around the saddle horn, and backed his horse. But this bull was running at a different angle. Instead of jerking backward, the straining line drew him into a circle, back toward Bernardo. Then the bull charged.
“Whoa there!” Diego called, but Juan Three-fingers was already in motion. His reata curled out low, its loop rolling on the ground. The bull ran across the loop. Juan gave a twitch and then took his dallies. He had the bull by the hind legs. When the slack ran out, the bull was caught forward and behind.
Bernardo’s horse had been pivoting to run, and the boy had almost thrown the dallies off his horn. But now he and the pony saw the bull go down. Bernardo threw another quick turn on the horn, and the angry bull lay stretched out on the ground.
“Now what?” Diego called.
“We’ll just hold him a bit. Let him forget what he was angry at. Then he’ll be as sweet as a lamb. Won’t you, toro?” Juan reached down and twitched his loop loose. As the bull rose, Juan freed Bernardo’s loop, then let his pony dance back. “Get on with you, now! Hoo!” he shouted at the bull. Dazed, it ambled toward the other cattle moving south.
Juan Three-fingers walked his horse over to Bernardo. “Exciting?” Bernardo was wide eyed. “Pull your glove up tight there, and be more careful how you take those dallies when you rope,” he said. He held up his three-fingered hand. “You don’t want to get any fingers caught in that reata, boy.” He grinned and rode away.
Diego’s fingers tingled and he pulled his gloves up tight too. Both boys looked at their saddle horns with new respect.
They herded bulls, cows, and this year’s new calves. Diego and Bernardo worked steadily south with Juan Three-fingers’s crew. The rancho’s territory seemed even larger than they thought it could be. By noon they were exhausted, resting in the shade, almost too tired to eat the bread and meat laid out on ground cloths.
At the end of the first day, they had covered only a small part of the rancho. The cattle were tired as well. They seemed content to stand and chew as if they’d been there all along, not dragged and hallooed and forced out of every thorny nook in the foothills.
The light was fading when Diego and Bernardo rode into the field
camp. The cook fire was bright where big iron pots hung from iron rods. They unsaddled their mounts—the fourth of the day—and rubbed them down with dry weeds. They staked them out with the rest of their remuda in good grass, checked their hooves, looked for cuts or bruises, and fed them some barley to go with the sweet grass. Only then could they drag their saddles near the fire.
The iron pots sat on the ground now, and the vaqueros sat around them. There were no plates. Each vaquero produced his own horn or wooden spoon and ate broth from the stew pot. Larger pieces of beef were caught up with corn tortillas, sometimes dipped in a pot of bittersweet mole or fiery salsa.
When they had eaten, Scar called in the men who had been walking their mounts slowly around the herd. He sent Diego and Bernardo to saddle up again. They would be the early-evening nighthawks, night minders of the placid cattle.
There was most of a full moon. The herd, hundreds of cattle now, made a constant low noise of breathing, sighing, jostling, and the occasional clack of horns. Their smell was big and musky but warm. Diego saw bats in their quivering flight against the moon, and once an owl. Coyotes called from the foothills where they’d ridden all day.
“I wonder where the coyotes were when we rode through there?” Diego asked. He often voiced his thoughts aloud, not expecting any response from Bernardo.
“That was something the way Juan Three-fingers shooed that bull away from the cliff with his whip.”
Bernardo remembered the horseman’s skill.
“He uses that thing like a long hand, doesn’t he?”
They both sat their horses, quiet. Without a word, they both started to walk around the herd in opposite directions. They didn’t need talk to decide most things; that’s the way they were together.
Diego walked his horse and sang a little, trying to remember a song about the sly fox going out to catch the farmer’s goose. The fox probably went out on a moonlit night just like this, he decided. He met Bernardo on the far side of the herd, away from the camp, and they passed each other without even nodding, continuing their rounds. But just seeing each other was comforting. It was good to have a brother. Wouldn’t life be lonely without a brother?
There were so many stars!
7
EL CHOLLO
IN THE MORNING DIEGO and Bernardo were combing cattle out of little valleys above the Camino Real, the king’s official road. Bernardo looked up at the sky. The vultures were with them every day, always riding the wind above them, but this circling funnel of vultures signaled that something was dead.
“Looks like we’ve got a dead cow.” Diego sighed. Nasty business. The most valuable part of the animal was the hide, so a vaquero’s job in this case was to skin the dead cow.
They rode on, hoping the beast hadn’t been dead long.
They trotted along the road, sending up dust behind them, and rounded a bend where it followed the shoulder of a rise. They pulled up their horses quickly. It wasn’t a dead cow but a dead man.
“¡Madre de Dios!” Diego said, not wanting it to be true.
Bernardo whistled and whirled his reata, riding toward the vultures. They scattered and flapped clumsily into the air. But they didn’t go away. They circled, waiting.
Bernardo backed his pony away from the body and pointed to a grove of trees. They tied their mounts there and ran to the body. Diego was about to rush up to it, but Bernardo stopped him, holding up a finger: Wait a moment.
He circled the body at a distance, looking closely at the ground. He picked up some broken twigs, a clump of weed, and a few leather strips. He circled inward slowly. Finally he knelt by the body on the ground and motioned for Diego.
“It’s Señor Porcana, the potter,” Diego whispered. The vultures hadn’t done much damage, yet. “He must have died last night.” Diego swallowed hard.
Bernardo tried to lift Porcana’s head, but the body was stiff. He bent close to the ground to look at the blood-clotted hair. He showed Diego the wound, then made a sharp chop with the side of his hand: He was murdered.
Diego looked closely at the wound and nodded. “And look at this.” Porcana’s strong hands were still clenched in anger. The knuckles were raw; skin and hair clung to the nails. “He was a tough little man, and he fought back.”
Bernardo pointed to the wrists, chafed and bruised, then held up the leather strips. He showed Diego the frayed place where the strips had been rubbed through.
“So he was tied up, broke free,” Diego said, “then fought and…”
Bernardo gave a final chop, then held out his hand to the body: And here he lies.
Pointing to the ground around the body, Bernardo held up three fingers and made motions of riding away fast. Then he pointed south, toward the pueblo.
It took time for Diego to recover enough to speak. “Why would anyone kill Señor Porcana? He was irritable, but not a bad man. And he was the best potter we have. We needed him.”
They looked at each other.
“And Paco Pedernales!” Diego said. “Another craftsman missing, like Padre Mendoza’s tanners. Like Captain Carter’s cooper. All skilled men! But why?”
Diego looked again at the bruises on Porcana’s wrists and the marks of his fight. The answer jerked him back like a reata around a bull’s horns.
“Look!” he said to Bernardo. “Señor Porcana is speaking to us, just as clearly as you speak to me without words. He is telling us that the missing men were taken, kidnapped. They had to be: he was tied up. He struggled to get free. When he got free, he fought the men who captured him. That’s what happened to all of them.”
Bernardo squatted on his haunches, clasping his hands together, deep in thought.
“But why? Why capture Porcana, a potter? A carpenter like Pedernales? Tanners, barrel makers…Why?”
Bernardo thought some more, then looked up at the vultures.
“Yes,” Diego said, glancing up, “I’ll ride to the camp and get a packhorse for Señor Porcana. You stay here and keep our flying friends away from him.”
Scar and Don Alejandro rode back with Diego. They trailed a mule with a packsaddle and a length of tent canvas. Porcana had a family in the pueblo and would be buried near the mission.
When they rounded the bend in the road, they saw Bernardo sitting beside his saddle on the ground, playing his flute. His horse was tethered in good grass a hundred paces away.
The older men looked at Porcana’s head wound. It was hard to turn the stiff, awkward body over, but when they did they found a knife wound in his chest. They looked at each other seriously.
“From what we saw on the ground,” Diego said, “we think he was here with three other men. Señor Porcana was bound, broke free, fought with them, and was killed. Then the men rode away quickly toward the pueblo.”
Don Alejandro looked closely at the body and pointed to the neck. A pale shadow in his tanned skin showed where something had hung, probably a religious medal. Then he said, “This man was an artist. More than just a potter. His work was beautiful.”
“That’s just the point, Papá. All the men who have disappeared are skilled workers, craftsmen, artists. Doesn’t the way Señor Porcana died tell us that they’ve been captured and taken away for something? The real mystery is why. Who needs all these skilled workers?”
Don Alejandro looked at his son thoughtfully and was about to speak, but Scar brought the canvas. Respectfully, quietly, they shrouded Porcana’s body in it and bound it with cord.
They sat on their heels beside the body without talking. Then Don Alejandro said, “One craftsman might leave for better pay, a new woman, or just to see what’s on the other side of the mountain. But this many men? No. The pattern is too strong. And if this is another pattern”—he gestured toward the body—“they were captured violently. Were they all killed? Doubtful: they could have killed Porcana easier when they first tied him up. But why are they capturing men?”
Scar finished lashing the cord around Porcana’s canvas shroud.
“H
ere’s one possible explanation,” Don Alejandro said. “To start a new place—a colony or settlement—you must have skills. That’s what the padres did. They brought skills to every settlement along the Camino Real. Every mission was a new beginning. They taught the important skills to all their neophytes.”
Diego thought a moment, then said, “If someone is trying to build a colony, why don’t they recruit craftsmen in Mexico City or even Spain? Why take our craftsmen?”
The don pulled at his earlobe, then said, “Here’s what I think. Somewhere in or near our pueblo, there are ruthless men who want their own colony or settlement. Let’s call it a kingdom or dictatorship, because it’s not a lawful settlement, not a civilized place. That’s why they can’t do it openly. Their only method of getting skilled men is slavery. Most craftsmen are free men. They might buy a few talented slaves from the plantations in the United States or from Jamaica, but that would cost a fortune and take too long. They want to build a new place now, and rule it soon. They’re willing to do anything to make it happen.”
Don Alejandro looked up at the vultures. “Some men are just like the vultures. Maybe there are other explanations, but I can’t think of one now.”
Scar nodded his agreement, and Bernardo nodded his.
“We wouldn’t know this much without him.” The don patted Porcana’s stiff shoulder through the canvas. “We owe much to our brave potter. Or we will, when we solve the mystery.”
Diego was about to speak again, but Don Alejandro held up his hand. He shifted from his heels to kneel in the dirt. The others did the same. They crossed themselves, and Don Alejandro prayed aloud for the soul of Señor Porcana.
When they reached the mission, Padre Mendoza washed the body and wrapped it in white cotton. When Señora Porcana arrived, it was already laid in the chapel on planks, and padres were chanting prayers around it.
Friends were digging a grave in the cemetery. Porcana was respected, an old member of the pueblo, one of the first neophytes. His wife stood weeping outside the door of the chapel when a man walked up to her and passed her something with a murmur. She looked at him, and Diego heard her say, “Gracias, amigo.”