by Diego Vega
The boys could see that Stackpole didn’t believe him. He put his arm around Trinidad as she ran up, something they had never seen him do. Of course, he was a Boston man, and the emotions of that distant, rocky coast were cool.
“Now,” the don said, “there are the usual details.”
21
THE CONFESSION
THE BOYS WALKED AWAY with him, glad to give Stackpole some time with Trinidad. Scar fell in with them.
Don Alejandro asked, “Prisoners?”
“Only a few, Patrón. Two of them wounded in the first firing, three who surrendered.”
“Let’s have a word or two with the prisoners,” he said.
All five prisoners were propped against the log that had sheltered Bernardo and Don Alejandro. The uninjured had their hands and feet bound. One wounded man was unconscious, one was gasping and crying. The don looked at their wounds, then at Scar, who shook his head: they wouldn’t survive.
“Take these three to a tent. No one is to speak with them,” he ordered. Juan Three-fingers and two of his crew hefted the bound slavers over their shoulders. Diego watched them walk across to the flap of a tent and toss the slavers in, just like sacks of grain. They strode away looking as if they’d bitten into a bad apple. They had no stomach for touching men like that.
Don Alejandro squatted down beside one of the crying prisoners. “Water!” he called. He helped the man to drink. “You are dying, hermano. You have led a wicked life. What do you wish to tell me?”
The man gulped and whined, “I did nothing. I am a sailor. This is my only crime. I followed orders.”
The don shook his head. “No, no, that will not do. You have been a thief of lives. You’ve taken men from their families. You’ve pushed them into stinking holds in chains. How many died, hermano? How many did you throw overboard?”
The man’s eyes were frightened.
“Tell me your sins, and I will have the padre pray for you. Perhaps you may be forgiven. Perhaps if you tell me who stole the lives of the padre’s men, he will grant you forgiveness.”
“Sí, Patrón.” The man was all cooperation now.
“Tell me your sins, and I will tell the padre.” He bent so his ear was at the man’s lips. The lips moved rapidly, and tears streamed down the man’s face, washing a path of clean skin through the filth. The don nodded and rose again. “I will speak to the padre, hermano, you have my word. And now tell me who told you to steal these men.”
“Our captain. Captain Pew told us where to land, to pick up blackbirds, and bring them here in boats.”
“But who captured them by land?”
“Hard men. Vaqueros from the south.”
“And who gave orders to these hard men, hermano?”
“I don’t know, Patrón. I would tell you. I swear to you on my death, I don’t know.”
Don Alejandro nodded. He turned to one of his vaqueros. “Make this man comfortable. Give him water; do your best.” He looked down at the man again. “Perhaps a little brandy to ease the pain?”
The dying man nodded gratefully.
“See to it,” the don said simply, then rose. “You have my word, hermano,” he said, and walked toward the tent.
Diego caught up with him. “You called that slaver ‘brother,’ Papá.”
The don nodded. “All dying men are brothers, Diego. It is the journey we all make.”
“What will you do with these prisoners?” Diego asked, looking toward the tent.
The don nodded his head from side to side: We shall see.
Diego suddenly had a notion of what the don would do. As they stepped past one of the slaver’s bodies, Diego drew the knife from his boot and wiped blood on it from the man’s wounds. He handed it to Don Alejandro.
The don took it. He kept walking, looked at the knife carefully, then said, “Sometimes, Diego, I worry that you can be too cool, too cleverly calculating. You have the ability to be ruthless. Yes, this is what I’m doing. A deception. But I want you to consider something. Your life can be cleaner, more merciful, more just than my life as a soldier. Will you think about that for me?”
“Sí, Papá.”
“Thank you, son. You and Bernardo stay here.” He entered the tent.
The boys didn’t stay, but hurried around behind the tent to listen. The don’s voice was different now. It had a new edge. “Here, I have given your shipmates help to the other world.” They could imagine him holding the bloody knife before the captives. “They were dying. Who knows how long they would have lasted? But you…with you I can be an artist. I can keep you healthy men alive for a very long time. Some of my vaqueros have great talent in keeping a man alive and screaming for days. It will take a while, and they will enjoy it. I like to give them their little pleasures.”
“No, Patrón!”
“Oh, yes. You are now only a source of amusement for my men.”
“No, we are men too!”
“Hardly. You’re slavers. Not men.”
“Patrón!”
“You may be of some small use to me. I might make things simpler for you.”
“Whatever! Tell us! Don’t let them at us!”
“Yes, you could be some source of information. For instance, the men who stole Angeleños ashore. Who were they?”
“Wicked dogs from the south, Patrón! We are simple sailors!”
The don laughed in a way the boys had never heard. It gave them chills. “I believe you will not help me after all.” The boys heard his boots creak as he rose to go.
“No, Patrón! We will tell you anything! They were vaqueros from south of Panama. Their leader’s name was Diablura. They brought the men to us on the beach.”
“Did you ever see them in daylight?”
The other prisoner’s voice answered, “Sí, Patrón. Once. We met them on the road between the pueblo and the docks.”
“Think carefully now. Your lives and the way they end may depend on it. The brand on their horses’ rumps, what was it?”
A silence, then spluttering as the prisoners tried to remember anything about the brand. “I don’t know! I don’t know brands!” one whined. “I can’t remember anything for sure. All I know is that it was ornate, complicated, all swirls and lines!”
“Diego!” the don called, but the men thought he was summoning his savage vaquero torturers. They cried and wailed. Diego pushed his head through the tent flap.
“Sí, Patrón?” He would not call him “Papá” near these men.
“Across the clearing Scar has found a tent full of hides and tallow. Go cut me off a brand. You know the one.”
Diego ran across the little valley, motioning for Bernardo. “Give me your knife!” he hissed. “Mine is doing its job in the tent!”
In the warehouse tents, Diego cut the lashings on a block of hides and found the brand on the top hide. He cut it free and ran back to the tent. Don Alejandro took the piece of hide and shook it under the prisoners’ noses without a word.
“Sí, sí! That is the brand on the horses! Don’t let them kill us, Patrón!”
Don Alejandro rose and walked out of the tent as the prisoners wailed, trying to call him back, calling on the names of God and saints. He nodded toward the tent and said to Juan, “Give them some water. They don’t deserve it, but give them some anyway.”
Bernardo took the hide from the don’s hand and turned it over. Some of the brand was burned deeper than other parts. Bernardo traced the de la Vega V in the shallow burns. The don nodded. Scar spat into the sand.
Regina and Trinidad, with the vaqueros and the old soldiers, had crossed the ridge to boats drawn up on the other side of the island. The skilled men of the pueblo were wading out to the fishermen’s boats. There would surely be a fiesta in the pueblo tonight.
Only Don Alejandro, Scar, Stackpole, Juan Three-fingers, Diego, and Bernardo were left on the beach. Scar nodded to the pile of slaver bodies on the sand.
“They came from the sea, let the sea take them back,” Don Aleja
ndro said. “Have the prisoners push them out into the current.”
“What then for the prisoners, Patrón?” Scar asked. From his look, he had ideas of his own.
The don looked at Diego. “Mercy,” he said. “I want you to think about mercy, Diego. Mere justice is hollow without it.”
“Should we take our prisoners to the comandante in the pueblo?” Diego asked.
“We could, but would it be merciful? These men could be an embarrassment for Don Moncada. The comandante is close to the don. It might be too convenient if the prisoners met a quick and quiet accident in their cell one night. I plan to leave these men here. It’s a harsh island. Perhaps they will not last out the season. They may be taken up by another ship. I will leave their fate in their own hands. Perhaps—though it is a dim possibility—they will even learn something.”
“Patrón?” Scar asked again.
“Take anything you can find in the camp. We’ll dump it at sea. Give each man a flask of water and a knife. Chance enough. They’ll probably kill one another, but it’s a chance.”
“Moncada’s hides and tallow?”
“Burn them. Moncada will never make a penny on his stolen goods, and I don’t want any part of them. Burn the whole camp.”
After all the excitement and noise, after the stink of gunpowder and blood, Diego didn’t feel like himself. The boy who read and dreamed and played games in the comfortable hacienda was far away. He hoped he could return to being that boy. It helped, he found, to think of something purely beautiful—like Esmeralda Avila. He clung to her image now. He wondered if that was why love was important: it gave you hope that life could be fresh again.
The sun climbed, the fishing boats set sail one by one, and the line of boats sailed down the channel past the bodies of blackbirders just beginning to attract the attention of small fish.
Diego and Bernardo were in the fishing boat piloted by Stackpole, with Scar and the don.
Bernardo looked back toward the billowing black smoke from the burning hides and tallow. He nudged Diego. On the beach the three unwounded slavers were dancing up and down in a fury, making rude gestures, calling out challenges and waving the knives they’d been given.
“They seem to have a new supply of courage,” Diego said. “Capitán Stackpole, can you do something for me?”
“Sure,” Stackpole said.
“Turn the boat around for a moment and head back to the beach. Just for a moment.”
Stackpole grinned and put the tiller hard over, taking in the sheet. The boat spun and headed back for the beach.
The slavers stopped leaping and stood still for a heartbeat. The boat with the guerrilla army was coming back to get them! They fled from the beach, kicking up sand with every leap.
“Thank you,” Diego said.
“No, thank you,” Stackpole replied, spinning the boat again to follow the others. “I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”
When they reached the channel between the island and the mainland, they saw Trinidad’s boat in the distance. Regina was with her. Fishing boats carried the old soldiers. All the boats were on converging courses, headed for the point above San Pedro.
Looking ahead, Stackpole grew worried. “Take the tiller,” he said to Diego. “Just hold it steady.” He pulled a telescope from a canvas bag under the seat and stood up, steadying himself at the mast. “Bad luck!” he said.
“What?” Don Alejandro asked.
“The slave ship. It’s run down to San Pedro ahead of us.”
“What are they doing?” Diego asked.
“If I was them,” Stackpole replied, “I’d be picking up the rest of my crew and any trace that they’d been there. They have hours before we can reach them.”
“That means—” Diego began.
“That means the waters will be muddied,” Don Alejandro said.
22
THE CONFRONTATION
AS THEY ROUNDED THE point above San Pedro, they saw the slave ship’s boats rowing out to rejoin the dark ship. The boats were filled with men.
“Telescope?” Scar asked.
Stackpole handed it over, and Scar rose beside the mast. He took his time and focused, watched, then said, “Southern vaqueros, gauchos from the grasslands, by their hats and gear. We won’t see them in the pueblo again.”
“Gracias a Dios,” Diego said. “God be thanked.”
“Once they’re gone, we can’t prove who gave them their orders,” Don Alejandro said.
“But Papá, we have the brands; we have the confessions of the slavers on the island!”
Don Alejandro watched the boats as they neared the slave ship. “We can’t connect the slavers or these men directly to Moncada. Now Moncada will find it easy to say that the brands were changed by the men who are leaving. That the hides on the island were stolen. It will be easy to place the blame on those who are gone.”
“But how can Don Moncada deny that they were riding Moncada horses?”
“He will say they were stolen horses.” Don Alejandro sighed.
“But you can’t believe that he is innocent!”
“Don Moncada is our villain, boys, but he has covered his tracks shrewdly. We will confront him with what we have, but remember what I told you about justice: a moving star, boys. Elusive, sometimes unreachable.”
This was a more serious kind of riding.
They had saddled the horses left in San Pedro and were covering the road to the pueblo. They would send back horses for the freed prisoners, carts for the weak. But the real purpose of this ride was more sinister.
The don rode ahead of the column, Scar just behind him. His old soldiers rode in twos behind, then the vaqueros. The boys trailed them. This was a troop of soldiers, riding grimly on a mission, unspeaking and angry.
They thundered into the pueblo, slowing their horses to a walk. As Don Alejandro swung down from his mount, Padre Mendoza walked across the plaza, his old, tanned face worried. Before they left for the island, the don had told him there was to be a battle. He was searching Don Alejandro’s face for some hint of the outcome.
Diego watched his father lean against his mount. His eyes were closed. He looked exhausted. In that moment the boy realized how much energy the don had given to protect the pueblo. He had been at it for years. Making Pueblo de los Angeles a fit place to live had taken so long, with so many battles. When would it end? Who would take over the task when the don grew older?
“Alejandro?” the padre asked.
The don nodded and opened his eyes. “We have them all. They are all safe. They wait for some horses and carts in San Pedro. We should tell their families.”
The padre shared the don’s weariness. So much struggle. But the lost had been found. His lined face split into a smile of gladness. “Yes, their families. And I will prepare a mass of thanksgiving for their return.”
“And a fiesta, Padre. My men deserve a bit of fun for the night’s work. But first I must deal with Miguel Moncada.”
“You’re certain he’s behind all this?”
“Sí. No other.”
“You have proof?”
“Every string in this web loops toward Moncada.”
“Proof?”
The don shook his head. “No. We know he changed the brands of mission cattle, de la Vega cattle, probably the cattle of other ranchos. We found bales of hides and a hundred bags of tallow on the island. But no, we have not seen the don with his hand on a branding iron. All we have for his reasons are a few unguarded words by Rafael Moncada. It’s possible that Señor Moncada’s ambition is so overblown that he wants his own colony, somewhere across the sea. This is why our men were stolen. But no one has seen him take a man prisoner. No one but the foreign cowboys can connect him to the kidnappings. Now they are gone. We saw them board the slave ship as we sailed down the channel.”
Bernardo touched Don Alejandro on the shoulder. He beckoned to the men to follow him.
The events of the night, the evil of the slavers, and th
e violence of the assault had sickened Bernardo. He had wanted nothing more than to be alone for a time. He had walked off the plaza and past the lines of pueblo houses, out toward the plain. He had found a strange thing there.
He stood with Diego and the men before a prickly pear cactus behind Porcana’s pottery. Mounted on a prickly pear’s oval branches were three hats, each stuck to the cactus with a knife.
“Gaucho hats,” Scar said.
“What does this mean?” the padre asked.
Diego stepped up and fingered one of the hat brims. “These are the hats of the men who killed Señor Porcana. They are dead. You will never find them.”
“Who has done this thing?”
“El Chollo,” Diego replied.
They gazed at the hats. “Leave them there until they rot,” Don Alejandro said. “Now for Moncada.” He turned and strode toward the plaza.
The padre shook his head and called after him, “Alejandro, I fear that he has outmaneuvered you this time.”
Don Alejandro turned. Diego and Bernardo couldn’t believe what the padre was saying. Could Moncada escape justice? Was the star of justice this elusive?
“Yes,” the padre went on. “He arrived at the pueblo this afternoon. He says he has discovered that foreign villains have been changing brands, capturing men, and deceiving all of us.”
Don Alejandro kicked a stone that rattled against a wall. It was a rare show of temper.
“What is his proof?” the don said after a time.
“A dead vaquero over a saddle. He says the man confessed everything before he died. He accused a cowboy named Diablura and a slaver captain named Pew. Moncada insists that these are the guilty men.”
“Do you believe him?” Don Alejandro asked.
“I examined the dead vaquero. I can’t prove it, but I believe he was strangled before he was shot. He was the scapegoat. They needed someone.”