He took out the document, looked at the star and vega one more time, and put it in Alonso’s hand, even though Maria Teresa stretched out her hand, too.
“It’s my brand!” she declared.
“And Alonso is your lord,” he replied. He spoke to his friend, who seemed to wilt from the shame of such a wife. “I recorded the transfer seal, of course. Do you have any cattle so marked yet?”
“Not yet. In the spring.”
There was no welcome, no invitation to sit down, no offer of food, no suggestion that he grain his horse. As Marco nodded to them, both standing like statues unfamiliar with each other and their own sala, he couldn’t help thinking of his own house, and the sweetness of the welcome there for three generations, and with any luck for more generations. His anger turned to sorrow for his friend.
“Good day, then. Perhaps we will see you in Santa Maria for Christ’s Mass.”
No one showed him out. He was halfway across the yard and ready to whistle for his mount when Alonso called to him. He turned around.
“Marco, will you ride with me?”
He nodded. With a glance back at the house, as though he expected his wife to come storming out, Alonso motioned for the stable boy to provide some hay for Marco’s horse while another servant saddled his own. In a short time, they were on the road toward the Double Cross.
Out of sight of the hacienda, Alonso pointed toward a nearby canyon, stark and snowy. Marco turned to ride beside him, waiting for an explanation.
“I don’t want Maria to worry,” he said, when they topped a small rise and were some way from the hacienda. He whispered, as though she could hear him from that distance.
“Why would she worry?” Marco asked, eager to get home, because the cold was settling in and the afternoon shadows were already turning the mountains purple.
“For the past two weeks, I have been steadily losing cattle.”
Dios mio, Toshua has found a way, Marco thought, appalled. “Many?” he asked, hoping he sounded more noncommittal than he felt. Did his voice rise and squeak? Pray God Alonso was too preoccupied to notice.
“A few at first, then more and more. There must be close to fifty gone now.” He looked around, as if the creosote bushes had ears. “I haven’t said anything to Maria.”
And what would she do? Shout at you? Beat you? Marco asked himself. He made some appropriate gesture. “It would be rare for anyone to rustle your cattle now. I have heard no rumors of savages in the vicinity.” Except the Comanche in my keeping, the man I told all about Paloma’s lost brand, he thought remorsefully. “I should be returning home. I can come back tomorrow.” Suddenly he was desperate to get away, desperate to see Paloma alive and whole.
“Come with me now,” Alonso said, gesturing to his own outriders, who were moving slowly behind them and chatting with Marco’s guards. “One of my herders noticed tracks this morning. With your men added to mine, I would not be afraid to follow them.”
“Alonso, there was a time when you and I weren’t afraid to follow any tracks,” he murmured under his breath, as he fell back on the narrow trail that climbed into a canyon. His own sense of caution made him unlimber the bow slung over his shoulder and reach for an arrow.
Single-file, they climbed higher and farther into the slot canyon, one of many such canyons on Rancho Castellano that made Alonso’s land less valuable. As they rode, he noticed more than one or two hoof marks and cow flops. He also noticed horseshoe prints that looked familiar to him. Pray God Alonso didn’t notice.
“My herder turned back at this point,” Alonso said. “Should we go on?”
Marco kneed his horse and took over Alonso’s point. He looked back as they climbed to see Alonso falling farther and farther back. Coward, he thought. These are your cattle.
The hair on the back of his neck rose higher, but he rode steadily into the canyon. He knew it would narrow soon, and then widen into a decent meadow. When his father was failing, he had told Marco to get to know the land around him. “You never know, son,” he had said, and those had turned out to be his last words. Marco took those words as his motto and his caution, if he planned to ever be an old man in the valley.
Inexplicably, his own outriders had fallen back. He rode on alone, into a silent world. Some unknown thing had spooked his men, and it made him pause, too, until he realized what it was. No birds sang. Granted, many of the summer birds that peeped and sang through glorious warm days had fled south, but the winter birds had their own good cheer that usually rang so clear in cold air. Nothing. “You never know, Father,” he muttered to himself, as he completed the gradual twist that would open up the small meadow before him.
He thought he knew what he would find. Even then, the sight startled him into an exclamation that made his horse’s ears prick up.
The small vega, white with winter, bloomed brown and red from Alonso Castellano’s slaughtered cattle.
“Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” he murmured, as the weight of his complicity clamped down like the cold. He had said too much and loosed a dog of war on his neighbor. “All my fault.”
Chapter Thirty
In Which Maria Teresa Knows Fear
Marco rode through the valley of death, counting cattle. Thirty cattle lay dead, their throats slit. Stunned at such waste, Marco sat in silence until his legs began to tingle with cold. “You could just have easily have killed the Castellanos,” he murmured finally, and wheeled his horse around. He turned back for another look, remembering his duties. The cattle did not appear to have been dead more than a day or two, but Alonso had said they were missing over several weeks.
He sat a moment longer, trying to calm himself, doubting that Toshua would actually kill the cattle. He knew how Comanches relished a good trade. He shook his head, wondering, disturbed at such wickedness.
Shock on their faces, his outriders clustered close together at the mouth the little vega, a meadow so pretty in summer, so deadly now.
“Indios?” one of them called, but came no closer.
“Just one Indian,” he said softly, so they could not hear, then raised his voice. “Who else would do this, but Indians?”
He rode toward them through the carnage, keeping his nervous horse controlled as he wondered what he could possibly say to Alonso. Maybe Pepita Camargo was right to circulate a petition. Maybe he was unfit to be juez de campo. In telling the Comanche about the double-crossing Maria Teresa and Paloma’s uncle, he had committed a sin so gross he flinched to think of the confessional.
For my sins, he thought. He forced himself to review his puny arsenal of facts that started to shrink as he catalogued them. For all he knew, Paloma’s father had willed the land and the brand to his wife’s brother, in the event of his death. Paloma had been a child; all she knew was what had happened on that bloody day when the Comanches rode onto her family’s land.
He shook his head to clear it. Paloma’s father would never have deeded property to his brother-in-law, because he had older sons, the ones who had died with their father that day. Still, what did he—Marco Mondagón, brilliant brand inspector—know of the circumstances? Knowing less than nothing, pained that his pride had been punctured by a woman who would have been thoroughly unpleasant to anyone, he had complained to a savage. The Indian, doing what Indians do, had avenged the wrongs committed against Paloma, who had saved his life in a madman’s henhouse. The chain of events was diabolical, and his part shamed him.
In silence, he rode the short distance back to Alonso and grabbed his horse’s bridle, leading his friend forward to see the death in the meadow. Alonso went pale and even swayed in the saddle, his eyes wide, his mouth open. “What will I tell Maria Teresa?” he asked plaintively, as though Marco could supply him with something glib to gloss over all that blood and bone.
“The truth. What else is there?” Marco snapped. “We live in a hard place.” That I just made harder, he thought.
Alonso put his hand on Marco’s arm, even as he turned away. “You don
’t understand. She already is badgering me to sell out and move to Santa Fe.”
Marco stared at his friend. “You don’t just walk away from a land grant.”
Miserable, Alonso wouldn’t look at him. “I know that. She follows me from room to room, demanding this and demanding that …” He paused, embarrassed. “Does your wife do that?”
“Never. Paloma likes it here.” Might as well say it. “Thanks to Maria and her aunt and uncle, Paloma had nothing to hope for in Santa Fe. And let me assure you, Alonso, she did not steal the family treasure. It was a cuartillo or two that she did not return, after buying eggs from a vendor.”
Alonso sighed heavily. “I know. I do not understand why Maria is so bent on ruining her cousin.” He looked away again. When he spoke, his words were tentative. “Marco, I am wondering—not certain, mind you—just wondering if maybe the Morenos had a good reason to look far afield for a husband for Maria Teresa.”
“It seems unlikely,” Marco lied, not willing to hurt his friend even more. He looked at the carcasses one last time, this time as a juez de campo. “Have your men harvest the hides, at least, and there is plenty of meat for your servants. Check the brands and bring me a list. I will enter the details in my log and take the information to Santa Fe next spring.” For all the good that will do, he thought.
As they rode toward Hacienda Castellano, Alonso seemed to wilt inside himself in dread anticipation of his wife’s reaction. Marco allowed himself the little luxury of imagining his return—Paloma’s wide-open arms, her smile and probably even her gentle scolding if she touched his hands and found them too cold. There would be food and talk and probably a hot bath waiting for him. And here was his boyhood friend, who had nothing sweet to look forward to.
Maria surprised him. Stumbling over his words, Alonso managed to gasp out what had happened to their livestock. Maria’s mouth opened in a silent scream, and she sagged against her husband. Embarrassed, Marco looked away when she made sudden water right there in the doorway.
“I must leave this terrible place!” she shrieked. “We will be dead before sunrise, meat for buzzards.”
“No, you won’t,” Marco assured her, speaking loud to be heard over her lament. Damn him, Toshua had fulfilled Marco’s demands to do no physical harm to the Castellanos. What he had done was worse; Toshua had left them vulnerable to every birdcall, every shadow, every creak of the floor, every tiny alteration from the generally boring routine of wintertime in Valle del Sol. Toshua had reduced them to walking, breathing terror—a Comanche specialty.
He doubted Toshua would do anything else on Castellano property; he didn’t need to. From now on, Maria Teresa would never know a single day without fear.
He couldn’t leave the hacienda fast enough, especially when it became evident that Maria’s terror had caused her bowels to evacuate, too. So much for the fine lady in church in Santa Maria, so busy spreading malicious gossip about her cousin, Paloma. He would never say anything about this, of course, not even to Paloma; a gentleman didn’t do that. He expected no such charity from the Castellanos’ servants. Disgruntled already, they would tell this tale until it went beyond Valle and popped up next year at the great fair in Taos. Maria Teresa Moreno de Castellano was ruined; she just didn’t know it yet.
Upon reflection—something he had time for on his silent ride home—Marco found himself grudgingly admiring Toshua. At the cost of a rancher’s thirty cattle, the Comanche had changed matters for Paloma. Cutting through obedience to a distant law that meant nothing to a Comanche, Toshua had protected them both.
Still, there was no reason to celebrate, because Marco was a civilized man and intended to remain that way, even if Spain withdrew entirely from New Mexico’s vast but unprofitable wilderness. He had to talk to Toshua. Tell him what, Marco had no idea, but he couldn’t just go around terrorizing other citizens of the valley, even if they richly deserved it. And I will have to watch my tongue, Marco told himself.
And then his mind and heart focused entirely on Paloma. As the sky darkened, he began his own sunset journey gripped by fear sown by the deaths of other loved ones. He knew it was illogical to think for even one moment that Paloma would not be there, but he could not help himself. His horse’s walk turned into a trot, then a canter and finally a gallop as his outriders raced to keep up with him and his own fright, one that Toshua could never help because Marco would never admit it.
If she is dead, I will die, too, he thought as the familiar gates of the Double Cross slowly opened to receive him. He raced his lathered horse inside, followed by his outriders. He threw himself from his mount and ran toward the hacienda, even as Paloma opened the door. She watched him a moment in surprise, then ran toward him as though she understood his fear.
She grabbed him and threw herself into his open arms, trying to hold as much of him as she could.
“You’re here!” he gasped.
He nearly bowled her over in his relief, which made her laugh. “Marco, you’re a great big silly,” she whispered in his ear as he held her up. “Where else would I be?”
Only the greatest force of will kept him from sobbing out loud in relief. How was it she knew his need? Had Felicia come from the spirit world somehow to visit this second wife and tick off on her fingers all the ways to keep Marco Mondragón contented? He was stupid to think it, but he knew God’s tender mercies had not abandoned him after all.
“Where is Toshua?” he asked.
“In the kitchen. We were eating,” Paloma told him.
He kissed her head and said he would join them as soon as he finished currying his horse. He spent a long time brushing his lathered horse, tossing more flakes of hay his way and dumping in extra grain, performing his own penance for Buciro, a four-footed old friend who only did what he was asked.
Toshua had finished eating. He sat there at the table, his arms folded, frowning down at his empty bowl. Marco thought about taking this discussion into the sala, but dismissed the notion, not willing to turn into Maria Teresa and deliver a scold in a cold room. He also knew he did not want to chastise the Comanche; he liked his own cattle alive and grazing.
He shook his head when Paloma offered dinner. She sat down close to him again, obviously puzzled.
“I know my cousin did not offer you any food, Marco, and you have been gone all day,” his wife hinted. “Some hot chocolate, at least?”
He nodded, not wanting it, but not eager to disappoint the mistress of the Double Cross. It did taste better than he thought it should, considering his own stupidity, and his willingness to suffer some sort of penance for the Castellanos’ pain, unleashed on them by his impulsive words to a Comanche.
He told them both what had happened to the cattle at Alonso’s ranch, his eyes on Toshua. Blast and damn the Indian for showing not a flicker of remorse or surprise. When Marco told them of Maria Teresa’s abject terror, he noticed something in Toshua’s expression—the tiny uplift of one corner of his mouth. It was so slight a glimpse of satisfaction it might have been Marco’s imagination, especially since Paloma’s exclamation of distress was immediate.
“Pobrecita!” she said, and there were tears in her eyes.
Marco glanced at Toshua in time to see a puzzled expression wipe away his smirk.
“But she has done you wrong,” Toshua said, clearly curious. “Why should you feel sorry for her?”
Marco glanced at his wife’s face then, wondering the same thing, and, churl that he was, glad Toshua had beaten him to the question.
“You’re right, Toshua. She has treated me poorly.” Paloma picked up Marco’s barely touched hot chocolate and sipped it, obviously trying to understand her involuntary reaction. “Still, it doesn’t follow that I hate her.”
Toshua flinched, as though she had pushed him. “I will never understand women,” he said, which made Marco laugh.
“You see why we Spaniards only want one woman at a time?” Marco asked him.
Paloma glared at them both, and then her expres
sion softened. “Maria Teresa has never known want, or trouble, or … or any unpleasantness. Now she is unhappy with the husband her father chose and a long way from home, alone and frightened. That is a lot of change for someone used to an easy life.”
“I suppose it is,” Marco agreed, dragging the words out of his mouth with pincers. He had no intention of forgiving Maria Teresa for her inexcusable, malicious rudeness to his wife. This was a grudge he intended to nourish.
Paloma twined her fingers through his, apparently going to love him anyway, even if he didn’t understand women. “It’s this way, Marco,” she said, glancing at Toshua and then at him, where her gaze lingered. “To live here successfully in Valle del Sol, perhaps it is better to be acquainted with disaster. Maybe it helps to be an adventurer, too, which Maria is not.”
He was silent, struck by her words. He thought of his own worries about Spain’s almost-certain withdrawal from an isolated frontier no king or grandee in Madrid or Cádiz could even begin to understand. He was a first cousin to disaster, with no plans to ever leave this land he loved so well.
“Marco, all we can do is live as best we know how,” she told him, increasing the pressure of her fingers in his. “The Lord God has showered many tender mercies on Maria Teresa. Now he is showering some on me.” She gave the Comanche a long look, until he shifted restlessly on the bench. “Leave it alone, Toshua. I can forgive Maria Teresa.”
She knows he killed those cattle, Marco thought, uneasy. Knowing this, it only followed that she knew her husband had been the blabbermouth.
“I do not understand ‘forgive.’ ”
Marco glanced at Toshua. He could not explain forgiveness to the Comanche, when he himself did not feel it.
Both of them were looking at Paloma now, and she blushed under their combined scrutiny. “Oh, you two!” she exclaimed softly, affectionately even, then turned serious. “Until you told me this sad story of Maria Teresa, I wasn’t so certain I could forgive her, either. Maybe I cannot. Time will tell.”
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