Paloma and the Horse Traders

by Carla Kelly

  “It’s not his first wound,” Marco said. “Someone shot one arrow. Only one. Why was he the target?”

  Chapter Eleven

  In which Paloma is certainly his better half—no surprise to Marco

  Sancha and Perla wasted no time in building a fire, and soon the clean scent of piñon filled the hacienda again, and stew bubbled in the hanging pot. The babies were asleep, and Paloma was already deep in conversation with Graciela, who had done all she could for Diego. The slave stood trembling in the hall, putting her hands over her ears whenever Diego cried out.

  Marco watched the process from the doorway, wincing when Diego moaned. Paloma came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. She reached lower and patted him. He chuckled and tickled her, his eyes on the men in the room who were concentrating on the patient and not the randy owners of the Double Cross, gracias a dios.

  “I can smell the poor fellow from here,” she whispered, her hands properly clasped in front of her again. “And look how long and greasy his hair is! I cannot see his face, but isn’t he bearded?”

  “Extravagantly so,” he whispered back. “I doubt he has seen a comb or a pair of scissors in years. But he does have blue eyes. Almost as blue as yours.”

  “Poor fellow. Look there on his back. He has so many scars. Someone has used him cruelly.” She sighed, perhaps thinking of her own scars, when her aunt took a hairbrush to her. She had told him those stories early in their marriage, but even now they made his heart sad.

  When the servant finished stitching, he carefully wiped around the wound but did not bandage it. “Let the air get to it, señor,” he said, as he left the room with a basin of bloody rags.

  Marco tiptoed to the bed and leaned over. “Would you like something to eat?”

  No answer.

  “I think he is worn out from pain,” Paloma said, coming into the room. “I’ll check on him later.”

  She kissed his cheek and went into the kitchen. Marco watched his servants tend the two new horses and spent time on the parapet with his guards, looking for Comanches. Naturally, they saw none.

  “Will tonight be another Comanche Moon?” he asked the guard standing nearest to him. He had heard of other Indians in American lands farther east who refused to attack at night. Comanches were not among that number. He remembered long nights from his childhood spent under the church floor, his mother praying, and his father somewhere else, probably where Marco stood now.

  His eyes started to burn in their sockets, but he remained on the wall, wondering how his neighbors were faring. The last two years of relative peace from Comanches—a pledge made to him by Kwihnai in the sacred cañón—had made them more relaxed in Valle del Sol, even though he had repeatedly warned the other rancheros to keep up their guard.

  He looked in the direction of the Castellano land grant, still unoccupied since the smallpox deaths of Alonso Castellano and Maria Teresa Moreno, Paloma’s cousin. In Taos, he had asked Governor de Anza about possible settlers, and the governor just shook his head. “It appears no one is brave enough to settle on the edge of Comanchería,” he had told Marco.

  I understand that, Marco thought, turning his attention to the thick walls of his hacienda and the guards, alert and watching. He wondered if he would leave, if he could, and arrived at no satisfactory answer. Perhaps his roots were too deep to even consider the matter.

  He heard a creak on the ladder and turned around to see Paloma. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he asked, noting how tired she looked. How exhausting it must be to carry a baby, even one not yet much larger than a peanut.

  “I’ll go to bed when you go to bed,” she told him.

  “Even if I insist that you get some rest?”

  “Probably even then,” she replied, with a remarkable degree of serenity.

  He knew there was no arguing with her, not with that tone of voice, so he put his arm around her. “How is our patient?”

  He felt her sigh. “He just stares at the wall. I know he is awake and in pain, but he seems shy to be in our home. He even said, ‘I should be in the barn,’ and I told him that was nonsense. He won’t turn around to look at me.”

  Marco’s conscience did more than prick him; it walloped the back of his head. “That’s my fault. On the journey from Taos, I said too many unkind things about how he stinks.”

  “Oh, Marco,” she said softly, which was a worse chastisement than if she had yelled at him, which she never did. “Most of us are only doing the best we can. When he feels better, Graciela and I will make sure he can wash. Maybe he will allow us to cut his hair and beard.”

  She leaned against his chest and both of his arms went around her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. “He was kind to let me take the horses with only the promise of payment at the end. And … and when he knew I had given away everything to pay that damned villain for Graciela, he even paid my bill at the posada. Shame on me.”

  “Father Francisco would order you to say a bunch of Hail Marys and make a generous act of contrition,” she told him, holding him off for a moment.

  “My generous act to Diego Diaz will be new clothes and new blankets,” Marco said. “I promise.” He pulled her close, too miserable to be at arm’s length when he wanted comfort.

  She nodded, and let him hold her. “You know something else?” she said finally, her voice quiet against his shirt. “The way he lies there reminds me of an old dog that Claudio and Rafael adopted, or maybe it was the other way around. I don’t even know if he had a name.” She chuckled. “He certainly never came when anyone called!”

  He listened to her soft words, happy that she was remembering life before him, that time on her father’s hacienda before everything went so terribly wrong. “And?” he prompted. This was not a story he had heard before.

  “He was a medium-sized dog, much smaller than your mastiffs that patrol these parapets, but larger than my little yellow dog.”

  “That useless bit of fluff that now follows Emilio everywhere?”

  “The one you paid my uncle an entire peso for? That one?” She laughed that low, intimate laugh that always made Marco’s heart beat faster. “We don’t need a dog to keep each other warm, do we? Well, the dog of Claudio’s got into fights and scuffles, and romantic tangles, I am sure. He would go off to a dark corner and lick his wounds. Not even Claudio could coax him out. When he felt better, he would show up at the kitchen door for scraps.”

  “Did he perish from overeating?” Marco teased.

  She tightened her arms around him. “He died that day in the field with Papa, Claudio, and Rafael. I … I walked just to the edge of the field, and there he was, an arrow through his heart.” She pressed her head against Marco’s chest, as though trying to burrow inside him. “They even scalped him!”

  Marco kissed the top of her head. “That means the nameless dog must have put up a fight, defending his people, mi Paloma. He served the Vegas well. That’s what you need to remember.”

  “I suppose he did,” she said after a while. “Maybe it sounds silly to you, but I think Diego is licking his wounds. When he feels better, he will let us know. I don’t think he is used to sympathy. I doubt there is anyone who cares about him.” She kissed his chest, then backed away, the better to see him. “Are the Comanches out there now?”

  “Hard to tell. I hear no strange bird calls. The horses aren’t restless. There’s a certain tension if The People are nearby. I don’t feel it.”

  “Then don’t stay up here too long,” she told him. “The nights are cooler now, and I’ve been more than a week without someone to put my cold feet on.”

  “And maybe a little more?” he teased.

  “Maybe a lot more.”

  Marco stayed on the parapet another hour, walking around, seeing his hacienda fortress from all angles. There were no weak spots and he knew his men. He said goodnight and walked toward his home, feeling all of his thirty-four years now.

  Toshua stood outside Marco’s old office by the
horse barn. He gestured Marco inside.

  Eckapeta sat cross-legged on the buffalo robe, a comb in hand. “Thank you for all you have done for my dear ones,” Marco told her.

  “They are my dear ones, too,” she said, her voice as soft as his.

  “Sit a moment, little brother,” Toshua said.

  Marco sat with them, hoping he could get up smoothly, especially when his bones ached.

  “I have one thing to say,” Toshua began. He turned around and sat in front of Eckapeta, who dragged the comb through his tangle of hair.

  “Say on, friend.”

  “A warrior shot one arrow only. One!”

  “No others? Are you sure?”

  Toshua gave him his sternest look.

  “One only,” Marco said hastily, wondering when he would be smart enough not to doubt the man.

  “They made a great show of following us, and yelling, but once Diego was shot, that seemed to be their only concern,” Toshua said. He closed his eyes as Eckapeta tugged on his hair. “Woman! I have only one head.”

  She snapped out something that made Marco blush, because he knew more Comanche than he let on.

  Marco thought through the silence, broken only when a piñon pine knot popped and scattered a shower of sparks.

  “Diego was the target?”

  “Who else? He was riding back a bit with Graciela. You and I were in no danger.”

  “I wonder what Great Owl wants with him? Horses? Something else?” Marco asked.

  “Maybe Diego will tell us when he feels like it.” Toshua shrugged. “Or he won’t. Go to bed, Marco. Paloma won’t stay awake forever.”

  She was wide awake and minus her nightgown when he finally came to bed, and he had never been a man blind to suggestion. He took his time with her, his fingers gentle on her breasts, because he knew they were sore.

  She was less gentle with him, which he found nearly as gratifying as the act itself. Her urgency signaled to him that he was forgiven of all crimes and misdemeanors, or at least, that was how he chose to consider the matter. She was soft, obliging, tenacious, and fierce by turns, and he happily let her swallow him whole.

  Paloma vanquished all his tension from the past week, and probably well into the next month. He relaxed and lay there at peace with his wife.

  “I was frightened in that space below the chapel,” she said finally. “I sang and sang to our children, and I hope they did not feel my fear.”

  He tightened his arm around her. “I am grateful that you did not hesitate to go to ground. Did … did Eckapeta suggest it?”

  “I needed no urging from anyone,” she said. “Funny I should think of this, but when I was a child, I used to stand outside with my father when lightning and thunder played. I hated to go belowground, and he knew it.” She sighed. “He called me Paloma la Brava.”

  “You are.”

  “I must be, when I have babies to protect,” she said, “the two we have and the third one we cannot see yet.” She turned sideways and looked deep into his eyes. “Poor Diego Diaz! I looked in on him before I went to bed. There he was, gathered into a ball. I wonder, did he ever have anyone to look after him?”

  “He told me something about a stepfather who was killed by Great Owl and his warriors not far from here. He didn’t sound remorseful,” Marco told her.

  “He said the same to Eckapeta and me, back when I gave him the message to find you.”

  Marco couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Then we are both in his debt. He helped you and he helped me.” And then he couldn’t keep his eyes shut. “Chaa! What did I do but insult him because of his uncleanliness?”

  Paloma put her hand over his eyes and closed them. “You can apologize again to him. I think that under all that grime and hair, there might be a very good man. Heavens and all the saints know he has been good to us, for no particular reason.”

  Marco left it there, and slept, Paloma warm in his arms. He woke up before morning, ready for Paloma again. He nearly stroked her, but her face in the early morning light showed him a woman still tired, with dark smudges under her eyes. He thought of her nights spent in the shelter under the chapel floor, alert and watching for trouble. One child to protect would have been enough anxiety, but there were three.

  And each baby is equally important to you, eh, Paloma? Marco thought. He doubted that his wife gave much thought to the fact that Soledad was her cousin. And I couldn’t be nice to a broken-down trader, he thought, still irritated with himself.

  He pulled on his shirt with the long tails nearly to his knees and tiptoed down the hall. A glance in the children’s room showed him two little blanketed mounds, because the air already had that chill of early fall still masquerading as summer.

  He crossed the hall and peeked in, pleased to see Graciela sitting by the trader’s bed, a bowl of steaming broth in hand. Diego lay sideways, babying his wounded shoulder, eyes closed, eating. Graciela looked at Marco standing in the doorway and nodded. He smiled and closed the door, glad for people in the world kinder than he was.

  Returning to his room for trousers and moccasins, he admired the smooth line of Paloma’s hip to her waist to her bare shoulders. He came closer and tugged the blanket over them, but not before observing the freckles on her shoulders. Once he had vowed to kiss every little dot. He had tried several times, but never got far before distracted by other enticements. She was lovely and healthy and his wife. A man could have no greater treasure.

  After he dressed, he went into the hall to just stand there, staring at the door where the trader lay. He had eaten a little, and perhaps slept now, certainly marshaling his forces in the way that wounded men did. He knew what that felt like. When he had hurt himself, Felicia had always been so tender and helpful. When he returned from the slaughter of Cuerno Verde and the other Kwahadi warriors four years ago, there had been no one to tend to his lance wound. His servants had cared for him, but it was never the same. Silently he thanked Graciela and left the house by the kitchen door.

  His guards, Toshua among them, stood staring into the distance on that part of the parapet that faced north and east. Curious rather than worried, he joined them. What he saw made his heart sink.

  Smoke poured from the direction of the Calderón hacienda. The holdings were too far away to see flames, but smoky blackness filled one quadrant of an otherwise beautiful morning. Trouble had come to Valle del Sol again.

  “We’re going to have to settle this with Great Owl, aren’t we?” he asked Toshua. “If we don’t, all the goodwill we have earned from Kwihnai will be worth nothing.”

  “You have no army, only useless soldiers in Santa Maria, and Kwihnai and his warriors are far to the east,” Toshua reminded him. “You know you will not take one man from the guard here, not as long as Paloma and your children inhabit the Double Cross.”

  “True. Sometimes a very small army is better than a large one.”

  Toshua nodded. “Only say the word.”

  Chapter Twelve

  In which the trader makes a discovery

  “Just a crisp tortilla with a little salt on it for me,” Paloma said to Perla in the kitchen.

  “That is not enough to feed a baby,” Perla scolded.

  “It will do this morning,” Paloma replied, touched by the way the servants bullied her when they knew she was with child. The same thing had happened when she and Marco returned from their adventure in the sacred canyon to the east, and she was pregnant with Claudio. Perla and Sancha had bullied her to eat more, scolded her to sleep more, and chided her to put her feet up and rest, until Paloma could only surrender to their ministrations. It was beginning again, and their rough love brought tears to her eyes. Tears, too? So soon? Ay de mi, she thought with some dismay, my body is not mine alone anymore. Funny how that notion should make her grin through her morning sickness.

  And here was Graciela in the kitchen doorway, shy to enter, even though she had already been such a help to Paloma. Paloma patted the space on the bench beside her. “Do
sit down. We have been too upended to give you the welcome you deserve,” Paloma said.

  “I am just a slave your husband bought,” Graciela said. “Dama, Señor Mondragón just threw that money pouch at Great Owl, so he would not kill me! He … he didn’t even take out just some of the coins and toss them. It would have been enough! He gave him the whole pouch.”

  “I would have been ashamed if he had done any less,” Paloma said quietly.

  “I blush to say this, but your husband could have done anything to my body that he wanted to, but he didn’t!”

  Paloma couldn’t help but smile, even in the face of Graciela’s anguish. “I would have been ashamed if he had!” she declared this time, which brought a slight smile to the slave’s lips.

  I am looking at someone much like I was, Paloma thought, as she regarded the young woman seated beside her, dirty and wearing a deerskin dress so ragged that it was only fit for the burning barrel. And what would I have wanted more than anything in the horrible household of my Uncle Felix?

  She knew. Without a word, and to Perla’s shocked surprise, Paloma pulled Graciela close to her. She felt the slave’s initial resistance, then felt her melt into her arms. Whatever terrors Graciela had suffered at the hands of the Comanches stepped aside, and for a moment she became just a girl again.

  “I am grateful to you for helping that poor trader. All I ask of you in this house is that you help me with my children. I am with child again and I need you,” Paloma said, smoothing down Graciela’s tangled hair. “There now.” She held Graciela away from her, seeing in her mind’s eye what the young woman could become. “You will tell me about yourself, and I will tell you about me, but first, come with me.”

  Paloma took Graciela’s hand and led her out the kitchen door and into the garden. They walked past the beans and peppers, and tomatillos, and beyond the corn. Paloma pointed to the acequia and the empty canal that led into a wooden shed close by.

  “Marco had this made for me alone a few years ago, because I was too shy to bathe in the acequia after dark during the summer,” she explained. “I will raise that little wooden dam, and water will flow into a metal tub inside the shed.”