Paloma and the Horse Traders

by Carla Kelly

  What he did next did not even startle Paloma. As she watched, her heart full, Claudio knelt on the kitchen floor and bowed his head. “Gracious God, defend us,” he said, his arms stretched out to encompass the Double Cross and everyone within its sheltering walls and those beyond. “Protect us from all danger. May the saints watch over us and all we hold dear: our families, Holy Church, King Carlos, peace to our lands and chattel.”

  She had heard this ages-old declaration once before, when they were small children. Papa had come to El Paso to serve as commanding officer of the frontier outpost’s garrison. He had married their mother, widowed young and childless, possessor of a land grant. Years later, on orders from the Viceroy in Mexico City, he had been chosen the district’s capitán-general. In the Ysleta Mission Church, Papa had knelt before the archbishop and repeated that very oath, his sword lying in front of him.

  Claudio had remembered it all. As Paloma held her breath with the enormity of what dear, battered Claudio was doing, he took out the dagger at his waist and laid it at Paloma’s feet.

  “Bless me, Sister,” he whispered. “There is no archbishop and your husband who should do this is far away now. I crave your blessing.”

  Paloma rose to her feet and put her hands on Claudio’s head, wishing she could remember the archbishop’s words. It was too many years ago, and she had been so young. She knew what to do, because her love for her brother filled her heart.

  “May God and all the Saints protect you and Graciela Tafoya, soldiers defending my home and protecting my husband,” she whispered. “Do all you can to defend the fragile peace we are forging here on the frontier. And do no harm to the innocent.” She leaned forward and kissed his head, then made the sign of the cross with her thumb on his forehead, his cheeks, and his mouth.

  He rose to his feet and held her close. Paloma whispered into his chest. “Come home safe to me, Claudio, you who were lost and now are found. And bring my dear ones home, too.”

  “I vow to you that we will.”

  “When do we leave, Señor Vega?”

  “I am Claudio to you, for we are soldados, Graci,” he said. “We leave now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  In which another small army sets out to do impossible things

  They stayed only long enough for Sancha and Paloma, her face so serious, to sling carne seca, hunks of sweet cactus, yesterday’s tortillas, and a wineskin into a cloth bag. Eckapeta contributed one of her deerskin dresses with thigh-high slits for easy riding and dared Graciela to turn it down.

  A few words from Paloma with Emilio at the horse barn produced a mare for Graciela, a gift that made the slave smile. “I will be your friend,” she said to the horse, who tossed her head and whickered back, evidently understanding.

  Claudio saddled his own horse Bueno, grateful Marco didn’t know that the black had been acquired from an obnoxious ranchero near San Mateo two years ago who had cheated Lorenzo just one time too many. At least, that was what Lorenzo had claimed, and Claudio had overlooked it, as he had overlooked too much. Claudio had learned through hard experience never to look too closely at any horse dealings of the Diaz brothers. That they hadn’t gone anywhere near San Mateo in the intervening years reinforced Claudio’s own suspicions about the transaction for Bueno.

  “Do you like to ride, Graci?” he asked the slave.

  He liked how she dimpled up simply from his little nickname. “I do,” she told him. That was all. She was not a talkative woman.

  Something about her suggested real intelligence. He discounted her complete dread of Comanches, because only fools would not be afraid of The People, and Graci was no fool. He needed an ally on this trip. He looked at her, so pretty in that deerskin dress, and decided that he also needed a friend. He couldn’t even remember his last actual friend. Probably it had been Rafael, his younger brother.

  There in the horse barn, he pulled out a rudimentary map that Paloma had drawn, indicating which of the passes through the Sangre de Cristos Marco had said they would travel. He knew the massive San Luis Valley well enough, but he wagered that Graci knew it better.

  He beckoned her closer and she came toward him, slightly hesitant at first. Maybe on this little trip she would understand that he meant her no harm. Or maybe she would always be wary of men. Every experience changes us, he thought, wondering if his own experiences had changed him for the better. He doubted it supremely.

  “We’ll travel along this western slope of the Cristos,” he said. “We’ll hang close to the sheltering trees and brush. When can we reasonably expect to see the Kapota Utes and Rain Cloud?”

  She pointed close to the large X Paloma had drawn, which he knew was La Blanca, a hulking mountain that seemed to rise out of the valley floor, but which was really just a jog in the Sangre de Cristos.

  “That’s scarcely more than a pass away from where Governor de Anza first encountered Cuerno Verde five years ago,” Claudio said. “Marco told me he was wounded there, three days before the final battle.”

  “The Kapota will be near there, or maybe a little north,” she said.

  “On the eastern slope, we might see Comanches,” he said. “I have never doubted Ute bravery, but that seems so close to danger, especially with women and children. Why there?”

  “It’s good land with many deer and elk,” she said. “And no, you should not doubt the bravery of my people.”

  Well, I’ve been told, he thought, pleased the slave was not so beaten down that she had no spark left in her. He had seen too many hollow-eyed women discarded by Comanches.

  Paloma had divided the food into two pouches. She handed one up to Claudio and the other to Graciela, who smiled her thanks. A blanket apiece came next, followed by bow and arrows given to the slave.

  “I’m not good with these,” Graci said, as she accepted them.

  “Then carry them as extras for me,” Claudio told her as he put his arms through the loops for his arrow case and slung his bow. “Do you want a knife?”

  She did, which Eckapeta furnished, tucked in a beaded sheath and strung on a deerskin belt. Graciela nodded her thanks, still wary of the Comanche woman, and tightened the belt around her middle.

  There was nothing left to do but blow a kiss to Paloma as she stood by herself at the open gate.

  “Two years ago, I would have ridden with you,” his sister told him. She patted her still-flat belly gently, which told him she had already established a rapport with the latest Mondragón within. “Too many other responsibilities now. Still, give Marco a kiss for me.”

  “I will, but not on his lips,” Claudio teased.

  “Oh, get going,” she said in a gruff voice. “And go with God.”

  If He can keep up, Claudio thought. He motioned to Graciela, and they began their journey to find Marco, or maybe French gun dealers, or maybe Great Owl himself. He avoided thinking about the sketchiness of his plan.

  “We’re going to keep moving off this plain,” Claudio told her. The sun was high overhead and it was no time to start a journey, but he felt a gnawing uneasiness, knowing that Marco, the damned Comanche, and the foolish royal engineer were out there somewhere between catastrophe and trouble, and he owed his sister for her kindness to him.

  “The Palo Fechado Pass will bring us out near Taos and—”

  “You don’t want to go there,” Graciela said. “I know a better way.”

  “A Comanche way?”

  She shot him a venomous look and he knew she hated The People as much as he did. “A Ute way! We are no strangers to these mountains. Follow me. We’ll camp high tonight. Is your horse surefooted?”

  He could have objected. He could have protested. He could have said that women like Graciela Tafoya didn’t know anything, but he was a smarter man than that. Besides, when she rode ahead of him, certain of a trail he could barely see, he liked the way her hips swayed in the saddle. A man couldn’t see that, if he led.

  She wasn’t fooling. They left the main trail—the tried an
d true way to Taos between towering mountains—and angled through a series of low foothills. They didn’t seem to be rising at all, just weaving back and forth among tall grass and then hills. The air grew cooler, and he found himself breathing heavier.

  He watched the slave ahead of him. She rode with casual grace, her back straight but her hips loose, blending with her horse. The rise and fall of her shoulders told him that she was not breathing heavily. The weight of his own mortality struck him. What was he now? Twenty-eight?

  “How old are you, Graci?” he called ahead, the first thing he had said in hours.

  She turned around and put her hand on her horse’s cruppers. “Twenty-two,” she said with a slight smile. “Maybe you should ride into the mountains more often to strengthen your lungs, and leave the horse thieving to your compadres.” She returned her attention to the miniscule trail she followed.

  I think I’ve just been insulted, he thought with real amusement. “Why does everyone think that Lorenzo Diaz is a horse thief?” he asked. “Now and then he does true business.”

  He saw her shoulders shake, and knew he needed to hang around with better people. Caramba, maybe even Lorenzo knew it. Hadn’t Lorenzo brought Claudio back to his sister with a noose around his neck?

  An hour passed, then another. He was hungry, thirsty, and needed to piss in the worst way, and still Graci continued her slow, steady climb into low hills that were turning into more challenging heights.

  “Stop a minute,” he said finally, and she did. She dismounted with such considerable delicacy that she revealed nothing to anyone who might be curious. Not him, of course. I am still a bit of a gentleman, Claudio thought, as he took only a tiny look.

  Without a backward glance, she walked to a clump of bushes. He turned away and took care of his own business, dousing some rabbit brush and finding great relief in so simple an act.

  “Some wine?” he asked when she returned to her horse, smoothing down her deerskin dress.

  “For me, too?” she asked, and he remembered she was a slave. He had forgotten, watching her sure movements and the way she took command—a slave bought by his brother-in-law.

  “Yes, for you,” he replied quietly, handing his wine skin to her. “Graci, we’re partners here. You are saving me from going miles out of the way.”

  She drank her fill, then handed it back. “May I have some tortillas?” she asked.

  “You don’t even need to ask. Carne seca, too.”

  She took what he handed her, ate, and didn’t ask for more. “Just tell me when you’re hungry,” he said.

  She nodded, but he knew she would never say anything. As they continued on the trail, winding higher now, he thought of what Marco had told him about Paloma, how even now, she never asked for anything. With a start, Claudio realized that he never did, either.

  They continued long after dark, guided by Graciela’s sure sense of direction. He hinted that they could stop at any time, but Graci only ordered him to go a little farther. “There is a small meadow soon, and a stream,” she told him.

  She was right. Claudio dismounted gratefully, stretching his good arm above his head and gingerly rubbing his other arm.

  Like the good horsewoman he knew she was, Graci tended to her mare, leading her to the stream for a long drink, sitting beside her until she was done. She led the docile animal to the best patch of grass and hobbled it there. She didn’t leave the horse right away, but stayed and chatted, nose to nose, so softly that Claudio could not hear. Of course, he wasn’t intended to be part of the conversation.

  Claudio cared for his mount while Graciela toed the grass until she found a comfortable place for her blanket. She plunked her saddle next to the spot and just sat there until he got the food from the leather bags. As before, she took what he offered her, shook her head over any more, then walked into the bushes for a moment. After she returned, she went directly to her saddle and blanket, rolled up in it and lay there quietly, her knees drawn up close to her chest.

  The next day was much like the first, with Graciela leading the way until they reached the highest point in their passage and started down. He made no attempt to ride beside her on the narrow trail, grateful for her calm competence.

  They regained the valley floor in the dark, but he knew precisely where they were. Graciela had saved them two days of travel and kept them away from Indians and settlers alike. He doubted she had said six words.

  Her silence had ceased to bother Claudio. He wondered what she had been like around her mother and brothers, and tried to imagine her as a laughing young woman, with ideas and dreams of her own. He wondered about his own dreams, not even certain when the last one had guttered out like a spent candle and left him in the dark.

  They were riding side by side now through the scrub brush and stunted trees, so common a sight in New Mexico. The day had been warm, and the piñon resin gave off its familiar odor. The moon had risen, but he was tired down to his bones. Maybe he could stay awake if he talked. Of course, that would only work if someone answered him.

  “If you could do anything you wanted to, Graci, what would it be?” he asked.

  She gave him a squinty look, her eyes nearly disappearing, as though she disapproved of his question.

  “Just curious,” he mumbled, feeling like an idiot.

  “I have no answer,” she said. “That’s not something you think about, with Comanches.” She gave an involuntary shudder.

  She must have felt she owed him more conversation than that. “Wh … what about you?” she asked.

  Up until that very moment, he had no answer, either. A few times at the Double Cross, he had tried to imagine himself as a hacendado like Marco. His thoughts had dribbled off into nothing, because he had no idea what that meant. Life was trading or stealing horses, hurrying away to stay unfettered by a district juez de campo, hanging around the edge of a trade fair or even a horse sale, watching the oily-tongued Lorenzo make his deals. Life was having enough to eat, finding a warm spot in a snowstorm—a barn if they were lucky—and once in a while paying for a woman.

  He had watched Marco and Paloma tease each other, laugh, cuddle, play with their children, or just sit in the sala, Paloma’s feet usually in her husband’s lap so he could massage them. An outsider, he had still felt the warmth of their devotion to each other, and truth be told, their affection for any unsuspecting houseguest who happened to wander by—him, for example.

  “I don’t have any plans either,” he told Graciela, even though it was a lie. Sitting there in the growing cold, a blanket around his shoulders, he knew he wanted more. More of what he wasn’t certain yet, but more of what had been his lot, so far.

  He found the camping spot and lay awake a long time after he thought Graciela slept, staring up at the familiar planets and constellations, a traitor to his words. He had assured Paloma that he preferred being outside, and not hemmed in by rooms and high walls. He stared at the stars, cold and unblinking and huge at their high altitude.

  “I want a roof over my head, kind people around me, good work to do, a family,” he whispered, secure in the certainty that Graciela slept.

  “I do, too,” he heard her say most distinctly, from the distance of her own blanketed burrow.

  He closed his eyes in embarrassment, kept them closed, and soon he slept.

  In the morning, she made no mention of his drowsy conversation, but neither looked the other in the eyes. They had reached the end of their dried beef and tortillas, but there were cactus chunks to chew on. Tonight he would make a snare for rabbits, or watch for unwary deer. Failing that, snakes weren’t so bad. He could dig a hole against a boulder—plenty of those—and shield a small fire from any other riders.

  He watched Graciela shivering in her blanket as she doggedly chewed on the dried cactus. She had said last night that she wanted something better, too. I wonder if either of us will know it when we see it, he thought.

  They sat in silence as the sun rose on the enormity of San Luis Valle
y, trapped between two massive mountain ranges, a high and dry desert. The Rio Bravo stretched in the distance, lined by cottonwood trees. After dark tonight they could strike across the valley toward the river and fill their nearly empty wineskins with cold water.

  Two days more would see them to White Mountain, where they might find Utes. Failing that—and if they felt particularly invisible—Graci could lead them to Great Owl’s stronghold. What had seemed like a good idea, sitting around the table in Paloma’s kitchen, now seemed foolish beyond words. What they really needed to do was find Marco and his miniscule army. That way, they could all be foolish together.

  But just for now, Claudio took a deep breath of piñon-scented air. He breathed in and out, seeing his puffs of air in the crisp cold of an early September morning. Gazing across the high, wide valley, he felt an unexpected emotion, one he almost didn’t recognize. Graci was in his line of vision, so he admired the high plain, and the erect back and handsome profile of a born horsewoman.

  He wondered, not sure, if what he felt was hope.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  In which Marco’s little army follows a smoky trail

  Marco remembered something Father Damiano, head of the abbey at the junction of the rios Bravo and Chama, had told him about pilgrims on a journey. “You gather any group of people together, and there is always someone who complains,” he had told Marco, who at the time was barely out of his boyhood.

  The Mondragóns had traveled from the Double Cross to Santa Fe, to take the annual reports and bring along a puny wool clip from a disastrous year. Continual Comanche raids and a Comanche moon that never seemed to set had ground them down. A hungry winter stared back at them, but his father’s records had to be carried to Santa Fe, no matter what.

  But here had been Father Damiano, bringing them hot bread and butter, good mush and mutton. Other travelers had filled the refectory, and sure enough, Marco heard one of them complaining.

  “There is always one,” Father Damiano had told him. “Always.”