Squirrel and jackrabbit were eaten at once. Larger game, whitetail deer from the medium ranges, mule deer from the lowlands, and graceful pronghorn antelope from the high mountains, was dressed, cut in strips, and dried in the sun.
Bands of javelina rooted through prickly pear in desert flats along the river. The men made several expeditions after the piglike animal. Lupe showed Rachel how to treat the flesh as pork, frying the fat down to cracklings to be used like bacon or for seasoning and cutting the meat into slices and soaking it in salty water spiced with chilis.
These supplies of meat were kept in the coolest part of the main room. Almost every day something was added.
Rachel and Lupe hunted wild grapes, washed and drained them and hung them from a ceiling beam in a basket to dry into raisins. Wild onions dried in bunches. Wild plums were dried on the roof, then stored, and a respectable melon and squash harvest from the women’s garden was cut up and dried on stakes. There was some corn, and what was not saved for seed filled several clay jars.
The honey tree yielded more honey and beeswax to make into candles. Sunflower seeds were gathered and dried. As the first snows showed on the highest peaks, Changa wandered in the mountains and brought home pouches of thin-shelled tasty piñon nuts from the little pines that grew along the slopes.
Water and grass for the cattle, food and shelter for the winter. The necessities were taken care of. Now the men made the first piece of furniture, a heavy plank table hewn of cottonwood. Next Game two benches, and the night they first ate sitting down, Rachel lit two of the precious candles instead of the fat-burning clay lamp, and Lupe placed between them a clay bowl filled with bronze, rust and yellow leaves and pods set off with evergreens.
“A celebration!” cried Changa, smiling from one woman to the other and giving Juanito, who was teething, a crackling to chew.
“Yes, it’s a real house now,” sighed Rachel pleasurably.
It was as if they had all been rushing, working feverishly to be ready for the cold, long winter. Usually she and Matt were too exhausted to make love until they had slept a while, and their fierce nocturnal matings, begun while drowsy and quickly consummated, didn’t really satisfy all her longing. Often during the day she thought hungrily of Matt or their eyes would meet with naked urgency, but she didn’t want to go to their room in the day, when there was work to be done and the others would know what they were doing.
Now, though, there would be more time. And they wouldn’t always be driven to their physical limit by hard labor. There’d be some strength for love. Tonight—
Suddenly, Matt rose from the table. His eyes, the turbulent gray of a building storm, pierced her, held her transfixed as he came around the table, taking her hands.
“Excuse us, folks,” he said.
“Matt!” Rachel whispered as he drew her into their room, undoing the front of her gown. “We—we shouldn’t! What’ll they think?”
“They’ll think we’re celebrating,” he laughed softly. His mouth took away her last resistance. She touched him as fervently as he caressed her, and when they joined, it was a deep primordial melting that left Rachel unable to tell where she began and Matt left off. They were one flesh, one joy, and they had their home.
Next came beds, wooden frames set on legs, with leather strips crisscrossed tautly to hold serapes and the skins that were constantly being tanned and sewn into usable sizes.
Quil made Juanito a bed, too, carved it with coyotes and badgers and curious birds which the little boy traced with his fingers as he learned to say the names.
Rachel meted out enough of the precious Chihuahua cotton to make each person a small pillow. These were stuffed with moss, scraps of fur and grass, until they could accumulate enough down and feathers from quail and dove to replace them.
Almost everything had a use. Fat was used for cooking, of course, and for lamps, plain clay bowls with a sotol fiber wick. It was also saved for soap, as were ashes. These went into a wooden bin in the lean-to put up behind the house to hold things too bulky or dirty to go into the house.
Hoarfrost glittered on the palisades, and though snow seldom covered the mountain meadow for more than a few days at a time, and never fell on the flats by the river, the higher mountains held snow for weeks on end.
Squirrels, chipmunks, rats and rabbits fed on insects, grass and other browse and were prolific enough to maintain their kind while providing food for carnivores like the golden eagle. To a degree this protected the slower-breeding deer, antelope, Bighorn sheep, and javelina.
But if these creatures hadn’t been checked by mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, badgers and skunks, grazers would have increased until there wasn’t enough forage and water to sustain them. The men kept a close eye on the cattle, though unless the winter grew hard it wasn’t likely predators would bother the herd until calving time. But in the higher ranges where they went hunting, Matt occasionally saw things that made him worry.
A deer on the slopes above them sank up to its belly in snow while a coyote ran lightly on the crust, attacked from the front, and cut the jugular vein with a quick motion of fangs, paying no attention to the men who’d left him his prey while they went after their own.
Another day Matt saw one coyote chase a large rabbit straight into the path of a hiding coyote who sprang out from behind a rock and made fast work of the unfortunate animal. After gobbling half the rabbit, the killing coyote left the other part for his accomplice.
The men hunted often, jerking and curing as much meat as possible. They brought in firewood from the mountains, seldom needing to fell a tree but hunting out lightning- or age-stricken giants—firs eighty feet tall and three feet wide, cypress, ponderosa pine, quaking aspen, maple. They smoothed the best wood with an adze and made it into shelves, chests, a big cupboard for the kitchen, more chairs and benches. And there were rawhide ropes to braid, riding gear to mend, shoes and boots to be patched.
The horses given by Don Celestino were wild, and Changa especially spent much time taming them, living up to his name of Monkey as he cleaved to animals who pitched, ran or rolled with only one desire, to be rid of the weight on their backs.
No one was sure exactly when it was Christmas, but Lupe made candy-cakes of honey boiled with nuts and dried fruits, and Rachel gave Juanito a ball stitched of leather filled with sawdust.
Lupe stared at the gift, then whirled to embrace the other woman. “Thousand thanks!” she cried laughing, though her eyes sparkled with tears. “In my village no one gave Juanito anything—my aunt even grudged him his life!”
Rachel thought back past the Christmas she and Matt had spent on the way here to her last Christmas in East Texas. Papa had been alive and Etienne. They’d sung carols in French and English, feasted on wild turkey and nut-filled fruitcake steeped in Papa’s best brandy. Now her father and Etienne were gone and so was Harry, who had not been granted his wish of that one last joyous holiday together at Gloryoak.
Now, in this adobe house at the edge of the country, Matt’s eyes met hers. He remembered, too. The sweet strong current between them flowed dark and cold for an instant. Rachel stroked Juanito’s head and said to Lupe, “It doesn’t serve to think of the past.”
Still, they all did, those winter nights. Matt spoke of western army posts; Rachel sang Juanito songs and play rhymes she’d learned from her father, but it hurt too much to share the ones she’d learned from Etienne or the children at Gloryoak. If they remembered her at all, it must be as a wicked woman who’d caused Mr. Harry’s death.
Lupe knew tales of witches who could take the shape of lions, miraculous healing by saints or the Virgin, the many tricks of Don Coyote and sad loves like that of La Llorona, who murdered her babies by a nobleman when he discarded her. She became a spirit of the night, luring young men to follow her beauty, then faced them with a skull countenance that brought death.
Quil told how the Seminoles had fought for their Florida lands till most were forced, with other eastern tribes—Cho
ctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws and Cherokees—to the Indian lands north of Texas. Some Seminoles had managed to hide out in the Everglades, however, and were still there. And Quil told of mustangs he’d stalked for weeks till they let him move among them freely. He spoke only once of the master he’d killed before running away.
“He was full-blood Seminole himself,” Quil said, his brow furrowing. “He’d been driven off his old lands, and you’d think he’d have had sympathy, but he beat his slaves until they died.”
When the silence persisted too long, Changa sang ballads of the border and of Tres Coronas, including the new ones about Quil’s and Matt’s duel and the Comanche defeat. He sang love songs, too, careful to direct his languishing glances at the space between the two women.
One night a trilling hiss made the circle around the fireplace jump and begin to search nervously. “Rattlers should all be asleep,” said Quil. “But that sounded like one!”
They found nothing, settled down again. Presently the hiss came again. This time the men carefully went through the woodpile and poked into the dim corners.
Lupe shivered. “That was a víbora!” she insisted. “A víbora cascabel! We must find it or it won’t be safe to go to bed tonight!”
“Snakes do like to curl up by something warm like a human,” mused Quil. “I woke up one morning to find one snuggled under my serape. But there’s no place else to look!”
They sat up a while longer, but no further hissing came, and they went to bed. Next morning, though, Changa didn’t appear for breakfast.
“That sleepyhead!” said Lupe. “I’ll call him!”
“He’s not there,” Quil warned, as Changa burst in from outside, waving a tattered saddle blanket.
“Look!” he lamented. “A cow, she got hold of my blanket and almost ate it before she woke me!”
“A cow?” Matt frowned. “Have you been sleeping with the cows?”
“That rattler hissed once too often after we went to bed last night,” said Quil as Changa looked sheepish. “So I sent it out for some fresh air.”
“And the cow ate my blanket!” Changa repeated in outrage, waving the scraps. “She liked the salt from my horse’s sweat!”
Matthew roared with laughter. “Rattlers don’t need blankets, little monkey!” he said.
After a minute, Changa laughed as much as anyone, and gave a long trilling hiss of his tongue.
The grass freshened with the approach of spring and grew high enough for easy cropping. The cows, most of them heavy with calf, were moved back to the mountain meadow after grazing the other pastures and dropped their calves in the home valley. The Spanish and Mexican cows could usually protect their young, but the shorthorn strain seemed feckless, more intent on browsing than watching out for their young.
The men kept careful watch, but a few sickly calves were run off by coyotes, and two golden eagles swooped on a stray, slashing its loins, tearing it into pieces they could carry to their young. For the pair of white eggs marked with purple and red-brown in the nest above the river had hatched into voracious youngsters covered with white down who were always hungry and kept their parents on a constant search for food.
Coyotes, too, had hungry young to feed. One morning the men saw half a dozen pronghorns chase a coyote against a cliff and kick it to bits with their sharp hoofs.
“He probably went after one too many of their kids,” said Quil. An eagle scarcely waited for the men to pass before dropping onto the battered carcass.
Half the mares dropped colts, and new life flourished along with the grass. Only the human household showed no increase. Rachel began to wonder why she didn’t conceive. She wasn’t truly eager for a child as yet but she’d begun to imagine a boy with eyes like Matt’s or a girl who might resemble her own mother. Quil watched Lupe with a kind of stoic longing, but whether he’d spoken to her of marriage was something Rachel couldn’t guess and hesitated to ask. Lupe was so vital and warm and lovely it seemed a waste for her to be single, but a certain proud reserve in her kept Rachel from matchmaking.
Gradually the calves grew too big for assault except by the most desperate predators. Quil helped Matt select the hundred cows least valuable for breeding, and in June the men set out for Fort Davis with the sale herd.
XIV
Rachel hurried outside. When she came back, weak and clammy with sweat, Lupe wiped her face with a moistened cloth and said, “This will be great news for Don Mateo!”
“I think he’ll be pleased,” Rachel said.
“You’re lucky.” Bitterness tightened Lupe’s face for a second. “I never had a lover or a husband, yet the village called me a whore!”
“But we all love Juanito! And he’s such a strong handsome smart little boy!”
Lupe’s eyes softened and she went to the door to watch her child playing with smooth pebbles Changa had fetched from the Rio. “Yes, I love him. A child lasts longer than passion.”
Matt got home that evening with a thousand dollars worth of Mexican silver and the staggering news that the country was at war, had been for over a year, since Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter last April. Texas had seceded from the Union in February of 1861 as had ten other Southern states, including South Carolina, which had begun the withdrawals the previous December. Fort Davis was now garrisoned by the 2nd Confederate Cavalry, which had been organized at San Antonio, but it was doubtful they could be spared much longer at the remote outpost. Mail service had been stopped, and white people were fleeing the unprotected frontier as Indians grew bolder.
And Quil had gone north to fight for the Union.
Lupe cried out at that. Matt touched her hand. “He’ll come back after it’s over. I tried to give him a share of the silver, but he told me to save it for him—and give it to you, Lupe, if—well, if something happens.”
Her dark eyes filling with tears, Lupe nodded mutely. Outside they could hear Changa talking to the horses as he rubbed them down. Rachel felt more nauseated than she had that morning. Something about Matt frightened her, the grim set of his mouth, the way he refused to meet her gaze.
“You’ll be greater than Don Celestino!” prophesied Lupe, throwing back her shoulders and struggling to be cheerful. “It is sad that Quil is gone, but you can hire other vaqueros!”
“I’m afraid Quil’s not the only one who has to fight,” said Matt slowly. He looked at Rachel then with regret and pleading.
She felt as if she were floating above her body.
He took her hands. “Rachel, Tom’s said he’d go abroad if war came. Harry’s dead. That leaves only me.”
“But you can’t go!” Lupe burst out. “Rachel is—”
Rachel silenced her with a squeeze of the arm. “Do you mean to leave this summer?” she asked Matt in a calm, dead voice. Of course their happiness couldn’t last. Of course as soon as she was with child, caught in that trap she had so dreaded and resolved to avoid, of course then her man, her only man would leave her. And how could she complain? After what had happened to Harry, how could she complain of anything?
“I can’t leave you here,” said Matt. “Maybe San Antonio—”
“No,” said Rachel.
He stared at her, eyes narrowing. “You can’t want to go back to Caddo!”
“I’m not going anywhere! This is my home, my place! I’m going to protect it and this house we’ve built and trees we’ve planted by staying, Matthew, just as you mean to defend the South.” She turned to Lupe. “You don’t have to stay. Matt can take you and Juanito to some settlement on his way to join the army.”
Lupe took Rachel’s hand and gave a soft laugh. “I was in this valley first, pero no? I welcomed you to my lean-to in the side of the cliff, gave you water from the coyote’s spring, and food. This is the first place I’ve been happy. I shall certainly not go!”
Matt scowled helplessly from one to the other.
“But I can’t leave you here! Two women in this wilderness? With Apaches and Comanches on the rampage and a war on?�
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“Why worry?” offered Changa grandly. “I shall stay with them.” Preening in his elders’ astonishment, he said, “I have no concern in this war. Nothing calls me to Mexico. My only wish is to serve these ladies.” He bowed to them in a way that made Juanito shriek with laughter. “If you will, have a monkey, this one is yours.”
“We’ll keep you if you work.” Lupe gave one of his outsize ears a flick of her shawl. “But don’t think you’ll be pampered because you’re the only one left in trousers besides Juanito!”
Tears squeezed from Rachel’s eyes but she laughed, too, fighting off the sick dread, the dizzying waves of illness. She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t cry. And she wouldn’t tell Matt about the baby. Let him go about his miserable war and she’d see to her own matters.
“You must promise no more hissing like a rattler!” she warned Changa.
He put his hand over his heart. “Ladies, when you need to smile I’ll be your monkey; when you need work or protection, I swear to be your man.”
“If you look after the ranch and women, I’ll see you’re well rewarded,” promised Matt.
Changa shrugged, glancing from Rachel to Lupe. Then he looked at Matt as if he marveled that any man could leave two such women.
“Don Mateo,” he said, “I shall be rewarded if they smile at me.”
Later that night, Rachel felt herself tensing when Matt took her in his arms, began to kiss her with the rough urgency of a man some weeks without his woman. Rachel could not respond. For the first time, his hands couldn’t rouse her, send blood tingling hotly through her.
The lean hard body pressed to hers would soon be gone, for months, years, maybe forever. The hands on her breasts would grip a carbine. He wouldn’t see the birth of their baby made in the winter’s loving.
Matt! Matt! she cried silently. How can you go? How can you leave me?
A Woman Clothed in Sun Page 17