Teresa felt that Ryker was nominally their leader, but Kelly Morgan exerted an indefinable domination over them which swung the command subtly to him. He looked to be in his early twenties, the youngest of the band; yet his size and the marks left by a violent life made him appear older. He towered over the other men by a full head and emanated a vivid, earthy vitality that crept against her whenever she looked at him.
It angered her that she should feel any attraction for him. He was a part of her rebellion. Hurt, alone, helpless, she had brought out what meager gallantry lay in such an elemental man. But it would soon wear off and he would be as quick to take what her ripe body offered as had been Biscara, or Johnny Cavan, or Juan Esquivel.
He ate like an animal, swiftly, ravenously, stuffing his mouth till the juice ran out the corners and stained his blond beard stubble. When he was through he wiped his greasy hands on his long hair, cleaned his Bowie knife against his pants, and began scraping with the blade at his cheeks, shaving himself.
Ryker had been watching Teresa all through the meal, and finally said, “You speak English?”
She licked her fingers. “My father was Irish.”
He raised black brows, surprised at her fluency. “Then you might as well pay for your keep. How about telling us what you know of this uprising Biscara spoke about.”
“More a revolution,” she said.
Ryker leaned toward her. “They been talking like that for years in Santa Fe. You sure it isn’t just another rumor?”
She saw that they were all watching her closely. This was a new role for her. Never had men asked her opinion on such things. Yet she knew as much about the politics of the country as most men. In El Paso her father’s set had included most of the saloon politicians and petty officials of the town. A thousand nights she had been kept awake on her pallet in the back room by their drunken, boastful discussions over a game of monte in the front. As petty and spurious as these men were, they knew much of what went on in the outer world, for El Paso was the hub of many trails. And it had built in Teresa a hungry longing for any knowledge of that outside world. It had led her to the camps of the countless traders that passed through El Paso, where she added to her knowledge of the countries and the cities she had never seen. She had a retentive memory, and often astounded her parents with what she had learned.
It seemed that all her life the country had been in a state of upheaval. Mexico and New Mexico at the time of Teresa’s birth had been colonial provinces under Spain. But in 1822 they had revolted against the Spanish Crown, declaring themselves a Republic. Ever since then there had been revolution and rumors of revolution.
“I don’t think this is just another rumor,” she said. “This northern department’s been seething for years. It won’t go much longer without an explosion. New Mexico’s too far away from the center of government. Mexico City hasn’t got much control over what goes on up here.”
Ryker leaned toward her. “Just what does go on?”
“Anything you want to name. Those in power at the capital can do almost what they please. Santa Fe’s riddled with graft and corruption. Nothing’s being done about the Indian problem. Every year hundreds of ranchers are killed by the Apaches. The people are sick of it. I think there will be a real battle for power soon.”
Turkey Thompson sucked the marrow out of a bone as he listened. When she was finished, he said, “Last I heard the governor was tryin’ to blame it all on the customs inspector at Taos. Nicolas Amado, er somethin’.”
Teresa glanced sharply at him. “Who?”
“Amado.”
“A friend of yours?” Ryker asked.
She tried to sound indifferent. “I thought he said Sonado.”
Kelly had finished shaving; he slid his Bowie into its brass-studded case, stood up, stretched like a cat, let out a resounding belch. “I seen enough revolutions. Let’s stick to our traplines.” He circled the fire and came directly to Teresa. He bent over and reached out a hand. She pulled back sharply, eyes smoldering. She saw surprise cross his face. Then he straightened up. “You got a hate on every man in creation?” he asked.
He wheeled and stalked away. She turned and saw the heap of blankets and robes beside her, and realized he had merely meant to spread one for her. He circled the fire, kicked open his saddle blanket, sat in it, lay flat, rolled up in it, and was snoring huskily, all in the space of two minutes. Black Blanket made Ryker’s bed, spreading out a carpet of springy pine needles, covering a buffalo saddle at its head with a blanket for the pillow. Ryker gave Cimarron Saunders first watch.
Before rolling in, Ryker pulled the two Ketland-McCormick pistols from his belt, laying one carefully on each side of his pillow, within reach of his hands. Then he lay down. Pulling the robe over him caused him to roll a shoulder aside for a moment, putting his back to Teresa. She flipped her own robe open across the ground, covering one of the pistols. When she dragged the robe away from Ryker, the pistol came with it. She left it there, and got a saddle blanket for the top cover.
The camp settled down. Some of Teresa’s tension abated. She grew drowsy. Finally only one thought remained: You got a hate on every man in creation?
Maybe she did. Hate and anger and rebellion seemed so inextricably bound up with every man she had known. What else could a woman feel for a man who had lied to her and seduced her and left her with a child? It was taking her back once more, to the dark memories. She could feel again the sense of betrayal that had crept through her like a sickness the day she had heard that Lieutenant Juan Esquivel had been married in Mexico City. She could feel again the misery, the apathy, the abysmal indifference to life itself that had filled her during those days following when she sat in the dark little jacal at El Paso, not eating, not sleeping, not talking.
After that, during the months of adjustment, Pepe Rascon was a perpetual caller at their home. With Johnny Cavan gone, this aging man had become the biggest trader in El Paso.
The arrangement was made between him and Teresa’s mother before Teresa knew of it. Pepe took them to his house, a sprawling hacienda of countless rooms. He opened his storerooms to them and revealed handsome dresses—taffetas and silks and laces. Dolores Cavan’s eyes grew wide and greedy. That night, in their miserable mud jacal, she told her daughter:
“A woman would live like a queen in a house like that. Sleeping till ten, awakened by an Indian maid, served with chocolate and cakes before you get out of bed even. And look how he would dress you. How many of us get a chance like this, Teresa? It is not as though he would be a real husband to you. He is obviously too old for that. More a father. A father of great kindness and benevolence, giving your son a name and you a home.”
A few months before it would have been abhorrent to her. But she had grown old and wise in those few months. She had learned how little a woman of this land could expect from life. To get this much was unheard of. She was surprised at how calmly she made the decision. After the soaring ecstasy with Juan, it was strange that one could so coolly decide to take a man. But ecstasy had betrayed her.
And her baby would have a name. That was the most important thing.
So they were married, carrying candles through the dimness of the chapel, reciting their vows. That very day Dolores Cavan took the rest of her brood on the trail to Santa Fe; she had tried in vain to support the children by working in town, and was now returning to the rest of her people at the Biscara house. And Teresa moved with Pepe to the great house on the edge of El Paso.
The baby was close now. They slept in separate rooms and the Pima Indian housekeeper brought Teresa chocolate and cakes and told her the things a mother should know and acted as doctor and midwife when the baby came. It was a boy, christened Pepe Gregorio Jayan Ignacio Miguel de Rascon.
And then that evening, three weeks after he was born, when she was nursing him in her room, Pepe tramped heavily th
rough the door, scowling and pulling at his mustache. He circled the baby.
“He is still so red. Are you sure he is not sick?”
“Nexpa says he is perfect.”
Pepe pouted, then sat down on the bed and began to take his shoes off. She frowned at him, not quite understanding. He belched, smelling strongly of chile.
“You can put him aside for a few minutes, then. It is time now.”
She could not believe it. He was too old. Her mother had said so. He was obviously too old. Yet here he was, undressing, wheezing, his neck turning red and swollen. When she finally understood, she thought she couldn’t do it. She gagged and she felt sick and she couldn’t breathe, and thought she couldn’t submit. Then the baby gurgled, in her arms, and she looked down at his pink little face, his helpless little hands. This was his only haven. Pepe’s name and Pepe’s home was all she could give him. Without it what would he be? Doomed to picking his life out of the gutter or to the endless labor of servitude in the household of some rico. For his sake, she had made a bargain; if this was its fulfillment, she must make her payment.
How could the same thing be so different? How could it be such blind ecstasy one time and such hateful repugnance the next? When it was over he sat on the edge of the bed and began dressing again.
“Tomorrow you will clean the house,” he said. “I also wish some trade goods transferred from the storehouse to those carts in the corrals. They must be loaded when the drivers arrive.”
She lay with her eyes closed, holding her sickness in her till she heard him stamp out of the room. Then she rolled over and buried her face in the pillow and bit her lips till the blood ran to keep from crying.
The house and the trading post was an establishment that would ordinarily have occupied the time and labor of a dozen servants. Yet there was only the Pima housekeeper, Nexpa, and a pair of sullen stablemen to keep the animals and help load the carts. The satins and the taffetas stayed in the storerooms or went in the creaking carretas to Santa Fe, where the gente fina paid handsome prices for such things. The rest of it, for Teresa, was the constant hours of labor, helping Nexpa in the house—the cleaning and washing and cooking, the weaving of coats and pants and homespun shirts, the ministering like a slave to the ceaseless, petty demands of a surly old miser who begrudged her the food she put in her mouth.
The only thing that sustained her was the baby. It had become the core of her life. It was the only thing in her world that had given affection unstintingly, the only thing she could call her own. It gave her the strength for the endless drudgery which seemed to be—most of the time—all that Pepe had brought her here for. If it hadn’t been for the grotesque ritual of the bedchamber she might have borne it.
But it came regular as the winding of a clock, the tramp of his feet outside her door, the sight of his red face, the goaty wheezing. Finally she could stand it no longer. One night, as he sat down and undressed, she crawled up against the wall, pulling the covers about her.
“I’m sick,” she said.
“I’m not. Lie down.”
“Have you no feelings? How can you enjoy it? I give you nothing. You could get the same thing from those women down by the river.”
The purple veins in his nose swelled till she thought they would burst. He sounded strangled. “Will you lie down?”
“I won’t. Not tonight. I can’t, Pepe—”
With a grunting sound, he grabbed her arm, pulling her down. She fought back. It was a rebellion that had been building up in her for months now. She cursed him and clawed him like a cat, tearing free. Before she could get out of the bed, he hit her. It sent her sprawling out of the bed. He followed her and tangled his gnarled hand in her hair and pulled her to her knees and hit her again. He kept hitting her, one side and then the other, till her body sagged against him like a sack of sand. Then he released her and she slid to the floor, barely conscious.
Naked, hairy as an ape, he walked barefoot around the bed to the cradle. He put his hand over the baby’s mouth, cutting off its squawls, so he could be heard.
“Now,” he said. “Perhaps you know why I married you. I wanted a son, and a wife. I guess I am too old to have a son the regular way even though I can still perform the function. But I have a son anyway, don’t I? If you do not want to be my wife I will take my son and leave you—”
“No—”
It left her in a pitiful sob. She tried to sit up. He looked blurred to her, across the room, and her head was still roaring from the blows. She could not stand to lose the child. She knew that.
Pepe took his hand off the baby’s mouth and it went into a paroxysm of coughing. Teresa crawled to the cradle on her hands and knees and took the child in her arms and pressed his cheek against hers, trying to soothe him. The beating and the fear of losing the baby had left her without any resistance. She made no sound when Pepe spoke.
“Now,” he said, “you will be my wife….”
The ugly picture faded from Teresa’s mind as she heard the stirring across the fire. She opened her eyes to see that Cimarron Saunders was coming back from the horse lines. He stopped by the fire.
She pulled the corner of her robe off Ryker’s Ketland-McCormick. The brass furniture of the big pistol glittered dully in the backlight of the fire.
Saunders’s eyes moved slowly from the weapon to her sullen face. Finally, through the unruly bramble of his red beard, she saw his lips peel back in a grin—a mixture of grudging admiration and sly malice. He chuckled softly and turned to walk into the darkness.
4
Don Fernando de Taos lay some seventy-five miles north of Santa Fe. It was an ancient village of tawny mud houses surrounded by a high adobe wall, sprawled on a plateau at the very base of the Sangre de Cristos.
Coming from the south, through the Rio Grande Canyon, it was like climbing into the land of the gods. The air was so clear it hurt the lungs and the colors so pure they were hard to believe. Every year or so the houses were re-plastered with a mixture of sand, mud, and straw; the straw gave them a golden hue in a bright sun, and at midmorning, from a distance, the buildings looked like so many glittering doubloons cast carelessly at the foot of the frowning red mountains.
This was how it appeared to Teresa as she rode with the trappers into the old town. They came out of the mountains on the old Pecuris Trail with budded willow brush screening their flanks and wild plum bushes banked white as snow along the gurgling irrigation ditches. They had given Teresa a pinto with a buffalo saddle. She rode like a man, the long antelope skirt given her by Ryker’s squaw hiding her legs.
They rode through the gate of the adobe-walled town and down one of the crooked streets to the plaza. It was more of an Indian town than Santa Fe. They were everywhere, squatting against the blank golden walls, standing like mahogany statues in the gates, the barbaric colors of their blankets blazing in the hot sunlight.
As the riders neared the plaza, Teresa heard the sound, like the roar of an angry sea crashing and breaking against a rocky coast. Within sight of the treeless square, the sound gained identity, becoming shouts, the voices of a crowd.
The square seemed filled with people, standing in the strong shadows beneath the portales fronting the buildings or massed in dense bunches across the open ground. It seemed to her that the bulk of them were Pueblo Indians, their primitive faces bronze and enigmatic beneath the blue bandas crossing their foreheads and tied about their jet black hair. One of their number was standing on a load of wood in a carreta, engaged in an oration.
Ryker pulled his horse to a stop at the edge of the plaza, glancing at Teresa. “It looks ugly,” he said. “Can you find out what’s happening?”
Teresa kneed her horse to the fringe of the crowd, asking one of the Mexicans there, “Qué se le ofrece?”
“El alcalde es en la cárcel,” he said. “The mayor is in jail. The g
overnment claims that the corruption in the customs department was traced to Don Melgares. Some dragoons are coming from Santa Fe to take him back there.”
Teresa told Ryker. His black brows pulled together and he surveyed the crowded square, shaking his leonine head. “Maybe we better camp outside till it quiets down,” he said.
Kelly swore disgustedly. “Hell, it may take days. If they riot they might wreck Barton’s post and we’d never get our traps. I say we get what we come after right now.”
Reminding Teresa of a dog with his hackles up, he touched his roan with the great cartwheel spurs. Sullenly, looking up at the blond giant with glittering eyes, the crowd gave way. Ryker glanced at Cimarron Saunders. The red-bearded man grinned broadly, kicked his big pinto after Kelly. Reluctantly the others followed. Teresa could feel the hostility of the crowd like a pressure against her as she rode between their ranks. They reached the opposite side of the square. The buildings here were fronted with the usual portales—a roof extending out from the wall and supported by peeled cedar posts—making a shady arcade that ran along the edge of the square. On one of the poles was nailed the crudely printed sign, Barton’s Trading Post. The party pulled to a halt here. Kelly and Ryker dismounted and went inside. Teresa swung off the horse to ease stiff legs. Cimarron Saunders stepped down beside her. The leering grin was on his bearded face, the sly shimmer in his eyes.
“You don’t look so big, without Ryker’s gun,” he said.
Teresa Page 3