Teresa

by Les Savage, Jr.

  She hesitated, then nodded her head toward the rear. They went to the room off the patio, with its black and white tile, its wine-red velvet. Watching him narrowly, she poured him a drink. It was an old ritual in this room. He accepted it, hitching his holstered gun around to the front so he could sit down. She saw that it was not a pistol but one of the new Dragoon six-shooters that had come from the United States in the last year.

  She wheeled and walked across the room, folding her arms, drumming slender fingers nervously against her elbows. “This revolution?”

  “Why don’t you light up a smoke? You seem to think better with one o’ them cigars in your mouth.”

  Frowning, she opened the silver box on the table, rolled herself a cigarrito swiftly, nervously. He held up the golden tongs and she placed the cigarrito in them. When she bent toward the candles to light it he touched her hand, stopping her. He pulled a block of wood from his belt, divided into long thin strips. He tore one of the strips off, scraped it on the underside of the table. It broke into flame. Blue smoke wreathed from it and when he raised it she smelled sulphur. But it was still burning brightly. Fascinated as a child, she bent forward to light her cigarrito.

  “The Yankees call ‘em lucifers,” he said. “Wouldn’t you say it was sort of revolutionary? Purty soon nobody’ll be carryin’ flint and steel in Santa Fe.”

  She breathed the gray smoke into his face. “You deceived me.”

  He squinted his eyes, chuckling. “Love and war—ma’am.”

  She tried to pull away. But his hand was on her wrist, warm, overwhelming in the force of its grip. He came up out of the chair to her. His other hand went to her bare shoulder, its callused heat sending a trembling wave of excitement through her. This was what had lain behind their constant fencing. This was the wonder and the questioning. This was the want and the hate, the scorn and the fear. Why had she toyed with the fire of it? Why had she been a fool? She was staring off the high wall now and she could see what lay at the bottom of the dizzy drop.

  “Kelly, I told you, I told you—”

  “I figgered it was about time to try again. You had that look in your eyes.”

  “Pepita!”

  “She won’t hear you, honey.”

  The golden tongs slipped from her hands in the struggle. As from a great distance she heard them tinkle against the tiles. The smell of the burning cigarrito sifted up from below.

  “Kelly, don’t be a fool.” Struggling. “I can have anything done to you. I can ask Amado to kill you.”

  “You wouldn’t kill your husband.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe so. I want you, Teresa. I want you all the way. This ain’t no Biscara with a servant girl. This ain’t no Amado pinchin’ rumps. This is Kelly Morgan, honey, askin’ you to be his wife!”

  She stopped struggling, staring up at him, in shock, in disbelief. But she saw the tenderness in his face, beside the savagery, the desire, she saw the love and the wanting and the needing like she’d never seen it before. She remembered when Hilario had come to her, and she’d wanted to cry. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to think, it was so bad and so good all at once, so strange and so crazy.

  “Then what?” she said.

  He looked surprised. “You and me. You wouldn’t have to fight any more, Teresa. You wouldn’t have to kick and claw and cheat and lie and set one dog on another—”

  “I could live in a tepee,” she said. “I could eat beavertail on Sunday. Sew and cook and get blind over a fire like some Crow squaw—”

  “It wouldn’t be that bad.”

  “I know how it would be. I’ve seen the women those trappers married. Left home half the year, while you’re off on your traplines. Caught inside four walls somewhere: Taos, Bent’s Fort, some Cheyenne camp, like a horse you put in a corral. It took me all my life to get away from that!”

  “Goddamit, I said it won’t be like that. You can have it any way you like. Jist name the rules.”

  “Why should I? I’m the richest, freest woman in all New Mexico. I can come and go as I please, answer to no man—”

  “And still you ain’t got what you want.” He gripped her so tight the bones of her shoulders ground together, shaking her in his frustration. “This is what you want, Teresa, you know it is.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “The hell you don’t!”

  He pulled her against him, writhing, and she couldn’t get free. His hand was at the back of her head, forcing her face up. His face was above her, shining with sweat, cruel and tender all at the same time.

  The kiss. The flower of passion blossoming inside her. The world beginning to lose focus.

  She knew he would have her this time. Desire was a hot, trembling flood in her, sweeping out all will to resist. There was only a little corner of fear, of resistance, of hatred left. Only a moment remaining. One of her clawing hands felt the butt of the big Colt dragoon, holstered at his side.

  “Kelly,” she sobbed. “Don’t. I killed a man once for this.”

  His words were muffled by the pressure of his lips against her neck, her shoulders. “He died happy.”

  She had the gun out, cocked, pressed against his side. It wasn’t Kelly she fought now. It was herself. It was her own need, her own weakness that in another moment would make her surrender everything she had fought for, would make her subject herself to this man, would allow him to possess her, body and soul, as no other man ever had.

  “Kelly.” She was crying openly now, the tears running down her face in silvery tracks. “Please, don’t—”

  “You’re agoin’ to be my wife, Teresa. One way or the other, you’re agoin’ to be my wife.”

  His hands found her breasts. Her whole body shuddered and she surged up against him with a broken sound.

  The room seemed to rock as the gun went off. She was so deafened that she did not hear his cry. His great body stiffened against her, hung there a moment, pitched back its full length onto the floor.

  20

  1841 was the year of the ill-fated Texas-Santa Fe Expedition. Since the Texas revolution, the boundaries of the Lone Star Republic had been in dispute. Texas claimed their land ran to the Rio Grande. But this river turned north at El Paso, running up past Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The Mexicans held that this could not possibly constitute the western boundary of Texas and claimed land for several hundred miles eastward.

  General Mirabeau Lamar was now president of the Texas Republic, giving official sanction to the boundary claims of his people. In the spring of 1841, news reached Santa Fe that he was equipping an expeditionary force to invade New Mexico. There were all kinds of wild rumors. Gomez claimed he had letters from friends in Texas proving that the force numbered thirty thousand men, and would overwhelm the New Mexicans. Ryker claimed he’d heard through his agent in San Antonio that the expedition was merely a band of traders trying to open a new trail.

  But tension and threat of war had existed between the Lone Star Republic and Mexico ever since the Texas Revolution. Governor Amado was only too willing to believe that the Expedition was an invading force, and immediately took measures of defense. Half a dozen known Texans in Santa Fe were arrested, all foreign-born residents were forbidden to leave their homes, and Captain Emilio Uvalde was sent to patrol the eastern border beyond Las Vegas.

  On September 4, Uvalde captured three Texans supposed to be advance spies for the Texas-Santa Fe Expedition and brought them to the capital for trial. Captain Uvalde was from Taos and had been one of Gomez’s men from the first. Thus Don Biscara was not surprised when the two showed up together at his house on San Francisco Street. He invited them in, offered them drinks and smokes. After the traditional punctilio of the country, observed even among such close companions, Uvalde lounged on a colchón, savoring the bouquet of the wine. His narrow wedge of
a face was still dust-grayed from the long ride and his long grasping hands were restless.

  “Are they going to arrest Kelly Morgan?” Biscara asked.

  Uvalde frowned into his glass. “I doubt it. Somebody remembered he was a Texan and there was talk of arrest. But he could hardly be a spy. He’s been lying in Teresa Cavan’s place for months now, hovering between life and death.” The militia captain shook his head. “What a woman! I will even fear to pass her a compliment from now on.”

  Gomez moved restlessly about the room, hands locked behind his back, as if coming to some decision. Finally he pursed his lips. “We have more important matters. Something came into our hands which I thought you might like to see.”

  He produced a document that had been found on one of the spies. It was a proclamation by General Mirabeau B. Lamar, addressed to the citizens of Santa Fe, dated April 14, 1840:

  We tender you a full participation in all our blessings. The Great River of the North, which you inhabit, is the natural and convenient boundary of our territory, and we shall take great pleasure in hailing you as our fellow citizens, members of our young Republic, and co-aspirants with us for establishing a new and happy and free nation….

  Biscara frowned. “It says nothing here of an army.”

  “Does a man announce a betrayal?” Uvalde asked. “These three spies admitted there was a large force behind them, five companies of mounted infantry heavily armed, an artillery company with brass six pounders. Does a peaceful trading party carry cannon?”

  Biscara’s black brows arched. “You play a dangerous game, Gomez. If the governor realized you had deliberately withheld evidence from him—”

  For a moment a gray tinge came to Gomez’s purple-veined jowls. Then he moistened his lips, shook his head. “The men have already been condemned to death as spies. I thought you might find a way to use this.”

  Biscara frowned, turning it over in his mind. A vague possibility came to him. He began to nod. “Perhaps you are right. I think it may be up to you, my dear Gomez.”

  “Me?”

  “A man who can come and go in the Palace at will. A man who has been the fawning sycophant, groveling his way back into their favor, waiting for this moment.” Biscara’s pointed beard made his smile intensely Satanic. “I think our time has come, señores.”

  * * * *

  On September the 16th Captain Uvalde captured five men near La Cuesta. They were in pitiable condition—ragged, exhausted, starving—but claimed to be scouts for the main body of Texans who were somewhere behind. Governor Amado was informed and left Santa Fe with the regulars, setting up headquarters at Las Vegas. The next day he encountered another larger body of Texans at Anton Chico. There were ninety-four men, under a colonel and a captain. They were a gaunt, haggard, miserable lot of creatures. Many had worn their boots out marching and stood shivering in their bare feet. They were all grimed with dirt and ridden with lice, scratching bearded faces and open sores on their necks and chests. A dozen were violently ill with dysentery, unable to walk. It was an absurd travesty of an invading army.

  Yet many of them carried the infamous Lamar proclamation. Hopelessly outnumbered, they surrendered their arms and suffered themselves to be marched to Las Vegas. That night, in a victory celebration, Amado had all the proclamations burned in the plaza.

  The news came back, bit by bit, to the little room—the little room in Teresa Cavan’s house where Kelly Morgan had lain all summer. A room so all-fired little it got him to crawling inside when he looked around at the walls.

  At last he couldn’t stand it. He didn’t know when he decided that. Days after the capture of the Texans. Maybe weeks after. He just knew that he’d been on his back long enough and one night for the first time he shoved the cover off.

  They had put the colchón on a home-made bedstead, some legs and a board bottom about a foot off the floor. He swung his feet out and sat up. The world began spinning. All the blue and yellow saints in the niches around the room started dancing and the walls tilted up. He held onto the bed till things righted themselves. He grabbed one of the niches and pulled himself upright. He swayed there, blinking his blue eyes, grinning foolishly to himself. Then he heard the scuffle of feet outside and before he could move the door was pushed open.

  Teresa stood there, eyes wide with surprise. Then, peevish as a mother hen rounding up her brood, she crossed the room and caught his arm.

  “What’re you doing up? You’re not strong enough yet.”

  “Strong, hell. I could lick my weight in—”

  “Pussywillows,” she said, and gave a tug. It pulled him off balance and he was too weak to fight her. She held on to him, breaking his fall as he folded up on the bed. When he tried to sit up she put her hands on his chest and pushed him down.

  “Dammit,” he said, “if you don’t let me get my legs back I’ll be crawlin’ around on all fours the rest o’ my life. ‘

  She smiled. “A little bit at a time,” she said. “The American doctor told me you shouldn’t get up for another two weeks at least.”

  She unpinned the bandages holding the compress against his wound. Pepita brought in a tray with fresh cotton and Teresa changed the dressing. He lay slack, watching her through half-closed eyes. She wore only a short-sleeved blouse, pleated around the yoke, and a skirt of heavy blue jerga. She had not done up her hair yet and it curled and massed around her head and shoulders, red as the flames of a windblown bonfire.

  “Lift up now,” she said. “I’ll wind the bandage around.”

  He arched up and she pulled the cotton strip three times around his body. The effort brought a fine beading of sweat to his brow and he lay heavily against the bed, breathing shallowly. She pinned the bandage tight over the compress, looking at him with troubled eyes. “So weak,” she said.

  He grinned. “I’d stay this way, if it brought you every morning.”

  She put her hands on the bed and leaned forward, her face very close above him, compassion in her dark eyes, more tenderness in the soft and pouting shape of her lips than he had ever seen before.

  Her breasts hung against her camisa, round, heavy, almost touching his chest. The blood began to pound in his head and he reached up for her. She pushed aside his hands and rose. She stood over him for a moment, lips petulant, green eyes stormy. Then, with a return of the nervousness that had come to characterize her so deeply these last years, she turned and walked to one of the windows. He put his hands beneath his head, smiling wickedly.

  “It must be hell,” he said, “to be so afraid of love.”

  She didn’t answer. She looked through the narrow barred window at Palace Avenue. A carreta went by, wheels shrieking.

  “What’re you fightin’ it for?” he asked. “What’re you afraid I’ll take from you?” He looked around the room. “This? You think you’re free o’ men here? What kind of freedom’s this? You’re trapped in four walls just the same.”

  She turned, goaded into answering. A brooding shadow lay on her face and her green eyes smoldered. “They’re my walls.”

  “Men got you under their thumb just the same. You got to play every dirty little game they bring you. Got to lie and cheat and steal and hurt somebody no matter which way you turn.”

  “I didn’t make the rules.”

  “You woulda spit in Biscara’s face once. Now you make deals like he was your brother. Amado’s your own monster. He wouldn’t o’ been nothin’ without you. He’s ten times worse’n Carbajal ever was. The people didn’t know what graft was till he come in. How would you know? In this place all the time, makin’ your money, spinnin’ your plots. Get out jist once, Teresa. Take a look at those people starvin’ on Galisteo. Count the beggars at your door every mornin’. I don’t know nothin’ about politics, but I kin see what you’ve done to this town.”

  “Kelly—”

 
; “All because you’re afraid.” He was on his elbows, breathing heavily with the effort of such a long speech. “This whole twisted goddamn thing you’ve built—all because you’re afraid. This ain’t freedom. You could have a million dollars. You could own this whole town. You’d still be trapped because you’d be afraid to trust one man in it.”

  “What do you know about freedom?” She was bent forward, her whole body trembling with the force of their antagonism. “Up on some mountain. Freezing in the winter, starving in the summer. Not a cent in your pocket. Living like some animal. Never knowing where your next meal comes from. Is that freedom?”

  She trailed off, breathing heavily, cheeks touched with flame. It was as if they had both spent their fury. He lay back, looking up at the ceiling.

  “You’ll know,” he said softly. “When you got it, you’ll know. It’s like an ache inside. It’s like flyin’ with the eagles.”

  She did not answer. After a moment she started for the door. Before she reached it someone knocked. She checked herself, then opened it. Don Augustín Gomez stood there, a bland smile on his gray-furred jowls. With him was Captain Perea.

  “Is the patient ready for our daily game?” Gomez asked.

  Teresa regained her composure. “Just in time,” she said. “The company of women bores him so.”

  “The captain is just back from Las Vegas with news of the Texans,” Gomez said. “I thought you would like to hear.”

  Interest kindled in Teresa’s eyes; she stepped back to let them enter. Perea strode into the room, holding his saber against one booted leg, bowing his greeting to Teresa. His tanned face always took on a glow in her presence, and his shining eyes never left her face. Kelly had never been able to fathom what lay between these two. If a man really had that much of a want on a woman, how could he stand around eternally murmuring compliments and looking at her like a lost puppy.

  “I hope it’s good news you bring, Captain,” Teresa said. There was always something a little maternal in her attitude toward him.