She shook his arm. “It’s not him you’ll be saving, Hilario. It’s your people, your country. If Amado is killed everything will go to pieces. The Americans will conquer us without a shot. Biscara could never pull things together. We have to save Amado. Between us we can control him, we can still make something decent out of this town—”
“You’ve told me that so many times before. It’s just gotten worse. What can we win, if he capitulates anyway?”
“He won’t. I’ve found the guns for the militia. You’ll have an army that will overwhelm the Americans.”
She saw it reach the military man in him. His eyes took on a shine and a fine sweat broke through the film of dust on his cheeks.
“There’s no time to explain. Just believe me. We’ve got to save Amado,” she said. He hesitated, then wheeled toward the front door. She caught his arm. “The Palace Avenue door. You’ll be under Biscara’s gun on San Francisco.”
He turned back and she ran with him through the countless rooms and halls to Palace Avenue. They hurried down the Avenue to the square. This was the only safe corner of the plaza, for it had been Gomez’s post. The dozen dragoons that had come with Perea were spread around the square, pushing the crowds back against the walls, clearing the way for the governor. A horse-holder stood with the two sentries at the Palace door, holding Perea’s handsome black mount. The colonel ran across the square toward the black, calling to a corporal.
“Lopez, gather your men here—”
Then—like a pall of smoke staining the sky above the flat roofs on the south side of the plaza—Teresa saw the dust. Amado, coming in off the trail.
She called sharply to Perea. But her voice was lost in the clatter of accouterments and the tramp of horses as the dragoons crossed the plaza from every side to form in front of Perea. He hadn’t heard Teresa, and he hadn’t seen the dust. By the time she reached Perea, the governor would be in the plaza. She was the only one who could stop Amado in time.
Picking up her skirts, she ran across the plaza toward the south side. Coughing in the dust raised by the dragoons. Shouldering through the knots of confused people. Hoping against hope that Biscara or Uvalde would not see her in the general confusion. Passing the cottonwoods. The sundial in the center. Seeing the yellow walls of La Fonda ahead. Seeing Amado’s mountainous figure on his great mule as he galloped down the street toward the plaza.
“Nicolas,” she called. “Stop, turn back—”
Ten feet from the square, he started reining in his mule. Skirts held high, stumbling and gasping, she reached the corner. Uvalde’s room in La Fonda was directly across from her now. He must have seen her, must know what it meant. Still running, she saw shadowy movement in the open window.
She knew she had but an instant left. As the mule ran by her, skidding to a clumsy halt, she reached up and grabbed Amado’s belt. She threw all her weight against it. The governor’s mouth popped open in surprise and he toppled from the saddle. As he fell, three shots cracked out in the plaza.
One of the bullets struck the mule and the beast screamed and reared. At the same time Amado hit the ground beside Teresa, his weight making the earth tremble. Hand still caught in his belt, she was pulled to one knee.
The wounded mule was running wild through the plaza. Perea’s dragoons had split into four squads, each squad charging toward a corner of the plaza, lances down. The sight must have panicked Captain Uvalde. With a wild shout he jumped from his window and tried to run for it. Two lancers caught up with him and spitted him from behind like a pig, lifting his body up, kicking and squalling, before they dropped it into the road and loosed their bloody blades.
Crouched by the governor, with the dust settling about her, Teresa saw that Perea led the squad charging Biscara’s post on the corner of San Francisco. The colonel waved his saber in a signal to his men, his shout cutting through the other babble.
“A pair of you down Galisteo to the Alameda. I’ll take the front.”
As they split up, Amado heaved his bulk to a sitting position. He was wheezing, stunned. He looked about him, the glazed look receding from his eyes. He glanced at La Fonda, then at the wall of the house behind him. There was a bullet hole in the wall, about the height of a mounted man’s chest. He drew a shaky breath, trying to grin.
“Gracias, Chiquita. Had you not pulled, that bullet would be in me instead of the wall.”
She hardly heard him. She rose from her knees, watching Perea as he swung off his horse before the Arballo house. The door opened before his rush and he disappeared inside. The two dragoons following ran in after him. Another dragoon came at a gallop through the crowd.
“Valdez has escaped by the Alameda. Corporal Ortiz took a detail after him—”
“Join them,” Amado squealed. “Follow him down. Kill him!” He puffed and wheezed, trying to get to one knee. “Teresa help me up.”
She paid him no heed. Wondering why there was so much fear in her, she started toward the Arballo house. Perea and his two men had left their horses at the door and a crowd was gathering around the stamping animals. Teresa was halfway to the corner when the muffled shots came from inside the building.
A moment later a man staggered from the door. He had a smoking pistol in one hand. The crowd spread from him in fright. Looking over his shoulder at the house, he stumbled three steps into the street, then fell forward on his face. It was Don Biscara.
Before Teresa reached him, one of the dragoons ran from the door. He went to Biscara and turned him over. The man was dead.
The dragoon straightened, saw Teresa. “We came in from the back,” he said. “Drove him toward the front of the house. The colonel met him in the sitting-room—” He hesitated, lips pale. “You had better come.”
Colonel Perea lay on the sitting-room floor. His blood made a spreading stain on the black and white jerga beneath him. He had both hands clenched against the bullet hole in his chest and his handsome face was pale and drawn with pain. She knelt beside him; he heard the rustle of her skirts and opened his eyes. His voice was feeble and shaken.
“Have they sent for the priest?”
“He’s coming, Hilario.”
“Teresa,” he whispered. “Where are you?”
He reached up, pawing frantically for her. She caught his hand and held it against her breasts. Then, with a sob, she bent to him and took him in her arms and put her face against his and began to cry softly and hopelessly while the daylight faded from the windows and the darkness crept in.
28
It was the night of August 17th. The plaza was empty, a yellow lake bordered by the broken black shadows of the surrounding buildings. The streets were empty, spreading out from the square like the crooked spokes of a wheel, losing identity as they twisted and turned into the blank mud walls of the houses.
For the people had been told that the Army of the West had passed Las Vegas and was marching on the capital. The people had been told that the Americans would brand them on the cheek like cattle, rape their women, kill their babies, turn their men into slavery. And those who had not fled to the mountains huddled in their darkened hovels, shivering and saying their Ave Marias and waiting to hear whether they were conquerors or the conquered.
Kelly Morgan moved like a shadow through the willows of the river. Only his long years in the wilderness had enabled him to get past the countless Mexican patrols in the mountains rimming Santa Fe.
Kearny had known what was involved. He’d made it plain that the choice was completely up to Kelly. He’d said a man had maybe a fifty-fifty chance of getting through. That was stretching it. But it didn’t matter. Kelly knew what was involved too. A hundred to one chance—he’d still have come. After what O’Brien said about Teresa they couldn’t have stopped him.
Kelly had hoped she would see the light on this one, had hoped she would realize she wasn’t big eno
ugh to stop the whole damn U.S.A. But apparently she was still trying to juggle everything on her head. Only this time it was too big for her. The thing was going to blow up in her face. And it wouldn’t come when the Army of the West marched into Santa Fe. It would come a long time before that, according to O’Brien, and Teresa would be caught right in the middle of the whole explosion.
Kelly thought of Biscara and Ryker and Gomez and Amado and Uvalde and a dozen others she had used and twisted and dangled on a string all these years—any one of them capable of killing her if she made a single false step in this last big tightrope walk. And he prayed to a God he’d never known that he wasn’t too late.
Moving like a rat against the walls, he made his way to San Francisco Street. At the corner of the Arballo house he stopped, looking down toward the plaza. It was empty, save for the shadowy movement of sentries under the portal of the Palace.
At last he took the chance and crossed San Francisco, ducking into the blackness of Burro Alley. He ran down to the familiar door, knocking on it. Anticipation was an ache in him now. He wanted the sight of her so bad it hurt.
The door was opened a crack; there was a gasp, and it was pulled wider, to reveal Pepita, one fat hand to her gaping mouth in shock.
“I want to see Teresa.”
Pepita gulped, blinked, shook her head wildly. “Señor Kelly, we think you’re dead—”
“Teresa!”
“Señor—she is at the Palace.” Fear contorted her face. She clutched his arm. “Something bad is happening. Get her out of it, señor, please!”
He couldn’t move for a moment. Then he turned and started to run. It had begun already. He knew it as sure as he knew his name. This was her last big gate card and she’d started to turn it already and God damn him to an eternal hell if he was too late.
* * * *
The guards at the Palace door were expecting Teresa and they passed her through without comment. The Assembly chamber was ominously dark and quiet but she saw that there was a light in the governor’s quarters.
Innocent admitted her, fawning and grinning like a jackanapes.
“The crows fly before the wind, señorita. The short man and the fool are seen from afar.”
She did not answer him tonight. Her mind was too filled with the bitter thought of Perea. Innocent frowned, rubbed a thumb over his bulbous nose, and led her to Amado. The governor had already sent his wife to Albuquerque and was alone in the bedchamber. Here was the bed Santa Anna had sent him, a thing of glittering brass whorls and embossed brass posts upholding a complicated canopy crowned with an elaborate brass floral piece. It was a thing of blinding elegance in the mud-walled room, almost overwhelming the governor himself. He had been pacing agitatedly, but he stopped when he saw her look at the bed. He made a feeble attempt at a chuckle.
“What blood pressure it would give my wife to know you were in this room tonight.”
She made no attempt to answer. Her eyes swung across the ornate walnut wardrobe, the claw-legged table, the red plush sofa—all trying so pompously to be regal and splendid, and achieving nothing but tawdriness. She looked at Amado. An oily sweat gleamed in the folds of his multiple chins and dampened his shirt till it clung like paste to the gross bulge of his belly. His lips were slack now, petulant as a child’s; his little eyes were barely visible behind the veined dissolution of their pouched lids. It was as if she saw him for the first time. Why hadn’t she seen him like this before, as a man, instead of a mere tool to gain her ends? She had used his selfishness, his ego, his cruelty, his greed all for her own purposes, without really knowing what they were, what they meant, beyond what they could do for her.
“What is it?”
He was staring at her. She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He frowned, breathing in shallow puffs: “I suppose it’s this afternoon. Perea’s death hit us both hard, Teresa. He was the finest. Pues”—he shrugged—”he died with a gun in his hand. What soldier asks more? And you.” He turned to her. “I owe a million thanks. Running across the plaza under their very guns. Risking your life for me.”
“For you?”
He locked his hands behind him, pacing ponderously across the room. The movement made him wheeze softly.
“We have to decide tonight, Teresa. The Americans will be at Apache Pass tomorrow.” He stopped beside the bed, toeing a heavy black satchel. “I suppose you know how much O’Brien offered me to capitulate. I don’t know whether it came from the traders here in town or the American government. Either way, it is a tempting offer.”
What kind o’ freedom’s this?
Kelly’s voice, out of the past, almost as if he were in this room, beside Teresa, speaking.
Men got you under their thumbs just the same…. Got to lie and cheat and steal and hurt somebody no matter which way you turn.
She looked at her hands. An hour ago they had been dark with Perea’s blood. He had represented everything that was fine and loyal and honorable in her people. And her hands had been dark with his blood.
“Fifty thousand dollars would give a man a fine start somewhere else,” Amado said. “Chihuahua, Vera Cruz, any of the departments could use a governor with my talents—and that kind of fortune.”
Amado’s your own monster. He wouldn’t o’ been nothin’ without you. I don’t know nothin’ about politics, but I kin see what you done to this town.
“On the other hand,” Amado said, “I could cut the Americans to pieces in the pass if my militia was armed.” He glanced at the case again, chuckling slyly. “It would be even better to be governor here, with fifty thousand dollars.”
All because you’re afraid. This whole twisted goddamn thing you’ve built—all because you’re afraid. You could own the whole town. You’d still be trapped.
“Were you able to get any guns?”
Kelly had been right. She had struggled to escape one subjection only to become enslaved by another—the subjection of lies and cheating, conspiracy and plot. And fear. Her fear had perpetuated Amado. And to perpetuate him she had killed Villapando, and Perea.
If only she had gone with Kelly when he first asked, if she had refused to lure Villapando for them, if she hadn’t asked Perea to save Amado from Biscara….
“Teresa.”
“What?”
“I said could you find any guns?”
In that moment all the last years seemed to sweep against her, gagging her with the knowledge of what would happen if she stopped fighting now. Then she looked at her hands again. What a travesty that it should take Perea’s death to make her see the truth. It was like a debt that she had to pay, to him, to Villapando, to Kelly, to all those who had ever suffered by her fear.
“No,” she said. “There are no guns.”
Amado’s sensual lips compressed and his chin sank against his neck, creating half a dozen fat furrows. He was but a foot from her now, watching her closely.
“And if I capitulate,” he said. “What of you?”
In his face she could see some of the sly lechery that had always seemed to characterize their relationship. But now there was something more, a shine to his eyes, a beaded moisture on his upper lip, hinting at the real needs he had always hidden behind that mask. She had sensed those needs before, had felt that the lechery and the buffoonery were merely a defense mechanism. As long as he made a sly joke of it her rejection couldn’t hurt him. But underneath it wasn’t a joke.
And now she had to use it.
She lowered her eyes. “I suppose I’ll be finished, Nicolas.”
“You don’t have to be.” He moved closer. He reeked of pomade and cigar smoke and sweat. “Instead of the end, Teresa, it could be the beginning. You always said it. We rose together. We could do it again. The governor of Chihuahua is in disfavor with Mexico City. The army is disaffected. A grito, a pronunc
iamiento, and we could be in again.”
She bit her lip. This would be the hardest part. This last act, this last lie.
He clutched her arms, breathing heavily. “More than just partners, Teresa. You know how little my wife and I have left. You know how I’ve always wanted it, with you. If I thought you would go with me, that way, I would abdicate tonight.”
Her lower lip began to tremble. She didn’t try to stop it. She looked up into his face and she felt a feverish flush run into her cheek. It made a convincing picture.
“Nicolas,” she breathed. “Why did I fight you so long?”
“Alma de mi vida!”
With a gusty sound he came to her, took her in his arms. She permitted it. He smelled of sweat and perfume and sour chile and punche, and being held against the perspiring blubber of his belly was like being pressed into the softness of a hog, a eunuch. She let him kiss her and she cursed him and began to cry because this was the last role she had to play, this thing of disgust and revulsion and strange pity for a man who was at once ridiculous and frightening, a buffoon and a tyrant, a giant and a little boy, a man she had sometimes admired, sometimes feared, and often hated. He thought the curse was passion and the crying for him.
“Teresa, I never guessed, you always seemed against me, how could you hide so much feeling for me?”
A hysterical little laugh ran through her sobbing. “Because it’s over now, Nicolas. I can show you what I really feel, no more hiding, no more being afraid, no more acting, just what I really feel. I’m thinking of a man I hated and loved all at once, a man I never really understood, a man who told me many things that I didn’t believe, but now I know, now I know—”
“Of course you do. We’ll go south together. You and I—”
He tried to kiss her again but she pushed him away, her face all twisted and wet with tears. “You’ve got to go now, while there is still time.”
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