The Star in the Meadow (The Spanish Brand Book 4)

by Carla Kelly

  “I am taking five of my men to the Durán estancia,” he told her. “Do I ask too much, or would you accompany us? Señora Mondragón is too worn down, but I want to hear your whole story, too. Will you?”

  He seemed to want her to say yes. “I will,” she said. “Let me dress.”

  He bowed and closed the door. She dressed hurriedly and started down the hall, only to stop a moment and peer into Paloma’s room because the door was open and she felt concern for her friend. What she saw left her at peace.

  Both children sat quietly on the end of their sleeping mother’s bed, Claudito stacking blocks and Soledad concentrating on cat’s cradle. Catalina smiled to see Paloma curled up close to what must be Marco’s pillow, hugging it lengthwise to her body. Hurry home, Marco, Catalina thought, and not without some wistfulness. You are missed. Nodding to the children, she continued down the hall, moving slower than she would have wished, but grateful to be moving at all.

  A league’s distance from the Double Cross to the narrow, scarcely used road that led to Estancia Durán was hardly enough for her to tell the story of their incarceration in an adobe outbuilding, but Catalina had a talent for condensation.

  “It will always be a mystery to me that two fools such as Gaspar and Pedro should hoodwink everyone so completely,” Catalina said as the estancia came into sight, the place she had vowed never to visit again.

  “I think I am always going to smart a bit, thinking how a brilliant commander and a truly astute Comanche saw absolutely nothing,” he said. “I don’t joke about Eckapeta.”

  She admired his profile for a moment, wondering if this excellent man would ever forgive himself for a lifetime of being perhaps all too human. She rode in silence, thinking of her own arrival in this lovely valley, all prickly and ready to find offense, weary to her heart’s core of rejection and disdain. She thought how Paloma had told her in that dreadful hut how much she, starchy Catalina Ygnacio, had changed. She had poo-pooed the notion, but Paloma had been right in that and in so many other things.

  She smiled to think of what she had told Paloma only last evening as they left Estancia Durán and decided to share it with Joaquim. The look in his eyes as he watched her nearly made her forget what she was going to say. He cares, she thought, entranced.

  “We rescued ourselves,” she said. “I will tell you how we did it.”

  Whether unoccupied for a night or ten years, abandoned places have a similar look of sadness. A glance was enough to make Joaquim and his soldiers suspect their quarry had fled.

  Discounting a geriatric horse in the barn nosing in its own evacuation for tiny bits of corn, the place bore no resemblance to a working ranch. “Feed that pathetic horse,” he told one of his soldiers. “And if you find no food, at least let it out to graze.” Joaquim frowned at the ruin of a good horse. “If no grass, shoot it.”

  The private dismounted and hurried into the barn. Each of Joaquim’s nerve endings went into high alert when the soldier shouted in surprise, then came to the door of the barn holding a sheet covered in rust. Catalina clutched his arm and he felt her shake. He dismounted and helped her down as the private held out what looked like a sheet with eye holes.

  “I told you Maria cut her own arms to streak La Llorona’s shroud with blood,” Catalina said. “Our enterprise would have failed without her.”

  The private dropped the sheet in the dust of the courtyard and led out the old horse, a nag so thin that his legs seemed to knock together.

  “Those wretched twins never fed anyone or anything here,” Catalina said, unable to tamp down her anger. “Thin people, thin animals, and nothing but cutting words, the kind that wound the heart.” She looked at him. “The kind of words I’ve heard all my life.” She picked up the sheet with the long brown splotches, shook off the dust and folded it carefully. “I might keep this to remind myself just how much brave people will do to help others, if they hear kind words.”

  “Do you need such a reminder?” he asked. “I personally doubt it.” He took a deep breath of his own. “I could keep it in my campaign chest … you know, until you decide if you need it.”

  “You could,” she agreed.

  Joaquim motioned for the others to follow him. Catalina indicated the kitchen with a nod of her head.

  “Pedro surprised me in here. He had been severely beaten the day before by Roque Durán,” she said, then turned away her head. “I can’t look in there. Miguel started cutting my hair in the kitchen.”

  Joaquim looked. “No one.” He let his gaze travel around the room. “Was there no food anywhere in this place? What did the brothers live on?”

  “Some cornmeal and endless bottles of wine. I never saw them entirely sober,” Catalina told him from the hall. She pointed ahead. “They spent most of their time in the bookroom, which seemed to adjoin their bedchamber.”

  She hung back as he moved where she pointed. “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything,” Joaquim said.

  “It was all a show,” she told him in her forthright way. “I was terrified.” He heard the pain in her voice because he was used to her now. He reminded himself that someone less discerning than the brilliant leader of Presidio Santa Maria would have noticed nothing.

  “I told myself years ago to strike first, before someone had a chance to wound me,” she said, her voice so soft now that he had to put his arm around her shoulder and bend close. His own heart felt less pummeled when she seemed to blend into him as a soft woman would.

  “I’ve done that, too,” he admitted.

  She gave him a look of perfect understanding. “Have we both stopped being foolish?” she whispered in his ear this time.

  “Perhaps time will tell,” he hedged.

  “That’s not good enough,” she said in that stringent way of hers that he was coming to enjoy, because he knew now that it ran so counter to the tenderness within.

  He opened the bookroom door. Again she refused to enter, but stood in the hall, directing him to look in the next room, a place so filthy that he didn’t want to stay long.

  “I told them stories every night, each one more terrifying. I saved ‘La Llorona’ for last.”

  “You found it easy to work on wine-soaked brains,” he commented, thinking how that could have been him, given enough years and disappointments.

  “They were putty, actually.”

  Joaquim started because she stood beside him now. “Don’t creep up on me!” he declared and patted his heart.

  She gave him a little jab in his side, which meant his arm had to go around her again. “And … and you came back here in a bloody sheet, wailing and screaming.” Just thinking about it made the hairs on his neck stand at attention.

  “It wasn’t so hard, Joaquim,” she said. “All I had to do was think of the many nights when Paloma cried for her infant whom she last saw in a broken-down carriage with a dead man nearby.” She shuddered. “I swear I will hear her screams forever! I thought of her and screamed and wailed.”

  What could he say to that? He held out his hand for her and she came a little closer, holding out her own hand.

  “When they both collapsed in a heap, looking for all the world like desperate rats, I grabbed Roque’s keys and opened that garden gate. Maria lay nearly dead beside it, so we picked her up and used La Llorona’s sheet to carry her to the barn.”

  Soldiers followed them and looked in each room as Joaquim directed, walking past the kitchen again, down the hall and outside, where the garden gate remained locked.

  “Paloma locked the gate and threw the keys over the wall,” she said, remembering the determination on her friend’s face.

  “Break it down,” Joaquim ordered his men. His most resourceful private found a pry bar somewhere and yanked the door off its hinges.

  “We could have used that,” Catalina said, her voice wistful.

  When she still seemed reluctant to enter the garden, he tugged gently on her hand. After that first step through the gate, she seemed more at eas
e, even though she hung onto him with a death’s grip. Maybe she wasn’t at ease. Two steps, a third, and then she stopped.

  “It seems so small,” she said. “No one fed us until the second day. Paloma squeezed out her own milk and we drank that.”

  Resourceful woman, he thought. No wonder I admire ladies in general and these ladies in particular.

  “Go around to the side. You will see the hole we dug,” Catalina directed. “Where are the keys Paloma threw over the wall?”

  “I have them,” called one of the privates. “Here, Teniente.”

  Joaquim did as she said and walked around the adobe shed. He stared at the hole a long time, wondering how even desperate women could have managed to pull themselves out through such a tiny opening. He sniffed. The air was redolent with skunk spray.

  “Good thing you weren’t here for the skunk,” he commented.

  Catalina’s sudden laughter startled him. “The skunk found us. Paloma named the skunk Señor Francisco and declared that the saint himself must have sent the zorillo to keep us company. She fed him tortillas,” Catalina told him. He heard the humor in her voice now. “Crawl inside, Teniente Gasca.”

  “You’re being silly,” he teased back. He stood before the door and tried the keys until he found the right one. “After you,” he said, gesturing grandly.

  Catalina backed away even farther. “Never.”

  The private stooped inside, swore, and backed out as though La Llorona sat inside waiting to pounce, blood streaming from her gouged eyes. Mouth open, he pointed toward the door.

  “I thought you were a soldier most brave,” Joaquim joked and bent down to look inside, too. What he saw made him gasp and leap back, too.

  A dead man lay there, hands on his throat. The air was thick with the stinging odor of skunk spray.

  “Can a man die of that?” the private asked him, amazement in his voice. “I know it’s bad, but really, is it fatal, sir?”

  Going against every instinct, Joaquim came closer and squatted by the body. He took a careful look, and saw nothing to indicate foul play. His eyes watered against the stench of skunk. A mystery. Could a man die of fear? Perhaps his heart gave out. God knows a steady diet of cornmeal and wine would likely hasten the grave. Still, a mystery.

  Joaquim turned to Catalina. “Would you … would you come closer and tell us who this is?” he asked.

  He watched resolution replace her own fear. She walked closer and stood by the open door for a long moment, as if steeling herself to look inside the hut she must have thought she would never leave alive. He watched the resolution on her marvelous face as she ducked inside the one place in the world she surely never wanted to see again. One look was all she needed.

  “It is Miguel Durán,” she said in a voice that held no remorse, not even a grain of it. “He is the one who cut my hair first.” She shuddered and turned away.

  “It appears he came to a fitting end,” Joaquim remarked. “There’s no skunk around now, and how did it get in this garden anyway, if the gate was kept closed?”

  “Paloma will probably tell you it was sent by San Francisco himself,” she said. “I might have laughed at her earlier, myself.”

  “But not now?”

  She shrugged and turned away. Joaquim directed two of his men to drag out the dead man and cover him with the bloody sheet. “We’ll come back later for the body,” he said. “Maybe.”

  While Catalina sat on her horse, they searched the house and all the outbuildings thoroughly, finding no sign of Roque or Pedro. They did find endless empty wine bottles, some standing in ranks as tall and straight as soldiers, others thrown against adobe walls to shatter.

  Joaquim needed no order to round up his soldiers and get them on horseback again, so eager was everyone to leave such a blighted place. The private he had put in charge of the half-dead horse trailed along behind them, giving the animal time to follow. Joaquim directed his men toward the presidio and food for the horse, and told them he would be along later.

  He rode in silence beside Catalina for precious minutes, trying to work up the nerve to speak from his heart before the Double Cross came into view. Whatever glib urbanity from his not-so-long-ago free-wheeling days deserted him now. He felt more tongue-tied than a boy longing after a skinny girl.

  Be blunt, he told himself. Catalina is not one for flowery words. He thought a moment, cleared his throat, and surprised himself. “ ‘If I could live on love alone, and prosper all my days, I never would your presence leave, but breathe deep of your ways.’ ”

  Catalina’s face colored from the throat up, giving rise to suspicion she had never been addressed in a poet’s language before. She must think I am a stupid imbecile, he thought in misery.

  “ ‘If, perchance you think of me, and wish to know me more, Just drop a note into the post, or open your front door,’ ” she continued, blushing in earnest now. She hesitated, then took another breath to say, “It seems we know the same obscure poets, my friend.”

  It was the “my friend,” that made Joaquim Gasca, reformed ladies’ man, dismount, take a look to make sure his soldiers were on the road to Santa Maria, and help Catalina Ygnacio, reformed sharp-tongued auditor’s daughter, from her horse.

  “I don’t remember the rest of it,” he said, pulling her close, taking a chance.

  “Something about love and kisses and promises,” she whispered. “What I used to think was silliness that only happened to others.”

  “I think it’s happening to us,” he told her. “Catalina Ygnacio, in some circles—most—I am considered a mountebank and a rascal.”

  She put her fingers to his lips and he kissed them. “Not here in Valle del Sol. Stop talking and just ask me.”

  He did, stumbling and stuttering and nothing like the man he used to be. She listened patiently, said yes several times before the good news penetrated, then a louder yes, which made him laugh and start to slap her on the bottom.

  He stopped in time, or maybe not, because the woman he was going to marry now put his hand on her hip anyway. He squeezed her, which made her giggle like a much younger lady.

  “Should I ask your father?” he said.

  “Just tell him,” Catalina replied. She let him help her back onto her horse. “He asked me only this morning if you were ever going to get around to proposing.”

  “And?”

  “I thought perhaps you might,” she said shyly.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  In which a husband redeems himself

  Two days resting in bed was Paloma’s limit. She discovered it was possible to tire of flan. She also wondered if Marco really felt no irritation with her over her dark mood. Why was it taking him so long to return from Río Napestle?

  Don’t think about it, Paloma, she told herself, grateful for the early morning distraction of her brother Claudio, who rode back with the servant who had taken the message of his sister’s return. He had news of his own, once he had hugged her within an inch of her life and babbled something about giving Marco a black eye and would her husband ever forgive him?

  “You did what?”

  “I smacked him when he said he had to go with Toshua and leave you lost,” Claudio said.

  “I fear my husband has been pulled in too many directions for most of his life,” she said softly. “Pray God he will return soon.” She had to change the subject before she started to wail like La Llorona. “What is your good news?”

  “Graci was brought to bed with a son last night, or I would have been here sooner,” he told her, sitting on her bed along with Soledad and Claudito. “Both Mama and baby are fine, and Cecilia is coping,” he added, with a wink at Soledad.

  He stayed a few more minutes, but Paloma knew even this short visit was too much for a new father. She sent him on his way after hearing him apologize yet again for blacking Marco’s eye, and teased him that the juez de campo might not bring charges.

  On the third morning after her return from the horrible house of the Dur�
�n twins, Paloma rose and got dressed—standing still a moment because the room did spin a bit—and made her way down the hall to the kitchen.

  She looked in on Soledad and Claudito first, standing there silently thanking God and all his numerous saints and angels that they were alive and well and much as she had left them.

  After greeting Sancha, who knew better than to try to force her back to bed, Paloma let herself out the door into the kitchen garden, where she watched the beans and peppers waving in a surprisingly gentle breeze and vowed never to take even the humblest vegetable for granted. A few days ago, she would have eaten the entire plant, leaves and all.

  As much as she dreaded even thinking about the last week, Paloma knew she had changed. If I feel melancholy again, I know it will pass, she silently told the garden vegetables. Please let Marco believe that of me.

  She crossed the courtyard to the little home of Señora Villarreal, who happily handed Juanito to her. She made herself comfortable and opened her bodice to her son, who rooted greedily, then settled into a slow suck, one that soothed her heart. To her infinite relief, she felt that exquisite near-pain as her milk let down.

  Señora Villarreal had been watching her face. “You feel some milk?” she asked. “I knew it would return.”

  Paloma nodded, too overcome to speak.

  “There will be even more tomorrow,” Señora Villarreal assured her, when Juanito became restless. “Put him to your other breast, then I will finish up.”

  Paloma did as Juanito’s dear nurse told her, handing him back after both her breasts were empty. “I should go drink more milk and eat.”

  Juanito settled into the remainder of his breakfast with Señora Villarreal, whose own small son slept nearby. “I would say that in two more days, we will turn Juanito over to you entirely, Señora Mondragón.”