Paloma and the Horse Traders Read online

  Suddenly shy themselves, the men looked away. To her amusement, Paloma noticed that neither man stopped eating, even though her candor had embarrassed them. There was hope for such men.

  “What are your names, please?” she asked.

  “Your husband is really the juez de campo?” Red Bandanna asked.

  “He is, but he is sometimes inclined to overlook misdemeanors in districts other than his own.”

  “In that case, I am Lorenzo Diaz. Paco Diaz was my late brother, and this is Rogelio, my ….” He looked at the younger man. “What are you?”

  Paloma stared down at her posole and tried not to laugh.

  “I was your slave, but you said that after seven years or so, I’d be free. Has it been seven years?”

  Rogelio’s eyes were earnest, but vague enough to make Paloma suspect he was a little slow.

  “Not quite yet, Rogelio,” Lorenzo said, after a long tug at his beard.

  “How much longer?”

  “Eight or nine months,” Lorenzo said with a vague wave of his hand. “You have other plans? Does the viceroy in Mexico City want your opinion on land grants?”

  “No ….” Rogelio said doubtfully, which told Paloma all she needed to know about the slave’s mental acuity. Perhaps Lorenzo Diaz’s carelessness with dates was less self-serving than it seemed, its goal being to keep someone like Rogelio alive in a dangerous place.

  “More tortillas, please,” Lorenzo said. His gaze met Paloma’s and he winked, which sent her back into her napkin, because she wanted to laugh.

  Paloma recovered and moved the covered dish closer. “There is flan, too,” she told them.

  “I do not remember the last time I had flan,” Lorenzo said. “My mother used to make it.” He sighed, and glanced at Rogelio. “You probably don’t think I even had a mother.”

  Rogelio shrugged, his eyes on the posole, which Paloma moved closer, too. He nodded his thanks, and she saw the unhappiness in his face. Maybe he understood more than Lorenzo thought.

  When they finished the posole and tortillas, Sancha brought in the flan with an unexpected flourish. She set it, all quivering and fragrant, with burned sugar and rum, in front of Paloma, who dished out generous helpings. They were rough men and just barely clean, but their appreciation for what was an ordinary meal touched her heart. She doubted they had a home anywhere. Hadn’t Claudio said something about not being under a roof since their family’s own roof near El Paso?

  While they ate, she told them Claudio’s story. Rogelio listened and nodded, his attention more taken with the flan, but Lorenzo put down his spoon and stared at her.

  “You were in that burnt out hacienda?”

  “That would depend on when you found Claudio. After a day under the bed, I set out for El Paso, and some soldiers found me.”

  “We never saw any soldiers,” Lorenzo said quickly. Paloma doubted they ever hung around anywhere long enough for troops to arrive.

  “Claudio told me he was bleeding in a ditch from that lance wound,” Paloma said, and swallowed, feeling her brother’s pain all over again, and her own distress as everything she knew disappeared in blood and fire.

  Lorenzo surprised her by covering both her hands with his. She did not pull away, even though Rogelio’s eyes were wide and his mouth open. She doubted he had ever seen much tenderness in the horse trader before.

  “He nearly died, señora,” Lorenzo said. He gave her hands a squeeze and let go, after sending a sour look in Rogelio’s direction. “We couldn’t take him to the Franciscans in El Paso, where they have an infirmary.”

  “I was there,” she said, and put her hand to her mouth as the implication struck. “I was there! If only you had ….” She stopped, remembering her own childish promise to herself not to endlessly revisit the event, because the pain was too great. It was greater now, because she and Claudio had found each other. “Why didn’t you?”

  Lorenzo looked away. “We were in some trouble with the law in that district. Some horses that weren’t strictly ours to trade.”

  Paloma nodded. She picked up her spoon again, but Sancha’s delicious flan had lost its taste. “What’s done is done. I’m just grateful you saved my brother’s life.”

  “We took him to some Apaches, who cleaned out that hole in his side. He had packed it with dirt to stop the bleeding, and there was pus and matter.” Lorenzo shuddered. “The Apaches knew what to do. We left him there and then came back for him, and he stayed with us. My brother Paco had lost a son and wife in a Comanche raid, so he called him Diego, after his dead boy.”

  “Claudio said he looked for me every time you came to a village.”

  “He did, though he would never say why, or who he was looking for. Finally, after years of that, he stopped.”

  They sat in silence. Finally Lorenzo slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “We’ll wait outside.”

  “You’re welcome to sit in the sala,” Paloma said.

  “No, dama. We’re used to being outside. We feel hemmed in here, even though your hacienda is lovely.”

  “At least sit in the galería, señor,” she told Lorenzo. “I would not consider myself much of a hostess if you just stood outside in the hot sun. Sancha will bring you wine and biscoches.”

  Lorenzo made an awkward bow, which Rogelio didn’t even attempt to imitate. She walked them to the front door, even though Lorenzo protested that the kitchen door was good enough for them. “We’re not exactly hidalgos,” he told her, embarrassed.

  “You are to me,” she said simply, and gave a more elegant bow, grand but not showy. “Thanks to you, I have a brother again.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In which Claudio makes stupid plans

  “I know those horses,” Claudio said, as they approached the open gates of the Double Cross. “My friends have arrived. I hope they did not frighten Paloma.”

  Marco rode slightly ahead. Claudio noticed that the nearer they came to the Double Cross, the faster he urged his horse.

  Toshua, that Comanche he knew he would never trust, must have noticed the quizzical look on Claudio’s face. “He does that. His first wife and twins died while he was gone on a brand inspection trip. I don’t think he even realizes that he is nearly at a gallop. He worries.”

  “Even now?”

  Toshua looked around him elaborately. “Has your colony suddenly become safer?”

  Trust a Comanche to make him feel like a fool without even breaking a sweat. Claudio ignored him, as much as a man could ignore a Comanche, and glanced at Joaquim Gasca, who seemed to be observing the Double Cross through an engineer’s eyes.

  “Hard to find, eh? I did the same thing,” Claudio said, riding closer to the private or lieutenant, or whatever he was. “Quite a marvel, isn’t it? The gray stones make it nearly invisible.”

  “Without a doubt,” Joaquim said, “although I can see one improvement that would make it even safer.”

  “Don’t hesitate to tell Marco then, when he slows down,” Claudio joked, then flinched at the gallows look that Toshua threw his way. “Someday he has to realize that Paloma is safe inside, doesn’t he, Toshua?”

  “You have never loved a woman, have you?” was all Toshua said, before he neatly put wings to his own horse.

  Claudio watched him. As much as he hated Comanches, he could never ignore the elegant way that someone not so tall and with a bit of a paunch could turn into Pegasus, almost.

  Claudio rode beside Joaquim, his eyes on the horses grazing outside the stone walls. “I wonder: do you think these traders would take this superannuated nag of mine in exchange for one of those beauties?”

  “Highly unlikely,” Claudio told him. He edged his horse closer to Joaquim so he didn’t have to raise his voice. “I believe several of these horses sort of fell into Lorenzo Diaz’s hands in Isleta, where I was supposed to meet up with them, after I collected my money from Marco.”

  Joaquim twisted in his saddle to regard Claudio. “You do realize that Señor Mo
ndragón is a juez de campo?”

  “Claro! If they have spoken to Paloma, they know, too. I have a feeling that my compadres will not want to linger overlong at the Double Cross.”

  “What will you do?”

  It was a good question, one that Claudio had not resolved in his mind. “I honestly do not know. Don’t tell my sister, please.”

  “You would actually leave with these horse traders, when you have a better way before you here at the Double Cross?” Joaquim asked. “This is the finest land grant in Valle del Sol!”

  “It doesn’t belong to me. Horse trading is what I have known for years,” Claudio said.

  “You know the Mondragóns want you to stay,” Joaquim told him. “I mean, I would, if the boot were on the other foot. Nobody cares what happens to me, and here are these good people, your people.”

  “What would I do here? Work for Marco? Become a farmer? Raise sheep? I know I’m a good horse trader.”

  “You can’t change?”

  Joaquim shook his head and turned away, coaxing his pathetic mount into a stumbling trot, leaving Claudio alone with the traders’ horses, quietly cropping grass and ignoring him, too.

  You handled that well, idiot, Claudio thought, angry at himself. He thought he might sulk a bit outside the walls, but his horse knew where the barn was, and where there would be grain, and went forward of his own accord.

  “Traitor horse,” Claudio said. “Are you part of a conspiracy to keep me here?”

  His horse had nothing to say, so Claudio let him lead the way through the open gates where archers watched from the parapet.

  The sight that met his eyes made him rein in, and stare in amazement. “Paloma, only you could do this,” he said softly.

  Marco had dismounted and was standing next to Paloma in a typical pose, his arm around his wife’s shoulders and his son on one hip. Nothing unusual there.

  What made Claudio’s eyes nearly pop from his head was the sight of Lorenzo Diaz, horse trader and ramshackle adventurer, sitting meekly in a chair with a towel around his neck as Graciela sheared him like a sheep.

  His heavy beard, where probably countless little creatures had dwelt for years, was gone, revealing heretofore unknown scars and a bit of an underbite. The slave was working on Lorenzo’s hair now, combing and clipping until it was shoulder length like Claudio’s own.

  Amazed, Claudio turned his attention to Rogelio, a slave still, probably because no one could remember the terms of the original agreement of his servitude and he was none too bright. Rogelio had been skinned first, his hair tied back neatly now with a black bow, probably from Marco’s clothing chest. Without his whiskers, he was handsomer than Lorenzo by far. Rogelio kept stroking his face, as though unable to believe what had happened to him.

  Lorenzo, you old fart, Claudio thought. You probably made Rogelio go first, to test the water.

  Lorenzo looked up and hailed him. “Diego—no, no, Claudio—Señora Mondragón says I am un hombre muy guapo y elegante!”

  Paloma turned her face into Marco’s shirt and laughed. “I never said that, Lorenzo! I possibly mentioned that you might be sought after by the ladies now.”

  How did she do that? Claudio wondered, stunned by his little sister’s skills. In all the years he had known that hard man, Lorenzo had never taken a bath, figuring that occasional rainwater and dips in whatever river they forded was enough for any man. Lorenzo had whacked at his beard now and then, sawing with a knife, but never with such skill as Graciela exhibited as she combed and cut.

  “Lorenzo, are you planning to give up trading and become un hidalgo?” he teased.

  Lorenzo gave him such a look then—three parts disgust and one part pity. “Your sister kindly asked us to bathe because strong smells trouble her right now, in her family way.”

  My shy sister said that? Claudio asked himself. “And the hair, too?”

  He shrugged. “One thing led to another until I found myself sitting in this chair with a towel around my neck.”

  “Lorenzo and Rogelio are so kind,” Paloma said. “I never met two more obliging gentlemen. Look how fine they are now.” She stepped away from Marco’s loose hold on her. “A few more minutes, and I will call you to dinner.”

  “I hope there will be more flan,” Lorenzo called after her.

  Claudio shook his head. Flan? This from the man who had no qualms about eating anything that crawled and didn’t fight back too hard? Claudio distinctly remembered a dinner of javelina, eaten raw because they were starving.

  Good God. Clean a man up, promise him good food, served on china plates, and probably a bed with real sheets, and he becomes a stranger. I don’t know you, Claudio thought.

  He stared at the hacienda, home to charming strangers, one of them a sister he had given up for dead years ago. The skinny, spunky child had turned into a poised Spanish gentlewoman who reminded him vaguely of the mother he tried not to think of, because his last view of her gave him nightmares for years.

  I could leave tomorrow with Lorenzo and Rogelio, he told himself. He looked back at the open gate, which he knew would close at dusk or sooner, given any hint of danger. His heart started to beat faster at even the thought of such confinement, he who had spent so many years on the plains, dodging Indians, starving and feasting in turn, selling horses or stealing some. He knew he had turned from a young man of principle to a man who didn’t mind the occasional theft. He could overlook a multitude of sins now that would have troubled him greatly when he was still the son of Pedro Vega, landowner and captain general of the El Paso del Norte District.

  Claudio couldn’t have said when he had changed, except that it must have come on gradually. There was no one moment when he woke up, looked at his reflection in a tin pan or still water and said, “Well, here is a rascal.”

  Paloma had no idea. For the past few days and nights, she had sat by him, listened to him, and even hugged him for no particular reason. His little sister’s kindly nature had blossomed into thriving womanhood, made sweeter by marriage to an excellent man.

  On the other hand, Graciela seemed to know him for what he was: an adventurer with few scruples. Her astuteness did not surprise him. He saw bedraggled slaves like her in every marketplace, in every Indian camp. Their lives were usually short and harsh, with death a relief. It had been his observation that such ill-used women either became hardened and suspicious or shrinking ghosts.

  Graciela was different. He could tell from subtle changes in the week or so he had known her that the Double Cross was working its magic on her. He knew she had been stealing food; now Paloma made sure that Graciela took tortillas to bed with her. The result was a relaxing of the slave’s shoulders. She no longer started at every strange sound. Just last night, he had heard her tell Paloma in a quiet voice that she did not need any extra food. He even thought he heard her singing, but that could have been Paloma.

  He knew he owed Graciela a great debt for keeping him in the saddle after the Comanches shot him. She had been fearless in her protection. He thought about it now, as he stood so indecisive outside the house. He had not expected her to help him. No one had helped him with anything in ever so long that her protection in a dangerous situation had the power to amaze him.

  A person could get soft, being around people like Graciela and Paloma, and even Marco, Claudio decided. He could let down his guard or remain alert, suspicious, and dependent on no one. There was only one logical choice for him.

  He watched Graciela put the final touches on Lorenzo Diaz’s impressive transformation into a man still several rungs below Marco Mondragón’s gentility, but not on the bottom of the heap anymore. He remembered Graciela’s sure hand on his own hair and beard, and the level way she looked at him full on, comparing sides, snipping a bit here and there until she was satisfied. Her hand on his shoulder, however briefly, had felt so friendly. It pleased Claudio to see Lorenzo’s beaming smile as he took off the towel around his neck and handed it to Graciela with a certain flourish. />
  Claudio lost his own smile as he watched Marco stroll casually to the gates and stand for a long moment, staring at the horses acquired somehow in Isleta. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lorenzo stand up straighter, watching Marco, too, which made Claudio’s heart sink. Their business was a shady one, at times. By keeping in motion and trading on the fringes of the colony, they managed to stay ahead of any scrutiny from other jueces de campo. I will be surprised if we are still here by morning, Claudio thought. There, he had said it: we.

  It won’t break your heart, Paloma, if I leave, he rationalized to himself. I’m not meant to live confined, and you have so much here to keep you occupied. You won’t even know I have left. “You won’t miss me,” he whispered, trying out the traitor words. He winced at the sound and knew he was turning soft already.

  He heard the dinner bell. Paloma had sent Perla’s little grandson into the kitchen garden to ring it to summon the house folk to meals and later, everyone to evening prayers.

  He wanted to go inside, but Marco was walking around the small herd now, looking closer at the brands.

  Lorenzo nodded his thanks to Graciela and walked toward Claudio slowly, not wanting to attract Marco’s attention. “Do you think if Rogelio and I are gone before daybreak, it will be soon enough?” Lorenzo whispered to Claudio.

  “He’s a smart man, but Señor Mondragón is also our host,” Claudio whispered back. “No later than daybreak, and I am coming, too.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Claudio,” Lorenzo said, his voice mild and patient for a change, as though the Double Cross was beginning to lull him into complacency, too.

  “I don’t belong here,” Claudio said.

  “You are so certain of that?” Lorenzo asked.

  Claudio had second thoughts in the kitchen. The table nearly groaned with slabs of beef, turkey, boiled eggs sliced in half and sprinkled with hot peppers, and mounds of bread cuddled up next to a bowl of butter. He smiled to see the imprint of a little finger dragged through the butter, remembering Paloma’s own love for butter and the tears it caused when Mama scolded her.