Paloma and the Horse Traders Read online

  She didn’t want him to leave her, so he stayed where he was until his rump cooled off. “Autumn is coming, my love,” he told her finally, as he reached for the bedding and pulled it over both of them. “My ass gets cold.”

  “Your language,” she said in that gruff voice he loved so well, the one usually reserved for times like this. She began to massage his cold rump against her, until she began to sigh again, and turned her face into his arm. “My goodness. I thought I was tired.”

  “Tell me truly, Marco,” she said finally, when he had settled himself beside her. “Am I a freak of nature?”

  He laughed softly and pulled her close. “No! You just love me a lot.”

  She laughed, too. “I do, you know,” she said, the words sounding almost shy to him. Her modesty after a wild romp never ceased to amaze him. Paloma Vega was a lady through and through, except when she was just a woman. And that was the magnificent paradox of his wife.

  He hoped she wasn’t too tired for what he thought of as their drowsy time, when problems of the world were solved, and issues aired and put away in the sleepy fashion of lovers.

  “I told Lorenzo to leave tomorrow and return those three horses you were wondering about to the man in Isleta he stole them from,” he told her, as he stroked her hair. “You were right.”

  “I wish I hadn’t even looked,” she said, her fingers tugging gently at his ears. Somehow she had figured out how much he liked that.

  “It’s worse. That matched team I bought from Claudio in Taos? Stolen, too.”

  He heard her intake of breath. “They’re so beautiful. But isn’t the bill of sale over there on your clothes chest?”

  “Forged. Lorenzo told me they were legal, but I could tell he was lying.”

  “You didn’t call him on his lie?”

  “How could I do that?” he asked her, as she rubbed his chest. His sigh sounded enormous in the quiet room, until he realized she was doing the same thing. “I feel that I owe the horse traders a bigger debt for sending Claudio to us, no matter how inadvertent that was. I paid Lorenzo, but I will return those horses to … to … Señor José Vasquez in Pojoaque Valley when I take my wool clip and brand records to Santa Fe in a month or so.” He rested his hand on her belly. “Go ahead and say it: I’m a gullible idiot, and many pesos poorer.”

  Paloma pressed her hand over his. “Push down gently right there, and you will feel the tiniest little package.”

  He was happy to oblige her and change the subject. She was right. Just a soft touch and he let go of the day’s cares. More important business than brands and money was going on inside his wife.

  He thought she slept then. His eyes started to close, too, but she brought his hand up to rest between her breasts. She was so soft there. His slim Paloma had been replaced by a woman with smooth curves, and he liked this one even better.

  “Claudio isn’t so happy here, is he?” she asked in a small voice, almost as if she didn’t want to hear her own words.

  “He told me on the way to Santa Maria that he doesn’t like living behind walls.”

  She sighed again, then raised his fingers to her lips and kissed them. “When you return, let’s think of ways to make him happier about Valle del Sol.” She put his hand on her neck, and Marco knew she was ready for sleep then. “There’s land here, and maybe he’ll find a lady to court.” She started to say more, but the day finally caught up with Paloma Vega.

  Marco was still in the grip of sleep hours later. Through the fog of morning, he heard a rooster, and another, and then a scream so loud and heartbroken that he was out of bed in one motion. He looked back to apologize to Paloma for scrambling over her like that, but there was only a pile of blankets where she should have been.

  Another scream, and then wild sobbing, and he knew without opening the door what had happened. “Damn you, Claudio,” he whispered as he grabbed his nightshirt and pulled it over his head.

  Paloma lay against the open door to Claudio’s room, weeping. He knelt beside her and gathered her close, even as their children began to cry in the other bedchamber, startled from their sleep. He didn’t need to confirm Claudio’s absence. Whether three hours, three days, or three years had passed, empty rooms all felt the same.

  He held his sobbing wife close to his heart.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In which Marco does his duty, even if King Carlos doesn’t pay him enough

  The horse traders had taken Marco at his word. They were gone before daylight, Claudio with them, plus the three horses under discussion last night, and the matched team, as well.

  Startled to see his master in a nightshirt with his hair wild, the night guard stammered out what had happened. “They … they were as nice as you please, and said you had told them to leave early, because the days were getting shorter.” His eyes were wide and worried. “Was that wrong? Forgive me, señor!”

  “No, no,” Marco replied, stung by his own words. “I told them exactly that.”

  “Your … your wife? Is she …. Señor, we could hear her!”

  There was no sense in lying. “Her brother left with them, and she is devastated,” he told the guard.

  He told the same thing to Toshua and Eckapeta, who had come to their door of his former office, Toshua with lance in hand. “I can bring back Claudio,” Toshua said, his voice hard and tight.

  The last thing Marco wanted was for a Comanche with murder in his heart to go after a confused man. “We can’t keep him here against his will,” Marco said. “I must go back to Paloma.”

  Eckapeta touched his arm. “My grandchildren?”

  “Go to them. Paloma needs me right now.”

  And here I stand in my nightshirt, Marco thought, as he hurried back to the hacienda, Eckapeta right behind him. At least Paloma was still on their bed, where he had left her. He closed the door and crawled in beside her, holding her close as she cried and then slept, exhausted.

  When he knew she had surrendered to deep sleep, he got out of bed, dressed and went across the hall to Claudio’s empty room. How could you do this to your little sister? warred with We both knew you were confused and unhappy. He sat on Claudio’s bed. “I was lost and you found me,” he said, looking across the hall to the bedroom he shared with Claudio’s sister. He looked down at the rumpled sheets on which he sat, testimony to a poor soul tossing and turning and unable to find any peace. “You were lost and no one found you, Claudio. Were we too late?”

  He lay back on Claudio’s bed, his moccasined feet dangling over the edge, and stared at the ceiling. He could remain here and let someone else lead this little expedition to scout out Great Owl. There was certainly plenty to do. The harvest was nearly over, and the cattle had been rounded up and brought down from summer pastures. What remained was to decide which ones to take to the Santa Fe market, along with his wool clip. Governor de Anza would entertain him and he would turn over his brand records and taxes he had collected to the fiscal primero. At most, he could devote two weeks to hunting Great Owl, or just ignore the man and hope for the best.

  But there was no one else to take up the task.

  “Yes, and Great Owl will attack the Utes closest to us, and perhaps cajole or force them to join him and come against our settlements,” Marco told the ceiling. “There goes any chance of peace. Damn, but this is a dilemma.”

  He heard the door across the hall open and turned his head to see Paloma looking at him. He blew her a kiss, hopeful. She returned his kiss, then looked toward their children’s room. He knew Graciela and Eckapeta had taken their little ones to the kitchen for mush and raisins.

  She must have known it too, so she just stood in the doorway in her nightgown and disheveled hair. Her eyes were red with weeping, but she was the most magnificent woman he had ever seen.

  She padded across the hall on bare feet, closed the door behind her and climbed onto Claudio’s bed. With a sigh, she rested her head on his stomach.

  “I wish I understood,” she said simply.
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br />   Marco touched her hair, combing out the tangles with his fingers. “It is God’s mystery,” he said finally. “There you were, two young ones who survived a terrible ordeal. You wound up in Santa Fe in the household of your uncle and were treated abominably.”

  She nodded, then turned sideways so she could look at him. “Go on,” she whispered.

  “I suspect that Claudio wound up as practically the possession of Lorenzo and Paco Diaz, men too easy with the law.”

  “Claudio knew better!” Paloma protested.

  Marco put his hand over her mouth. “Hear me out, wife,” he said, relieved when she kissed his fingers. “I have been part of rescues of colony children stolen by Comanches or Apaches. Even a Ute tribe. They should loathe their captors, eh? Small children like ours—God forbid—I could understand little ones transferring their allegiance to Indian parents. But older children? Children who would have been the age you lost your family all those years ago? I don’t understand it, but some of them come to love the very people who stole them.” He sighed. “Maybe someone much smarter than I am can explain this odd thing someday, but I have seen it. Claudio identifies with the horse traders now. He only feels safe with them.”

  “He never gave us a chance!”

  “He certainly did not.” Marco pulled Paloma closer until they were breast to breast. “Here is the oddest part of all: what happened to you could have made you sour and bitter, but it didn’t. There is something in you that would not succumb to foul treatment.”

  He enveloped his wife in a tight embrace. “Paloma my heart, I was on my way to turning into Claudio when you came into my life with that yellow dog. I had given up! All I wanted was a dog to keep my feet warm. I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

  They clung together until Paloma heaved a shuddering sigh. “My love, I was only a day away from giving up, too, and just returning to Santa Fe and my relatives. Adventures aren’t all that fun, are they?”

  They laughed together.

  “What … what made the difference?”

  She thought a long moment, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “Something inside I cannot explain. Why doesn’t Claudio feel as I do? We were reared by the same parents.”

  Marco raised himself up on one elbow to see her better. “Was Claudio happy?”

  “Well, certainly,” she began, then stopped. She flopped on her back and stared at the same ceiling that had given Marco no answers earlier. “No, no, he wasn’t. I’ve tried so hard not to remember that morning, but another piece is coming back.”

  “Let it.”

  She touched his heart then by putting his hand on her belly, as though to protect their child within from what she was remembering. He knew it was an unconscious gesture, but it told him everything he ever needed to know about Paloma as a mother, and if he wanted to flatter himself, her idea of him as a father.

  “He and Papa had been arguing for some time. Claudio was sixteen and desperate to join the army. Papa said no, of course. Papa always said, why would you do that when there was this hacienda and land grant? I didn’t like it when they quarreled.”

  Her voice sounded small, like a child’s. She hesitated, as if resisting another memory.

  “Go on, Paloma, tell me,” he whispered. “I’m keeping our baby safe.”

  “The last thing I remember him saying to Papa … oh, I can’t.”

  “You can. You’re safe, too.”

  “How could I forget this? Claudio said, ‘There are times I wish you were dead, Papa.’ ” She shuddered. “Papa just laughed. He knew Claudio was joking. I remember that Papa put his hand on Claudio’s head and gave his hair a friendly little tug, and Claudio put his arm around Papa. All forgiven.”

  “And then?”

  “They all died.” She sucked in her breath, and he pressed more firmly on her belly. “Marco, do you think Claudio keeps remembering that argument?”

  “I think it highly likely. Imagine that much guilt.”

  They were silent then, twined in each other.

  “I know he was happy to find me,” Paloma said.

  “Of course he was, but there is this war going on inside your brother.”

  “Do you think he will ever return?”

  “I am certain he will, Paloma,” Marco said, and meant every word. “He’ll show up when he feels like it, visit a while, but then he’ll leave again.”

  Paloma gave him a long look. “Unless he can find a reason to remain, my love.”

  She slept again, but peacefully now. Marco stayed with her.

  Paloma woke up to the noisy rumble of a stomach—hers. Marco was snoring softly in her ear, just tickling it enough to wake her up, if her stomach hadn’t.

  “I am hungry,” she whispered into that ear.

  He opened his eyes. “Come to think of it, so am I. We haven’t slept this late since we were newly married.”

  She sat up, hands flying to her hair, which by this hour was usually smooth in a low bun on the back of her neck. She looked down at bare legs up to her thighs, hoping that no one had decided to blunder into Claudio’s room and see her in such disarray.

  She looked around the sparse room, wondering if she could find a brush, and found something better. She pointed it out to Marco, who was closer. “Over there. Is that a note?”

  He got up, reached for the folded paper, and spilled out a handful of gold coins. He read the note and started to smile. “Maybe Claudio isn’t so far off the mark. It’s addressed to me. Listen: ‘Señor Mondragón’—ah, the penitent sinner!—‘I am returning the team to José Vasquez in Pojoaque.’—well, well—‘It was easy to steal back your money from Lorenzo, for he is a heavy sleeper. Tell Paloma I am a fool and that I love her. Claudio.’ ”

  “I would like to wring his neck,” Paloma said, then managed a smile. “I would!”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Marco told her. He went to their room and returned with her hairbrush. “Turn around. I can do this for you, and then I think I had better get my carcass to the horse barn. We still need to find out what Great Owl is up to.”

  She closed her eyes when he began to brush her hair. She knew she had the power to weep and rail and carry on and keep him from this scout for Great Owl, but she understood his duty.

  “How long?” she asked when her hair started to crackle and he stopped.

  “Two weeks, perhaps a little more. I know you will feel safe here with Eckapeta and my guards. I want to know where Great Owl is. Winter is coming, and I doubt he will act before spring.”

  She stood up, and staggered, but he was right there to steady her. “Crying makes me red-eyed and dizzy,” she said. “I think I will not weep anymore over Claudio, that rat.”

  He laughed and clapped a brotherly arm around her shoulder as he steered her toward their room. “That’s my girl!”

  Paloma stopped at the door. “I am wondering … why did Great Owl sell Graciela for money? He didn’t want to barter, did he? I am naïve, indeed, but why do Comanches want money?”

  “I have wondered that myself, because I have seen many barters for captives. There is only one reason I can think of, and that is partly why I want to find that rascal. It didn’t occur to me any sooner than last night, but I think he might want to buy guns from the French. The governor told me of such suspicions—a word here, a word there.”

  She absorbed that bit of unwelcome news. “And then?”

  “That’s the rub. Is he planning to shoulder aside Kwihnai, or destroy the cloudland Utes, or try to gain their alliance against us? And if there are French in our Spanish domain, where are they? The whole thing makes my head ache.”

  He helped her dress, because she couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything.

  She borrowed one of Marco’s hair ties and gathered her hair low on her neck, not taking time for a bun. It was easy enough for her to go calmly into the kitchen, greet her children, and help Graciela give them their breakfast.

  “Mama, you scared me,” Soledad told her as the little
one sat on her lap.

  “I didn’t mean to, my love,” she said. “It’s just that my brother has left without saying goodbye and I was so sad.”

  In that wise way of children, Soledad stared at little Claudio. “When he is naughty to me, I might not cry if he left.”

  Paloma laughed and hugged Soledad. “I remember times like that, too, with my brothers.”

  She smiled at Marco over Soledad’s head. “And you, señor, had better prepare your little army. If Eckapeta, Emilio, and a host of excellent archers and guards cannot manage in your absence, then we are too cowardly to live in Valle del Sol.”

  There was no denying the relief in his eyes or his good humor. “Señor, is it? Should I sleep in the horse barn when I return?”

  “Only if you prefer smelly barns to me,” she teased back. “I will miss you most awfully.”

  She meant both statements, and reminded him again an hour later when she and their little ones knelt on the hard ground by the gate while he made the sign of the cross on each forehead and blessed them to be safe. Then she was in his arms with no tears, and a whacking great kiss that made Joaquim Gasca laugh out loud, and Toshua turn away, because he was a gentleman.

  Children in tow—Soledad and Claudito both looking like thunder clouds because they wanted to ride with Papa—Paloma climbed the steps to the parapet. The little family watched the three horsemen until they were small specks against the enormous sky.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In which Claudio is more penitent than usual and Lorenzo is equally firm

  Leading Marco’s stolen team of matched bays, Claudio did not look forward to catching up with the horse trader and Rogelio. Lorenzo would certainly thrash him. Several years had passed since his last beating by either Lorenzo or the late unlamented Paco, but Claudio knew how Lorenzo felt about commerce, legal or otherwise.