Paloma and the Horse Traders Read online

  Toshua laughed, a rare-enough event for Marco’s ears, but evidently even more startling for two townsmen who stood by and gasped in amazement that Indians had even a remote sense of humor. Toshua gave them a sour look, which meant that almost immediately the juez and the Comanche were the only two men standing over the display of Toledo-made baubles. Just as well; Marco was a countryman and he didn’t care for crowds.

  A countryman in the company of a Comanche, probably two crimes against society in a place as dignified as Taos. At least Marco had insisted that Toshua put on the wool pants, cotton shirt, and serape of a servant, rather than the scraps of loincloths that both he and Toshua had worn on their way to Taos.

  Toshua had drawn the line at boots or sandals, preferring his moccasins. To Marco’s eyes, his friend looked not much different from other Indians around them in the plaza. He tried to see Toshua through more gentrified city eyes, and he could not deny that there was something palpably menacing about his friend, even without his lance, bow and arrows, which Marco had insisted remain behind in the public house. The knife was non-negotiable.

  “I am a hopelessly fond husband,” Marco said. “You know me too well.” He became aware of a slight commotion, his hand on his knife, because that was how men stayed alive in Valle del Sol.

  Governor de Anza made his stately way through the plaza. He caught Marco’s eye, and both men gave each other a proper bow of respect. De Anza veered toward him, followed by a man equally well-dressed who looked like someone not long in the colony. How he knew that, Marco couldn’t have said, beyond the obvious fact that the young man’s eyes had no hard stare to them, no look of caution. Marco looked closer and saw disdain. I see Taos as a big city, he thought, and you see it as a dunghill, stranger.

  Marco knew the governor had spent the last day in meetings, held in the refectory of the church, because he had been there for some of them, giving a casual commentary on the Indian situation in his district. The formal paperwork would follow in October, when he made his annual trip to Santa Fe. The governor’s secretary had also handed him a new list of brands of missing cattle and horses.

  Marco found these informal Taos gatherings vastly more useful than the formality of Santa Fe. No scribes hung around to record anything, so everyone felt free to speak his mind on any topic. The governor had listened and offered suggestions of real merit, because the man knew how to fight Comanches, unlike other governors who had come, flinched, and left New Mexico as soon as they legally could.

  De Anza was a short man, but his stately bearing added five or six inches to his frame, somehow. He looked up at Marco and indicated Toshua. “This is the friend of whom you spoke, Señor Mondragón?”

  “He is my more-than-friend,” Marco replied. “He calls me his brother.”

  The governor looked from one to the other, nodding his approval. “And Valle del Sol continues to remain peaceful, because of Kwihnai’s pledge to you?” He gently touched the scar on Marco’s face, which the Comanche war leader had given him as a reminder of that pledge. Marco had said nothing about the scar, but news traveled fast, even in isolated New Mexico. According to Paloma, even settlers in distant places had heard how Marco and his wife and a mysterious doctor—long vanished—had saved their fiercest enemy from smallpox.

  “Your Excellency, we do what we can to strengthen our ties with the Kwahadi, as you requested. We must, living where we do,” Marco said, embarrassed at the attention. The younger man relaxed his air of superiority to stare at the lengthy scar on Marco’s cheek where Kwihnai had peeled back the skin as a potent reminder of his own boundaries.

  The governor gestured to the tribes and settlers around him. “Again we have Comanches in Taos for the fair, the first time since our victory over Cuerno Verde. At the risk of further embarrassing you, I wager we owe much of this success to you and your friend here. Keep on, señores, keep on.”

  “No hint of treaties yet?” Marco would have asked that question yesterday in the meeting, but there were too many others preening and clamoring for de Anza’s attention.

  “No hint, but I am a patient man,” de Anza said. He gazed across the plaza with an expression of satisfaction. “All honor to you, Señor Mondragón! Some Comanches have returned and the Truce of God holds.”

  “God willing,” Marco said under his breath. He came from a long line of realists, so this great trade fair in Taos still had the power to amaze him. It reminded him of the vigor of commerce, when sworn enemies would agree to do each other no harm for a ten-day period, in exchange for the opportunity to trade. For two years now, the fair had hosted Apaches, Navajo, and Utes, but no Comanches, who still smarted from their defeat in the land of the Utes by this very governor. Marco smiled to see The People now, trading with their enemies.

  “Marco,” de Anza began, becoming more familiar, “this is Señor Enrique Rojas, an abogado and hidalgo newly sent from the viceroy.” He smiled. “If the time does come for a treaty, Señor Rojas will be the man to draw it up.”

  Marco bowed to the lawyer, who returned a shallower bow, telling Marco all he needed to know about the young man before him. His eyes, blue as Paloma’s, and his light hair spoke of his Spanish origins as plainly as if he had strung a placard around his neck. Marco knew what he looked like to this man—tall, but high-cheekboned and not so fair of skin, because there had been lonely Mondragóns from the last century in New Mexico who looked on Pueblo women and found them pleasing. In the eyes of this Rojas, he would always be inferior. Marco regretted his deeper bow, then regretted his own pettiness.

  “Marco, I must return to Santa Fe because business summons me,” the governor said. “There is word of some unrest, from which direction I do not know. You know how garbled a report can get.” Marco could tell from the amused look on de Anza’s face that he had noticed Rojas’ arrogance. “I leave Señor Rojas here in my stead. Let us see what he will learn today, eh?”

  “I’m not a schoolboy, Your Excellency,” Rojas said, perhaps speaking a little sharper than he should have, because de Anza skewered him with a long stare.

  “I would never suggest that,” de Anza said. He turned his attention to Marco. “I hear there are traders bringing fine horses from the cloud land of the Utes. How they get around! I have given Señor Rojas sufficient state funds to purchase some horses for my personal guard. Help him if he needs it, eh, Marco?”

  Marco bowed, confident that the lawyer would allow no such thing. A glance at Rojas confirmed his suspicion.

  De Anza pulled Marco closer, his arm around his shoulder in a gesture so familiar that several onlookers whispered to each other. The governor tugged Marco away for a private moment. “He’s a pup and a fool, but I have to work with what Mexico City sends me. Keep him from killing anyone today, will you?”

  “I can only try, Excellency,” Marco said, his pride soothed by an expert politician, but also a man of no little military ability.

  “I ask no more,” the governor said. With a wave of his hand, Governor de Anza made his way back through the plaza, as the crowds parted like the Red Sea.

  “Señor Mondragón, don’t let me interfere with your valuable time,” Rojas said, making an even slighter bow, now that the governor’s back was turned. “You and your … well, this Indian.”

  “His name is Toshua,” Marco said, but he spoke to the back of the lawyer, who made his own escape from less exalted company. Hands on his hips, Toshua watched him go.

  “I do not think this one will live long in New Mexico,” Toshua said. “In fact, if you like, I can gut him tonight in his own bed and no one will know who did it.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Marco said, then regretted his words. “No! You know I do not approve, and neither would Paloma.” There. Best to play the Paloma card.

  “You ruin all my fun, Marco, you know that, don’t you?” Toshua asked. His expression unreadable, he looked around at the wares of several nations. He pointed with his lips toward a pile of fabric. “Look now. I am doing what you
call changing the subject.”

  Marco laughed. “And doing it rather well! What do you … oh, Dios, this is it.”

  Together they walked to the corner of the plaza where a crowd gathered around a weaver. As soon as the settlers saw Toshua, they backed away, leaving a path—not one to rival the governor’s, but satisfying, especially after the rudeness of Señor Rojas. Lord, smite me for pride, Marco thought.

  There it was, the perfect present for his dear wife. Marco knew his own hands were rough and he hesitated to touch the pretty shawl that appeared to be woven from cobwebs. He pointed to it. “This one, Rosario,” he said to the weaver—a Tewa woman related to his first wife, the lovely Felicia.

  Picking it up, Rosario carefully arranged the folds and held the shawl close to him for his inspection. “Marco, you look well these days,” she said. “I hear that you have two children now, bam! one after the other.” She leaned closer, speaking into his ear alone. “My cousin Felicia is probably smiling on you all from heaven.”

  “I believe she is,” Marco replied, touched, because he hoped it was true.

  “And that is how the world works,” she told him, and rubbed the fabric against his cheek, because she knew his kind heart.

  He closed his eyes in pleasure, because the merino wool, probably blended with mohair, felt as soft as Paloma’s inner thighs. This winter past he had watched her nighttime nursing of Claudio in their bed, how she shivered sometimes when she pulled down her nightgown. When the new baby came, he would drape this around her shoulders for those late-night feedings. A husband had to do something, after all. A lesser man would roll over and return to sleep, but Marco, twice a husband, knew better.

  He nodded to the weaver and asked the price. Rosario told him, and he pulled the coins from his pouch without any hesitation.

  “See here, lover of my cousin, you know better than that!” she teased him. “Half my fun is arguing the price.”

  “Mine, too,” he agreed, but his interest had just been captured by more commotion on a side street: the sound of many hooves. Those traders from the cloud lands to the north had arrived. They weren’t a rumor, after all.

  Rosario quickly wrapped the precious shawl in sturdy cotton, tied it with string and handed it to him. He kissed her cheek, which made her blush, then hurried with Toshua and others who had been waiting for the horse traders. He noticed the Mexico City lawyer in the crush, and remembered that the governor wanted horses, too. He smiled to see Enrique Rojas gather his cloak tightly around him so as not to brush against his inferiors. Toshua was probably right; this man almost certainly had a shorter future in New Mexico than anyone else in the crowd, unless something changed him drastically.

  They stood under the awning of a butcher shop, watching the spirited animals. Marco’s attention was quickly caught by two bays, moving in tandem. They already looked like a team, and he walked closer, wanting to catch the eye of whoever controlled this herd.

  He saw two men, one older than the other—rough sorts, with untended beards and from the filth on their faces and hands, obviously not much interest in hygiene. Amused, Marco wondered what the Mexico City lawyer would make of these traders who spent more time with Indians than settlers and yet somehow managed to hang onto their hair and pertinent body parts that a man might miss.

  A younger man rode closer to the portal, dirty like the others and equally bearded. Marco held up his hand. “Ho, there,” he called, “is this a matched team?”

  The man nodded. “Worth every real that old Lorenzo there is going to ask.” He brushed his long hair back with filthy fingers, hair with an unexpected red shine to it, but that might have been because of all the grease. “Follow me to the grove over there and we will talk.”

  Marco followed the man and the slowly moving herd. He looked back for Toshua, and stopped, watching his friend, who had stepped into the shadow close to the door of the shop. His hand rested on his knife.

  Marco gestured to him. “Come on! I need to strike a deal before anyone else does.”

  Toshua shook his head. He wiggled his hand like a snake, and pointed with his lips to just beyond the horse herd. Then he motioned for Marco to come closer.

  Marco walked back to Toshua, going against the crowd that followed the horses, the lawyer among them. He stood beside Toshua and looked beyond the herd.

  He counted fifteen Comanches, as travel worn as the horse traders. He looked closer and saw three children with ropes around their necks. Two of the children couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Closer observation told him that the third child was no child, but a young woman. She had the look of the Ute about her, but he saw the Spanish, too, in her deeply porched eyes and full lips. The younger ones had light hair, but the older girl had hair as dark and lustrous as Felicia’s. Two races mingled in her.

  “Captives,” he whispered to Toshua, all the while wondering why he whispered. “The first two might be settlers’ children, but I do not know about the third.” He gave Toshua a lengthy appraisal. “You’ve seen captives before. Why stand in the shadows?”

  “I recognize the Kwahadi there with the horned owl headdress,” Toshua replied, barely moving his lips. “I saw him in the sacred cañón last winter. Believe me, he is trouble. Hang back with me. I fear the worst.”

  Marco did as Toshua said, moving back until they stood in the door of the shop. He patted his sheathed knife and wished he had not left his bow and arrows in the public house where they slept.

  He watched how the Indians with the captives waited, hanging back from the horse herd, as if biding their time until they could make the most dramatic entrance. Some instinct assured him that they had not traveled with the horse traders, considering the wary glances from the traders. He watched and began to wonder if the Comanches had followed the traders for a longer time than just this appearance at the trade fair.

  “Toshua, do you think ….”

  His companion nodded. “You know what will follow.”

  Marco swallowed the sick feeling in his stomach and wished that Governor de Anza had not left a fool in charge.

  Chapter Seven

  In which Marco cannot haggle, because Paloma would never forgive him

  The Comanches were evidently familiar with the trade fair and the streets of Taos, because they ducked down an alley, riding single file but paralleling the crowd and the horse traders.

  Marco made a small hand gesture to Toshua then regretted even that miniscule movement as the rider bringing up the rear glared at him. The Comanche held the rope that bound the neck of the young woman and gave it a vicious tug, a clear warning to Marco to stay well back.

  The captive turned her own eyes on Marco. He could see her bare pleading from across the street, as well as long scars on her arms where she had been tortured. He knew what else they had probably done to her, and it shook him, even though he had ample understanding of just how vicious men could be to women. He made a silent vow to himself to never fear sacrificing his own life to keep Paloma and now Soledad safe.

  “Don’t move again,” Toshua whispered, barely moving his lips. “We’ll follow when they are out of sight.” His eyes tracked the other fairgoers, who must not have noticed the brief exchange, so intent were they on following the horses. “Slowly now, let us join these oblivious people who would not last five minutes in our Comanchería.”

  He said it with a certain quiet pride, and Marco took heart. Their clothes and own roughness may have set them apart from the Taoseños and settlers from this softer part of the colony, but what they lacked in polish they made up for in capability. Hadn’t Paloma told him, in the quiet of their bedroom, her leg thrown over him, that she never feared because he was there to keep her and the babies safe? Her absolute faith in him always seemed to add exquisite fervor to her lovemaking, and he was not a husband to quibble.

  He tucked the cotton-wrapped package down the front of his shirt, wished again for his bow and arrow, and set off with Toshua at a fast walk, keeping with the
crowd now and in the shadow of the portal. They came to the area just a block off the plaza to the corral where all teamsters drove their wagons and unhitched their horses. Merchants would gather, dicker, purchase, and then load the goods onto the backs of servants or slaves.

  Thinking of captives, Marco looked at the three bound ones, two so young but with eyes already old. He shivered, thinking of his own babies. He knew what life was like in this harsh colony, but not until he was a father did he understand the true peril. He hoped the lawyer that de Anza left in charge would do the right thing, but he was not sanguine, which made him ignore Toshua’s hand on his arm and edge toward the front.

  The three traders dismounted and stood close together. The trip from the cloud land of the Utes must have instilled some discipline in the horses, because they bunched tight, too.

  Several of the settlers had started forward to examine the merchandise on hoof when the Comanches rode into the gathering place. Fearful, or at least prudent, the buyers drew back. Marco counted fifteen of The People, as Toshua had said. He stared at the man with the owl headdress and the cold eyes. The Comanche raised his lance and many in the crowd stepped back. Mothers with their children moved to the rear of the gathering. Icy fingers went down Marco’s back as he watched some of the Navajos and Utes melt into the background, too.

  He looked for the lawyer and suppressed a smile to see that several of the town’s leading businessmen had pushed him forward. Marco took a deep breath. Soon everyone would know what the man was made of. He touched the pouch tied to his own belt, hefting it, wondering.

  His breath came faster when the Indian with the smallest blond boy seated in front of him dismounted. He held the rope around the child’s neck loose in his hand, looking up at the boy in the saddle, then around the silent circle of people, and then at Enrique Rojas.

  “I have a slave here, taken in a raid near Isleta,” he said in perfect Spanish. When he said “Isleta,” someone in the crowd gasped—perhaps a relative of the boy. People moved aside to allow that person passage forward, but no one took a step toward the Comanche.