Carlota (6 page)

"Where?" Don César said.

"Down the road." The gringo spoke good Spanish.

The other gringos had come up now and sat lounging in their saddles. They looked like the first one, the one who was speaking. At first glance they might have been brothers. They all had bony faces and streaked hair and blue eyes that were red-rimmed.

Don César said, "At Rancho El Nido?"

"Name don't sound familiar, señor. Down the road, it was. Paid a hundred pesos for the lot."

"The horses carry the Peralta brand," Don César said. "If you bought them, you bought stolen horses."

"Anyhow, señor, we bought them, stolen or not."

Don César didn't believe the gringo. Nor did any of us. It was the way the gringos acted that made me doubt what they were saying.

The young man took up his reins. "We'll be moving on," he said. "We got a long ways to go."

"You do not go anywhere," Don César said, "until you hand over the horses you lead. The ones you ride, you can keep."

Don César repeated his offer.

None of the horses was worth much. And we had hundreds of them, though many were wild. But what he said to the gringos seemed fair to me.

Juan Palomares said, "We wish to get on the trail. I have much to do when I reach home. Give him the horses."

Matías Yorba echoed his words. As he spoke, the gringo put a spur to his horse and the horse jumped. Sixto was circling around and I had trouble handling him. The big horse reared and I brought him down and made way for the gringo. As he passed by, the gringo reached out and slapped Sixto on the flank.

"Pardon," the gringo said to me. "Pardon,
muchacho.
"

I don't know whether it was that he had given the gelding a slap that made me angry or that he took me for a boy. My grandmother said afterward, when we got back to the ranch, that she didn't blame him for calling me a boy since, with my hair braided up under my sombrero, I looked like one.

I glanced at my father. He looked as angry as I was. With a quick motion of his hand he gave me a signal. I grasped the riata coiled beneath my leg.

Sixto had backed off when the gringo slapped him, and when he came down I turned the gelding. At the same time I unloosed the coiled riata. It was a good one, fashioned of eight strands of leather, and it had taken Sanchez, the saddler, more than a month to make. It was of deerskin and every inch had been carefully chewed by his wife until it was soft. It would handle a bull. It would handle two bulls, one at each end.

When the gringo was beyond me at a dozen paces or so, I let the riata go. It went out slowly at first. The loop was perfect and long. It gained speed and rose in a curve and settled over the gringo's shoulders.

I pulled up on the rope and gave it a double hitch around the saddle horn and turned the horse down the trail. The gringo fell from the saddle. He lay sprawled on the ground. The riata was still around his shoulders and his arms were pinned to his sides. Before I let up, I dragged him twice his length through the grass. He got to his feet and freed his arms from the noose and I coiled the riata and hung it on the horn.

The other gringos began to laugh. They laughed while he got back on his pony. He put his hand on the rifle he carried alongside the saddle. I think that for a moment he thought of using it on me. His eyes ran over the vaqueros who were sitting with muskets across their laps. Then he cursed under his breath and headed his pony down the trail and the others followed. They let loose the stolen horses they were leading.

They went to the brow of the hill. There the first gringo stopped while his friends went on. He lifted his rifle and fired toward us. He was firing at the statue of Christ, not at us. He hit the statue and it fell to the ground.

Everyone was silent. Our vaqueros took up their muskets and waited for my father to speak. He turned and gave me a prideful glance for what I had done. "
Vamanos!
" he said. "Now let us go and punish them."

Father Barones had picked up the statue. Its head had been splintered by the gringo's bullet. He stood in the way of the vaqueros, holding the broken statue in his arm.

"Let them go," he said.

The story about the Piutes had been true after all. They attacked a ranch near the pueblo of Los Angeles, burned a house, and rode off to the desert with a large herd of cattle and some good horses.

That was the news until a short time after the wedding, when Don Manuel Ybarra of El Nido sent word that he wanted to call upon us to offer his thanks for the charming hours he had spent at the
baile.
But my grandmother looked upon this as something else, something of far more importance than a polite visit.

We were sitting in the courtyard, drinking our morning chocolate, when a vaquero from El Nido rode in with Don Manuel's note. My grandmother opened it with trembling fingers. She read the note twice. Then she looked up and smiled. A smile so early in the morning, or at any time for that matter, was unusual for Dona Dolores.

My father and I looked at each other, and wondered. Dona Dolores then read the note to us and put it away in the sleeve of her dress.

"I am pleased to know," she said, "that our Carlota made such a favorable impression upon Don Manuel."

"What makes you think that Don Manuel pays us a visit for that reason?" my father said. "It is the custom of Spain to make such a call. It is Spanish politeness that will bring him."

"Politeness, no doubt," Dona Dolores said, "for Don Manuel is a gentleman of breeding. But he is also a gentleman of the finest perceptions." She paused to glance at my dusty boots, at my hair pushed up under the sombrero. "He is also a gentleman of understanding."

"Don Manuel Ybarra of Rancho El Nido," my father said bluntly, as was his manner, "is old enough to be Carlota's father. Upon second thought, he is old enough to be her grandfather."

Dona Dolores snorted. Cigarillo smoke spurted from her nostrils.

"It will take a man of Don Manuel's years, of long experience, to manage your daughter," my grandmother said. "Furthermore, an officer in the King's army, who is accustomed to the deployment of troops in battle, of battles in all weather and in all circumstances."

"I will send Don Manuel a note in reply," my father said. "I will send it today, now. But as for encouraging him as a suitor for Carlota's hand, that I refuse."

Don Saturnino was faithful to his promise. Before noon he sent off a vaquero with a message to Rancho El Nido. He sent off two vaqueros, in fact. The other vaquero carried a note to Don César Peralta, requesting the cattle and horses he had lost on the race and agreed to deliver.

Don César answered the note. Toward the end of the week his vaqueros brought in three hundred cattle, part steers and part cows, and twelve horses. Of the horses, one was a fine breeding mare.

Don Saturnino decided to turn the cattle out to pasture without changing the brands. But the horses were more valuable, especially the mare.

"We'll make a brand that will fit Peralta's circle," my father said. "A small Z, smaller than the one we use."

Our blacksmith worked through the morning and made a brand that was half the size of my palm. We tried the iron cold and were satisfied that it would fit the Peralta circle nicely.

I never helped brand cattle, but I always helped with the horses, because we marked only those we valued. We did the branding in the small corral, which was near the hitching rack and the big gate.

It was late afternoon. There was a breeze from the sea but it was still hot on the mesa, and the dust the horses were kicking up stung my eyes. I pulled the bandana up over my nose and that helped me to breathe. I was sweating, and thinking how good it would be when we finished with the branding and I could ride down to the stream and bathe in the cool water.

I heard a voice behind me. My father had tied the breeding mare César Peralta had sent—I am sure he sent the mare because he knew that I would be pleased with her. And I had just lifted the hot branding iron from the fire and was taking the few short steps to where the mare lay when I heard the voice. I didn't know who it was, nor did I care, but when I heard the voice again I looked up.

It was Manuel Ybarra from El Nido and he was leaning on the top bar of the corral, watching me.

The iron was cherry red so I didn't stop to wave a greeting to him. I took a careful sight with the brand, aimed at the small Z at the center of the Peralta circle, over the slash mark, pressed it down firmly, and counted three seconds, as the hair sizzled and smelled strong.

The mare staggered when Don Saturnino re-leased her and then began to gallop around the corral. Our brand looked handsome on her flank. She would be the mother of many fine colts, I thought, and I gave her the name Gavilán Azul, Blue Hawk, because she had a bright hawklike look in her eyes and her coat was of bluish cast.

I waited for my father and we went over to speak to Don Manuel. He looked fresh and handsome, as if he hadn't ridden for two leagues over a dusty trail. He wore an officer's uniform, blue with scarlet edgings, and on his chest were five medals, each polished and bright. I hadn't noticed when we were dancing together at the
baile
that he had a deep scar on his cheek. It gave him the look of a warrior.

He glanced at me as if we had never met and then I was aware suddenly that he didn't recognize me in my working clothes. Not until I spoke did he take off his officer's cap and try to grin and make a bow while standing on the bottom pole of the branding corral, which is difficult.

We strolled into the courtyard, where my grandmother joined us and we all drank cool drinks made of cherimoya juice and honey. My grandmother kept telling Don Manuel nice things about me—how well I sewed—I had made the shirt I was wearing—and that I was a very good cook, that I was a thoughtful granddaughter.

While she was telling Don Manuel these nice things, he kept glancing at my boots and my grimy hands, and at the hair that was tucked up under my sombrero.

When the three of them forgot about me and were talking together, I slipped away and washed my hands and face and put on a pink dress and a pair of new pink shoes. But when I returned Don Manuel didn't notice me. He quietly drank his cherimoya juice, and when my grandmother asked him to stay to dinner—we were having quail and venison—he thanked her, but said that since he was still unfamiliar with the trail he must leave before dark.

No importa.
It was of no importance that Don Manuel was going home before dinner. I had put on my pink dress and pink shoes mostly to please my grandmother. I wondered why a grown man like Don Manuel would go around showing off a chest covered with ribbons and medals.

He was no sooner on his horse and moving off across the mesa than Doña Dolores said to my father, "Why was it necessary to brand the horses on this day, on this day of all days?"

"Because the horses were in the corral and I wished to brand them before we put them out to pasture."

My grandmother thought for a while. "Why was it necessary for Peralta to send the horses today?" she said suspiciously.

Don Saturnino, who, as I have said, often spoke bluntly, said, "Don Cesar Peralta sent the horses today because I asked him to send them today. Does that answer your question?"

Then my grandmother threw up her hands and asked God to be a witness to the dastardly act of an ungrateful son. She also asked Him to bear with me until I somehow learned to mend my errant ways.

The gringos on the stolen horses we did not see again or hear of, but when summer ended and we were trying tallow at Dos Hermanos, two more came to the ranch. They were dressed in blue uniforms and one, who rode a spotted horse, called himself Lieutenant Carson. He came to buy jerky and yucca cakes for a long journey.

My father would not have let them through the gate if he had been home, but he was away in the pueblo. I told my grandmother what the men wanted.

"Give them all they ask for," she said, "but do not take money."

Doña Dolores didn't like the gringos any more than the rest of us did, but she thought it was a good idea to be on the safe side.

"The war is finished," she said, "and the gringos have won. California belongs to them now, but we still have our land. We will keep it if we keep our tempers and our manners."

"Have you forgotten the gringo who shot and broke the statue?" I said.

"I have not forgotten," my grandmother said.

The gringo who called himself Lieutenant Carson was very polite. He told me he was married to a Spanish girl who lived in Taos, a pueblo far away to the east of California.

"I haven't seen her for almost two years now," he said, "but I hope to see her soon. I am taking a message to President Polk that the fighting is over, and maybe I'll stop in Taos on the way and pay her a visit."

He used Spanish well for a gringo and he had a soft voice and a pleasant way of talking.

"Many people call me 'Kit.' Kit Carson. My friends call me 'Bub.'"

I gave him a double supply of jerky, a leather
bota
packed with strips of dried deer meat, since we had no yucca cakes, and when he wanted to pay me I refused the money, as Doña Dolores had instructed me to do. I thought soldiers always saluted, but when he rode away he tipped his hat and said politely, "
Vaya con Dios.
"

I thought it was nice of him to hope that I would go with God. He was different from the man I had lassoed. This confused me, but not for long.

Lieutenant Carson was wrong about the war in California. And so was my grandmother. The most important battle of all the fighting in California was yet to take place. The battle came about in this way.

My father was gone from Dos Hermanos for almost a month. When he returned (we said nothing to him about the gringos who had come to the ranch) he brought with him the startling news that an army of American soldiers was on its way to California. Spanish travelers had passed the army camped west of Santa Fe and learned that it was headed toward San Diego and the pueblo of Los Angeles. As we learned later, the Americans thought that the war in California was still going on.