Carlota (9 page)

When Lieutenant Carson left Dos Hermanos, so we learned, and rode east with his message for President Polk, he met General Kearny a few leagues west of Santa Fe in New Mexico. He told the general that the war in California was over; the Spaniards hadn't fought and wouldn't fight and were a "passle of old women."

General Kearny partly believed Kit Carson and sent two thirds of his troops back to Santa Fe. He had orders to ride out to California and subdue the Spaniards, so he set out with one hundred and ten men for San Diego. He took Kit Carson with him, though Carson wanted to see his wife in Taos and take his message to President Polk.

They had traveled along the Devil's Highway and climbed the high mountains toward Agua Caliente. The men became exhausted, and most of the mules and horses sickened and died. At Agua Caliente, General Kearny had rested his men and caught more horses and started down the mountain for San Diego. It was there that our paths had joined.

These things we heard much later, after the bloody battle of San Pasqual had long been over.

A soldier got up from the place where his comrades lay and came toward the clump of oak trees where the horses were hidden. I don't think he saw me. He came slowly, dragging a rifle behind him.

I still did not see the lancers. The gringos were far across the meadow. They seemed to be getting ready to climb the hill that was covered with cactus. I watched the soldier coming toward me. He had lost his hat and there was a gash on his forehead.

The soldier didn't see me until he was standing under the first of the oak trees, looking at the horses. He was trying to decide which horse to take.

He stood glancing around. He must have felt that someone was there because when he saw me sitting on my horse under the oak, he didn't act surprised. He lifted the rifle he had been dragging and held it in both hands.

He cleared his throat and said, "Get down." He spoke Spanish, but poorly.

I held tight to the lance with its tip of Toledo steel. I had no other weapon except a small blade strapped to my leg. I could not use the lance if I dismounted, for it needed not only a thrust but the speed of my horse behind it.

"Get down," the gringo said once more.

He backed off two long steps and raised the rifle. We looked at each other. He had a thin mouth and a snubbed nose and hard blue eyes.

I wheeled Tiburón. I crouched low behind his shoulder and swung behind the nearest tree. Then, as the rifle exploded, a shot tore into the branches over my head. I set the spurs and the lance.

Tiburón bolted forward. The lance struck the gringo in the shoulder and he fell backward against the trunk of a tree and lay still. I got off my horse. The gringo was breathing. The gash on his forehead no longer bled.

All the gringos had left the meadow and were climbing the hill, but our lancers were nowhere to be seen. I was alone with a wounded man. There were many others who were wounded lying in the meadow.

The young soldier was tall but he was not heavy. Still, I could not hope to lift him onto a horse or hold him there if I did. I stood looking down at him. His eyes were closed. He looked very young, as if he should be home somewhere and not lying wounded here, in a strange meadow.

A cannon went off from beyond the meadow, in the direction of the hill that was covered with cactus. Another shot was fired. The sound of moaning came from the meadow as the sun rose and the mist burned off. My horses grew impatient.

When Don César Peralta rode up, I was still standing there by the wounded gringo, unable to decide what it was best to do.

Don César glanced at the soldier. "One more," he said, and looked at me for a moment. "There is good news and news that is not good. Your father was knocked from his horse. The horse was killed. Another is needed."

We selected the biggest of the seven horses and I put my saddle on him and we crossed the meadow to a wooded
barranca,
where my father lay. He was not able to stand or talk and his eyes were closed. Four of the men lifted him to the gelding's back and we took him out of the draw. We went back to the clump of oak trees. The gringo had not moved.

"We will make a travois," Don César said, and he sent two of the vaqueros off to cut strong saplings. "Don Saturnino cannot stay here in the open. Dos Hermanos is close."

The vaqueros made a travois of sapling boughs and two ponchos stretched over the frame. With riatas they made a makeshift harness and fastened the travois to the saddle on one of the horses.

"You can ride the gelding as far as the river," Don César said. "I will send some of your vaqueros ahead to Dos Hermanos and have them return to the river in an ox cart, which can be used for the rest of the journey. The fighting is over. We will keep the gringos on the hill for a night or two, but we cannot keep them there any longer. We have won the battle, not the war. But we have shown them that we are not old women, which is a thing of importance."

While they were placing my father on the travois, I went over to where the soldier lay. His eyes were closed but he was still breathing. The lance wound in his shoulder bled slowly.

I went back and spoke to Don César. "I will take the gringo also," I said.

He was surprised. "Take him where?"

"To Dos Hermanos."

"For what reason?"

"Because he is wounded and may die."

Don César pointed to the meadow. "There are many there who are already dead and others who will die. We will take him there and leave him for the gringos. They will appear at nightfall, in the darkness."

I looked at Don César. "I take the soldier also," I said. "I take him to Dos Hermanos."

"Santa Maria," Don César said. He shook his head and muttered a curse under his breath that I was not meant to hear. But he went with the vaqueros and helped them to lay the gringo on the travois.

A cold wind was blowing when we started for the river. Three vaqueros went with me. One I sent ahead to carry the news to Dos Hermanos. My father did not know that he lay on the travois close beside the young soldier.

We came to the river at nightfall. Juan, the vaquero I had sent ahead, had reached Dos Hermanos and had returned to meet us. He brought with him two litters, as well as horses and vaqueros.

The water was shallow, so we crossed the San Luis without trouble. There was no moon, but we knew the trail. Before midnight we were on the open mesa and Dos Hermanos lay in front of us.

Pine torches burned along the walls. The big gate was open; servants were running everywhere; the eagle was screaming. My grandmother stood in the courtyard, where more torches burned. As the two litters were carried through the gate, she looked at me and said fiercely, "This is your fault. Without you, Don Saturnino would not have ridden off to fight an army. A foolhardy act, and one you did not discourage."

I did not answer, knowing that words were of little use. But I wondered if she were not right, that if in some way the fault could be mine.

Don Saturnino and the soldier lay quietly on the pine-bough litters. The soldier had said a word or two from time to time that I did not understand. Don Saturnino had lain with his eyes closed, without speaking. It was hard for him to breathe. He had a deep wound in his chest.

We carried him into the big
sola
and laid him upon his bed. The gringo we put in a room at the opposite side of the patio, as far from my father as we could. Dona Dolores had already sent off a vaquero to bring back help. There was only one surgeon in the pueblo and none in the country between.

When the surgeon came the next evening at dusk, he looked after the soldier first since he was a gringo. The gash the soldier had received in the battle was not serious, but he had lost blood from the lance wound.

"He is young," the surgeon said. "And the young don't die easily. That's why they do well in the army."

My father had been struck by a bullet during the first skirmish in the meadow. The bullet had entered his chest and gone out his back.

"Your father may live. He also may die," the surgeon told me and my grandmother and Yris, who had come from the Peralta ranch. "It is serious."

He showed the servants what to do for my father and left salve and a jar of medicine. He wanted a good saddle horse in payment. Instead, we gave him two horses.

"If Don Saturnino worsens," he said as he made ready to ride away, "send word and I will come."

"When does the gringo leave?" Doña Dolores said.

"In another week," the surgeon said.

"Before?"

"No, señora."

"Since he has come this far," Doña Dolores said, "why can he not travel farther, perhaps to the pueblo?"

"He is not to be moved," the surgeon said. "He rests here for a week."

He climbed on his horse, and the Indian boy who had come with him got on one of the two mares we had given in payment.

"Mind you, señora," the surgeon said, "the young man is a soldier in the American Army. Be careful to treat him with respect. Remember that the gringos are now in charge."

"With respect?" my grandmother said, as the surgeon and the Indian boy rode away. "He will be treated well, with courtesy. That is all."

The soldier's name was John F. Fleming. I don't know what the F in his name stood for and I didn't ask him. He had lived in the Spanish town of Santa Fe for three months and during that time he had gained a little of the language.

The third day he was with us I took him a cup of chocolate, which he liked. I stood in the doorway before saying good night. A candle was burning by his bed. He had a thin face and the candlelight made it seem thinner than when I saw him first, with a rifle in his hand, coming toward me out of the meadow.

"I could have killed you," he said.

"You tried," I said. "You came close."

"I fired to scare you. And only when I saw you were not a man. I was a little surprised when my rifle went off. It was one of the few rifles in the company that didn't rust in the rain. But I always took good care of my rifles. My father taught me to."

"How was I to know that you were shooting just to scare me?"

"You should know that I meant no harm."

"Then what was the rifle for?"

"It belonged to me," the soldier said, speaking Spanish, "and I was carrying it. What was I supposed to do? Leave it behind in the meadow?"

"Why did you bring the rifle here to California?"

He raised up in bed a little and made a painful face. "I am a soldier in the army and when I am told to march, I must march. With my rifle, naturally."

"But why did you march here from a far place to use the rifle on us?"

He looked at me as if I were crazy.

"What did we do?" I said. "What harm have we done to make you wish to kill us?"

"Kill you? Who said anything about killing you? We heard that there was still some fighting going on, so we came out here to stop it."

He finished his drink and muttered a few words of thanks. "You make good chocolate here, better than they do at home," he said. "I like California, what I've seen of it. It was pretty, leaving the desert and coming up the mountain through the pine trees, finding hot springs flowing right out of the ground."

He looked around the room. At the white walls and the beams and the floor that was made of ox blood mixed with earth, worn smooth and shiny by many feet.

"The ranchos are big in California," he said. "Big as some states in the United States. Some have sixty thousand acres, I hear. How many do you own here on this rancho?"

"Many," I said.

"What is the name of your rancho?"

"El Rancho de los Dos Hermanos."

"Pretty name," the soldier said. "How many sisters do you have, señorita? I have three. They are ten, twelve, thirteen."

"Only one."

"Is she married?"

"Yes."

"Do you have brothers?"

"One, but he is dead."

The soldier poured himself a spoonful of the medicine the surgeon had left. "I never thought to be among such pretty señoritas," he said.

"You are not among them," I said.

I closed the door behind me and went along the
pórtale
to my room. The night was calm but the big eagle was restless on his perch.

As I came in the next morning Don Saturnino opened his eyes and stared at the wooden crucifix above the doorway. "
Donde estoy
?" he said. These were his first words since the day of the battle at San Pasqual, at least that I had heard.

"You are home," I said, answering his question. "In your bed at Dos Hermanos."

He looked at the sunlight on the windowsill. The eagle screamed in the courtyard and he listened until it was silent. "At home," he said. "It is as you say. Everything is here. But why, where have I been?"

"You were wounded in the battle and we brought you home."

"The battle, yes, that I now remember. How did we fare against the gringo? My comrades, how are they?"

"The battle is won. The gringos have fled. Your friends are safe."

"No one dead, no one injured?"

"Only you, Don Saturnino."

"Everyone was brave, including Don Roberto?"

"Especially Don Roberto," I said.

The talk was tiring him, so I fixed the pillows under his head, gave him a drink of cold water, and slipped away. Don Saturnino had survived. I went to our chapel and knelt down in the candlelight, the warm lights that always burned there, and prayed. I gave thanks that my father was better and that with help he would now live.

I left the chapel and went out into the windy dawn with the faith that my prayers would be answered. And it seemed for a time that they would be answered.

The next morning Don César Peralta rode up with two of his vaqueros. He made a great commotion until the big gate was swung open. Then he rode through into the courtyard and tethered his horse—he was the only person my father permitted to ride his horse through the gate—and began shouting.

"
Hola,
Don Saturnino. Where do you hide? Under the bed? Come out, the battle is over." He strutted around the courtyard, jangling his spurs, taking his sombrero off and putting it back. "Come,
amigo,
we will protect you."