Paloma and the Horse Traders (23 page)

Paloma cast aside her own shyness. No reason
they should think that she was such a martinet to all visitors to
the Double Cross. “I must be frank, but it is this way, señores: I
am with child, and strong odors are difficult for me right now.
Thank you for indulging my whim. The
juez
will appreciate
it, too.”

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
galer
í
a,
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.”

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 Mondragón 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?”