Young Zorro (6 page)

T
HE HERD WAS ENORMOUS
now. They could see the dust cloud above it long before they saw the cattle. Closer, they heard it, loud with a constant bawling.

A herd this size, thousands of cattle, was difficult to move. Every rider the rancho had was in the saddle. From the shoulder of a rise, Diego could see Don Alejandro working beside the vaqueros, keeping the big, dark mass together. Crews were turning back cattle at the sides of the herd. And coming up behind was the drag—the vaqueros who pushed and worried at the tails of the bawling cattle, keeping them moving in the choking dust. Everyone in the drag had their bandannas wrapped around their noses and mouths.

Bernardo pulled his bandanna over his nose and
glanced toward the back of the herd.

Reading his movements, Diego said, “Yes, you're probably right. We've been up in the mountains taking it easy. Scar will put us on the drag all day.”

And he did. “All rested?” he called over the noise. “Get back to relieve a couple of Juan Three-fingers's boys in the drag.”

They found Juan using his whip to encourage the slowest cattle, popping it behind them. But now and then, they saw a particularly stubborn cow leap forward, stung.

“Scar sent us to relieve you and a couple of your crew.” It was surprising how loudly Diego had to shout to be heard over the sound of the moaning, jostling cattle.

Juan nodded and started to ride off but spun his pony back. “Here,” he said to Diego. “Give it a try.” He handed Diego the coiled length of the black whip. Then he disappeared into the wall of dust.

“Hoo hoo!” Diego called, and hefted it. He tossed the whip out behind him and gave it an experimental flick, almost knocking his own hat off. “This will take some time to learn,” he shouted, then leaned into his pony's turn as it moved across to block a wandering cow.

 

Both boys were standing beside fresh ponies, spitting, trying to get the feel and the taste of the dust out of their mouths. Diego was gargling a big mouthful of water when Don Alejandro rode up with Scar.

“I'm not sure, caballero, but you look a little bit like my son. Hard to tell with the dust and the dung. But maybe.” He grinned from the saddle. “And you, vaquero, I know a boy named Bernardo who resembles you. But his skin is darker, not so dusty white.”

Bernardo slapped his jacket, raising a cloud of dust.

Diego spit out the mouthful of water. “We're working in the drag,
Papá
. Hundreds of cattle try to sneak past us, but we hide in the dust and leap out, howling like wolves. They run back to their friends. Bernardo and I are learning to be shape-shifting sorcerers in that dust. We turn into wolves and bears. Anything that will impress the cattle. But you know what frightens them most?”

“What's that, my dusty shaman?”

“We turn into
mayordomos
with big mustaches. It scares even big bulls silly.”

Scar raised one critical eyebrow and puffed through his mustache.

“How is the herd shaping up for numbers,
Papá
? Did we have a good spring for calves?”

“Not as good as we'd hoped. With this much grass and the mild winter, we should have hundreds more cattle than we're driving. It's puzzling. We'll sort it out.”

“Will the branding begin tomorrow?”

Don Alejandro swung down from his mount and tightened his saddle girth, speaking as much to Scar as to the boys. “Don Honorio is the
administrador
this year, and a few of the garrison sergeants are his
jueces de campo.
I hope they're at least sober. I have no faith in
mataperros
as field judges.” He used the rude term for the garrison soldiers: “dog killers.”

Scar snorted. It was his short and complete opinion of the soldiers.

“But with this many cattle, they can't go far wrong. God has been good to us. God loves California.”

“Yes, and so do we,” Diego said, slapping a cloud of California soil from his chaps and jacket. “We love it so much we carry it around with us.”

Don Alejandro shook his head. “My son the clown. I would love to sit and laugh at your antics, caballeros, but there is this rancho I must run, so adios, and have a good lunch of dirt, yes?” He and Scar rode off.

Diego and Bernardo spat a few more times, tightened their bandannas, and rode back into the dust behind the herd.

 

The de la Vega herd for this year's
apartado
was assembled. More than eight thousand head of cattle made a satisfying display. Not every cow, bull, and calf had been gathered. There were some wily cattle still grazing in the hills or hidden in cottonwood thickets. Not all of them were de la Vega cattle, either. The herds mixed and wandered. A few hundred of these cattle would carry the cross-and-
G
of the mission's brand. Some would be branded with Don Moncada's elaborate poppy brand.

When the
jueces de campo
sorted them out, they would find cattle belonging to ranchos far and wide. But the big plain
V
of the de la Vega rancho would be on most of them.

And there would be this year's increase, too. Every unmarked calf the de la Vega vaqueros rounded up would become de la Vega cattle as soon as the branding iron marked them. This was the law of the range.

The herd was backed against the Santa Monica hills. It was time to brand this year's calves. Instead of the great dust cloud of moving cattle over the plain, there were individual plumes of smoke rising from dozens of small, hot fires where the iron brands had been heating in the coals since first light.

But the field judge had to signal for the start. Scar was impatient but reluctant to question the
juez de campo's
authority. “Sergeant Figueroa is still damp from soaking in a bowl of wine last night. We've got to persuade him that he's alive enough to get things rolling. Diego, take him a big mug of coffee.”

Diego and Bernardo could see Sergeant Figueroa sitting against a tree, asleep. The vaqueros had long since finished their porridge and coffee, and the camp cook was clattering around in his wagon, starting things for the midday meal. Diego picked up a mug and was about to fill it with thick, sweet, vaquero coffee when Bernardo headed over to the cook's camp box and picked up a pot. Diego stepped quietly toward Bernardo. The pot contained tiny chili peppers, dried almost black, hotter than the Devil's pillow. Diego shook several into the mug and crushed them with a wooden spoon, then poured in the coffee.

The sergeant was snoring. Diego put the coffee beside him and backed away. “Sergeant Figueroa!” he called. The fat soldier jerked awake and looked around, disappointed he was not back in the garrison kitchen, where he usually slept in the morning.

“Shall I fetch you a cup of coffee?” Diego asked. “The one you have there may be cold by now.”

Figueroa felt the mug. “No, young de la Vega. No, it's just right for drinking now. I was waiting for it to cool a bit, you see.”

Diego nodded and walked back toward the horses with Bernardo. When they had gone a dozen paces, they heard a bullish bellow behind them. “Whoo! Whoo!” The sergeant leaped up, threw the coffee mug into the fire, then began to dance around the tree. “Whoo! Whoo!” He was very lively for a fat man. He took off his hat, waving it to fan his mouth. “Whoo! I'm dying! Bring water!” He was waving both arms as he danced around the tree.

Diego called to Scar, “The
juez de campo
is signaling us to begin, Jefe.” But by then every vaquero within three hundred paces had seen the signal and mounted up. Their tough ponies were moving toward the herd, reatas whistling above them.

 

Back and forth. A hundred times, it seemed, each boy rode into the herd. His leather reata curled out and, when he was lucky, snared a calf. He dallied turns on the saddle horn and backed out, dragging the new member of the de la Vega herd toward the fire. The calf balked and bawled, jerked at the reata, and planted its short legs, but it was no match for the pony. By the fire,
one vaquero seized the calf by its tail and back leg, another by the head and front leg, and toppled it. One would sit on its head while the other grabbed a rag-wrapped iron from the coals and pressed it into the calf's flank. For a moment it sizzled and smoked, and then the branded cow was released. They shooed it away from the herd toward the open plain. A few minutes later, it was grazing as though the morning had been uneventful.

The boys roped and they branded. There was no comparison. As hard as the riding and roping was, the calf wrangling was harder. Some of these brutes had grown to the size of a dinner table, and not one of them was cooperative. Toppling a frisky cow was work, and the smell of burning hair was awful.

They were sweating by the fire as Juan Three-fingers dragged an especially large calf toward them. Bernardo looked toward the mission with a wistful expression.

“You're right, Bernardo,” Diego said. “Today is the first day that being a padre seems like a better idea than being a vaquero.”

A
S
D
IEGO AND
B
ERNARDO
rode in to change ponies, Scar whistled for them. He was looking at a small book with Sergeant Figueroa. They stood some distance from the camp because the sergeant was still mad at the cook about the coffee that he was sure almost killed him.

The boys stepped down from their ponies. Diego said, “Jefe?”

Scar showed them the book. “Here's the tally of cattle and calves so far. The good sergeant has agreed on the numbers. I want both of you to take this tally book to Don Honorio at his camp on the Moncada range, somewhere to the northeast of the pueblo. Bring the tally book back by way of the tar springs. Julio Castillo's crew is herding there and may need a couple
of extra vaqueros to finish up. We'll see you by last light. The cook camp will be over by the river marsh then. Questions?”

Diego repeated their chores, then Scar said, “Good.
Vayan con Dios, hijos
.”

Sergeant Figueroa spoke up. “And if you see Sergeant Velásquez, tell him I'm out of wine.”

The boys touched their hats in respect and replied, “
Sí
,
Sargento
,” though they had seen Scar's lowered brow and slight shake of the head: No more wine for Sergeant Figueroa until the
apartado
was finished.

They saddled fresh horses, filled their canteens, and rode east to make a sweep of the foothills, looking for this year's
administrador
, Don Honorio.

The pueblo could boast about its twenty thousand head of cattle. Within the sound of the mission's biggest bells were several hundred vaqueros hard at work. Yet this great landscape still seemed empty. Except for the little wisps of smoke from the branding fires, there was little sign that anyone lived here. It was so big and empty that they might have been among those first Spaniards to visit this place. Diego had the strange feeling that he and Bernardo were seeing it just as Padre Junípero Serra had seen it when he came up from Mexico City, long ago.

Diego looked across the peaceful plain. “Don Alejandro tells me that the streets of Barcelona are all pushed together for miles. The shops along them stand wall to wall like the boxes in a stable. Miles and miles.”

Bernardo signed quickly: Not for me.

“We'll see it, Bernardo. Before too long we'll go to Barcelona and learn to be fine gentlemen as well as vaqueros. We'll see all those streets and shops and fine ladies. And many wonders, I expect. But Pueblo de los Angeles could never be like that: streets and shops and hard paving everywhere. No, this is the real California.”

They came up onto a little crest. Bernardo whistled softly. Smoke was rising behind a stand of trees.

“I don't like it either,” Diego said. “That's too much smoke for a branding fire. Something's not right.”

Both boys flicked their long reins and spurred their ponies into a gallop toward a thickening bank of gray smoke.

They rode out of the trees into a little meadow. It was alive with flame. A wildfire! This was a cattleman's nightmare—leaping and spreading, burning up the cattle's feed, crippling the pueblo's prime business. A disaster for every
Angeleño
.

The fire was spreading out through the yellow-dry grass, and a thicket of brush was blazing. “It's still
small!” Diego shouted over the pop and crackle of the fire. “We might head it off!”

Bernardo looked around for help. He pointed to where, across the fire, dim through the smoke, half a dozen vaqueros were galloping away!

“Where are they going? Don't they see we need help?” Diego shouted.

Bernardo spurred his pony and rode back toward the trees. Diego did the same. No time for dithering!

“The brush! Let's cut a break in the brush! If we do that, maybe we can do something about the grass fire!”

Leaping down from their ponies, they drew their big blades. A young gentleman might carry a sword by his saddle, but a brush knife was more useful to a vaquero—as long as an arm, thick and wide. They tied off their ponies, away from the fire but nervous in the smoke, and ran toward the brush.

Bernardo sprinted around the thicket to the other side. He would cut inward so they'd meet in the center. Let it have half the brush. They'd try to starve this fire.

Diego began a few dozen paces from the fire, cutting carefully. He threw branches, dead wood, and heavy grass away from the fire, trying to make a lane the fire couldn't leap across. He stopped for a moment and looked back to the trees where the ponies were whin
nying in fright. The top leaves of the trees were still. Good! The afternoon wind from the mountains hadn't begun yet. As long as the wind didn't blow, fanning the fire toward them, they had a chance. He bent saplings hard over and cut them off close to the ground. Tossing the young trees and their leaves away from the fire, he moved on to the next piece of fire food.

The smoke eddied and rolled. Diego coughed, and his eyes stung. Pulling the bandanna up over his nose and mouth helped only a little. The heat was scorching.

Once he jumped back as a rattlesnake coiled just beneath him, striking and missing. “Look out,
culebra
! You're no help! Get out of here. Save yourself!” Diego seized a chopped limb and whacked at the snake. It slithered quickly away, and he started cutting again.

Now he could hear chopping ahead of him. Yes, and Bernardo coughing. He whistled. Bernardo whistled back, and they kept hacking toward each other.

One moment he could barely see Bernardo. The next moment he had to step back to stay out of his blade's swing. They had made a fairly straight lane across the thicket of brush, but not wide enough.

“I'll widen the break!” Diego shouted. “You try to stop that grass fire!” Diego began to cut at the edge of the break, widening it by another arm's length. With
luck, with no wind, he might have time to widen the whole length of the break.

Bernardo ran toward the whinnying ponies. They hated the smoke and the fire. He couldn't blame them.

He mounted his pony and patted it gently, trying to pour confidence into the frightened beast. Riding around the meadow outside the spreading fire, he found what he needed: a fallen tree. It was a handsbreadth thick in the trunk, dead for several seasons, no leaves. Bernardo hitched his reata to the trunk and dallied the end to his saddle horn. When he pulled back, the tree moved without much difficulty. He turned the pony and moved ahead, pulling the tree behind them. The leather rope burned across his thigh, squeezing it painfully, but he didn't have time to think about it.

The tough cow pony shied and danced away from the flames. Bernardo fought the pony's fear and his own as he rode along the burning edge. The dead tree's branches dragged across the fire, mashing the grass down, kicking up sparks but stubbing most of the flames out. He rode one way and another along the black edge until he and the pony were exhausted. But they had stopped the fire.

Bernardo tied the pony in the trees again and ran back with his brush blade. He stalked the edge of the
burn, stomping embers and kicking apart clumps of smoldering grass, digging into smoking pockets with the blade and scattering the bits of fuel. Breathing so much smoke had made him sick. He coughed painfully and threw up.

The fire wasn't as loud as it had been. He could hear Diego cutting brush and coughing. The firebreak had worked. The fire was burning itself out.

The afternoon wind finally swept in. The cool air was welcome. But it also blew up new sparks and fanned old embers into flame. They worked for hours at the stubborn fire. A dozen times it threatened to revive itself and devour the great plain.

“Any more water?” Diego asked, shaking his own empty canteen. They were both lying against the trunks of trees near their horses, gasping and trying not to cough, more tired than anyone had ever been. Or it seemed that way.

Bernardo gave him his canteen, which had a few drinks left. It tasted wonderful. Anything that didn't taste like smoke was wonderful.

They helped each other up and walked toward the center of the black, burned ground. “Here's where it started,” Diego said, then spat several times, trying to get the grit and dryness out of his mouth. “Those
vaqueros that rode off started the whole thing. At least we'll know what rancho they ride for,” he said, stooping to pick up the warm branding irons.

They looked at all the irons. “No we won't,” Diego said. “I've never seen irons like this before. There's no brand here I recognize. Do you?” They weren't real brands but curves and circles and squiggles.

Bernardo shook his head: None that I know.

Diego looked around them. “I think the fire's out now. And Don Honorio still needs the tally book. Unless an angel in a chariot will deliver it for us, we've got miles to ride.”

They gathered up the irons and walked back toward the trees and their horses. They had their arms around each other, partly out of brotherly affection but mostly to stay upright.

 

Don Honorio was sitting under an oak tree sharing a pitcher of wine and fruit juice with Don Moncada when the boys rode up.

“
Hola, hijos
,” the
administrador
called to them as they approached. “Where have you been? Have you been digging in the mines? You're as black as Barbados fishermen.”

“
Sí
, your honor. We have been digging in our gold
mines. It is messy work, as you see. But the profit is too great to ignore. We will put up with a bit of blackness for a bit of gold, yes?”

When the boys came closer to them, Don Moncada wrinkled his nose at the sour smoke smell. “Truly, Diego, what has happened to you?” He was more polite than his son, and much more charming.

“We stumbled onto a wildfire, Señor, and paused to put it out,” Diego said.

The older men were concerned by his news, but Diego went on. “It was not a big fire as such things go. It was just our size. Large enough to frighten us, small enough to put out, and nasty enough to turn our stomachs.”

Diego handed Don Honorio the book.

“The fire was begun by some vaqueros,” Diego continued. “They were branding calves with brands I have never seen. We brought them with us. Perhaps you will recognize them.”

“But first we must see to our brave young fire-eaters,” Don Moncada said quickly. “While our
administrador
copies the numbers of your tally, I will have your horses watered and seen to. You will sit down with some cider or juice to clear your throats. It is only right. I insist.” Such a hospitable demand could not be
politely refused. Diego and Bernardo bowed, and Don Moncada pointed them to a tent near the cook camp. “I will have my vaqueros see to your horses and join you in a moment.”

It was cool in the tent, and there were elegant folding chairs. Moncada arrived with an Indian servant bearing a tinkling tray with pitchers, glasses, and pastries. Bernardo's eyes were wide in appreciation. Diego smiled, gulped down the sweet juice, and worried about smudging the cloth of the chairs with his sooty clothes. In a few minutes, Don Honorio joined them, carrying his large tally book under his arm. He handed Scar's smaller book to Diego.

“I have recorded the numbers, young de la Vega. The
apartado
for this year is nearly complete. We can look forward to the fiesta now.”

Diego rose and said, “With God's blessing, we can be hopeful for a good increase of cattle. Yes, and we will have a grand fiesta. But, with respect, gentlemen, we must return to what duties remain. Our
mayordomo
is, you know, a man of iron will. We must be where we are told to be.” He bowed again, and they all walked out of the tent.

Bernardo's horse was waiting, but a hard-eyed vaquero the boys had never seen offered Diego an
unfamiliar horse and saddle. “Excuse me, Don Moncada, but this is not my horse,” Diego said.

“We had a minor excitement,” Moncada said. “Your horse, a fine mount, must have been upset by the fire. When my men tried to rub it down and give it some water, it bolted. Galloped clean away. I had a few vaqueros ride after it. They'll bring it back to your hacienda tomorrow, along with your saddle. Until then, please accept the use of a Moncada mount and one of our saddles.”

Diego paused a moment, then his natural courtesy returned. “Many thanks, Don Moncada. You do me a kindness with this beautiful stallion. I will use it with respect for its bloodline and for your generosity. Again,
muchas gracias
and adios.
Vayan con Dios
.”

“Yes,” Don Honorio said, “go with God.”

The boys rode west toward the river in silence. After a while Diego said, “It's a good horse. But I'd sooner ride my own horse.”

Bernardo looked over his shoulder to the distant Moncada tent. He made the sign for trickery.

“I bet we'll never get those irons back. That must be why Moncada took my horse. The irons are a clue to something.”

Bernardo pursed his lips.

“Did that vaquero who brought this horse look a little strange to you? Did you see his boots and chaps? They're not local gear, are they? A bit foreign?”

Bernardo looked at him, looked back toward the Moncada ranch, and whistled low and soft.

The sun was only two handsbreadths from the horizon. They flipped the reins against their horses' necks and headed for the river marsh.