Carla Kelly - [Spanish Brand 01] Page 17

  Everyone says that, Marco thought. He looked back to the open door, wishing he could knock down the flimsy wall and let in fresh air and sunlight. And then his wife stood in the doorway, a bucket in both hands. She hesitated, and he did not blame her.

  “Come closer,” he said. “He will not hurt you. He speaks our tongue.”

  Still she hung back. He watched as she looked at him for reassurance. It was the same patient look, as if he knew more than he did. When Felicia did that, he had wanted to tell her, “I’m just feeling my way through life, same as you.”

  Paloma came closer and set down the bucket next to him. Even in his extremity, the Comanche lunged on the chain toward the water. Paloma gasped and tried to burrow into Marco’s side, but she did not run from the henhouse.

  “He’s just thirsty, my love,” she said, maybe to bolster herself.

  She still crowded close to him. He held his breath as she sat up straight then, hesitated, then came close. She cupped her hands, dipped them in the bucket, and held her hands close to the Comanche’s mouth. Little ripples formed on the water, because her hands shook, but she did not back down.

  I’m not that brave, he thought, as the Indian lapped from her hands.

  When he finished, she dipped her hands again and he drank again. And again. When he finished the third time, she shook her head. “Too much would not be good for you. Let me wipe your face. I know I always feel better when someone does that.”

  Marco nearly laughed at the puny effort, considering that the Comanche was covered in filth, but he could not deny her sincerity. Calmly she ripped a section from her petticoat, dipped it in the water, then wiped the man’s dirty, rancid face.

  “You have been eating terrible things,” she murmured as she wiped around his mouth. “I will make you some cornmeal mush to start out with.” She rocked back on her heels and looked at Marco. “We have to remove this iron collar. Where is that wretched Señor Muñoz?”

  “I do not know that he will let us do anything,” Marco said. He stared, unprepared for the look his wife gave him.

  “He had better!” she said, her eyes narrow, lips tight. She ripped off another length of her petticoat and dipped it in the water, then dabbed at the Indian’s ruined neck. “This will help until we get the collar off. I’m going to find Señor Muñoz.”

  Marco watched the Indian’s eyes as she left, both of them wincing to hear her vomit, once outside of the chicken coop. He had not a doubt that she would return with the key to the iron collar.

  “Tough woman. Married long?”

  Marco looked at the Comanche in surprise. “Three weeks.”

  “I had a woman like that once. She scared me, sometimes.”

  Marco couldn’t help but chuckle, amazed at humor from such an unexpected source. He had grown used to the stench, so he sat back on his heels. “Would you like more water?”

  The Comanche’s few comments must have worn him out. He nodded, his eyes closed.

  Marco dipped more water from the acequia. He had an unused handkerchief, which he put in the water, then handed to the Comanche to suck on.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, after he had dipped the handkerchief two more times.

  The Comanche said something incomprehensible, then, “Toshua. I am Kwahadi. You are the Mondragón who lives behind stone walls.”

  “I am, and I’m here to discuss the theft of Señor Muñoz’s boots.”

  Toshua shook his head again and closed his eyes. At the sound of his gentle wife’s voice—not so gentle this time—Marco went to the door of the chicken coop. He grinned to see her shaking her fist at Señor Muñoz and saying things to him that she must have heard from his sinful teamsters. “Impressive,” he murmured. “Paloma, you’ll give him a heart attack.”

  He knew he could have helped her, but she didn’t need any help. He watched her going at the old ranchero like a wren taking on a chicken hawk, demanding the key. Muñoz grabbed the keys from his belt and held them as though to slash her with them, but his wife was quicker. She sidestepped the keys when he threw them at her. Paloma picked up the keys, glaring at Muñoz. Marco smiled.

  “He wasn’t going to do a thing!” she fumed, when she came to him, the fire in her eyes increasing his appreciation of the woman prepared to walk to Valle del Sol to return a yellow dog. “What are you grinning at?”

  “Hey, hey, calm yourself, Paloma, my little dove,” he teased, grasping her by her shoulders. He kissed her forehead, and gave her a gentle push. “Get that collar off the Comanche. I’m right behind you.”

  She stopped in the doorway. “I can’t. You do it.”

  “No, Paloma.”

  “You’re the juez de campo,” she whispered, backing up again him.

  “You will be tending him.”

  “And why is that?” she snapped, and he heard all the fear in her voice.

  “You gave him water from your hands. I wasn’t even that brave. Look you there, he is sucking on my handkerchief.”

  She looked. He knew she would help Toshua when she sighed.

  “We can’t leave him here.” She walked slowly toward the Comanche lying on the filthy ground. She stopped when he opened his eyes, and held out the ring of keys. “I might hurt you, because I don’t know which key it is,” she whispered as she sank to her knees beside the prisoner. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”

  Toshua grunted. Gently she took the handkerchief from his mouth, dipped it in the water bucket, and tucked it under the keyhole on the iron collar. He couldn’t help his groan when she pressed the collar against his ravaged neck, trying to work the key in the disgusting lock.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Let me try another key.”

  She tried four times. The fifth key turned the lock and snapped open the collar, which made Toshua sob in pain. Marco steadied the Indian’s head while she gently worked the collar off his neck. When his neck was free, she stared at the collar and threw it across the chicken coop with a sob of her own.

  “Marco, do you think he has been here for as long as you were gone?” she asked.

  “I fear so.” He looked around. “He has eaten everything he could reach, and probably drunk his own piss.” He eyed the pile of feces. “And maybe more. He wants to live, Paloma.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s hard to imagine a master so cruel,” Marco said, as he carefully unwound the length of Paloma’s petticoat from Toshua’s neck and soaked it in the water bucket. He handed it to Paloma, who applied it to the man’s neck again.

  “Do you have any powers to remove a slave from his master?” she asked, as she ripped another hunk off her petticoat, dipped it in water and wiped his chest. “Can you invent some?”

  “Paloma, I am juez because I am an honest man,” he reminded her.

  “I mean it, Marco. This man is coming with us, if I have to thrash that dreadful old man myself.”

  It was quietly said, but he knew his wife well enough now to know she was not leaving without the Indian whose tribe she feared above all others. He took his knife from its scabbard and handed it to her.

  “Sit over here. If he makes a move, kill him,” he told her, wrapping her fingers around the knife handle. “I’ll deal with Señor Muñoz, and I’ll find a cart.”

  The old man was sitting in his kitchen, staring at the cold fireplace. It was such a far cry from Marcos’ own kitchen that he felt a twinge of pity. I wonder if I would have become Joaquin Muñoz eventually, if I had not needed a yellow dog, he thought. It can be so easy not to care anymore.

  “Señor Muñoz, Toshua is coming with me, the better to interrogate him and find your boots.”

  It sounded logical to Marco, and the old man must have thought so, too. With a dismissive flick of his hand, he rose from the table and stalked into the hallway. He just stood there. Marco bowed and left.

  He found a handful of Señor Muñoz’s thoroughly cowed slaves, biting back the urge to demand from them why they had done nothing to at least feed the C
omanche, a slave like they were slaves. Obviously they were more terrified of the old man. A few terse orders and they scurried to hitch a cart to a bullock that looked as ancient as they did. They could not move fast enough to suit him. All he wanted to be away from Hacienda Muñoz with his wife and what was likely a dying Comanche.

  Gagging and retching, his men carried the Indian from the henhouse and set him none too gently in the cart, atop a dusty rug Marco had snatched from the hacienda. After so long in the darkened chicken coop, Toshua had to cover his eyes with his hands to shield them from the sunlight. Marco hated to do it, but as carefully as he could, he tied a cord around the man’s wrist and bound him to the cart. Paloma stood beside him, and Marco’s arm went naturally around her shoulders. He kissed the top of her head, even though she smelled nearly as bad as the Indian now.

  “I’ll get you another bucket of water and you can sit with him.”

  She nodded and he helped her into the cart. It touched him to see her arrange her skirt so carefully around her ankles. Ladies will always be ladies, he thought. She had by now sacrificed the rest of her petticoat to the Comanche, part of it around his neck, where the wounds had begun to bleed and weep, and the rest modestly covering his private parts. With her last remaining scrap, she dabbed at the lesions on his arms then sat back and looked at Marco.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” she said.

  They were two hours getting back to the Double Cross. Clouds had gathered and spit snow and sleet now. He rode by the cart, distressed to see the Comanche shiver. Paloma had pulled what she could of the kitchen rug around his body, but it was a puny effort. Breaking his own rule of never traveling with less than four guards, he sent one man ahead to alert Emilio and Sancha what was coming and have a bath and some lamb ointment ready.

  “Where will we put him?” Paloma asked. She had inched closer and closer to the Indian until her arm was under his head.

  “There is a smaller storeroom off the kitchen. Sancha can empty it and find a pallet. I want a door we can lock, but he needs to be warm, too.”

  “Do you think Sancha will help me with him?”

  “Everyone will, Paloma,” he told her, wanting to shout it to the distant mountains. “Do you think anyone wants to admit less bravery than La Señora Mondragón?”

  His reward was a faint smile. “I don’t feel very brave,” she said simply. “Not at all.”

  “The Señora Mondragón I heard raking over Señor Muñoz was braver than lions.”

  She gestured for him to close closer. Balancing herself in the slow-moving cart, she stood by the railing. “Marco, the strangest thing happened when I went into the hacienda to find him.”

  “Say on, my love,” he encouraged, as his horse kept pace with the cart.

  “He was just standing there in the hall, almost as though he did not know where he was.” She looked away, and he saw her embarrassment. “I know that is absurd, but that was what I saw.”

  Marco nodded. “Absurd? Hard to say. Didn’t he misplace a slave for two months?”

  “We know Señor Muñoz is a hard master,” Paloma countered. “Ay de mi.”

  Paloma sighed with relief when the cart lumbered into the courtyard of the Double Cross. Snow fell in earnest now, and she had not heard even a groan out of the Indian for the last mile. Part of her tired brain thanked God that the Comanche was dead, and now there was one fewer Indian to plague the colony. The other part of her brain resented that Toshua would die, after she had tried so hard to keep him alive. Where is the justice in all this? she fumed to herself.

  For the last mile, she had wanted to put her head on his chest and see if Toshua still breathed. Absently, she brushed the snow off the Indian’s body. She would let them take the corpse to the wagon shed, where he could wait out the storm. No need to clean him up. While it was true that the Holy Father himself had decreed centuries ago that Indians had souls, she did not think His Holiness knew how unlikely that was for Comanches.

  Suddenly the Indian grabbed her wrist. She gasped, then heard the sound of Marco’s knife coming out of its sheath.

  “No. Wait,” she said as Toshua relaxed his grip. “He lives, but not much longer, if we do not hurry.”

  Their faces averted from the awful sight that even the snow and cold could not hide, the guards took a corner of the rug and hauled the Comanche into Sancha’s clean kitchen. The housekeeper stared in disbelief and crossed herself once, and then again, as if she needed more proof against a Comanche.

  “We will never get this one clean,” she said to Marco, her apron covering her nose.

  “Yes, we will, Sancha,” Paloma said, rolling up her sleeves. She looked at the guards, no more willing than Sancha. “Put him in the tub and stand ready.”

  They did as she said, while Marco watched. The water was warm and Toshua struggled for only a moment before the possibility of his survival must have taken root somewhere inside his starved brain, or maybe his dusty heart. How would Paloma know where a savage’s emotions lingered, if he had any?

  Marco spoke a few words and the guards left. He seated himself at the table, where he could guard as Paloma and Sancha bathed the Comanche. After Toshua started to cry—the women worked as gently as they could around his lesions—Marco helped.

  Two hours and many changes of water later, the Indian was as clean as he was going to get that night. His long hair lay in an evil-smelling pile. He had set up a fearful wail when Sancha whacked it off, not comforted until Paloma put her lips close to his almost-clean ear and whispered, “It will grow again. Your hair is full of filth and lice.”

  “I am no man without my hair,” Toshua had whispered back.

  “Yes, you are. Don’t be a fulano.”

  “A … fulano?”

  “Just don’t argue,” Paloma said gently.

  He was silent, his lips in a tight line, not resigned, which she decided was a good thing for a Comanche. Maybe he really would survive this ordeal by water called cleanliness. You had better live, you evil man, she thought. I’d hate to think I did this for nothing.

  When they finished, Marco called in more servants to hold Toshua upright while Paloma dried him. She sent Marco to their bedchamber for a night shirt, which Toshua refused to wear. Paloma just shrugged.

  “I can’t convince my husband to wear it, either,” she said, which made Sancha turn away and laugh. “I won’t have you there nude while we feed you. What do you want?”

  Unable to stand upright by himself, the Comanche pointed to the towel and gestured that they wrap it around him. Paloma did, then sat him down on the bench by the table. She took a bowl of corn mush from Sancha and a spoon. “Open your mouth.”

  “I do not trust you.”

  Paloma ate the spoonful of mush and another. She had eaten nothing since breakfast and she wanted to eat it all. “I don’t trust you, either, but I know what it feels like to be hungry. It’s not poisoned. Shall we try again? That’s better. You can eat this and no more, and drink some milk.”

  “I never had milk.”

  “I hadn’t either, before I came here.”

  He ate in silence then, his eyes half closed. By the time she held the cup of milk to his lips, he was leaning heavily on the table, unable to sit upright. When he finished, Paloma wiped his lips.

  “In the morning, you will have more mush and two eggs.”

  He surprised her with a slight smile. “I ate eggs in Señor Muñoz’s chicken house.”

  “Ours are better. I promise.” She winked back tears and looked at her husband. “Help me get him to bed.”

  Sancha held a lantern high and opened the door to the small storage room so close to the fireplace. The room was warm. Sancha had moved everything out of the room and the servants had found a cot. They sat Toshua down on the cot, Marco swinging up his legs and covering him with a blanket. Paloma put a thick cloth behind his head then knelt beside the cot, applying the lamb ointment that Emilio had left on the kitchen table. Toshua tried to lic
k it off her fingers.

  “No, no,” she told him gently. “This is to heal the sores on your neck. I promise there will be more food in the morning. I promise.”

  She stayed there on her knees, Marco’s hand on her shoulder, until the Comanche closed his eyes and slept.

  “This was a strange day’s business,” she said, as he helped her to her feet. “Is this the way things are for a brand inspector?”

  “I never know from day to day, Paloma.” He locked the door, and kept his hand on her shoulder as they walked down the corridor.

  He helped her into the tub in their bedchamber, sitting beside her as she washed herself and cried. When she was dry, he took his turn, and then crawled into bed beside her. He was silent a long time, and she thought he slept.

  “Where do you suppose those damned boots are, Paloma?” His voice was drowsy.

  She kissed his cheek. “Personally, I doubt they are missing. I don’t think Señor Muñoz knows where anything is. Since you put me in charge of a wretched Comanche, the boots are my problem. A juez de campo can deal with more pressing issues than missing boots. Go to sleep, husband.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  In Which the Mondragóns Discover the Dubious Pleasure of Relatives

  Morning came too soon, except that Marco had been lying awake for the better part of an hour, wanting his wife but too wise to trouble a woman who still looked exhausted. He lay next to her, comparing her slim shape, tucked close to him for warmth, to that of the more robust Felicia. He decided that each would do equally well. Half Tewa, Felicia had been a pleasing caramel color. Paloma was white, with freckles on her shoulders. Somewhere in his own ancestry was an Indian or two, so he was darker than Paloma and lighter than Felicia, as were many people in New Mexico.

  “What?” came his wife’s sleepy voice.

  He kissed her shoulder. “You have eyes in the back of your head? I was admiring your freckles.”

  She muttered something then sat up. “Toshua. Should we—”

  “See if he is still alive?” he finished. Paloma got up quickly.