Hers the Kingdom (26 page)

     I felt a tug at my skirt; it was Thad in his night clothes and he smelled of urine. The girl assigned to care for him looked at me and shrugged. "I want to see the
vaqueros
," Thad said. He looked sleepy. The girl must have waited until the last minute, then wakened him so she could see the arrival. Willa turned, saw what had happened, but before either of us could say anything Owen said, "Let him stay."

     "But . . ." Willa started to object.

     "It doesn't matter," was all Owen would say.

     "It matters," Willa replied under her breath.

     The girl smiled smugly at her triumph. She would not be smiling tomorrow, Trinidad would see to that. Because
it mattered
, as Willa had said, and because somebody had to be punished for something none of us quite understood.

     
"Buenos días,"
Owen began. His presence pleased the men. Here was a gringo who respected their customs, a man who dressed as they dressed and spoke to them in their language. Owen's Spanish was flawless. He learned it, he told me once, in three weeks from an old Mexican who had memorized all of
Don Quixote.

     Owen told them how pleased he was that they would come to his ranch, how he looked forward to watching them work in the corral that day. He introduced Ignacio, who knew all of the men
already, and each was told the section of ranch he was expected to cover. Since the ranch was twenty-two miles long and only three miles wide, some men would have a great distance to travel.

     "We will hope to return, with all of the herd, to the corral in Zuma Canyon by the time the sun is overhead," Owen told the men. "Time is short, my friends, and my ranch large.
Vaya con Dios
." He repeated this last in English, presumably for the benefit of the Lattimores, who tipped their hats and took off, happy to get on with the work of the day, happy too that they would have a small lead, since the Californios would have to take time to change into their brown work clothes.

     It was not until the men left that we noticed the man sitting his horse under the big oak. "I'm Connor McCord," he said as he rode toward Owen, "I got here as early as I could."

     "Yes, you certainly did that," Owen replied, obviously pleased. The man would have had to ride all night to arrive by daybreak. "I am obliged to you," Owen went on, "because we have a great deal to go over before I leave tomorrow morning, and as you can see, today is rodeo."

     Owen was much the taller of the two. Most often his size, and his grace, gave him an advantage. That didn't seem to be so this time. There was a sureness about McCord, an ease in himself, that compensated for his ordinary looks.

     "My wife, Willa," Owen was saying, "and her sister, Lena Kerr. Lena is our bookkeeper." McCord looked at me then. His beard was darker than his hair, which was a dusty blond. It was hard to say how old he was. I guessed he was younger than he seemed.

     "I'm pleased to meet you, Miss Kerr," he said, with quiet civility. His voice was low and clear and melodious, the remnant of the Irish accent he hadn't been able completely to lose, I guessed. His smile was as beguiling as his voice. I no longer thought Connor McCord to be in the least ordinary.

     "Mr. McCord," Willa said, in a voice that was coldly precise, "you are to report to me each morning at eight in the front parlor
of the ranch house, which we use as an office." She added, without looking at Owen, "I will be in complete charge while my husband is away."

     Owen stiffened. He had planned to say something of the sort himself, I was sure of it, but in a way that would show him to be the kind of man strong enough to turn his business over to his wife in his absence.

     Suddenly (it always happened suddenly) my hip locked and I jerked, staggering and dislodging Thad from his grasp on my skirt. The sudden movement sent the child sprawling. He sat down hard, so hard that for a moment he was too surprised to cry, and then he wailed.

     Owen steadied me, made sure I was all right, before scooping up his son to comfort him. Thad was wet and smelled bad, but Owen petted and kissed the boy while I made wobbly excuses to them both.

     "It's all right, Lena," Owen said with perfect gentleness, "Thad knows he has to be careful not to tip his Auntie over like that."

     Tears sprang to my eyes, I don't know why. Perhaps it was the pain that was even then ebbing, perhaps it was the sweetness that was as much a part of Owen as his insatiable curiosity or his love of celebrations or, even, his Yankee business sense.

     "I'll be fine," I told Owen.

     "So will she," he answered quietly, nodding toward Willa, "take my word, Lena—so will she."

     I would have thought Owen knew what he was talking about, or at least knew more about what was between them than I did—if at that moment I hadn't seen Connor McCord's smile, and if I hadn't seen Willa's hand brush the curls from her face, the motion accenting her breasts under the cotton shirt and the curve of her hips. Willa was softer now; the lean boyishness was gone.

     Suddenly I had the urge to go after Owen, to ask him to stay a while longer. But Willa had tried, and failed. There was no stopping Owen, I knew.

     I was being silly, I told myself. Forebodings were Trinidad's silliness. I was thinking about men too much, I was getting loco.

     "Maybe not," Sara said.

     She was standing just inside the door, waiting for me. We had invited Sara to come for the rodeo.

     "You've got to stop that," I laughed.

     "What?" she asked.

     "Reading my mind," I answered, and she laughed too.

     "I can always tell when you're deep into yourself," she went on, "for a minute there I thought you might disappear altogether in a wisp of blue smoke."

     Willa came in behind me, and Sara blurted, "Oh, Willa, you look so beautiful with your hair loose like that."

     It was so sincere a compliment that Willa hugged Sara, which caused her to blush.

     "Let's saddle up and ride out early to Zuma," Willa said suddenly, "I have to see that everything is in order and the wagons are all packed, but then we can leave."

     "I want to see Thad and Wen first," Sara put in.

     "They'll be at Zuma for the rodeo," Willa called over her shoulder, "if we hurry we might even get to help with the herding."

     I stood looking after her; the morning's gray mood seemed to have lifted, Willa was suddenly bursting with energy. And there was something else, something it took a while for me to recognize—the old recklessness had returned. Willa wanted to take part in the herding. She wasn't going to be content to sit and watch with the rest of us.

     "She's in fine spirits," Sara said.

     "She was crying at breakfast," I answered.

     "Willa? Crying? Has that ever happened before?" Sara wanted to know.

     "Not in my memory," I told her.

     "Then what is it?" she asked.

     "I don't know. She doesn't want Owen to leave tomorrow, but
he will. I don't know what is happening, but I have this strange feeling . . ."

     Sara was watching me. "I know it sounds peculiar," I went on, "but I have this feeling that something is happening and I don't understand what it is, but it troubles me."

     Sara bent her head and told me she did know the feeling. "But you'll just have to wait, you know that," she added softly. "Women like you and me, we can't change the flow of things, we can only watch . . . and wait." Her voice became impertinent then and she said, "So let's just go and watch the gallant
vaqueros
prove their manhood with the riata and the
castrata
, and in the process put more Yankee dollars in Owen's cupboard, to prove his."

     I laughed at Sara's wonderful irreverence. "Maybe that's the trouble," I said, and when I saw that she didn't understand, added, "Owen's manhood."

     She leaned against the wall and frowned. "I hope not," she said, "that beautiful man . . ." but before she could finish Willa was back, breathless from hurrying. She called to us to come along. Willa had tied her hair back loosely with a ribbon, and she had changed into the delicately flowered lawn blouse that Owen had given her last Christmas, and which she had yet to wear. He would notice and consider it a peace offering. He would be able to leave tomorrow, I thought, with an easy mind.

"You'll have to ride Ranger," Willa told Sara, "all the saddle horses have been pressed into work. Ranger has been favoring his left front leg a bit, so we thought we should give him a rest—that's you, an eighty-five-pound rest."

     Sara ran her hand over the big dapple gray and when he dropped his head to nuzzle her, she kissed his forelock. He was the gentlest horse on the ranch, and the largest. Willa squatted to examine his hoof, expertly thrusting her fingers into spots that
could be sore, and the big horse waited patiently.

     I watched the two women I cared most for in the world; the only thing alike about them, it seemed to me, was their love for animals. Sara, I felt sure, because she trusted so few people with her love. And Willa, perhaps, because she trusted so many.

     Our horses waded, belly-deep, in a field of bright yellow wild mustard flowers; we were in a world of two distinct colors, yellow and the brilliant blue of the sky, and when we reached the top of the hill that looked down over Zuma Canyon, and out to sea, the whole of the ranch lay before us.

     The ocean spread to the west, deep and calmly blue, only a gentle breeze blowing off the water to relieve the steady heat of the sun. Below us, against the spring-green valley, was the corral, newly built of split sycamore logs, big enough to allow six riders to work, all at once. And above us to the east were the coastal mountains that separated us from the rest of the continent.

     We sat our horses, the three of us, and breathed of the mountains and the sea. "It's a kind of magic kingdom here on the edge of the land," Sara said, "closed off by the tides, it is truly an enchanted land."

     I was surprised, and pleased, that Sara would speak in her poet's voice in front of Willa.

     "Yes," Willa answered, "this is the center of the earth."

     "The earth is round, Willa," I said. "No center."

     She did not even smile. Instead she said in perfect seriousness, "I guess I mean that this is my center, my world. My safe place."

     There was something haunting in her words. Sara felt it too, I could tell by the way she looked at me.

     A small cloud of dust rose to the east, so we knew the first group of cattle would soon be arriving.

     "Here comes the food wagons," Will said, pointing to the beach below, where hard sand served as a road. Willa spurred Princess down the hill and we followed, though she quickly outstripped both of us.

     Owen and McCord stood inside the corral, Owen talking earnestly and McCord listening. Outside the corral a
vaquero
was cutting out cows and calves, putting them in one area while the rest of the herd was held in another. The cows were lowing pathetically, licking their calves all the while, as if some forgotten wisp of memory made them sad.

     The pace was easy now. One or two calves were taken into the corral at a time, the
vaqueros
working together as in a dance, one whirling his lasso over the head, gracefully looping it, while the other curled his rawhide riata around the hind legs. At the exact moment each spurred his horse in a different direction and the calf was brought to the ground. While the horses kept the ropes taut, one man grabbed the hot branding iron and pressed it into the animal's hip, while the other brandished his knife, cutting the mark of the Rancho Malibu y Sequit, a notched circle, into an ear.

     Some of our neighbors had come to watch. They sat on the sides of the corral, shouting their approval or groaning when one of the
vaqueros
missed. The excitement would build when the main body of the herd arrived.

     Willa had seen Francisco, our oldest and most inept herder, coming from the east with a small group of cattle, and she rode off to help him. Sara and I collected Wen and Thad, who had arrived on the wagon with Trinidad, and went to the stream to hunt for crayfish.

     Bordered by low growing brush, the stream was cool and pleasant. We found one crayfish and then another. They thrilled Wen and frightened Thad, who told me, "Thad no like pinch fish, Auntie." So I took him to a grassy place and sat with him snuggled in my lap while Sara and Wen waded, absorbed in their mission.

     Finally the sounds of the herd began to move in on us from all sides as hundreds upon hundreds of cattle converged on Zuma Canyon. We climbed to a grassy hillock, the four of us—Sara and Wen scrambling on ahead, Thad and I making our ponderous way behind them. We lay on our stomachs and watched the action.

     The fires were blazing in the corral, the branding irons heated white hot. Some of the men had red bandanas tied round their foreheads, and every now and then you could see them wipe their knife blades flat against them, to clean off the blood, before sharpening them on pieces of oiled stone.