Marco and the Devil's Bargain (33 page)

Paloma had not the energy to stand. She stayed on her knees until Marco reached her. He knelt, too, and grabbed her around the waist, his face in her hair.

Neither of them said anything. What was there to say? Paloma just breathed in and out, grateful beyond measure because he still lived. They stayed there as The People hurried into the cave and began to shout, the echoes weird and wonderful, because there was food now, as much as they could eat.

“
I ripped my pants,” he said finally. Paloma laughed.

“
Now it is your turn to look like the rest of us, my
juez
.” She held him tight until her heartbeat returned to normal. “What will the governor think?”

K
nives flashing, eyes intent, The People made short work of the bears. The fire bearer sent the children scattering to gather wood and built a fire inside the cave. After staring at the mound of bear meat and turning away with a queasy feeling, Marco appointed himself to round up the horses that had fled in terror. The old man who had helped him gestured that he would come, too.

Marco helped the elder mount his horse again, wondering how useful he would be. Before they rode from the clearing, he looked back at Paloma, who blew him a kiss and waved him on. She had taken the baby out of the cradleboard and held it in her arms.

The old man gestured to Toshua, and the two of them spoke in whispers. Toshua nodded, his eyes lively, then scratched his head as if wondering how to convey the message.

“
I can manage whatever he says, Toshua,” Marco assured him.

Toshua waited a little longer, obviously trying to convert what he had been told into workaday Spanish. “Señor ….”

“
So formal, my brother?” Marco teased.

“
He, uh, hopes you give that woman lots of tipi time.”

Marco blushed and looked away, speaking to the distant canyon wall. “Let the old goat know that I do, indeed. By the way, has he a name?”

“
It will come as no surprise to you that his name translates as Buffalo Rut.”

Marco threw back his head and shouted with laughter, which earned him stares, then smiles, then laughter from people relieved to have something to joke about, even if they hadn't heard the conversation. Paloma gave him her look-down-the-nose stare, so he thought it prudent to actually search for the horses.

They left the area at a walk, and Marco was immediately impressed with Buffalo Rut, who went from elderly man to Comanche tracker. The old
muchacho
prudently did not lean too far out of his saddle to look for tracks, wisely leaving that to Marco.

The snow showed no signs of letting up, but the tracks were visible. After a mile or so they found Paloma's horse calmly nosing aside snow and eating dry winter grass. Another mile, and the rest were gathered in.

“
I wish I could talk with you,” Marco said to his companion, feeling the shadows of early evening creep around the canyon and into his heart. It was that time of day when, if he had paperwork to deal with, he would close his ledgers and clean off his desk—tidy fellow—and start to wonder what Paloma had ordained for dinner. There would be cheerful conversation, maybe a glass of wine in the
sala
, and then prayers in the chapel and bed.

Funny how the memory of a lifetime seemed to recede, the longer he stayed with The People. He closed his eyes and let his horse find the way back. He would probably tell Paloma about their quick work in the cave against an enraged sow protecting her cubs, but he doubted a wife even as well-tuned as his would understand what it felt like to take a stance, lance in hand, and wait for the beast to charge. All his life, he had heard Pueblo Indian tales of the Old Ones, and even seen the curious skulls and bones of giant animals found in their colony. A sublime storyteller, his mama had told
fantasias
of primitive people—half man, half beast—who had roamed their mountains, living short and terrible lives.

“
Are we any different, Mama?” he murmured. All of a sudden, he longed to be back in those Sangre de Cristo Mountains, living the life he knew better than this one. He took a deep breath. And yet he could not deny the siren's call of the life he was leading right now. Well, it would be something to think about, shoes off, Paloma in his lap, a glass of wine in his hand. It couldn't come soon enough.

He looked back at Buffalo Rut. And yet ….

After a prodigious nursing, the babies were full and exhausted by their rare bout of crying. Paloma and Kahúu cleaned them and swaddled them with trade blankets and popped them into cradleboards, where the tight wrap reassured them and sent them quickly to sleep. Ayasha said she would watch them, while the women not preparing great slabs of bear meat for the fire had gathered to offer help to Antonio, if he needed any.

Tired down to her toes and pained by the scratches on her arms, Paloma sat on a rock by the cave entrance, her chin on her palm, her eyes heavy. She watched Antonio work quickly on the warrior with the bear claw scrape. He offered the man a leather strap to bite, but the warrior turned his head, looking faintly insulted.

“
Suit yourself. You're braver than I am,” Antonio said. Gently, he pulled the wound together and stitched away. The Indian began to sweat, but he made no sound.

Antonio surprised her then. When he finished, instead of walking away, he put his hand on the man's heaving chest, patting him until his breathing returned to normal. He also did not object to the mash of something that looked to Paloma like beef gravy that Eckapeta applied to the wound. In fact, he smiled his approval when she took a smoldering stick of wood from the fire, blew it out, then waved the smoke over the man.

He must have felt her eyes on him, because Antonio joined her on the rock. She didn't ask, but he pushed back the fringe on her deerskin sleeves and took another look at her scratches. He rummaged in his medical satchel and pulled out a tin of salve. He sniffed it and nodded. “Might help,” he told her, and applied it to her arms.

“
But you don't know for certain?” she asked, skeptical.

“
It's been a while since medical college, but I remember a doctor telling me, ‘Whatever it is, treat with white salve.' There you are.”

She smiled at him, wondering what had changed.

He must have known what she was thinking. Mirroring her earlier position, he rested his chin on his hand and stared toward the fire, too. “They went into that cave so fearless. Did you see what happened?”

“
Probably not. I closed my eyes because I was so frightened,” Paloma said frankly.

“
I took a lance from one of the recuperating warriors and started into the cave, too.”

“
You
did
?”

He gave her a wounded look, which made her smile. “I am not without some courage,” he said, then smiled, too, a shy sort of smile, interesting because of the hope in his eyes, a quality Antonio Gil had lacked. “Well, a little courage.”

“
You
started
in?” Paloma asked, prompting him.

“
Yes. Ayasha grabbed my arm and yanked me back.” His voice took on a sound of wonder. “She told me, ‘Medicine men do not need to fight. Your battle is different.' ”

Paloma digested this, thinking of the times Ayasha had helped the little doctor, who could be so irascible. “I think she likes you, Antonio.”

He made no comment. When she took a good look at this face, his eyes were closed.

Kahúu took the babies inside and arranged their buffalo robes, making her husband comfortable. Paloma stayed where she was until Marco and the old man returned with the horses. Someone, probably Toshua, had created a picket line near the cave's mouth. Paloma watched as the men cared for the horses then trudged through the snow to the cave. She joined him, ready to eat, her mouth watering.

To her heart's delight, he put his hand on her shoulder and massaged the muscles, then draped his arm over her shoulder, establishing complete ownership of her—something he never did at the Double Cross, with his servants around. This was a different man, too, and she liked him just as well.

After eating until one more bite would have signaled disaster, they joined Toshua and Eckapeta, who leaned against the cave wall, far enough back from the entrance to feel warmth from the fire. Her eyes closed, Paloma listened as Toshua and Marco organized the watch.

With no protest, she let Eckapeta lead her to a familiar buffalo robe and obeyed the woman's soft-voiced command to raise her arms. Her dress came off and she crawled between the robes, content to sleep in her own semi-hibernation. She was aware when Marco came to bed, less aware when he left later for his turn at the cave mouth.

No one spoke. Silence ruled the cave until some point in the early morning when a baby was born. Paloma moved closer to her husband.

In complete agreement, the war chief and the peace chief decided that the people needed one more day in the cave, eating and sleeping. The snow tapered off by mid-morning, allowing weak sunshine to angle inside. Ayasha had organized the older children in a stick game. Marco was content to sprawl on the buffalo robe and watch his wife play with Kahúu's small niece. When he spoke, and the baby turned her head toward him, his happiness was complete.

He knew he had to say something to Paloma about her attachment—no,
their
attachment—to the infant. What it would be, he did not know. He wasn't a man to put off important conversations, but his courage would fail him if he spoke now. Surely they had a few days. Such a conversation would keep.

His more pressing current worry was the big rip in his breeches. Toshua solved that bit of sartorial indelicacy, totally at Marco's expense. After a discussion with the men in the encampment, punctuated by laughter, Toshua motioned Marco inside the cave. He held a breechcloth in his hands, which made The People chuckle.

“
We have decided that our peace chief needs more dignity. Little brother, you are one of us. Take off your rags and come here.”

“
Um, you could hand that to me where the cave is dark,” Marco suggested, his face warm, even as he began to grasp the significance of what was happening.

“
Do it their way, Marco,” his sweet wife said. “Didn't you tell me this is their world?”

How true were her words. He looked at her. Her face was solemn because she already understood what was happening. He took a deep breath. This was more than a change of clothing. He was being offered entrance into a society he had feared and dreaded all his life.

“
Help me, Paloma?”

She stood, already so graceful in her beaded deerskin dress, and unbuttoned his equally ragged shirt. Her eyes did get a little merry when he removed his useless breeches and the women started to chuckle and talk to each other.

“
I think they envy me,” she whispered, which made him smile.

Naked now, he started walking toward Toshua with as much dignity as he could manage, considering that he was a modest Spanish gentleman. To his relief, Toshua took his arm and ushered him into the welcome darkness of the deeper cave. He wondered just what he would have to do for Paloma to buy her silence about this, once they had returned to the Double Cross. He didn't think that a new dress would be enough, then remembered the red leather shoes he had promised her, in a world that seemed distant now.

“
You know that in Valle del Sol, I am considered a man of some dignity,” Marco said to Toshua, as they walked deeper into the cave.

Toshua looked around elaborately. “I do not see that man here,” he teased, and then became serious at once. “I see instead a man of great kindness.” He handed Marco the breechcloth.

Keeping his mind blank—what he was doing went against his entire life and upbringing—he put on the Comanche breechcloth. The garment was a model of economy, and he had to admit to himself that he had been envying the men on their journey. Toshua took the trade blanket from his own shoulders and draped it around Marco.

“
I can't take your—”

“
Eckapeta has another one for me. Don't argue.”

Marco kept his boots on, knowing the sight would probably send Paloma and her friends into whoops. That was all right, too. The People needed to laugh, maybe Paloma more than most, because he feared what was coming, when they reached the greater gathering of The People.

They found a flat rock that in some distant epoch might have tumbled from the ceiling, and sat down. Toshua called out in Comanche, which in a few minutes brought a warrior with a torch. He sat with them while Toshua asked Marco what he thought about sending the man ahead to the still-distant place in the canyon where a larger river flowed and The People waited out the rest of the winter.

“
He can tell the Elders that the Dark Wind has visited us and passed, and we have someone who can save The People.”

“
I think he should go ahead,” Marco replied, “if he is willing.” He had to ask what had been on his mind since the strange journey began. “I know there must be Kwahadi in that gathering who lost many friends and family at the Rio San Carlos, where my governor and many of us defeated Cuerno Verde. What will they do to us, do you think?”