Spanish Serenade (35 page)

They sold the boat for a goodly sum. They added that to the last of the silver, and with it bought horses — most of them cheap but fleet and sturdy plains ponies, though Vicente found a young stallion with an appearance of fine bloodlines which he insisted on having. They also bought flour and dried corn, dried beef, bacon and beans and peppers, plus another musket or two to increase their store and an additional supply of ammunition. Finally, they bought a pair of pack mules to carry everything.

Doña Luisa tried to insist that a change of clothing be bought for each of the women to replace those left behind in New Orleans. The only thing to be had, however, was a few lengths of cheap cloth suitable only for the Indian trade. It was Enrique who, disappearing in the afternoon, returned a short time later with a collection of blouses and shirts and even a day gown in Doña Luisa's size. He would not say where the items came from, but they were still damp, as if fresh from a washline. Nevertheless, he basked in the approval of the ladies, at least for a while.

At dawn two days after they had landed, they mounted up and rode their horses away from the post and along the trail that led to the Sabine River and the Tejas country beyond.

17

THEY LEFT THE MOSQUITOES behind, for the most part, once they crossed the Sabine. They traveled for several more days through rolling hills covered with dense stands of pine and hickory, sweet gum and ash trees, and where wild plum bushes and haw trees were hung with small green fruit. Slowly the trees became more sparse and the pines and ash and gums gave way to scrub oak. The hills became flatter, more spreading. The winding waterways grew farther apart and narrower. The swampy bottomlands opened out to stretches of long grass blowing in the wind.

Charro became their guide, pointing them along the faintest of paths in a southwesterly direction. He did not pretend to know the way, however; this he told them plainly. He had only heard tales of the trail that was a part of the old El Camino Real, the king's highway, and could recall but a few landmark mentioned during stories told of caravans that had disappeared and massacres by Indians at lonely way stops. He knew the route began at Natchez on the east bank of the Mississippi, crossed the river and passed overland to Natchitoches and through what had once been the mission settlements along the Sabine, including old Los Adaes near Natchitoches, and then continued on to Mexico City. There had been a time when there was much movement on it. In the days of the French in Louisiana, it had been a favorite contraband route for men bent on cheating the king of Spain of the silver from his mines in New Spain, or of the proceeds of the trade between the two colonies, a trade that was illegal under Spanish law. There had also been diplomatic missions between the French commandant at Natchitoches, St. Denis, and the Spanish settlements along the Rio Grande. During one of the latter St. Denis had been arrested for smuggling and imprisoned by a Spanish military commander, then had married the military commander's daughter. Since the closing of the Sabine missions some sixteen years earlier, after Louisiana became Spanish and the area ceased to be one of contention between France and Spain, traffic on the highway had slowed to a trickle and nearly ceased. Travel along it was dangerous for another of the reasons that the missions had closed — the depredations of the Indians of the Tejas plains.

The man in Natchitoches who had sold them the horses had thought they were crazy to be setting out on the El Camino Real alone. They should wait, he said, at least until another group came along heading in their direction. There were sometimes traders who moved among the Indian tribes, men who exchanged muskets and the
aguardiente
, known as firewater, for buffalo hides and other furs, men with knowledge and experience in the vast country through which they would be traveling. Such traders were not exactly persons of respect, but the larger the party, the less likely the Indians were to attack. There was a quartet of traders and their helpers who were due to leave in a week or so.

It was decided among the band that they must go on. The news of who they were and what had taken place in New Orleans might reach the town before the traders were ready to depart. In addition, the kind of men who would arm savages with muskets might well be more dangerous than the Indians. They did not need more trouble than they had already.

The men were glad to be on horseback again. They showed it by staging impromptu races and displays of horsemanship in which they did everything except make their mounts stand on their heads. Such high spirits soon waned, however, under the day-to-day tedium of the journey.

Pilar also enjoyed being back in the saddle. She had grown used to the hard pace Refugio set during her few days with the band in Spain, and though it was exhausting, the tiredness it brought was healthy. It was also welcome, since it prevented her from thinking.

Doña Luisa was shocked that she was expected to ride, something she had never done in her life. She had, at first, refused to go at all unless a carriage, or at least a cart, was found for her use. No arguments about the unsuitability of the country ahead for carriage traffic or the slowness of that mode of transportation moved her. Only Refugio's threat to tie her facedown across a saddle brought capitulation. It also added a bitter note to her ceaseless complaints.

The woman sat her horse like a bundle of soiled linen ready for the wash. She moaned through the first two days, cataloging her every sore muscle and bruise and rubbed section of skin, and castigating Refugio as a beast for dragging her along on his flight from prosecution. It took two men to help her onto her mount, and three to haul her down again, and she was so insecure in the saddle that their rate of travel was reduced by a third.

On the morning of the third day Enrique interrupted the woman's grumbling with a suggestion. Doña Luisa could ride pillion with him, he said; he rode light, so the two of them together would not overburden his mount. She refused, she protested, she cried and even cursed. Regardless, she was hoisted up behind the acrobat. Enrique kicked his horse into a gallop. The lady screamed and flung herself against him, wrapping her plump white arms around his narrow waist. Grinning like a dog with a new bone, Enrique wheeled in a wide circle, then came high-stepping back to rejoin the others.

Doña Luisa's endless cataloging of her grievances did not stop, but only found a new outlet. Enrique, unlike Refugio, did not ignore them, but took issue with every word she said. He questioned her reasons for grumbling, cracked jokes, ridiculed her lack of equine prowess, and generally goaded her into rage. The resulting quarrels and shouting matches seemed to give him vast satisfaction, and at the same time so wearied the lady that she ceased to rail at her circumstances.

Whether Refugio approved or deplored the arrangement, no one could tell. He was distant, preoccupied. He often ranged for miles ahead, bringing back information on diverging paths and watering holes and instructions on resting places. Sometimes he backtracked, circling around in a wide loop to watch the trail behind them.

It did not seem to trouble him that Charro had taken a position of leadership. The two of them consulted together often and long, holding midnight sessions in which Refugio went over everything the Tejas-born man knew about the country and its dangers. He extracted details concerning the route they were following that Charro was hardly aware he knew, the names and locations of rivers and distances between them, the detours for dry stretches and best ways to cross the open prairie lands, and the characteristics of prominent landmarks. He also delved into the nature, habits, and tricks of the different Indian tribes, from the forest-dwelling, sun-worshiping Caddo Hasinai to the cannibalistic Karankawa of the coastal areas; from the primitive Coahuiltecans of the southern desert and nonmalignant Tonkawas of the grasslands, to the warlike Apaches and hard-riding Comanches who had made the plains their own by driving all others from them. Of the last two tribes, it was difficult to say which was worse.

The Apaches, Charro said, feared nothing that breathed or walked. They were cunning and devious and renowned for their cruelty. All efforts to convert them to Christianity had failed. They had, during the two-hundred-odd years of Spanish occupation of the Tejas country, been the greatest single factor preventing the settlements from prospering.

The Comanches were more recent arrivals, sweeping down from the mountains to the north within the last hundred years. Incomparable horsemen, aggressive, swift, and deadly, they were competing with the Apaches for mastery of the plains, and so were their enemies. Caught between the Comanches on one side and the Spanish on the other, the Apaches had become more daring, more vicious, as they waged a campaign to the death against both. In retaliation, the Spanish had formulated their own policy of extermination of the Apaches. Toward that end they had attempted to create alliances with the other Indian tribes, but the rate of success was not impressive. Spanish expansion in the vast region bounded by the Sabine, the Rio Grande, and the western mountains had officially stopped; unofficially, it was in retreat.

Regardless of the Indian danger, the leagues slid past without a hint of trouble. The weather was dry and mild, a succession of perfect days. Birds called, bees hummed in the wildflowers and the clover, and the sun shone down with heat that slowly increased. Rabbits with tails as white and fluffy as cotton were flushed from the grass before them, and coveys of quail flew up sometimes from directly under the hoofs of their mounts. In the drowsy heat of the afternoon they watched the languid circling of sparrow hawks and buzzards, while dusk often brought the call of coyotes. It did not seem possible that there could be savages somewhere beyond the haze-shaded horizon, savages waiting for a chance to kill them or inflict the horrible tortures Charro described. Imperceptibly, the fears of the past weeks receded, as if they were being left behind as surely as the mountains of Spain and the Mississippi River which curled around New Orleans.

Vicente grew brown and healthy. The scar on his face faded to a pale design, one they all ceased to notice and which he ignored as if it weren't there. Gradually, the solemn introspection of the boy's manner gave way to interest in his surroundings. He seemed to take to life on the move, especially the changes in the countryside. Sometimes he rode with his brother, sometimes with one of the others, but often he sought out Pilar. She thought it was because she shared some of his growing fascination with the strange flowers and grasses, the birds and animals they came across.

Vicente was riding with her and Charro one afternoon when they topped a rise and saw before them an open plain. A shallow stream wandered through it and a few trees stood here and there, but it was the grass that made them draw up their mounts to look. It grew green and thick near the water and more sparse farther away, but mingling with it, like bits of fallen sky, were patches of low-growing wild-flowers of deepest blue. The color was so intense it hurt the eyes, yet at the same time it soothed the soul.

“Beautiful,” Pilar said softly as she placed her hands on her pommel and eased her weight in the saddle.

“El conejo, we call it,” Charro answered. Stepping down from his horse, he bent to pick a flower from the grass at their feet and hand it up to Pilar. “You see the white tip inside the blue? That's the rabbit's white tail, el conejo. You'll see acres of them from now on.” He gestured toward the lower end of the plain. “And over there are wild cattle.”

Pilar had been so bemused by the wildflowers that she had not even noticed the cattle. She raised a brow as she looked in the direction he indicated. “Is it my imagination, or are they larger than in Spain?”

“No, you're right. They're descended from animals that escaped from the herds that traveled with the great entradas, the expeditions and explorations into this country made by men such as Coronado. The land here was well-suited to cattle, but not without its hazards, so only the biggest, the toughest, and those with the longest and sharpest horns survived to breed. Now they are formidable.”

They were indeed. The largest of the herd, a great dun-colored bull, appeared to stand as tall at the shoulder as a horse, and had horns with a span far wider than a man could reach with both arms outstretched. The twenty or thirty cows the bull watched over also had horns, and they were not much smaller.

“You say they're wild?” Vicente said.

Charro nodded as he remounted and gathered up his reins. “They have to be, out here so far from any settlement. All such cattle belong to the king, according to the law, but any man daring enough to put a brand on one can claim it with few questions asked.”