When the Splendor Falls (72 page)

“Mr. Gil!” the grizzled old
pastor
called out, waving a gnarled hand in welcome. “Never do they forget Pedro at the
rancho
.
Mi patrón
, he always remembers. A good man, him. Always I know someone will come,” he said, throwing the wide flap of his
sarape
across his shoulder as he approached.

“Always, Pedro!” Gil promised, for the old Mexican had been herding sheep for his father since Nathaniel Braedon had herded fifteen thousand head of sheep to the gold fields of California back in 1850. He’d invested almost ten thousand dollars in a herd of the little
churros
, first brought to the territory by the
conquistadores
, then another couple of thousand for provisions, mules, and herders. They’d headed west, toward the San Juan Mountains of the Colorado Territory, and Ute country. After some bartering, with payment made in full to the Utes for trespass on their lands, the caravan had continued without mishap the rest of the over fifteen hundred miles to the High Sierra and the wealth of the mining camps, where mutton and wool brought premium prices.

Gil grinned at the old
pastor
, for his father had made a profit of over a hundred thousand dollars on the transaction. Pedro, however, despite the money he’d pocketed, which had provided handsomely for his family in Santa Fe, had soon returned to the high country and his sheep, his only companions his trusted dogs, and where none of the everyday, petty problems could reach him, including too much tequila and a nagging wife.

Gil glanced over at the herd, some of the older sheep showing their
churro
ancestry. They were smaller and had less wool, and it was coarser. They’d been nicknamed “Mexican bare-bellies” because of that, but they were hardy and could survive the harshest winters and the hottest, driest summers, and that was why his father had bred them with European sheep, paying a high price for prize Spanish Merino rams, the crossbreed developed yielding soft, silky wool.

Gil suddenly became aware of Pedro staring at Leigh in amazement, and he quickly made the introductions. “This is Leigh Braedon, Pedro. She’s Neil’s wife.”

Pedro pulled off his
sombrero
with no hesitation. “
Señora
Braedon? Mr. Neil’s wife? Ah,” he murmured, nodding his graying head as if in approval, his dark eyes unreadable in a wizened face as wrinkled as a walnut. “
¿Cómo estamos?
” he responded to Leigh’s greeting, his face crinkling into even more creases when he grinned. “Is good, I think. But the
caciques demonios
will not be pleased.”

“Who?” Gil demanded, dismounting.

“The old ones,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “The evil chiefs.
She
calls on them,” he said in oblique reference, his lips tightening into a thin line that told Gil he’d get nothing more out of the old
pastor
as he crossed himself, then held his hands up to the heavens in supplication, lest there be other gods listening.

“Well, I don’t know who the devil they are, but I figure they don’t have much to say about what goes on at Royal Rivers. And Neil does as he damn well pleases,” Gil said, beginning to unload the bundles piled high on the packhorse. “The usual, Pedro. Beans and flour, and plenty of coffee. Lupe also sent plenty of
salsa
, and hot the way you like. Said it was the only way you could eat your own cooking. And she even prepared lunch for you,” he said, glancing down in surprise at the collie, thinking he’d growled, then he laughed, for it had been his own stomach.

“That Lupe,” Pedro said with a wheezing laugh as he gratefully accepted the tightly wrapped packet Leigh handed to him from her saddlebag.

“We’ll get ours later, Leigh,” Gil called over his shoulder, knowing Pedro would be embarrassed he might cause offense if he ate in the company of Neil’s beautiful, patrician wife, and an
inglesa
, even though he knew Leigh wouldn’t mind. Handing several packs to Pedro, and taking the bulk of the load onto his own young shoulders, he started toward the crudely built hut that had somehow managed to survive countless winter blizzards.

“Everything all right up here, Pedro?” Gil asked, glancing around the shepherd’s campsite, where he stayed only occasionally, having to follow his herd cross-country as they grazed fresh pastureland each day until they returned to their settled range or bed-ground each night. “Soldado and the other dogs seem a bit nervous,” Gil remarked as he noticed the collie circling the herd again, pausing now and again beside a couple of slightly larger black-and-brown shepherds, as if they were listening for marauding coyotes or wolves.

“Oh,
sí
, but last night, we have the big trouble with the wolves. They come down from high on the mountain, ’cause they know we got the little ones now and they like to make Soldado awfully angry, ’specially when they steal one of his little lambs,” he explained. “But I shot one of them thievin’ devils,” he added with his almost toothless grin as he pointed toward his rifle propped against the side of the hut, and the gray carcass of a wolf lying nearby. “They don’t come back too quickly. It’s the coyote Soldado don’t like, ’cause they too much the coward to get caught like the brave wolf.”

“Did you lose any lambs?” Gil asked, setting down the bundles by the door to the hut.

“
Sí
,” Pedro said sadly. “And they got two ewes that wandered off to graze.
Muy loco!
It was midnight. They eat all day long—now they’re eaten. And the little ones have no
madre
. One followed his
madre
into the brush and…” Pedro said, throwing up his hands in helplessness to explain more succinctly what had been the fate of the poor lamb.

“Think the wolves are still around?” Gil asked, eyeing the silver gray carcass worriedly, his gaze moving to search the copse of pine, where too many shadows seemed to deepen before his very eyes. “Soldado acts like he knows they’re out there.”

“
Sí
, but we be ready for them this time. Ol’ Soldado, I think he’s been eating chile peppers, or…there’re Apache around. Never seen him so jumpy, ’ceptin’ when they been sneakin’ around in the rocks. Soldado hates the Apache. They eat dog,” Pedro said, frowning as he decided to keep his rifle closer at hand.

Gil looked over at Leigh, whose eyes had widened in growing dismay. Meeting her worried glance, Gil winked, for no one believed half of what Pedro said anymore. He remembered mostly the old days. Although, Gil thought, the beginnings of a frown forming on his brow, the Apache were always raiding isolated mines and ranches, Cochise never having given up seeking vengeance for his overwhelming defeat at Apache Pass. But he was hiding out in the Chiricahua Mountains most of the time, and the old Apache warrior chief Mangas Coloradas had been killed a couple of years earlier, Gil thought with a return of confidence. And last year Colonel Kit Carson and his troops had fought the Kiowas at Adobe Walls, but now that the Civil War was over, there would be more troops stationed in the territories, and the way Gil figured it, the Comanche were a problem for the Texans since they seemed to do most of their raiding across the High Plains, their war trail cutting across the heart of Texas from the Pecos River to the Red.

It was shortly after noon when they bade farewell to the old
pastor
, who stood waving to them, Soldado by his side, watching until they disappeared from view. Their path carried them along a narrow trail winding down the far side of the highland meadow, and in the opposite direction from Royal Rivers.

Gil was taking her to Riovado.

“I don’t know if I ought to do this, Leigh,” Gil said over his shoulder an hour later, the fringe on his buckskin jacket stirring slightly in the breeze. “It’s later than I thought, and I’ve only been along this trail a couple of times. I haven’t even been up to Riovado since Neil left. Father doesn’t like any of us to come here—except Neil, of course, but it’s his land.”

“Why doesn’t Nathaniel want you to come here?”

“Well, actually, he’s forbidden it, now that Neil’s away,” Gil admitted a trifle sheepishly.

Leigh was indignant, urging Capitaine closer as she followed Gil and Jicama single file along the trail. “You should have told me, Gil! I wouldn’t have asked you to bring me here otherwise. I knew Nathaniel would refuse to bring me. And I understand why. This is where he lived when his first wife died, and where Neil and his sister were kidnapped. But I didn’t think he’d mind you bringing me.”

Gil shrugged. “He thinks it’s a bad place. He thinks it should be called Malvado instead of Riovado because it is an evil place. But I don’t care,” Gil added defiantly. “I’m almost a man now, and I can make up my own mind. You have a right to see Riovado,” he said, lightly touching his heels to Jicama’s sides and sending the dark bay more quickly along the narrow, rocky path.

Leigh glanced around nervously, noticing for the first time how low the sun had dropped toward the distant mountains, and how much deeper a gold the lengthening shadows were, and the air was no longer as warm.

“How far is Riovado, Gil?” Leigh asked, glancing around at the forested slopes that rose around them, the gilded crest of a cloud beginning to form above the hills in the distance and as she watched the cotton-like mounds grew higher, darkening ominously. She wasn’t surprised when she heard the thunder.

Gil squinted at the sun. “Too far, I think, for us to make it there and back by sundown, Leigh. I’m sorry,” he said, risking a glance back at her, his own disappointment greatest because he’d wanted to please her. But when she nodded her agreement, her smile coming easily, his spirits lifted and he squared his shoulders, glad he hadn’t had to find the canyon that led to Riovado, because he wasn’t certain he remembered exactly where it was, and he’d have hated to have gotten lost up there with nightfall coming, and then he’d have to explain to his father where they’d spent the night. Not that he was too worried about that, because if they’d reached Riovado, they could always have stayed in the cabin.

“I promise we’ll come another day, all right, Leigh?” he asked as they turned their horses around and headed back along the trail.

“That’s a promise then,” Leigh agreed, glancing up as a hawk’s shadow passed overhead. Shivering slightly, she decided she was just as glad they’d turned back.

“We’ll stop and water our horses just the other side of this grove of cottonwoods, where we had lunch earlier. We’re almost back on the trail now. Pedro’s meadow is atop that ridge, but we’re going to head across the clearing toward those trees and come out on the trail lower down,” Gil told her as they entered the shade of the thicket, slowing their mounts down to a walk as they threaded their way through the tall, waving grasses and tangled undergrowth, the gentle murmuring of a meadow brook coming from just beyond.

“What was that?” Leigh asked, pulling up on the reins just as she reached the edge of the woods.

“What?”

“That! Didn’t you hear it?” she asked, turning around slightly as she looked around, her saddle creaking beneath her.

“Probably a prairie dog or ground squirrel.”

“No, it sounded like a lamb,” Leigh said, climbing down and looping Capitaine’s reins over a branch.

“Better be careful, Leigh. It could be a skunk, or a bear cub, and if it is, then its mother isn’t far away,” Gil warned as he watched Leigh walk carefully toward the nearest tree, and the thick brambles at its base.

Suddenly she knelt down, peering through the leafy growth. “Oh, look, Gil! It’s a newborn lamb. Poor thing,” Leigh crooned, reaching in to pick up the tiny, frightened creature, its baaing growing louder out of fear of the unknown.

“It’s caught on a thorn and can’t get loose,” Leigh called back to him.

Gil sighed in resignation as he dismounted, not bothering to tie Jicama, who was trained to stay in place. Gil squatted down beside her, looking through the leaves at the big-eyed lamb. “Never known critters that can get themselves into so much trouble,” Gil muttered beneath his breath as he pulled out his knife, nonetheless glad that Leigh had heard the pitiful thing.

“One of the ewes that wandered off from camp is probably this little fellow’s mother. It would have just stood here waiting, and either died or been killed by wolves or coyotes. We’ll have to take it back to Royal Rivers with us. We don’t have time to go back up the mountain, and even if we did I doubt we could find another ewe to feed it,” Gil said, his knife having sliced through the thorn that held the lamb captive, and lifting the shaking creature in his arms, he placed it well away from the brambles.

Before either Leigh or Gil knew what had happened, the lamb had hopped off, just escaping the arms that reached out to stop its flight.

“Damn!” Gil said in exasperation as Leigh hurried after it, unable to corner it as it shot out into the clearing, its spindly legs carrying it right toward the babbling water of the brook, obviously mistaking it for its lost mother. “Probably drown,” Gil said, Leigh’s laughter drifting to him as he joined in the merry chase along the grassy bank of the brook.

They’d chased the animal some distance from the grove before they finally caught it, and only because it slipped and fell into the icy water, its blathering drawing no sympathy from either Gil or Leigh as they pulled it, drenched and dripping, from the stream.

“Probably catch its death of cold now.”

“No it won’t,” Leigh said, holding the trembling lamb close against her breast. “I’ve a
sarape
rolled up behind my saddle. We’ll wrap it in that. This little lamb is—” Leigh was saying when she was suddenly interrupted by Gil’s hoarse voice.

“Damn,” he said. He stood completely still, his blue-gray eyes wide and unblinking as he stared at the grove of cotton woods where they’d left their horses.

Leigh followed his stare, her arms tightening around the lamb convulsively.

“Damn!” Gil said again, his face paling into a sickly pallor as he stared at the group of mounted Indians who’d formed a half circle in their path.