Scorpion (9 page)

Zion groaned and lay there, staring silently at the deepening dusk. He eventually sat upright and waited for his vision to clear and his eyes to focus. Then he sat there rubbing his jaw. He leaned forward and spat blood. “Sonuvabitch! I think I bit half my cheek off.” He looked up at the man he had aptly named Alacron. Zion had seen a blur of motion, and the next thing he knew, the fist had connected with his jaw. “You feel better?” he dourly inquired.

“Much better,” Ben said, satisfied. He held out his hand. Zion caught hold and Ben hauled him to his feet.

“Then I reckon that evens things between us. We better wash up for supper,” Zion said. “We best be on time for eats. Señora Gallegos expects folks to show up when she sets out the food.”

Zion steadied himself, then, taking his hammerhead gray by the reins, walked the wagon team back toward the barn. The horses would need a quick rubdown and fresh hay before anyone else sat down to dinner. Ben agreed to help. Ambling along in step with the segundo, Ben could not help but notice how empty the corral seemed, and made his observation known to Zion, who had promised him a horse and supplies enough to reach the Río Grande.

“You can thank General Valentin Najera for this,” Zion said as they unhitched the horses and led them into the shade of the barn. He lit a lantern and hung it from the nearest beam. The interior of the barn was partitioned into twenty stalls, ten to a side and all of them empty.

“Don Sebastien kept his breed stock in here. The corral held a string of thirty-five more, all of them prime.”

“He stole them?”

“Requisitioned.” Zion’s tone was full of irony. “There’s a war on and Najera’s a damn general. Personally, I think the best mounts will wind up on his ranch to the south of here, closer to Saltillo.” Zion spat another stream of blood. It wasn’t as coarse red as before, but his jaw still hurt. He took some small satisfaction in the bruised condition of Ben’s knuckles.

Ben tended to the bay mare, leaving Zion to curry and feed the bad-tempered gray gelding. The bay was bred for hauling. It was thick and sturdy but hardly the mount for the back country Ben would have to travel to avoid the Mexican patrols. The gray was obviously a one-man horse and no doubt would fight Ben every step of the way to the border.

“Looks like I’ve got a long walk home,” Ben predicted ruefully.

Zion shook his head and began tossing hay into both stalls with a pitchfork. “Ventana is as good as anyplace else if you ask me. Maybe even better. It’s all the home I’ve ever needed. You might wind up feeling the same way if you gave it half a chance.”

Zion had argued his case before. But Ben wasn’t buying any of his arguments. He was convinced the answers to the question mark that was his life lay to the northeast.

“I’m no vaquero,” he said.

“How do you know?” Zion reached out and turned Ben’s hands palm upward. His skin was callused and rough, and in places streaked with scar tissue, the legacy of a rope burn. “You’ve worked cattle, horses too, I’ll warrant.”

“Maybe so,” Ben said. “But I didn’t work them here.”

“Hell, I give up,” Zion said in mock disgust.

“It’s about time.” Ben grinned. “And don’t try the trick with the shackles again. Tonight I aim to sleep light.” He patted the Colt.

“You win, Señor Alacron,” Zion said. “We’ll ride into Saltillo tomorrow.” Ben visibly stiffened. The segundo chuckled. “Don’t worry. You can pass for a Mex. Just keep your sombrero pulled low, eh?”

“Why the blazes Saltillo?” Ben asked, his eyes narrowing as he searched the black man’s expression for a glimmer of duplicity. Zion appeared to be totally forthright.

“Juan Medrano owes me many favors. If there are any decent saddle horses left in Saltillo, the blacksmith will know about them.”

“I have no money.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Zion said. “Don Sebastien had a saddle with a silver pommel. Juan Medrano’s always wanted to own it. Tomorrow I’ll give him his chance. But it will cost him. Come.” Zion headed up the center aisle of the stall. “If we’re late, Elena will be angry.”

“Go on. I’ll be along.”

Zion gave him a quizzical look but continued out through the double doors. A fading wash of amber, lavender, and cobalt-blue painted the western horizon where the sun had vanished beyond the cordillera to a chorus of coyotes howling in the distance. The ranchyard was eerily quiet. The segundo was deeply troubled by Najera’s latest actions. By requisitioning the horses and pressing Ventana’s vaqueros into service, the general had dealt the ranch a death blow. Cold fury welled in the former slave. Don Sebastien’s family deserved better. Zion had never trusted Najera, despite the fact that Don Sebastien and Josefina considered the man a friend. The segundo had seen past Najera’s platitudes. As in a deck of cards, Najera, like the one-eyed jack, had always kept one side of his face hidden. Until now.

Ben McQueen chose the nearest ladder and climbed up into the hayloft. Half an hour ago, while coming across the ranchyard from the Quintero family plot, he had glimpsed movement in the shadowy reaches of the loft and thought he knew who had been watching as the coffin was lowered, the words read, and the grave covered over. He squeezed his broad shoulders through the hole in the floor and stood silent and watchful as his vision adjusted to the glow of the lanterns that filtered up from below. Isabella Quintero, dressed in a plain cotton dress with a cream-colored shawl wrapped about her shoulders, sat near the loft window at the rear of the barn, from where she was watching the sunset. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, her arms folded before her. She studied Ben as he approached and squatted down on a sack of grain a respectful distance away.

“What do you want?”

Ben realized he had no answer. Yet he was filled with tenderness for the girl, parental feelings that left him puzzled, and he wondered if they could tell him something about his own past. He smiled at the girl, his eyes full of compassion, but the shadows hid most of his face.

“Perhaps I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

“Well, I don’t,” Isabella replied. A shadow stirred at her side, and Ben realized it was the girl’s dog, Niño. The animal rose up, walked a tight circle, stretched and then settled alongside its owner once again.

“I understand,” Ben said, and prepared to leave. He had just begun to retrace his steps when Isabella spoke, halting him with another question.

“Why did you come up here? I don’t even know you. You’re a stranger without a name.”

“Sometimes strangers are the easiest people to talk to.” Ben faced her again. “I understand the hurt you’re feeling. I’ve lost someone too.”

“Who?” Isabella shifted uncomfortably. She continued to struggle to hide her emotions.

“Myself. And it makes me feel as if there’s a hole, here.” He placed his hand over his heart. “And every night feels like I’m carrying the darkness on my back.”

The girl sniffed and wiped a forearm across her eyes. Before she could reply, Josefina’s voice drifted on the night air, calling her stepdaughter to the dinner table. Isabella craned her head past the edge of the loft window. “I’m coming,” she called out. The girl climbed to her feet and dusted the straw from her dress. Her hair fell long and straight and black across her shoulders, in stark contrast to the shawl. “You may escort me to dinner,” she said.

Ben marveled at her composure. This was a strong little girl. And yet he felt sad that she dare not allow herself to weep for her father. He bowed, quickly descended the ladder and waited at the bottom for Isabella to join him. A carriage at the rear of the barn allowed Niño to leap from the loft to the carriage top and then to the packed earth floor.

Isabella looked up at Ben. “I hardly knew my mother, and there was always Elena and then Josefina, so I guess I didn’t miss her so much. But I will miss papa very much. Do you think he’s in heaven?”

“I’m certain of it,” Ben replied.

“I think so too. I saw lightning flash in the north. It was very far away, but that was papa. He loved the rain. He’s told the angels to make it rain here at Ventana. Just wait and see.” Isabella spoke as if she were trying to convince herself. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes.” The big man placed a hand on her shoulder. They stood in silence.

“Señor Alacron … what you said, about the darkness, it’s the same with me. Promise me you won’t tell.”

Josefina appeared in the doorway, her blond hair pinned back with a mantilla. A silk veil framed her pale, high-boned features. “Oh. You both are here. I was worried, my dear.” She raised her arms, and Isabella hurried down the aisle between the stalls and into her stepmother’s embrace. She glanced questioningly at Ben.

“Zion said you are leaving us.”

Isabella looked back at him. She had forgotten the conversation she had overheard between Zion and the gringo, and had begun to like this norteamericano and think of him as a friend. Surely he wouldn’t leave now.

“Yes, ma’am, in the morning.”

“Oh … I had hoped …” Josefina stammered.

Isabella jerked as if stung. A slight gasp escaped her lips. The look of betrayal she cast in Ben’s direction nearly wilted his resolve. But parental feelings aside, this was something he had to do.

“I cannot thank you enough for all your help,” Josefina said. Ben wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and scream in her pretty face, “Your man chained me! I had no choice!” But what was the point? The experience had cost him a week of his life, precious little for a man whose past was a blank.

“You’re welcome,” said the man called Alacron.

“Please join us, then. A decent meal is small payment for all your help.” With a wave of her hand, Quintero’s widow led the way to the hacienda where Elena waited in the dining room by a table she had laden with the bread and
pan dulce,
the smoked ham, the beans and spicy salsa that comprised the funeral meal.

J
OSEFINA QUINTERO HEARD NINO
barking and realized the men were leaving for Saltillo. The widow set the bottle of laudanum aside, though its contents had served her well since Don Sebastien’s fatal accident. Her husband had used the opiate to deal with a chronic back ailment that had plagued him for the better part of two years. More recently, the bitter-tasting liquid had helped to ease the woman’s pain and unbearable sense of loss during the long ride home.

Josefina glanced at the table by the bed where a worn leatherbound volume of Dickens’s
Oliver Twist
lay. Don Sebastien’s bookmark, a slim, gold-plated tab crafted to resemble a writing quill, had been left undisturbed despite Elena’s dusting. She sighed and drew the bookmark from its resting place, the first step along the road to acceptance of her husband’s untimely death.

Quintero’s widow padded across the bedroom floor, left her quarters and proceeded down the hall to the broad, high-ceilinged living room with its dark, heavy furniture, hand-hewed and -crafted from sweet gum, oak, and even maple wood harvested from the forests to the east, nearer the Gulf. The living room dominated the front of the hacienda’s interior. She glanced to her left at the study and felt a catch in her throat. Don Sebastien always went to his study after rising. The room’s corner windows allowed him a view of the sunrise, and he liked to sit in his leather-backed chair and watch the dawn. She would never find him there again.

Josefina averted her eyes and continued on to one of the front windows. The shutters were thrown back and sunlight flooded the room. A blur of motion to her right caught her attention, and Isabella, in her cotton sleeping gown, appeared in the doorway leading off to the long rectangular dining room that ran the length of the hacienda’s west side.

The girl held a couple of pieces of
pan dulce,
crisp rounds of fried bread coated with a dark caramel-flavored glaze. Caught off guard by Josefina’s presence, she started to retreat. Then, as if deciding retreat meant losing face, Isabella left the doorway and continued on into the living room. She and her stepmother were alone in the house. Josefina could hear the housekeeper’s voice drifting in from outside, scolding her husband for some infraction. Elena and Pedro lived in quarters that were attached to the outdoor kitchen at the rear of the hacienda, across a breezeway shielded from the elements by a roof of woven vines and branches. Elena’s domain was the kitchen, and there her word was law. She reigned with an iron hand. Pedro often suffered the brunt of his wife’s temper, especially when she caught him pilfering a scoop of custard or a handful of fried bread, wrapped in cloth and cooling in a wicker basket.

Isabella crossed to the woman who had been her tutor for many years and now was the only parent she had. The girl held out a sweet roll, and Josefina, who had a sweet tooth to rival the ten-year-old’s was happy to oblige. Then Isabella returned to the window in time to see Zion and the man called Alacron, astride the gray and the mare respectively, ride out of the ranchyard. Niño, usually much too lazy to pay the coming and going of humans any mind at all, had taken it upon himself to herald the segundo’s departure.

“People are always leaving.” Isabella sighed. “First Mama, then Papa, now Zion and Alacron.”

“Zion will come back. And he will hopefully have some horses for us.” Josefina reached out to the girl. “And I won’t leave. I have never expected nor wished to take your mother’s place, but we have been friends ever since I came here. I hope we can always be friends.”

Josefina felt a rush of guilt for the way she had handled her husband’s death. While poor Isabella had persevered and hidden her grief behind a mask of stoic resolve, her stepmother had numbed herself with an opiate and transformed the entire journey home into a plodding procession of hours that finally concluded at Ventana. Don Sebastien’s burial had been the final act of a tragedy begun in Linares.

The enormity of the task that lay ahead was enough to quash even the bravest spirit. How could she run a ranch the size of Ventana? Even with Zion’s expert guidance, they would need vaqueros. One man alone could not possibly hope to gather what cattle General Najera had missed and drive them to market. Summoning her courage, Josefina turned and crossed the room to the doorway of the study. A ledger book lay closed upon Don Sebastien’s rolltop desk, a stack of notes and letters stuffed into compartments and drawers. The walls of the room were lined with crowded bookshelves and adorned here and there with artifacts from Quintero’s past: Comanche war clubs, a quiver and arrows, a porcupine quill breastplate trimmed with eagle feathers and clay beads; and on the wall just behind the desk, a bull-hide war shield, a prize Don Sebastien had personally taken in battle. In one corner of the room a suit of Spanish armor kept silent vigil. Its iron visage was etched with whorls of detail, swans and griffins upon a backdrop of polished steel. Josefina smiled, recalling how once, years back, just after her arrival at the hacienda, a sound like ghostly rattling and wailing had issued from the armor. She had entered the room to investigate, only to have the “knight” come crashing down at her feet. Isabella had dropped a cat into the armor and hidden herself behind her father’s desk to watch the fun. She had howled with laughter as Josefina nearly jumped out of her buttoned boots.