The Furies (10 page)

With money Cordoba had given her, she bargained for food. She refused the tainted meat always offered first, and demanded fresh. She swore and gestured and haggled until the inflated price came down to a satisfactory level. Here, at least, her experience on a farm and at the hotel made her the equal of most of the other women—and superior to some. Quite a few of the
soldaderas
were young girls, unlettered and ignorant of the fact that the sutlers routinely tried to sell spoiled food at ten times its worth.

She did get a rest every afternoon. War or no war, the Mexicans demanded a siesta. But as soon as the army camped for the night, work began again.

She prepared the major’s evening meal. And whenever there was a stream nearby, she carried his laundry there, washing it with yellow soap that left her hands raw. She slapped the clothes damp dry on stones, Indian fashion.

Illness was still rampant in the army. So once a week, she insisted on plunging the major’s wash into a kettle of boiling water. She boiled his drinking water as well. Although these unusual procedures elicited more laughter from the camp women, Cordoba remained healthy while many of his fellow officers succumbed to dysentery.

She spent a considerable amount of time polishing boots and uniform buttons. Cordoba was almost fanatic about a neat appearance—a reaction, she suspected, to the sloth and disorder prevalent in the camp. Cordoba’s gleaming leather and metal were an expression of his outrage—and one of the few aspects of a chaotic world that he could control absolutely.

There was one part of the
soldaderas’
routine in which Amanda refused to participate, though. Every night, the women worked together to dig open trenches. Whenever they had to relieve themselves, they squatted over the trenches like so many hens, chatting amiably with their skirts hiked above their waists and their bottoms clearly in view.

Perhaps because of her city upbringing, Amanda couldn’t expose herself that way. She had to seek the privacy of a grove of trees, or at least some shrubs. Occasionally, the lack of such foliage near the campsite kept her in excruciating pain while she waited for darkness.

The other women laughed about her fastidiousness, just as they laughed about her cooking of the clothes. One
soldadera
in particular seemed not just scornful, but hostile. This was the coarse-faced young woman with the mole, the girl Amanda had encountered in the street the morning after the massacre.

Now and again Amanda would run into the girl at the sutler’s or along a creek at laundry time, and the girl would be sure Amanda heard some particularly filthy reference to her parentage, or her relationship with Cordoba.

Each time, Amanda met the girl’s ugly gaze squarely—almost daring her to lay hands on her. But she didn’t. Amanda asked a few questions of Cordoba’s men and learned that the girl lived with a captain of the artillery. For a woman belonging to a man of lesser rank to attack the
soldadera
of a senior officer was a violation of the camp’s rough protocol; and it was that which kept the girl’s hostility from degenerating into the physical. But Amanda was sure the ranks of their respective men fueled the girl’s fury; she was probably jealous of an Anglo woman enjoying the favors of a major.

If the girl only knew! Amanda thought. During their first weeks together, Cordoba didn’t so much as touch her.

She had frankly expected him to order her into his bed, despite what he’d said that first day. But he treated her with punctilious politeness. He complimented her often, praising the flour biscuits she baked, or the whiteness of his dress shirts.

“I swear to heaven, no man ever had a better
soldadera.
You take to this life as if you were born to it.”

“I wasn’t, and I don’t like it.”

“Nevertheless, you’re extremely skilled.”

She shrugged. “All it takes is making up your mind.”

In response to his puzzled frown, she elaborated. “I didn’t have a lot of schooling, Luis. And what I did have, I didn’t care for very much. But when I was growing up, I managed to learn something that’s as important as what they teach in classrooms.”

“What is that?”

“I can do almost anything I want if I want to do it badly enough.”

“Such confidence!”

“I’m not trying to brag—the same thing’s true of most people. They just don’t want to put forth the effort, that’s all. When I was young, I lived for a while with a tribe of the Sioux—”

His mouth dropped open. “With
Indians?
”

“Yes.”

“You continually astonish me, Amanda. Do go on.”

“I was the property of one of the dog soldiers—the warriors who police the buffalo hunts. To satisfy the man I lived with—and keep him from hurting me—I had to learn how to make love like a grown woman—when I wasn’t much more than twelve years old. I had to learn to broil the meat of a buffalo hump the way he liked it. I’d never cooked anything in my life—but I learned because it was necessary. And because I didn’t want to seem weaker than the Sioux women, I learned every game they played—and practiced until I was better than they were. The man I stayed with was so proud of me, he ordered his first wife out of his tepee forever. And whenever white traders came to the village, he put guards over me and kept me hidden. He was afraid I might be stolen away—”

“I trust you were appropriately flattered.”

“Yes—but maybe not for the reason you think. Not because of vanity. His attitude showed me I’d done what I set out to do. Survive. Even thrive. The man I was living with was killed, and I left the Sioux. But before I went, the old chief—the father of my man—told me he’d never seen a Sioux girl who could play the double-ball game—handle the rawhide and the sticks—as well as I did. He couldn’t give a higher compliment to any woman. The point is, I don’t think learning the game took special talent. Just the will to do it.”

“I think you underestimate your abilities.”

“Will counts for a lot in this world, Luis. I’ll trade money or education for will anytime.”

Cordoba was silent. There was a look akin to awe on his swarthy face.

His reticence about sex continued to bother her. At night, he seldom glanced her way as she brushed her hair and prepared for bed. She slept in the same black silk dress she wore all during the day. Could that be part of the trouble? she wondered. The dress, clean but ragged now, struck her as decidedly unfeminine.

One warm evening in the first week of April, she was awake long after Cordoba had fallen asleep on the cot. She moved her head from side to side, uttering a small sigh once in a while. There was a tightness in her body that she couldn’t deny.

Jaimie de la Gura had been dead a long time. And there had only been a very few men since then—an occasional customer of Gura’s Hotel to whom she took a fancy. The last one, a wandering trader bound for Taos, had slept in her arms more than half a year ago.

She alone was responsible for the unsatisfied hunger, she knew. It was ironic—the brothel madam who could no longer give herself casually. She had given herself that way early in her life, when it was necessary to use her good looks and her sex for survival. But after Jaimie, she changed. Without a basic liking for the partner, she was unwilling—even though her body made its need manifest in aches and sleeplessness.

The need this particular night grew almost unbearable. She finally rose on one elbow, whispered softly in the darkness, “Luis?”

The major answered with an exhausted snore. She stretched out again, uncomfortable and unhappy. She had come to like Cordoba. But beyond that, his lack of interest made her feel there must be something wrong with her.

True, she was dirty and unkempt most of the time.

That didn’t seem to make any difference to other men in the army, though. They rutted with women who smelled like a sty.

Cordoba stirred. Said something in his sleep. She propped herself on her elbow again, listening.

The major was mumbling a name. Her heart beat a little faster in the hope that it might be hers—

A moment later, she was ashamed of the foolish conceit. She slid her hands down her belly, pressing her palms against herself. She couldn’t go to the cot and waken him now. She knew it would have made him miserable afterward.

In torment, she lay still. It was an hour or more before she fell asleep and dreamed erotic dreams that left her grumpy in the morning.

The army marched into San Felipe on the Brazos on the seventh of April. Once more the Texans were gone, though Cordoba said scouts had sighted Houston and three or four hundred men downriver at Thompson’s Ferry.

That the tiny Texas army had recently been in San Felipe was evident when Amanda went down to the Brazos in the red twilight. Carrying Cordoba’s laundry, she passed two pirogues with their bottoms staved in. The prow of a third poked up from reeds near the shore. Houston had destroyed any craft the Mexicans might use to cross the rain-swollen river.

Up and down the bank, chattering
soldaderas
kneaded and pounded their men’s clothing. As Amanda walked by a group of four, she noticed the girl with the mole. Kneeling in the mud, the young woman stared at her.

Amanda hurried on. She heard the girl and her companions talking. Suddenly she yelped, stumbling as a stone struck the back of her head.

She dropped Cordoba’s shirts and underdrawers in the mud, turned, saw the girl wiping her hands on her blouse.

The girl hoisted her skirt and began tucking it into the rope belt she wore, unconcerned about revealing her grimy thighs and a black tangle above. One of the older
soldaderas
caught her arm.

“Ah, let the white slut alone, Manuela. She behaves herself—”

“Which is more than can be said for your friend!” Amanda called, rubbing her scalp, then bending to retrieve the laundry.

Head lowered, Manuela started walking toward her. Amanda wondered why the young woman looked even more haggard than usual.

“I’m sick of seeing her parade herself,” Manuela said to her companions. “She thinks she’s a queen, living with a major—”

Only a step away now, Manuela reached out and twisted a lock of Amanda’s hair around a stubby finger. She breathed out the smell of wine as she went on. “But she’s an ice queen, this one. I have a friend who belongs to a sergeant in one of Cordoba’s platoons.”

Amanda said, “Let go,” then pulled back. But Manuela held the lock of hair. Amanda winced.

“And I hear Cordoba’s marquee is silent all night long. Never any sounds of pleasure. Just the ice queen farting in her sleep.”

Amanda’s cheeks darkened as she realized she’d been spied on. She supposed she should have expected it.

Manuela kept winding the strand of hair tighter around her finger. “Probably the major regrets taking an Anglo into his tent. Anglos are as weak between the legs as they are in their bellies—”

Amanda wrenched suddenly, tearing away. Manuela stepped back with a curse. Then she squatted, fingers digging in the mud until they closed on a pointed stone.

A barking dog and half a dozen ragged boys from San Felipe came running along the sunset-reddened bank, drawn by the promise of a fight. Amanda’s stomach flipflopped. Manuela meant to do her physical harm—

“You’d better get her away,” Amanda warned the other three women. “I don’t want a quarrel. But if she pushes it—”

“Yes? What will you do?” Manuela demanded. She spat. “Nothing!”

“She lost her captain three days ago,” one of the older women blurted. “He was knifed in an argument over cards—”

Amanda understood the reason for the girl’s haggard look. But that didn’t lessen her fear.

Manuela held out the rock, showing Amanda the point. “After I finish with this, the major will need another companion.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do. He may be surprised when I come back in your place. But I don’t think he’ll be disappointed. I think he’ll welcome a woman who knows how to spread herself properly.”

Amanda’s racing mind sorted the ways she might deal with the situation. Appealing to logic wouldn’t work. Manuela obviously had a gut hatred of Texans. And now the loss of her captain had removed any reason for restraint.

The boys had stopped nearby, smirking and nudging one another in anticipation. Manuela shuffled forward again, her bare feet squishing in the mud.

“The fact of it is, I need a man. I’m sure you won’t mind surrendering yours since you bring him no happiness—”

Determined to try to bluff her way out, Amanda said, “Unless you want to get hurt, leave me alone.”

“Perhaps if you beg me, Anglo.”

“
Beg!
The hell I will, you”—unthinkingly, she resorted to the kind of slur she would never have used when she was calm—“you greaser bitch.”

Manuela licked her lower Up. “I am going to make you hurt for that, Anglo.”

“All right.” Amanda nodded. “Turn your wolf loose.”

“What?”

“I mean go ahead and fight. You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Briefly startled, Manuela laughed with false bravado. “Eh, the ice queen shows a little fire! What are you going to use to fight me?” She ground her heel on one of Cordoba’s shirts. “Dirty laundry?”

Before Amanda was quite prepared, the girl rushed her. The point of the stone slashed toward Amanda’s eye.

Amanda lunged aside, lost her footing in the mud. As she fell to her knees, the stone raked her temple. A second later she felt the trickle of warm blood above her eyebrow.

Snarling obscenities, Manuela jumped around behind her. She seized Amanda’s hair with one hand, used the other to smash the stone against her scalp. Amanda pitched forward, gasping. Manuela stepped on the back of her neck, driving her face into the mud.

Sputtering and fighting for air, Amanda rolled aside frantically as the young girl started to kneel on her stomach. Mud clogged her eyes, her nostrils. But somehow she avoided the next swipe of the rock and kept rolling—straight into the shallows of the river.

Manuela stormed after her, kicking up droplets that glowed red in the sunset. The dog was barking loudly. The boys clapped and encouraged Manuela, who struck for Amanda’s head again.