Treasure of the Sun (31 page)

Taking in the distraught appearance of the usually imperturbable housekeeper, he patted her hands. "Tell me about it."

"It's the vaqueros. They say it's true, but I can't imagine. . . . Who would be stupid enough to believe they could succeed with such a plan?",

"I don't know," he humoured her. "Who are they, and what have they done?"

"Those animals shot Felipe," Leocadia said.

From the foot of the stairway, his father called up in a furious tone, "They've planted themselves on my land, on Rancho Donoso. They say they are laying claim. They've taken the cover off their wagon and fashioned some kind of shelter. They're chopping wood and setting fires."

Damian stepped out on the landing. "Who is doing this, Papa?"

"The Americanos." Don Lucian waved a fist to the ceiling.

"The damned Americanos."

Shutting the door behind him, Damian started down the stairs. "The Americanos," he echoed grimly. "How is Felipe?"

Following on his heels, Leocadia snapped, "Bleeding." He glanced back, and she replied to the spark in his eye. "He'll live."

"Have they no respect for the law?" Don Lucian roared. "Let's go see if we can teach them some respect." Damian took his father's arm and asked with quiet intensity, "Where are they?"

Don Lucian glanced up towards the attic room door, realizing for the first time the need for stealth. He lowered his voice to match his son's. "On the north corner, camped on the river. Come down to the library. Prudencio was there at the river with Felipe, and he's got a level head on his shoulders. We'll have him come in for questions."

To Leocadia, Damian instructed, "Send us Prudencio, then see if you can find distraction for Dona Katherina."

Leocadia nodded, slipping away, and Prudencio joined them in the library to give up his information. "They're pigs," the vaquero told them. "They're dirty pigs."

"How many pigs are there?" Damian asked.

"Five men. Also some skinny, squeaking women and dirty children." Prudencio wrinkled his nose. "We offered to help them. We thought their wagon had broken down."

"They refused help?"

"They laughed in our faces. They said this was their land now, and we'd better get off. Felipe told them this is de la Sola land, and you know Felipe. He's a little gruff. So they shot him. When I went to him, they laughed and spit on me." He shifted from one foot to the other. "Let me shoot them."

"You must allow us our fun, also, mi amigo," Don Lucian commented.

Prudencio's eyes glowed with a vengeful fire. "S~ patron, only put a pistol in my hand and I will show you what my practice has accomplished."

Damian shifted from one foot to the other, too, as he glanced towards the closed door of the library every few minutes. But the disaster he feared didn't occur. Katherine didn't arrive, and he thanked God and Leocadia as he unlocked the solid walnut door of the gun cabinet.

"Papa?"

"My pistols, I think, and a rifle," Don Lucian instructed. "If these Americanos are as proficient with firearms as were Fremont's, we'll need the extra shots." He accepted the horn of gunpowder and the pouches of bullets.

"I have extra shots," Damian assured him as he placed three rifles side by side on the wide desk.

Don Lucian snorted with disdain. "That revolver of yours?

Are you still so proud of it?"

Prudencio grinned as he checked the barrel of each rifle.

"They're clean," he told Don Lucian. Taking the powder horn, he held the long guns upright and, one by one, loaded them with gunpowder.

Don Lucian took them next and with the ramrod tamped the bullets, wrapped in a greased cloth, down onto the gunpowder.

Damian loaded his father's pistols, then brought out an elegant wooden box. Setting it on the desk, he lifted the lid and smiled down at his Colt revolver. "An Americano invention to defeat Americanos."

"Foolish nonsense," Don Lucian grumbled. ''Trusting your life to a contraption such as that. When the Yankee captain sold you that, he knew he'd found himself a fool." Holding up his old-fashioned duelling pistols, he said, "These have been tried and proven. Stick with them." He tucked them into his waist. band, not surprised when his son disregarded his advice.

With meticulous care, Damian loaded each chamber of the repeating pistol with ball, powder and a percussion cap. "It misfires occasionally, Papa, but mark my words, this is the gun of the future."

"Not at the price you paid for it," Don Lucian answered. To annoy his son, he rubbed his fingertips together and nodded significantly at Prudencio.

Damian ignored him, sliding his revolver into his belt.

"Prudencio, take the rifles and go to the stables. Speak to the vaqueros you think we'll need, then have them mounted and ready at the oak. We'll follow."

"Si patron," Prudencio agreed. "Every vaquero on the place wishes to go, but I've selected eight to accompany us. They're good men, not given to rapid judgment." He walked out the door, then stuck his head back in to add, "And they're good shots."

He left, and Don Lucian tucked his pistols into his belt.

"Where do you suppose she is?" he asked.

"Katherine? Leocadia's keeping her busy, I'm sure."

"Then why are we sneaking out of our own home?" Don Lucian trailed behind Damian as they silently slipped through the door and across the yard.

"Because de la Sola men have been wife-wary cowards for generations." Damian grinned back at his father. "Isn't that right, Papa?"

Don Lucian lifted his hands. "I've never denied it."

In the stable yard, Damian was so relieved to see Confite saddled and fitted with a rifle holster that he almost failed to see the feminine figure mounted next to Confite and waiting. Almost, but not quite. Squaring his shoulders, he strode to the mare and caught the bridle. Staring fiercely up at Katherine, he said, "I will not take you."

"As you like," she agreed. "I can arrive with you, or alone."

"It isn't safe," he pointed out.

"Not for you. Perhaps for me."

He reached up and grasped her knee. "Querida, a man wishes to protect his wife from the ugliness of life. In Monterey, I failed in that respect. Let me protect you now."

He relaxed as his fervent plea, the use of his expressive eyes, swayed her. But only for a moment.

She thrust out her chin. "Perhaps these Americans will listen to me. I'm trained as a lawyer. Perhaps I can make them see reason."

From behind him, Don Lucian said, "Katherina, at least change from that lovely dress into the new riding outfit I had made for you. Leocadia will help you. It will only take a minute."

She turned her dear green eyes on her father-in-law, leaving no doubt she'd seen through his ruse. "I can arrive with you, or alone," she repeated.

Wondering why he'd resisted the gentle wiles of the Spanish senoritas to marry such an obstinate woman, Damian swung into the saddle. He rode to Katherine's side, and, using the advantage his taller horse gave him, he told her, "You can go. But when the shooting starts--"

"If the shooting stars," she corrected.

He drew an exasperated breath. "When the shooting starts, you keep quiet. You get out of the way and stay out of the way. I'm serious, Katherine Anne. Your carelessness could cause someone to be hurt."

"Yes, Don Damian."

"Madre de Dios," Damian muttered to his father as he spurred out of the yard. "Do you suppose she'll ever call me 'Damian'?"

A stench assaulted Katherine. Almost under the hooves of her mare, hidden in the tall green grass, a steer lay dead in the sun. Flies buzzed around its eyes and feasted on the gunshot wound in its side.

All eight vaqueros muttered as they looked down at the corpse.

"Our earmarks," Prudencio pointed out. "Our brand. They must have shot it yesterday and left it."

Katherine glanced at Damian, half frightened to see his reaction.

He stared down at the rotting corpse with a grim kind of satisfaction. "The Americanos make it easy to remove them."

She could hear an ax ringing in the distance. "I wonder what they are chopping."

Damian looked around at the flat, grassy plain, dotted sparsely with spreading oaks. "We'll find out soon enough."

Under one of the trees, close against the river, stood the American camp. They'd done no more than lift the covers off four wagons and set them on the ground. A burned patch of grass spread from their campfire. They'd let it escape, and only the wet foliage of early spring had saved them from disaster. Another butchered steer hung from a branch, its hide staked out in the sun.

Two men sat idle against a tree trunk, watching three women turn a beef-laden spit. One man chopped desultorily at an oak sapling. One stood in the wagon tossing their belongings to the ground, ducking beneath the scolding tirade of the woman who straddled the sideboard. A short distance away and off to the side, three women knelt beside the river with washboards, and every size of child ranged across the flats.

Activity ceased as the mounted party came dose. Only the women at the stream didn't realize they had visitors, their hearing blocked by the running water. They continued to chat in a sort of pantomime as the others fell silent.

Damian and Don Lucian took the lead, blocking Katherine behind them with their huge stallions. In their turn, each of the vaqueros pushed her behind, until she was at the back of the group. Twisting her neck to observe, she groaned when the men resting at the tree picked up their rifles and aimed them at the approaching party. The woodcutter held his hatchet like a weapon.

Ignoring the threat and taking his time, Damian stared around the camp. "Preparing to stay?"

The fishwife jumped off the wagon and placed one hand at her waist, one hand thrust out to revile. "What business is it of yours?"

Don Lucian nodded toward the rifle barrels that stared with such gray unseeing eyes. "That's not how we greet visitors here in California, unless we have reason for shame."

The woman's hand waved ceaselessly. "We got no reason for shame."

Don Lucian seemed to grow in the saddle, gaining dignity and stature as he communicated with the shrill woman. "You, or one of your men, shot one of my faithful servants."

"He was uppity."

"He was doing his duty. You shot him and left him to die." "Nah." The man with the hatchet stepped forward. "I'm a better shot than that. I just aimed to maim." He laughed a little. "Aimed to maim. It rhymes. I'm a sissy, pants poet."

The other men laughed, too, but their rifles never wavered.

Their rough amusement seemed to serve as a signal. The cooking women fluttered like prairie hens, swooping up small children and carrying them behind the wagons, herding the older ones in bunches into the taller grass.

"Did the other Mexican get him home?" The hatchet swung in the man's hand, and he tossed it end over end in a demonstration of competence.

Tight-lipped with anger, Prudencio took his place beside his leaders. "I'm not Mexican, I'm Indigena. And my friend could still die of infection."

"If he's not strong enough to stand up to a little infection, then I'm not the one who killed him." The man's gap-toothed grin leered at them until all the vaqueros moved forward in a rush. Then he seemed to realize he held only a hatchet. As a defense against vaqueros armed with pistols, lariats, and knives, it was inadequate. He stepped back.

Damian said softly, "To pick up your rifle at this moment would be an act of aggression. Comprende?"

For a man who didn't speak Spanish, he seemed to comprende very well. He grasped the hatchet until his knuckles turned white and he stood still as a rabbit in the brush.

"You clod," the spokeswoman scolded. "My man's the leader of this expedition. Haven't I told you to let me do the talking?" She turned back to the mounted party. "We can shoot that mouthy Indian, 'cause we're just defending this property, 'cause it's ours."

"By whose law is it yours, senora?" Don Lucian's courtesy contrasted with the woman's ignorant disdain.

"By American law." She lowered her voice to make it sweet and sarcastic. "There's this law that was passed by our Congress, an' it says we got the right to stake claim to this land, an' we can keep it if we farm it an' improve it." She looked around scornfully. "That shouldn't be too hard. You got nothing here but a bunch of half-wild cows."