Chapter 16 #2
He went out. Through the window Elena watched him cross to the bunkhouse, and she began her counting.
Six men. She counted them twice that first day and again the second to be sure, six riders besides Vega himself, and Refugio who slept in the cook shack.
Two of the six stood watch at night, one by the horses and one on the rise above the house, trading off somewhere in the small hours.
The horses were picketed east of the house on a line strung between two posts.
The men ate in the bunkhouse and Vega ate alone in the front room of the big house.
On the second day, Vega sent gifts. A silver comb. A shawl of good wool dyed blue, the kind that cost money. A little carved horse for Carlos. Elena sent back the comb and the shawl with Refugio and kept the horse, because Carlos had seen it, and a boy needed something in a place like that.
"You take nothing," Refugio said to her in the kitchen, low, not unkindly.
"I take what my son needs," Elena said. "Nothing else."
There was a paring knife in the cook shack, short bladed, wood handled, the kind used for potatoes.
On the fourth day Elena helped Refugio carry in the washing, and when she came back to the house the knife came with her, and by nightfall it was sewn into the hem of her gray traveling dress.
She did it in three minutes with the door shut. She did not look at it again.
In the afternoons she sat with Carlos on the porch where the men could see them being no trouble at all, and she taught him a new game.
"This is the quiet game," she said. "It is the hardest game of all. When I press your hand two times, like this, you go still. You do not talk. You do not point. You do not look at me to ask why. You are a stone in a field, and a stone sees everything and says nothing."
"For how long?"
"Until I press your hand two times again. No matter what you see. No matter what you hear. No matter who talks to you."
"What if somebody asks me a question?"
"A stone does not answer questions."
Carlos thought about it. "What do I win?"
"A story. Every time you win a story, any one you want."
They practiced. She would press his hand while he was in the middle of talking and he would swallow the words and go still, and she made it harder as the days went, pressing his hand when riders were near, when Vega himself stopped to say good afternoon, and the boy sat like a small carved saint and gave up nothing.
He was good at it. He was better than good.
Some nights he asked for the same story twice just to bank another win, and she told it twice.
On the sixth night Vega asked her to take supper with him.
She went because refusing gained her nothing and going cost her nothing, and they sat at the long table with Refugio's chicken between them and the flowers changed out fresh. Vega poured wine. She left hers where it stood.
"You are angry with me," he said. "It is natural."
"Is it?"
"I want you to understand." He turned his glass by the stem.
"Eighteen years ago your father gave me his word.
You were promised to me before that man ever came into your life.
What he did was theft, se?ora. A man came onto another man's land and took what was spoken for. In Chihuahua we have a name for that."
"So do we," Elena said. "We call it a wedding."
Vega's jaw moved, but the smile held. "You were a girl. You did not know what you were choosing."
"I was seventeen and I knew exactly what I was refusing.
I have known every day for eighteen years that I had refused a man I didn't love.
" She folded her hands on the table. "You have six men and a cook and a house at the end of a road that goes nowhere.
You say you are a patient man. Be as patient as you please, Don Rodrigo.
Patience will not make me a widow. My husband is coming.
You know it better than I do. That is why we left in the dark. "
Vega leaned back. He looked at her for a long moment and then he raised his glass an inch off the table, as a man does at a toast.
"I hope so, se?ora," he said. "I sincerely hope so."
"If you think your six men will stop my husband and his friends, you are sadly mistaken," Elena said. "They've taken whole gangs before, and often they left no one alive."
Elena smiled, rose and thanked him for the supper before going across the hall. After entering her room, she pressed Carlos's hand twice where he lay pretending to sleep, and then twice again.
"Do you want a story, mi amor?"
"You owe me five," he said. "How about telling me about Milo again."
Elena laughed. "Okay. Milo was a tiny field mouse who lived in a magical kingdom, but he had a big fear of the dark forest. Every night while his family danced under the stars, Milo huddled inside his cozy log, too timid to go out and enjoy his life.
"One evening, a gust of wind blew his sister Carmelo's magic wand up into a tall oak tree that sometimes whispered in the night. And that night, the oak tree actually laughed, whispering like the wind, 'Ha, ha, ha, I've got your magic wand.'
"And the whispered taunts of the oak tree caused his sister, Carmelo, to weep for the return of her magic wand. Milo lay there in his log feeling sad for his little sister.
"As he lay there, a tiny, glowing dragon named Chispa...in English we call him Spark. Well, Spark flew down, his scales glowing in the starlight. Spark invited Milo to get on his back, telling him that he could fly him into the oak and together they could recover his sister's magic wand.
"'But I'm afraid,' Milo squeaked.
"'I know,' Spark said, 'but inside your little heart, I know you're brave.'
"'I am?' Milo squeaked.
"Milo wanted to do it. He wanted to be brave, but he was still terrified of the big, dark woods. His heart beat fast and his paws shook, but he loved Carmelo. He loved her more than he feared the dark woods and the whispering oak tree.
"After taking a deep breath and gathering all his courage, he climbed onto Spark's warm back, and they flew into the dark sky.
"'There's the magic wand,' Milo said. 'I can see it.'
"'Yes, we have to come at it from the other side,' Spark said and flew around the oak tree very fast, pausing only long enough for Milo to get his hand on the wand.
A limb from the oak tree tried to sweep Milo off Spark's back, but he clutched the wand and held onto Spark's back as the magical dragon flew away from the limbs and out into the night sky.
"When he returned the magic wand to his delighted little sister, Milo smiled, for he had found that courage was greatest even when you're afraid.
"Now, it is time for you to sleep," Elena said as she tucked the blanket around Carlos's neck. "Tomorrow, more stories."