Chapter Five
Torn between anger and pity, Pedro Sanchez watched the man who was like his own son.
Ramon de la Guerra stood at the foot of his brother’s grave beneath a huge live oak, holding his hat in his hands, his eyes closed, his head bent forward.
It was nearly nightfall. Padre Xavier had finished the brief mass for Andreas early that morning.
Since then, Ramon had returned three times to the grave.
He left there now, walking back toward the compound, though he had yet to go into his house, not even last night to sleep.
Sighing into the silence, Pedro thought of leaving, of letting him continue to grieve, but his anger would not let him—that and an instinct that told him perhaps Ramon needed something besides his brother’s death upon which to dwell.
He clamped his jaw. Pedro knew exactly what that something should be.
Crossing the distance between them, he walked up beside his friend. “I would speak to you, Ramon. There is something I must say.”
Ramon’s dark head came up. “What is it, Pedro?”
“It is about the girl.”
“I do not wish to discuss the girl.”
“No? Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is better if you see your handiwork for yourself.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “What are you talking about?”
“Come with me.”
Wordlessly, Pedro led the way toward the house, Ramon close at his heels. They entered the small adobe building to the aroma of red peppers simmering in a heavy iron kettle suspended over the fire in the hearth, and the sound of masa being slapped into the flat, round shape of tortillas.
Florentia, a short stout, black-haired woman in her fifties, turned at the noise of the door closing sharply behind them. “La comida will soon be ready, Don Ramon,” she called out. “It is time you had something to eat.”
Ramon said nothing, just followed in Sanchez’s wake to the door leading into the single small bedroom. The old vaquero pushed open the door and Ramon walked in.
Pedro turned to face him. “You have blamed the girl for Andreas’s death. And you have blamed yourself. The girl did nothing any one of us would not have done in the same situation. You did only what it was your brother wished. You could not have stopped either one of those things from happening.”
Ramon said nothing, just stared at the small figure huddled in the bed.
“It is time you forgave the girl. Perhaps even more important—it is time you forgave yourself.”
She lay unconscious, her pale face bathed in sweat, the covers kicked off and her nightgown tangled up around her bare knees.
The gown was clean, he saw, one Florentia must have provided, borrowed from Miranda or one of the Indian girls.
The dirt was gone from her legs and feet, but not the long deep scratches.
He could still see the bruise on her cheek.
Occasionally, her eyelids flickered, as if the dreams she suffered were even more unpleasant than the journey that had brought her to such a state.
Ramon’s mouth went dry. The air seemed to burn in his lungs. His face felt bloodless and nearly as pale as the girl’s.
“If it is penance you seek, my friend,” Pedro said softly, “this is the crime for which you must pay.”
Ramon leaned forward, gripping the scrollwork at the foot of the old iron bed. Huddled in the center, the girl looked like an innocent child, her small hands fisted beneath her chin, her legs drawn up, her flame dark hair tousled and unkempt around her shoulders.
Ramon’s chest tightened, the ache more painful with each escaping breath. “Madre de Dios—what have I done?”
Sanchez’s tension eased as he walked up beside him. “What matters is that you care. That you are thinking clearly again. Florentia and I will see to the girl. When she is better, you can—”
“I will see to the girl. This is my fault. All of it. Por Dios, I cannot believe I am responsible for something like this.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, my friend. Even you. A wise man learns from them.”
Ramon just shook his head. “I told myself it was her fault, that she was to blame for what happened to Andreas. From the start, I knew it was not the truth, that I was the one to blame. It was wrong, what I did. Unforgivably wrong.” Stripping off the black leather vest he wore, he tossed it over a chair, then sat down at the side of the bed.
He leaned over and touched her forehead, which burned beneath his hand.
“Her fever is high,” he said.
“Si. Florentia has tried to bring it down, but so far nothing has worked.”
“Get me some water and several more clean cloths. Tell Miranda to fetch the Indian woman from the village. Tell her to take Ruiz with her and get back here as soon as she can.”
Pedro smiled gently. “I will see to it, patron.”
Ramon looked up at the word, rarely used between the two friends. Something flickered in the old vaquero’s eyes, respect, or perhaps approval.
“Gracias, my friend,” Ramon said softly. There was a shift in the air between them, a moment that said without words what each man felt for the other. Then Sanchez nodded, backed from the room, and quietly closed the door.
Ramon sat with the girl all that night, bathing her forehead, opening her gown and bathing her shoulders, bathing her legs and feet.
He would have liked to remove her clothes, to care for her more completely, but he refused to submit her to any further indignities.
He knew how proud she was. How much her pride would suffer if she thought he had seen her naked.
If he hadn’t felt so bad, he might have smiled.
Even without breaching her modesty, he knew what a beautiful body she had.
It was outlined clearly beneath her thin cotton bedclothes: the tiny waist, graceful legs, and high lush breasts.
Her bottom was round and womanly, her neck pale and slender, her feet and hands small and well formed.
He took in her tumbled hair, a cinnamon brown, once alive with fiery highlights. He frowned. Like its owner, it lacked the luster it once had. Washing it would return the fire. As soon as she was better, he vowed, he would remedy that himself.
Sponging her face, he rested the cloth for a moment against her dry lips. Caralee was her name, he recalled. Carly, she had said. A pretty name, saucy and determined just as she was. As he vowed that she would be again.
Throughout the night, she tossed and turned, and in her sleep she began to speak, rousing Ramon from his thoughts as he sat beside her in the chair. At first the words were incoherent, just fever-induced, disjointed ramblings, then little by little the words began to form sentences.
“Pa? Is that you, Pa? I love you, Pa.” She fisted the sheets in her small hands and tears began to slide down her cheeks. “Don’t go, Ma, please don’t leave me.”
He smoothed the damp hair back from her forehead. “You are not alone, nina,” he replied in the English she had slipped into. “Rest easy.”
“I ain’t gonna do it,” she suddenly said. “I ain’t gonna leave her. She’s sick. She’s dyin’. I don’t care if n I catch it, I ain’t gonna go.”
Ramon leaned forward, listening to her words, a frown of uncertainty creasing his brow. Just then Pedro walked in.
“You have been awake all night, Ramon. I will sit with the girl while you get some sleep.”
“She has been talking, Pedro. I have spoken English to her on several occasions, but it sounded nothing like this. Her words were always refined, cultured. The way she speaks now sounds more like the illiterate gringos who come off the ships, headed for the gold fields. Something is not right here.”
Pedro came closer. “What do you think it means?”
“I do not know, but I intend to find out.” He shifted closer, listened to her talking again, then turned once more to his friend.
“I want you to find Alberto. His cousin, Candelaria, works in the hacienda at Rancho del Robles. She has helped us before. Ask him to see what she can discover about our guest.”
Pedro nodded. “In the meantime, I will send Florentia in to watch—”
“I am staying here.”
“But you need your rest. You must—”
“Por favor, Pedro, do as I ask. Tell Alberto we need to know as quickly as we can.”
Sanchez merely nodded. Arguing would do no good; Ramon intended to stay. “I will do as you wish.”
Four days passed. Long, sleepless days for Ramon de la Guerra, but Carly’s condition only worsened. Her breathing turned ragged, shallow, the way his brother had sounded near the end. It made the knife of remorse twist harder inside him.
The Indian woman came the second day. Trah-ush-nah, Blue Jay, was her name.
The Californios called her Lena, her mission name.
She was thin and dark skinned, with long straight black hair and bangs cut over her forehead, the style worn by most of the local Indians, but her features were softer, more refined.
She was young, a woman in her twenties, a shaman by family tradition.
She ignored him as she worked. Using a mortar and pestle, she ground dried lemon balm leaves into powder, stirred them into a broth over the fire, then spooned them into the girl.
She made a tea from birch bark, and forced her patient to drink it every few hours.
She rubbed Carly’s chest with an ointment made of lard, pulverized redmaid seeds, and roasted kernels of buttercup, and waved a fan made of eagle feathers over her pale face.
Ramon didn’t care what she did, as long as the girl got better.
By the fourth day, he had almost given up hope. The Indian woman had returned to the village, telling him she had done all she could. If Carly’s condition didn’t improve by the morrow, the priest was next to be called.
It was two in the morning, yet a lamp still burned on the small roughhewn table beside the old iron bed.
Ramon could not sleep. He had barely been able to eat.
The thought of another death on his conscience made his stomach roll with nausea.
That it was a woman, that she was so young, that he was the man responsible made a hot ache rise in his throat.