The farther Skye pierced into Mexico, the more he felt its brooding silences. For days after they had descended into the San Luis Valley, Skye and his entourage had progressed southward through a moody and austere land. Scarcely a breeze stirred the air. The skies were a transparent indigo that he had never before seen in all his wanderings, and he found this heaven utterly strange and marvelous, as if God had fashioned a different firmament for a different nation.
But most of all, Skye felt the fearsome silence. Mexico was a land of such deep silences that the slightest noise was startling, like a lamentation in heaven. They rode their docile mounts along a dry trail toward the village of San Luis, northernmost of Nuevo Mexico’s settlements, or so Childress said.
So transparent was the air that Skye was sure he could see peaks a hundred miles distant, brooding and mysterious, harboring secrets. Crystal air, deep silences, and forbidding ranches in hidden havens.
Where would the children be? This country was so vast that a glance could sweep hundreds of square miles and yield nothing. Yet it was an illusion. They had passed hidden valleys verdant with foliage, which were invisible from the plain. Ranchos could be tucked into any of them. How would they
search? Who would guide them? The sheer grandeur of the country they were slowly penetrating humbled Skye.
Somewhere off to the west the Rio Grande tumbled through a gorge, according to Childress, and in various places its bottoms were farmed and settled. Yet none of that was visible from the trail to Taos. They saw only vast and mysterious reaches of the earth’s surface, endless flats, distant mountains rising in air so clear they seemed sharp-edged and near.
They reached a watered basin filled with thick grasses that didn’t bend to any wind, and beheld skinny longhorned cattle there, some of them herded by children.
“Approaching San Luis,” Childress said from his seat on the cart. “Nothing here. Half a dozen adobe jacals, and a defense tower. You won’t find the missing ones. These peasants couldn’t afford to buy a slave, much less feed and clothe one.”
“We’ll look anyway,” Skye said, determined to miss nothing. “Where’d you learn about Mexican slavery?”
“Mister Skye, you’ll spend a lifetime looking for the Cheyenne children, and get nowhere doing it that way. What you want is information. We’ll get that in Taos, if it is to be gotten anywhere, Sah. We’ll buy it or steal it, but we’ll fetch it some fashion or other, and thereby find the string that will lead us to the children.”
Skye knew it was so, and yet wanted to ride to every rancho for a look. Childress’s strange enthusiasm piqued him.
They reached San Luis late in the afternoon of another quiet day, and their arrival drew everyone in the village into a rude plaza. They knew this trader and his monkey, and jabbered about him, with bright smiles. Skye rode through clay streets between brown buildings while a small crowd followed the horses and cart. Skye could scarcely see a difference between these dark, wiry people and the Indians, except for the dress. Older women wore black rebozos; younger ones wore lighter cottons, and most of the men wore only pantalones. All were barefoot.
Childress began to banter with them in Spanish, and again Skye could fathom none of it.
“I’m going to look at that tower,” the Colonel said, sliding off his cart. “Always interested in blood and death.” Several young men eagerly escorted him to the two-story adobe structure.
The monkey stayed on the cart, entertaining the Mexicans, who laughed at him much as the Utes had. Shine shook hands, pilfered anything he could, and chittered at them.
Skye watched the trader vanish into the shadowed interior of the tower, curious as to why the man chose to see that rather than to trade. But maybe these people had no coin, nothing to trade. Still, they would have grains, and that would be worth some dickering. The travelers had fed themselves almost entirely on the few provisions Skye had brought along.
As usual, Standing Alone was surveying the young people in the village, and finding no sign of her own.
When the colonel returned, he pulled back the canvas covering his wares, and set a few out. The women crowded about, but the men held back.
“Won’t sell a dime’s worth,” Childress said. “They’ve nothing to trade.”
“We could use some wheat or maize,” Skye said.
“Well, I won’t trade for that. Mister Skye, that tower’s never been used. Built to defend against Utes and Apaches, but it never was put to a test. There’s only two escopetas in town anyway. That’s blunderbuses, if you don’t know the word. And no powder for the lot. All the tower’s good for is to store grains.”
Skye dismounted, dug into his packs, and found a couple of knives he had been given for trade.
“Tell ’em I’ll trade knives for grain,” he said.
“But, Sah, why?”
“Because we’re about starved.”
A few minutes later, Skye had surrendered two knives but had a sack of rough-ground flour that Skye knew would have sand and bits of husk in it. He’d eaten plenty in his day.
They trotted out of San Luis in midafternoon heat, but suddenly Childress seemed to be in a hurry and snapped a whip over his Clydesdale.
“You learn something there?” Skye asked.
“Only that there’s nothing here. These are all peasants, Skye, with their kitchen gardens and a few kine. We won’t find any big ranches, the kind that might use Indian herders, until we approach Taos.”
“Did you ask about workers or slaves?”
“Sah, the only thing I inquired about was that tower.”
Skye puzzled that, and could not explain the man’s interest in defenses.
“Trust me, Skye, when we approach a great ranch, you will find me a bloodhound on a trail. I do so yearn, Sah, yearn to find those little red gnats.”
Skye stared.
“I’m a sucker for any good cause, Mistah Skye. Wherever there’s injustice, cruelty, lives ruined, death, and misery, there’s old Childress trying to make things right.”
That afternoon they struck an icy creek that tumbled out of the Sangre de Cristos, hurrying toward the Rio Grande off to the west somewhere. Beside it was a faint road. They paused where these merry waters laughed their way west, and refreshed themselves and their horses.
Skye thought that the Clydesdale was looking gaunt, and perhaps they should all recruit for a day on the lush grasses that grew along the banks.
“Behold the trace, my English friend,” said Childress. “I take it that we’re near a hacienda, and we can begin our quest for the Holy Grail hereabouts.”
“Where’s the ranch?”
“Oh, I take it that one or two leagues will suffice.”
“One or two leagues!”
“Sah, you are in country so large that it dwarfs the Republic of Texas, God spare me for saying it.”
“I thought you were aiming to get information first.”
“My dear Mistah Skye, here we are; a road leads westward to someplace that might harbor vile slavery and cruel servitude. As for me, I will not only search for the lost tribe of Israel there, but also reconnoiter.”
“Reconnoiter?”
“A filibuster, my dear Sah, needs a map of the territory and its armed men burnt into his gray matter.”
Skye laughed. “Your purposes grow clearer with every mile, Emperor. All right. We will use one another. I’m cover for you and your schemes, and you’re my translator and guide in old Mexico. I’m beginning to understand the Jolly Roger painted upon the sides of your bloodred cart.”
Childress grinned. “You are a man to reckon with, Sah. Let us examine this rancho, if such it be.”
The Colonel took it upon himself to explain this to Standing Alone, who brightened. At last, she would be going to a place where her children might be snared.
They turned westward along the two-rut trail that paralleled the creek, and soon found themselves in a broad, grassy valley that could only be paradise for cattle.
Even Victoria brightened. Skye had never seen her so dour, so distrustful, and judging from her glare at the spider monkey, she probably had slaughtered him a hundred times in her mind.
Shine himself sensed that they were piercing toward some nearby objective, and began doing handsprings on the sweated brown back of the patient Clydesdale. The brook babbled, relieving at last the oppressive silence Skye had felt ever since he entered Mexico.
Thus they continued, under an azure sky, until near sundown they beheld an adobe settlement, a rural fortress situated on a vast meadow that was sheltered by a long arid bluff
to the north. This place, too, had an earthen tower high enough to command the surrounding fields. A great black bell hung on a frame above it; a bell that might be heard for miles.
“Well done,” Childress said. “See that brass poking out of the tower? A field piece. Stuff it with grape and see the carnage.”
“What might threaten them, Colonel?”
“Utes and Comanches and Jicarillas,” the Colonel replied. “Every one of them capable of slaughtering the occupants, ravishing their women, and roasting the males over a fire until they are cooked alive.”
By then their imminent arrival had attracted attention, and assorted Mexicans, mostly male, flooded out of the placita, and stood waiting.
“Oh, one thing, Skye,” the Colonel said. “These hacendados play God. If they don’t like us, they can bind us up and ship us to Mexico City for a decade in a dungeon.”
“For what?”
“For anything, Sah. For trespassing, for trading without permission, for breathing, for being Protestant, for failure to pay import duties. Or for warring upon the Republic of Mexico.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Skye said.