Skye marveled. That very morning they had found themselves naked and bereft, a deadly circumstance that should have destroyed them all. But they did not perish. He could thank a monkey for that, and this old woman whose name, he gathered, was Milagro.
He looked at his brown habit and smiled; and Brother Childress was even more the fat monk. The women sat quietly, masticating chunks of fresh bread. The monkey was swinging everywhere, his tail wrapped around branches as he explored this little green courtyard of the most gracious house and garden in Arroyo Hondo.
The old woman sat on a split-log bench, watching them, her eyes bright. The monkey vanished inside the building, and when it emerged it carried something that looked like an earthen jug.
Skye leaped up. The monkey was stealing something and Skye would not abuse this woman’s kindness by letting that happen. But when Skye approached, it swung upward and sat on an eave, scolding Skye and waving the crockery jug.
The old woman laughed.
He turned to Childress. “Tell her I will get it, whatever it is. We’ll not be stealing this old woman’s food.”
The old woman nodded and said something.
“It’s molasses,” Childress said. “Very precious, the only molasses in Arroyo Hondo.”
The monkey dodged Skye’s every effort until Skye began shouting at it. And then Shine leaped meekly to Skye’s feet and left the jug there. Skye carried it to the woman, who nodded and set it in her lap.
“Ask her how far it is to Taos,” he said.
Childress queried the woman, and learned that Taos could be reached in a day if one left at dawn and the weather was dry and the horse didn’t go lame.
“We should go,” Skye said, restlessly. He really didn’t want that funeral party to return and discover him in a monk’s habit and his women wearing someone’s dresses with nothing under them. There could be trouble.
Childress caught his urgency, and thanked Milagro profusely, and listened to her lengthy reply, whispered in a throaty, soft voice, punctuated with small smiles, and finally a giggle and a euphoric grin.
“What was that?” Skye asked.
Childress flashed one of his buccaneer smiles. “I told her I could not repay her, for we have nothing, and she said she was already repaid. I said, yes, you’re repaid by God, and by our gratitude. She said that wasn’t it at all. She’ll get another sort of payment from it.
“She said that when the family and neighbors return, she will tell them that she saw a red cart drawn by a huge horse with a monkey on its mane, and everyone in the cart was naked, and a skull and crossbones was painted on its side, and so she took the naked ones to the chapel.
“She says she will recite that with relish to young and old and that the family will stare at her as if she is daft, and pat her on the shoulder and tell her that she’s getting old and seeing things and listening to the devil, and saying things she has invented, and maybe she should say her beads more often.
“She says they would rather believe that Jesus Christ
Himself had visited her than believe a red cart with naked people in it had arrived in Arroyo Hondo. And then she would giggle and laugh, and they would never know the truth, and she would have her secret the rest of her days, and it is an old lady’s joke.”
Skye laughed. He saw the old woman grinning primly, a finger at her mouth, anticipating the big joke she would play on her family, and how they would all think she was a loco old lady, and that was just fine with her.
They drove off with clothing covering their bodies, fed and comforted. At the last moment, Shine leaped aboard the Clydesdale, unhappy to abandon such a paradise. Skye sat on the bench beside Childress as the horse dragged the cart up the long grade and out upon the open plains once again.
“Now we’re monks,” Childress said. “Maybe that’s best.”
“No, mate, we’re not monks and if we pretend, we’ll be found out.”
“I don’t know how we can get into worse trouble than we’re in, Skye. We haven’t so much as a knife or a cookpot, no money, food, shelter, horses, boots or sandals, and I’m the only one who speaks the language. At least, as monks, we could beg a meal.”
“We could always hire out.”
“I’ve never worked a day in my life, Skye. I take what I want, but that requires an evil heart, a cutlass, some grapeshot, a few pistols, a dirk, and assorted instruments of terror. I’m not fitted out to be a monk or a laboring man. I’ve been a buccaneer for as long as I can remember, and it’s a family tradition. Skye, there isn’t a thing in my Galveston digs that I purchased. I take great pride in it. Everything’s stolen.”
“We can work.”
“Work! You can; I won’t.”
“First thing is to get to Taos and keep ourselves and the horse fed,” Skye said, not wanting an argument just then. “We have two Cheyenne children to find.”
“You still thinking about that?”
“I’ve never stopped thinking about it.”
“With nothing but the clothing on our backs, and that borrowed? And not an ounce of food?”
“Yes,” Skye said.
Victoria, who was listening, laughed. “When he sets his mind to something, it gets done,” she said. “That’s how he gets drunk.”
Dusk found them in an open flat. The mountains to the east caught the setting sun and glowed gold. They were far from water, and would have to make a dry camp. But Taos was not far away. At least there was bunch grass for the horse, and the last of the bread. They found a shallow arroyo that offered some protection from the rattling wind, and settled there in the twilight. Skye divided the bread, reserving a piece for Shine, who snatched it happily. He eyed the skies, worried about the clouds building up in the east over the great black mountains.
He and Victoria settled against the warm slope. They were without blankets, and Victoria’s thin linen dress would not ward off the chill. He put an arm over her shoulder and drew her into his coarse brown robe. Childress vanished into the juniper brush for a while, while Standing Alone chose solitude. For her, a modest Cheyenne woman, the dress she wore meant everything, and especially an end to her suffering and the endless violations of her person by other eyes. The monkey was steering the Clydesdale from place to place, sometimes tugging on the lines when the horse lingered.
“You glad you came?” Victoria asked.
“Yes.”
“You think we’ll get out of here?”
“We’re in trouble.”
“I don’t know much about these Mexicans. But that Milagro, I like her. She helped us.”
“Yes, she did. But from now on, we’re going to depend on the Mexicans for everything—food, shelter, warmth, clothing,
sandals, and … liberty. I hear they don’t take kindly to strangers.”
“What is liberty?”
The question startled Skye. Victoria had never known anything but liberty, subject only to the traditions of her people.
“The children we’re looking for don’t have it. They can’t live their life as they choose. They’re slaves. We may not have it if we run into trouble. I think we’ll be all right.”
“Some Apache has your rifle.”
“That’s one of the ways I’m feeling naked. But there’s this about it. Now we’re no threat to anyone. No alcalde—that’s a mayor, sort of—of any town here is going to worry about us.”
He wasn’t sure he believed that, especially with Childress obviously collecting military information. For all he knew, the Mexicans might have an exact understanding of Colonel Childress and his mission. But he wanted to hearten her.
Standing Alone approached, and after some hesitation, settled down beside Victoria in the lee of the arroyo.
“She says it’s cold and this is better,” Victoria said.
The women conversed softly, often using their hands, and Skye listened patiently, understanding very little of it.
“She says the old woman was kind, and the Mexicans are good people,” Victoria said. “Food and clothing for us all. The old woman shared what she had. She likes Mexico. Standing Alone thinks maybe her children are comfortable here.”
Skye had no answer for that. If her son had been taken to the mines in the south, he had been subjected to a life of unremitting toil. He would be fed barely enough to keep life in him, and he would be naked, because the masters spared their slave labor nothing beyond what kept body and soul together.
“Yes,” Skye said, “tell her the Mexicans are good people,
most of them. They have a beautiful spirit. They would help anyone in trouble. They have a great faith that teaches them good things, but sometimes they ignore the teaching of their church. Sometimes they treat their own people badly and sometimes they treat Indians badly too.”
Victoria did, and Standing Alone absorbed that bleakly.
“If her son was sent to the mines where they dig the metal, he is suffering and in danger. If he’s working on a plantation, hoeing and weeding, or herding cattle, he would be better off. If her daughter’s working in a household, she may be well off. But they aren’t free. They are either peons, held to the land by perpetual debt, or slaves.”
Victoria translated as best she could, and listened to the reply.
“Then they are savages, she says. The Cheyenne would never do such a thing. We must hurry, before it is too late.”
Skye pressed Victoria’s hand in the dusk. “We will, and it may take months,” he said. “But there will be a way.”