Skye watched an odd-looking priest start across the plaza with a lumbering gait.
“You’re too late,” Larrimer said. “That’s the Calf.”
“The what?”
“Padre Martinez. His head, see it? They call him the Calf. He hates Yanks.”
“I’m not a Yank.”
“Lot of good that’ll do you. I shouldn’t even be seen with you.”
“Mr. Larrimer, we’re destitute and we need help. Anything you can do—”
“What you’ve done, Skye, if that’s your name, is start trouble for every citizen of the United States living here.”
Colonel Childress, who had been bantering with the people of Taos, paused as he watched the ponderous progress of the priest, who parted the frightened peons as if he were Moses.
“Why does he worry you?” Skye asked Larrimer.
“He’s more powerful than the alcalde, and an alcalde is not just a mayor; he’s police chief and judge, too. The Calf’s agitating to put all us heathen out of the territory, or march
us off to the City of Mexico. The Calf’s a law unto himself. Not even the governor rules this priest.”
The Calf was indeed a strange-looking priest, his huge walleyed head perched heavily on a stocky frame covered with a dusty black cassock.
At last the priest stopped before them, as the crowd fell back. He peered at each man from bright and penetrating brown eyes, then the cart, monkey, and Indian women, and finally at Larrimer.
“Que pasa?” he asked Larrimer.
But Childress replied in a burst of Spanish that Skye couldn’t follow. The fat privateer gesticulated grandly, foam at the lips, pointed at his empty cart and the two women, at himself, and at Skye.
“What’s he saying?” Skye whispered.
“That you’re a pair of Franciscans from St. Louis that got robbed by the Jicarillas.”
Skye barely contained his rage. This was worse trouble because it was a lie, and preposterous.
The Calf peered, skeptically, as if nearsighted, wetting his lips and pondering. He turned to Larrimer, and said something.
“I’m translating. Who are you; what are you doing here?”
Skye was damned if he would lie. “I’m a man without a country, Barnaby Skye, and I’m helping this grieving Cheyenne woman find her son and daughter. We think they were brought here by the Utes. We came to obtain their liberty.”
“Are you a friar?” Larrimer translated.
“No, I am in the fur trade, working for Bent, St. Vrain. We were left without clothing, or a weapon or a pot thirty miles north by marauding Jicarillas. A merciful woman in Arroyo Hondo lent us these garments, fed us, and sent us on our way. She took us to the church there, put these habits over our nakedness, and urged us to leave swiftly.”
“A likely story. Where are you from?” Larrimer translated.
“London.”
“Where’s the fat one from?”
“He says Galveston Bay.”
“Tejas! Who owns that monkey?”
Skye gestured toward Childress.
“What is his name? The Texas one. What is he doing here?”
“Jean Lafitte Childress. He started with a wagon of trading goods. We lost them all to the Apaches, and our horses except for this. We came with him, with our own horses and gear.”
The Calf stared at the Clydesdale. “The great horse looks like the Calf,” he said, and Larrimer translated. “Why are these symbols of piracy and death painted on the side of this cart?”
Skye shook his head. There were facets of Childress that were beyond fathoming.
“He wants to know who she is,” Larrimer said, pointing at Victoria.
“She is my Crow wife, Victoria.”
The Calf laughed heartily. “Concubina,” he said.
Skye didn’t need the translation. “Wife,” he said, heat building in him.
The Calf chuckled nastily, and spoke again.
“You will be of great interest to the authorities,” Larrimer translated. “One says he’s a monk from St. Louis. The other says he’s a man from London looking for Cheyenne children. Monks with two sluts, a bloodred wagon, and a monkey.” He beckoned. Skye thought the priest’s finger was an inch in diameter.
“Do we have to go with him?”
“Skye, if you don’t, you’re likely to get yourself killed. See that?”
Standing on the periphery of this crowd stood three young men bearing lances. Skye thought all of Taos had collected
there, twenty deep. These were no longer warm and friendly faces.
“What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t second-guess Mexican officials. But the last few illegal traders or … filibusters, is that it, Skye? … got sent off to Mexico City in chains, and the few that survived the long walk in irons are still there and won’t be leaving there. Not unless they leave feet first.”
All this Colonel Childress absorbed angrily, glaring at Skye as if his truth-telling were a criminal act in its own right. Skye didn’t care. Childress’s lies had gotten them into this.
Skye saw that they had little choice. He nodded to Larrimer. Did he see some pity in the man’s corded face? Then the huge, ominous crowd began to seethe along, carrying Skye, Childress, Victoria, and Standing Alone with it. Shine leaped up to Childress’s thick shoulder, and even he looked subdued and afraid. Someone was leading away the Clydesdale and the wagon, and Skye doubted he would ever see the rig again.
Skye glanced at Standing Alone, who bore all this with her innate dignity, enduring the stares, keeping her thoughts private. Victoria, always the observant one, was studying the clothing and weapons of these people, looking at faces one by one, as she was harried along with the throng. Where were they going? Did this earthen village have a jail?
They were escorted across the dusty plaza and through an alley to a massive building with walls as blank as the future, and there pushed through the thick doors and into the sharp coolness within. Skye had no inkling of the purpose of this structure; only that it contained chairs of rawhide, benches, and a beehive fireplace in a corner. The sole window could swiftly be shuttered; the heavy slab-wood door could be barred. As a jail it would do just fine. The women in their thin shifts would soon be chilled in such a place.
This was some private residence. The massive door creaked shut behind them, and Skye felt the claustrophobia
he had experienced deep in the bowels of men-o’-war. The room wasn’t large. Skye headed for the high window, and could see one of the men with a lance standing beside it.
“Skye, why didn’t you keep your trap shut?” Childress asked. “I could’ve talked my way out of it.”
“Lied your way out of it,” Skye retorted.
The monkey abandoned the Colonel’s shoulders and explored the room with swift bounds, hunting food but settling at last in the patch of sun on the sill of the high window.
“Skye, get this straight. I’m a privateer. I will do what I will do.”
There was no sense arguing with the man. Skye turned his back on him and looked to see how Victoria and Standing Alone were faring. The Cheyenne woman had settled into a chair.
“Victoria, tell her we came here without the permission of the governor—the chief. I’ll get her out some way, but I don’t know when or how.”
Childress started laughing. “That’s what they all think before they walk the plank.”
Skye boiled. He started toward that fat pirate, but the door opened again, shooting bright sunlight, into the room and half blinding him. Shine started chittering.
This time a hawkish black-bearded man appeared and surveyed them all with imperious eyes. Four soldiers backed him, this time armed with broadswords.
“I am prefect, Juan Andres Archuleta. I make a, a … disposition of your case,” he said. “I speak little English.”
“We’re hungry,” Skye said.
“That is of no consequence. We are much entertained by your party, but we have learned many lessons from our past.”
He nodded, and two of the guards caught the women by the arm and escorted them out. The last view Skye got of Victoria, she was being dragged into the sunlight but she was looking back to him, and her eyes told him of love, and desperation and determination. Standing Alone didn’t require
dragging. She walked willingly, but paused at the bright door frame, looked back at Skye with sorrow. Then they were gone.
“We’ll deal with your concubines separately.”
“My wife is not a concubine!” Skye snapped.
“She is what I choose to call her, a puta.”
Skye lurched at him, only to be constrained by Childress, who clamped an arm over him. The grip was hard. Bright steel blades gleamed just ahead of him.
“Very gallant, Americano.”
“I’m not an American. And that was my wife.”
“Si, si, you have say that. You’re a man without a nation, and therefore, all the easier for us to deal with.” He turned to Childress. “A Tejano rebel. A privateer. Maybe a spy. Maybe doing some little task for el Presidente Lamar.”
“I’m an ordinary privateer, señor, at the service of whoever has the biggest purse. And when no one has a purse, I engage in my own violations of the laws of the sea.”
Archuleta contemplated that. “Ah! I am glad to have your … confesión before witnesses, and that of your friend Skye,” he said. “That is all I need.”