part0009

Two riders from the hunting party found the bear tied to the tree. The criollos were ecstatic, calling out to Roman to join them in hauling the animal back to the fiesta. Roman rode in the opposite direction, ignoring their excited summons.

The criollos wasted no time. When Roman arrived at the fiesta that afternoon, having spent much of the day at a peaceful glen along the river where he bathed and shaved and spent some much-needed time resting, the bear and bull were chained together for the fight.

Roman slowly walked his horse toward the circle of spectators. From a distance, Rachel Tyler’s golden hair shimmered in the sunshine. He didn’t want to speak to her, but he couldn’t stay away. She stood alongside a female Indian servant who whispered in her ear. It was obvious the little Yankee had no stomach for the savage fight between the animals. She covered her mouth with her hand and turned away as the bruin charged the bull.

By the time he reached her, she was crying softly into her hands. An overwhelming urge to comfort her assailed him. “You do not like the entertainment,” he drawled gently, purposefully getting off his horse between her and the servant so nothing stood between them.

She looked at him in disbelief. “How can they do this to these animals?” She swiped at the tears on her cheeks, struggling to compose herself. The crowd cheered and clapped, egging on the warring beasts. Snarls of the bear and snorts of the bull filled the air. He stood close enough to smell the delicate perfume of rosewater on her skin and found himself at a loss for words.

“Which will win the bull or the bear?” She wouldn’t look at the raging fight.

“The bear almost always wins, but this bear is young and stupid. He might lose,” he spoke gently.

“How do you know he’s young and stupid?” Rachel peeked at the fight and then, clearly regretting her glance, locked wide eyes on him.

“I captured the bear this morning. He wasn’t much trouble.”

He didn’t like her outrage directed at him. “Your father has done this.” He waved his hand toward the animals trying to kill each other as the crowd roared its approval. “The Yankee takes without asking. Life, land, a woman who belongs to another man. Your father is like the grizzly. ” Roman scanned the crowd for Tyler and spotted Sarita beside her husband. Both of them cheered as the bear took the bull down by fastening its teeth around the bull’s nose. The bull bawled as the bear muscled it to the ground. It kicked its legs, trying to free itself as the bruin moved his muzzle to the bull’s throat, ripping open the flesh there.

Rachel’s scream split the air, but Roman couldn’t take his eyes off Sarita. She threw herself into Tyler’s arms, kissing her Yankee husband as the bear finished off the bull. Their public display of unbridled passion stunned him. Though he’d been to many bear baitings, often capturing bears with Rancho de los Robles’s vaqueros, never in his life had he been unsettled by the event as he was now. Watching Sarita relish the bull’s death in the lusty embrace of her gringo husband unleashed something in Roman he’d never felt before. A deep, grieving regret over the human depravity he only now recognized in himself and those around him. It sickened him to see Sarita in another man’s arms. True, she thought he was dead, but still it felt like a betrayal, and sliced his soul open.

Beside him, Rachel wept, her shoulders shaking, her face buried in her hands. She seemed so young and innocent, standing there sobbing in the midst of a crowd reveling in the bloodbath. The Indian servant waiting at her side watched him with knowing eyes. He recognized this servant, Sarita’s old dueña, Chula. He’d always disliked this particular Indian. She practiced black magic and had led Sarita into her dark ways. In his younger years, he’d laughed at such nonsense. Now that he was older, and had seen plenty of death in Texas, he did not find the worship of devils so foolish and funny.

“I will see Señorita Tyler to the hacienda,” he told the servant in Spanish.

Chula smiled. The gesture didn’t reach her expressionless black eyes. “She is weak and fragile. A foreigner,” she returned in Spanish. “She won’t survive here. I believe the gringa will die this very year. Certainly, you of all men, Señor Vasquez, know I cannot allow la niña to depart with you.”

Wrapping his arm around Rachel’s waist, he pulled her from Chula’s side in a swish of petticoats, leading his stallion nearly over the top of the dueña to get away from her. The servant jumped out of his horse’s way, her cold black eyes suddenly flashing fire.

“The little gringa is safe with me. See to your señora. She is acting the harlot for her Yankee husband.” Roman pointed across the crowd to Sarita and Tyler, relieved Rachel didn’t understand the Spanish he spoke to the servant.

“I see you are alive,” said Chula. “You should thank Tohic for sparing you.”

“I do not thank devils,” Roman returned in Spanish.

After escaping the dueña, he walked with Rachel at a leisurely pace away from the bear baiting. Moving slow eased the pain in his leg. She went along trustingly, tears streaking her cheeks, clutching his billowing shirt like a lost child.

In Spanish, he whispered comforting words he would never say to her in English, his arm firmly about her waist. Everything in him longed to protect this delicate girl. She didn’t belong to her father’s madness. He needed to get her away from the slaughtered bull. Away from the blood-thirsty crowd. Away from her father and Sarita with their passion displayed for all to see. Away from Chula and her devils.

It was late afternoon. A cool breeze pushed in from the coast. He could smell the ocean on the air. They’d held the bear baiting far out in the field, a safe distance from the hacienda in case the animals escaped and the vaqueros required open space to recapture the beasts. On the horizon, the hacienda loomed like a frontier fort, surrounded by high adobe walls with orchards, outbuildings, and stables sprawling across an open meadow ringed by giant redwood trees. Like all Californio ranchos, the wide clearing protected the occupants from a sneak attack. Enemies would be seen well before they reached the homestead.

As Roman and Rachel walked slowly to the hacienda, he led Oro with one hand, keeping his other arm around Rachel’s waist until she stopped crying. He could have released the stallion’s reins and let the horse follow, as Oro was trained to do, but he didn’t trust himself with two free hands with this particular woman. The urge to carry her far away from this place was a feeling he couldn’t shake. It would be so easy to sweep her onto his saddle and ride back to Rancho de los Robles where protecting her was easy. Under her fair skin, a blue vein throbbed in the center of her forehead. Her delicateness reminded him of his mother, who died of the fever when he was a boy. How he missed his beautiful, gentle mother. This girl’s same beautiful gentleness tightened his chest, made him long for what he could not explain.

“How can they do that to God’s creatures?” Rachel stopped walking, lifting her damp face to his. “How can people be so cruel?” Her tear-washed eyes shone as blue and fathomless as the sea. Those beseeching eyes pulled him far from the shore of his resolve to hate all Americans. With the sun on her face, he noticed a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks he hadn’t noticed at night. She was taller and slimmer than Sarita. Her head nearly reached his shoulder, her slender figure fitting his six-foot frame as no other woman’s ever had.

“I don’t know, pequeña .” He didn’t tell her this was the only bear baiting—besides his first one as a very young boy—that had horrified him. “The osos grandes can wipe out a sheep herd in one night. The cattle are rags in the great bears’ mouths; one bite and the calves are gone. The mother cows grieve like women. They won’t eat, won’t sleep. They roam the hills bawling for the calves the bears have carried away.” He needed her to understand why he’d killed so many bears. Why, though he felt sorry for the grizzlies, he had to go on destroying them. The welfare of his herds depended on it.

The sinking sun shining on her tresses turned her hair the color of California’s golden hills come summertime. “You raise cattle and sheep?” she asked.

“Sí .” He stroked Oro’s forehead. “And horses the color of your hair. This is Oro. His name means gold in Spanish. He has never sired a foal that did not match his color. We run one stallion with twenty-five mares in manadas. I own many of these small herds, placing chestnut mares with palomino stallions. This gives us the greatest return of palomino foals. Everyone rides palominos at Rancho de los Robles.” He pointed across the mountains in the direction of his domain. “Rancho de los Robles has endless oak groves, pines, magnificent redwoods, and a crystal-clear creek singing through the land.”

“What does Rancho de los Robles mean?” She smiled, and his stomach tightened.

“Ranch of the Oaks.” A wave of wistfulness washed over him. He longed to show her his home. The rolling hills full of cattle and golden horses. The great oak trees that sheltered the herds during winter storms and warm summer afternoons. The creek so clear you could see the salmon swimming upstream from the ocean to spawn in the fall.

She stroked Oro’s neck, her small white hand caressing his horse’s flaxen mane. His mother had small hands too, soft and pale such as these. Giving into longing, he closed his eyes and feathered his fingers over the top of hers on the horse’s warm hide. He savored the silkiness of her skin. When she didn’t pull away, something deep inside him eased. He kept his eyes closed, relishing the comfort coursing through him in the presence of this gentle, young woman. There was such a sweetness about her. A serene beauty that captivated him.

“My father enjoyed watching the bear kill that bull.” Her voice caught. “All the men enjoyed it. Even the women enjoyed it. I’ve never met people who savor cruelty this way.”

He opened his eyes. Took a deep breath. In his mind, he saw Sarita cheering and lusting for blood alongside her gringo husband. He removed his dark hand from Rachel’s fingers, so fair and delicate on his horse, gazing as far as he could across the horizon, wishing he didn’t feel so raw inside. Wishing he didn’t feel anything at all here with Joshua Tyler’s daughter. “It is the Californio way,” he finally said.

“What does pequeña mean?”

“Pequeña is small one.” It was an endearment, really, the way he used it with her, but he wouldn’t tell her so.

Her smile widened. “I’m not little. I’m tall for a woman. At least here in California, where the women are quite short.”

“You weigh as much as my sister. She is a willow stick.” He had no idea how his sisters, aunt, and uncle had fared in his absence. His uncle especially loved parties, and Sarita was Tia Josefa’s niece. His family should have been at this wedding, even though Tyler was no friend of the Vasquezes.

“What was your mother like? When did she pass away?”

“Who told you she passed away?”

“Why would your father speak of my mother?”

“Not my earthly father. My heavenly Father.”

“God?” Roman rasped out a laugh, but it unnerved him, the way she spoke of God.

“You don’t believe in the Lord speaking to people?”

“Perhaps if you were a priest.”

“The only mediator God requires is Jesus. His death on our behalf ushers us into the presence of the Almighty.”

“Are you a Protestant?”

Her cheeks flushed. “I serve the Lord. Who do you serve, Señor Vasquez?”

“I have served you today, Yanquia pequeña . You should thank me for escorting you home.” The whitewashed walls of her father’s hacienda loomed ahead. The smell of roasting meat drifted on the air. Wine and brandy would be flowing soon enough, along with the sound of guitars and violins when the celebration returned to the house.

She glanced at the rambunctious crowd making its way toward them in crude wooden carts and atop prancing horses, then turned back to him. “You are mocking my faith?”

“I do not mock faith.”

“So you are Catholic?” Her voice trembled.

“Everyone in California is Catholic.” He tossed the challenge out to her, waiting for her to deny an allegiance to the Catholic Church for herself or her father. He smiled even as his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun and the real trouble religion could bring. Perhaps he could wipe her from his mind if she admitted to being Protestant. A Protestant woman was about as appealing to him as a prairie fire.

“My father is . . .”

His heart stalled and then beat thickly, anticipating what she would say. He couldn’t let her say it. “Catholic,” he finished abruptly for her in spite of himself. Denying Catholicism was a serious matter in California. She appeared taken aback by his forceful interruption. Her mouth opened and closed and then opened again.

“All landowners in California must belong to the Church,” he finished before she could utter a word.

“The Catholic Church,” she clarified.

“Yes.” Favoring his wounded thigh, he swung onto his horse, settling himself in the saddle to look down at her. On top of his mount, he felt invincible, even with his bad leg. But staring at her, her wide blue eyes locked expectantly on him, his chest tightened. Who would watch over the Yankee pequeña once he was gone? Surely not her foolish father or Sarita’s wicked dueña.

He recalled Sarita’s fascination with the Indian shamans. Her dueña was a soothsayer. Intuition had saved his life on countless occasions, and he sensed Rachel was in danger here. I believe the gringa will die this very year. He scanned the approaching crowd and found the Indian servant watching them but a stone’s throw away, waiting like a snake to coil back around the little gringa.

“Stay behind these walls.” He pointed to the whitewashed adobe bricks behind her. “And tell your father to find you a different dueña.” He pointed to the servant. “That one serves the devil.” Reining Oro around, he rode away without looking back.