Don Tomas Biscara was waiting for her. The room was dark and she could barely see him in the high-backed inquisitional chair. He made her think of a spider in its web.
Teresa Cavan stopped just within the door, not wanting to go farther. She was barefoot, wearing only the camisa and coarse wool skirt of the peon. They did little to hide the ripe curves of her nineteen-year-old body. She saw Biscara’s eyes rest on the lace at the neck of the camisa, pulled taut by the bold swell of her breasts.
“Que bonita,” he said. “How beautiful.” His voice was a cat’s purr. He beckoned with a slim swordsman’s hand. “Closer.”
She did not move. His smile faded. In Santa Fe of 1837 a peon did not decline the order of a man like Don Biscara.
“Have you no ears?” he asked.
Teresa’s mother pushed her from behind. She took a pair of stumbling steps into the room, stopped again. There was no shyness in her expression, no fear. Her face was too boldly formed to be delicate. It was tawny-fleshed, high-cheekboned, framed by a tumbling mass of fire-red hair. Her eyes caught reflection from a distant window, looking green as jade. Their heavy lids gave them a smoldering insolence.
“You have been here two weeks now,” Biscara said. “I thought to give you time to get over the death of your husband and child.” She did not answer. He moistened his lips. “The Navajos will be punished. The governor sent out dragoons to find the ones responsible.” Still she did not speak. Irritation made his voice rusty. “Your mother has been faithful here. She tells me you are a hard worker, quick to learn…and willing.”
“I will work.”
“Ah—?” he said. His piercing black eyes swung for a moment to the woman standing behind her. Teresa’s mother, Dolores Cavan, in the same flimsy camisa and grimy wool skirt, not yet forty, but already gnarled and stooped and half-blind with the age that swiftly overtook so many women in this barren land. Don Biscara said to her, “You may go now.”
Dolores Cavan caught her daughter’s arm with callused fingers. “He is your patron now. Remember that. Your patron.”
She turned and disappeared in the darkness of the hall behind Teresa. Biscara’s lean brown hands, holding the carved arms of his chair, were all cord and sinew. Teresa had known hands like that once, so expert at playing the bandolin or holding the sword or finding the secret places of a woman’s body.
“Cavan,” he said. “An Irish name.”
“My father was Irish.”
“But you were married to Pepe Rascon.”
Her eyes went blank. Rascon. The very name rekindled a memory of hate and misery she wanted to bury and forget.
“I’ve taken back my father’s name,” she said.
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He smiled sardonically. “An Irish father, a Mexican mother. An exotic combination.”
She did not answer. He made an impatient sound and rose, lithe as a panther, every inch the hidalgo, the aristocrat. His hair was jet-black, queued behind his neck. He wore a blue velvet jacket, calzones that fitted tight to his leg and were adorned with silver buttons on the outer seams from hip to calf. His boots were of Cordovan, soft as silk, their thin soles making a brittle clatter against the hard dirt floor as he walked to the cabinet at the end of the room.
“You are beautiful. We will admit that.” He poured wine into a pair of silver goblets. “The work in the fields is hard. Would you not rather be a servant in the house?”
“Yes.”
“It can be arranged.” He brought a drink to her. He tilted his own goblet, looking over its rim at her body. It sent a dull throb of anger through her. From the first, she had known how it would be. She had hoped against hope that it would be different. She had told herself that in the protection of Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, with the man whose family had been patrons of her people so long, it should be different. A patron was like a father to his peons; he watched over them and protected them and supported them in their sickness and old age.
“You do not drink,” he said. She looked at the glass, without speaking. The shadows moved smokily in the hollows at his temples and beneath his sharp cheekbones; coupled with his pointed black goatee, they rendered his face distinctly Satanic. He smiled maliciously and waved at a chair. “Be seated, then. Perhaps I can open your heart with a song.”
She watched his face for mockery. Was this a game? Or was he so habituated to this prelude that he had to execute it to the point of absurdity? Reluctantly she moved to one of the stiff chairs, lowering herself into it. Near it, against the wall, was one of the colchones that lay about the room. These were mattresses, rolled up and covered with bright Navajo blankets during the day. In this barren and isolated frontier, even the houses of the rich had no bedsteads, and few chairs or tables. The finest people were accustomed to sleeping on the floors at night, rolling up their mattresses during the day to sit on. He got his bandolin from the corner, seated himself cross-legged on the mattress before her, and began his song:
* * * *
“Teresa, tu eres hermosa
Como los rayos del sol…”
* * * *
This was the way it was done. The traditions of courtship set by a million young caballeros back through the years, sitting on their hams and playing their bandolins and singing one thing and thinking another.
It deepened her anger that he should take her acquiescence so for granted—licking his chops and mocking her with a ritual that could have meaning only to the daughters of the rich. Yet this was an accepted custom of the land. He was one of the most powerful men in New Mexico, offering her his protection, his patronage, his hearth and his bounty, in return for something which a hundred others of her class and her background had given him without question.
She had been married and knew what it was to bed with a man and knew no fear of the act itself. And yet his suave cultivated voice and his smooth hands and his lickerish anticipation only intensified the rebellion in her. It was a rebellion that went way back—so far back she didn’t know when it had started. But somehow this was a culmination. It came like a decision she had made, yet could not remember making. It was simply a knowledge, a certainty, a sharp focusing of all the pain and the tears and the subjection of the years behind her.
With a discordant twang, he set the bandolin down. “Do my verses bore you?” Black eyes shimmering with anger, he rose, not waiting for her answer now. With one practiced movement he slid the Navajo blanket off the colchón and unrolled it. “Perhaps I made a mistake,” he said thinly. “I was according you the courtesy of a gentlewoman. A peóna is courted differently.”
She did not move. She saw the anger fill his face and knew a sudden impulse to flee. But she could not even give him the pleasure of seeing her run. She was gripped by an adamant refusal to yield to him in the slightest way. He stood above the mattress, lean cheeks flushed, waiting for her to come to him. When she did not move, he took one step to her and grabbed her arm. She rose to his strong pull and when she was against him she hit him across the face with the goblet.
“Chingada!”
With a curse of pain he stumbled blindly backward, falling heavily to the floor. The blood and wine dripped from his face onto the cement-hard adobe of the floor. Teresa stood transfixed for that instant. The anger and the rebellion were drained from her momentarily by the enormity of what she had done.
He turned his contorted face up to her. There was a vicious anger in his eyes. But there was surprise too. She realized this had probably never happened to him before, with one of her class. She had violated a tradition. It was the last thing he had expected.
With another curse, he started to rise. The spell was broken and she turned, this time unable to block her simple animal impulse for escape. Before she could reach the door it was pulled open by Garcia, one of the numberless servants of the household.
He blocked the way and Teresa wheeled around and ran for the other door out. But Biscara was on his feet, near this door, and it took him but three stumbling steps to reach it. She stopped, six feet away, panting and flushed. Biscara wiped blood from his face, transferring his rage to Garcia.
“Do you dare intrude at a time like this? I’ll have you flogged.”
The man cringed like a sycophant. “But, patrón, I did not know, there is a personage, a Señor Kelly, he wishes an audience—”
Biscara looked at Teresa. His thin lips worked faintly. Then he took a ragged breath, speaking waspishly to Garcia.
“Get Iguala. Take this one to the stables. Give her twenty lashes.”
Garcia gulped, nodded, disappeared down the hall, calling for Iguala. In a panic, Teresa darted for the door he had left open. But she saw that he was only a few feet away, and another man was coming from the opposite end of the hall. He was bigger than Garcia, a Taos Indian, thick-chested and ape-armed, his loose cotton tilma flapping around hairy calves.
Biscara smiled maliciously at her. His voice was nasal, vicious. “It is a pity we could not continue, mi Teresa. But there are many ways to break a horse that will not be ridden.”
Iguala and Garcia entered the room. In the last instant she tried to evade them. But Garcia moved quick as a ferret, cutting her off, and Iguala swung in from behind, snaring an arm. While she was still writhing in their grasp, she heard the scrape and rattle of spurs in the hall leading from the parlor. Like a frightening apparition, a huge man appeared in the door.
She did not think she had ever seen one so tall. She recognized him as one of the Yankee trappers who frequented Taos and Santa Fe when they were not in the mountains. He had to stoop as he stepped through the door to keep his coonskin cap from being knocked off. From under the cap a veritable golden mane of hair spilled out. He wore an antelope blanket for a shirt, its four tails held at the waist by a broad black belt, and his elkhide britches were slick and blackened with the grease of a thousand meals. The spurs were great cartwheels with jinglebobs on the rowels that tinkled and rattled at his slightest movement. He had blue eyes, the color of ice in shadow, and there was a Satyr’s arch to his tufted eyebrows that lent his whole face a devilish look. He saw Teresa, and then moved his glance to the blood still oozing from Biscara’s cheek. His chuckle was malicious.
“Looks like you picked one out’n a varmint’s cave.”
Biscara was white with outrage. “Señor Morgan, could you not have the manners to wait in the sala?”
Morgan’s grin died. “I got tired waitin’,” he said. “My party’s ready to go. If you still want a stake it’s time we made the deal.”
Controlling his anger with obvious effort, Biscara spoke to Garcia. “Take her out!”
She began to fight again, as they dragged her toward the rear door. But both men were field workers, and she was helpless in their grasp.
“Tu barrachones,” she panted. “Hijo de la gran puta. Bueys, rumberos, pendejos!”
She heard the American chuckle again. “Cusses like a muleskinner. You got a real chili pepper, Biscara.”
Then they were in the long dark hall, with its adobe walls whitewashed with yeso and light filtering through the spindle door at the end.
The grapevine had already informed the household of what was to happen. They were gathered in the patio, a score of barefoot, sun-browned servants, muttering among themselves and calling questions to Iguala and Garcia. Then Teresa’s mother broke through the press, catching at Iguala’s arm.
“Please, Iguala, I give you something. I have saved three pesos for a candle to burn before La Conquistadora—”
He shook his head, pushing her away. “It is the word of the master, old woman. We can do nothing.”
She followed them like a whipped dog, wringing her hands, muttering prayers to her patron saint. Teresa could see the fear in her mother’s face; but she could see the resignation too. Beaten by this land, broken on the wheel of its primitive ways and its ceaseless labor, aged and feeble before her time, left with no strength to rebel or fight back. It only made Teresa struggle more frantically. But they finally got her into one of the stables at the rear of the patio.
They lashed Teresa’s wrists high to the crossbar at the mouth of an empty stall. Her heart was pounding from the struggle and she sobbed for breath. She saw Garcia get a horsewhip from its peg on the wall. Iguala bunched her camisa at the back of her neck and gave a sharp tug. The lace jerked painfully across her breasts, then ripped. He pulled the garment down about her waist and left it hanging there.
“Forgive me, señorita,” Iguala said.
The whip swished through the air, cracked against her. Pain ran like fire across her back. She stiffened, all her weight swinging against her lashed wrists, biting her lips to keep from crying out.
“A thousand pardons, señorita.”
The lash fell again, echoing through the stable with a sharp crack. This time she could not help her stifled cry. She could hear her mother pleading with the guards, begging Iguala to stop. She could feel the blood on her back now, soaking her camisa.
“With an aching heart, señorita.”
The crack of the whip again. The pain branding her. The cry torn from her. The wailing. Then it was a new sound, a husky outcry of voices from outside, someone’s shout, like the clap of thunder rising above all the others. Dizzy with the pain, she turned her head. First she saw that great yellow head, towering above the shawls of the women and the black heads of the men. Then one of the guards at the door was flung aside so hard that he tripped and fell full length in the straw. And the American was in the stable, like an angry god in his wrath.
“What the hell’s fixin’ here?”
Both Iguala and Garcia were gaping at him in surprise. Before they could answer, Don Biscara elbowed his way through the mob, right on Kelly Morgan’s heels. His face was pale and his eyes blazed.
“Señor, you have no right to interfere. This is no business of yours.”
“A woman bein’ horse-whipped is any man’s business,” Kelly said. “Cut her down.”
Biscara drew himself to his full height. There was a white ridge about his compressed lips. “You will leave at once, or I will turn you over to the governor.”
For answer, Kelly slipped twelve inches of Bowie knife from its brass-studded sheath at his belt and took two long steps that placed him beside Teresa. Before any of them could move he had slashed the rawhide binding her wrists. She sagged against him, almost falling. As from a distance she heard Biscara’s voice.
“You are a fool, Morgan. I give you one last chance. Release her and leave here.”
“On your promise that you won’t touch her again.”
“She belongs to me. I will treat her as I choose.”
“The hell you will.”
“You have made your choice, then,” Biscara said. “Iguala, disarm this man and take him to the palace.”
A dozen other peons had pushed into the stable. Still holding Teresa with one hand, Kelly swung to face them. They did not move for a moment. He made a frightening figure, towering a foot above the tallest of them, his knife glittering wickedly in one trap-scarred hand.
“Iguala,” Biscara called.
With a grunt, the Taos Indian responded, swinging his whip back and lashing at the trapper’s hand. But Kelly swung his knife up. Steel parted leather like hot butter and Iguala gaped incredulously at the two feet of his whip dropping to the floor. But the others had begun to pull their saca tripas—the wickedly curved gets-the-guts knife of the Mexican peasant.
Before they could surge against Kelly, he lunged at Biscara. The don tried to jump back, but Kelly caught his arm, almost tearing him off his feet as he swung the man around. Holding the man that way, with Biscara’s arm twisted cruelly between their two bodies, Kelly placed his knife blade against the man’s throat. It stopped the surge of the other men.
“Clear the way now,” Kelly told them, in his cowpen Spanish.
Sullenly the men parted, leaving a path into the patio. Kelly looked at Teresa. She pulled her torn dress back over her shoulders, holding it together at the front. Biscara’s voice left him in a strained, wheezing bleat.
“Teresa, if you go, your life will be forfeit.”
She knew he meant it. He was powerful enough in the province to have it done. Yet she knew how it would be if she stayed. She had made her choice, back in that room, when she had hit Biscara. She moved to the trapper’s side.
It was like marching down a gauntlet. The servants stood on every side, knives in their hands, watching for some break, looking at Biscara’s face for some indication. But he was powerless. He walked like a man on eggshells, with that knife pressed to his Adam’s apple. They came to the zaguán—the great door in the wall through which passed the carts and coaches and riders. Kelly told Iguala to open it.
The bar was lifted from its sockets and the heavy gate, groaning and protesting, was swung open. Dolores Cavan was wringing her hands again and pleading with her daughter.
“Teresa, do not do this thing. It is better that you stay. He is your patron. He will be your protector, the food for your belly, the roof over your head—”
Teresa looked helplessly at her mother. Holding her dress together, she followed Kelly out. East of them, down San Francisco Street, lay the main portion of Santa Fe, a tawny huddle of flat-roofed mud buildings. At the hitchrack beside the zaguán stood a roan horse.
“Step aboard,” Kelly said.
She took the reins off the hitchrack. The half-wild horse shied and reared. She pulled him down, toed a wooden stirrup, and swung into the saddle.
“Señor,” Biscara said. “You will regret this. I will have every dragoon in the province on your trail in ten minutes.”
Without answering, Kelly swung him around suddenly, releasing him. It slammed Biscara back into the men massed in the open gate, checking their anticipated rush for an instant. And in that instant Kelly ran for his horse, vaulting up over its rump and slamming to a seat directly behind the saddle. His arms were around Teresa’s waist and he raked the horse with his huge spurs, deafening Teresa with his roar.
“Now, you spotted bastard—light a shuck!”