1841 was the year of the ill-fated Texas-Santa Fe Expedition. Since the Texas revolution, the boundaries of the Lone Star Republic had been in dispute. Texas claimed their land ran to the Rio Grande. But this river turned north at El Paso, running up past Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The Mexicans held that this could not possibly constitute the western boundary of Texas and claimed land for several hundred miles eastward.
General Mirabeau Lamar was now president of the Texas Republic, giving official sanction to the boundary claims of his people. In the spring of 1841, news reached Santa Fe that he was equipping an expeditionary force to invade New Mexico. There were all kinds of wild rumors. Gomez claimed he had letters from friends in Texas proving that the force numbered thirty thousand men, and would overwhelm the New Mexicans. Ryker claimed he’d heard through his agent in San Antonio that the expedition was merely a band of traders trying to open a new trail.
But tension and threat of war had existed between the Lone Star Republic and Mexico ever since the Texas Revolution. Governor Amado was only too willing to believe that the Expedition was an invading force, and immediately took measures of defense. Half a dozen known Texans in Santa Fe were arrested, all foreign-born residents were forbidden to leave their homes, and Captain Emilio Uvalde was sent to patrol the eastern border beyond Las Vegas.
On September 4, Uvalde captured three Texans supposed to be advance spies for the Texas-Santa Fe Expedition and brought them to the capital for trial. Captain Uvalde was from Taos and had been one of Gomez’s men from the first. Thus Don Biscara was not surprised when the two showed up together at his house on San Francisco Street. He invited them in, offered them drinks and smokes. After the traditional punctilio of the country, observed even among such close companions, Uvalde lounged on a colchón, savoring the bouquet of the wine. His narrow wedge of a face was still dust-grayed from the long ride and his long grasping hands were restless.
“Are they going to arrest Kelly Morgan?” Biscara asked.
Uvalde frowned into his glass. “I doubt it. Somebody remembered he was a Texan and there was talk of arrest. But he could hardly be a spy. He’s been lying in Teresa Cavan’s place for months now, hovering between life and death.” The militia captain shook his head. “What a woman! I will even fear to pass her a compliment from now on.”
Gomez moved restlessly about the room, hands locked behind his back, as if coming to some decision. Finally he pursed his lips. “We have more important matters. Something came into our hands which I thought you might like to see.”
He produced a document that had been found on one of the spies. It was a proclamation by General Mirabeau B. Lamar, addressed to the citizens of Santa Fe, dated April 14, 1840:
We tender you a full participation in all our blessings. The Great River of the North, which you inhabit, is the natural and convenient boundary of our territory, and we shall take great pleasure in hailing you as our fellow citizens, members of our young Republic, and co-aspirants with us for establishing a new and happy and free nation….
Biscara frowned. “It says nothing here of an army.”
“Does a man announce a betrayal?” Uvalde asked. “These three spies admitted there was a large force behind them, five companies of mounted infantry heavily armed, an artillery company with brass six pounders. Does a peaceful trading party carry cannon?”
Biscara’s black brows arched. “You play a dangerous game, Gomez. If the governor realized you had deliberately withheld evidence from him—”
For a moment a gray tinge came to Gomez’s purple-veined jowls. Then he moistened his lips, shook his head. “The men have already been condemned to death as spies. I thought you might find a way to use this.”
Biscara frowned, turning it over in his mind. A vague possibility came to him. He began to nod. “Perhaps you are right. I think it may be up to you, my dear Gomez.”
“Me?”
“A man who can come and go in the Palace at will. A man who has been the fawning sycophant, groveling his way back into their favor, waiting for this moment.” Biscara’s pointed beard made his smile intensely Satanic. “I think our time has come, señores.”
* * * *
On September the 16th Captain Uvalde captured five men near La Cuesta. They were in pitiable condition—ragged, exhausted, starving—but claimed to be scouts for the main body of Texans who were somewhere behind. Governor Amado was informed and left Santa Fe with the regulars, setting up headquarters at Las Vegas. The next day he encountered another larger body of Texans at Anton Chico. There were ninety-four men, under a colonel and a captain. They were a gaunt, haggard, miserable lot of creatures. Many had worn their boots out marching and stood shivering in their bare feet. They were all grimed with dirt and ridden with lice, scratching bearded faces and open sores on their necks and chests. A dozen were violently ill with dysentery, unable to walk. It was an absurd travesty of an invading army.
Yet many of them carried the infamous Lamar proclamation. Hopelessly outnumbered, they surrendered their arms and suffered themselves to be marched to Las Vegas. That night, in a victory celebration, Amado had all the proclamations burned in the plaza.
The news came back, bit by bit, to the little room—the little room in Teresa Cavan’s house where Kelly Morgan had lain all summer. A room so all-fired little it got him to crawling inside when he looked around at the walls.
At last he couldn’t stand it. He didn’t know when he decided that. Days after the capture of the Texans. Maybe weeks after. He just knew that he’d been on his back long enough and one night for the first time he shoved the cover off.
They had put the colchón on a home-made bedstead, some legs and a board bottom about a foot off the floor. He swung his feet out and sat up. The world began spinning. All the blue and yellow saints in the niches around the room started dancing and the walls tilted up. He held onto the bed till things righted themselves. He grabbed one of the niches and pulled himself upright. He swayed there, blinking his blue eyes, grinning foolishly to himself. Then he heard the scuffle of feet outside and before he could move the door was pushed open.
Teresa stood there, eyes wide with surprise. Then, peevish as a mother hen rounding up her brood, she crossed the room and caught his arm.
“What’re you doing up? You’re not strong enough yet.”
“Strong, hell. I could lick my weight in—”
“Pussywillows,” she said, and gave a tug. It pulled him off balance and he was too weak to fight her. She held on to him, breaking his fall as he folded up on the bed. When he tried to sit up she put her hands on his chest and pushed him down.
“Dammit,” he said, “if you don’t let me get my legs back I’ll be crawlin’ around on all fours the rest o’ my life. ‘
She smiled. “A little bit at a time,” she said. “The American doctor told me you shouldn’t get up for another two weeks at least.”
She unpinned the bandages holding the compress against his wound. Pepita brought in a tray with fresh cotton and Teresa changed the dressing. He lay slack, watching her through half-closed eyes. She wore only a short-sleeved blouse, pleated around the yoke, and a skirt of heavy blue jerga. She had not done up her hair yet and it curled and massed around her head and shoulders, red as the flames of a windblown bonfire.
“Lift up now,” she said. “I’ll wind the bandage around.”
He arched up and she pulled the cotton strip three times around his body. The effort brought a fine beading of sweat to his brow and he lay heavily against the bed, breathing shallowly. She pinned the bandage tight over the compress, looking at him with troubled eyes. “So weak,” she said.
He grinned. “I’d stay this way, if it brought you every morning.”
She put her hands on the bed and leaned forward, her face very close above him, compassion in her dark eyes, more tenderness in the soft and pouting shape of her lips than he had ever seen before.
Her breasts hung against her camisa, round, heavy, almost touching his chest. The blood began to pound in his head and he reached up for her. She pushed aside his hands and rose. She stood over him for a moment, lips petulant, green eyes stormy. Then, with a return of the nervousness that had come to characterize her so deeply these last years, she turned and walked to one of the windows. He put his hands beneath his head, smiling wickedly.
“It must be hell,” he said, “to be so afraid of love.”
She didn’t answer. She looked through the narrow barred window at Palace Avenue. A carreta went by, wheels shrieking.
“What’re you fightin’ it for?” he asked. “What’re you afraid I’ll take from you?” He looked around the room. “This? You think you’re free o’ men here? What kind of freedom’s this? You’re trapped in four walls just the same.”
She turned, goaded into answering. A brooding shadow lay on her face and her green eyes smoldered. “They’re my walls.”
“Men got you under their thumb just the same. You got to play every dirty little game they bring you. Got to lie and cheat and steal and hurt somebody no matter which way you turn.”
“I didn’t make the rules.”
“You woulda spit in Biscara’s face once. Now you make deals like he was your brother. Amado’s your own monster. He wouldn’t o’ been nothin’ without you. He’s ten times worse’n Carbajal ever was. The people didn’t know what graft was till he come in. How would you know? In this place all the time, makin’ your money, spinnin’ your plots. Get out jist once, Teresa. Take a look at those people starvin’ on Galisteo. Count the beggars at your door every mornin’. I don’t know nothin’ about politics, but I kin see what you’ve done to this town.”
“Kelly—”
“All because you’re afraid.” He was on his elbows, breathing heavily with the effort of such a long speech. “This whole twisted goddamn thing you’ve built—all because you’re afraid. This ain’t freedom. You could have a million dollars. You could own this whole town. You’d still be trapped because you’d be afraid to trust one man in it.”
“What do you know about freedom?” She was bent forward, her whole body trembling with the force of their antagonism. “Up on some mountain. Freezing in the winter, starving in the summer. Not a cent in your pocket. Living like some animal. Never knowing where your next meal comes from. Is that freedom?”
She trailed off, breathing heavily, cheeks touched with flame. It was as if they had both spent their fury. He lay back, looking up at the ceiling.
“You’ll know,” he said softly. “When you got it, you’ll know. It’s like an ache inside. It’s like flyin’ with the eagles.”
She did not answer. After a moment she started for the door. Before she reached it someone knocked. She checked herself, then opened it. Don Augustín Gomez stood there, a bland smile on his gray-furred jowls. With him was Captain Perea.
“Is the patient ready for our daily game?” Gomez asked.
Teresa regained her composure. “Just in time,” she said. “The company of women bores him so.”
“The captain is just back from Las Vegas with news of the Texans,” Gomez said. “I thought you would like to hear.”
Interest kindled in Teresa’s eyes; she stepped back to let them enter. Perea strode into the room, holding his saber against one booted leg, bowing his greeting to Teresa. His tanned face always took on a glow in her presence, and his shining eyes never left her face. Kelly had never been able to fathom what lay between these two. If a man really had that much of a want on a woman, how could he stand around eternally murmuring compliments and looking at her like a lost puppy.
“I hope it’s good news you bring, Captain,” Teresa said. There was always something a little maternal in her attitude toward him.
He shook his head, face troubled. “Not good. I can’t understand it. The Texans surrendered without battle. Would they do that if they were invaders? Yet the governor showed them no mercy. He is sending them on foot all the way to Mexico City. It’s unthinkable in their condition. Hundreds of miles through the desert, without shoes, sick. It will be the worst of winter before they reach the capital. Half of them will die.”
Teresa glanced at Gomez. The man raised his brows. She spoke to Perea. “Don’t misjudge the governor. If they’re invaders, he has no authority to hold them here—”
“Surely he has the authority to treat them like human beings,” Perea said. He paced across the room, helmet under one arm. “I don’t understand it. He seems to be getting worse and worse.”
“When we get word from Mexico City, you’ll find he’s done right.”
Perea shook his sleek black head. “Nothing can make this right. Tyranny is tyranny, under any circumstances, and that’s what I saw at Las Vegas—”
She took his arm. “Let’s go into the sala and talk it over while these two have their game. You’ve just been looking at the surface of things again, without trying to understand what goes on underneath….”
She led him out, closing the door behind her. Gomez shook his head, smiling cynically. He started walking toward the spindled cupboard. Kelly put his hands behind his head.
“Why doesn’t she want Perea to see what Amado really is?”
Gomez took out the pack of cards, tilting his head to one side quizzically. “Perhaps to avert a catastrophe, my friend. To have Perea’s loyalty now is to have the loyalty of the regular army.”
“She plays a dirty game.”
Gomez slid a low coffee table beside the bed, putting the cards on it. “Who is to say that we would not play the same way, under the same circumstances?”
Gomez moved a chair by the table and settled himself into it with a comfortable sigh. Kelly studied the man’s dissipated face from between slitted lids. Gomez had been a faithful companion, coming in every day or so for a game of cards, a drink of wine. Despite their disparity in background, in culture, they had enough in common to establish a sort of casual bond between them. Gomez was a wit, an intellect, a charming companion, with enough common clay in him to find a meeting ground with Kelly’s native shrewdness and wry sense of humor. But in Gomez’s relations with Teresa, Perea, and the others, Kelly had caught vagrant glimpses of another side to the man.
“You know what toadyin’ is, Gomez?” he asked.
The man frowned. “My English is not that good.”
“It means lickin’ somebody’s boots,” Kelly said. Gomez began to shuffle. Kelly murmured, “You ain’t a bootlicker.”
Gomez inclined his head, ironically. “Thank you.”
“Then why do you do it?”
Gomez stopped shuffling. He looked at Kelly. Then he stacked the cards and pushed them across the table. The latticework of veins seemed to grow darker in his gray jowls.
Kelly cut the cards. “Toadyin’ up to Teresa. Lickin’ the governor’s boots. Spreadin’ the honey on for Captain Perea. That ain’t you at all.” Kelly lay back, looking carefully at the man. “What are you, really, Gomez?”
The man smiled, picking up the cards to deal. “Someday, my friend, perhaps you will find out.”