The Hunting Trip

The vaqueros were deferential, solicitous, just a little bit edgy.  What had they done to warrant this kind of scrutiny?  Had they allowed the herd to stray too far onto the neighbor’s land, or been a little too eager to round up more than their share of strays?  They hadn’t asked Benito directly, but Alejandro had seen the questions in their eyes as they had made room for him around the fire where, early this morning, they had been branding a few odd calves.

Fortunately, Alejandro had anticipated this reaction to his visit.  He knew he didn’t get out here as much anymore as he used to, but he did get out enough to know that the men would relax when they noticed the elegant little hunting carbine he had brought with him.

Only a few of them had ever even held such a weapon, much less fired one.  Benito and one or two of the others carried rifles to protect the herd from dangerous predators.  But they all knew that it was both the duty and the privilege of the patrón, every once in a while, to go after some especially menacing specimen.  Sipping strong black coffee from a tin cup, the patrón smiled as he heard them already starting to speculate as to whether it would be the cougar or the bear.

Benito, of course, would be invited to go along, and maybe one other vaquero, though at least a few of the other caporales would have to stay with the herd.  Alejandro would, of course, let Benito decide which ones.  Meanwhile, he sat quietly eating the plate of beans and carne seca they had given him.

With a series of discreet glances, Benito motioned to a few of the men, then came to sit beside the patrón.  Clearly, he didn’t know what all this was really about, and he would never have been so bold as to ask, though he could guess.  The gossip had spread quickly among the household servants once Don Diego had failed to return home.

"I will be gone a few days," said Alejandro, "maybe longer.  When you get back here, see that those strays from the Rancho Torres are returned."

"Sí, Patrón."

"And the cook wishes you to bring in another steer; they are almost out of fresh meat.  And tell the majordomo to give her enough money to buy another comal."

Benito nodded.

The two men ate in silence.  Then, without much further ado, Benito and another vaquero, a wiry little half breed named Silvestre, folded their bedrolls and lashed them behind their saddles, along with their flintlocks, and followed Don Alejandro as he headed northeast, toward the hills where they would find the beginnings of the eastern fork of the arroyo that ran through the center of this stretch of pastureland.  If they also found the cougar there, so much the better.

As the sun rose farther up the early morning sky, they paused occasionally to look back behind them, toward the southwest, at least until they got to the hills, where it was certain that anyone following them would probably lose sight of them, especially now, with the sun in his eyes.  The rough terrain and the undergrowth would help.

By the time anyone had spotted the smoke from their midday campfire, Alejandro himself would be just a little under five hours from the Capistrano mission, in the company of the two padres who had agreed to meet him at the spot where el Camino Real crossed the river at the eastern boundary of his lands.

Not once did it ever occur to them that anyone might have anticipated their movements.  And as Silvio crouched against the side of a rocky outcropping, watching them get ever closer, he reflected that he himself might not have anticipated the plan if he hadn’t spent the better part of at least one day helping these very men track down strays in this area.

Of course, he didn’t intend to kill the patrón while he was still in the company of the vaqueros, even though he would soon have an excellent chance.  That would only mean he would have to kill the vaqueros, too.  And Padre Eusepio had convinced him long ago of the virtue of patience and thrift.  It was enough to do just what was needed—and do it well.

Besides, while his pistol was fairly easy to reload, it was not a long range weapon like theirs.  Someone might be able to return his fire, or even get away.  No, better to wait, he thought, at least until he had some reason to think that the don might actually be fearful enough to leave his hacienda in the hands of less experienced men, just so that these two could provide him with an armed escort all the way to Capistrano.  Silvio didn’t think Don Alejandro was that much afraid of anything.  But he thought he could afford to wait and see.

Then, as he crept back down the path on the other side of this cliff, down to where he had left his horse, Silvio realized that he didn’t even need to wait here—and in fact it would be better if he didn’t.  From these hills, it was only a short ride across open country to el Camino Real, and from there to the river.  And if Don Alejandro left his lands, he would have to cross the river.  And if he crossed the river, he would probably follow the highway and use the bridge.  That, thought Silvio, was the best place to set up his ambush, someplace where, if a body were to fall into a stream, it might never even be found.  Someplace where a man might climb a tree, then wait in leisure for his work to come to him.

It took him less than an hour to reach the highway and then less than another few hours to reach the river.  He knew he could have made it in less time had he gone at a less leisurely pace, but he hadn’t wanted to ride quite as hard as he could, lest he stir up enough dust to warn anyone of his presence.  When he reached the shady riverbank, it was still early afternoon, and he figured he was probably still about a half hour ahead of the old man.  He filled a canteen from the river, watering his horse as well, then left the animal to graze while he went to find a comfortable spot overlooking the bridge.

A young sycamore grew on a rocky island in the middle of the stream, but he wasn’t sure it was close enough, even if he could have climbed it, so he settled, instead, for an outcropping of rock just up the road from the bridge.  No one could pass by here without giving him a clear shot, and that would be that.  Then, with two sound horses instead of one, he would be able to make better time.  Perhaps he might even be able to catch up to Endicott, though he was certain that Endicott would be in a hurry.

They crossed into the lands held by the mission San Luis Rey long before the massive adobe building with its square two tiered bell tower and scalloped roof line came in sight.  Diego hadn’t slept very well the night before, thanks largely to the cold and to the clothing they had dressed him in, which was serviceable, as mission garb usually was, but nowhere near the weight and quality he was used to.

But at least now he was starting to feel like himself again.  His head had almost quit aching, except for the lump on his skull where the blow had actually fallen.  So now, even though he was still chained to the inside of a packing crate, he had at least gotten a sense of where they were.

He had decided to take Oreana’s advice, though, and not let the soldiers see how much better he felt.  They looked like trouble—the two privates, anyway.  The corporal had continued to be as chivalrous as he dared, even to the point of not nailing the end back on the crate this morning as he had put his prisoners inside for their journey.  But he remained cautious.  And apparently he had orders not to let any civilians—even priests—come near them.  So while he himself would be stopping at the mission for supplies, they wouldn’t get any closer to it than they were.  Looking out at the small square of daylight that framed the receding roadway, Oreana shrugged.

"My grandmother used to say that the inquisitors would warn people not to look into the eyes of witches, lest they enchant you.  But the truth was, if you looked into the eyes of those who had been tortured, you would see they were innocent.  This was the only spell most of them knew how to cast.  The spell of truth."

Diego shook his head and smiled wryly.  Long ago, he had arrived at the conclusion that people accused of witchcraft were innocent, simply because he hadn’t believed there were any real witches.  Now he was starting to see another possibility.  "So the real ones are not caught, eh?"

"Well obviously they are."  She held up her chained wrists.  "But often, they are the people one would least suspect.  If they are accused, they often have powerful allies.  They can even be advisers to kings."

Suddenly Diego understood.  "Your grandmother," he said.

Oreana lifted her brows and puckered her mouth into a tiny smile.  "My grandmother was only a girl when Carlos Tres, he of the two Sicilies, became king.  But my great-grandmother—she was young and beautiful.  She became a favorite at court, and she taught my grandmother many things besides healing.  My grandmother always says that this Carlos was the best king Spain ever had."

"He did suppress the Inquisition throughout his reign, if I recall."

"Sí, but his son Carlos Quatro was a weakling.  All he ever wanted to do was hunt.  In political matters, he relied far too much on the Queen.  And she was far too susceptible to the flattery of that venal, ambitious son of a pig merchant, Seńor Manuel de Godoy.  The ‘Prince of Peace,’ they called him, but the people hated him.  My grandmother says it was his fault the navy was lost—and Louisiana.  If not for his scheme to carve out a kingdom for himself in Portugal, Napoleon would probably have stayed out of Spain.  Of course, I don’t remember him myself.  My mother and father left Spain when I was just a child, a year or so before Napoleon came.  I only heard about it many years later, when I returned."

"And I did not go to Spain until after Napoleon was defeated," said Diego.  "But even then people blamed Minister de Godoy for many things.  That was how they came to support Prince Fernando in the first place.  They pitied him because de Godoy was clearly trying to usurp his place.  Once, he even got the King to arrest the Prince for treason.  They had a stone mason seal off his room."

"Small wonder he was so sullen and bitter," Oreana nodded.

"Yes, he was bitter," said Diego, "even though he finally triumphed over them all and regained his throne from the French.  Still, by then it was far too late.  The world had changed.  Spain had gotten her first taste of democracy."  Diego sighed, then added in a confidential tone, "In my opinion, he should not have cracked down quite so hard on the liberals, reinstating the Inquisition, repealing the constitution.  But how could he have known?  How could he have known anything but suspicion and tyranny?"

"Sí."  Oreana rearranged her legs, then tried to pull her skirt down a little farther over the chains that bound her ankles.  "I was there when the army revolted against him," she added.

"So was I," Diego nodded.  "It happened the first of the year, the year I left.  Actually, I did not know this at the time, but it was probably the cause of my leaving."

"Oh, sí?"  Balancing an elbow on her thigh, she cupped her chin. "Your father—I suppose he didn’t want you there in the midst of such turmoil."

"Well . . . now that I think of it, that may have been part of it," Diego shrugged thoughtfully.  "But it was also that, once the liberal soldiers reinstated the constitution, people voted to stop paying such heavy taxes.  Naturally, there was no longer any money to pay the soldiers.  Many of them left the army.  In New Spain, many joined the insurgents.  And here, some commandantes used the whole thing as an excuse to impose harsh local taxes on rancheros and peons alike, enriching themselves in the process.  My father was trying to mount a rebellion against one such man."

Oreana chuckled quietly, rolled her eyes and sighed.  Clearly, now, she understood it all.  "And he thought you could single-handedly tip the balance of power against such a tyrant?  Quite a lot to expect from a son," she mused, embracing him with her eyes.  "Yet even now, he does not realize that you are all he could have wished for."

"Am I?"  Diego draped his forearms over his knees and studied the shackles on his wrists.

"You are harder on yourself than he is," she said, leaning back against the wall of the crate.  "Like my grandmother.  To this day, she still thinks she should have stayed at court and gotten rid of de Godoy."

Diego laughed.  "She thinks she could have done that, eh?"

Oreana laughed too, but softly.  "You do not know my grandmother," she said.  "Still, I am glad she went to Toledo to found her school.  She would have paid a heavy price for changing history."

"And your grandfather?  How did he feel about all these things?  You know, I do not think you have ever mentioned him."

Oreana looked down, her cheeks coloring just a little.  "Neither did my grandmother," she said with a faint smile.  "Oh, there were rumors.  She was the mistress of a very wealthy and powerful courtier, but—"

"I see."

"In my family, we trace our lineage through the mother," she added.

"That must be difficult.  Spanish law has always prohibited women from inheriting land."

"Sí."  Oreana nodded thoughtfully.  "But we pass on . . . other things."  She adjusted the folds of her skirt and shifted her weight, then leaned her head to one side, letting the ends of her hair fall onto the blanket she had spread over the floor of the crate.  Then she began running her fingers through the golden locks to comb out the tangles.  Sunlight fell through the cracks in little stripes across her shoulder and the side of her face.

Diego also tried to change his position as much as he could, to stretch the aches out of his stiff muscles.  But by now the rough iron manacles had begun to scrape his wrists and ankles raw.  Hers too.  He had known this trip would be an ordeal, and they were still a few hard days from el Descanso.  As his strength continued to grow, he knew that so would his temptation to escape, or at least to get her to safety—if he could convince her to go.

"What are you thinking?"  She gathered her hair and lifted it over her shoulders, studying him carefully as he let the look of grim determination he knew he must have been wearing melt into something softer.

"I was thinking about the other night by the lake," he said, which was more or less the truth, since the incident was never very far from his thoughts.  "You just looked so surprised when— "

Now she did blush, looking down, raising her hand to cover her face.  Finally, she said, "I suppose you have had many lovers."

He shrugged, suddenly feeling his own cheeks start to color.  "I am much better known for my abilities with a sword," he said.  Then his grin broke as he added, "Still . . . I have had no formal training in the other.  No one ever told me what was supposed to happen."

"You are teasing me," she said, trying not to smile but still hiding behind her fingers as she ran them through the hair at her forehead to lift the curls that had fallen across her cheek.

"Lo siento," he said.  "You are right.  I will stop."  The chains kept him from reaching even to touch her hand, let alone embrace her, as he would have given nearly anything to do.  Instead, he said, "It is just that I have never met a woman with whom I could discuss these kinds of things."

"No, I suppose not.  Politics and lovemaking—these are not the sorts of things that proper young Spanish ladies are encouraged to discuss."

He shook his head, but more in wonder than dissent, for it struck him, once again, that she really did not think lust was a sin.  He could still see the spark of it that burned in her eyes as she finally did look up at him.

As the cart came to a stop, he began to look for anything he could find, a crack in one of the boards, a loose nail, anything that might better his odds in a fight.  But the corporal gave him little time.  After only a moment, he appeared at the end of the crate to invite them to take their midday meal outside.  And this time, he let Oreana unlock their irons from the wall.  But as Diego leaned on her and let her help him to a shady spot just off the roadway, under the largest tree in a stand of cottonwoods that hugged the banks of the nearby stream, he already felt the other man eyeing him closely.

"I will be gone for a time," the corporal said, "but soon you will have food and water.  And you must tell me if there is anything else you need."

"Sí, Corporal," she nodded shyly.  As the soldier walked back to a spot just beyond the cart where the two privates had started to build a fire, Diego felt her reach for his hand.  Having ached for her touch, he had found it such a relief to put his arm around her that he hadn’t realized how much she also needed to touch him, until he noticed she was trembling.

"You must trust me, Diego," she said softly as she watched the corporal ride off.  "No matter what I say or do, you must not forget that I love you.  And you must not interfere—no matter what happens."

"Why are you— "

"You know why."  She watched the soldiers through narrowing eyes.

As he looked from her to where the two men busied themselves adding strips of dried beef to a fresh pot of beans, he knew at once what she meant.  Muńoz laughed and nodded in their direction as he stirred the fire.  Zavala squinted at him, then shook his head and gestured as if he were tossing something over his shoulder.  Then, he glanced up sideways at the prisoners, but he wasn’t smiling at all.

He rose from the log he had been sitting on and said something more to Muńoz, leaning in, as if he feared he might be overheard.  Muńoz glanced off in the direction the corporal had gone.  Then he began speaking to Zavala, tilting his head occasionally, an amused but reassuring smile on his face.  At last Zavala began to smile too, but then he turned away, still agitated.  Only the intensity in his eyes as they drifted again to Oreana hinted at the nature of his agitation.

Diego looked back at her in disbelief, letting a soft breath escape his lips as though he had just been hit in the stomach.  "You have to be joking," he said.  "Surely, you do not expect me to just sit here and do nothing if they mean to— "

"Listen to me, Seńor Zorro," she said.  "If you harm anyone now, we will never get out of California alive—even if we escape for the moment.  Fear of us will spread, and we will be hunted down like animals."

"If either of them lays a hand on you, I will kill them," he said quietly.

"Then I will try not to let it come to that," she said.  "But you must trust me.  We are playing my game now.  On my court.  Do not interfere, or we will lose far more than we gain."

"What do you plan to do?"

"Collect my wits," she said, shifting into a cross-legged position again.

"And then?"

Taking a deep breath, she scooted nearer to him.  "I will ask la Seńora for protection," she said.  Then, she reached down to trace with her finger in the dirt.  This time he could see what she drew.  It looked like the letter Y, but with a third branch in the center, like a little tree.

"Maybe you should use the one you used on Silvio," he said dryly, remembering the twisted cross on Urbino’s signet ring.  "It certainly protected him well enough."

She couldn’t help but smile.  "I thought you said you would stop teasing me."  But then, her soft gaze seemed to engulf him, and he felt everything around them recede into darkness, as if he were going to faint, though by now the sensation seemed almost familiar.  She picked up his hand and, in a language he knew he should not have been able to understand, said, "Close your eyes."

The inner darkness seemed absolute at first, but then he began to imagine a faint glowing shape that looked like an afterimage of the letter she had drawn.  Soon, there were many beside it, and they looked like the tracks of the ravens that sat on a big rock not far from the body of a man.  Then one of the tracks grew larger and brighter, and he realized it had taken on the shape of a woman, her arms uplifted in the moonlight.

As she turned toward him, a gentle breeze rustling through the leafy garlands in her hair, he saw a young sycamore tree growing amid the willows on a rocky island that cleft a widening stream.  Ravens gathered in its branches, their black iridescent wings glinting like steel against the patchy flesh colored bark.  Then the shimmering water seemed to inhale him like a soft sudden gasp.  When he opened his eyes he had the uneasy sense that more than a little time had passed.  But as he watched the two lancers who approached them now with plates of food and a canteen, he also had the odd feeling that someone else was watching them.