A Lady Bought with Rifles (42 page)

“Eaten,” I said, recoiling at this pragmatic end to an idyll.

“She is caught by her own will,” Caguama explained. “She comes to renew our people.”

“It's like eating the sacrament, Mama,” put in Jon loyally, though he'd looked as shocked and distressed as I. Then as if he could no longer resta in himself, he blurted, “Caguama, did—did you ever eat anybody?”

“Jon!” I cried, but Caguama, after a startled look, simply shrugged and laughed.

“Who knows what goes in cook pots?” he inquired guilelessly. “I have certainly eaten the great sea turtle and we consider her divine.”

Jon's eyes had gone absolutely round. “But a man—”

“Jon,” I said firmly, “this is one thing that is absolutely none of your business. Would you sing that whale song again, Caguama?”

The late sun turned the sea to winy gold and Jon cuddled in the Serf's arms as Caguama made soft humming sounds and began his song.

In warm sun I play

with many companions.

In warm air spout

many clouds of vapor.

All of them are happy.…

So we journeyed along the Sea of Cortez, the Vermilion Sea, clambered over lava spills that were gray-black and crisscrossed with sparkling quartz, pinkish sculptured masses that might have been mud hurled by a giant child and left to harden in weird shapes.

We glimpsed bighorns on high pinnacles and, of course, there were circling buzzards and hawks. I had a strong sense of life in the air, on the land, in the water, with humans only a small part of it. We didn't meet any of Caguama's wandering tribesmen. He thought most of them must be at Tiburón, the shark-surrounded Seri island homeland shaped by the great turtle's shell ages ago. Our only sight of people was several fishermen in what Caguama said was a Seri boat, formed of reeds lashed together with mesquite root fiber. Though they must have seen us, the men didn't come in to shore.

I worried about that, but Caguama seemed unperturbed. “Seris learn it's best to keep to themselves,” he said. “Best to stay at Tiburón or on land no one else wants. Hope government forgets about us.”

Which was an attitude I could certainly understand.

The land was growing bleaker as we neared the northern part of the coastal mainland. From here we would strike across a desolate waste of sand dunes, lava spills, and ancient volcanoes till we picked up the old road leading to California. We would lose the sea's bounty and for at least several days would have to live on water and food we carried.

So we gathered pitahayas to store in pouches, enough for the
burros
to have both food and moisture from them, and filled our water bags at the last sweet water from which both we and the animals drank deeply before we took a last look at the sea and started inland, north and west.

Sand so fine it was almost dust stretching in wavelike patterns to eroded black peaks in the distance, exhausted volcanoes more or less buried by the sand, depending on the direction of the wind. One day of this and a day when black lava spills ridged here and there above the dunes with an occasional blanched ocotillo, cholla, or creosote bush.

Closer up, the mountains resembled vast eroded cones of iron rusted to various hues of dull or shiny lava—chocolate brown, reddish, black. Among the twisted wreckage of lava spills, we found bleached bird droppings and glimpsed eagles, the first creatures we'd seen since entering this waste, which made the sea desert seem a Garden of Eden teeming with life.

Sun glared off sand, reflected from lava, and there was no place to escape it from the time it rose in the morning till it dropped abruptly below the endless dunes at night. During our daytime halts, we rigged our blankets for shade, draping them from improvised frames of rifle, saddles, and packs. Though the moon was gone, we still traveled at night, for the sand hid no secrets worse than its own substance.

Fortunately we had plenty of water to last us to a verdant stretch along an old river that still secreted enough water to fill vast natural rock tanks. Caguama had never been there. This area had been inhabited, if one could call it that, by a very few roving people called Sand Papagos, on Pinacateños.

On the third day we were among the isolated worn-down craters. Sheltered from the devastating sea wind that scoured the region with sand for miles from the coast, there was more vegetation. I rejoiced to see the dusty-green curiously delicate foliage of ironwood, and as the day wore on, we encountered mesquite and paloverde.

Between two craters worn completely level with the ground on their windward side, jutting up in toothed semicircles, Caguama hunted till he found a rock-enclosed hollow that looked dry as a small fox skull tumbled near it. He dug with his machete till moist sand appeared and the
burros
crowded up snuffling, for they hadn't watered in three parching days and the last pitahayas had gone at noon.

More digging and the hole began to fill. Caguama laughed and patted the
burros
as they lowered their heads, straining up the water.

“They could have dug it out themselves,” Caguama said. “
Burros
are sagacious and can smell wetness. Also, they will not drink poisonous water, so you will not die from drinking after them, though we will wait for better water at the old stone tanks.”

We camped there that night, for the country was too rough now for traveling blind and the sweet slim crescent moon set before it was fully dark. When coyotes set up their yipping, it was like hearing old friends, returning to a place of the living.

Next morning we were up by faintest light. Caguama hoped we could reach the big tanks and shady trees before we had to stop, and so did I. Another bath, another shampoo! And big trees to rest beneath. It sounded like heaven.

Jon kept wanting to ascend a crater and look down inside; so, when we approached one that was not too formidable in steepness, we worked up it at a gradual angle. The rim was perhaps twenty feet wide, circling a vast hollow hundreds of feet wide and at least that deep. Sandy earth had long ago begun to fill in the huge hollow mountain and there were washes in that small world, a few trees, cholla, even some tall yellow grass here and there. The inner sides were jumbled lava rocks and smooth sandy walls where it would have been impossible to get a foothold.

“What a prison that would make!” I breathed. “Do you think a person could get out of there, Caguama?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Very hard.”

“I wouldn't want to live there,” Jon decided. From this vantage point we could gaze in all directions. South to the dunes and sand-hidden mountains, east to larger mountain ranges, west and north to other craters dotting the stark landscape.

A ribbon of green showed in the distance with smaller veins branching out. In the Pinacates, as these mountains were called, one could tell where rains collected or ran off because, even though such washes and pools were dry, ironwood, mesquite, paloduro, acacia, and smaller shrubs grew along these intermittently refreshing places. By some of them were large stones hollowed by ancient grinders, stones piled high enough to break the wind.

“That must be the old river where the tanks are,” said Caguama, squinting till his skin wrinkled like leather. “
Ay
, that will be our best stop between here and California.”

My heart sank at the thought of weeks more of this. I started to suggest we spend some days resting ourselves and the
burros
where there was shade and water, but so long as we were in Mexico, there was a chance Court might find us. We had to push on. But the rest of this day and the night would be a blessing.

“Real water, Lindos!” Jon crooned to his beast, who batted her ears and rolled a yellowish eye back at us. She clearly had an opinion about people who took innocent
burros
through such infernos.

Distances played tricks in that country. That tantalizing fringe of green seemed no nearer than when first glimpsed while we plodded on. For a while it vanished behind hills. Then we skirted these and were in the beginning of a stretch of small trees that verged into larger ones. There was grass, coarse brown and spiky, but grass, and many small fragile wild flowers nestled in shade or swayed in the slight breeze. Bees and hummingbirds grew more delirious as the flowers increased!

“The Pinacateños said that in spring the paloverde are showers of gold,” said Caguama. “There are miles of yellow flowers and big white thistle blooms, purple nightshade—many colors, lady.”

“Those big trees look wonderful,” I said, too glad to be near water and rest to regret the missed beauties overmuch. “But there's no water in the river, though you can see where the torrents rush through these low places and leave debris everywhere. Which way do you think the tanks are?”

We stood in the river course and looked both ways. To our left were gnarled big trees bending along either side of the water's track, but on the right we could see the beginning of a rugged broad channel the river had carved through rock; it rose, buffed and smoothed, to rugged pinnacles that the water had not been able to chastise.

If there had been any question, the
burros
would have settled it. They jogged toward the defile. Silt became paved with rock, which surfaced more and more, rising in uneven hollowed layers. Jon and I slipped off the
burros
and they hurried on, found the first stone trough and began to drink.

Not far behind, we clambered to the next level, where a broad pool was surrounded by rounded boulders and fed by water trickling from a crevice.

There we drank, splashed water over our hot dusty faces and arms, luxuriated in the cool sweetness, looked at one another, and laughed. Tomorrow we'd face the desert again, but for now we could be at ease in this green shaded place with its wealth of water.

“You're the best guide in the world, Caguama,” I praised. “I doubt if anyone else could have brought us here without getting lost in those dunes.”

“Probably not,” said a voice above us. “Now let's see if he can find his way through hell.”

20

Court's rifle was pointed at Caguama, whose laughter changed to utter calm. Materializing from the rocks, several gaunt figures cut us off from the
burros
and rifle. Caguama had his machete, but he didn't reach for it, only watched Court as the rifle barked. Caguama spun with the impact, fell as a second bullet ripped through his throat. Jon screamed shrilly, threw himself upon his friend.

“Caguama, Caguama!” he wailed, trying to lift the Seri as blood pumped from his wounds.

I knelt down, frantic to stop the flow, trying to stanch the torn throat with my hands, but bloody foam ran from Caguama's mouth and the harsh rattling breath ceased abruptly, though his eyes were open, staring fixedly into Jon's.

It didn't seem possible. The shy misfit young soldier at the back of the school whom I'd taught to read and write; Jon's companion and teacher, the faithful friend who'd brought us through the sea desert and the lava sands—to end like this, in one instant, one little minute of time. Because he had helped us.

I held him, dazed. Jon sprang up, ran at Court, beat at him with doubled fists. “You killed him. You—you made holes in him! I hate you, I'll kill you—”

Court sent the child sprawling with an open palm, scarcely looking at him, as if he were a troublesome mosquito. I was astounded even in that terrible moment. Court had never disciplined Jon, though he hadn't spent much time with him, either, as if he could best maintain his avowed relationship by not really knowing the boy.

Jon was amazed, but he scrambled up and attacked again, setting his teeth in Court's wrist and hanging on like a terrier. Halting on his way to me, Court set finger and thumb of his free hand against Jon's cheeks and forced his jaws apart, brushed him carelessly away. At a signal, one of the skinny ragged men with headcloths got hold of Jon.

Kicking Caguama from my arms, Court dragged me to my feet. I was covered with blood, felt more covered in my soul. Caguama, Caguama … His eyes golden as an eagle's sheen, Court stared down at me.

“I thought you must come this way.”

He slapped me hard across the face, so hard my brain whirled; I would have fallen except for the steel clasp of his arms. And then he kissed me.

At least he didn't slaughter the
burros
that had carried us, though he examined our packs with a curled lip and gave everything but our clothing to the Papagos, even the jewelry and twisted gold. I was wearing my mother's crucifix, of course. He left me that, and our wedding ring.

When the packs had been closed up again, Court was ready to start in spite of the heat. I knew from the way his mouth had seared mine that he burned to possess and humiliate me, inflict the kind of punishment a man can visit only on a woman.

I had gathered Jon to me, full of baffled foreboding at the way Court ignored him. Momentary anger at the boy's attack, that I could understand, but not this cold dismissing attitude, as if the child didn't exist. No move had been made to bury Caguama. He lay sprawled and bloody where Court had kicked him away from me.

The Indians brought mounts. I hung back, glancing at our dead companion. “Let us bury him,” I said through stiff lips.

“That carrion?” Court started to refuse, then smiled. “By all means, love. Bury him. You and the brat. Dig the grave yourself and see what this latest folly of yours has acccomplished.”

At a word from him, a man brought a shovel from one of their pack mules, looked at Court as if thinking he'd misunderstood, and gave it to me.

“I'll help you, Mama,” Jon whispered. His face was tear-streaked, but his blue-green eyes had an expression that was suddenly all too adult.

He pushed rocks aside farther down the riverbed where I hoped the sand would go deep enough to make a burial if we heaped it up with stones. The shovel was clumsy in my hands, but the silt was easy enough to dig, though my hands blistered long before I struck rock three feet down. Jon dug with a stick, doggedly, and I thought it good, not horrible, that he should be able to do at least this for his friend.