Marco and the Devil's Bargain (27 page)

When she spoke, it was as though she spoke to a child, and not a bright one. “The People here have survived an ordeal of
la viruela
. Time is wasting and I want to get home to the Double Cross and plant chives in my kitchen garden. If you will not inoculate those who need it, I will.” She looked at Toshua for reassurance, which relieved Marco; he was still stunned by Antonio Gil's callousness.

“
If I said the word, little man, in five minutes there would be not enough left of you to gather into a small pile,” Toshua said as he stood up. He held out his hand for Paloma. She took it without hesitation.

“
Don't waste our time,” Paloma told Antonio. It was simply said but with more power than Marco had ever heard from his wife.

They all stared at Antonio. Even behind his timid demeanor there was a look of desperation that gave Marco an unsettling glimpse of what a father would do for his child.
I can understand that
, he thought.

Paloma must have seen it, too. “If we do not help here, there will be no opportunity to find Pia Maria. If ever anyone needed friends and allies, we do.”

B
efore they left for the hunt, Marco surprised Paloma by planting a kiss full on her lips in front of everyone. When she felt her face grow warm, he did it again, then whispered, “Maybe I'll get into the spirit of the Comanche.”

“
You are a rascal,” she teased, which earned her a pat on her rump.
Dios mio, my man had gone crazy
, crossed her mind.

Eckapeta seemed to appreciate the sentiment, if her smile was any indication. Her face clouded over a moment later. “I have not smiled in a long, long time,” she said.

Paloma put her hand on the woman's arm. “Then I will make sure he does that again when he returns, if it makes you smile.”

She took a quick glance at Eckapeta's hand, minus two fingers, as Toshua had said. She couldn't help her exclamation, which caused Eckapeta's pock-marked face to harden.

“
Look at this hand, too,” she said quietly, holding up her other hand, where the tips of three fingers were missing. She touched her face, drawing her hand through the smallpox scars to trace longer scars made with a knife by a woman in mourning. “Toshua and I had three children. All gone now.”

Paloma felt her heart go out to the woman. “Perhaps I should not complain of my own trial,” she said.

“
We all know sorrow,” Eckapeta replied. She held up her hand. “One fingertip for each child.”

While Eckapeta watched, Paloma took a dozen pemmican balls from one sack and the same amount of hardtack from another. “We don't know if our men will find deer, but we won't go hungry in this tipi,” she explained, setting them aside, happy to change the subject. Paloma handed one of the sacks to Eckapeta. The other pemmican sack went to Antonio, and she carried the hardtack. With her boots on and her cloak tight around her, she left the tipi.

Yesterday's storm had blown away and was probably over east Texas now. The day was crisp and clear, with nothing to stop the view that greeted her. Her mouth open in amazement, Paloma looked up and up to the canyon rim, even as she wondered how they had ever survived their descent in last night's storm and darkness. In the distance, she saw Marco and Toshua on horseback, following the stream. Hawks wheeled and dipped far above
.
She had never seen anything like this canyon.

“
What is this place?” she asked in awe.

“
It is our winter refuge,” Eckapeta told her. She indicated the other tipis with a wave of her hand. “Usually we are much deeper into the canyon by this time, but the Dark Wind blew.”

It was as Marco had feared. The band must have been traveling toward winter refuge when
la viruela
struck, forcing them to remain on the Llano Estacado. The dead they had encountered must have been cut loose, for the safety of the others. And so they had wandered.

Eckapeta gestured to what Paloma assumed was north. The canyon gave her no reference. She was as lost here as on the endless plains. “We are safe here, or we might be,” Eckapeta said. “Who can tell? You can ride for days, until the rim is so high that the gods must perch there and look down on us.” The woman sighed. “The gods have not been of much use lately.”

Paloma nodded, taking in the shabbiness of the tipis. She knew that winter even made the Double Cross look a little rundown, what with no flowers in the hanging baskets, and the gurgle of the
acequia
hushed by a film of ice. But there was more than winter at work here. This was a village near death.

“
How many have survived
la viruela
?”

“
Three or four only survived, and they are so weak. Others seem not to have suffered, and we worry about them. Perhaps the Dark Wind will strike them yet.” Eckapeta pointed to the scars on her face. “Those of us visited in other years by the Dark Wind are alive.” Her voice hardened. “Others from farther in the canyon have forbidden us to come closer until we are sure the wind has blown over us. Meanwhile, we starve.”

“
I can understand that,” Paloma said calmly, she who comprehended hard choices as well as the next woman. “We'll just have to change things.”

For the rest of the day, they went from tipi to tipi with their modest amount of pemmican and hardtack. At first, her heart was in her mouth from the sheer terror of what she was doing, with Marco, her bulwark, nowhere in sight. By the end of the day, her heart was in her hand and she gladly offered it to The People.

She was no physician, but even to her untrained eye, the ones unaffected by
la viruela
—those who had developed immunities earlier—were also ill. She asked Antonio, and he shook his head. “Mostly they're hungry,” he whispered to her. He looked her in the eye, maybe because to gaze too long on such suffering drained him. “I know how hunger feels. You do, too.”

Paloma nodded, and turned her attention back to The People, admitting to herself that she could not argue with Antonio's shake of the head as he had wondered where to begin.
How can we make a difference?
she asked herself.
How can we keep The People alive?

“
I can help the little man.”

Paloma turned around to see the young woman who had probably saved her life on the trail last night. “Ayasha?”

Ayasha nodded, obviously pleased that the Spanish lady remembered her name. “He seems afraid, but if you and the tall man tolerate him, perhaps he will be of use in some way.”

“
I believe he will be, and soon,” Paloma said, happy to have Antonio Gil off her hands. After a moment's thought, she leaned closer to Ayasha, making them conspirators. “Actually, he is a man with powerful medicine, so powerful that he will save your people here.”

Ayasha didn't try to mask her skepticism. “I do not see how that can be.”

Stand up a little straighter, Señor Gil
, Paloma wanted to tell him, because he did not look much like a savior. “Small and mighty. You will see,” she told Ayasha. “Take him to those tipis and help him divide the food we bring.”

Ayasha walked to Antonio, touching his arm lightly. When he jumped back in alarm, she turned her face to hide her amusement and rolled her marvelous brown eyes at Paloma.

“
Very powerful man,” Paloma said firmly, ready to thump Antonio.

She heard Eckapeta's chuckle. “Well, he is,” she insisted. “When our men come back from the hunt, you will see.”

They spent the day going from tipi to tipi, handing out what food they could. Paloma repented of complaining to Sancha that they would never need one more ball of pemmican, when the housekeeper had suggested they keep making more, back on the Double Cross. She had finally convinced Sancha, but as Paloma felt her heart grow heavier and heavier to see the dire need all around her, she wished she had listened.

Paloma finally lost all fear in the tipi where an older warrior with hollow eyes lay, frustration written all over his gaunt features. One of his hands clutched an arrow as the other patted for a bow just out of reach.

“
Poor man. He knows he should be out hunting, and he is too weak,” Eckapeta whispered to her. “His son and daughter are dead of
la viruela
.” She touched his face, tracing earlier smallpox scars like her own. “He is starving and he has few teeth left.”

As Paloma watched, barely breathing, Eckapeta bit off a hunk of pemmican and chewed. When it was soft, she took it from her mouth. With her finger against his lips, she coaxed the man to open his mouth and put in the food. It took him a few seconds to realize what was happening, and then he began to chew. Paloma knelt beside Toshua's woman, her heart full of an emotion she couldn't even identify.

“
Some of The People might say I am wasting my time, that he will die soon,” Eckapeta said. “Maybe I am, but I have not the heart within me to drive anyone else onto the Llano.” Tears filled her eyes. “I should never have done that to Toshua two years ago, even if his other wives had threatened to cut off
all
my fingers!” She sobbed out loud, then clapped her hands to her mouth, shamed. “He's a good man, my Toshua,” Eckapeta said finally. “Maybe I forgot.”

“
Toshua told me I am his little sister,” Paloma said.

“
He told me how you have saved his life over and over,” Eckapeta told her. She shook her head mournfully. “I couldn't even do that once. No wonder he is your older brother now.”

Without a word, Paloma took the pemmican from her and began chewing for the man lying there with something close to hope in his eyes now. When she finished with the pemmican, Paloma chewed hard bread and continued the meal, deeply aware she was probably performing a task more humble than even Father Damiano had ever attempted, and doing it for her enemies since childhood.

While she fed him, Eckapeta took water and deerskin scraps and cleaned the old fellow, despite his protests.

Paloma finished the puny feast with a swallow of water from her hand, the other hand behind the man's head to raise him a little. He smacked his lips in that way Toshua did when he ate with them in the kitchen of the Double Cross, and she knew he was satisfied. As the man she had fed looked at her and nodded, she wished that she had never scolded Toshua to stop smacking his lips.

“
Sleep now,” she whispered, her hand on his skinny chest. “My man will bring meat tonight.”

She knew she would never be the same again, not ever, when she arrived at the next tipi and watched a young woman with exhaustion deep in her eyes and hunger practically sitting on her shoulder like a vulture nurse two infants. To say that she looked overwhelmed was to understate the matter.

“
What is this?” Paloma asked, horrified.

“
Her sister died of
la viruela
,” Eckapeta said, “and she is trying to keep both of their babies alive. I think her husband followed my husband and your man on the hunt this morning. If they are successful, she gets the first meal, else how can she keep them alive?”

Paloma nodded. She knelt close to the woman, all fear gone. When one baby appeared satisfied, she picked up the child and gathered it to her heart, wrapping her cloak around the little morsel. “Would to God this were mine,” she murmured into its hair. “Would to God.”

Eckapeta looked at her, eyes alert. “I … I thought perhaps you had left your children with a nursemaid at that fortress with the stone walls that Toshua told me of last night.”

“
I have no children. I am barren,” Paloma said. Only blunt speech would do in this place of nothing but terrible truth. “It is the sorrow of my life, perhaps even greater than the death of my family.”

“
We have all suffered,” Eckapeta said quietly. They sat together, shoulder to shoulder, until the woman with the one baby now held out her hand for the pemmican. Paloma had to look away. The desperation in the young mother's face was as great as the desperation in Toshua's eyes, when she found him starving in Señor Muñoz's henhouse and rolled a rotten egg his way. She held the baby close, not caring when it wet on her and soaked through her cloak.

Content to her heart's core, Paloma sat cross-legged in the tipi. There was warmth and food for the mother, who made little mewling sounds as she ate. Paloma looked around to see Antonio come into the tent with Ayasha and kneel by a still form.

“
Where do I take the dead?” he whispered to Eckapeta.

“
Cross the stream by the two trees close together. You will see other bodies in the rocks.”

He picked up the body and Eckapeta covered it with a worn blanket, the kind someone must have stolen on a raid into Spanish lands. Maybe it was even from her own parents' hacienda, snatched eight years ago. Never mind; what was done, was done.

When Antonio returned, his face stark, Eckapeta had finished feeding the young mother. The baby slept, too, so she covered mother and daughter with a trade blanket and held out her hands for the infant wrapped in Paloma's cloak.

Paloma shook her head and backed away. “No. I will keep this baby with me until it cries for milk, then I will bring it back.”