TWO AFTERNOONS LATER, Don Severo returned to Rancho Los Ojuelos at merienda. He did not come alone. A group of six rancheros accompanied him, their bridles and spurs glinting in the morning sun as they dismounted and joined Papá on the patio.
Mamá and Nena served them sweet breads and coffee. Oddly, Mamá did not scold Nena when she spied her eavesdropping from the corner of the kitchen. A few moments later, she joined Nena, hovering just behind her shoulder, her focus also trained on the men seated around the table on the patio.
The men’s conclusion was final: each would muster as many vaqueros from their peones as they could spare. They needed the fastest, the hardiest, the best shots from among their men. Their militia would be a formidable addition to the government’s cavalry.
“Provided we don’t lose any more vaqueros to susto,” Don Severo’s voice added darkly. Rumors whispered that Los Ojuelos was not the only rancho to fall victim to the strange sickness. Some even said it infected portions of the Mexican army stationed along las Villas del Norte. “We need every man we can get.”
The men rose with murmured, solemn agreement, taking their conversation with them as their footsteps carried them off the patio.
The mention of susto was like kindling dropped on embers. A plan licked to life in Nena’s head. It was dangerous, it was improbable, and with Félix’s help, it just might work.
Nena stuck her head around the corner of the kitchen and spied Félix, the last among them, placing his hat on his head and moving toward the corral.
“Félix,” she whispered. “Félix.”
But he did not hear her. He was already striding behind the other men. Nena gathered her skirts and darted out onto the patio, ignoring Mamá’s hissed scolding that she stop.
She ran after Félix’s turned back, her skirts swishing through the grass, her boots crushing pebbles as she caught up with him and the other men.
She loved this land as fiercely as any of the men, from the sun and heat that brought sweat to her brow as she drew level with Papá to the dirt beneath her boots. She, too, could defend it.
And this was her chance to prove it.
“Papá,” she began softly.
He cast her a sharp look down his nose. “Go back to the house. Your mother is calling you.”
Indeed, Mamá was. Nena ignored her.
“Papá, the squadron will need curanderos,” she said. “With so many men ill from susto, you need to keep the healthy ones well. To prevent them from falling ill. To set broken bones, to stitch up wounds. To stop infections from turning to fever and killing the few men you have.”
“Magdalena, I said go back to the house.”
Nena turned her head to Félix, who walked just behind Papá. She ignored the curious looks of the other rancheros, some of whom glowered at her for so openly disobeying Papá’s blunt commands.
Help me, she mouthed at her brother.
“Casimiro Duarte would have never walked again, much less ridden, if it were not for Magdalena,” Félix said slowly.
“War is not the concern of young ladies,” Don Feliciano snapped.
“Of course it is my concern,” Nena said. “This is my home, too.”
“Your daughter is right,” said a voice behind Nena.
She nearly tripped over her skirts at its support of her plea.
Don Antonio Canales, the voice—if her eavesdropping served her correctly—of the ranchero from whom the idea for the squadron originated.
“We need all the help we can get to keep these vampires from sucking our land dry,” Don Antonio added. “We need every man in good health.”
“Vampires?” Don Severo snorted as they approached the shady corral where the rancheros’ horses were tethered. “Now you sound like Cheno Cortina.”
“A lot of people sound like Cortina these days,” Don Antonio said. To Papá, he added: “We need every man in good health. Can she ride?”
Nena bit her tongue and cast Félix a meaningful look. Answer, she prayed.
“As fast as any vaquero,” Félix said.
Papá cast Nena a sideways look. Beneath the shade of the brim of his hat, she could not parse its meaning.
Asking him this in front of all of the other men was a gamble. A risk. It was possible that none of them saw the sense in her idea, even when it was supported by Félix. It was possible that she could have embarrassed Papá in front of all of the men he held in the highest esteem, which would earn her his ire behind closed doors.
Perhaps she had. Perhaps she had already sealed her fate.
But now Don Antonio was asking her if she knew how to stitch up bullet wounds and cure snakebite, and she was nodding with affected humility, hope unfurling timid and new in her chest as the praise from this other ranchero slowly began to erode Papá’s sternness.
He had to let her come. He must.
“Se?orita Magdalena will join us,” Papá announced.
Don Antonio clapped a hand on Papá’s shoulder. “Good man,” he said. “She will be an asset to our cause.”
Nena’s heartbeat thrummed in her ears as the rancheros turned to their horses and began to mount. The prospect of a battlefield was but a distant fog in her mind.
She had won. With Félix’s help, she had convinced Don Antonio of her worth. Now, all she had to do was show Papá in front of all of his peers what she could do.
A hand fell heavy on her shoulder.
The unsmiling look on Papá’s face quelled her burgeoning optimism, freezing it like a monarca killed by early frost.
“You can have this on one condition, mija,” he said sternly. “When we return, you will marry immediately. You have caused your mother more than enough grief and disappointment with your stubbornness. If she is to suffer watching her daughter ride with me to war, then she will be rewarded when it is over. Is that clear?”
Nena’s hand closed around dice in her mind, sweaty and firm as she prepared to cast her second gamble of the morning. If Papá allowed her to ride to Matamoros with the squadron, her life on Los Ojuelos as she knew it was forfeit the moment they returned.
Unless . . .
In the course of her time with the squadron, she could prove to Papá that she had worth beyond bartering. That she was as vital a part of this rancho as he was. That she would not leave it any more than he would, that she was of more use and value to him on Los Ojuelos than being haggled away to an hacienda with more cattle than theirs.
She inhaled through her nose to steady herself. There was no choice in this gamble. She was already playing.
“I understand, Papá,” she said. “You have my word.”
6
N?STOR
Abril 1846
LAREDO
WHEN THEY RETURNED to Laredo five weeks later, Rancho Buenavista’s vaqueros went back to their mistress’s property. Néstor did not follow. Though he was happy to work with Buenavista’s herds and had stayed at the rancho in the past, passing Celeste’s house in town on the way to the post office left him with an odd feeling of emptiness.
If pressed, he would not have been able to explain why, nor how the feeling arose. Nor if it had something to do with the last morning he woke up in her sheets, bolt upright with fear.
Néstor stepped beneath the shade of the post office patio and removed his hat. The single room swarmed as if someone had kicked a beehive; the well-heeled men of town and silver-spurred rancheros traded grim news of the fall of Puerto Isabel, voices rumbling as steadily as the movement of a herd as they pocketed their mail.
Néstor’s chin lowered out of habit. He was keenly aware of the dust on his chivarras and boots as he made his way forward to the counter to speak to the postmaster. The man recognized him and held a finger up for him to wait while he spoke with an agitated ranchero.