And then Beto screamed.
Uneasiness thrummed an unwelcome beat down Néstor’s spine as he checked the shoes of the horses and curried them until sweat dripped down his back.
Something was not right. The sensation that curled around him and Nena as they argued—that silence—reminded him too much of another night, long ago, when the two of them were alone in the dark.
He was so absorbed in his work he did not notice Don Félix approach until the patrón’s son was standing over him.
“Buenas,” Don Félix said.
When Néstor returned the greeting, Don Félix clasped his hands behind his back and lifted his chin slightly. Nearly nine years had passed since Néstor last worked with Don Félix, but his mannerisms had not changed a bit. That was the look he got when he knew he had to give orders that he did not like to the vaqueros, when he was trying to deliver his father’s commands without seeming like an ass. Néstor readied himself. Whatever Don Félix meant to ask him, he was sure it would mean less rest before the battle tomorrow. As if he would be able to sleep anyway, with thoughts of Nena within reach of Yanqui soldiers haunting his nightmares.
“I am glad you volunteered to come with us and are tolerant of my father’s demands that someone watch Magdalena at all times,” Don Félix said. “I know it adds to your work and I am grateful for your service.”
An unvoiced however hung at the end of the sentence, swinging open like a corral gate, waiting for the next part of what Don Félix had to say. But Néstor was impatient. This opened like a man-to-man conversation; he seized it and drove it forward like one.
“Do?a Mercedes said she was dead,” he said. After all these years, even with the knowledge that Nena was alive and well and angry at him, the words still made the ghost of a sob rise to the back of his throat. “That night when she was wounded, when she was attacked—”
The reaction in Don Félix was immediate. His brows snapped together, bristling, the expression an eerie echo of his father.
“Enough, Duarte,” he snapped. “I know you were close as children, but enough with this fixation. Mind your boundaries.” Metallic finality punctuated each word, dissonant as a farrier’s hammer.
As far as the patrón’s son was concerned, this conversation was over.
It put Néstor’s teeth on edge. Protective anger rose in his chest, forming a barrier between Félix and the memories he guarded like silver. I know you were close. Close didn’t even begin to describe what Nena meant to him. Don Félix didn’t know the half of it.
But perhaps he sensed it.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Don Félix,” he said, dragging the words slow over coal, letting them burn and blacken. Let Don Félix hear the anger curling the edges of what he said like kindling about to catch flame. Let him remember that Néstor was not a peón of Rancho Los Ojuelos, not anymore. He had returned because Don Félix asked him a favor and he saw fit to grant it. He owed the Serranos no debt, no respect, not an hour of his time nor a lick of work.
It was their privilege to ride beside him, and one day, they would know it. Even Don Feliciano. All the vaqueros knew that the patrón was self-absorbed; many things that troubled the peones of his rancho escaped his notice.
Don Félix was another matter. Based on what Bernabé and Casimiro said, Félix would be a better patrón than Don Feliciano ever was. He possessed an inborn nobility that was often mistaken for aloofness; this was not a sin, for unlike many rancheros’ sons, this meant he left the women of the peones untouched. He was generous with his time and his money. He was canny. He was observant.
Perhaps too observant.
“I think you understand me perfectly,” Don Félix said. “Consider this your only warning: any man who says or does anything that might touch her reputation has more than my father to face. And as for me—I will not allow her to be hurt again.”
A flash of shame seared Néstor’s skin, hot beneath his neck kerchief. Yes, he knew he was guilty of hurting Nena. Whatever God or unseen hand that made the world had granted him a fragile, perfect thing, and through a foul stroke of luck, a flash of cowardice, he shattered it.
That was his shame to bear. It had no place on Don Félix’s lips.
“I swear she’ll never be hurt again, not if I have anything to do with it,” he said hotly.
“Then we agree,” Félix said, leaning closer. Each syllable he spoke next was slow, stressed, deliberate, a threat shadowing each word. “Keep your distance.”
It was a patrón’s command if there ever was one.
At this point, arguing would only inflame Don Félix’s ire. If any word of this reached Don Feliciano, or if Don Félix changed his mind about who to have guard Nena, Néstor might be cut off from her entirely.
He bit his tongue.
He did not allow his hands to curl into fists until Félix had turned his back and walked away, his silver spurs catching the firelight and winking mockingly at Néstor.
No, he was no longer a peón of Los Ojuelos. But here he was.
This was one of the many reasons he had not wanted to return to Los Ojuelos.
One principle ruled Néstor’s childhood on the rancho: the patrón’s word was law. The patrón held the whip. He owned the land. He gave the vaqueros and other workers the opportunity to serve him. To make their living in the harsh world of El Norte under his benevolent rule. The patrón’s word gave shape to the world and kept it tightly in his fist.
Néstor’s leaving changed that. He chose for whom he worked and for how long. If he was mistreated or disrespected, he left. Unlike Bernabé or the other workers on Los Ojuelos or any other rancho, he was not financially indebted to any one ranchero. He bound himself to no master. If he wished to drive for Celeste’s vaqueros and the Buenavista herd, he joined them for a short while, then took his money and his leave. Made no promises. He was the one who decided his fortunes. He determined his life’s path. Yes, that freedom meant living hard, sleeping hard. It meant loneliness.
But once he had tasted that freedom, hollow though it sometimes was, he chafed at the heavy yoke of the patrón and his son.
He was always crisply aware of who rode with silver on their bridles and who did not. Whose hats and horses were new and whose were worn with age. He was a man of dust who served men of silver: it was impossible not to know his place in the world. Especially when he had worked for years to claw his way out of the dust and build himself a house of stone.
It was one thing to know that mending what lay between him and Nena was an uphill battle. It was another to be reminded that, as far as many were concerned, there were no battles to be fought at all.
Vaqueros may call me se?orita, or better yet, say nothing to me at all.
If he was honest with himself, he was afraid that Nena found him repulsive. Their differences never slipped between them in the past; what did it matter that she was the daughter of the ranchero and he the orphaned son of a lowly vaquero when they were watching the sheep together? Hand in hand in the chaparral, they were the kings of El Norte, no rule over them but the brutal, azure sweep of the sky, no law but the setting of the sun.
But the past was long gone. Long dead. Unlike Nena, it would have no miraculous resurrection. He was a man of dust and sweat; she was Don Feliciano’s eldest daughter. There could be no friendship between them. Good manners forbade it. The very structure of their world forbade it.
Don Félix had explicitly forbade it.
But Beto’s advice hooked into him like a burr.
She had shouted at him that afternoon, but now she knew the truth. She knew he had made a terrible mistake by leaving, but perhaps, after having seen Beto, she might one day deem it a forgivable one.