Laughter rose from the vaqueros; Néstor’s cockiness even drew a gruff laugh from the caporal.
Beto alone was unamused. He did not take the mug Néstor offered him. Under his breath, he asked, “You didn’t quarrel with the widow, did you?”
Maybe if he let Beto think that were the case, he would stop asking. It was better to stop him now, before Beto got to the question he sometimes asked when he was trying to figure Néstor out. A question that reminded Néstor too much of places and people he only saw in dreams. It felt like a thumb pressed on a half-healed bruise, and he shied away from it.
What are you running from?
He wouldn’t lie outright to Beto. He had tried in the past; it was never worth the effort. Beto saw right through him.
So instead, he said: “I need to work.”
“Don’t you always,” Beto said. He slapped Néstor on the shoulder with a defeated sigh. “Come on, then. Won’t hurt to have another English speaker on this drive. Finish that coffee and we ride.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
DON’T YOU ALWAYS. This followed Néstor as the men mounted, as they followed the caporal’s orders, divided into pairs, and began to collect the Buenavista herd.
Yes, he did. He needed to work hard, ride hard, sleep hard. It kept nightmares at bay. It kept a steady trickle of money flowing toward him, which he counted and saved with the sharp eye of a miser. Other vaqueros might laugh at him as he struggled to break the most aggressive mustangs, as he flew through the air and ended up with a mouthful of dirt. But he always brushed himself off and straightened his vest with a sharp, self-assured gesture. Spat out the dirt and set his hat back on his head with his chin held high. Let them laugh. He was the one whom wealthy rancheros paid lavishly for his trouble, for downing and castrating the most dangerous longhorns.
Don’t you always. He did. Porque así fue la suerte. Nothing worth wanting came easy; nothing worth wanting was ever given to men of dust and sweat.
And Néstor wanted. He wanted land. But land was not simply granted to men like him, vaqueros who were sons of vaqueros, whose great-grandfathers came north from Tlaxcala and Puebla, lured by peninsulares’ promises of work and horses and dignity. No. The Spanish crown gave men of noble blood pieces of paper inked with flourishes a hundred years ago, gifting land grants in the wild, windblown north of Nueva Espa?a. It was the pampered hidalgos who owned the land to this day, who barely broke a sweat as they hired servants to raise their houses of stone, lining their mantels with silver as their workers lived in dark jacales. It was their entitled sons who reaped the bounty of what had fallen into their laps by virtue of their noble names.
But Néstor?
If he wanted to stand on the patio of a casa mayor that was all his own, he had to work for it. It was easy to work hard, when he knew what he wanted.
He had ample time to envision this over the last nine years on long, slow drives, as he sat on watch during cricket-filled, hot siestas on the ride east to San Antonio. A house of rough sillar stone mined from his own quarry. The golden sweep of his own land at sunrise. Corrals of horses bearing his own brand. The intricate engraving of a silver-trimmed bridle, fit for a powerful ranchero, running under his fingertips as he slipped it over Luna’s velvety ears.
That part was easy. If he told Beto that was what he was saving his money for—a porción of land with a spring and a quarry—Beto would understand.
Beto might also suggest marrying Celeste for her land. This made Néstor’s skin itch with discomfort, not least because the widow was of a class so high above Néstor and Beto that even the suggestion was veiled in gentle mockery.
But because Beto might suggest marrying.
An empty house was incomplete. A husk. It needed family to fill it with noise and food and memories. Family Néstor had, if he ever built the courage to speak to them again, but what about children?
What of a woman?
When Néstor was brave or drunk enough to dream about this, he was met with blankness. An empty wall. The sweep of crinoline silk, the echo of a voice, but no face. The sensation of knowing someone was next to him. Of turning only to find the dream shattered, to realize he was utterly, achingly alone.
When he was a boy, he knew exactly who would stand on the patio of the dream house next to him. He knew her light footsteps and the shift of her skirts like his own heartbeat, the weight and silky texture of her plaits between his fingertips.
But the boy he used to be was long dead, along with many other precious things besides.
At last count, he had nearly saved enough to buy a small porción, some cattle, and a few horses. It was more than most vaqueros—bound to ranchos and forever indebted to their rancheros—could dream of achieving. It was time to begin. But he was dust clinging to a wind, too afraid to touch the earth, too afraid to meet the ground. He could dream of a house, but the next step paralyzed him.
Don’t you always.
He did. Because without work and a distant goal, he did not know what else he was living for.
4
NENA
Marzo 1846
RANCHO LOS OJUELOS
HUMID TENDRILS OF mist pawed at Nena’s skirts as she crossed the central rancho, the bag of her curandera’s supplies beating an urgent rhythm against one thigh. She strode through cold, dewy grass toward the vaquero Ignacio’s jacal, her breath coming short from haste.
Yesterday, Abuela’s hands clicked and curled inward from the damp. The promise of a storm stiffened her joints; her movements became slower than usual, restricted by pain. Nena put warm compresses on Abuela’s hands and promised that she was capable of taking on any ailments that might strike the people of the rancho—God forbid—while Abuela rested.
So when a young vaquero pounded on the door of la casa mayor as madrugada lightened, asking for a curandera, Nena had risen and snatched the first work clothes she set eyes on. As she left the house, she made sure to meet eyes with Papá and give him a curt nod. Though his expression was bleary from being woken suddenly, she prayed that he recognized how important her task was: her presence was integral for the strength of the rancho. Necessary. Especially as Abuela grew older.
The rancho was a lively beast with many limbs; lately, she fretted about it. It was tired, stretched thin, its strength paled by sickness at the worst possible time. They could not afford weakness when Anglos breathed down their necks. So she would tend to it with every technique she knew, and would not rest until it was well again.
She reached the high walls that enclosed the rancho’s most precious organs like curving wooden ribs and passed through the gate, leaving it to creak shut behind her.
Metal scraped over metal; the gate’s latch clicked into place with a tone of finality.
Stillness hung with the mist over the rest of the rancho.
She should hear crickets. At this hour, she should hear the trill of birds.
Everything was as it should be on a March morning in the hours before dawn. Everything smelled as it always had.
But for some reason, she felt as if she were suspended in a pocket of silence between the central rancho and the jacales, silence broken only by the swish of her skirts in the chill, damp grass. The soft crush of the soles of her boots, now hesitant, on the earth.
Her own breathing.
The more she noticed this, the more her breath pulled raspy. The louder and farther it seemed to stretch through the mist. The faster she sought breath after breath.
She cast a glance over her shoulder.
Behind her: mist curled between her and the walls of the central rancho. To her left: a sea of fog sheathed the dark line of oak trees on the way to the springs.
A longing for a torch flared sudden and urgent in her breast.
That was odd for her, someone who happily snuck outside to her herb garden after moonset to be alone beneath the stars.
It was odd that she should feel as if something was observing her.