dog packs. If he could get the chains off, there would be a way to brave the dogs.
Wesley Buttons, though he had held up bravely during the long march and the drawing of the beans, was feeling keenly the loss of his two brothers, and of the rest of the troop.“I remember when we left?I got to drive the wagon with old General Lloyd in it,” he said. “We had an army. There was enough of us to hold off the Indians and whip the Mexicans. Now look? there’s just us, and we’re way out here in the desert, locked in with these sick ‘uns.”
“It’s a long way home, I reckon,” he added. “Ma’s going to be sad, when she hears about the boys.”
Brognoli’s head swung back and forth, back and forth. “I barely know which way is home,” Long Bill said. “It’s so dusty it’s all I can do to keep my directions. I guess I could go downriver, but it would be a pretty long walk.”
Gus remembered that it was the same river they had camped on when Matilda caught the big green snapping turtle.
“Why, if it’s the Rio Grande, we could just stroll along it easy,” he said. “Matty could catch us turtles, when we get hungry.”
Matilda shook her head?she didn’t welcome the prospect of another long walk.
“It’s just the six of us got across New Mexico,” she pointed out. “If we have to walk the rest of the way, I doubt any of us will make it. That big Indian knows that river?he might get us yet.”
“We’d have to have weapons,” Call said. “None of us would make it, without weapons.”
“I don’t see what the hurry is,” Gus said. “We’ve had a long hike, as it is. I’d like to laze around here and rest up, myself. These lepers ain’t bothering us. All you got to do is not look at them too close.”
He had been inclined to try escape, until Matilda had mentioned Buffalo Hump. Memory of the fierce Comanche put a different slant on such a trip. Better to stay inside the walls of San Lazaro and rest with the lepers, than to expose themselves to Buffalo Hump again?especially since they only had five men.
“I want to leave, if we can get these chains off,” Call said. “What if the Major comes back and has us draw some more beans?”
He was tired, though, and didn’t urge escape immediately. When the wind was high, his back still sometimes throbbed, and his sore foot pained him. A day or two’s rest wouldn’t hurt?at least it wouldn’t if the Mexicans didn’t decide to eliminate them all.
As the evening wore on, the Texans rested and napped?they had been assigned the little room where they had spent the night’ before, but no one really wanted to go into such a dark hole. The courtyard was sunny; those who didn’t want sun could rest under the long barricades.
Gus was determined to gamble?he had asked several of the Mexicans who worked in the convent if they had any cards; one woman with only three teeth took a shine to him and managed to find an incomplete deck. It was missing about twenty cards, but Gus and Long Bill soon devised a game. They broke a few straws off a broom to use for money.
While they were making up rules for a card game involving only thirty-three cards, a black woman taller than Gus came across the courtyard. She didn’t seem to be a leper?her face and hands were normal. She approached them in such a dignified manner that the men straightened up a little. Gus hid the cards.
“Gentlemen, I have an invitation for you,” the Negress said, in English better than their own. “Lady Carey would like to ask you to tea.”
“Ask us to what?” Gus asked. He was taken by surprise. Although he had just shaved the day before, the dignity and elegance of the black woman made him feel scruffy.
“Tea, gentlemen,” the Negress said. “Lady Carey is English, and in England they have tea. It’s like a little meal. Lady Carey’s son, the viscount Mountstuart, will be taking it with us. I’m sure you’ve seen him playing with the Mexican children. He’s the one who’s blond.”
Call, too, was startled by the black woman’s courtesy and poise. He had never seen a Negress so tall, much less one so well spoken. Few black women in Texas would dare to speak to a group of white men so boldly, and yet the woman had not been rude in any way. She had an invitation to deliver, and she had delivered it. Like Gus, he felt that the few Rangers left were a rugged lot, hardly fit to take food with an English lady.
While he and Gus and Wesley and Long Bill were looking at one another, a little uncertain as to how to respond, the black woman turned to Matilda Roberts and smiled.
“Miss Roberts, Lady Carey knows you’ve traveled a long way across a dusty land,” the Negress said. “She was thinking you might appreciate a bath and a change of clothes.“Matilda was surprised by the woman’s serenity.
“I would … I would … mainly I’ve just had a wash in the river, when we were by the river,” Matilda said.
“That river comes out of the mountains,” the woman said. “I expect it’s cold.”
“Ice cold,” Matilda confirmed.
“Then come along with me,” the Negress said. “Lady Carey has a tub, and the water is hot. These gentlemen can wait a few minutes ?tea will be served in about half an hour.”
Matilda looked a little uncertain, but she followed the black woman across the courtyard and up the stairs.
“I wonder what kind of meal it will be,” Wesley Buttons said. “I hope it’s beefsteak. I ain’t had no beefsteak in a good long while.”
“For it to be beefsteak there’d have to be cattle,” Gus remarked. “I ain’t seen no cattle around here, and I don’t know how a cow would live if there was one. It would have to eat sand, or else cactus, and if it wasn’t quick the dern dogs would get it.”
A problem they considered as they waited for it to be time to go to Lady Carey’s was that Brognoli’s condition seemed to be getting worse. He turned his head more and more rapidly, back and forth, back and forth, and he had begun to drool; now and then he emitted a low, thin sound, a sound such as a rabbit might make as it was dying.
A little later, the black woman appeared on the balcony above them and motioned for them to come. Gus had doubts about taking Brognoli, but it seemed unfair to leave him, since food was being offered. It was true that the Mexicans who ran San Lazaro had been generous with soup and tortillas, but Wesley Buttons had put the notion of beefsteak in their minds. It seemed wrong to exclude Brognoli from what might be a feast.
“Come on, Brog,” Gus said. “That lady that did that singing over Bigfoot and the boys is up there waiting to give us grub.”
Brognoli got up and came with them, walking slowly and still swinging his head.
None of them knew what to expect, as they went up the stairs and along the narrow balcony that led to Lady Carey’s quarters. Gus kept brushing at his hair with his hands?he had meant to ask Matty for her broken comb, but forgot it. Of course, he had not expected Matilda to be led away by a tall black woman who spoke better english than any of them.
Suddenly, the little blond boy jumped out of the shadows, pointing a hammerless old horse pistol at them.
“Are you Texans? I am a Scot,” the boy said.
“Why, I’m part Scot myself,” Gus said. “That’s what my ma claimed. You’re as far away from home as I am.”
“But that’s why my mother wants to see you,” the boy said. “She wants you to take us home. She told me we could leave tomorrow, if you would like to take us.”
Call and Gus exchanged looks. The little boy was handsome and frank. Perhaps he was merely fibbing, as children will, but there was also the chance that his mother, Lady Carey, had told him some such thing. Call didn’t mean to stay a prisoner of the Mexicans long, but neither had he expected to leave in a day.
“If we were to take you home, what would we ride?” he asked. “Our horses got stolen a long time back.”
“Oh, my mother has horses,” the boy said. “There’s a stable in the back of the leprosarium.”
“In the back of the what?” Gus asked.
“The leprosarium?aren’t you lepers?” the little boy asked, “My mother’s a leper, that’s why I never get to see her face. But her hands are not affected yet?she can still play the violin quite well, and she’s teaching me.”
“When we get home I shall have the finest teacher in Europe,” he added. “Someday I may play before the Queen. My mother knows the Queen, but I haven’t met her yet. I’m still too young to be presented at court.”
