cart. They prodded the bear with a pole and, as it didn’t move, felt brave enough to go right up to it. It was older than they’d thought: two claws were missing on one paw, several teeth were broken, and it was stippled with old scars. The dragon breath issuing from its open jaws struck them full in the face, but this was no time to retreat; they tied up its snout and roped its four paws together. At first they worked slowly, blocking out defense moves that would have been completely useless had the beast wakened, but once they were convinced that it was as good as dead, they moved quickly. Soon they had the bear immobilized, and went to look for the terrorized mules.
Bernardo used his method of whispering into their ears, as he did with wild horses, and convinced them to obey. Garcia approached with caution, after being assured that the bear’s snores were legitimate, but he was shaking, and smelled so bad that they sent him to wash himself and his trousers in a nearby stream. Bernardo and Diego followed the vaquero’s method for lifting huge weights: they secured two ropes to one end of the tipped-over cart, passed them beneath the bear, pulled them back over it in the opposite direction, then tied the ends to the mules’ harness and ordered them to pull. At the second try, they succeeded in rolling the beast over, and in that way worked it into the cart. They were panting when they finished their backbreaking task, but they had achieved their goal. They hugged each other and leaped around like lunatics, prouder than they had ever been before. The proud boys hitched up the mules, and were ready to start back to town, but not before Diego had pulled out the bucket of tar he’d collected in the pits near his house and used it to paste a sombrero onto the bear’s head. The boys were exhausted, bathed in sweat, and saturated in the stench of the beast. Garcia, for his part, was a bundle of nerves; he could barely stand, he still smelled like a pigsty, and his clothes were soaking wet. Their adventure had taken most of the afternoon, but when finally they headed the mules back down the Sendero de las Astillas, they had a couple of hours of daylight left. They urged the team on, and reached the Camino Real just as it grew dark. From there on, the long-suffering mules found their way by instinct, while the bear wheezed in its prison of rope. It had woken from the lethargy brought on by White Owl’s potion, but was still muddled. When they drove into Pueblo de los Angeles, it was pitch-black night. By the light of a pair of oil lanterns they untied the animals’ rear feet, but left its front paws and snout bound. They prodded it until they got it out of the cart and onto two feet, dizzied but with every ounce of fury intact. The boys started yelling, and soon people were pouring out of their houses carrying lamps and torches. The whole town came out to see what was going on, and the street filled with people admiring the bizarre spectacle: Diego de la Vega leading a huge bear wearing a sombrero, of all things, and staggering along on its hind feet with Bernardo and Garcia poking it from the rear. Applause and cheers echoed for weeks in the ears of the three boys, and by then they’d had plenty of time to consider how foolish they had been and to recover from their well-deserved punishment. Nothing could dim the radiance of that victory. Carlos and the other bullies never bothered them again.
The exploit of the bear, exaggerated and embellished to the point of impossibility, spread by word of mouth; with time, it crossed the Bering Strait, carried by traders in otter skins, and circulated as far away as Russia. Diego, Bernardo, and Garcia were not excused from the whipping administered by their parents, but no one could contest their fame as champions. They were very careful, oh yes, very careful not to mention White Owl’s sleeping potion. Their trophy was exhibited in a corral for several days, exposed to the jeers and rocks of the curious, while promoters looked for a bull worthy of fighting it, but Diego and Bernardo took pity on the captive and the night before the fight set it free.
In October, when the town was still talking about nothing else, they were attacked by pirates. They had sailed along the coast by night and at dawn they came ashore without warning, with the experience of many years of marauding. Their ship was a brigantine armed with fourteen light cannons; it had made the voyage from South America by swinging around Hawaii to take advantage of the prevailing winds that blew toward Alta California. They were on the prowl for ships laden with treasures from America destined for the royal coffers in Spain. These buccaneers rarely attacked on dry land the important cities could defend themselves, and the others were too poor but they had been at sea for an eternity without any luck, and the crew needed to take on fresh water and release a little energy. The captain decided to put in at Pueblo de los Angeles, although he didn’t expect to find anything interesting there, only basic supplies, liquor, and a little diversion for the lads. They were counting on not meeting any resistance, preceded as they were by the reputation they themselves made sure was well known, spine-chilling tales of blood and ashes, of how they chopped men into little pieces, gutted pregnant women, and strung children on grappling hooks and hung them from the masts like trophies.
They liked being thought of as barbaric. When they struck, all they had to do was announce their presence by firing off a few cannons, or come howling onto the scene, and the whole town would desert, leaving the pirates to sack the place without the inconvenience of a fight.
They dropped anchor near Pueblo de los Angeles and readied their assault. In this case, the brigantine’s cannons were useless; the shot would not reach that target. They disembarked in launches, knives between their teeth and swords in hand, like a horde of demons. Halfway to town they came across the de la Vega hacienda. The large adobe house, with its red roof tiles and purple bougainvillea creeping up the walls, its orange grove, its unmistakable air of prosperity and peace, was irresistible to those rough sailors, who for months had seen nothing but mossy water, wormy biscuits, and smelly dried beef. In vain their captain bawled that their objective was the town; his men rushed toward the hacienda, kicking aside dogs and shooting point-blank a pair of Indian gardeners who had the bad luck to get in their way.
Alejandro de la Vega was in Mexico City at the time, buying furniture more graceful than the crude pieces in his home, gold velvet for drapes, heavy silver for the table, place settings of English china, and crystal glasses from Austria. He hoped to impress Regina with these queenly gifts, to see whether she would give up her Indian ways and return to the European refinement he wanted for his family. His business affairs were thriving, and for the first time he could treat himself to living in the way a man of his breeding deserved. He had no way to suspect that as he was bargaining over the price of Turkish rugs, thirty-six soulless pirates were invading his home.
Regina was awakened by the furor of the dogs’ barking. Her room was in a small tower, the only bold feature in the low profile of the house.
Through her window, which had neither drapes nor shutters, she could see the timid light of early morning streaking the sky with orange. She threw a shawl around her shoulders and went out on the balcony in her bare feet to see what was disturbing the dogs, just as the first marauders forced open the wooden gate of the garden. It never occurred to her that they were pirates she had never seen one in the flesh but she didn’t stop to identify them. Diego, who at ten still shared his mother’s bed when his father wasn’t there, saw her race by in her nightgown. As she flew past,
Regina seized a well-kept sword and a dagger that had been hanging on the wall since her husband left his military career behind, and ran down the stairway yelling for the servants. Diego leaped out of bed and followed her. The doors of the house were oak, and in the absence of Alejandro de la Vega they had been bolted from the inside with an iron bar. The pirates’ rush was stopped by that invulnerable obstacle, and that gave Regina time to hand out the firearms stored in big chests and prepare a defense. Diego, still not completely awake, found himself watching a woman who looked only vaguely familiar to him. In seconds, his mother had been transformed into Daughter-of-Wolf. Her hair was standing on end and the ferocious gleam in her eyes gave her the look of a woman possessed; her jaw was set and her lips drawn back, and she was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Toypurnia barked orders to the servants in the Indian tongue, and was brandishing a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other when the shutters that protected the windows on the main floor gave way and the first pirates spilled into the house. Even over the clamor of the assault, Diego heard a cry, more jubilation than terror, issue from the earth, course through his mother’s body, and shake the walls of the house. The sight of that woman barely covered by the thin cloth of a nightgown rushing to meet them and wielding two weapons with a strength impossible in someone her size shocked the pirates for a second or two. In that time, the servants fired their weapons. Two pillagers fell face forward, and a third staggered, but there was no time to reload; another dozen were already swarming through the windows. Diego picked up a heavy iron candlestick and ran to his mother’s defense as she retreated toward the big hall. She had lost the sword and was holding the dagger in both hands, swinging blindly against the vandals closing in on her. Diego thrust the candlestick between the legs of one man, throwing him to the floor, but before he could club him, a brutal kick to his chest slammed him against the wall. He never knew how long he lay there, befuddled, because later versions of the attack were contradictory. Some said it lasted for hours, but others said that within a few minutes the pirates had killed or wounded everyone in their path, destroyed what they couldn’t carry, and before they continued on to Los Angeles set fire to the furniture.
When Diego regained consciousness, the ruffians were still running through the house looking for loot, and smoke from the fire was drifting into the room. Despite the tremendous pain in his chest, which left him gasping for
