day.
Here the wealthy rancho owners and their families rubbed shoulders with the hacienda peons and the slaves who worked their fields. Many of the tribes in the region raided neighboring bands, stealing children from one another, then selling these prizes to slave traders, who would bring them to the Mexican villages where the captives would be sold at auction. Young boys grew up working in the fields or tending the owner’s animals. There was an even higher demand for young girls to work the many household chores it took to keep their master’s rancho operating. The Navajo were the most numerous and, therefore, made the most wealth at this trade in human misery, while the destitute Paiute were driven to venture to the Mexican towns, where, having no captives of their own and possessing nothing else to trade, they reluctantly sold their children into slavery.
Suddenly the Nativity procession came to an abrupt halt as a parade of small children streamed in from a side street, raising their beautiful voices in a song of the blessed birth, some of them bearing streamers over their heads, the rest carrying tall tallow candles, flames fluttering on the morning air as they marched in formation past the braying burros and whinnying mules, the crowd clapping and joining in that joyous, youthful song. At the end of their line came groups of the oldest youngsters, who carried on their shoulders long platforms bearing crude papier-mache effigies of the magi, lowly shepherds, the sacred Madonna and Joseph, and of course the infant Christ swaddled and lying in his simple corncrib.
Immediately behind these children appeared the holy fathers: a half-dozen black-robed priests, swinging the smudge of their sacred incense and surrounded by their young acolytes. As the holy men passed by, some of those in the crowd fell to their knees and cried out for heavenly mercy and temporal blessings; others turned their faces and palms heavenward, making sacred vows, while most merely bowed their heads in silence while the padres moved on past, the oldest of the altar boys struggling beneath the huge wooden cross he dragged along.
As soon as that replica of the dying Christ nailed to the crossed timbers went by, the somber devout rose from their knees, joyous smiles returning to their faces, and songs began to spill from their tongues, many clapping in ecstasy as they resumed their celebration of this holiest of Christian holidays.
Here in this last push toward the plaza many of the revelers who were wrapped in thick multicolored Navajo blankets or kept themselves warm beneath striped serapes were huffing mightily on their last corn-shuck cigarillo rolled from a mild native tobacco wrapped in a small sliver of husk, this vice enjoyed by man and woman alike: a few last puffs taken before they would join the hundreds in climbing the steps to enter the cathedral’s huge double doors.
Past the bustle of carriages and carts rumbling noisily to a halt in the midst of that teeming throng of those on foot who streamed toward the morning Mass, the two lone Americans eventually reached the far side of the plaza. Here they were forced to squeeze their horses against one side of the narrow street as they swam against the surging tide of bodies and carts, horses and burros, all those pilgrims intent upon reaching the town square. Then of a sudden the crowds thinned and trickled off, just about the moment the cathedral bells pealed one last time.
Joyous voices, the clamor of celebration, the bleats and whinnies and brays, all faded quickly behind them as the two trappers hurried down the trampled street toward the southern side of the sprawling village. Here and there they encountered a rumbling cart or a carriage chock-full of a family of anxious churchgoers realizing they were already late, racing past the Americans without so much as a greeting or a second look. Back in the shadows of the side streets mangy hounds and ribby, mixed-breed dogs roamed in pairs and packs, sniffing among piles of refuse. Some of the braver animals ventured out to bark or yip among their horses’ legs, yelping in surprise and pain when Hannah tumbled an unwary cur with her hoof.
Beneath the low-tracking sunlight of this midwinter day the whitewashed walls of the wealthy residents soon gave way to the earth-toned sepia of the poorer adobe homes, the appearance of it all quite striking against the expanse of those hills rising beyond the outskirts of town. There at the far reaches of Santa Fe among the growing stench of the open-air sewers, Bass and McAfferty hurried on by the well-marked bordellos and watering holes where a few bleary-eyed inhabitants stumbled from the doorways to stand in the morning sun, staring up at the two Americans. Half-dressed soldiers and still-drunk vaqueros emerged to shade their eyes as they gazed at the pair. Some of the dusky-skinned, buxom women pulled cigarillos from their lips and pushed unruly sprigs of black hair back from their faces to call out invitations to the trappers as the pair plodded on by. It struck Bass how a whole section of this capital city was devoted to whiskey and women, revelry and sin.
Just the sort of deadly mix that had put the two of them on the run.
With all the celebration of this holy day they had slipped on through the inhabitants of Santa Fe to reach the southern road that would take them to the hacienda of wealthy rancho owner Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca.
“If we don’t find no one around out to his place down on the Pena blanca,” McAfferty said at last as they nudged the horses into a lope, putting the mud-walled village behind them, “I figger they’ve all come here for church.”
“We’ll just lay low out to Vaca’s place,” Scratch agreed, “till the old man can come back to hide us.”
21
Ol’ Vaca was dead.
Killed the day before Christmas.
Only a matter of hours before Bass and McAfferty showed up at his hacienda, Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca had been shot resisting a detail of Governor Manuel Armijo’s soldiers sent from Santa Fe to confiscate the beaver pelts and other property of Americans suspected of being hidden at Vaca’s rancho.
Near noon on that sacred holiday as the two gringos rode down from the low hills toward the mouth of the Penablanca, instead of looking down from the heights on the splendor of the Vaca-family empire, they gazed at the deserted, still-smoldering ruin of half the buildings. As soon as they reined into the smoky yard, more than a dozen armed men appeared from all sides, every one of them smeared with cinders, their faces and clothing streaked with ebony and dried blood.
Among them were Vaca’s three sons, as well as a nephew who knew a little English—enough to explain that the governor’s
“My family has been on this land for generations,” the nephew explained. “This is no way to treat my family!”
True to his personal code of honor, the old man had stood before the overwhelming array of soldiers without a weapon and refused the captain permission to search the grounds. Which prompted the officer to rein up to the old man and brutally slash him across the face with his quirt, splitting Vaca’s cheek open and knocking him down. Yet he struggled back to his feet and immediately attempted to yank the impudent soldier out of the saddle.
“The captain—he pull his pistol and shoot my uncle,” the nephew disclosed.
Before the smoke from that single pistol shot could clear, a general melee broke out as family members and ranch hands turned and raced for their weapons while the soldiers began their rampage. In the end it was Vaca’s old wife who ventured out of the hacienda waving a large white handkerchief in the stiff, cold wind, surrendering so that no more of her family would die, so that she could go to the body of her husband where he lay mortally wounded in the trampled yard, bleeding to death near the foot of their porch. A patch of dirty crimson still stained the crusty snow where Vaca fell.
After rounding up all the family and their employees, placing them all under guard in the middle of the yard, the soldiers rummaged through the house and outbuildings before they moved on to the barn and the barracks where the ranch workers slept. Only then did a young Paiute house servant turn back to look at the hacienda and emit a horrified scream. The house was on fire.
At first the captain had refused to allow the ranch hands to fight the flames, claiming that such a catastrophe was no work of his men. But after nearly half of the graceful old building had been consumed, he relented and allowed Vaca’s men to put up a valiant but hopeless effort against the flames.
Instead of ordering his men to help the family, the captain had his soldiers continue their search: eventually managing to find over two hundred pounds of beaver pelts hidden beneath a trapdoor in the barn floor. Beyond that
