Califia's Daughters Read Free Page B

one end of the bench. When she turned back there was another person standing there, a dark stump of a woman whose head barely reached Dian’s chest, scowl on face and hands on hips as she glared at the stripped horse.
    â€œ
Calmate
, Carmen,” Dian began immediately. “
El tenía una siesta larga abajo de un arbol
and then had an easy twelve miles home. I never pushed him out of a canter, and he positively begged to trot up from the creek.
Te juro por Dios
.” She put her hand over her heart to emphasize her honesty.
    The horse had looked around at Carmen’s silent entrance and was now pulling against the immobilizing reins in an attempt to snuffle at her hands. He was barely wet, in spite of the heat, and his neck and ears moved vigorously, but still Carmen fixed Dian with an eye filled with baleful threats and said nothing.
    â€œ
Mira
, Carmen,
siento mucho lo de esta mañana
, what I did to Simon this morning. I hated to do it to him, it hurt me to take advantage of his big heart, but I had to. I hope he’ll be all right?”
    The compliment to her charge did it, and the horsewoman allowed herself to reach out and make contact with the horse’s soft nostrils before snorting a brief forgiveness.
    â€œNo fue gracias a ti,”
she grumbled at Dian.
    â€œYou looked at his off hind? I think I got the stone out before it bruised him, but—”
    â€œGo teach your
abuela
to suck eggs. Don’t you have anything better to do than stand around here jawing? Go get yourself something to eat.
Darte un baño, por Dios,
you’re stinkin’ up my barn. I’ll finish him up. Got nothing better to do, hanging around here.”
    â€œOh, Carmen, I can’t let you care for a horse that I—”
    â€œShut up.
Vayate
.” She waved a dismissive hand at Dian, snatched the bucket out of Judith’s hand, flicked the reins from the groove in the stanchion, and stalked off, muttering Spanish imprecations. The horse shambled after her, eager as an adoring puppy. Dian and Judith looked at each other, stifled laughter, and gathered up Dian’s possessions.
    . . . THERE WERE NO MALES AMONG THEM AT ALL,
FOR THEIR WAY OF LIFE WAS SIMILAR
TO THAT OF THE AMAZONS.

T WO
    T HE TWO WOMEN WHO EMERGED FROM THE BLACK cavern of the barn door were a study in contrast. One was a tall, loose-limbed woman closing in on thirty, killing weapons tucked easily under her right arm, left hand stretched down as if making ghostly contact with some hip-level object. She was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and long trousers over tall soft boots; everything about her was the color of dust. Her wiry, scorched-looking blond hair was closely cropped above angular cheekbones, sun-dark skin, and intensely blue eyes, and she walked with the lithe economy of a distance runner. Dian had chosen her name when she attained her womanhood, in a self-conscious but determined evocation of the goddesses of war and hunt, for, even then, half her lifetime ago, she had known what her skills would be. Her contributions of game to the village’s tables were regular, and she held a fanatic’s eye toward the security of their boundaries.
    The woman at her side, the woman she called sister, was a full head shorter, looked more than her eight years older, and moved with the more compact strength of a person whose muscles dig and lift and build. Her face was browner than the sun could dye it and broad across the cheekbones, set with eyes of the darkest brown and surrounded by thick black hair, glossy smooth in the sun with glints of white in the braid down her back. Her mouth was soft and smiled easily, although there was a long history of burdens borne in the lines beside it. She wore a loose, sleeveless yellow blouse, amateurishly embroidered with bright flowers, and rough woven shorts belted with a similarly colorful and badly woven sash. She had simple, thin-soled sandals on her feet, and she walked with that