Carlota Read Free Page A

built of adobe, which is mud mixed with straw and made into big bricks and set out in the sun to dry. The walls of the house were very thick, almost as thick through as the reach of my outstretched hands. There were few windows, only two on each side of the house, and these were iron-barred and shuttered.
    The house was built in the shape of a hollow square. Each side was ninety long strides in length. The roof, which was made of tile, was proof against the flaming arrows the Indians liked to use whenever they raided us. The house was a stronghold, like the fortresses in Spain.
    I always started at the big gate. There was a small garden on one side of the gate and here my father kept his pet eagle. It was Rosario's duty, when he wasn't running errands or serving as a footstool for my grandmother, to tend the eagle. The bird's name was Vuelo Grande, which means Big Wing.
    Old man Tiburcio, who had been a vaquero but now was too old to work the cattle, gathered mice and gophers to feed the bird. He caught them in traps every day and put them in a wicker cage and early in the morning set them inside the big gate where the eagle sat.
    Vuelo Grande was screaming for his breakfast. He sat on his perch with a silver-link chain around one leg, flapping his wings and turning his neck first one way then the other, even backward like an owl. His eyes were large and hooded. They were green, with some yellow and brown spots in them. His eyes never seemed to look at you. They looked through you at something far away in the hills, in the mountains, beyond the mountains.
    Rosario came running from somewhere and picked up the wicker cage. He reached in and took out a gopher, with care because it had long, sharp teeth.
    "
Holal
" he shouted to the eagle. "Catch!"
    With one claw Vuelo Grande caught the gopher in mid-air.
    "You have taught him a new trick," I said.
    "Yes. And soon," Rosario said, "he will permit me to stroke his feathers."
    "The feathers are very pretty," I said, "but take care that he doesn't get the claws in you."
    "He is a brother," Rosario said. "He is an Indian bird."
    "True. He comes from the Piute country. But remember that perhaps he doesn't know that you are brothers."
    "He knows," Rosario said, and got ready to toss him a second gopher.
    Next I visited the forge, where two young men were beating out shoes for the riding horses. Four that they had made especially for Tiburón hung on a peg. Next door was the saddlery. Here they made braided riatas and silver-studded saddles for the family and common saddles for the vaqueros. The weaving room was next. I did not go in. Through the open door I could see piles of yellow wool, still oily after the shearing. The looms were clicking and the spindles hummed. The Indian girls who tended them were in a happy mood now that they were no longer required to work on Sundays. It had been my idea to give them one day of rest. Doña Dolores opposed it, but with my father's help, I had won out.
    I went quickly past the family rooms for fear that my grandmother might see me and call me in to do something for her. She had three servants, counting Rosario, and I didn't like to be used as a fourth one. I crossed myself as I passed the chapel, where I had already prayed at dawn.
    My father sat in the sun beneath the
portale.
He sat here every morning when the sun shone and had his first cup of chocolate.
    "
Que pasa?
" he said. "Everything is in bad condition as usual?"
    "In good condition," I said.
    "How's the grandmother this morning?"
    "I have not seen her."
    "That is fortunate. You start the day well."
    Don Saturnino sat on a three-legged stool, his legs spread wide, his long black hair hanging down his back. It glistened like the tail of a horse.
    Hovering over him was Alfonso, the barber, combing his hair with a heavy horse comb. When that was done the barber braided it carefully and piled it on top of Don Saturnino's head and anchored it there with stout iron pins.
    His hair combed