Marco and the Devil's Bargain Read Free

hands full of mewing kittens that groped about blindly, their mouths open, hungry. In another minute they were arranged carefully in her shawl and carried through the snow into the kitchen.
    As Marco watched, she warmed some goat’s milk and sat on the floor with a rag, which she dipped in the milk then dribbled into each kitten’s mouth. After a long time, their bellies were full and they slept in a heap. “This is how I kept Trece alive, that expensive and rare yellow dog of yours,” she told him. “Tomorrow we will take these orphans to the Widow Chávez.”
    â€œ Paloma, she’s old and forgetful,” he reminded her. “Four kittens! She’ll be up all hours.”
    â€œ She’s a mother,” was his wife’s simple reply.
    So it had proved. The Widow Chávez had been only too happy to take the babies into her house and nourish them. That was the last time that Christmas season anyone saw the Widow Chávez mourning her own son in the snow beside the belén .
    Considering all that, if Paloma came with him to the garrison, Marco knew he would have an ally when the sergeant started to blather and apologize and blame the king of Spain for every wrong his pitiful cadre of soldiers suffered. And there would be the visiting lieutenant. Ay caray! Marco said as much to Toshua—their Comanche who would not leave—as he saddled his horse and then Paloma’s.
    Toshua shook his head. “You’re growing soft, señor. What did you do before Paloma came?”
    â€œ I complained and went by myself.”
    â€œ Well then.” Toshua folded his arms. “She said she would knit me a pair of socks, too. Me, I have never worn socks, but you do not hear me complaining. I want socks.”
    â€œ You could be a little sympathetic, Toshua.”
    â€œ I doubt it.”

    They left for Santa Maria, Paloma riding beside Marco and followed by a mule carrying a sack of yarn and other gifts for Luisa, as proud-stepping as if his wife had promised him socks for each of his four feet, too.
    Toshua came next, riding behind, and then beside them, then ahead, always looking to the right and left, even as Marco did. His four guards looked as pleased as men could look. They knew they were escorting their master’s admirable wife to the hacienda of the Widow Gutierrez, where, while the ladies knitted, there would be wine and card games and gambling.
    As much as he liked to ride with Paloma on the same mount, Marco had quickly discovered how pleasant it was to watch her control her own horse. She had a sure hand, even when the mare sidestepped a few times, shying from winter birds hunkered down in the brush along the trail.
    â€œ Did you ride with your father?” he asked her.
    â€œ Whenever he let me. He gave me my first horse when I was six.”
    Marco knew the look in her eyes was the same one in his, when she had assured him she did not mind if he mentioned Felicia. Why is it that no one thinks we want to speak of our beloved dead? he asked himself, not for the first time.
    His mentioning her father had given Paloma permission to ask a question of her own. “Marco, how did your sister’s husband die?” She glanced at Toshua, who rode farther ahead of them now, his lance across his lap.
    â€œ A sad story. It was a summer seventeen years ago when the Comanche moon never set. We were all forted up throughout Valle del Sol. One of Manuel’s best milk cows wandered away, and he went to find it, even though Luisa pleaded with him. He could see the cow tethered to a bush, just a stone’s throw from their walls, with no one in sight.”
    â€œ That means nothing,” Paloma said.
    â€œ Manuel knew that, too, but all he could see was the cow. When he was too close to the cow to back away, he saw the feet of the Comanche clinging to the cow on the other side. Then, Luisa said, there seemed to be indios everywhere.”
    â€œ She