exchange a few words.
Certain the news brings good luck, they give Rawhide orders.
They have decided to sacrifice the Born-to-Run. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, and not worth us dwelling on. They keep his scalp and his magical jug. They depart camp ululating.
We’ll leave them to their business, which doesn’t have much to do with us.
Rawhide doesn’t participate in the attack, he stays in camp with a group of elders—his guards—responsible for looking after the slowest livestock. He writes a message and ties it to the Kwahadis’ only messenger pigeon, Penny.
Penny flies south across Indian Territory, to a nearby Comanche camp. The captives, who are well cared for because they will be traded (Mexicans, gringos, Germans; all young men who are treated like the finest livestock), listen to the news as it is announced by the tribe’s herald. The majority don’t like it, but there are a few who have unfinished business with Nepomuceno and celebrate it.
The Comanches ignore the news. They couldn’t care less about Nepomuceno, some sheriff, some shitty town. They were hoping for a different message, a response to their earlier one. Now they worry that the Kwahadis have decided to attack.
LET’S BACK UP A LITTLE. The pigeons are on the wing, the Born-to-Run streak across the prairie, the white horseman crosses the Valley like lightning, the falcon hunts its prey, Indians rush around getting decked out for their attack, but not a soul stops at the Aunts’ Ranch—no one dares call these women what they really are: Amazons.
It’s something to see, the entrance to this ranch, painted with Teresita’s family tree (flowers, leaves, and names all painted in bold, harmonious colors). There’s no wall, just this entrance.
The inhabitants of the Aunts’ Ranch are unusual on the Great Plains, some even claim their ranch doesn’t exist. They live in the open air like cowboys on the trail; they use lassos; they know how to use pistols; they can’t stand farming; and they hate living under a roof, with two exceptions: a pale-faced blonde, Peladita, who sews like a madwoman, all night and all day, waiting for her Ulises to return (an ill-tempered Mexican who, needless to say, has no intention of coming back for her); that’s her story. The other is a different kettle of fish: she’s ancient, and though she’s wrinkled like a raisin, her nose grown long, she looks almost childlike. She was once kidnapped and no longer remembers anything else. You can’t set foot on the Aunts’ Ranch without hearing all about her kidnapping.
The other Aunts just let her be.
The Aunts chatter:
“Don’t dismount here, no way. On this ranch we ride like the wind. No one falls to their knees at Aunts’ Ranch, no one defers to a superior. We’re all queens. And here’s the thing: we ride so fast we could fly, all we need are wings.”
“We tame mustangs. Twelve handy, pistol-packing women who defeat anyone who dares to take us on.”
“No one sets foot here without asking our permission. Nobody even dares to take a drop of water from our well without asking first.”
“The chickens roam free.”
“The donkeys sleep where they want.”
“We drink when we feel like it, the good stuff.”
“We have sex with each other if we want, and no one takes it the wrong way or thinks they’re sinning.”
“You bet!”
“We dance until daybreak.”
“We’re amazing cooks.”
“Only Doña Estefanía cooks better than us; better to admit it than get found out.”
“What good is it to her, to have so much land, livestock, and money? It’s better to be free.”
“I was at Doña Estefanía’s once. The women didn’t sit at the table, they just served the men.”
“Shameful.”
“Absolutely.”
“Know if she had any lovers?”
“Doña Estefanía, lovers? A few might have tried, if they did they fell wide of the mark.”
“Why would we women go looking for that kind of trouble?”
“Because, some of us like men.”
“I just use them for sex.”
“Get outta here, you’re gonna spend your life begging for something you’ll never get. Look what happened to Peladita, you should go sit and sew with her.”
“I wouldn’t do it even if they tied me up, you can’t tame me! I don’t have hands, I have hooves! Plus I know how to run and to hunt.”
“Has anyone here ever seen that guy Nepomuceno?”
“Some folks call him the Red Menace, because he’s a redhead, and he’s dangerous.”
“He’s really a redhead?”
“Depends on how the sun hits his head.”
IN BRUNEVILLE FRANK RETURNS to the Stealman mansion with the oxtail for the stew wrapped in dried corn husks—finely chopped, like Señora Luz likes it. The women who work for Mrs. Lazy have already heard what happened in the Market Square, they know even more than Frank because, while he was spreading the news and haggling with Sharp over the ingredients for Señora Luz’s soup, he missed out on quite a bit. A detailed report was delivered to the Stealman home by a longshoreman called Steve.
Steve is a tameme, he always has a basket of goods on his back. Today it was full of long-stemmed flowers to fill the Chinese and English vases that will decorate the salon where the best—or worst, depending on your perspective—of Bruneville society will gather.
Steve has added a flourish to the story, to get a better tip: “Nepomuceno, the cattle thief, Doña Estefanía’s black sheep, got what he deserved from the sheriff!” Here he paused to laugh. “He called him a ‘greaser!’” Then he told them how, after a few seconds of silence during which the sheriff stopped beating the drunkard and no one on the scene, not even Shears or Nepomuceno, blinked or drew a breath, Nepomuceno emptied his pistol into the Sheriff, “He shot him … I think he mighta killed him. Then he picked up the drunk guy, fired once more into the air, and took off with his men.”
Let’s dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Sheriff Shears had wanted to arrest Lázaro Rueda for being drunk, disturbing the peace, and urinating in the Market Square. “Since when do they arrest folks in these parts for drinking themselves stupid and taking a piss?” Lázaro resisted with what little dignity he had, which wasn’t much (old and worn-out, he was falling-down drunk), but it was enough resistance for Shears to give him a thrashing. He was beating him with the butt of his pistol when Nepomuceno stepped out of the Café Ronsard.
Inside
