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By Root 983 0

business, this strange kind of reverence some of them were showing for her. This was simply not acceptable. Her spiritualist parlor games, her unseemly roughhousing with the men, these things alarmed him deeply. The damned natives were ready to charge off after messiahs and seers at the drop of a hat. The Indians in the United States were rising again, the Apache would not be tamed, and full-out war with the Yaquis here in Mexico was ticking ever closer. All he needed was for Gastélum or some other whore of President Díaz to send word that Teresita fancied herself some sort of female messiah. She refused to understand that spies watched them from all sides. And she failed to accept the burden of being an Urrea. Teresita was too special to be dirtying her hands with babies, with herbs and foolish spells. He had started to imagine the ranch run by a woman. He had begun to see Teresita in his mind as the great patrona. Teresa Urrea, riding her stallion among hundreds of peones, regal as a queen. The first woman to command the vast holdings of the family. He could see it.

It could be done, even if it seemed unspeakable.

Lately, Tomás no longer rode the herds or the fence lines, no longer wrangled wild horses or broke ponies. He didn’t rule with a pistol or a whip or a stallion. Even Segundo had gone inside to work. No, Tomás ruled Cabora with a quill pen. He ran the herds and the cowboys and the grain harvest and the peones with ink—his pen, his ledger books, his abacus. Tomás tallied. And when numbers dictated a change in the work, he called in a hired hand and told him, and the needed change was accomplished. There were periods—days at a time—when Tomás did not feel the sun on his head. A woman, he thought, a woman could do this work. He smiled. A woman could probably do it better than he.

In his dreams, he could see himself set free. Riding home to his women from far journeys. Returning from a jaunt to San Francisco, in the company of Aguirre, perhaps even Segundo, and that gangly boy Buenaventura. His daughter the queen of Cabora awaiting him, his beloved little Gaby with an heir at her breast, and in the city, Loreto. He could smell it.

He did not believe the stories about Teresita, but he knew the People believed. She had somehow found a way to mesmerize them all. Now, if he could only turn her energies to ruling the ranch, instead of this Indian foolishness. He lay awake nights with the burden of his worry. He argued with Gabriela. He drank late into the night, staring into his glass.

Gabriela, as the new doña of the ranch, was not free to play with children or animals or young people. She was not free to ride wild with Teresita, or to swim in the stock ponds or the arroyo’s dammed lagunas. She was compelled to behave like a mother, a fine creature of a more tender and valuable weave than the rest of them. Often, as on this day, she was left in the courtyard to fan herself and sew, while Huila snored and snuffled in the shade of the plum tree. She did not fear Huila the way the others did, but she knew Huila would never tell her any secrets. Huila would never even teach her how to make a simple healing tea. Gabriela wanted to learn something more than good manners, corsets, stockings, place settings. One of the girls came out of the house and asked, “Missus? Would you care for chicken and rice soup, or potato soup?”

She wanted to curse, the way Tomás cursed, but such things were not allowed.

“Chicken soup,” she droned, “would be lovely.”

Outside the garden walls, Teresita’s voice rose—she was leading a group of children in some kind of chant.

Fina Félix and Teresita led a gang of kids in a race around the barn, then over one of the tumbledown fences. They jumped like horses, then galloped in circles. Buenaventura watched them, smirking. His back was to the barn wall, and his right knee was cocked, his boot heel jammed into a knothole behind him. He had learned to smoke. He hung a corn-shuck cigarette off his lip and blew smoke and said “Jesus Christ” to himself.

“Fucking savages,” Buenaventura mumbled.