The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [73]
Tomás sat astride his stallion and smiled down at them. Both he and the horse were yellow and gray with dust. Later, the People would say he was a different patrón from the one who had left. Something in him had shifted in those days riding alone.
The Indians behind him were grim and silent, and behind them, the women and children they had taken captive commenced wailing and caterwauling as the People danced and hopped up and down before them in joy. They jumped off their horses and flew through the crowds like scattered chickens, hands in the air, though nothing had happened to them, and they knew not a face in the gathering, and their shacks were now the homes of strangers. They were home, and that was all that mattered to them. They blended in and were absorbed. The vaqueros charged in from the plains and the dogs barked. Aguirre pushed through the revelers and reached up to Tomás and shook his hand.
“Welcome back,” he said.
“Looks good.” Tomás nodded, glancing around Cabora. “Nice work.”
“Claro que sí,” Aguirre acknowledged with a small nod.
He had already snapped an order: men were pulling a bed from a wagon and were assembling it near Aguirre’s, under the big cottonwood. They set a clay jarrito full of cool windmill water beside the bed, and by the time Tomás finally lay upon it in the evening’s lamplight, they would have a plate of candied yams and cactus jelly set on the small table with the water.
Tomás gazed out beyond them all, toward the Sierra. He shook his head and looked down.
“Huila,” the patrón said.
“Señor.” She nodded. “At your service.”
“And you,” he said to Teresita.
She wiggled her fingers at him.
Segundo wandered over, his horse-bowed legs making him look like a sailor on a rocking boat as he walked.
“Boss,” he said.
Tomás smiled at him.
“I’ve been out there,” he said.
“Yes, you have.” Segundo nodded. He saw it in his face. “You liked it.”
“Oh!” Tomás said.
He had intended to tell them all of his journey. Of the mad Indian who had led him into the warrior village. How the naked runner with deer antlers tied to his head trotted backward, yelling and jabbering and laughing at him. How the runner sped away and stopped and bent over, opening his ass at him and making the rudest of sounds. How the runner peed in the road, then held his hands over his belly and made exaggerated laughing gestures at Tomás. And how, when he tired of this laughter, he pantomimed crying, rubbing his eyes with his fists, then pointing at Tomás, clearly saying Yori crybaby!
How the runner led him to the village, and how the people came forth with their weapons and yelled at the runner, and the runner pranced and skipped and made his way straight through the village and out the other side, pausing only to waggle his bottom at Tomás before dancing out of sight.
He wanted to tell them of the fighters standing in amazement when he rode into their midst, some of them running to him, striking him with their clubs, threatening him with their machetes. How his stallion had stood still in the maelstrom, had then danced in place, had moved sideways and backward, cutting perfect squares in the center of the pueblo, the warriors falling back half-afraid and half-amused at this crazy Yori and his demonic horse. How the old man, the cacique of the people, had come forward, wearing a cross, speaking Spanish; and he wanted to tell of how they had spoken of many things.
He wanted to tell them of the stars. Of the lovers in their hellish graves. Of the Apaches and their snake barbecue.
Tomás knew suddenly that he would not tell. He had always fancied himself an untamed man, and now he had discovered he was half coyote. He had finally, over the last weeks, tasted what it truly meant to be untamed. And the coyote was doomed to live within the cage of his social standing. Tomás had no way of imagining how to set himself free.
These Yaquis didn’t help. They had understood the coyote in him as soon as he dismounted his horse. They were part eagle, these men, part hummingbird and part snake.