As I grew up working for Gomez, I had spread my wings to the outskirts of town, to the corrals where horses were traded and trained.
I watched fascinated as horse traders brought their horses to town to sell and barter with. So much fine horseflesh, so exciting to watch and learn as masters of the trade appraised horses and bargained over them as if their whole lives were at stake with each transaction.
And I watched as trainers broke horses to the saddle. It was not a gentle craft, nor were the horses usually completely broken before they were turned over to their owners.
The partial breaking was done by saddling up the horse for the first time and mounting it. Once the rider was aboard, the horse would go racing across the pasture galloping and bucking, the rider hanging on for dear life as people ran to get out of the way.
By the time the horse had gone to the end of the pasture and back, if the rider had hung on well enough, the animal was too tired to put up any fight and was turned over to its owner, who would take it home and continue the breaking and training process. Only merchants with a soft behind and older caballeros had the horses completely broken to the saddle.
Going to the corrals was the only relief from the stable, but my new masters even forbid that because they wanted to control my every waking moment.
I still managed to get away occasionally when a horse had to be taken to the corrals or brought back from there, and sometimes when it wasn’t necessary for me to be at the stable, I simply left and went to the corrals, ignoring the venomous looks I would get from the swine husband.
Gomez only had a pair of mules he kept to pull his feed wagon, so it was at the corrals that I had learned to break, ride, and train horses, besides judging their monetary value.
Breaking a horse with a wild and crazy ride had risks besides the broken bones for the rider. Sometimes horses sprained muscles or even stepped into a gopher hole and broke a leg and had to be put down.
Owners of extremely valuable horses often hired me to do the breaking because my method was a little less violent. While I couldn’t “talk” a horse into accepting a saddle, with my whispers and cooing I was able to convince most horses not to go into a full gallop even though I, too, had to hang on tight and occasionally got thrown because they were still powerful beasts full of energy and spirit.
Whether it was to treat a sick horse or break one to the saddle, horse owners frequently made the arrangement with the stable owners. Gomez had always let me keep a bit of the money, but the new owners kept it all, although I got an occasional coin for work I picked up myself at the corrals and never told them about.
This morning a trader who knew me asked me to show a potential buyer a horse that I had trained. Besides the animal’s physical condition, the horse buyer was interested in the horse’s walk, pace, and gallop, which I put the horse through. The buyer, a young caballero, wanted a horse that he could parade in the small park called a paseo along the river to the admiration of the town’s affluent señoritas.
I have been told that every town has a greenway where caballeros can parade in their fancy clothes and prance horses for admiring young women in open carriages, and that the paseo in Mexico City was so large that the entire town of Oaxaca could fit into it.
I had trained the horse in what caballeros considered to be a more elegant movement. Called the paso, in reference to the way the horse was taught to pace, the movement was different than the ordinary and simple trot.
When the horse performed the paso, it moved a bit side to side, with its two hooves on one side hitting the ground at the same time and then the two hooves on the other side doing the same thing.
The paso was used mostly for show, but it actually created a smooth, comfortable ride that a horse can maintain for long distances and is suited for mountain journeys.
Another movement I had to put the horse through—the rayar—was not of my liking. It was a fancy display of horsemanship that machismo riders used only on the paseo and was dangerous for the horse.
To perform it, the horse was taught at a gallop to suddenly put its forefeet straight out, similar to what a mule does to keep from sliding down a steep slope, and then to whirl around to face in the opposite direction.
To teach the maneuver, a line is placed on the ground where the horse is supposed to stop and turn. That line, the border where the horse stops to whirl, was called a rayar. It required strong hands and a good command of an already-trained horse to get the movement right.
I didn’t like the trick and avoided training a horse to do it whenever I could because it damaged the horse’s forefeet. But it was a favorite of the young men showing off on the paseo—prancing dandies is how I thought of them, endangering a horse to attract a woman.
I was a better horseman and fighter than any of them, but because of my blood curse, I shoveled manure while they pranced in fancy clothes and expensive horses.
While getting an admiring glance from a pretty señorita was worth some endangerment, the rider should be the one who’s put in danger, not the mount.
I told myself that I would never be interested in horse tricks on the paseo even if I were a caballero, but sometimes when I saw the lovely women with their fancy gowns and grand carriages, the men with their clothes studded with leather and silver, the horses prancing proudly … I daydreamed a little and wondered what it would be like to have pure blood, to be in their position, and to be able to live and love and laugh—
That was sentimental nonsense, boyish fantasies that were never meant to be. Besides, there were times working with horses that I truly felt exhilarated—when I saw that my treatment of a horse’s malady had brought it back to its feet, when I was able to take a horse at a full gallop to test the animal’s speed and stamina, feeling free with the wind in my face and a powerful animal under my control.
Eh, at the end of those moments of being as free as the wind, when I had to turn the horse and go back to where I was still just a lépero and stable boy, I fought a temptation to keep going, to leave Oaxaca in the dust behind me.
Sí, I had a wanderlust, probably created by endless hours at night listening to Gomez as he sucked on a jug of wine and told tales of his travels as a boy that took him across a great ocean from mother Spain to the colony and over mountain ranges and high plateaus before he settled in Oaxaca.
What was beyond the Valley of Oaxaca?
Other than the stories Gomez had told me, I knew only what I overheard on the streets: that Mexico City was the queen of cities, a place where the streets are so wide, carriages can travel six side by side; that in Guanajuato, a city so rich in silver, a mine owner once paved a street with silver for his daughter’s wedding; that Vera Cruz and Acapulco were where the products of the colony flowed out and imported goods flowed in.
While the cities were just names and stories to me, sometimes when that wind was on my face and a powerful horse was galloping beneath me, I dreamed of riding into those places to experience the land, the people, and especially the women …
Ayyo! My daydream was smashed as a dirty little lépero street boy ran up to me.
“The stable owner says to get back and serve their customers.”
He began to plead with me for a handout.
I threw the boy a copper to stop his whining.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE STAGE COACH to the capital and a gachupin’s fancy coach were being hitched by their coachmen as I arrived back at the stable.
A group of Spaniards—several men and a woman—were nearby, waiting for the coaches.
I almost turned and ran in the opposite direction when I heard the woman speak to one of the men and then heard his reply.
The naked woman and her married lover!
Unable to resist the impulse, I glanced over. I had seen the woman only in pitch darkness and hadn’t gotten a look at all at the man, but I knew their voices.
They stood farther apart than necessary even for strangers, keeping up the pretense that they didn’t
know each other as they spoke to the others in the group.
Once I got over the moment of panic, I chuckled over the notion of going up to them and asking what he did with the sheepskin sleeve he used to catch his male fluid.
My good humor lasted until I almost bumped into my new master as he staggered in the stable’s main room and blew the stench of soured wine in my face.
“Get busy,” Héctor growled.
“Doing what? The coachmen will handle the carriages.”
“Work,” he muttered, looking around confused for a moment as he attempted to identify something to keep my idle hands occupied.
What I wanted to do was drag him to the pile of manure waiting to be hauled away and bury him in it, but I took my anger out at the anvil, shaping a horseshoe.
Héctor sauntered over to the cheating husband to fawn over him, but the gachupin waved him away, as he would to a fly buzzing around.
Apparently getting brushed off by the man was enough attention for Héctor to imagine that he had been rubbing shoulders with nobility.
“Don Carlos de Rueda is the brother-in-law of the marquis,” he boasted when he came back. “He is in Oaxaca to celebrate the return of the marquis from Spain. He owns the finest horse in the colony, a stallion of the bloodline of the warhorse Cortés rode in the great battle against the Aztecs.”
Héctor veered off to collect a fee from the stagecoach driver, or I would have pretended to be civil toward him and asked him more questions.
Not only was my own interest stimulated because the gachupin owned the most famous stallion in the colony, but he had made that puzzling statement to his lover last night:
“What you do for my stallion has kept me in gold so far, but as the animal grows older, suspicions will arise.”
What could a woman do for his stallion that keeps him in gold?
Why would suspicions arise?
The two of them departed in their separate coaches, and I was left with another question.
Héctor said that the stallion owner was in town to celebrate the marquis’s return from Spain. Had that other stallion owner, the one called El Mestizo, who was my benefactor, also returned from Europe?
I asked Héctor.
“Sí, the man is back with his brother.” Héctor gave me an appraising look. “He sent a message that he is coming by the stable with a horse he wants boarded. He requested you be present to handle the horse.”
My heart leaped.
“Listen, lépero, you must remember to tell El Mestizo how well we treat you. He is only the mixed-blood brother of the marquis, but some people say he has the marquis’s ear.”
“Only the mixed-blood brother? You phony little shit of a mouse, you would lick the sweat off his cojones if he let you!”
I don’t know how the insult popped out of my mouth. Neither did Héctor. But the expression on my face must have been that of el diablo himself because the man backed away from me, gawking in fear, and fled to the house that he occupied with his wife.
I realized that it wasn’t just the insult to my benefactor that had generated the slur to Héctor. Something in me had changed—my view of the world, and of myself.
When I was street trash, there was only me and other léperos at the bottom and the rest of the world above us. But I had now lived almost half of my life among pure-blooded Spaniards. I found some of them intelligent and brave; others, like Héctor, were spineless twits who would not have survived a night taking care of themselves on the streets.
Hearing Héctor demean El Mestizo, just one of many such slurs I’d heard from those with “pure blood” over the years about indios and mestizos, had finally snapped my patience. The drunken little weasel had cheap wine and indio beer in his veins while El Mestizo carried the blood of the great Cortés and the heroine Marina.
To hear that El Mestizo remembered me and wanted to show me a stallion made me giddy with joy.
I had always secretly hoped that someday he would return to Oaxaca so I could thank him for taking me off of the streets, and also show him the skills I had learned.
There was only one dark shadow that tempered my elation: I had greatly insulted Héctor.
If a gachupin had insulted him, he would have fallen to the ground and kissed the man’s feet and licked his dirty toes. But hearing it come from me, someone he not only felt superior to, but the only person around that he could actually lord over because he was a spineless worm, made him dangerous.
To me.
TWENTY-FIVE
WHEN EL MESTIZO arrived, he and his vaqueros had in tow a great black stallion.
I was awed at the sight of El Mestizo. All the saints of Christendom could have risen and come to me and I would not have been as effected as I was by the sight of my benefactor.
Nine years had not put any noticeable gray into his thick black hair. That was because of the indio in him, though a few gray specks had settled on the dark mat. That was the Spaniard in him. A few more wrinkles at the eye—perhaps because of the worries a gachupin carries. But otherwise, the Prince of Mestizos looked the same as he had when he took a mudlark off the street and made him a stable boy.
Héctor appeared suddenly, flying by me, fawning over El Mestizo as if the marquis himself had arrived. And in a sense he had for Héctor, because this was probably as close to the Marquis del Valle the drunken stable owner would ever get.
El Mestizo gave Héctor a polite nod, addressed him as señor when he said good day, and sidestepped him to approach me.
Like a fool, I awaited him as if my feet were planted in the ground. I was so in awe of him, so grateful for what he had done for me, I didn’t know what to say or what to do.
“I heard many good things about you from Gomez over the years. He wrote that you are not just a master of horses, but the grandmaster of horses in all Oaxaca.”
Ayyo! The great man had kept track of my progress even halfway around the world.
“He was a good man,” I said. “He treated me fairly and taught me a great deal. I miss him.”
“So I have heard.” He gave me an appraising look. “You are full-grown. Stronger than most, eh?”
“Perhaps.” I gestured at the blacksmith’s anvil and hammers. “Those are my swords and pistols.”
“May you use them only in peace. Since I have been back, I have heard from others about you. Caballeros who trade and train horses say that you can make horses rise from the dead.”
I laughed, embarrassed. “No, señor, but perhaps I have kept a few from going to horse heaven by asking them not to leave.”
“I see you are still talking to them. And do the horses tell you where they hurt?”
“Sí, señor, they whisper it to me when no one else is listening. Do you have need of my services? A horse suffering a malady?”
“No, actually I just wanted to make sure my stallion is well cared for tonight in the stable. What do you think of my prize?”
I walked over to his horse to get a better look. The vaquero holding him warned me off. “He doesn’t like it when people get close.”
I ignored him and got close. The spirited stallion stomped his feet and neighed, and I hummed as I walked around him, running my hand along his flank and rear.
“He is temperamental, territorial, strong-willed. Sired by the stud that I shared a stall with.”
“Yes,” El Mestizo said, “and he inherited his arrogance.”
“Is his bloodline good?” I asked.
“Almost the best. It runs back to one of the horses of the conquest.”
“Cortés’s warhorse?”
“One of them, though not the most prized of all.”
I wondered if the “most prized of all” was the one owned by the man Héctor said was a brother-in-law of Cortés’s sons.
I almost told him what I had overheard about the stallion bearing the most prized bloodline but didn’t because it would involve a great many explanations, most of which I would be hanged for.
“Where is
the sire?” I asked.
“Back in Spain, producing champion horses for caballeros who also prize the bloodline of the conquest. I didn’t want to have him make the long sea journey. He is most happy with his mares and oats.”
The stallion stopped fidgeting and gave me a nudge with its nose.
“There,” El Mestizo said, “you have won the friendship of another of my horses. Perhaps someday you will come to my hacienda and meet all of my horses.”
I was thrilled by the intimation that El Mestizo might have a job for me at his horse ranch.
Spaniards were coming up to the entrance to claim their horses.
“You have customers to attend to,” El Mestizo said. “The stallion’s name is Rojo. Take him to his stall and make him comfortable.”
El Mestizo left, and I told the men who had arrived that I would be with them momentarily.
Red was an apt name for the stallion, both for its temperament and its color. Like its sire, its color was the reddish-brown called chestnut, but it had more dark shades of red than I’d ever seen.
As I was leading the stallion to a stall, Héctor approached me, full of wine and bravado.
“Take care of the customers,” he slurred. “I’ll put the stallion away.”
“El Mestizo wanted me—”
He jerked the reins from my hand and gave me a shove. “Get away, you lépero bastardo.”
Héctor pulled at the reins and the stallion reared back, sending the stable owner stumbling into the coal brazier. Héctor yelped from pain as he brushed against the hot blazer, knocking it over, sending hot coals scattering on the ground.
“You filthy animal! I’ll give you a lesson you’ll never forget!” he yelled at the stallion. He grabbed the short-handled coal shovel and raised it, stepping up to the stallion.
“No!” I shouted.
I caught the shovel below the metal blade. Héctor pulled back on it and I hung on.
“Let it go!” I yelled.
He wouldn’t let go and I had to wrestle the shovel out of his grip. He swung his fist at me, catching me on the side of the face. It wasn’t much of a punch. I shoved him away from me, sending him stumbling backward to fall on his rear.