Carlota
Scott O'Dell
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Houghton Mifflin Company Boston
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
O'Dell, Scott, 1903–
Carlota
SUMMARY. A young girl relates her feelings and
experiences as a participant in the battle of San Pasqual
during the last days of the war between the Californians
and Americans
1. San Pasqual, Battle of, 1846—Juvenile fiction.
[1. San Pasqual, Battle of, 1846—Fiction. 2. Cali-
fornia—History—To 1846—Fiction] I Title
PZ7.0237Car [Fic] 77-9468
ISBN 0-395-25487-6
Copyright © 1977 by Scott O'Dell
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher
Printed in the United States of America.
VB 10 9 8 7 6 5
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Author's Note
President Polk fervently believed that California, and the rest of the Southwest, belonged to the United States by right, by Manifest Destiny. He was joined in this belief by a strong faction in Congress who wanted to extend slavery from the South into the West. Between them, they deliberately provoked Mexico into attacking the United States in the year 1846.
The war that followed was fought mostly in Mexico and Texas. In California, which Mexico had won from Spain only a few years before, the ruling class, those who had come to California from Spain, were divided in their loyalties. Some wanted the United States to win. Some hated the gringos and wanted Mexico to win. Others, and they were in the majority, didn't much care who won so long as they were left to follow their pastoral ways. In time, if left alone, they would have revolted from Mexico and founded a republic of their own. Though they felt no love for the gringos, the de Zubaráns, for most of this story, belonged to the last group.
The war as it was fought in California was not a war but a series of comic-opera skirmishes. American adventurers, like General Frémont, marched up hills, raised flags, and marched down the hills again. There was one exception. After California had been overrun, a handful of Spanish lancers, out of pride and desperation, surprised and bloodily defeated General Kearny's Army of the West in the peaceful valley of San Pasqual.
The story of Carlota de Zubarán is based in part upon the life of Luisa Montero, who lived in southern California, near Mount Roubidoux, in the early years of the last century. Details of the San Pasqual battle are taken from the reminiscences of Juan Palomares and Kit Carson, and from the diary of Lieutenant Emory, a topographical engineer with General Kearny's Army of the West.
1
Trees and the tall grass bent. Clouds curled down from the mountains. Lightning forked through the sky, and thunder crashed. Wedges of rain slowly descended upon the Ranch of the Two Brothers.
My grandmother sat in her rocking chair and watched the storm beat against the windows. "It is a good sound the rain makes," she said. "I prefer it to the sound of bells or of birds, or of most anything."
Her cornhusks were in a tray on the table. She picked out one and took a double pinch of tobacco from a silver box. She sprinkled it into the husk and carefully rolled herself a long, thin cigarillo. Then she looked around for Rosario.
"Fire!" she shouted.
Young Rosario was in the courtyard, but he heard her screech and came running. He went to the fireplace and picked out a coal and quickly lit her cigarillo.
Doña Dolores settled back and began to puff and rock. She liked her chair because it fit her bony bottom. It had come from a place called Boston, thousands of miles away. She had had it for just a week.
"The only thing wrong with this chair," my grandmother said, "is that it was made by a gringo. Things made by gringos always have something wrong with them. Offhand it is difficult to say what will go amiss. It may develop a creak, like the last one. Or an arm will come loose. Or a rocker will fall off and pitch me on the floor."
"This one looks stout," I said.
"It is hard to tell what will happen to anything bought from a Yankee trader. Do you remember the wooden nutmegs I bought from a gringo?"
"That was before I was born."
"So it was. But imagine, nutmegs made of wood. They looked precisely like real nutmegs. And a polite, handsome young man sold them to me."
Grandmother struck the floor with the tip of her cane. "And now that the gringos have won the war, matters will be even worse."
The war my grandmother spoke about was the war between America and Mexico. We, the Californios, those whose ancestors came from Spain, were drawn into the fighting against our will. We had few quarrels with America. Nor many ties with Mexico; and it irked us that we were ruled by despots who lived a thousand leagues away. We wished only to be left to ourselves, to spend our lives in peace. This, we had learned, could not be done.
"The gringos have not won the wars," I said. "Yesterday I heard that we had beaten them in a battle somewhere in the North."
"Somewhere. It is always somewhere. The Californios have not won a single battle since the war began. And how could they when there is not one man among us who wishes to fight? The weasel-livered young think only of dancing and cards. The old are tired and do not care who rules them so long as they are left alone. The war is lost. It was lost the day it began. There are thousands of gringos. Who cares?"
"I care and you care."
"Little difference that makes. Two women. What of the men? What of Don Saturnino?"
"He will fight to protect the ranch. He and all the vaqueros and our Indians."
"Talk. Talk. The war is lost. A horde of locusts waits to descend upon us."
Doña Dolores always looked upon the dark side. I didn't feel that the war was lost. Perhaps in the North, but not here in California del Sur. Not here, ever.
Grandmother rocked and puffed and watched the rain beating against the window. Presently she finished the cigarillo and rolled another. Again she shouted for Rosario.
After he had come and lit her cigarillo, he got down on all fours in front of her and she put her feet on his back. I am sure he didn't like to be used as a footstool. Nor did I like it. He belonged to the tribe that had killed my brother, and this was the punishment my father had decreed. Rosario was ten years old, but he was no larger than a five-year-old; just a small bag of skin and bones, with small black eyes like copper centavos. What his Indian name was I do not know. He was a Piute Indian my father had captured in a raid when Rosario was only two.
"How long do you think the rain will last?" I said.
"Ten years ago, in the winter of thirty-six, it rained for a month. It almost washed the ranch away."
"The sky looked the way it does now, like a great gray blanket."
"Exactamente," Doña Dolores said. She gave me one of her sharp, bodkin looks. "Why are you so concerned about the rain?"
I had never lied to my grandmother, except once. Sometimes to my father and often to my sister. But never to my grandmother, because she had a good memory and usually found me out.
"There's a horse over at Jamal. He's a palomino, about two years old. I want to ride over and bring him back."
My grandmother blew smoke through her nose, two thin streams, and thought about something for a long while.
"This riding business," she said. "One of the vaqueros reports that he saw you riding Tiburón, the black stallion. Is that the truth?"
"It is true."
"With a leg on one sid
e of the horse and a leg on the other side. Astride! Is that also true?"
"It is also true."
"Do you know that young ladies or ladies of any age do not ride stallions? That they ride mares and geldings, but not stallions?"
"I do."
"How long have you known this?"
"For ten years. Since I was six and you told me."
"When did you start with the stallion?"
"This summer, in June."
"And with the legs on each side?"
"Yes. Otherwise it is hard to ride. You do not stay on a stallion if both of your legs are dangling on one side."
"Is it necessary to ride a stallion?"
"No, but it is more fun than to ride a mare."
Doña Dolores's cigarillo had gone out and Rosario brought another coal from the fireplace.
"This business of the stallion is the fault of your father," my grandmother said. "He should not have encouraged you to ride the stallion with your legs helter-skelter."
This was true, what she said about Don Saturnino. He had put me on a horse when I was only six years old. He sat me in his silver-studded saddle and walked the horse around the corral. We walked for most of an hour while he told me things about a horse. When my first lesson was over, he said for me not to say anything to my grandmother about what we had done. I promised not to and I didn't. The next day she asked me about the riding. She had heard of it from a vaquero, Felipe, the same one who had just told her about the stallion. I acted as if I had never been near a horse. Although I did not tell a lie, the way I acted it was still a lie.
It was the only lie I ever told her, for the next morning, while I was riding around the corral and my father was walking beside me, she suddenly appeared. She was lame and walked with a stick, but there she was, a half-league almost from the house, peering at us between the rails of the fence. And there I was, astride.
"So this is what goes on under my very eyes," she said in her calmest voice. "A scandal."
"Dear Mother," Don Saturnino said. "One day my Carlota will be good on a horse if, if you leave us alone."
"She still does not need to ride like an Indian. In my youth I rode sidesaddle from here to Los Angeles, which is more than fifty leagues."
"How long did it take you, Doña Dolores? This ride to Los Angeles. How many weeks?"
"Not even one week. Six days and a half, to be correct."
"If you had ridden astride in the manner I teach Carlota, then you could have reached Los Angeles easily in half the time."
"And have the countryside talk about me as they will talk about my granddaughter? It is an embarrassment. It is a scandal. It is unsupporta-ble." Sometimes my grandmother liked big words.
"Once Carlota rides a horse as it should be ridden," my father said, "and the countryside, as you call it—I presume you mean the Bandinis and the Palomareses—when these upstarts..."
The Bandinis and the Palomareses both had received their grants and moved from Mexico many years after we, the de Zubaráns, had settled upon Rancho de los Dos Hermanos. These were the people my father and his mother were talking about.
"When the upstarts see how beautifully she rides," my father went on, "how swiftly and how elegantly, they will copy her. All of their daughters will be riding astride within a year's time, as if they had always ridden that way. Indeed, as if they themselves, and they alone, had set the fashion."
"I do not care the flick of my little toe about either the Bandinis or the Palomareses," Grandmother replied. "I care about my own sense of what is proper."
Doña Dolores had paused to dab at her nose, as she stood there at the corral when I was only six years old.
Sometimes when she saw that she wasn't about to get her way, my grandmother dabbed at her eyes with a dainty pink handkerchief she always carried in her sleeve. But this morning she didn't use it. Instead, she went clumping off, swinging her stick back and forth as if warding off a horde of enemies.
"She is very angry," my father said. "We had best not ride for a week or so until she simmers down."
This did not please me, but I was then an obedient daughter, as I am now, mostly, and said nothing.
While the rain increased and beat loud upon the roof, my grandmother fell quiet. For a while I thought she was asleep. But suddenly she reached out and with the toe of her fine vicuña shoe gave Rosario a dig in the ribs.
"Off with you," she said, "and see that Anita brings my chocolate. We have nine servants, three cooks, two ironsmiths, two carpenters, two harness-makers, four weavers, one mayordomo, and twelve vaqueros. Yet with all this army, nothing is ever done."
"There are too many captains in the army," I said, easing myself toward the door. I did not get there.
"Before you leave," Doña Dolores said, "let us talk more about the business of the stallion."
She paused and examined me from the tip of my boots to the red bandana that bound my hair.
"Once you looked like a girl," she said. "That was before you started riding around the country like an Indian. Your legs were always too long, but now they have stretched out. Your skin is the color of horsehide that has been cured for a year. And your hair has long sun streaks in it. The only thing about you that looks like a girl are your eyes, the golden eyes of the de Zubaráns, for which you can take no credit and which, no matter what you do, can you ever change. And the white teeth, also."
Rosario came back and got down on his hands and knees and my grandmother very delicately put her tiny feet upon his back. She fixed me with her steady gaze. Behind it I could see her mind working.
2
The rain was coming down. It was running off the roof in a waterfall and down the trail that led to Los Angeles and down the trail to San Diego. It was running everywhere.
"The way the rain looks now," my grandmother said, "it may last for a week. Perhaps two weeks. It is coming from the sea. From the sea the rain has much endurance."
My grandmother took her eyes off me and began to rock slowly. Then she rocked faster and looked out the window for a while.
"If the rain falls for two weeks," she said, "creek beds dry for years will swell. Rocks as big as houses will block the trails; the Los Angeles river that you can jump without wetting a shoe will run from bank to bank. The Santa Ana on its way to the sea will take forests with it. Then we can postpone the thing until spring comes. God, Who is on my side, can do much by spring."
The "thing" my grandmother referred to was the wedding of my sister, Yris, to Don Roberto Peralta.
"Perhaps He can think of something bigger than a flood," Dona Dolores went on. "Like an earthquake, where the countryside opens and scares the wits out of everyone. The last time the earth opened up was nine years ago. It is time for another, like the one that shook all of Helena Yorba's china out of her cupboard. The set she bought from a Yankee trader, and bragged that she had paid one hundred cows for, fell right out on the floor and broke into a thousand small pieces."
"Perhaps Don Roberto will change his mind," I said. "He has changed it before."
"He has no mind to change," my grandmother replied. "Don Roberto is a worm. But it is not his fault. His father is also a worm. Roberto has been told that it is for the de Zubaráns and the Peraltas to join in marriage. Two of the great families of California to be made one. Don Roberto believes what he is told."
"It may be a good marriage," I said, though I didn't think so.
"If the marriage will be so good," my grandmother quickly answered, "why did you not think of marrying Don Roberto yourself? It is you who are the older. Yris is two years younger than you. Who in this life ever heard of a younger sister marrying first? It is wrong. It is never done. It is likewise a scandal."
Rosario started to sneeze and Doña Dolores lifted her feet until he had sneezed three times and stopped.
"Do you wish to do your grandmother a great service?" Doña Dolores said.
"Yes," I said without warmth. "I wish to."
"Wishes are v
ery cheap. Muy barato. Will you?"
"What is it that you wish?"
"I wish for you to marry Don Roberto."
I thought my grandmother was going to ask me to give up my stallion. I was not ready for an answer about Don Roberto.
"I will think about it," I said to gain time.
"Good," said my grandmother. "Begin to think about it now, at this moment."
She gave Rosario a prod with her foot.
"Go fetch my son," she said. "Whatever he is doing, fetch him."
Rosario scuttled off and my grandmother and I looked at each other warily and said nothing until my father came.
Don Saturnino was not tall, not so tall as I am, but he was stout-chested. He had small narrow feet and he was very proud of them. In a big chest he had sixteen pairs of boots, all beautifully stitched, of the best leather, and, to suit the way he felt, of many colors.
He bowed to his mother, taking off his sombrero and clicking his heels.
"It rains," he said.
"To good purpose," Grandmother said.
"What is the purpose? We do not require floods and torrents."
"The marriage," Doña Dolores answered. "It gives time to make changes. Roberto can marry Carlota instead of Yris."
"Don César and I have thought of the marriage. We have talked about it for five years."
"It is not proper that the younger daughter marry first."
"Don César and I have given thought to everything. This as well. It is not what is proper, but what is best for Yris and Carlota."
My grandmother puffed away calmly. She shifted her feet, looking for Rosario's back, but Rosario had not returned. He was outside, under the pórtale, feeding the big eagle that belonged to my father.
"Carlota and Don Roberto," Father said scornfully, pulling at his pointed beard. "Have you asked their permission?"
"Permission," Doña Dolores replied, "as you well know, is not required."
"It would be prudent, nonetheless," Don Saturnino said, keeping his temper. "Carlota is not Yris. She is a true de Zubarán."