The horses fell silent. Perhaps they were all thinking of the many partings they had endured in their lives. Few had had such luck to be reunited with those for whom they cared so deeply. Estrella could never hope to be reunited with Perlina, her dam.
Their thoughts were interrupted. Snorts and windy exhalations laced the air. “The thunder creatures are getting up to move. You’ll see them now,” Tijo said, looking around excitedly. “There’s a wallow over there, probably near some good grazing — thunder grass, the clan calls it.”
The wind shifted and the odor of the thunder creatures became sharper. Estrella signaled that they should start walking, but only at a soft-hoof walk. She swung her head four times in each direction. The meaning was clear — no snorting, no whinnying, no wheezing. Absolute quiet so as not to disturb the huge beasts. Even though the horses could not see them because of the thickening fog, the creatures had to be very close.
They walked in silence. Even the large stallions’ hooves made no noise as they struck the ground. The familiar sounds of the horses’ breath faded away, as if the animals were more spirit than flesh and blood.
Suddenly, Tijo tensed on Estrella’s back. “No,” he whispered.
Although there had not been a single sound from the first herd, something had disturbed the creatures. The ground began to shake. As the fog thinned in the distance, that part of the earth was buckling up into a new mountain range, but this one was a mere half league away. The landscape, the very skyline was changing before their eyes.
“Is that an earthquake?” Bobtail neighed tensely.
“No! Hush!” Tijo said urgently. “These are huge animals. Whenever they move in a herd like that, you will feel something beneath your hooves.”
“What is that dark dust cloud? Darker than the night?” Estrella asked.
“That’s the thunder creatures. It’s a big herd,” Tijo said.
There were deep rumbling sounds now, accompanied by great belches and gusty reports.
“That’s their stomachs growling, digesting, and preparing for more food,” Tijo explained.
“More food?” Grullo asked eagerly, swinging his head from side to side.
“You think you eat a lot, Grullo.” Tijo laughed softly at the big dun-colored stallion. “But one of these bulls eats five times as much as you.”
“So you say your people hunt them?” Grullo asked.
“Yes. Their meat is sweeter than most meat and rich. What they don’t eat, they cure and eat all through the winter. It fills the belly like no other meat.” Tijo paused. “But it takes skill and strong hunters to bring down a single thunder creature. Two brought down are enough to keep a band going through a long winter.”
Estrella tossed her head sharply to one side to signal that they would go around the creatures and leave them a wide berth. But she did not hurry. Again, she led them in a soft-hoof walk, something that would not have been possible had they been wearing iron shoes. The herd followed quietly. She blessed the fog that began to roll in again and conceal the first herd’s presence. She was grateful that their hooves were naked, that none of them wore shoes. She blessed the nearly invisible moon that hung like a filament of her mane in the sky, and she was thankful that her favorite star had been swallowed by the roiling mist of this darkness. If they could just pass through — unseen, unheard, mute like a ghost herd in the shadows of this night.
Pego was uneasy as he trotted along with the chieftain on his back. They had joined other men of El Miedo’s expedition. They were all mounted now. And they were heading toward a vast plain where some of the scouts had seen the tracks of the first herd. He could feel El Miedo’s eyes on him the entire time. Pego’s mind worked slowly. He wants me. Will he exact revenge if he captures me? One thing was certain. He would not be treated like a god, not the way this band of Chitzen treated him. The chieftain had assigned two strong-handed members of the band to massage his muscles every time they returned from a ride. A burr was not allowed to rest for a minute in his mane or tail, as two women meticulously groomed him three times a day with the combs made from bone. Not only that, but the chieftain’s mate was ordered to prepare special foods for him. The tastiest was a dish made from the thorny plants. She would strip these plants, then mash the flesh into a creamy pulp. It was a tangy mixture both sweet and sour at the same time, and he was served this dish as if he were a king. The chieftain would spread out a large white blanket. He would sit at one end eating his victuals from a bowl and insisted that a wooden bucket of the mash be set at the other end for Pego. All this would vanish if the chieftain traded him to El Miedo for glass beads and muskets. That could not happen!
But Pego could tell that the chieftain was falling in love with the muskets. When El Miedo had demonstrated how the musket could bring down a deer, the Chitzen had gasped in delight. A shaft of moonlight had fallen on the shiny surface of the musket that was matched only by the gleam in the chieftain’s eyes. He wanted that killing stick. And El Miedo, through smiles and gestures of offering, communicated that one would be his if the chieftain would help capture the boy and the first herd. As if magically summoned, a deer had suddenly materialized. El Miedo raised the firing stick, aimed it, and brought down the deer in one shot. Then his men butchered the deer and gave every bit of meat to the Chitzen. From that moment, they were in El Miedo’s hands. Pego knew that the musket was the lure. The trap wouldn’t take long, for soon the Chitzen would be slaves and the muskets trained on them.
Hours later, Estrella breathed a sigh of relief. She had successfully led her herd around the thunder creatures, and now the horses were taking a well-deserved rest under the shade of a large tree. Within a few minutes, she fell sound asleep, her legs locked in the slumbering posture. Yazz stood next to her surveying the landscape, while the others indulged in their favorite ways to relax. Grullo rolled in the dirt, letting out little snorts as he scratched his back. Angela and Corazón stood head to tail, grooming each other.
Hope watched all this from a thicket of sagebrush. He had followed the horses around the thunder creatures and knew they were weary. If there was ever a time to strike, this was it. Yet he knew now that he could not seek vengeance. His father’s soul was lost. There was nothing he could do to save him, and most important, Little Coyote knew that he would never be haunted by him. He was done with hiding, with spying on this herd. Hope was determined to become a part of something, something good. He came out from behind the thicket and took his first step toward that something. Just at that moment, the air split as a loud, sharp crack reverberated across the plains.
“Guns!” roared Arriero, who’d spent enough time in battle to recognize the sound.
Hope froze. The Ibers were far behind them. Or so he had thought. Could they have followed the herd unseen?
“Men and guns!” Bobtail’s shrill whinny cut through a thunderous pounding that could never have come from men and horses alone. It was something else …
Hold On tossed his head and flared his nostrils to sift through the scents swirling through the charged air. “The Ibers are close. They’re hunting the thunder creatures.”
Estrella now saw them. Dusty figures in the dawn, hundreds of Ibers were mounted on horses and mules, and Chitzen on foot followed, thinking they were on a grand hunt for enough meat to get them through the winter.
For a moment, Estrella couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. Two terrible words echoed through her head: I’ve failed. The omo owl had been right. She should have split the herd. And now it was too late.
Then the pounding of the massive creatures became deafening. It was as if the earth were convulsing. The other horses snorted anxiously, their eyes wide with fear and confusion as they looked to Estrella, waiting for her to tell them what to do. But all she could do was stare at the cloud of dust rising up from the horizon.
“Stampede!” Tijo yelled as he leapt onto Estrella’s back. But his voice was lost in the concussion of noise as over a thousand thunder creatures raced in
panic. Like a turbulent dark river the immense animals streamed across the plains.
Tijo leaned forward and shouted in Estrella’s ears, “Stay away from the middle. Get to the edges.” They could smell the sweat of the beasts. And cutting through that odor of sweat was the acrid smell of gunpowder.
Guns! Hold On thought. Guns! I thought we had left those far, far behind. Hold On ran shoulder to shoulder with Estrella.
“We must split into two groups,” Yazz whinnied, before she realized she must save her breath. No one could hear her in the midst of this maelstrom of noise, fear, and guns — for the guns kept firing. She could hardly see, for the thunder creatures had kicked up a blizzard of dust. Even breathing was hard, and with each breath they inhaled more dust than air. She heard a hacking near her. It was Hold On. Poor Hold On, whose lungs had been scraped with smoke in the canyon fire and his eyes singed into darkness. Would he now finally succumb? Yazz heard the grand old stallion stumble. But he was up again, his voice rasping. The thud of his hooves seemed like a drummer’s beat in a march and beneath them a refrain: I shall not yield … I shall not yield.
Estrella heard that beat as well. The beat from the stallion’s hooves began to reverberate through the herd. The old horse’s astonishing determination despite the clamor seemed to travel through the herd. They would not be captured. They would sooner be blown to bits by musket fire.
Is it possible? Estrella thought. Are we gaining speed? Will we escape?
Then there seemed to be a clearing in the dust at the very center of the herd. A whiteness rose that was not dust at all as the pelt of the darkest of the thunder creatures began to fade. At first, it turned pale yellow. But it grew whiter and whiter. Tijo now realized he had felt her presence, Haru’s spirit, ever since they had arrived on the plains. The huge white creature turned its enormous head. The eyes on either side fixed him in its gaze. Haru! She had found a new spirit lodge!
Go east,
Go west.
Guns and men
They shall enslave
And this will be your living grave.
But it was too late. Estrella heard two words over the din: “¡Adelante! ¡Adelante!” It was the voice of an Iber. Then a peculiar whistling seared the air. Like a snarl of vipers, something writhed above her and Tijo’s heads. Then she felt the sting as two lassos fell upon them. There was the sudden burning of the rope on her neck and then the cinching. She twisted violently, crashing to the ground. Tijo felt himself yanked from her back, then reeled in like a fish.
From her spirit lodge, Haru looked on in horror. She knew in that same moment that she had quickly worn out this lodge of the thunder creature. She had tried to reach beyond the shelter of the immense creature. A spirit housed within the body of another animal could only see a story about to happen, tell a story, but had no power to control that story. The spirit in that sense was powerless. She had tried to control the story. She must return to the spirit camps perhaps forever.
Estrella fought them all the way back to the Ibers’ camp. A chain twitch clamped down painfully across her upper lip and restricted the movements of her whole head. There were now three ropes around her neck, and the Ibers were trying to get close enough to hobble one of her front hooves to her back hoof, but she kept bucking and whinnying. Her eyes rolled into her head. She crashed to the ground, and before she could get up, they had secured the hobbles just above her fetlocks. Then more ropes, until finally eight Ibers were actually dragging her into the stall. The last thing she recalled was the slam of the stall door and the sound of the bolt lock. She lay there in the suffocating, airless darkness for quite a while in a state of shock. The wall seemed to lean in on her. There was no sky, no stars, no moon nor sun. It was like the ship hold she had been foaled in, except there was no dam. No Perlina.
At last when she got up, she found that the hobble on her feet had loosened. There was no longer a twitch, but she had three ropes around her neck looped through iron rings on the stall walls. She began panting again. There was not enough air to breathe, and the darkness closed in around her.
She was dying. And she had only herself to blame. Her impatience had ruled her, owned her, and led her into this disaster. If only she had stopped and listened when the omo owl appeared. Then painfully she recalled Bella’s words: “Have faith, young’un. We all have faith in you.” The very word faith had made her flinch. And now she knew she’d been right. She did not deserve anyone’s faith.
But what had happened to the herd? She and Tijo were the only ones taken to the camp, which meant the others had probably escaped. But were they together, safe? Or had they scattered during the stampede and were now wandering apart, scared and lost and alone? Her heart ached as she thought about Hold On sniffing the air for signs of his friends.
The walls of the stall pressed tighter. Her heart raced. The panting seized her again. She must concentrate on breathing normally, deep long breaths, not the shallow ones that seemed to scrape at her lungs. She must quell the panic that was threatening to suffocate her.
She stood very quietly for a long while, and eventually realized that she was not alone. Pego was in the next stall. She recognized his scent. Oddly, she was not angry or fearful. She would not waste fear on him.
But she was fearful for Tijo. Where was he? She couldn’t smell him. What would they do to him? Enslave him as they had the Chitzen? They, too, were in fetters. She’d heard their wailing and seen them placed in a pen. El Miedo had taken them as slaves just as the Seeker had done to the Chitzen of the south. How would Tijo fare as a slave among slaves, people who already had hated him? Would their hatred for him deepen now that he was more horse than human?
Estrella heard footsteps approaching. She knew the scent immediately. El Miedo. He smelled of the spirit liquids that she remembered from her time on the ship, the strange drink that made the men behave crazy at times. There was also sweat. Human sweat was different from that of animals with fur. It was stronger, saltier. She had only encountered this man El Miedo two times, once months before at the ravine when they had jumped, and then when she had been roped and dragged into the stall. He had stood by gloating as they had hobbled her hind feet. Although, at first, she didn’t recognize his language, he had stood there making strange triumphant hooting sounds as they had finally attached her hobbled feet to a stake. He was taking great pleasure in seeing her vanquished, actually clapping his hands with delight. At one point, he tripped near her hind leg, which she tried to lash out to kick him. But of course she couldn’t. He delighted in her failure. Stepping around to her head, he drew his face close to hers. The stench of his breath was awful. His eyes like dark agates bore into her.
His brow knotted as he spoke. His thick mustache twitched as if it had a life of its own. The Iber language, which she’d learned as a tiny foal on the ship, began to come back to her. She knew what he was saying. “I shall break you, and if I don’t break you, I shall crush you.” She peeled back her lips, and a sound she never knew she could make slithered out — a long, low hiss like that of a snake. He looked startled, then suddenly his fist smashed her muzzle. She saw the blood on his knuckles. Her blood. He turned away, delighted.
The indignation was worse than the pain. She, who was born wild, was now subject to the whims and cruelty of men. She could not bear it. She spun around and kicked the stall in frustration, hoping to feel it shatter under her hooves.
Next to her, El Miedo was addressing Pego. “So, my friend, we meet again, eh? Our last encounter — well, how should I put it? — was a bit rough.” There was a long pause. “And now look at you. All four legs hobbled to posts. I doubt you will ever throw me again. Humiliate me in front of my troops again, you cowardly beast!” Estrella heard a thud, the same sound of his fist smashing a horse’s face. Pego’s. But Pego did not emit a single whinny.
“I called you a mule then, and that is what you are and shall be from now on. You see, I plan to build a road. A road to El Dorado. There is gold in this country
. I can smell it. I shall find the gold and build a road, for there will be cartload after cartload of gold. And you, my friend, shall help me build that road. You shall be yoked and learn to work in the jerkline with the other mules and the humans I’ve captured. You like that? You … you … Pura Raza.” He spat out the two words as he spun on his heel and strode away.
Once El Miedo left, only silence followed. A deep, thick silence that was finally broken by Estrella.
“We are all to be slaves, then,” she said.
“He said nothing about you,” Pego replied flatly. The pride in his voice had disappeared, and Estrella could sense that something inside him had broken.
“If Tijo is a slave, then I shall be as good as enslaved myself. If he is yoked, I am yoked.”
Estrella knew that Pego could not understand that. He could not comprehend that kind of bond between two living things. That souls could be bound to one another in a manner that did not always require chains. She would never be free until Tijo was free. She did not even know where Tijo was being held, but there was one thing she did know — neither she nor Tijo would let El Miedo break them. Somehow, they would escape. She had Tijo to live for, the herd to live for. Pego had nothing.
They had not split, yet the herd felt as if their heart had been ripped out. The horses were snorting and trembling as they milled about confusedly on the edge of the plains. The thunder creatures had gone, leaving nothing but trampled grass and despair in their wake.
“But are you sure, Hold On?” Angela asked frantically. “Are you really sure that they got Estrella and Tijo? How? How could that have happened?”
“I don’t know. I just heard the rope fall on Estrella, then a second later on Tijo, and they were gone. Just gone!”
Grullo broke in with a shaky voice. “I saw Estrella fall to the ground. I saw the rope around her neck and one on Tijo’s shoulders. He flew into the air. He could have been trampled — more easily than Estrella.”