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went through their
saddles, bringing back hardtack and jerky— biscoche and carne seca . Maria smiled as she took the food from them. Was
there nothing in this difficult land but hardtack and jerked
meat?
    Between bites, she told the little party of men what
had happened, as far as she knew. Once during the recounting she
started to breathe rapidly, her voice sounding high and tight to
her ears. Diego took her hands and held them in his own until her
breathing returned to normal. When she finished, several of the men
crossed themselves. They were silent then, all of them, turned
inward to their own thoughts.
    “These things are always with us,” Diego said at
last, then shook his head. “I do not mean that to sound hard.
Still,” he paused, looking across the river to the west, “they have
never struck so hard before.”
    “Who?”
    “Apache,” he answered, spitting out the word like a
foul taste. “They are our scourge, our special plague. We have good
reason to fear them.”
    The other men nodded, speaking among themselves in
low tones. Although she could not hear their words, she could tell
from the seriousness of their expressions that each man had
witnessed the handiwork of the Apache.
    “You were the lucky one. La Afortunada ,"
commented Diego Masferrer. “From now on, that’s what we shall call
you. Daughter of Fortune.”
    She smiled faintly at him, then shivered
involuntarily. He got to his feet. “Stay where you are, chiquita ,” he said. “We have work to do.”
    Silently the men followed Diego toward the wagons.
He stopped suddenly and turned to Maria again, his hands on his
hips.
    “Tell me. Were the Indians on horseback?”
    She considered. “Not at first. When they left, they
were riding the caravan’s horses and mules.”
    The men exchanged glances. “Now it has come to
that,” one of the soldiers said, clapping his hands together in a
frustrated gesture that made Maria jump. “They will never attack on
foot again.”
    The men went to the wagons. Maria sat with her back
to them so she could not see. But she heard them dragging what
remained of the bodies together into a heap. The stench was
dreadful, and she closed her eyes and covered her ears as the men
gagged and retched. As afternoon yielded to early evening, she grew
chilled sitting by the water, but she refused to move until the
work behind her was done. She could not bear to gaze on all that
death again.
    She listened as the men ripped the boards off the
unburned wagons and soon she heard the crackle of fire. The sound
startled her and she leaped up. For one terrible moment she was
back in the grove, hearing the caravan fire for the first time,
waking to a nightmare of torture and death. Then she remembered
where she was and stood in silence, her head bowed. She could think
of no words or prayers to offer for the wretched ones. Their
troubles were over. Hers had only begun.
    “It is done now.”
    Diego was speaking to her. She turned to him, then
glanced quickly away. His face was lined and drawn, even as she
knew hers was. He walked past her to the river where he squatted to
wash his hands and face. He was joined by the other men who also
sought to remove from hands and clothing stains that could only
dissolve slowly, if at all, through the years.
    I can tell you it will not wash off, thought
Maria.
    She was seized then by a fierce desire to be away
from that place of carnage and death. She could not sleep there
again and risk a visit from Father Efrain or Carmen de Sosa,
crawling around in search of her scalp.
    Already the sky was dark. She looked toward the
grove for a glimpse of those two specters peering at her through
the tall grass, waiting for her to sleep so they could claim her
again. She sobbed, covering her face with her hands in
mortification. Her fingers were ice cold, as though death were
already on them. “If you please, Señor; can we not leave this
place? Now?”
    Diego spoke to her out of the shadows. “We