Paloma and the Horse Traders by Carla Kelly Read Free Book Online

was I to do?” he said,
his voice high and his words tumbling out.
    “ In mercy, free the other prisoner,”
Paloma snapped. She glared at the sergeant, who seemed to grow
smaller with every glance in his direction. “What is it you want
Eckapeta to ask him?”
    “ J-j-just the usual,” the sergeant
stammered. “Where is he from, what were their intentions, where
were they going?”
    Eckapeta gave Paloma a look full of disdain for
the sergeant, as if wondering how such a man could be sent to a
place like Santa Maria. She moved closer to the chained Kwahadi but
stayed out of his reach, which had proved so deadly for the other
prisoner. She spoke. No answer. She spoke again. No reply. She
might as well not even have been there.
    Eckapeta stepped back and looked at the
sergeant, who had moved only a few centimeters closer in the small
room with the big odor. “He will say nothing. I could ask all day,
and he would say nothing.”
    “ We could … could torture him,”
the sergeant ventured.
    “ He would still say nothing. He is
Kwahadi,” she said. “I suggest that you kill him right
now.”
    The sergeant gasped in horror. “Think of the
wrath that his fellow warriors would visit upon this
valley!”
    Eckapeta shrugged. “Then you never should have
allowed him to be taken alive. If you kill him, his brother
warriors will harm this valley. If you merely keep him in chains,
they will harm this valley. If you let him go, they will still harm
this valley.”
    “ Even if we let him go?” the
sergeant said, his eyes like saucers.
    Paloma turned away, embarrassed to see such
fear.
    “ If you let him go, he will know you
are a weak man, and he and his warriors will harm this valley. You
cannot change what will happen now,” Eckapeta said.
    Eckapeta watched the sergeant, perhaps looking
for some clue of his intent. When she saw nothing, she sighed and
threw up her hands. She spoke a few words to the Comanche, who
began to sing in a high voice.
    Paloma turned away. She knew what was coming.
She had heard a death song before, the high-pitched wail that made
the hair rise on her back and arms and turned her knees to
jelly.
    In one quick movement, Eckapeta grabbed a
Spanish lance in the corner of the blacksmith’s shop and launched
it into the chest of the Comanche, ending his death song. She fixed
a ferocious look on the sergeant, who quailed before her on his
knees.
    “ You! Send an order to everyone in
this little village to gather inside the garrison for
protection.”
    The soldier said nothing. Eckapeta looked at
the corporal and private who had come to find them. “Who can be in
charge, if not this man?” she demanded.
    “ I will,” said the corporal. He
turned away to shout some orders. With relief, Paloma watched other
soldiers obey him.
    “ We have to leave now,” Paloma
said.
    “ We’ll have no guards with us,”
Eckapeta said.
    Paloma took a deep breath. “Then it’s a good
thing that Emilio replaced our tired mounts with these horses.
Marco would be angry if he knew I was riding this
stallion.”
    A smile crossed Eckapeta’s pockmarked face. “We
will never tell him.”
    The sun hadn’t entirely left the sky. Paloma
knew this ride well—the one from Santa Maria, and church, and her
friends to the Double Cross. Ordinarily she and Marco took the
distance at a sedate pace, mostly because they liked free moments
without little ones around to chat and tease each other.
    With a bound that jarred her teeth, they tore
through Rio Santa Maria and raced on the dirt road toward home and
everything dear to Paloma, except her husband, who was probably
enjoying himself in Taos. Never mind. He would be here as soon as
he knew. She glanced at Eckapeta, and knew she was in as good
hands. It was as if her own parents and brothers, her husband, and
Toshua rode beside them. She hoped the baby inside her was too
small to feel any effects from the harsh ride, but this was not the
time to worry about such matters.
    She