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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Milagro
Maureen Gilmer
Alma knew from the stories of her people that there had been dry times before. The stench floating on the winds told her every day that cattle were dying all over the valley. From her small adobe atop a long, low rise just north of the massive Tejon Ranch, she could see the condors circling where carcasses littered the low lands. The great dark birds were her spirit guides, a part of her world since birth. They came close to her house in the early winter mornings, perching like great sentinels of death on fence posts and dead trees. There they opened their enormous wings to the rising sun as it cleared the High Sierra peaks to the east. For what seemed like hours they stood, the black plumage efficiently absorbing the heat until they took flight for the day.
The tales told over winter fires described ancient migrations of their people in search of water during the rare dry year when rain refused to fall. This knowledge from ages of Cahuilla memory was why the padres at the mission had built such extensive aqueducts to carry water from the mountains to their land. For if the Cahuilla knew of the dry times, then the mission herds and fields would not survive either.
This was the first year in her lifetime when rain vanished from the moon of the elk through winter and around again to the time when the great bull elk began trumpeting for their mates. The stories she had learned as a child came to pass with once luxurious grass of the great valley grazed down to bare soil by ravenous wild cattle. She had watched them pawing the soil into dust clouds trying to reach roots, and once uncovered they were plucked with relish. But that was far from enough. Now the vultures grew fat and raised large families on the endless rotting carrion. Alma did not fault them for it was their purpose.
Alma was thankful her Papa did not survive to see this day. They had come from the mission after Spain summoned its priests home and their orderly Catholic world disintegrated. When she asked about her red hair, Papa had told of Marian, an American woman brought to the mission from a ship wrecked on the coast. She fell in love with Tomas the Indian, and once it was discovered she was with child they fled to escape punishment from the angry padres. But Marian died in childbirth and Tomas had no choice but to bring his bright spirit Alma back to be raised in the mission school with the rest of his people.
Her papa had chosen land on the second rise of hills east of the valley where the oak woodland was dense enough to keep her with acorn meal. There was plenty of grass to feed their heifers and the young bull they had cut from the abandoned mission herds, driving them eastward to the hills. Although she had lived well in the adobe her father built, they were Cahuilla and did not come naturally to raising cattle. Her papa had been trained to rope and butcher the mission cattle from horseback, but the care and breeding of his own herd escaped him. The calf failed to thrive and finally died of snake bite. The heifers wandered off, melting into the huge wild herds and were lost.
In the end her Papa aged quickly, his horse growing sway backed and finally died of colic. Together they reverted to the old ways that Alma had learned them from the other Cahuilla women who taught her to find food among the wild plants while her Papa hunted abundant game. Alma built granaries for the acorns and worked over her metate to keep them both well fed. Then before the drought her Papa grew ill and slowly slipped away, his final words freeing her to marry.
Alma lived alone in the house when the drought descended. The deer vanished into the high country, the rabbits lay dying around their burrows, fat coyotes picking at the remains. Even the quail, once plentiful had disappeared. Alma survived by the grace of their hand-dug well, but the water level had dropped precipitously and was now barely deep enough for the bucket to fill. She would soon have to climb down inside it to dig deeper if she was to have any drinking water at all.
Each day Alma worked at her loom set up outdoors under the brush ramada. At the mission she had learned to harvest yucca and strip it's fibers away from the green tissues. After bleaching them in mud she'd stockpile this soft and resilient fiber to weave into saddle blankets unique to her tribe. She sold them to the vaqueros from Tejon and the other large ranches, but even these men had moved on without work during the drought. But her people's stories held promise that the rains would come again and the vaqueros would be asking for the yucca blankets they claimed were the best for horses working twelve hours a day under saddle. Wool and cotton would not hold their loft but the yucca remained resilient despite the heat and sweat and compression. She knew these men would ride for days to obtain Cahuilla yucca weavings, so she kept up her work through the drought to prepare for their return. And perhaps among them a husband would come to create the small rancho her father had dreamed of.
The day broke hot and cloudless, the sky no longer blue but a hazy gray from dust devils dancing across the valley floor. Alma was thankful Papa had insisted they live on higher ground, though he had insisted it was far better to defend. But they both had heard other tales told of such immense floods that the people lived on isolated islands in an inland sea. They no longer walked but traveled by tulare boat from one shore to the other.
She'd risen early with the heat inside the adobe rising too early to remain indoors, the vultures were already flocked up over the new carcasses, waiting for them to cook in the sun and split open to make the entrails easier to feed upon. They were smart birds, patient and sharp of eye, able to see long distances as they floated across the ridges to gain altitude rather than work for it with their wings as the hawks did. It was that intelligence, and their ability to thrive upon adversity that had made them her spirit guides, and she never tired of observing their flight.
But this morning something was different. They circled over an odd form not far down hill from her home. As her eyes adjusted to the glare she caught movement different from the usual death throes of starved cattle. This creature's legs were too long, the stance headed into the wind while cattle always stood ass end into a gale. She squinted against the glare and saw that this was another animal entirely.
Alma went back into the house and retrieved her father's bow and pulled two arrows from the quiver on the wall. She headed down the slope, the animal becoming clearer by the minute. And then she knew it was a horse, it's head down, the tongue lolling and eyes nearly shut as it waited for the inevitable death to come. As she approached she could see it was big bellied despite outstanding ribs and hips, telling her without question this was a mare.
When Alma reached the horse she discovered remnants of a rawhide reata hanging from her neck. Her coat was thin, patches of bare skin bedeviled by the flies that swarmed like locusts over dead cattle. Alma had no idea how much life was left in the mare, but she thought that perhaps she could find a way to keep it alive. Gently she tugged the reata, but the far away eyes registered nothing. With more clicking and urging plus a thin stick to tap the mare's hind quarters into a tentative walk, they returned to the little adobe.
The well had recharged since she last drew water so there was enough to share with the horse. Alma offered the mare a small wooden bowl filled a few fingers deep with brown water. She immediately sucked it dry, her cracked tongue finally retreating into the great dark head, the eyes studying the peculiar woman with curiosity.
Alma had learned much from her father the horseman, and now she studied every inch of the mare in great detail. It was not easy with her so thin, but there was the shape of the head and the neck that said without question that this was a Californio's horse, a Spanish barb from one of the land grants. Alma suspected that when the wells gave out many had simply released their livestock to fend for themselves while they left for Monterey or San Diego to wait for rain.
Alma knew that if the foal inside that mare was well bred, and if it had not already died, she might be able to sell it in the future for a goodly sum. Eventually the ranchos would start up again and this would earn her enough to buy cattle.
Alma drew more water for the mare and haltered her to the hitching post, then took off across the hills to the east, a large burden basket held by a wide leather band that ran across her forehead. This was the Cahuilla way, to leave her arms free to gather. Mile after mile she trudged through the barren hills toward the eastern mountains until she came upon a sheltered valley that was part of the most distant Tejon lands.
In good years it was huge sink where a sea of tulare reeds stood in the still water drawing duck and migratory birds. Now the reeds were brown except for a small clump at the very lowest point. Alma used her arms to open a way through the dense reeds, her yucca sandals crunching over the deep cracks in the black clay. When she reached the green tulares there was no more water but the earth was still damp.
With her father's hunting knife Alma cut the plants off at their base, stuffing the leaves into her basket. Then her fire hardened digging stick coaxed the thick, fleshy roots from the damp soil, each one of them containing a great deal of nutritious starch. She spent hours working in the hot sun, filling that oversized basket to overflowing, then hoisted it up onto her back again. The sun was low and the shadows long as she trudged back to the house to find the mare still standing tied in the shade, her water bowl bone dry.
Alma set the basket down and poured it out on the dry ground and began sorting through the tulares as the mare watched hungrily. She carefully set aside the long leaves, then peeled the flower stems to reveal a soft white center that she would save for herself. She whisked the thick roots clean with a stiff soaproot brush and then cut them like potatoes into small pieces. These she fed to the mare one by one, listening to her crunch and swallow before offering the next. She knew that feeding too quickly would cause a horse to tie up, or perhaps colic, but the slow ingestion of easily digested starch would prepare the stomach for the fibrous leaves.
Alma spent the cool of the evening repairing the remnants of her father's corral, binding the dried lodgepole pine and willow with rope she twisted out of yucca fiber too coarse for her weaving. When it was sufficient to hold the mare she moved her inside, then untangled the remnant of reata. Once turned out the mare dropped to the ground, weakly rolled a bit, then stretched out with a satisfied groan to rest on her side in the cool evening breeze.
Alma knew she would be making more trips to the tulares. She considered going even further to where the prickly pear cactus grew. At the end of the dry season when grass was short, the mission Cahuilla always cut the cactus and burned away the spines to feed the cattle. Perhaps the mare would eat it too.
That night Alma went through her father's things. His gear was stored away in boxes so the contents would not be spoiled by field mice. Inside one heavily carved trunk that once belonged to the padres lay his leather breeches and soft riding boots along with the wide flat brim hat with its silver band. Underneath these things she found a finely braided horsehair bridle and a bosal plus other bits of tack essential to the vacquero's trade. In another flat wood box she found his forty foot rawhide reatas, three of them, each a slightly different color. She immediately recognized the thinnest one because he had used it to teach his young daughter how to swing a loop with great accuracy. This one Alma retrieved and then secured the box again before preparing for bed.
In the darkness she lay in her narrow bed trying to remember everything her father had told her about his horse. She remembered the foods he used when the grass was short, and the way he'd bring his gelding salt bush now and then for its minerals. Alma walked their land in her mind, recalling every tree and shrub that could yield forage. She knew them all, for her life at the adobe had been one of gathering the very same plants that fed her grandmother's people for ages.
The moment Alma awoke in the morning it was still dark, yet she sensed a change. The air was thick and still, already uncomfortably warm and the odor of carrion stagnant, but another scent evoked memories of better times when the grass grew green and luxurious across the valley. She lay there for a moment organizing her thoughts, then rose up to open the wood shutter on the adobe's single window.
Expecting to see the hazy sky she smiled to see a bank of dark clouds approaching from the east, silhouetted by the still weak light of the dawn. This, her father had said, was the place where summer storms came from. They were born in the desert, and when the winds blew from the mountains they would bring the great black thunderheads.
Alma slipped into her shift and yucca sandals, then stepped outside into the humid air. She rounded the adobe to where the corral nestled into the hillside sheltered from the weather. There she stopped short, for beside the mare stood a tiny foal, as dark in color as she was, it's little body thin but clearly healthy enough to survive. He turned and nuzzled his mother's bags, miraculously able to create milk. The mare turned her head around to touch the colt's hip, then looked straight at Alma as if she was announcing her surprise.
Alma drew muddy water from the well and set the whole bucket before the mare, then sat down to share the rest of the tulare root and stem. She studied the colt, a deep chestnut with a lighter fuzzy mane and tail, the hoofs perfect and its head beautifully dished like the Spanish horses that her father had spoken of on long winter nights. It was Arabian blood, he explained, that came from the Moors. These north Africans had crossed the sea to invade Spain, blending the blood of their small desert horses with the larger European breeds. Her papa always said the dished head was how you could tell good breeding, and also by the way the tips of the ears pointed inward creating a heart shaped space in between. Alma could see both these traits clearly in the foal, and she rejoiced for a good stallion always brought a high price.
As she prepared to head east again with her basket, the clouds grew darker and the wind blew in gusts. The land began to smell of rain, that scent of life so foreign after a year long drought. Though Alma had seen clouds pass by the adobe, not a drop of rain ever reached the parched ground.
Alma carried her gathering basket through the oak woodlands where only a few black acorns were scattered across the soil, pocked with maggot holes. They were all that the trees could manage with so little moisture. She reached the tulares and dug further bringing up all she could for her horses.
As she trudged back she thought of the mare, that like her was alone in the midst of an epic drought. She pondered names for the mare and foal, names in Cahuilla and Spanish until a bright flash followed by thunder brought her back to the present. As the first large drops smacked the ground she immediately began to chant the rain song of her people in thanksgiving, when followed with a prayer to the Virgin begging that her well would recharge. By the time Alma saw the adobe upon its long low ridge the rain was falling generously. Perched upon the fence posts was a condor, its wings folded as it gazed upon the foal trotting joyfully around the corral, excited by the first drops. It was then that Alma knew that two miracles had come, the mare and the rain. Each one brought a windfall of promise to her lonely life.
And so she knew that the mare would become Corazon, for few horses had the heart to survive and bare a foal under such stress. And the little colt, the miracle that would sire her remuda, would be Milagro. They would all survive until the first rains of fall helped the grass return. When it did, she would be ready for the vaqueros to buy her yucca blankets and Milagro's foals and perhaps among these men she would miraculously find a husband.
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