When Garza rode with Don Ramón to the ranch house, he informed his wife Magdalena of the extraordinary proposal, and although neither he nor she could read, he showed her the impressive document heavy with wax seals. They discussed the offer for several minutes while Don Ramón inspected his shoes, his fingernails and his knuckles; then they came to stand before him, holding hands, and Magdalena, delighted to get land, any land, said: ‘Don Ramón, we kiss the soles of your shoes. Land of our own after these many years. God will bless you, and we will too. Teodoro and I will go down to the river and take the land’—and here she tapped the precious parchment—‘but because we love you and your family, we’ll leave our son Domingo here to care for the ranch, as before.’
‘No, no!’ Don Ramón said. ‘Your son must go with you!’
Now Teodoro began to argue that in simple fairness they must leave Domingo behind, but when this was said a second time, Don Ramón became angry: ‘He will go with you. To build the corrals, the barns.’
So it was settled, and Don Ramón slept at the ranch for three nights until the Garzas were packed and lesser hands instructed as to the care of the cattle. He gave the departing family four good horses, a fine bull, six cows and the loan of seven armed men to protect the exodus as it crossed the hundred leagues of Indian lands separating it from the place where the Rio Grande approached the Gulf of Mexico. As they pulled away from El Codo, Don Ramón rode with them for several hours to make sure that they were really on their way; then he embraced Teodoro and his wife, wished them luck in their new home, and shook hands formally with Domingo, seventeen years old, handsome, clever, honest. ‘You’re a good lad, son. Build your own ranch, and make it prosper.’ He reined in his horse, told the armed men protecting him to wait, and watched as the little caravan headed toward the southern horizon. By this time next month they’ll reach the place, he thought. I remember it that first night when Escandón and I were riding ahead. Rich land, plenty of water, even some trees, as I recall. Escandón advised me to choose my land on the south side of the river. When I said I liked the look of the north, he said: ‘It’s yours, if you think something can be done with it.’ And now it’s Garza’s. He reflected on this for many minutes, finally muttering to himself: ‘Their son could make his fortune on good land like that. That’s why I chose it, for its richness.’ As he recalled the capable youth he had sent into exile, other thoughts surged into his mind, but he repressed them, for he did not wish to consider such possibilities: He’s a mestizo. He has his own place, and it’s not here.
Signaling to his escort, he headed back to town.
The cumbersome entourage which Don Ramón assembled in February 1789 for the long trip to Mexico City would be able to cover about four leagues a day (roughly ten and a half miles), and since the distance was about four hundred leagues, the trip would require a good hundred-odd days of unrelieved travel, plus time for repairs, for rest on Sundays, when Doña Engracia refused to allow the horses to be worked, for the forced halts at swollen rivers, and for much-needed recuperation periods in the provincial cities like Saltillo. The journey would thus require about half a year, then a six-month visit in the capital, plus another half year for the return. No family initiated a trip like this without prayers and solemn adieus, for everyone knew that sickness or flood or the Apache and bandits who prowled the lonely stretches might take the lives of all. When the Saldañas bade farewell to the Veramendis, there were tears aplenty, especially when the dear friends Trinidad and Amalia embraced.
The Saldañas knew that the bleakest part of the journey came at the start, for once they crossed their own river, the Medina, they left Tejas and entered upon those empty, barren plains reaching down to the Rio Grande; it was proper, they thought, that these wastes not be a part of Tejas, for they were El Desplobado, totally unoccupied, and could best be understood as the desert which constituted the northern part of Coahuila.
The Saldañas would traverse almost three hundred miles of this desert before they reached partial civilization at Monclova and real settlement at the entrancing city of Saltillo, so they wrapped damp cloths about their nostrils and lips to keep out the dust and plunged into the forbidding lands. After nineteen wearing days they reached the Rio Grande and the excellent hospitality of the missions at San Juan Bautista, where they lingered for two weeks. The friars were glad to welcome them, for they brought news of Tejas, and the Saldañas were pleased to stay because the missions had fresh vegetables.
Almost regretfully Trinidad bade the friars farewell, and now started the dangerous part of the journey, eighteen days across the desolate, exposed stretch to Monclova, for it was here that the Apache often struck, wiping out whole convoys. Eleven mounted soldiers accompanied the travelers, for the Saldañas were personages and risks could not be taken. Day after day the wagon in which Engracia de Saldaña rode creaked over the forlorn pathway, this royal road, with never a house to be seen nor even a wandering shepherd. Once Don Ramón told his granddaughter: ‘When they ask in the plaza at Béjar “Why aren’t there more settlers here?” this is the reason,’ and with a sweep of his arm he indicated that terrifying emptiness, that mix of sand and stunted trees and washed gullies down which torrents cascaded when the rains came, pinning travelers inside their tents for days at a time.
South of Monclova everything became more interesting, for now the Saldañas entered one of the most enchanting areas in all of Mexico: beautiful barren fields sweeping upward to become graceful hills, then low mountains and, finally, crests of considerable size. El Camino Real now became truly royal, providing grand vistas and magnificent enfolding mountains, so that one had the impression of piercing into the very heart of the hills. Repeatedly Don Ramón halted the troop to say: ‘I remember this spot when I was a boy. Captain Alvaro, my father of blessed memory, brought me and my brothers here and we took our meal by that waterfall. How long ago it seems.’ He told Trinidad that she, too, must remember this spot: ‘Let’s see. You were fourteen last month. If you marry at sixteen, as a girl should … babies … then the babies marry … and they have babies.’ He stopped to count. ‘You could be traveling down this road in 1843 with your own grandchildren. And when you do, halt here and have your merienda and lift a cup to me, as I now do to my father, may God rest his soul.’
It was from such conversations that Trinidad had acquired for a child so young an unusual sense of the passing of time. She perceived that a human being was born into a certain bundle of years, and that it did not matter whether she liked those years or not; they were her years and she must live her life within them. If they turned out to be good years, fine. If they were bad, so be it, for they were the years in which she must find her husband and have her children and perhaps take her grandchildren to a merienda in the mountains like this, at spots where her grandfather and his father had enjoyed their rest stops and the tumbling waters.
When the picnic ended she ran to Don Ramón and kissed him, and he said: ‘There will be even better moments than this, Trinidad, you mark your old grandfather’s words.’
The first of them came in the gracious town of Saltillo, for here Trinidad saw her first community of any size, and she was awed by its magnificence: ‘It is so big! There are so many shops! A person could find anything in the world here!’
For the first two eye-opening days she savored Saltillo, especially the new church, so large and so majestic, its ornate façade exquisitely adorned with intricate carving and crowned by a beautiful shell above the entrance. To the right rose a stern tower topped by three tiers of pillars, behind which hid a carillon that echoed long after the last peal was struck. It is overwhelming, like God Himself, Trinidad thought. One side of Him is all gentleness and beauty. The other is almost frightening, so big, so powerful. But the more she studied this uncompromising structure the more she accepted both halves.
Four times she returned in daylight hours, captivated by its mystery, and when Don Ramón teased her for wasting her time, she explained: ‘I’ve neve
r seen anything so grand before. In Tejas …’ He went to a store and purchased pen and paper for her, and with these she sketched the church, rather effectively, Don Ramón told Engracia, and he pleased Trinidad by asking solemnly if she would sign it for him, and she did: ‘Trinidad de Saldaña, Dibujado en Saltillo, 16 de Mayo de 1789.’
It was not until the evening of the third day that Trinidad discovered another wonder of a city, for then her elders took her to the church plaza, where she saw for the first time not the aimless wandering about of young people in a rural village like Béjar, but the formal Spanish paseo of a major town like Saltillo. She and her family reached the plaza when the paseo was in full swing, and for some minutes she watched, open-mouthed, as handsome young men and alluring girls swung past, talking always to someone of their own sex, pretending to be indifferent to the other. Finally she brought her clasped hands up to her lips and sighed: ‘Mother, this is so beautiful!’
It was, and there Trinidad stayed till the last promenaders left the plaza. She had seen something which touched on the rhythms of life, its uncertainties, its mysteries. She could not get to sleep that night, for in her mind rose the awkward towers of the church and in their timeless shadow walked the young people of Saltillo, pursuing their unstated passions in the ancient Spanish way.
It was obvious to Engracia that on the next night her daughter was going to plead for permission to join the paseo, and this posed a problem, which she took to her father-in-law: ‘I’m certainly too old to parade with her holding my hand. And she knows no one with whom she can walk.’
‘Let her walk alone.’
‘Never.’
‘I seem to remember girls walking alone, when I was younger.’
‘Not girls of good family.’
Don Ramón, recognizing that he must assume responsibility in the matter, went to the manager of the inn at which they were stopping, and said forthrightly: ‘Don Ignacio, our fourteen-year-old granddaughter wants to join the paseo. Do you know a girl of impeccable family with whom she could walk?’
‘I have a granddaughter, excellent family, her mother born in Spain.’
‘Don Ignacio, I would be honored.’
‘To the contrary. We’ve all heard of your martyred uncle, Fray Damián. The honor would fall upon our family.’
So it was arranged that Trinidad would make the paseo with fifteen-year-old Dorotéa Galíndez. When the evening bells rang, the nervous girls asked their elders how they looked, and Don Ramón replied: ‘If I were twins, I’d fall in love with each of you.’ Then, nodding very low to Dorotéa, he added: ‘If there’s a cavalier out there tonight, he’ll ride away with you.’
Señoras Saldaña and Galíndez waited about an hour before taking their daughters to the plaza, for they wished to introduce them into the parade unostentatiously, but as soon as the two girls entered the plaza the young men meeting them in the paseo grew attentive, and for the first time in her life Trinidad realized that she had more than an ordinary appearance. Her warm smile and uncalculated approach so tantalized the passing young men that one young fellow said to the friend with whom he was walking: ‘That’s the kind of face you remember at midnight when you can’t get to sleep.’
Dorotéa, a year older, warned Trinidad that girls must never look directly at the boys; they must appear to be engrossed in each other. Dorotéa played this game to perfection, finding in the country girl from Tejas a person of unlimited curiosity, and the two chattered happily as the young men passed. But Trinidad was not interested in games; she was noticing attractive young men for the first time in her life, and she was bewitched, her pretty face turned brazenly toward them, her unforgettable smile greeting them with joy.
That night Dorotéa told her mother about Trinidad’s forward behavior, and Señora Galíndez spoke to Engracia: ‘You must warn your pretty daughter against an unbecoming boldness.’ So the next afternoon Trinidad’s mother and grandfather explained that it was most unladylike for a young woman to demonstrate too much interest in young men. ‘You are to smile, of course,’ Don Ramón said, ‘but only to yourself. That adds mystery.’ Inviting Engracia to walk the narrow room with him, he explained: ‘Your mother is Dorotéa. I’m you.’ And he minced along, talking with great animation to Engracia, who smiled back at him. ‘This is how proper girls make the paseo,’ and on he pranced.
‘You look so funny!’ Trinidad cried.
Don Ramón stopped, and reprimanded her: ‘If a girl of good family like you smiles openly at young men, it’s very forward. And if you actually encourage them, you’re brazen, as Señora Galíndez warned.’
‘She’s a busybody.’
‘Without her approval you cannot walk with her daughter,’ Engracia said, and when Trinidad started to reply, her mother pressed a hand against her lips. ‘Child, remember that three days from now we go on to San Luis Potosí. Dorotéa stays here, and if her reputation is damaged by some foolish thing you do, she suffers, not you.’ She cuffed her daughter lightly on the ear and said: ‘Now you behave yourself.’
Trinidad did behave herself for the first half of that night’s paseo, but as the girls rounded a corner by the church steps Dorotéa gasped ‘Oh!’ and Trinidad looked forward. Then she, too, gasped.
Joining the men’s circle in an easy, indifferent manner came the most engaging young man either girl had ever seen. He would have been spectacular even had his face not been so pleasing, for he was an outstanding blond among all the dark-haired Saltillo youths, and so graceful that he seemed to move without his feet actually touching the ground. He was one of those fortunate men who would always be slim, and he would retain that air of youthful excitement, that devastating smile, those bright eyes filled with wonder. Age would not wither him nor years increase his girth. He was now nineteen, a mere five feet five inches tall, weighing no more than a hundred and forty pounds, and so he would remain.
When the young man came abreast, Trinidad threw caution away and smiled directly at him. To her dismay, she realized that he was smiling at Dorotéa, and she at him.
Although Señorita Dorotéa Galíndez had been a very proper young lady when none of the passing men interested her particularly, she became a very skilled young temptress when someone as intriguing as this newcomer came her way. She now lost all interest in Trinidad, and since she would encounter the stranger twice in each complete turn of the circle, as soon as she completed one pass she began preparing for the next, so that although the young man would be meeting many girls in his round, he would meet none more obviously affected or more eager to make his acquaintance than Dorotéa. She saw to that.
So the enchanted evening progressed, one of the most compelling and confusing that Trinidad would ever know: the beauty of Saltillo, the grandeur of the new church, moonlight filling the plaza, the smell of flowers, this handsome stranger, but most of all, watching a determined young woman of fifteen planning her moves to entrap a devastating young man of nineteen who was making his own plans to entrap her. Trinidad was by no means watching this as one detached; she wished desperately that the young fellow had saved his smiles for her, and the more often she saw him the more she liked him, but she was sensible enough to know that Dorotéa had stepped in before her, so she contented herself with watching Dorotéa’s skill.
Bells sounded in the dark tower. Annoyed pigeons flew over the plaza briefly and returned to their roost above the bells. A watchman started his rounds, nodding to the citizens as they made their way home. The flowers of Saltillo dozed and Trinidad de Saldaña, agitated as never before, clasped her grandfather’s hand with unwonted emotion and whispered as he led her back to the inn: ‘Saltillo is so wonderful, Grandfather, and Tejas seems so bleak.’
Dorotéa, up betimes and asking a thousand questions, had much to report when the Saldañas came down for eleven o’clock chocolate: ‘He’s French. He comes from New Orleans. His family owns large vineyards in France, but his father manufactures mining things and ships them to Vera Cruz for the capital.’
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‘What’s he doing in Saltillo?’ Don Ramón asked, and Dorotéa said brightly: ‘Oh, he’s looking to see if we have any mines in places like Béjar and Monclova.’ Then she winked at Trinidad: ‘And he’s going to San Luis Potosí to see if he can sell a marvelous new machine to the people there. His name is René-Claude d’Ambreuze. He speaks fine Spanish, and he’s stopping at the other inn.’
‘So he’s in business?’ Don Ramón said huffily, but Engracia, gazing in wonder at the self-satisfied girl, asked: ‘How did you learn where he’s staying?’
‘I know people. I asked the porters in the plaza.’
‘When is he going to Potosí?’ Don Ramón asked, and Trinidad’s heart almost stopped, for she immediately visualized this godlike young man joining their party for the three hundred miles to the mining capital, and before anyone could speak further she saw herself and René-Claude—what a heavenly name!—cantering across the high plains of Mexico, she in the lead, he avidly in pursuit.
‘He’ll be here soon,’ she heard Dorotéa say, at which Engracia asked sternly: ‘You didn’t speak to him? Without an introduction?’
‘No,’ Dorotéa said pertly, arranging her dress. ‘I told his innkeeper to suggest that he stop by.’
‘My dear child,’ Engracia protested, ‘that was indeed forward. It was even brazen.’
‘Look!’ And down the narrow street that joined the two inns came the young Frenchman, threading his way through the rubble that had collected overnight, sunlight on his pale hair, that smile on his lips.