Free Maria's Trail (The Mule Tamer) by John Horst Page B

suddenly
hungry and looked up at the old woman. She was afraid to be so bold as to ask
for some of it. She thought of another question. “Is he your husband?”
    “Hah!” The old woman startled Maria with her
energetic response. “No, child, my goodness no.” And at that, as if on cue,
another old man came in. He was holding his hat and some work gloves. He kissed
his wife on the head and smiled broadly at Maria.
    “Ah, a visitor.” He bowed to Maria as if she
were an important, grown up person, which gave Maria a little flutter in the
pit of her stomach.
    “Yes, Maria. She wanted to know if Paulo was my
husband.”
    The old man smiled broader. “Hah, little Maria.
In his dreams. He wanted her but I got her.” He pinched his wife on the cheek.
“I got her.”
    They were nice people and Maria was feeling
good. Maybe she would stay here and not go to the sea. She blurted out, “What’s
to become of me?”
    The old people shrugged. They weren’t certain.
The padre said nothing to them.
    “You’ll have to ask the padre, my girl. But not
now. He’s busy. At dinner.”
     
    By the third day the padre was still busy and
it seemed that Maria was just absorbed into the family. She was one of them, as
if it had all been arranged. She didn’t ask about it again. She liked the old
people and she liked the place. They’d given her a little room with a bed. It
was clean and bright when the window was not shuttered and nice and cool and
dark when it was. It was quiet there and even at night, in bed, she could sense
people around, not like at the cave. Juana’s ghost didn’t even bother her.
    She felt safe there and had her little gun that
she didn’t tell anyone about. She hid it under her pillow but didn’t really feel
the need for it. She slept soundly and didn’t even try to bar the door.
    She took to doing chores for the old woman; she
thought it would be a good idea to be useful. She’d earn her keep and, since it
was getting along toward winter, she didn’t find traveling by burro all the way
west so attractive now.
    Anyway, there was a lot to do and she found
herself in the church more and more often in her free time. She looked through
the hymnals and the bibles. They had all sorts of writing in them. Maria knew
well enough that it was writing but couldn’t read. She quickly decided to learn
how to do this over the winter. She also saw gringo words thereabouts and
decided she wanted to learn to read them, as well. One day she’d go north to
the US and she planned to learn the lingo used up there.
    When she was finished with the books, Maria
would examine the decorations in the church. It was a simple, yet
well-appointed country church. It had several statues, of course, of Jesus
being crucified, but also of the Virgin. She liked that one. She liked the
Virgin’s blue rebozo and the kind look on her face. She was pale like the
priest so she thought that the Virgin must be from the same stock as the
priest. She certainly was no Indian.
    All around the church there were little wooden
plaques made up with what Maria later learned were depictions of the
crucifixion. These were called the Stations of the Cross and Maria found them
sad and intriguing. She was fairly caught up in all this when she saw the old
priest standing at the back of the church, watching her. He beckoned for her to
sit beside him.
    “Do you like the church, Maria?”
    “I do.”
    “Is it like yours?”
    Maria was a little confused. “I don’t have a
church. I don’t have religion.”
    “Oh.” He was shocked and realized now that she
must have been very isolated, likely from one of the poorest of the villages.
    “Have you been baptized?” He could tell by her
expression that she had not. He smiled at her. “Would you like to be?”
    “I don’t know what that is. What is baptized?”
    He grinned. “When you take Jesus into your
heart. When you become a Christian.”
    “Oh.” She sat quietly for a while. She wanted
to ask the