A Ballad of Love and Glory(34)
“?Don Juan!”
He turned to look at her, his face registering surprise. “Ximena, ?pero qué sorpresa!” He dismounted and told his men, “I’ll meet you at the cantina.”
“You’re still serving the Mexican government, I see,” she said.
“It’s the only choice I have, for now.”
A scream startled them both, and they turned toward the riverbank, Seguín’s hand on his escopeta. Yanqui soldiers had plunged into the river to bathe under the watchful eyes of the sentries, and they and the Mexican women were splashing water at each other, shouting and squealing in delight. Ximena’s concern turned to relief and then anger. How could those women be playing and flirting with the enemy? Couldn’t they see the Yanqui cannons pointing straight at their homes?
To escape the commotion, she and Juan Seguín began to walk away, farther down the riverbank where Nana Hortencia had gone ahead, until the only noise they could hear was the raucous chattering of the green parakeets in the trees. Ximena had last seen Seguín two years earlier when he’d come to pay his respects at her father’s funeral.
“Do you think you’ll ever return home?” she asked.
Seguín sighed. “I will serve Mexico loyally and faithfully, but one day, I will return to the land of my birth to reclaim my property and clear my name or die trying. And you, have you been happy here with your husband and the ranch? Have you made a good life for yourself?”
Attempting to disguise her pain, she fixed her gaze on a nearby buttonbush where swallowtails fluttered over its white pincushion-shaped flowers. But it was no use. She gazed back at him and said, “My husband is dead, don Juan. The Rangers who came down with Taylor murdered him, burned our house, plundered our stables. I’m not sure what I will do, but I know this much—I can never return to Béxar. There’s nothing for me there. Just like there may be nothing for me here.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. “I’m sorry, Ximena, I’m sorry to see you suffering. I wish I could help you, but I’m as destitute as you are at the moment. Still, as long as we have hope, then all is not lost. War is about to commence, and right now, all we can do is survive it.”
“Don’t you think we fought on the wrong side, don Juan? Could this war have been prevented if Texas hadn’t rebelled against Mexico, if we Tejanos hadn’t helped the Texians win? Could this war allow Texas to return to the Mexican nation? To us?”
He smiled and shook his head but didn’t answer her questions. He stared off into the distance, and Ximena began to feel foolish for speaking with such na?veté. But she desperately wanted to believe that the opportunity to take back Texas from the Yanquis hadn’t yet passed. The thought of her homeland being turned into a slave state sickened her.
“Don’t torment yourself with such thoughts, Ximena. What’s done is done,” Seguín said at last. “It’s true, once the smoke cleared after the rebellion, we Tejanos became foreigners in our own land, and I, like your father, had to leave Texas and abandon all I had fought for to become a wanderer. But you know as well as I that the Mexican central government has never had our best interests at heart. With one political uprising after another in the capital, there has never been stability or progress, especially here in the northern frontier. Then that vile caudillo, Santa Anna, rose to power and threatened our rights of self-government, and what else could we Tejanos do, Ximena, but to defend our homeland from his tyrannical government?”
He stopped walking, and grasping her shoulders firmly, he turned her to face him.
“You wish to return to that? No, querida amiga, no. Béxar—all of Texas—deserved its freedom, and I shall never regret playing a part in its independence. Even if by doing so, I—we—paid the price for its liberty.” He released her and kissed her hand tenderly, then mounted his horse. “I’ll be scouting for General Arista, so you might not see much of me. But if you need me, send word with my tocayo, Juan Cortina. You know him, I assume?”
She nodded and bid him farewell.
“We’ll get through this,” he said. “And when I’m back in Béxar, if you wish to return home, know that you’ll have a friend there.”
She watched him ride away, thinking about his words, more certain than ever that she could not return to San Antonio de Béxar. But she was Joaquín’s sole legatee and had a full claim to his rancho here in this beautiful river delta. Though the Rangers might have destroyed their house and stables, the land was unharmed, and as long as it was alive, Ximena and Nana Hortencia could survive, even if their home was a humble jacal made of carrizo cane and thatched with palm leaves. She refused to let those vile men prevent her from seeing the sun rise over her land, from beholding the changing colors of the prairie through the seasons, from tasting the wind sweetened by wildflowers. But if Mexico lost the war, would history repeat itself? Would she once again find herself dispossessed?
She quickened her pace to catch up to Nana Hortencia, who was picking and eating the berries of an anacua tree. Ximena joined her and reached to pull down a branch. Just then, something blue caught her eye. At first, she thought it was the iridescent wings of the bluewing butterflies puddling in the mud. But as she peered through the shrubs and reeds at the water’s edge, she could see a soldier in a blue uniform tangled up in the branches of an uprooted tree at the edge of the bank.