“EEE,” FELIX SAID SUDDENLY, startling Flavio so much that he jerked in his chair. “I wish I was Cristóbal García.” He reached out to the plate in the center of the table and broke off a piece of hard tortilla. “Then I could have been the first García to ever be here.”
Flavio had been listening to Guadalupe in a state that was close to sleep. He had almost forgotten where he was and had followed the tone of Guadalupe’s voice as if it were a hand that was leading him. He looked over at Felix. “Don’t you listen?” he asked. “Cristóbal García was crazy. And even if he wasn’t, every morning he was covered with frost and he didn’t even have any shoes.”
“So?” Felix said, chewing his tortilla with his mouth half open. “You don’t know everything. Besides, I’m a García, too. Maybe Cristóbal García was my grandpa.”
There were Garcías scattered throughout the village and, as far as Flavio knew, not one was related to Guadalupe. “I think Cristóbal should have stayed home,” Flavio said. “Whenever someone says be careful, something bad is going to happen.”
“Don’t worry, Flavio,” Felix said. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“What about the priests being shot with arrows and the frozen cows?” Flavio said. “That was bad.”
“It’s just a story, Flavio. Besides, it’s almost over.”
“They walked all over this valley,” Guadalupe said. She was leaning back in her chair, staring through the space between Flavio and Felix. She was still smiling slightly, and when Flavio glanced at her, he could see that her nightgown had pulled a little off of one shoulder. He stared at her for only a second and then quickly lowered his eyes.
“The three of them,” Guadalupe said. “Where you boys live, Cristóbal and Hipolito and Francisco once walked. They breathed the same air you do and cut fence posts from juniper that still grow in these hills.” Then she moved her eyes and seemed to look at Flavio and Felix at the same time. “This is just the beginning of the story,” she said.
“THERE IS ROOM HERE NOT JUST FOR US,” Hipolito said excitedly, “but for a whole village.” He pointed at the mountains. “Look at the aspens running in the canyons. There is so much water, and the peaks are still white from last year’s snow.”
The valley was cradled on three sides by lowlying foothills and on the east by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It is sheltered from the wind, Hipolito went on, and the mountains reach high enough to catch the clouds that bring snow for irrigation and rain in the summers.
Three large creeks flowed out of deep ravines and joined together at the base of the mountains. From there, the water wound its way through the center of the valley. High grass grew everywhere, and Hipolito and Francisco could see where deer and turkey had beaten down trails when coming to feed.
Although a part of Cristóbal could see the beauty of this place, he felt only uneasiness at how jagged the mountains were and how they seemed to loom over the valley rather than protect it. He didn’t like how the twisted junipers and thick cottonwoods grew along the creek. They seemed to be hiding something and reminded him of the shadows he sometimes dreamed of at night. As he stood on the foothill amid the small piñon and scrub oak, two things went through his mind and then left before he could fully grasp them. One was that he could never live in this place, and the other was that he would never leave.
They camped beneath the limbs of a tall juniper where the grass was not so high. The burro was staked near the creek, close enough that coyotes or the small wolves that roamed in packs would stay away. Cristóbal had wished to spend the night in the foothills rather than even set foot in the valley, but Hipolito and Francisco had chided him and talked to him until finally he had followed them out of the hills and into grass that came to his waist.
They ate in silence the same meal they had eaten for the past twenty-eight days: a tortilla with dried rabbit meat and beans that had been heated over the fire. Occasionally, a slight breeze would move the flames, and the shadows made it seem to Cristóbal as if the juniper itself was moving. He would close his eyes and tell himself that he would be here for just one night. In the morning he would leave. By the time he reached Las Sombras, he would not even remember this place.
Hipolito finished eating and put his plate on the ground. He leaned forward and tossed a small branch on the fire. Sparks flew into the darkness.
“When it’s light,” he said, “two of us will begin the walk home. The third will remain here and wait for us to return. If we leave the burro and take only what we need, we can be in the village in six days and then back here eight days after that.”
Cristóbal stopped eating and looked at Hipolito. “We should all leave,” he said. “There is no reason anyone should stay here.”
“It’s what we planned before leaving Las Sombras,” Francisco said. “If we found what we were looking for, then one of us would remain behind to claim it as our own.”
Cristóbal, who had no intention of remaining anywhere and who wished only to live the rest of his life in Las Sombras, glanced at Francisco. “Who would ever come here?” he said. Besides, he thought, this valley wants no one. It only wants to be left alone.
“Those were your words, Cristóbal,” Francisco said. “You spoke them over and over in Las Sombras.”
The burro suddenly let out a deep sigh. Cristóbal watched as it lowered itself to its knees and lay down in the grass. When he looked back at Francisco, he said, “I will tell your wife and children that you are well and miss them.”
Francisco smiled and said, “You think it is me who is to stay behind?”
It had been Hipolito who had led them from Las Sombras and even if many of his decisions had been poor and cost them days and miles, still, it was he that Cristóbal and Francisco had followed. Cristóbal had no desire to be led out of this valley and into the wilderness by Francisco, who only made decisions about how much his burro should carry, which was usually little, or what they would eat at night, which was always the same.
“Cristóbal is right, Francisco,” Hipolito said, looking at his cousin. “You are the one who should stay.”
Sometimes at night, after Cristóbal had finally fallen asleep, Hipolito and Francisco would sit close to each other and talk in whispers. As they had traveled farther and farther away from Las Sombras, both had come to fear that Cristóbal was losing his mind. He would wake every morning refusing to go on, and when he did, he would talk to himself and stare at the ground as he walked. At times, as he stumbled behind with the burro, Hipolito and Francisco would hear him moaning as if weeping. Neither knew what to do about their companion, and some nights when Cristóbal was more upset than usual one of them would remain awake by the fire until dawn. Hipolito had told his cousin he was afraid that if Cristóbal woke he would wander off by himself and who knew what would happen to him then. What troubled Hipolito the most, however, and what he did not tell Francisco, was that he realized once they returned to Las Sombras Cristóbal would never leave again. It was Cristóbal’s own words spoken before they had left the village that haunted Hipolito.
“My daughters,” Cristóbal had said, “and your sons, Hipolito, and yours, Francisco, will be raised together, and when they grow older they’ll marry. Our families will be as one, and our descendants will receive what we found. Then, truly, we will have a place that is ours and where our names are known.”
Hipolito would sit up through the night and watch Cristóbal sleeping fitfully. He knew in his heart that they needed Cristóbal’s family far more than they needed Cristóbal himself. He would sit by the embers of the fire, and a blackness would come over him as if he, too, knew that what they were looking for was already lost.
Hipolito looked across the fire at Francisco. “We will be gone only a few weeks,” he said. “When we return, all our families will