"Look, my dear, that's an old Indian city."
     "Pecos," said Mr. Krohn, a fellow passenger.
     "Like the river?"  Laura leaned forward to peer out of the window and glimpsed a heap of crumbling mud walls and the remains of a Spanish church.  The sun was behind it, sinking toward the stair-step mountains and hurting her tired eyes.  The trail had left the river and begun to rise as it turned north and skirted the mountains beyond which lay Santa Fé.  Now that they were close to the journey's end, Laura was able to take more interest in the country they passed through.
     "Just a mile or two to the next stop," her uncle said.  "The supper is worth waiting for, I assure you."
     Laura sat back, making an effort to smile.  Her uncle's assurances, she had learned, were generally exaggerated.  As they had stopped at a ranch not an hour before, she made up her mind not to expect less than ten miles in the next leg, which would bring them within a day's travel of Santa Fé.  Rubbing her thumb along the peak of the clock in her lap, she stared out of the window at the cedar-dotted hills.  Though her middle seat had a poor view, it was better than staring at her fellow passengers.
     Her mind returned to Fort Union, as it often had in the last few days.  Her uncle had expressed his disappointment in her behavior there; she had failed to captivate Lieutenant Owens, and she had interfered with Captain Sibley's "property" in a most unseemly fashion.  Laura had swallowed her indignation, but could not bring herself to apologize for a simple act of humanity.  It troubled her to find herself in a country where slavery was tolerated, and it troubled her deeply to know that her uncle acquiesced in that tolerance.
     A cool breeze reclaimed her attention.  The trail had swung west again, passing between rising hills.  Pine trees began to appear, dwarfing the cedars and casting long shadows in the slanting sunshine.  The stage slowed, mules laboring uphill as they entered a little canyon.  Ridges of rough, grey rock closed in on both sides.  The sun was hidden by the cliffs, and the air in this valley was much cooler.  Laura shivered at the sudden drop in temperature.  She was beginning to wish for her shawl when the trail rounded an outcrop and sunlight spilled through the window once more, dappled by a sea of fluttering green leaves.
     "Oh!" Laura cried involuntarily.  The valley had opened into a little bowl, surrounded by pine-covered hills and filled with rustling cottonwoods.  The trail bisected the grove, and in the middle a ranch house appeared, its mud walls glowing golden in the late sunshine, a rocky ridge overlooking it to the north with a blue, domed mountain beyond.  It was the loveliest place Laura had yet seen in New Mexico, and her spirits rose as the stage slowed to a halt before the house.
     "Here we are," Uncle Wallace said.  "Not so bad, was it?"
     "No," Laura replied, and this time her smile was heartfelt.  As she stepped down from the coach she inhaled cool air tinged with the smells of wood smoke and forest earth.  Rock walls marked a large corral west of the ranch house.  A covered portal shaded the whole front of the house, which had three doors facing onto the trail.  From one of these emerged a tall, lanky man in rancher's clothes, waving long arms in welcome and saying "Bonjour, bonjour!  Welcome to Glorieta!"
     "Glorieta?" Laura said.  "What a pretty name."
     The Frenchman's face crinkled in a smile.  "And you are a pretty lady, madame.  May I carry that for you?"
     Laura sensed kindness, as though this gentleman drew great joy as well as a living from serving his guests.  His hair and mustache were black, just beginning to be peppered with grey, and his eyes had a merry twinkle.  She liked him, she decided, and allowed him to relieve her of her clock.
     "Thank you, Monsieur--?"
     "Alexandre Vallé," he said, bowing with a flourish.  "But I am also called 'Pigeon'."
     "Thank you, Monsieur Vallé."  Laura gazed around the valley again, drinking in its beauty.  It was a peaceful place.  The wind in the cottonwoods reminded her of the ocean, and instead of making her homesick, it made her feel at home.
     Uncle Wallace trudged up with his portmanteau and Laura's traveling case.  "Hallo, Pigeon," he said.  "When's the next fandango?"
     "You just missed one."  The Frenchman grinned.  "For three days we were dancing."
     "You'd outdance the devil himself," her uncle said.  "I see you met my niece."
     "Ah!" Vallé exclaimed, turning to Laura.  "So this is Miss Howland?  You did not tell me she is so beautiful!  She will break all the hearts, my friend!"
     Laura gave a cough of surprised laughter and tried to frown at Vallé, but he was smiling and she found herself smiling back.  She had not been teased since her father died, she realized.  She glanced down at her dusty half-boots, suddenly lonely.
     "Supper?" Uncle Wallace asked.
     "It will be ready in half an hour," Vallé said.  "Meanwhile, I will show mademoiselle her room, yes?"  He waved them to the center door, through which the other passengers had already gone.
     The house was Mexican in style, like every other ranch they had stopped at since Fort Union:  thick walls made of the mud bricks called adobes, dirt floor covered with black and white checkered rugs, and wool mattresses rolled against the walls.  Two rough tables and several chairs formed the rest of the furniture.  One of the curious little beehive fireplaces common to the country was tucked into a corner, and a larger conventional hearth crackled with bright fire over which a pot of something savory was simmering.  A diminutive Mexican woman with a long, glossy black braid down her back looked up from stirring the pot as they entered, and smiled when her eyes fell on Laura.  Very bright, those eyes, giving her an elfish look.
     "Carmen," Vallé called to her, and paused to exchange a few words in Spanish.  The stage passengers were setting their bags on the mattresses, claiming their beds for the night.  Uncle Wallace hurried to secure one while Vallé led Laura to a door in the lefthand wall.
     The second room was as large as the first, though it had but one table and one corner fireplace.  Luxurious accommodations for a solitary female.  "Shall I light the fire, mademoiselle?" Vallé asked as he set Laura's clock in a little niche in the wall.
     "Yes, thank you," Laura answered.  Vallé knelt by the beehive fireplace, and Laura went to the front wall, where a door and a window faced the trail.  There was glass in the window--attesting to Monsieur Vallé's prosperity--and the curtain tacked over it was clean, if a little faded.  As Laura looked out, the mail coaches rumbled past on their way into the corral for the night.
     Uncle Wallace came in with her traveling case, which he set near the fire.  "Well, now," he said.  "Quite cozy, aren't we?"
     "Yes," Laura said.  "This is a beautiful valley."
     "Knew you'd get to liking New Mexico.  It grows on you."
     Laura glanced at Vallé and refrained from expressing her opinion of New Mexico in general:  hot, dry, dusty, filled with starving Mexicans and American adventurers.  Instead she opened her case and took out her black shawl.  "I think I'll walk while there's still light," she said.
     "Bien," Vallé said, dusting off his knees as he rose from the fireplace.  "When you hear the bell, supper will be served."
     Laura went out into the crisp evening, crossed the dusty ruts of the Santa Fé Trail, and found a stone well to the south of it, with a stand of young corn nearby.  Beyond the well was a small pond, fed by a stream that trickled down the valley from the west.  Spring had lingered in the shelter of the mountains, and purple and white wildflowers flourished at the water's edge.  A plink of water told her of fish, and she glanced up in time to see circles widening on the pond's surface.
     This place I could live in, she thought as she strolled into the woods that were something like the green she had known at home.  She had always loved the outdoors, both wild forests and civilized gardens.  She and her father had taken long, frequent walks, looking for herbs to make into medicines, discussing philosophy and politics, pondering how to improve his career as a lecturer on health and homeopathy, making grandiose plans that had never been put into motion, and now never would be.
     Laura's throat tightened, and she came to a halt in the middle of a little copse of trees, pulling her shawl closer around herself.  She had tried so hard to help her father's success.  They had struggled.  They had made sacrifices, stood by their beliefs, and then he'd been drowned in a fishing accident--of all useless ways to die--just when he'd seemed on the verge of success.  Why? she asked silently, as she'd done a thousand times in her prayers.  God had a reason for everything he did, but this she had not yet been able to understand, and she was tired, so tired, of the weariness of grieving.  She tilted back her head and closed her eyes, inhaling the smell of forest earth, hoping still for an answer.
     "La glorieta," a soft voice said.  Laura started, and looked up to see Monsieur Vallé at the edge of the glade.
     "Forgive me," he said.  "I did not mean to frighten you."
     "You followed me?" Laura accused, anger replacing the momentary fear.  Her heart was still racing from surprise.
     "I am sorry," Vallé said.  "When I saw you go into the woods, I came to be sure you were safe.  Many people travel on this road, mademoiselle," he said, gesturing toward the Trail.
     "Oh," Laura said.  "I see.  It's kind of you to be concerned."
     "Also, it is almost time for supper," the Frenchman added.  "Shall I walk back with you, or do you wish to be alone?"
     "Let's go back," Laura said with a glance at the hills behind which the sun had dipped.  Twilight was falling in the forest, and she fell into step with Vallé, who kept a respectful distance as they walked up the gentle slope to the trail.  "What did you say?"  she asked.  "Glorieta?"
     "Yes," Vallé said.  "That is what you were like, standing in the middle of those trees.  Like a glorieta.  The Spanish give that name to any place where something special is surrounded by trees.  A fountain, a shrine, a statue--"
     "Are you saying I looked like a statue?" Laura asked in mock indignation.
     "It was not how you looked," he said.  "To me it is the feeling that makes a glorieta.  There is a special feeling . . . eh, bah.  I am talking nonsense.  Please pay no attention."
     Laura looked at his sun-weathered face, wanting him to continue.  Shyness prevented her from asking; she did not know him and didn't wish to be rudely inquisitive.  Yet she had the feeling that what he had been about to say was important.
     The clear sound of a bell broke the silence.  They reached the house as Carmen was hanging a lantern from the portal's roof.  The coachmen started coming in from the corral, and with a last glance at the whispering cottonwoods, Laura followed her hosts in to supper.

Next stop:  Denver City

Copyright © 1998 by P.G. Nagle. All rights reserved.