As he discovered a nicer tapa made with cheese, he washed it down with coffee, nodded, and said, “Nobody said it was, ma’am. The way Anglo cattlemen get around the restrictions of the Homestead Act is by claiming a prime spot for a home spread and grazing the unclaimed open range all around.”
She shrugged and asked who was stopping them from raising their own beef any way they wanted. Longarm replied, “You land-grant rancheros, ma’am, along with the Indian reserves, I mean. New Mexico and Arizona territories, save for the state of Nevada, have way more land tied up privately or as reserved federal land than most anywhere else. The price of beef has gone up back East, as I hope you’ve discovered to your own pleasure. But even as cattle barons like old John Chisum are trying to expand, they run into Indian reservations bigger than some Eastern states, or privately owned land grants big enough to be counties at least. Your modest holdings wouldn’t quite hold Manhattan Island, albeit Denver could fit in easy enough. But I can see how some new neighbor cut off from the river road by that much private property could feel vexed about the earlier administration’s generosity. The Homestead Act came way after that Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, you know.”
She looked so worried he quickly added, “The real pressure in Santa Fe is for taking back all that land we gave to the Indians, now that we’ve found some use for it. I just came down from Dulce, and nobody I met was wearing war paint. So it seems more likely the government shifting all those Jicarilla will free up a mess of open range any time now.”
She stared into the glowing embers of her fireplace, her own sloe eyes glowing back, as she murmured, “I know how most of your kind feel about the rights of Indians. I have, as you suggested, a new neighbor who would like to graze all the way to the river. He has taken me to court twice since my Carlos died a little over a year and a half ago. He and his Anglo lawyers keep trying to prove I am an Indian, rather than a Mexican protected by that treaty, and hence, that I have no rights to this land now!”
Longarm grimaced and said, “I’m certain he’d just love to take it off your hands, ma’am. But you were married lawfully to the holder of a land grant recognized by Guadalupe Hidalgo, right?”
She said, “Si, but alas, I was unable to give Carlos any children, and they say it was he, a blanco of pure Spanish blood, who held his family’s grant from the old Spanish Crown.”
Longarm polished off a pork-stuffed tapa and said, “I’m sure the court dismissed his plea because of the usual precedent’s, ma’am. You call a ruling based on what earlier courts have found a precedent. That was decided years ago, out California way, when some earlier California Spanish raised the question in reverse. Seems this Scotch sea captain married a land-grant heiress who up and died, leaving a Spanish land grant to a pure gringo.”
He sipped some coffee and added, “It was a federal court that held that inherited property was inherited property. They weren’t about to hand over all that land to distant Mexican relations. You have been fighting off this rascal in a federal court, right?”
She nodded. “My own lawyers explained that to me. You were right about my being probated as the rightful heir to this land. But now they have raised the issue of, well, my being born a Zuni. I was raised a Christian by converted parents, but alas, I am afraid I have pure Indian blood!”
Longarm shrugged. “That has to have impure blood of any sort beat. I got to ask you a mighty personal question if I’m to go on, ma’am. I ain’t asking for exact figures, but is it safe to say you were born the other side of 1848?”
She dimpled and said, “Of course I was, you flatterer. But what difference might my age make? An Indian is an Indian, no?”
He said, “No. Under Mexican laws, left over from the Spanish, a Spanish-speaking Christian who wore shoes and got a haircut now and again was a full citizen with all the rights of any other Spanish subject or law-abiding Mexican under the republic. You do pay taxes on this rancho, don’t you?”
She nodded, but said, “Those Anglo lawyers say that only proves how primitive I am, because Indians are not required to pay taxes on their lands under your laws. But my lawyers tell me they think I should go on paying my land taxes anyway.
Longarm nodded. “You’ve got the right lawyers, Miss Consuela. You and your folks living Christian, apart from other Zuni, if I know my Pueblo medicine men, means you were never listed as any sort of Indians by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, right?”
She nodded. “My parents were working for the parents of my poor Carlos when Mexico lost that war with your people. Nobody ever asked us what we were until most recently. But they say I am still an Indian and that the U.S. Constitution gives no rights to Indians. They showed me the paragraph, in black and white. I cried. It seemed so cruel and unjust!”
He said, “It would be if that was the way it read. But you missed the details, Miss Consuela. What may appear to exclude Indians from the Bill of Rights reads, ‘Indians not taxed.’ It don’t recognize Indians in general as a race. Shucks, colored folks and even Swedes are fully protected by the Bill of Rights since the war, at least as far as federal law extends, and New Mexico is a federal territory.”
She said she didn’t understand. A lot of well-meaning folks didn’t.
He explained. “When the Founding Fathers drew up the Constitution, they naturally had to deal with the simple fact that heaps of Quill Indians were still lurking in the woods all the way back East. So they divided Indians up into folks like the Christian Stockbridges, a mess of Mohegans who’d fought on our side at Bunker Hill, and the wilder sorts, such as Mohawk and Shawnee, who’d traded Yankee scalps for firewater from Hair-Buying Hamilton, the royal governor up to Detroit.”
She sniffed. “In other words, they divided Indians into those they thought tame and those they thought wild?”
He said, “Sure. It would have been dumb to divide them any other way. The real point is that even then there were Indians acting like everyone else and, well, folks who had to be dealt with differently. So what that clause about untaxed Indians really means is that nobody can expect to have the full rights of an adult citizen as long as they’re off the tax rolls, as public charges or wards of the state.”
He tried another tapa, decided he’d best quit while he was ahead, and added, “Wouldn’t make much sense to let men vote whilst they were at war with the government, either. So whilst Victorio or even one of those reservation Jicarilla would have a tough time voting in the next election, that clause about Indians can’t apply to you. Anyone who pays taxes on property lawfully come by is by definition a taxpaying property-holder, be she white, red, or a becoming shade of lavender. I have this argument all the time with boys who’ve been led to believe only their kind have any rights. Not all such pains in the neck are white, by the way.”
She laughed and said she’d heard Victorio could be awfully bossy. Then she asked him if he was ready for bed. He’d been ready for bed since first he’d noticed how she filled out that white blouse and cordovan riding skirt. But when he said that sounded like a mighty fine notion, she tinkled a small brass bell and that same serving gal came in to show their honored guest to his room for the night.
She led the way out back and along a long archway, holding up a candle they really didn’t need until they got there. The cell-like room, furnished with a four-poster bed and an oaken wardrobe, was a bit severe but smelled of rosewater. He saw, when the chica put the candlestick on a small bedtable, that the ‘dobe walls had been recently replastered.
Then he saw the pretty little Mex gal was crying, too, although she was trying not to show it as she shut the door, shot the bolt, and moved over by the bed to start shucking her duds.