Bernardo knew without having to have it drummed into his head, but it was a subject that drew tears from Diego when his father brought it up.
And far from seconding her husband in his didactic aims, Regina continued to treat Bernardo as if he were her son, too. In her tribe no person was superior to another because of birth, only for their courage or wisdom, and in her mind it was still very early to know which of the two boys was the more courageous or wise.
Diego and Bernardo parted only at bedtime, when each went to his mother’s room. The same dog bit them both, they were stung by bees from the same honeycomb, and they got the measles at the same time.
When one did something mischievous, no one bothered to identify the culprit; they made them both bend over to receive identical switchings, and they took their punishment without protest, as seemed perfectly fair. Everyone except Alejandro de la Vega thought of them as brothers, not only because they were inseparable, but because at first sight they looked very much alike. The sun had burned their skin to the same wood tone, Ana made them identical linen trousers, and Regina cut their hair in the Indian style. The observer had to look carefully to see that Bernardo had noble Indian features, while Diego was tall and fine-boned, with his mother’s caramel-colored eyes. In the years that followed, they learned to flourish the epee according to Maestro Escalante’s impeccable instructions, to gallop bareback on their horses, to use the whip and lasso, and to hang by their feet like bats from the eaves of the house. The Indians taught them to dive and rip shellfish from the rocks, to follow a prey for days to get a kill, to craft bows and arrows, and to endure pain and fatigue without complaining.
Alejandro de la Vega took them on the roundup when it was time to brand the cattle, each with his own riata so they could help in the task. It was the only manual labor considered proper for a gentleman, more sport than work. All the dons of the region brought their sons and vaqueros and Indians. They rounded up the cattle, separated them, and put their brands on them, which afterward were listed in a book to prevent confusion and cattle rustling. That was also the time for slaughtering, and after skinning the steers they rolled up the hides, salted down the meat, and rendered the fat. The nuqueadores, fabulous horsemen able to kill a steer by planting a dagger in its nape while riding at full tilt, were the kings of the roundup and tended to be signed up a year in advance. They came from Mexico and from the American prairies, with their trained horses and their long two-edged daggers. As soon as a steer was down, the peladores ran to them to skin them, stripping off the whole hide in a matter of minutes; then came the tasajeros, responsible for butchering the meat, and last the Indian women whose humble task it was to cut off the tallow, render it in enormous kettles, and then store it in botas made from bladders, intestines, or stitched skins. It was also the women’s responsibility to tan the hides, scraping the raw side with sharp knives, spending endless hours on their knees. The smell of blood maddened the herd, and there were always gutted horses and one or two vaqueros trampled or gored to death. The monster formed of thousands of head of cattle racing by, bawling and heaving, raising a hell of dust, was a sight to be seen; the vaqueros in their white sombreros, glued to their mounts, whistling lassos dancing over their heads and gleaming knives in their waistbands, were something to be admired; the thunder of the herd shaking the ground, the yells of the fired-up men, the whinnying horses and barking dogs, were sounds never to be forgotten; and the smells the steam rising from the hide of foam-flecked mounts, the acrid smell of the vaqueros, and the disturbing, warm, secret scent of the Indian women would linger forever in the men’s minds.
At the end of the roundup, everyone went into town to celebrate a task well done. Rich and poor, white and Indian, young and the few elderly in the colony, all joined in a spree that lasted several days. There was a wealth of food and drink; couples danced to music from Mexico till the last pair dropped; they bet on fistfights, rat fights, cockfights, dogfights, and bear-and-bull fights, and in one night they might lose everything they had earned during the roundup. On the third day, the fiesta ended with a mass officiated by Padre Mendoza, who used a coachman’s whip to herd the drunks off to the church, and then, musket in hand, forced the seducers of his young neophytes to marry them; he had counted, and nine months after every roundup a scandalous number of fatherless babies were born.
One year during a bad drought the ranchers had to kill off the wild horses to guarantee pasture for their cattle. Diego rode with the vaqueros, but for once Bernardo refused to go with him; he knew what they were going to do and he couldn’t bear to watch it. The riders encircled herds of horses, spooked them with gunpowder and dogs, chased them at full gallop toward the cliffs, and then drove them over in a blinding stampede. Horses jumped off by the hundreds, falling on top of one another, necks and legs broken by the fall into the bottom of the ravine. The fortunate died on the spot; others agonized for days amid a cloud of flies and a stench of carrion that attracted bears and buzzards.
Twice a week Diego had to make the trip to the San Gabriel mission to receive the rudiments of a proper education from Padre Mendoza.
Bernardo always went with him, and the missionary eventually allowed him into the class despite his belief that it was unnecessary, and even dangerous, to give Indians too much learning; it put bold ideas into their heads. The boy did not have Diego’s mental quickness and tended to get behind, but he was stubborn and did not back down, though it meant spending his nights burning the candle down to the end. He had a reserved and quiet nature that contrasted with Diego’s explosive happiness. He backed his friend with unquestionable loyalty in all the pranks Diego thought up and, when he had to, resigned without fuss to being punished for something that had been Diego’s idea, not his. Ever since he could walk, Bernardo had assumed the role of protecting Diego, who he believed was destined for great things, like the heroic warriors in White Owl’s storehouse of myths.
Diego, for whom being quiet and indoors was torture, often schemed to slip away from Padre Mendoza’s lessons and get out in the open. He put as much energy into games as Bernardo did into studying. The lessons came in one ear and he recited them quickly, before they went out the other. He was so good at bluffing that he succeeded in fooling Padre Mendoza, but afterward he would have to teach Bernardo the lesson word for word, and it was by this repetition that he learned. After much discussion they reached an agreement: he would instruct Bernardo, and he in turn would practice the lasso, whip, and sword with Diego.
“I don’t see why we work so hard to learn things we won’t ever use.”
Diego complained one day after he had been repeating the same Latin phrases for hours.