Chapter 2: Mora

You might ask, what was an Ohio farm boy doing in the mountains of the United States Territory of New Mexico?

In partial answer, I’ll note that, pinned to my wool waistcoat was a circle of nickel-plated steel with a cutout five-point star in the center. Stamped deep into the upper portion of the rim were the words, “UNITED STATES MARSHAL,” and the word “DEPUTY” was impressed into the rim underneath the star.

I was carrying a fugitive warrant for a man, Hector Guerrero, who was wanted on a murder charge. I hoped to catch up with him in a small town with a big name, Santa Gertrudis de lo de Mora, though I’d learned that most folks just called it Mora. Mora, in the eastern foothills of the Sangre de Cristos, was Guerrero’s home, that is, where he’d grown up, and where his mother and his widowed sister-in-law and her baby still resided. At least that’s what Anton Dahl, the Assistant United States Attorney, had told me. Guerrero had his own home in Taos, on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristos. Taos is an old Indio pueblo about seventy miles north of Santa Fe. Guerrero had a trading and supply business in Taos, where he lived with his wife and children. Taos is where the murder took place.

From Taos to Mora is close to fifty miles. Over the mountains. In early June.

I was posted to Taos, where I have a room above a blacksmith shop. I’m usually on the trail, so more elaborate living quarters would be wasted. Besides, it suits me. There’s a bed, a small table and chair, a cushioned arm chair, some shelves and some hooks on the wall, and a window that looks out on a corral out back and toward the mountain slope close beyond. I can divert heat from the forge in the winter and my favorite cocina y cantina (kitchen and tavern) is only a block away.

The rent is cheap, because the smith, Miguel Herrera, now works mainly with silver. Having a deputy marshal reside on the premises provided a modest level of security for his stock of precious metal and semi-precious stones, even though I wasn’t there most of the time. Miguel’s work had moved away from blacksmithing and horseshoeing to the point that the big corral which my room overlooked is usually occupied only by my two horses and my mule and by Miguel’s four horses. He had quit providing farrier services after his ornamental silver jewelry business became successful. I didn’t blame him. I’d shoed horses myself. Hammering filigree designs into a silver cuff had to be just a mite easier. It sure seemed to pay better. And he could work sitting down. On a chair. Out of the weather.

When I’m in town, I have use of a desk in the Taos County Sheriff’s office, over in the courthouse on the main plaza. District United States Marshal Albert Garrison pays a modest rent for the space, but I’m hardly ever there, either, which probably explains why I get along so well with Sheriff Manuel Gonzales. Actually, Mannie Gonzales is a friendly fella and we really do get along. Plus, he and his deputies keep me up to date on all of the town happenings I missed while I was on the trail.

Even though it was the eleventh of June, the so-called wagon road over Palo Flechado Pass still contained considerable packed and drifted snow. The crossing had been a challenge for Pasa, my chestnut Morgan mare. Once below snowline, I’d decided to set up camp, though it was only mid-afternoon and I was still twenty or so miles from Mora. Pasa needed the rest, I rationalized. Besides, it gave me time for a little fishing, which is never a bad thing.

I carried a buffalo robe with my bedroll because, despite the calendar, it can still get down to freezing at eight- and nine thousand feet elevation. With the buffalo hide and a couple heated rocks, I spent a reasonably comfortable night. Pasa seemed fine, too, after some oats and a night of browsing on some of last summer’s grass that had been preserved beneath the snow.

I left right at sunup and, barring a few rocky stretches where the road led close to or actually crossed the rio, we made good time on the downhill trail and got into Mora mid-day. I rode directly to the Mora County Courthouse and the sheriff’s office there. Marshal Garrison wanted us to maintain good relations with local lawmen. Even though I knew it might end up alerting Guerrero, I followed the boss’s established protocol.

I was surprised to find a woman at the desk behind the door marked “Sheriff.” I took off my hat.

“What can I do for you, sonny?” she asked, in Spanish. She was an attractive Mexican woman wearing a man’s plaid flannel shirt, and likely tall in stature, seeming strong and robust even seated. Nonetheless, the “sonny” address rankled and seemed out of place as she hardly looked older than my own thirty-seven years. Then I noticed the twinkle in her eyes and I realized she was just teasing me.

“I’m Deputy Marshal Judah Becker, with the Federal Tenth District out of Santa Fe. I’d like to speak with the sheriff.” I also spoke Spanish, as I’d learned it in Texas, scouting for a troop of Buffalo Soldiers after The War, and later tracing fugitives across the border for the Pinkertons.

She snorted derisively and muttered, “Tejano,” (tay-HAH-no, meaning Texan) under her breath, apparently in response to the Texas-accented Spanish I’d picked up.

“Actually, miss, I’m from Ohio.” I used señorita instead of señora as a payback for her calling me jovencito (youngster, sonny) earlier.

She laughed and, turning slightly toward an open door behind her, called out, in Spanish, “Matias (mah-TEE-ahs), you have a man from the rurales asking for you. What have you done now, husband?” The rurales (roo-RAH-lays) referred to the Guardia Rural (GWAR-dee-ah roo-RAHL), the Mexican rural police, a mounted paramilitary federal police force not dissimilar to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

I heard paper shuffling and furniture creaking from the next room, then footsteps and a mid-sized Mexican man appeared at the doorway. He had sad eyes behind the eyeglasses low on his nose, a droopy, graying mustache, and a sheaf of papers in his hand. He glanced first at his wife, then at me.

Noticing my badge, he said, in accented English, “I am Matias Salazar, the Mora County Sheriff. What can I do for you, Deputy?”

“Pleased to meet you, Sheriff. I’m Judah Becker, out of Santa Fe, though I’m posted to Taos.” I reached out a hand which he shook, after shifting the papers to his left hand. I said, “I have a fugitive warrant, Sheriff, and I wanted you to know I was here to serve it and take the man back with me.”

He grimaced and shook his head, then turned to his wife and set the bundle of papers on the desk in front of her. “Something in this does not add up,” he said to her, in Spanish, tapping the stack of paper with his forefinger. “The posted receipts do not match the deposits. I do not know if it is my poor arithmetic or if there is something improper. Would you please go over it?”

She said, “You are excellent at arithmetic, Matias, but not always so good at judging people. I will take a look,” and she bent to examine what looked like county tax forms.

Switching back to English, he said to me, “Is your warrant for Hector Guerrero?” While still looking at the papers, his wife said, in Spanish, “The man is from the town of Ohio, Texas, and he speaks a mongrel form of Spanish,” and she laughed again. I’d actually heard of a town in Texas called Ohio, so I had to smile at her wit.

“You are from Texas?” Sheriff Salazar inquired.

Grinning, I said, “I grew up back east, in the northwest part of the state of Ohio, on a farm near the town of Defiance. I learned Spanish in Texas when I was with the army.”

He tilted his head toward his wife. “Please excuse mi esposa (my wife). She is still fighting the Taos War.” The so-called Taos Revolt was a rebellion by Pueblo Indians and resident Mexicans in the mid-eighteen-forties, protesting abuses by an occupying U.S. presence just prior to and during the U.S.-Mexican War. Mora had been the scene of two pitched battles between U.S. Army troops from Texas and the local Indian and mestizo militia. The army troops lost the first battle but, with reinforcements, won the second engagement. That battle ended with the burning of Mora and the surrounding farms and crops, as well as all of the local district records.

“I’ve heard of that war,” I said, sticking to English. “If what I heard is accurate, Mora was destroyed in eighteen forty-seven by U.S. troops, just before the end of the war with Mexico.”

“Burned to the ground, everything,” the woman said, in clear, barely-accented English. “I remember fleeing with my mother and my sisters, while my father fought the fires with the other men. But the Texans came back and killed everyone they found there, including Papa. We lived for a week in the mountains as we walked over to Taos. I was five, but I still remember it.” She looked up at me. “Your Tejano Spanish brings back bad feelings.”

“My apologies, Señora.” (seen-YOR-ah, form of address for a married woman, as opposed to Señorita, seen-yoo-EE-ta, used when addressing an unmarried woman. Equivalent to Mrs. and Miss.)

“It is not your fault. Perhaps you were not even born then.”

“I was born in eighteen forty-six., the year before.”

She shrugged, saying, “Still...”

The Sheriff said. “Deputy Becker, this is my deputy, Maria Sofia de Lorenzo Salazar.”

“Señora Salazar,” I said, with a slight bow.

“I am not really his deputy. He could not pay me enough. You may call me Sofia.”

“And I am Judah, to fellow lawmen. And law-women.” Then I turned back to the Sheriff. “You know about Hector Guerrero?”

He nodded his head his head, displaying another sour grimace. “I know that he was here in Mora on the day he is accused of stabbing that Señor Stillwell in Taos.”

“How do you know he was here?”

“Because I saw him at the church that morning, at holy Mass. Because Sofia took menudo and flour tortillas to him and his mother and sister-in-law and the child that day. Hector has been here the entire time since the end of February.”

“Didn’t you tell the federal prosecutor?”

“Of course. I sent a telegram to Peter Ferguson, the United States Attorney at Santa Fe. I informed him that Sofia and I are not the only people who saw him here. There is Padre Rodrigo at the Iglesia de Santa Gertrudis (Saint Gertrude’s church). There are dozens of others who saw him at holy Mass and on the street.”