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Pilar, Santiago and Enrique Run For Their Lives from Rancho Arroyo with Horses and Wagons from the Water Now Covering Rancho Arroyo (Book Five, Chapter Seven)

    Sleep was fitful that night for all three of the siblings. Where normally the soft patter of rain on the roof would lull them to sleep, this rain was not the welcome moisture they looked forward to every spring, making everything green and forcing the long-dormant flowers to bloom. This rain was disturbing, filling the San Gabriel River and threatening all the homes that were nestled in the valley, including their own.

About four a.m., when the horses started nickering from the corral, Enrique got up to see what was bothering them. 

It was pitch black out when he opened the kitchen door. He could hear the rain on the porch roof but he couldn’t see it. He put on his hat and ducked he head, as he made his way across the water-soaked earth. The house was on a small rise, so it wasn’t until he got closer to the corral that the ground transitioned from mud to water. Now he knew why the horses were worked up. The closer he got to the corral, the deeper the water became. When he reached the corral fence, he was standing in ankle-high water, and he could hear the horses splashing nervously on the other side. He knew what he had to do.

Instead of going into the corral, he headed for the barn, where he found the horses’ halters and lead ropes he and his siblings would need to bring them back to the barn to get them saddled up. It was time to leave Rancho Arroyo. 

As he made his way back up to the house, the rain washed away the tears that fell from his eyes.

“Pilar! Santiago! Come quick!” he yelled up the stairs. 

Pilar was already dressed, having given up on getting any more sleep an hour ago. She was braiding her hair in one thick plat as she stepped out of her room. Santiago came out of his bedroom still in his nightclothes.

They both ran to the top of the steps.

“What’s the matter?” Pilar asked.

“We’ve got to go. The river has already reached the ranch. The barns and corral are filled with water.”

Pilar and Santiago looked at each other. It took them a moment but they both turned and went back to their rooms and started to pack. Enrique followed suit.

Pilar threw open her clothes closet and stared. Then she fell on her knees and began to cry.

“I’m not ready for this,” she said to herself. “This is my home. This is my family’s home.” She hit the floor with her fist. “This is not fair!” she yelled. “This is not fair!”

Santiago ran into the room. When he saw his sister on the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks, he ran to her and pulled her into his arms. Enrique was next into the room. He went to their side and put his arms around them both. It took a moment for them to let go of each other.

Santiago was the first to speak. “You’re right, Pilar, it’s not fair. Our family has been forced off land that we have been working for generations. But we are not alone. We have family who are all waiting for us. That is what’s important – family, the people we love and who love us.”

Pilar wiped the tears from her cheeks and nodded her head. 

“It’s just hard,” she said, tearing up again.

Enrique grabbed her arm. “It is, sis, but you’re strong. You can handle this. Santiago is right, our families are the thing that is important here. As long as we are all safe, we will manage. As long as we stick together. But we need to move, quickly.”

Pilar nodded again. Santiago pulled a case from on top of Pilar’s clothes closet and set it on the bed.

“You okay, sis?” Enrique asked.

“Yes, go, go,” she said looking at both of them. “I’ll be fine, as long as we’re together,” she said with a smile.

Her brother’s nodded and ran from the room.

Pilar pulled a few choice clothes from the closet, then opened dresser draws and pulled out as much as she could fit in her case. She pulled a carpet bag from under her bed and filled that too. The last thing she took was the picture that sat by her bedside. It was the picture of her parents on their wedding day – a studio picture with her mother sitting in a simple wedding dress and veil, a bouquet of flowers in her hand and Roberto standing right behind her in a fine suit, his hand resting on her shoulder. The picture was black and white, but Pilar knew her father’s suit was velvet and a deep burgundy color. Elizabeth had told her the story of their meeting a hundred times. He had worn that same suit to a barn raising dance outside of San Antonio where he was visiting, looking to buy horses, and had swept Elizabeth off her feet. The thought made Pilar smile, before she wrapped the precious memory in a scarf and buried it safely inside the carpet bag before she closed it.

She picked up her cases and ran down the stairs. 

In the kitchen her brothers had both put one case just inside the kitchen door. She assumed they were outside already. She put the remaining biscuits from last night’s dinner in a dishtowel and put that into her carpet bag, then put on a wool poncho and a large-brimmed hat before she stepped out the door.

The rain had not stopped but it wasn’t coming down in sheets as it had the night before. But the wind had picked up so was now coming at her sideways, so she had to drop the brim of her hat and squint as she made her way to the corral. The sun was up but it was hidden behind storm clouds so everything was a dull gray, except the dark clouds overhead. The horses’ whinnying made he pick up her speed as she waded in water that now came up to just above her ankles.

“Dear God, help us,” she said to herself, sloshing through the muddy water.

Enrique and Santiago had the halters around three of the four horses, so she grabbed the halter and rope hanging on the corral gate and headed for King, her favorite riding horse, who was running rings around her brothers as they made their way to the gate. 

Enrique gave his lead rope to Santiago and helped Pilar corner King in the three-sided shed. He reared up, pawing at the air before he dropped down to let Pilar take hold of his mane.

“It’s okay, boy. I’m here. I’m here,” she said soothingly into his ear. “I’ve got you.”

Enrique threw the halter on his head and tied it in place.

“I’ve got to help Santiago,” he yelled over the pelting rain as it drummed on the roof of the shed.

“I’ve got him,” Pilar said, attaching the lead to the halter.

Enrique ran and got hold of his own horse, and they all made their way slowly out of the corral and over to the barn, the horses dancing nervously in the raising water, their coats and manes slick with rain.

The horses settled a bit once inside the barn, but the barn floor was also covered in water. They all tied up the horses and Pilar and Enrique worked quickly to saddle up King and Enrique’s horse, Mesa.

The horses Santiago was leading would be hooked up to the wagon, so he tied them to a barn post and slogged over to where the wagon was resting.

“I’ll saddle up Mesa,” Pilar said the Enrique. “You help Santiago with the wagon.”

The two men pulled the wagon into the center of the barn with some difficulty since the floor of the barn was now mud. They threw in bales of hay and bags of oats for the horses for the long journey north. Then they covered it all in a canvas tarp and strapped it down to keep it from flying off in the wind.

Pilar brought the two remaining horses and started hitching them to the wagon. It wasn’t easy because the water made it harder for the horse to concentrate on her commands. Pilar kept talking to them, trying to sooth them with her voice.

“Good girl. That’s right, back up. We’ll be out of here soon, I promise. Good girl, just a little more.”

Her brothers were finally at her side, latching the final straps in place. 

Santiago jumped up on the wagon’s seat, as Enrique lead the pair out of the barn door.

Pilar took hold of King’s reins, then Mesa’s and followed them out. She led them to the house, where the water was now lapping against the porch floorboards. Enrique held the wagon horses while Santiago threw their cases into the back of the wagon and covered it all back up with the tarp.

He jumped back into the wagon and Enrique came back to Pilar and took Mesa’s reins from her.

Pilar and Enrique mounted their horses and rode up in front of the wagon, slowly leading the horses that pulled the wagon down into the now mid-calf-deep water, their heads bend down against the rain that pelted their faces. The horse too, had their heads down against the wind and rain. They had to travel a good five slow miles before they pulled out of the standing water. They had ridden another four miles when the last of the rain drops fell and they could get off their horses and have something to eat. 

They were now on perched on the edge of the valley. They could not see their ranch but they could see the large El Alto Grande dam in the distance and the water that now covered where cornfields and pastureland once stood. Close to the dam, trees that had once lined the San Gabriel could only be seen by their crowns, just poking up out of the deepening water. In a few days’ time they would be completely submerged.

The siblings stood side by side surveying the surreal scene, all three lost in their own thoughts.

Pilar eventually walked back to the wagon and took the biscuits out of her carpet bag. She brought them back to her brothers, and they all ate in silence, looking over the valley that had once been their home, trying to memorize the hills, rocks, and trees that they all knew so well, before it would forever be erased from sight, but never from their hearts.

1933, Pilar, Enrique and Santiago Talk and Eat in the Kitchen of Rancho Arroyo and it Starts to Rain Outside (Book Five, Chapter Six)

May 1933

    Pilar stood outside the kitchen and rang the bell to bring her brothers in for dinner. She remembered how Teresa used to call in the family and all the ranch hands every evening. They never ate until after the sun went below the horizon, needing every precious hour of daylight to get the many tasks done needed to run the large Arroyo Ranch. Now her grandfather and most of her aunts and uncles were either dead or living with Elizabeth up in San Antonio, where Elizabeth had family and where she had met their father, Roberto.

    It was just her and her two brothers, Enrique and Santiago, that were left on the ranch. They had all sent their families and what livestock they could take with them into Texas, over a month ago. The rest of the livestock had to be sold since the Mexican government hadn’t followed through on their promise to pay the people anything for their property who were affected by the El Alto Grande Dam. Though Pilar had made sure they kept a couple of their prized horse-breeding stock. She wanted to continue her mother’s tradition of raising award-winning racehorses. 

Pilar herself, had given up racing years before. It was after she had lost her second child falling off a horse in a race in Monterrey. Racing was a risk, she knew, but she was only four weeks along, and she hadn’t fallen off a horse since she was sixteen so she thought she was safe. But she had not given up on horses. That she couldn’t do. Horses were in her blood, just like this ranch.

 They also had to say goodbye to most of the ranch hands. The only ranch hand that made the trip north was Rico. Rico was in his eighties now, like Elizabeth and Will, and Elizabeth considered him one of the family, since he had no family of his own and had nowhere else to go

Pilar pulled the biscuits out of the oven as her brothers walked through the kitchen door. 

“Wait! Wait! Turn around and wipe off those boots. Have some respect,” she said, looking at their mud-caked cowboy boots.

It had started raining the night before and hadn’t stopped since. It wasn’t a heavy rain, but it had been steady, so the grounds were a mess.

“It’s just us, Pilar. Why do we need to bother?” Enrique said.

“Because it’s our home,” she shot back. “I will not see it degraded, no matter if our time here is limited.

“Speaking of that,” she said as she ladled the stew into large ceramic bowls. “How does the river look, Santiago?”

Santiago took off his hat and coat and hung them on the hooks next to the door. “It has just left its banks.”

Pilar stopped ladling and stared at him. “It was four or five inches below the bank just yesterday?”

“We must have gotten more rain last night than we thought,” Enrique said, as he sat down at the table.

Pilar placed the bowls on the table. “Santiago, get the biscuits, please.”

He placed the hot pan on the table coaster in front of them, grabbing a hot biscuit in his hand. “They are hot,” he said with a chuckle, throwing the biscuit from one hand to the other to try and cool it down.

Pilar shook her head. “You could just wait until they cool.”

“I’m hungry,” he said, and threw the biscuit at her.

She expertly caught it out of the air, used to her brothers’ antics. “Mother would be yelling right about now.”

Santiago smiled and reached for another biscuit. “Yes, but she’s not here, is she.”

Enrique was already eating the stew. “Good stew, sis. Not as good as Teresa, but not bad.”

Pilar nodded in appreciation but added, “You’re just saying that so you don’t have to take your turn cooking tomorrow.”

“Me, try and get out of cooking? I wouldn’t do that,” he said with a wry smile.

“No, no, of course not. Just like you don’t try and get out of mucking out the stalls. We have four horses left and you still can’t manage to keep up.”

“I’m busy,” he said, trying to look hurt at the accusation.

Santiago laughed. “Busy doing what?”

“Taking a siesta, I think,” replied Pilar.

Enrique didn’t reply. That hit a little too close to home.

Santiago dipped his biscuit into his stew and looked at Pilar. “You went into town today, right? Did momma send a letter yet? Have they arrived in San Antonio?”

“She sent a telegram, actually.”

Pilar stood and walked out of the kitchen, then back in, holding the telegraph. She placed it on the table between them.

ARRIVED AT THE RANCH YESTERDAY  STOP  EVERYONE IS FINE BUT LOST OUR MILKING COW  STOP  PILAR, HORSES ARE ALL FINE  STOP  WILL WRITE SOON  STOP  LOVE MOTHER 

“Glad to hear they all made it,” Santiago said. “That’s a long haul.”

“How many miles is it?” Enrique asked.

Pilar put down her wine glass. “It’s over two hundred and fifty miles,” she said, then sighed. She wasn’t looking forward to the trip, but what was more disturbing was leaving the ranch. It had been in her family for at least two generations. She had expected to raise her family on the ranch and grow old with her husband, Augustino, sitting on the veranda bouncing grandchildren on her knee. Augustino had agreed to take the children into Texas with Elizabeth, for now, just until they got her mother settled somewhere. Pilar felt she owed her that much. Then they would return to Mexico and set up house with Augustino’s family, a day’s ride from the Arroyo Ranch, far from the dam and the rising water. 

She was glad that the stud and the mare that they kept for breeding were safe on the Vargus Ranch, Augustino’s family’s ranch. It reminded Pilar of her first race. 

“Do you guys remember that first race I was in at the Vargus Ranch?”

“You were just a wee thing,” Santiago said.

“I think I was seven,” she said.

“Which is probably why you won,” Enrique said. “You couldn’t have weighted more than fifty pounds.”

Pilar threw her napkin at her brother. “I won because I was a good racer,” she said, trying to look mad.

“If you hadn’t have gone to that race, you wouldn’t have met Augustino,” Santiago said.

“And we wouldn’t have the wonderful breeding horses we have today,” Pilar said with a smile. “Momma had some fine horse, but that little colt I won turned out to be the best thing for us.” Pilar thought of all the ribbons that used to sit on the mantle over the large fireplace in the room right next to where they were now sitting, a room that was now practically empty, save for a few old chairs and a couch too large to move. “It’s why we got so much for the horse that we had to sell.”

Pilar took a bit of her biscuit. “I was just thinking how strange it is that we’ll be combining out stock again – the Vargus and Arroyo horses – forty some years after I won those two horses.”

Enrique nervously tapped his spoon on the table, an anxious look on his face. Pilar knew what he was thinking.

“It is fine, Enrique, really. There is plenty of work to do on the Vargus Ranch. Augustino was sincere when he offered you a job.” She placed his hand on top of his. “And I you know how to break horses better than any man I know.”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” he said, his eyes still on his plate. “I just don’t want to live in America. I know it’s Momma’s family but my home is in Mexico.”

Pilar squeezed her hand and smiled.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” Enrique said, looking at his brother.

“Maria has never been to America, so she wants to see what living in Texas would be like.” 

“And what Maria wants, Maria gets,” Pilar teased.

Then another napkin went flying, hitting Pilar in the chest. “Like Augustino doesn’t spoil you.”

“He just knows what’s good for his family,” Pilar said.

“He just knows what’s good for himself,” Enrique said almost under his breath.

Then they all laughed. That is until there was a loud clap of thunder that silenced them all.

Enrique stood and headed for the kitchen door. “Wow, that was close. I should make sure it didn’t hit any of the buildings,” he said, opening the door and peering out.

Pilar and Santiago got up too.

They all looked out the door at the deluge that was falling from the sky.

“If this doesn’t let up soon, we may be moving sooner than we thought,” Santiago said.

“We’ve got time,” Pilar said.

They closed the door and went back to finishing their dinner.