Cibolero by Kermit Lopez

Cibolero by Kermit Lopez

ISBN: 978-0-595-43567-8

Book Summary:

For years, Antonio Baca lived the wandering and restless life of a Cibolero, or buffalo hunter, following the great herds that roamed the endless Llano Estacado-the high plains of a region that would one day be New Mexico. After marrying and settling down, Baca has finally found a modicum of peace in the home he built for his growing family.

But Baca witnesses the transformation of Nuevo Mexico from an isolated colonial outpost of the Spanish empire to a province of the newly independent nation of Mexico and, finally, to a land conquered by the avaricious americanos. Following the United States’s seizure of New Mexico, Antonio and his countrymen find themselves treated as foreigners and second-class citizens in their own land.

When his daughter, Elena, is kidnapped by a band of invading Texas Rangers after the American Civil War, Baca desperately tracks them across the llano of New Mexico and into Texas using his skills as a Cibolero. Terrified for his daughter’s safety, he plunges into the world of the gringos, and discovers just how much the americanos have changed his homeland. But as the days pass without any sign of Elena, Baca fears for her life-and his own.

 Book Description:

Cibolero, the new novel by Kermit Lopez, is a tale of sorrow and terror, hope and triumph, set in 1800’s New Mexico.  Antonio Baca, a former “Cibolero” or buffalo hunter, pursues his daughter’s kidnappers in Post-Civil War era New Mexico and Texas.  “Cibolero” is a fictionalized account of the Hispanic experience before and after the conquest of the Southwest by the United States.  

On one level, Cibolero is an action-oriented adventure tale as Antonio Baca sets out to rescue his daughter from an invading band of Texas Rangers using his skills as a Cibolero hunter. 

On another level, Cibolero deals with racism, ethnicity and society in the “old West” and the historical ties of large parts of the present western United States to Mexico and Spain.  Cibolero is a fictionalized account of a true but overlooked part of U.S. history.

Author Bio:

2008 New Mexico Book Award Finalist, Kermit Lopez wrote “Cibolero” after researching his family ancestry, which spans four hundred years of New Mexico history.  He received electrical engineering and law degrees from the University of New Mexico and lives with his wife and son in Albuquerque.   Mr. Lopez is also the author of the novel The Prodigy.

 Excerpt:

Chapter 1

         Antonio Jose Baca gripped the hard, wooden handles of the plow firmly in his hands and shouted, “Ándale!” at the stubborn mule. The animal did not move.

Antonio heaved a sigh of frustration and hissed, “Terco!” He bent down, grasped a clod of dirt, and flung it at the animal. The mule lumbered forward, straining against the singletree plow. The blade of the plow cut through the fertile river bottom, forming a furrow as it turned over the sweet-smelling loam teeming with earthworms. Behind him a dozen noisy chickens scratched at the plowed field, in search of the burrowing worms.

         Antonio’s dark muscular arms and callused hands radiated strength. The reins, around his neck and under his arms, had long ago ceased chafing his skin. His torso, bronze from the neck down, suggested a life spent primarily in the open air and beneath the sweltering sun. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead and soaked into the earth.

He reached the end of the field, where a small orchard grew, and released the plow, yanking the reins to signal the mule it was time to rest.

Pausing under the meager shade of an apple tree, he reached into the small sack hanging from his waist and grabbed a handful of seed corn. Then he began walking down the furrow, dropping three or four kernels with every step and pressing them into the ground with the toe of his boot. When he returned to the mule, the animal was fast asleep. Its head hung low and its rear foot dangled slack; its enormous penis almost touched the ground. Only its tail moved, frequently swatting at flies. Antonio woke the animal, maneuvered it around, and walked the plow to the opposite end of the field.

He started a new furrow, the plow turning the soil over, burying the seed. There was enough moisture in the warm earth to ensure the corn would sprout and push its way into the sun. Someday these clever americanos would invent a plow that could turn the soil over in the proper direction without having to waste time dragging it back to the beginning of a row. The Americans puzzled him; how could such a cruel, heartless people produce such wonderful implements and plentiful luxuries so cheaply that even he could afford them?

         He repeatedly dragged the plow to the upper end of the field, plowing four more furrows on each pass, each time covering three furrows with turned-over soil and then planting corn in the fourth. Every so often, the mule lifted its tail and excreted several round “apples,” further enriching the soil.

         About once an hour, Antonio trudged to the nearby cottonwood-shaded creek, dipped a bucket in, took a big swig, and then watered the mule. By late afternoon his work was done. He unhitched the mule, wiped the plow blade clean with a burlap bag, and stripped off the moist, darkly stained harness, hanging it in a young apple tree. Then he led the animal to the stream and splashed water on its lathered flanks, currying it with a corncob. Although the animal obviously enjoyed the scrubbing, it was restless and visibly hungry, no doubt anticipating a supper of shelled corn and dry hay.

         This was Antonio’s favorite season. The air was hot in the sun, yet cool in the shade. Green cottonwood leaves dangled and vibrated in the late afternoon breeze, reflecting spikes of sunlight. A grove of snowy white capulin nestled among the cottonwoods, its wild cherry blossoms nurtured by the waters of the stream. The blossoms threw off a scent almost too sweet to endure.

In a week or two, this same stream would be filled with plentiful snowmelt draining from the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the northwest. For the time being, however, the late spring sun bore down upon a dry valley. The sheltering canyon’s walls, their ridges dotted with green piñon trees, reflected rays of copper and golden brown from the burning orb. The birds sang, the crows scolded, and the cicadas accompanied them with a steady hum. He could not imagine a better life!

         Antonio looked back at the plowed field. The plow, dangling harness, and horse collar glinted in the sun. With a twinge of unease, he admitted that had the Americans not brought all these new things down from Missouri, life would be much more toilsome.

A growl in his belly abruptly turned his thoughts to the supper waiting in the warm, safe kitchen of his three-room adobe house. His mouth watered at the thought of María’s and Elena’s cooking: a large stack of hot flour tortillas draped with a dish towel to keep them warm; a large pot of steaming beans; and cubes of venison swimming in bowls of red chile. He strode to the corral; locked in the mule; gave it a bucket of corn; and flung in several pitchforks of hay for the livestock. The pitchfork was another American-made implement, as was the barbed wire fencing the corral.

Antonio walked to the adobe house. A row of wooden vigas jutted horizontally from the walls to support the dirt roof. The adobe walls merged into a small torreón, a watchtower formation from which the ranchito could be defended in case of attack. In the five years since he had constructed the torreón, however, the immediate area had been spared any Indian raids, so the family now used the torreón for storing supplies and grain.

When Antonio stepped into the kitchen, María stopped him, holding her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She handed him a bucket of water, a towel, and a bar of store-bought soap, then gestured toward a clean shirt hanging on the nail sticking from the door jamb. Antonio laughed, grabbed the shirt, and went outside. He lathered himself from the bucket; rinsed and dried himself; put the shirt on; and re-entered the house, ready to devour María’s cooking. He greeted her with an affectionate hug and a pat on her rear end. She blushed and slapped his hand.

Antonio smiled at his wife. María was a short woman in her mid-thirties with dark auburn hair and soft eyes, a contrast to the darker and harder features of her husband. And while María’s eyes were light green, Antonio’s were dark brown, almost matching the color of his hair.

         Elena, their oldest child, placed a rolled tortilla on the cast-iron stove—what a change from the comal Antonio’s mother had used all her life, from the one María had used for the first dozen years of their marriage! Antonio remembered the day he had proudly pried open the crate in which the Pennsylvania-made stove had traveled over a thousand miles from St. Louis. The stove’s black firebox and oven contrasted sharply with the gleaming steel trim of its handles and legs, which María still polished daily. Antonio had saved the planks and nails for who-knew-what projects.

         “Hola, patrón,” Joseph Lewis greeted him as Antonio sat down. Joseph was tearing a tortilla into pieces which could be used as spoons for scooping beans and chili from his tin plate.

         “Hola, Pepé.” Antonio nodded and continued in Spanish: “How’s it going down at el rinconcito?” Rinconcito was Antonio’s name for the nook in the small canyon a quarter mile to the south, where the land was covered with a delta of rich, crumply loam.

         “Good, good. Got the beans and most of the squash hoed. Tomorrow I’ll finish up and irrigate,” Joseph answered and lapsed into silence. A man of few words. Antonio liked that. Although he was at ease with the nineteen-year-old, lanky, yellow-haired, blue-eyed gavacho, who came from somewhere around Wisconsin, it always seemed unnatural to Antonio to hear an americano speak perfect New Mexican Spanish. Even more unnatural was the respect, even deference, which the younger man paid him.

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