Love and War on the Rio Grande

Where the Rio Grande River meanders through the Pass had always been a place for Anglo and Spaniard and Indian to meet and mingle. Conquerors and colonists, fierce Indians and devout padres, cavalrymen, railroad barons, and fancy women had all played their roles here.

Beginning with the declaration of the Texas War for Independence on March 2nd, 1836, the stage was set for three females, all born on that same historic day. From thereon, their incredible lives were to be irrevocably interwoven by the vagaries of that great river, the Rio Grande.

Blue-eyed and fair-haired Judith Dublaski, full of piss and vinegar, is the daughter of a widower, a Polish Jew who came to the Pass in 1824 as a peddler and has become by 1848 a prominent merchant. In no small measure, her father controls the vital goods and services on which people of the Pass, most especially the illustrious Cárdenases, depend.

Raven-haired Tepaté, with eyes a dirt brown, is a descendent of the Tigua Indians, loyal to the Spaniards of Nuevo Mexico with whom they fled the Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680 to settle in the Pass. During one of the worst droughts in memory of the Tigua tribe, she is sold at the age of eight by her mother to the Cárdenases.

Of Spanish aristocracy from Pamplona, Spain, the Cárdenases came to the New World in 1650. Never for a moment has the family forgotten that they are important people. Proud auburn-haired, silver-eyed, young Magdalena Cárdenas, bored by her socially prescribed life, finds the fearless and bright Tepaté and the gregarious and shrewd Jude a diversion.

Their friendship leads them into escapades covering a half-century of El Paso's illustrious history—forbidden and life-changing adventures that include the cocky Texas Ranger Jeb Shackleford; the indomitable Captain Daniel Durrett of the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment; the idealistic French officer Gérard La Bruyére; the cheerful mestizo, Little John, passing himself off as a padre; and handsome Bartolomé Cárdenas, with his beloved qualities of gentlemanliness and nobility . . . and a determinedly suppressed carnality running through his pure blue blood.

And then there is the half-breed Blondie, a lifelong formidable foe.