A Lady Bought with Rifles (27 page)

What did Reina plan? That heap of wood.… Horrified, I refused to understand what was going to happen until Reina stopped in front of Cruz.

“Old man,” she said, “I know what Yaquis do to witches. It will happen now if you don't say where Lío is.”

He didn't speak.

She prodded him with her whip. “Do you hear?”

Slowly, his eyes opened. Their depths glowed as if all his remaining strength was hoarded in them. His lips curved in a faint smile. “Does one answer the hiss of a serpent?”

Gasping, Reina drew her arm, brought the whip stinging forward. I hurled myself forward in time to catch the worst of the blow across my upraised arm. The metal tips brought blood, but I didn't feel it. Outrage swept reason from me. All I could see was Reina's taunting face, the joyful glitter of her eyes. With an animal cry, I sprang at her, grappling for the whip. She was taller and stronger, but I was powered by fury.

Wresting the crop from her, I leaped back and snapped the lash against her face just as Ruiz reached me, forced me away. Reina snatched up the crop and lashed me across the breast.

“Stop that, señorita,” snapped Ruiz, thrusting me among the soldiers for safekeeping. “Our business is not with your sister.” He strode up to Cruz and Reina followed with a last murderous glance at me.

“Well, old man?” the major demanded. “Speak or burn. You have one minute.”

Cruz was completely motionless. There was in him such self-possession that the soldiers Ruiz ordered forward didn't move for a moment, and when they reached the tree, they stopped.

“Lift him!” Ruiz commanded.

Fearfully, the men untied Cruz from the paloverde, fumbling the knots. His hands and feet were still bound together. “Kindle the fire,” said the major.

In a moment the dry twigs spat and flamed, searing the heavier wood. Ruiz stepped close to the condemned man.

“Your last chance,” he threatened.

Cruz said, “I am dancing.” And I remembered what he had said months ago, about how even death must let a brave man do his last dance, reveal for one final time the essence of his nature.

“Dance in fire then,” shouted Ruiz. He signaled his men.

They advanced on the blaze. There was screaming, my own, and I tore at the hard bodies around me, frenzied, unable to break through as the soldiers lifted Cruz, tossed him onto the pyre. The wood shifted, some breaking loose. There was the smell of burning hair, the flare of cloth, then, after what seemed an eternity, the acrid sizzling and scent of flesh.

No cries.

My knees gave way. I fell to the earth, retching. Someone put an arm around me, turning my face to his shoulder. “I think his neck broke when he struck the fire,” Court said. “He's dead or he'd be coughing. Come to the house, Miranda.”

One of the soldiers helped him raise me. Reina stood between the fire and the hushed crowd. “You see what happens to rebels,” she shouted. “But I will reward anyone who can tell me where the outlaw Lío hides.”

No one moved.

“We can build more fires,” Ruiz said. “Or perhaps pulling out a few tongues would loosen those remaining.”

“A hundred gold pesos!” cried Reina. “I will give that for Lío's whereabouts.”

A woman stepped forward, muffled in a black shawl. I couldn't see her face, yet something about her was familiar, something in the free swing of her walk. She mumbled something beneath her breath.

Reina stared, then shrugged and moved toward the cantina. The woman followed her inside. The door creaked shut. Ruiz folded his arms.

“Come,” urged Court.

I shook my head. “I have to know what happens.”

Minutes passed. Cruz's body smoldered. Though I faced away from the fire, there was no way to avoid the smell of burning flesh, but I was so glad he was past pain that it scarcely mattered. At last, at Ruiz's order, a captain strode to the cantina, called.

There seemed to be no answer. He pushed through the door, gave a cry, and reeled backwards, clawing at the knife in his chest. At almost the same moment a tremendous blast echoed from the mine, reverberated from the hills, followed by a dull crashing sound like distant thunder.

After a frozen instant of shock, Ruiz ordered a squad to the cantina, the rest toward the mine. A figure was streaking from the rear of the cantina, dodging through the dwarfed trees and scrub. The major ordered his men to fire. Bullets hummed after a crash of firing. The running body leaped, turned around, and fell, arms swinging up as if to curse or embrace.

Tula!

Then the air came alive with hissing cartridges. From the low ridges and dusty thickets, men appeared, tattered wild men wearing bandoliers. Ruiz rallied his men, the bugler sounded, and the men straggling from the mine redoubled their pace, dropping some comrades, apparently wounded by the blast, in order to run forward and join the battle.

“Run!” Court hissed at me.

Lío's band? It almost had to be. But their shots could kill me as quickly as could the soldiers'. I ran with Court for the cantina, slid inside past the captain's body, and lay panting on the hard-packed earth a moment before I glanced around and sighted Reina.

She lay by the counter like a broken doll. When Court turned her over, her head lolled and I screamed; that slender throat was cut from side to side. Her green eyes stared in glazed disbelief. Tula, an advance spy for Lío's group, must have been rounded up with the villagers and taken her chance to kill the woman who had brought so much suffering on them.

“But they can't win,” I groaned to Court. “There are so many soldiers.”

“Maybe not so many,” Court said dryly. “I didn't see near as many coming out of the mine as went in.” He stared at me. “Was setting off that charge your idea?”

“I couldn't think of any other way to save the people if the soldiers started poking around in the place.”

Court shook his head. “You're crazy, Miranda. Really crazy. If word gets out of what you've done, you'll be executed for treason.”

“I'll worry about that if we live through the next hour.” I shrugged. And for the first time it hit me. Trace had to be back with the ammunition and guns. He might even be with the attackers.

And he might be dead.

Court read my thoughts. “We'll know in a while,” he grunted, staying low to the ground as he worked around the bar. “How about some wine?”

“I'd rather have water.”

“It's wine or tequila.”

I settled for a few sips of sour wine. At least it was wet Bullets spanged against the cantina. One flew through a window, drilled into the opposite wall with a shower of flaked adobe.

“Damn!” said Court. “They're taking cover behind the cantina. If we're lucky, we can have them firing from both directions.”

It was a nightmare; reality had stopped for me when Cruz went into the fire. I wasn't afraid. All my interest was in what was happening outside.

Were the people in the mine safe? Did Lío's band have a chance? Where was Trace?

These things chased through my head till it throbbed. Another bullet whirred above us, spanked into adobe, ricocheted a palm's breadth from my head. Court swore.

Would the firing never stop? From the yells and shots, the fray ranged from the general store to the mine. Where we sheltered behind the bar, I could hear the steady strong beat of Court's heart, in strange counterpoint to the battle. Where our skin touched, it stuck with sweat. Even the earthen floor held little coolness.

A bullet whined over, struck the wall, splintered adobe, and bounced. Impact. Court's body lifted, shuddered.

“Court!” I tried to rise up, but he pushed me flat, collapsed so that his body shielded mine.

“Be still!” he panted. I could feel a thick warmth seeping from his hip. “I won't have you scarred, marked up. You're mine.”

He would bleed to death. I rolled out from under what was almost dead weight, ripped off the flounce of my petticoat, made a pad, ripped the side of his trousers with a knife hidden under the bar. Blood pulsed from his upper thigh. I fitted the pad over the wound, bound it in place.

If the blood would stop! Court had done his best to protect me. I couldn't just let him die. Reaching for the wine bottle, I held it to his lips. He swallowed. His eyelids fluttered as I wiped the clammy moistness from his face.

“Lie down!” he breathed, exerting his last strength to bring me next to him. “Stay low, damn you!”

Pinned by his weight, I lay in the dust. Firing, shouts, and screams filled the air outside, now closer, now ebbing. Where was Sewa? Would she be safe in the tunnel with the women and children? Whatever happened outside, perhaps they might survive.

And Trace! He must be out there with Lío's men. If I could find a weapon …

Keeping as much as possible behind the wall and the fallen captain's crumpled body, I worked the heavy gun from his holster. It took both my hands to hold it. Aiming at the nearest soldiers spraddled behind some rocks near the cantina, I pulled the trigger.

It clicked on an empty chamber. But there were a dozen men clustered in easy range, their attention centered on the ragged Yaquis who seemed to be firing with those rifles, the ones with which Trace had bought my life.

Trace was out there somewhere.

With any luck, dense and close as they were, I could pick off one or two soldiers before they learned they had an enemy behind them.

I squeezed off a shot, wrist and fingers numbed by the recoil. A soldier pitched forward.

“Miranda!” It was Trace, over among some rocks. “Get down, you little fool.”

He was alive. Till I saw him, I couldn't be sure. My heart swelled with thankfulness. I aimed once more. Then a mountain seemed to fall in on me as an explosion of pain was buried in unconsciousness.

13

When I tried to open my eyes, light stabbed through them to my brain in a way that made me moan and turn my face into the soft comfort of pillows. For a while I didn't know who I was, where I was, anything except that it hurt to be awake. Then drifts of remembering swelled; I would hear a voice, glimpse a face against my closed eyelids, figures outlined in blood-red so dark it was almost black.

There was a face I longed to see, not knowing whose it was, but it never appeared in my feverish half-dreams. If it did, I would know everything that my mind could not or would not retrieve. Till I remembered that face, I didn't want to rouse at all, open my eyes to the world around me, the owners of hands that brought me food and drink, dressed me, and attended my needs.

Reluctantly, I became aware of the hands. One pair was light and tentative, almost hesitant in the way they touched me. The other was strong, hard, deft. They held me more than was necessary, lingered in a way that, as I returned to reality, made my flesh chill. A voice that went with the hands talked at me. I couldn't hear the words. I kept my eyes shut. But a name kept knifing into the soothing haze, jarring me to consciousness.

“Miranda,” said the deep voice that belonged with the caressing hands. “Miranda …”

My heart would seem to stop beating. And long warm fingers would stray over my face, my throat, pass to my breasts and down the rest of my body. What would they do if I came alive? I was afraid of the hands, though they cherished me. They didn't belong to the face I desperately groped to remember.

But the soft fuzziness muffling my thoughts and feelings began to fade. I began to want to see, even though it hurt. The face I wished for mightn't ever come, I might have to search for it Only how was I to elude the hands that tended me?

“Why shouldn't I bed her, Doctor? It might help and it can't hurt!”

“A senseless woman!” protested a husky frayed tone interrupted by a harsh laugh.

“I've been patient. Six weeks married and still no consummation. I'll give it a few more days, but then I'll have her.”

“If she stays like this, you should have the marriage annulled,” said the other voice while I tried to understand the words.

The owner of the strong hands laughed again. “I won't lose her. I'd rather have her, even if she stayed just like this, than any other woman.”

“That—that's obscene!”

The voices went away. I opened my eyes slowly, winced at the light, but fought to pierce the murky veil shrouding my vision. Pushing up on an elbow, I bit back a groan at the sledging ache in my head. When I could bear to move, I sat up fully, stared through weaving red shadows at the white-walled room, dresser, and elaborate screen.

Did I know this place?

Nothing stirred memories. If I could only see the face, then I'd know, then I'd remember.

Remember what? Sadness? My head throbbed, sending waves of nausea through me, and I lay back.

There was a sound. The hands gripped mine and the voice that went with them said roughly, “Miranda, my darling. Miranda, my wife.”

I looked up, through shifting mists to tawny eyes, a hard squarish face. I knew him.

He saw that I did.

But when a sound of pain tore from my lips as he bent over, jarring the bed, he said contritely, “Does it hurt so much, sweetheart? Never mind, just lying there as long as you have would make a person dizzy weak. Now you're awake, you'll soon feel good as new.”

“Court,” I said slowly. “Your name is Court. You—you were hurt.”

He touched his thigh. “Healed.” Strong white teeth showed for a moment. “And so is the hole you shot through my shoulder.”

Then, as if parts of a scattered jigsaw suddenly fitted themselves together, I saw Reina dead, soldiers firing, and glimpsed, at last, the face I'd hunted in my fever dreams, a dark lean face with storm green eyes, as I'd seen it before something crashed in my head.

“Trace!” I said.

Court lost his smile. I felt a surge of longing and need for Trace, an equally strong fear of the big man leaning over me. His sun-bleached golden hair reminded me of a lion's mane. I felt exposed to him, my softness undefendable, as if he might lower his mouth to my throat and tear at it.