A Lady Bought with Rifles (28 page)

He did bend his head. I tried to move away, but he held me against the pillow, set his lips where the pulse leaped and pounded.

“You're my wife.” His words muffled against my flesh. “I'll wait a few days more, help you get stronger. But then I'll make you forget every man but me.”

Though I dreaded the reaction my question might bring, I had to know. “Where is Trace?” I asked. “The fight—what happened?”

Court released me abruptly, straightened, turned on his heel to the window. “Winslade's dead and buried.”

“No.”

“Lucky for him. Or he'd be slaving in Yucatán on some henequen plantation. He wouldn't last long. They'd beat him to death.” As I stared in puzzled horror, Court explained, and each word woke echoes in my aroused memory.

Those of Lío's band who hadn't died in the battle were sent under heavy guard to Guaymas and shipped to Yucatán to be sold to great plantations, where they would work under brutal conditions till they died.

“Yaquis don't make good slaves,” said Court “I've heard two-thirds of them die inside the first year.”

Another name stirred in the depths of my heart, a name I must call before I let myself think about Trace. “Sewa?”

“Your little pet got away along with the women and children you hid in the mine. They're back in the sierra.” Court smiled indulgently. “You're thorough, sweetheart. It took the men two weeks to clear out the rocks and earth that dynamite shook loose.” He paused. “Major Ruiz doesn't know you sheltered Yaqui families. I wouldn't give him an excuse, love, to take a closer interest in you. He's stationed here with a detachment that goes off Yaqui-hunting every week or so, but I believe he's far more preoccupied with you. Most punctilious he's been with his calls and courtesies. And unmistakably crestfallen at your slow recovery.”

I scarcely heard all that. Sewa had escaped, and presumably so had Domingo. He'd look after her. The women and children would have a cruel time of it by themselves, but at least their men would not be attracting pursuit.

Their men. Dead or enslaved.

My man. Dead. Trace, to whom I was pledged with heart and body though drunken old Dr. Trent had spoken legal words binding me to this powerful man leaning over me. Court read my thoughts. His mouth twisted.

“He's dead, Miranda. Dead and tumbled in an arroyo where the soldiers tossed corpses and shoveled in the sides to cover them. By now worms will have eaten such of his brains as weren't blown away with the back of his head.”

“Trace,” I said. “Trace.”

A vein stood out in Court's temple, but his voice was soft, almost pitying. “Dead, Miranda. Dead and gone. Forget him. You'll get well and strong and be happy.” His hand caressed my cheek. “I'll take good care of you.”

I felt cold at the words, colder at his touch, coldest when I thought of the future. Live without Trace? It seemed impossible, yet I knew I could. A matter of getting through an hour at a time, a day at a time, till there was a week, then a month, at last a year. People did it all the time. So would I. Somehow.

But live with Court? I couldn't and wouldn't I'd get away. Perhaps find Sewa again and Domingo, get back to Las Coronas, and build some sort of life.…

Life without Trace. It kept coming back to that. I needed to weep, to mourn him, but my eyes were dry. The heaviness pressing on my heart seemed to crush all feeling. Or was it the pressure of Court's tawny eyes?

“Rest now,” he said, trailing his fingers across my eyes. “You'll be better soon, darling. If you knew how hard it's been to wait—”

I could almost have laughed. He expected me to sympathize with his frustration? Did he think I could stop loving Trace, just like that, on the snap of a finger, because he was dead? I closed my eyes against the smoldering flame in Court's, but I couldn't evade his lingering hands, which both chilled and burned, like ice-fire. That was the awful, treacherous thing. I wasn't indifferent to him; in some hostile way he aroused my senses.

That frightened me more than the inevitability of being taken by him. So long as he took without my response or encouragement, I believed I could feel separate from it, not really there. But if I answered him, even to fight, he'd have trapped me in the body he could handle and use at will.

A sudden freezing question pierced my desperation. Court thought me a virgin. Only that had kept him from forcing me months ago. When he thrust for that membrane and found it gone, I doubted he'd believe I had lost it riding horseback or any of those other possible, implausible excuses.

My breath slowed till it almost stopped. Court's hand lay on my throat as a beast of prey might pin a victim. “We will be cautious,” he said. “You will get back your strength a little each day.” He buried his face against my belly and I felt his warm breath heat my skin. “For certain things, though, my energy will suffice at the moment.”

Laughter rumbled deep in his chest. He kissed my mouth slowly, making it open to him. Then he went away.

My head still ached and I could go only a few steps without tiring, but I was recovering from what Dr. Trent called a serious concussion caused by a soldier clubbing me with a carbine butt.

Raquel and Chepa waited on me when Court was at the mine, Raquel with averted eyes and a resentful curve to her soft lips. When I was stronger, she might help me escape, but I dared not sound her out yet. When I asked Chepa if anything had been heard of Sewa or the others who'd hidden in the mine, Chepa gave a sad shake of her head.

“The soldiers line up our men every week to be sure no Sierra Yaqui have slipped in. Major Ruiz's order is that anyone giving food or shelter to the fighters will be hanged or sent to the henequen plantations.”

“But Sewa's a child and crippled besides!”

“She's with the rebels. That's all Ruiz cares for.” We shared a heavy silence before Chepa brightened. “Domingo will take care of Sewa. She's told me how brave and clever he is, that he will be a better leader even than Lío.”

“Did Lío die?”

“No. It pleased Ruiz to send him as a slave to Yucatán.”

Lío a slave? He wouldn't be one for long, I was sure of that. He would get away or resist till he was killed. Trace would have been the same; for the first time I was bitterly grateful that the man I loved had died quick and clean, been spared what Lío and the surviving men were enduring.

And Sewa, my chosen sister-child? Domingo would look after her, and so would old Camilda. The women and children would be safer in the mountains than in settlements where they might be arrested simply because they were Yaqui.

That evening Court helped me out on the veranda and filled goblets with wine. “To your recovery,” he toasted. He pulled a rawhide bench so close that his long upper leg pressed mine. “You're beautiful again, Miranda. I'm rewarded for my patience.”

“You've been kind.”

“Be damned to that! I take care of my horses. Won't I do more for my wife?”

That was what I was' if the words Dr. Trent had mumbled meant anything. Watching Court obliquely, I realized that if I were married to him in twenty cathedrals by twenty archbishops I'd still feel soiled and dishonored when he touched me. It wasn't only that I didn't love him—in my heart I belonged to Trace Winslade.

“I'm sorry I've been such trouble,” I said, and changed the subject swiftly. “Court, everyone talks about slaves on the henequen plantations, but surely the Mexican constitution forbids that.”

He stared, dumbfounded. “The constitution?”

“Yes. Miss Mattison had me study it. She didn't want me ignorant of my home country.”

“As if reading a lot of high-flown words could teach you anything real!” Court scoffed when he finally stopped laughing. “All right, my earnest student On paper, Article One, Section One, it says: ‘In the Republic all are born free.' It even adds that slaves setting foot on Mexican territory become free with a claim to protection of their liberty. And it says that no one shall be made to work without just compensation and his full consent and that no compact shall be tolerated in which a man agrees to his own exile. But my sweet naïve darling, those words mean nothing.”

“Then Lío and the others won't be released after a term? They can't be bought out?”

“Who'd buy them?”

“I will.”

“Miranda! If you weren't my wife, you'd already be in serious trouble for sheltering Yaquis. If you don't want to be imprisoned; exiled, or have all you own confiscated, you'd better learn to mind your own business.”

“It
is
my business when men are slaves and women and children are hunted and killed.”

Court took my hands, gripped them hard. “The government is weary of these continual Yaqui rebellions. The Indians will either work peaceably on the lands left to them after Mexican colonization, or they will be exterminated. Nothing you do will change that.”

“And later nothing could change that I did nothing.”

“Lío and his men were rebels. Their death sentence is a slow one, that's all.”

My head throbbed savagely. Closing my eyes for a few minutes, I made myself breathe slow and strong. “If a man can be bought, I think he can be sold. Tell me how this slave system works.”

“It's an outgrowth of peonage. The victims aren't all Yaqui. If any Mexican incurs a debt he can't pay, his ‘debt'—along with his body—can be acquired by anyone needing a laborer. Once he's caught, it's a simple matter to charge enough food, shelter, and clothing against his wage to make sure he never gets free.”

“And the government allows it?”

Court laughed at my shock. “My very deaf, the government is in the business. Ramón Corral, who used to be governor of Sonora, is Díaz's vice-president. It's said he gets three pesos for every Yaqui sent to Yucatán or Oaxaca. The Secretary of Development, Colonization, and Industry is Olegario Molina, the leading henequen hacendado of Yucatán, You see what a useful arrangement it is. The government, in sending Yaquis to the plantations, not only supplies cheap, replaceable labor to some of the richest, most powerful men in the country, but also opens up Yaqui lands to settlers, including large American interests, and it is solving the centuries-old problem of what to do with
indios
who will not become tractable peons.”

“If the government permits such things, there
ought
to be a revolution.”

“There will be. But don't say it so loudly. I don't think there are secret police among the soldiers, but one never knows.”

“Secret police?”

Court touched my cheek gently, shaking his head. “I forget how innocent you are of the world and of Mexico, in particular. On top of the army, regular police, and both state and federal
rurales
, there are
acordadas
, secret assassins attached to each state. They put politically offensive people out of the way, along with personal enemies of ranking officials, and you may be sure no noise is made about their murdering.”

We seemed to drop, conducted by Court's passionless voice, from one corruption to a worse. I stared at the lights of Mina Rara and wondered if it was for this that Juárez had driven out Maximilian and the encroaching European powers. Ironic that Díaz had fought the Austrian archduke but then opened his arms to foreign speculators who grew rich while untold numbers of Mexicans toiled for a bare existence!

How had my father been able to live here, accept profits to some degree made possible by such a wretchedly oppressive government? I knew my father had paid our miners well and doubtless he'd succored many families as he had Lío's, but all the same—The idealized picture I had of my father suffered a bit of tarnish and I began to understand why he'd hoped I'd stay in England.

And did I intend to give up everything I'd inherited because the government was rotten and helpless people were being enslaved or killed? I couldn't do anything about the abscessed core of the infection. That
would
take a revolution followed by careful building, courage, faith, and hope. But I must help my friends.

“What does a man cost in Yucatán?” The words seared my lips. I still couldn't believe such things happened.

“I'm not sure.” Court frowned, watching me sharply. “I think it's about four hundred to one thousand dollars Mexican, but the big hacendados only pay sixty-five dollars apiece for Yaquis they can resell a month later for eight times that.”

“I want to buy Lío out. And all of his men who went to Yucatán.”

“You what?”

“You heard me.”

Court studied me, eyes narrowing. “Lío and his guerrillas are rebels, not regular debt slaves. Even trying to buy them could bring trouble.”

“It seems to me that money, used in the right places, can do almost anything here.”

“You're learning,” Court drawled. “And I have a few more lessons for you. When you married me, I acquired a half-part interest in your property. Though it may seem highly unjust, you cannot act independently in matters involving money.”

It was a humiliation I hadn't imagined, though in England, too, a woman became her husband's chattel with no control of her own inheritance. Evidently Court had determined it was time to make his power recognized. As I tasted the bitterness of realizing that he could now interfere with me in economic matters simply because he was my husband, I reflected that married women were enslaved to a degree and all the teachings on equality I'd learned at Miss Mattison's rose to my lips.

Court's ironic smile made me stifle those appeals and arguments. Somehow I'd get away, be free of his domination. But for now I must persuade him to buy Lío and his men.

I raised my glass for more wine and managed a shaky laugh. “I don't understand all the legalities, Court, and I'm sure it would make my head ache if I tried. Lío saved my life. I want to save his. You understand these things. I'm sure you could bargain for him and his men.”