A Lady Bought with Rifles (45 page)

“You thought I was dead?” he whispered at last. “Oh, Miranda. Couldn't you feel me wanting you?”

I had believed him dead because he didn't come for me. The reasons he hadn't were simple enough, once explained, with Jon between us, his arms around this miraculously discovered father, who kept smiling at him, touching his hair as if he couldn't believe he existed.

Sewa hadn't known under what compulsion I married Court, only that I had. Even then, when Trace returned from Yucatán, he'd longed for me and resolved after many struggles with his pride to find some way to speak with me, but the messenger he'd sent to arrange a tryst learned I had a baby and reported to Trace. Never dreaming the child was his, Trace concluded bitterly that I'd succumbed to Court's charm and was content.

Besides, vowed to aid Lío's band, he couldn't promise me even safety. So he'd tried, to put me out of his heart.

“It didn't work,” he said, tracing my face with his hand.

All these years … A wave of tumultuous sorrow for the lost time swept through me but subsided in the ocean-deep joy and peace of being with him. Then I remembered Sewa. It was a question I had to ask.

“Trace, it—it's been a long time. Are you free?”

He gathered me to him, bringing Jon into our embrace, though his mouth told me it couldn't be long till we merged in a way that excluded all the rest of the world.

“There has never been any doubt that I loved you. If we come through this alive, you'll be mine.”

“Sewa—”

“Sewa is a wonderful person. And she loves you.” He glanced toward the group by the nearest ramada. “Come along. We'd better join the council.”

22

“Eighty soldiers,” pondered Domingo.

Like Sewa, he was easily recognizable, though he had grown to man's height and was muscled like a puma. He had bent his face to my hands, greeted Jon warmly, and now everyone was intent on Ortega's invasion.

I had expected them to melt away into the ravines and higher mountains, but no one suggested this, except as a luring tactic.

“Court will suspect I've come here,” I said hopefully. “It may be that Ortega won't attack if he thinks you're warned.”

“In that case, good,” said wizened, monkeylike Rosalio, who, with Tomás, had thanked me for buying his freedom from the henequen plantation. “But if he comes, that can be better. We are twenty-four rifles. We can pick them off once they are in the canyon. Not a one will live.”

Tomás spat. “We can deal with eighty, maybe twice that. But then what? Ortega's superiors would have to make reprisals for such a defeat. Our mountains would swarm with soldiers. Even if we survived by some wonder, the government would punish any Yaquis they could seize.”

It was a forceful argument. No one spoke for a while. The germ of an idea worked in my mind, suddenly took form. “But if Ortega attacked a peaceful ranch,” I said, “if the ranch people, armed and vigilant because of frequent bandit raids, fought the soldiers, thinking them bandits, for surely the Army would not battle law-abiding citizens—”

“What ranch?” Rosalio demanded. “What citizens?”

Trace nodded slowly. “It might work. We could leave a trail even the Army could follow. Probably the best place to draw them would be to the horse camp. Most of us could take cover in the buildings, but enough could hide in the arroyo leading to Cruz's canyon to make sure that no one escaped. For this plan to work, there must be no soldier left to say they followed Yaquis.” His mouth thinned. “Miranda, of course, must send a most indignant message to the general-in-chief of the First Military Zone, demanding to know why her ranch was set upon. What is it to her that this Ortega was reportedly planning to rebel, get a jump on other revolutionaries? Why should he decide to start his lawless career on her ranch?”

Domingo said admiringly, “The general will most humbly beg her pardon. And if he wonders why a small ranch force could overcome trained soldiers, no doubt he will be too furious at their treachery to care much.”

It was decided that the women and children would take the animals and refuge in a smaller, even less accessible valley till word came that the danger was past. If that word didn't come, Yaqui women had raised children alone before, and when the young ones were grown, well, there would be warriors among them.

So two parties left the basin that night, going in opposite directions, though the family group wouldn't travel far in the dark, just to the next valley, from which they'd move on at dawn. I tried to send Jon with them, but he begged so hard to stay with us that at last Trace struck a bargain. Jon could ride with him to the ranch but then must let me take him to the women at the big house for safety.

Jon, from the glory of his perch behind his father's saddle, generously told Sewa she could ride Cascos Lindos, who did seem to remember her onetime mistress, though she'd heaved her flanks in a
burra
sigh at being mounted again after such a short rest.

Cascos Lindos, like my mare, had been unsaddled, watered, rubbed, and given precious maize. Domingo strode ahead by Sewa, who had left Ku with friends. Rosalio had a raw-boned gelding as did two other men. The foot warriors went in front. Trace and I, with Jon, rode at the end of the column. Where there was room for us to ride abreast, we often touched hands; where we couldn't, our hearts touched anyway.

We reached the horse camp in the middle of the night. Dogs ran out barking, horses whinnied from the corrals, and someone shouted from the house that had been Trace's,
“Quién es?”

“Miranda Greenleaf and her son,” I called, never thinking of styling myself Sanders. “I am here with friends. We require the camp for a few days.”

“Forgive me, señora.” I recognized Enrique's voice. “Can you and the small
dueño
come forward alone to assure us you are not captive or speaking under threat?”

“Good thinking, Enrique,” said Trace. “I will escort them.”

There was silence. “Can it be?” marveled Enrique. “Don Trace?”

“No other.”

We rode forward. Enrique stepped out of the door and Jon slipped from behind Trace and ran to the vaquero. “See, Enrique? It's me, with my mother and
real
father.”

Briefly, Trace explained how we hoped to draw the soldiers to the horse camp. “You had better move the horses till this is over,” he counseled. “And if anything goes wrong, if the soldiers take us, the people of Las Coronas are in the clear. You heard shooting but thought it was gangs of bandits.”

“With permission,” said Enrique. “I will stand with you, Don Trace, My
compañeros
can move the horses.”

Trace had dismounted and now he dropped his hand on the vaquero's shoulder. “Thanks, my friend. But
la señora
must take Jon to the main house. Perhaps you will ride with them?”

“I am at your orders,” Enrique promised.

Three other men had come out of the houses. They all remembered Trace, greeted him with delighted awe, nor did they argue the situation. As soon as they could saddle, they began moving the horses from the corrals, the task simplified by the fact that it didn't much matter where the horses went so long as they did.

Enrique caught me a fresh horse and roped out a gray gelding he said he'd been gentling for Jon's next visit.

“Can you sit a saddle?” I asked the child, for we had been riding most of the day and night and I myself was exhausted and sore.

“'Course I can,” he said proudly.

After we had a drink and stretched a bit, Trace lifted him up and we made, for the headquarters of Las Coronas, twenty miles away, with Enrique leading.

It was after sunup when we got there. Consuelo and Catalina were already in the kitchen and recovered quickly from their astonishment to give us chocolate and
pan dulce
and bear Jon off to bed when he fell asleep with the sweet flaky bread in his mouth.

“You must sleep, too, señora,” said Consuelo. “I will see your bed is fresh.”

I rose, yawning. “Call me in an hour,
por favor
. I must go back to the horse camp.”

Consuelo and Catalina cried out in protest. “Oh, no, señora,” Catalina scolded. “Let them do their fighting. I tell you plainly it is all one to me who dies, Yaquis or soldiers. But you must stay here with Juanito!”

“I must go to Trace Winslade. He is the man I have always loved, and until today I thought he was dead. Sewa, too, is there, whom as a child I took for my sister.”

Catalina scowled but bit off the numerous remarks she clearly longed to make and hurried me to bed. Consuelo helped me out of my clothes, washed my face and hands and feet with tepid water.

“I rejoice that Don Trace lives,” she said.

I clasped her warm hand gratefully and fell into slumber.

An hour later she helped me dress again. There was fragrant coffee and eggs cooked with chilis that Catalina insisted I eat. I tried to persuade Enrique to avoid the horse camp, but he said he'd have no manhood if he let me go that way alone. A staunch man always, back to the day he'd buried the massacred Yaquis for me because I'd prevented Court's rape of Consuelo.

It was midmorning when we started, carrying all the fresh-baked bread and tortillas available, along with cheese and barbecued meat. We were an hour's ride from the camp when we heard distant firing.

Enrique and I exchanged glances. I bent forward to urge my horse, but Enrique caught the reins. “Señora, you can't ride into that.” As I set my jaw and tried to strike aside his hand, he held on and pleaded. “Will it help Don Trace for you to be shot? You cannot get through to him now till the fight is over, one way or the other.”

In spite of my frantic need to be with Trace during the battle, I knew Enrique was right. There was no way to reach the houses without being a target. But as I made an assenting gesture and let my horse drop back to a steady pace, I was tormented.

What was happening?

The soldiers had come earlier, much earlier than I'd expected. Was Court with them? Would the advantage of the buildings' thick adobe walls compensate for numbers? But I hated the thought of all the soldiers dying, too, the young ones forced into the Army like Caguama, like the young men I'd taught to read and write who'd been homesick and lonely. I didn't want them to die, but the alternative was worse.

A lull in the battle sounds held, with only an occasional shot. Over so quickly? Then there was a burst of rapid fire which dwindling to a few isolated firecrackerlike pops followed by silence.

That time Enrique put his horse into a gallop alongside mine. “It sounded like the fight,” he shouted. “And then the
degüello
, the throat cutting.”

That had been my thought. The long exchange, then the battle must be over.

Who had won?

We sped through a stretch of hills, following a sandy wash that slowed our horses, and we came in sight of the camp. Vision blurred by motion and wind, I saw men moving prostrate forms, dragging them to a central place while down by Cruz's canyon mouth, others seemed engaged in the same task. It was too far to distinguish clothing, but the location of the fallen had to mean they were soldiers. At the same time that my heart swelled with relief for Sewa, for her people, and most of all, for Trace, I felt sick to my soul for the young men in uniform spilling out their blood and strength at the bidding of corrupt men.

Caguama might have been dead out there; others like him were. I began to suspect there was no way to ever be wholeheartedly glad about a victory; there would always be the waste of young men who had no real choice of whether or for what to fight. But what drove me now was fear for Trace, and then for Sewa, then Domingo.

Did they live?

The wash narrowed into a gorge walled by rock and brush. We had to go slower here. Enrique took the lead. As my horse maneuvered between thorny acacia on one side and jutting rocks on the other, something like steel clamped around my waist, dragged me from my horse, held me against the rocks.

Enrique turned at my gasping cry, reaching for his rifle. “Hold it!” Court snapped, leveling his revolver at my head.

He spoke with difficulty. Sweat stood out on him and he was pallid beneath his skin's weathering. “Listen well, vaquero. I am dying. I can take this woman with me or I can let her live—but she shall not live to be Trace Winslade's.” He paused, breath wheezing. His face contorted with pain, but the ugly black barrel didn't waver. “Go tell Winslade that if he wants your mistress to live, he must come alone to this place and let me kill him. When he is dead, she can go.”

“But, señor! If he is dead already—”

“Bring me his head. But use no tricks. If I suspect any, I will kill her at once.”

“Don't do it, Enrique,” I cried, struggling, trying to provoke a bullet. “Don't. I would rather die.”

Grunting, Court thrust me under his knee, pinned me with sheer weight. Blood dripped sluggishly from his side and groin. “Ride,” he said panting. “And don't think to wait till I've bled to death. When I feel that coming, I'll kill her.”

Enrique whirled and was off.

“Court,” I choked, half-suffocated by his bulk, rocks grinding into my arms and back. “Court, let me bandage your wounds. They may not be as bad as you think.”

“What's the matter, you don't like having my blood on you?” He shifted enough to drag me up, though I was still trapped between his body and the rocks. “No, my dear, I've seen enough men die to know when I've had it, or I'd have let you pass just then and healed, grown strong, and when I came for you again, I'd kill Winslade myself, not leave it to be bungled.”

“You—you knew he was alive,” I accused in sudden understanding. “That's why you got Ortega to organize that expedition.”

“Exactly. I had thought he was dead, but when I went hunting for you, my sweet, I glimpsed him in Hermosillo with that young thug, Domingo. I couldn't guess why he'd never come for you, but I was damned sure if you ever learned he was breathing, you'd be after him like a bitch in heat.” He gave a short ugly laugh, eyes smoldering. “And I was right.”