Bed of Roses (12 page)

He led the mule out of the barn. Moonlight showed him the way out of La Escondida and out of the confines of the hideaway. After closing the concealed doors he spotted Mariposa, who was feasting upon a big fat rabbit. Zafiro had said that the cougar sometimes brought fresh meat to her and her charges, but the great cat sure didn’t show any signs of sharing the rabbit.

He wondered when Tia would again have meat to prepare. The lamb the nuns had brought was only enough for one meal.

Instantly, he tore the thought from his mind and mounted Mister—a difficult task considering the fact that his leg was now hurting fiercely. Urging the surefooted mule down the pebbled slope, he prayed he’d make it to a village or even some small farm before pain forced him to stop.

But before he reached the bottom of the foothill the acrid smell of smoke stopped him. Twisting upon Mister’s back, he spied the source of the smoke: a small fire burning in the near distance. Although nighttime had fallen, he could also see a white-garbed figure moving around the fire.

Flames shot up around the person, and Sawyer realized immediately that he or she was soon going to catch fire. “Get away from the fire!”

His warning echoed through the mountains, but the person on the hill made no move to obey. He or she began to jump up and down and finally fell to the ground.

Sawyer drove Mister back up the mountainside. When the animal arrived a few feet away from the blaze, Sawyer slid off its back and hurried to assist the groaning man on the ground.

He gasped when he saw that the man was Pedro and that the hem of Pedro’s white robe was burning. Instantly, he grabbed Pedro’s shoulder and hip and began to roll him all over the pebble-strewn dirt, thereby suffocating the fire that would have soon consumed the robe and Pedro.

“For God’s sake, Pedro, what the hell—”

“The bush,” Pedro said raspily, hoarse from breathing too much smoke. “I saw the burning bush on the side of the mountain and knew I was being summoned.”

“What?” Confused, Sawyer studied the fire that still blazed nearby. His bewilderment disappeared when he saw that the flaming object was, indeed, a bush. The scripture-preaching Pedro had more than likely set the bush afire himself in an effort to bring the Bible story to life.

Sawyer examined Pedro’s feet and legs, frowning when he saw several burned places on the old man’s wrinkled skin. “You could have burned to death, crazy old man! Zafiro’s looking all over for you, and here you are on the side of the mountain setting bushes on fire!”

“Leave me in peace, my brother,” Pedro requested. “This is the garden of olives, and I must pray here. I lost my coat of many colors, you see, but after I pray I will find it.”

Sawyer’s lips thinned in a tight line of irritation. His leg hurt so badly now that he could hardly stand to use it, but he gathered the old man into his arms and placed him on Mister’s back. He couldn’t leave Pedro here alone. The elderly lunatic would more than likely pitch himself off the mountain and call to the angels to save him.

The mule’s bridle reins clutched tightly in his hand, Sawyer limped his way back to La Escondida, and by the time he reached the hidden entrance to the hideaway, he knew that he could travel no further tonight. He had exhausted what little strength he had going up and down the mountain and would have to spend one more night in the concealed den of batty bandits.

So frustrated was he with the maddening turn of events, he failed to see the thick tangle of vines that covered the ground ahead of him. When he reached the mass of thorny vegetation, his right foot disappeared into the twisting stems, which wrapped around his ankle as if alive.

He let go of the bridle reins, and down the slope he rolled, head over heels, until a crash into the rattletrap wagon stopped his fast and painful descent.

The old, unsound cart immediately splintered apart, and Sawyer soon found himself buried beneath a pile of rotten wood.

“Sawyer!”

He heard Zafiro call to him, then heard her footsteps as she approached the wagon. “Here,” he managed to tell her.

She looked at the mountain of wood that used to be a wagon. “Are you all right?”

Gingerly, he moved away a rusty nail that bit into his neck. “Oh, I’m just fine, Zafiro. In fact, falling down that rocky slope, crashing into a one-hundred-year-old cart, and being buried alive beneath a heap of worm-eaten wagon planks was so much fun that I think I’ll get up and do it again.”

His caustic reply assured her that he’d survive his little accident with the wagon, so she turned her attention to Pedro, who was struggling to dismount from Mister. “Pedro—”

“I am very angry at Sawyer, Zafiro,” the old man said, wincing when his scorched feet hit the ground. “Righteously angry, because I was just setting out to find some blind, paralyzed, and demon-possessed people to cure, when he came and got me! If I was not a saint, I would—”

“He was setting bushes on fire, Zafiro!” Sawyer yelled as he battled his way out from under the rotten wagon wood. “Then he set
himself
on fire!”

“On fire?” Tia repeated as she arrived at the scene, holding her skirts above the ground as she waddled along. “Pedro, come into the house this second and let me tend to your bums. And you, Francisco, get out of that wood before you get splinters in your little bottom!”

Splinters in his “little bottom” were the least of his problems. His leg was hurting so badly now that he actually longed to be back in the bed in his bedroom. Stumbling out of the pile of broken wood, he glared at Zafiro, who in his frustrated mind, was the indirect cause of every infuriating thing that had happened to him since the day he’d chased her from the convent.

He felt like yelling at her and decided to give in to the temptation. “Zafiro, I swear to God that from the second I laid eyes on you, my life has been—”

“Thank you, Sawyer,” she said, walking toward him and taking his hands into hers. “Thank you for going out to look for Pedro the way you did.”

“What? But I didn’t—”

“Pedro has never left La Escondida before, so I did not think to look for him on the mountain the way you did. You are intelligent like a switch.”

“If I were smart as a whip, I wouldn’t be here! Look, Zafiro, you don’t understand. I didn’t—”

“If not for you… Oh, Sawyer, if not for you, dear sweet Pedro would have burned to death! I knew you were sent to me. I knew in my heart that you—”

“Would you stop?” Sawyer blasted. He yanked his hands from her grasp. “I didn’t go looking for your dear sweet Pedro! I had left La Escondida, got that? Left, and I was already almost at the bottom of the mountain when I smelled the smoke from Pedro’s burning bush! I found him by accident and would be on my way to the nearest village by now if not for him!”

She drew away from him; her fingers trembled around her sapphire. “The nearest…village?”

He saw the shock and hurt in her pretty blue eyes, and lowered his voice. “I
told
you I was leaving. Told you, but you didn’t believe—”

“Azucar is on my rock!” Pedro shouted from across the yard, resisting Tia’s attempts to escort him into the house. “I do not mean to be disrespectful, Tia, but a soiled dove has no place on the rock that I am to build a church upon! Now, tell her to get off.”

“I will get off when I am finished brushing my hair,” Azucar announced, shaking her brush at him. “Sawyer is back, and I am sure that he has brought gold with him. I must be beautiful for him when I go to his room.”

“Broom?” Lorenzo asked from his spot on the cabin porch. “I will get you a broom, Azucar.” Turning, he reached for the broom that leaned against the wall by the door, but just as he took hold of the handle Maclovio burst out of the cabin and knocked him down on the porch.

“Who ate all the apple tarts?” Maclovio demanded, holding the heavy silver sword the nuns had brought from the convent. In a drunken frenzy he lurched off the porch and began swinging and stabbing the sword at various objects in his path.

One sharp blow left a gaping hole in the side of the woodshed, whereupon the door promptly fell off. Another vicious swing of the blade cut a swath through one of the rose gardens, and then Maclovio walked into the chicken coop.

The feeble cage broke open, and the hens quickly squawked, flapped, and scooted their way to freedom.

“
Santa
Maria,
Maclovio, look what you did!” Zafiro started to race toward him, but stopped when Sawyer grabbed her arm.

“Are you insane?” he barked down at her. “He’s a drunk with a sword! A combination like that could get you killed!”

“What do you care?” she shouted back at him, struggling to remove her arm from his hold. “You are leaving! Now, let go of me before Maclovio destroys everything we have!”

Sawyer saw that Maclovio was now using the sword to hack through a row of throw rugs that Zafiro had beaten clean earlier in the day. The rugs hung on a rope strung from oak tree to oak tree, and in only a few moments two of them were slashed beyond repair.

He let go of Zafiro’s arm. “I’m going to knock him senseless,” he seethed.

“Do not hurt him, Sawyer!” Zafiro cried when he began limping toward Maclovio.
“Dios mío,
please do not hurt—”

“In his state
nothing
could hurt him!”

When he saw Sawyer coming at him, Maclovio raised the sword and smiled. “At last we will fight, eh, Sawyer Donovan? I have been waiting for a very long time to smash your face, and now I will do it!”

Knowing that his leg would prevent him from participating in a long fight, Sawyer realized he had precious little time to subdue the man. Gritting his teeth against the pain that flared through his thigh, he lunged toward Maclovio. His head rammed into Maclovio’s stomach while his hand yanked the sword from Maclovio’s grasp. He tossed the weighty blade into the nearby rose garden.

Both men crashed to the ground. Stunned, Maclovio lay still, blinking up at the stars and smiling the ridiculous smile of a man thoroughly overcome by liquor. “Yes, Sawyer,” he slurred, “they came from all around to see me gentle the horses. Those were the days, my friend, but now…now they are over.”

Sawyer staggered to his feet and glared down at the inebriated old outlaw, his anger quickly waning when he saw that Maclovio’s entire face was wet with tears.

“You have gold now, Sawyer?” Azucar asked from her seat on the rock.

He looked up and saw she was still brushing that dry and brittle-as-straw hair of hers as if it were the longest, most luxurious set of tresses ever to grace a woman’s head.

And Tia, he noticed, continued trying to get Pedro into the house, a fairly impossible task as Pedro lay prostrate on the ground in front of a small tree that he swore was the True Cross.

Snorting sounds then took Sawyer’s attention to the porch, where Lorenzo lay sleeping. The porch was hard, and Lorenzo’s head had fallen halfway into the hole where the missing plank had once been. But the old man was sleeping as soundly as he would have had his bed been made of a multitude of down-filled mattresses.

A wave of pity came over Sawyer, and the feeling intensified as he saw Zafiro chase several chickens into the dark woods. If she didn’t catch the fowl there would be no eggs.

She and her people needed those eggs.

God, they needed so many things.

He resisted going soft, however, reminding himself repeatedly that if he stayed at La Escondida, not only would he be forced to deal with his loss of memory, but a loss of his sanity as well.

Still, he reckoned he could perform one good deed for Zafiro and help her find her chickens. She and her companions needed those eggs. He’d stay and find her chickens, and then he’d leave.

His walk through the woods went slowly because he could hardly see where he was going, but he finally approached the stream. Weeping sounds melded with the gentle rush of the water. With naught but the silvery moonlight to aid him, Sawyer looked around the area.

There on the creek bank sat Zafiro, crying into the feathers of the two flapping chickens she held in her lap. She was the most pitiful sight Sawyer could ever remember seeing. Her small shoulders shook with her sobs, she made deep, choking sounds, and even from where he stood, Sawyer could see that her chickens were wet with her tears.

He joined her at her spot by the water. “You’re going to drown those chickens if you don’t stop crying all over them.”

She hadn’t heard him approach. The sudden sound of his voice scared her so badly that she jumped up off the ground, dropped her chickens, and almost fell into the stream. Her pulse pounding in her ears, she looked up at Sawyer.

He was leaving.

She’d lost her chickens.

Maclovio had destroyed half of La Escondida.

And Luis… The deep, cold knowledge that he was soon going to find her…

Zafiro felt her knees buckle and would have fallen to the ground had Sawyer not reached for and caught her. “The danger,” she wept into his shirt. “It is coming.”

“What?”

“And my chickens are gone. Now we will have no eggs. The barn is going to collapse on Pancha and Rayo, the fences are all… Oh, Sawyer, what am I going to do? I try,” she said, sniffling, “but I cannot do everything all by myself!”

When she began to sob again, her slender body quaking in his arms, Sawyer didn’t know what else to do but hold her. Gently, he rubbed her back, his fingers slipping through the midnight silk of her hair.

“Your chickens are all around here somewhere.” He tried to comfort her. “They’ll probably come home when they get hungry enough. You know how chickens are—always on the lookout for grand adventures.”

He glanced down to see if his silly chicken story had made her smile and saw that it had not. “Zafiro—”

“I wish my grandfather was still here. He would know what to do. And my father, too. My father, he died when I was very small. I held his head in my lap when he died.”

Sawyer’s sympathy toward her tripled. “I’m sorry. About your father.”

She nodded miserably. “I was so little when he died that I do not have many memories of him. That is a very sad thing to me, so I understand how you must feel when you cannot remember your own father. Or your mother. You do not even know if they are alive. I am very sorry that you do not have your memories, Sawyer.”