Paxton Pride (43 page)

Save for the markings on the calender, Karen could not tell when one year ended and the next began. January the first came and went as any other day and Karen found herself settled into the routine of a winter's existence. Mornings she spent with Maruja, learning to prepare the various ranch fare. The kindly Mexican woman taught Karen to work with skins and furs, to weave, to plan for spring, which seeds would be planted first, what crop should go where. In the midst of the days, Karen came to think more and more of Maruja as the mother she wished she'd had.

If the afternoons were clear and bright, Ted Morning Sky or Billy would accompany her into the hills to instruct her as to which plants were edible, which held medicinal value, where to look for water and how to read the calligraphy of the trail, identifying the tracks of animals and man. Every day, rain or shine, she longed for more time with Vance, but he spent most of his days out on the PAX range keeping tarck of the stock through the heavy winter months, driving them to better feed and delivering supplies to the line cabins on the boundaries of PAX range. At first she begrudged his absence, but as she slowly assimilated herself into the workings of the ranch she began to understand the necessity of his being gone and concentrated on the business of taking care of herself and learning the thousand details involved in running a ranch house on the frontier.

Her girth increased as the child within her developed and grew. To fill the increasingly lonely hours she and Maruja altered some of Elizabeth's dresses, plain though they were. She promised herself the provincial apparel would serve only until she regained her normal figure, but after wearing the new clothes for three days, had to admit they were more comfortable than anything she had brought with her. The first time True saw her in one of his wife's dresses his eyes narrowed. That night, as unobtrusively as possible, she let him win at checkers. With the blue.

It seldom snowed. Worse, the winter manifested itself in bright, crystal cold days contrasting with gloomy periods of freezing sleet and rain. It was on one such rainy afternoon she amused herself in Elizabeth's old workroom. Sick of sewing, she dusted off a canvas and started on a painting she planned to keep secret from everyone. And during especially inclement times she would bake several batches of doughnuts, filling the entire
hacienda
with their delicious aroma. Bundled up in a heavy coat she traversed the icy distance to the bunkhouse and left heaping platters full for the men when they came in, an action that ingratiated her to the PAX riders more than anything she could have done.

February brought more of the same, days of bright clear cold sunshine, days of ferocious rain and gloom when wind and thunder threatened the security of the adobe walls, when driving sleet took the measure of horse and rider and made a body yearn for the stifling heat of a summer day. It was on a bright morning in early February that Marcelina saddled a half-wild Appaloosa and, bearing an assortment of food, magazines and a book or two for the line shack at the northwest edge of PAX range, rode west on the trail leading to Sleeping Giant Mountain. How she hated the Paxtons. All of them! And so she volunteered to ride to the line shack simply for an excuse to be out of the house and away from the
Señora
who mocked her with incessant, pretended attempts at friendship, and from Vance, the only man to whom she had ever offered her body, the man who scorned her.

The Appaloosa fought her lead but she was an expert horsewoman and brought the animal under control, heading him up the northwest fork in the trail. The weather had been clear for several days, but February in hill country was a time of rapid changes and Marcelina was wise enough not to trust the pleasantness of the moment She looked warily to the north where even now the sky was awash with a scattering of high cumulus clouds. Gibson, the PAX line rider, would probably be anxious for a visitor, especially before the new storm hit. It was early afternoon by the time she drew near the cabin nestled on the chest of the Sleeping Giant, having taken a roundabout path merely as an excuse to prolong her journey and the time spent away from the ranch. She reined up the Appaloosa in front of the house and, not getting an answer to her halloo, tethered the horse near a patch of grass growing a few yards from the door, slid out the Winchester from her saddle scabbard and strode up to the shack. “Hey, Gibby!” There was no response. More than a little pleased she wouldn't have to fend off the cowboy's awkward advances, she decided to leave the supplies inside and be on her way. She went back to the Appaloosa, slung the burlap sack over her shoulder, crossed to the shack and stepped inside where without warning the carbine was torn from her grasp and she was spun into the center of the room. Her fingernails slashed the air but the man only laughed and stepped back out of range.

To her surprise he was not Gibson. Against the closed door and holding her rifle stood a lean hard wolf of a man, a cruelly handsome half-breed with a scar, a vivid trail against deep brown skin, marring his high cheekbone. Long black hair hung down to his narrow shoulders and a mandarin moustache ranged along his lip. His eyes glittering with singular malice, he wore the clothes of a
vaquero
, tight black trousers flared at the boots, a short coat of faded buckskin and a sombrero hanging down his back, held by a rawhide thong across his throat. He had the look of one who was a predator among men, and despite her initial fear, Marcelina felt her face flush and her blood quicken beneath his unwavering, sensual stare. His grin revealed even white teeth, sharp like a rodent's, and there was an aura of power about him, a look she had seen in only one other man, Vance Paxton. “Who are you?” Marcelina asked, her voice trembling.

“The man who was here. He is out back where I kill him,” the man said.

“What are you doing here?”

The man leaned the rifle against the door, stepped closer to the girl. His hands reached up, curled the fabric of her blouse and tore it to the waist. “This,” he said. His hands caressed the girlish breasts. “And this.”

Her head tilted up to receive the crushing, hungry kiss and she fell back on the cot as his hands ripped her jeans from her and his own weapon of flesh, brutally large, was exposed. Only then, suddenly panic-stricken, did she recover enough to struggle, but her hands were held to the side and he was over her and into her, inside, tearing her with seething strokes of fire. “And this,” he laughed, “… and this …” in rhythm with the fierce strokes. With his sudden release she lost consciousness. His words were a final fearful echo reverberating hollowly down the long final plummet. “And this.…”

It was late afternoon. The sun drifted lazily on its way, dipping below the crown of the Sleeping Giant, bathing the cabin in shadow. Without those rays of warmth, feeble though they were, the cabin soon grew unbearably chilly. Riders, many of them, approached and the man unsheathed himself from her and, catlike, strode to the door and grabbed the carbine as the weapon tilted and began to fall. A man with only one ear, the right one being but a knob of flesh, waited outside. He tried to look over the naked wolf's shoulder even as he gave his report. “The men return, Jaco. There will be a storm soon.”

Marcelina sat up in the cot at the mention of the man's name. Jaco!
But what of it. He is a man
. Her eyes narrowed.
A man to keep. A real man
.

“What of the rangers?” Jaco asked.

“José believes we have lost them.”

“José is a fool. What do you say?”

“We have lost them. But not for long, I think.”

“Tonight, then, Jaco said, his voice heavy and foreboding. “Tonight we burn the ranch.”

The one-eared man hesitated in the doorway. “What is it, Arcadio?” Jaco growled.

“The men … Marquez wishes to know if the girl is for all the men.”

Jaco glanced over his shoulder, a grin splitting his face, then back to Arcadio. “She is mine. For a special reason.”

“Marquez will.…” Jaco spat on the floor and Arcadio stopped talking. The message was explicit. He nodded and closed the door.

Marcelina, her feet on the cot and her back against the wall, sat wrapped in a blanket, knees bent and against her breasts. She studied the bandit's naked form as he stirred the embers in the iron stove, tossing in a few pieces of kindling and grunting with satisfaction as they burst into flame. Jaco. Jaco the bandit, Jaco the feared. He placed the carbine on the table and neared the girl. Marcelina's small pert breasts were bruised from his rough caresses, yet the dark brown crowns tightened as he walked toward the bed. He sat near her, his hands touching her knees, separating them then traveling down across young thighs chafed from his demands. She shuddered as the strong hand with skin as brown as the dead leaves sought the tender flesh and teased it, oddly gentle, until the moisture of desire flowed to warm the calloused fingers. “You bled well,” he said. The first and second time she had fought him, but now, beneath those feral eyes glittering with power and primeval hunger, Marcelina felt the flood gates of her own frustrated passions unleashed, sweeping her along to what tomorrow she did not care, as long as this man, this Jaco, was with her.

He ripped the blanket from her to reveal the exquisite form and his hand sought her again even as hers entreated his massive staff. Together they matched coaxing provocations until his free left hand clasped around the back of her head, forcing her over and down to taste the searing, surging brew she had so wilfully instigated. A wind soughed mornfully through the chinked walls and his laughter echoed the crackling of the spitting fire.

The two of them rode together, the remainder of the bandits keeping their distance to the rear lest a party from the ranch come upon them, for there was the possibility someone might have felt her absence peculiar and gone looking for her along the trail. The full weight of the pact between them had not yet made itself fully known to her. Pulling the coat tighter around her torn clothes, Marcelina was glad for the darkness bathing her, for the swelling clouds, the towering airy battlements carried on the north wind. “You will not harm the older woman,” Marcelina reminded the man at her side.

The wind howling down the canyon whipped his serape open yet Jaco seemed immune to the icy breath that caused the shivering girl to burrow deeper into her fleece-lined coat. “I will treat her,” Jaco laughed cruelly, “like she was my mother. This I promise you. I come for the old man and his son. They are what matter to me. Arcadio, Marquez, José and the others care only for plunder—what they can carry away to buy women and whiskey. Maybe guns or horses. Nothing else matters. They kill only because there are those who try to keep them from what they want.”

“And you?”

Jaco's sentiments were made all the more horrible because he smiled. “I will kill True Paxton. I will kill his whelp.”

“And the woman?”

“Maybe I keep her.” Marcelina's brows knotted angrily. Jaco laughed, oblivious to the Mexican girl's concern. “Or maybe I give her to the men.”

“She is with child,” Marcelina said.

“Then it is all the better,
mi chula
. Maybe I even keep her man alive long enough to watch.” Jaco's vehemence surpassed even Marcelina's anger and made her curious, but as she started to speak he held up his hand in warning and blended back into the darkness of an overhang. Someone was ahead, coming up the trail. Marcelina nudged the Appaloosa into a trot to increase the distance from the bandit's hiding place. She reined up as Ted Morning Sky rounded an outcropping, rifle across the pommel of his saddle.

“You are late, little one. The trail is dangerous at night.”

“I … Gibby was not there so I wait for him. When he return I visit with him because he is lonely. But I did not want to stay with him the night.” She guided her mount past the Indian and continued down the trail. “I am glad for the company,” she said.

Ted peered into the hills. His keen ears searched for the sounds of the night, inexplicably stilled. He sniffed the air but the north wind would tell him of nothing to the west Still … the elertness of a Comanche entailed more than just the rudimentary senses. Something there was, an instinctive warning. He backed behind the protection of a boulder, then wheeled his horse deftly and followed Marcelina down to the valley floor toward the
hacienda
.

CHAPTER X

The fire crackled, twigs split open from the heat. A cluster of gleaming comets shot up the flue as a large oak log settled into the bed of glowing coals. Karen stirred the chili bubbling in the huge iron pot hung but a few inches over the flames. For the first time she had prepared the meal from scratch, without any help from Maruja or the tardy Marcelina and, though she had imitated the older woman's cooking step by step, the meal was hers and hers alone.

The patio door swung open and Marcelina entered, frowning at the pale rival who had usurped her duties. “I am here now,” she announced, expecting Karen to relinquish her place.

“We were worried about you.”

“You leave now.”

Karen shook her head. “Perhaps Maruja could use some help.”

“This is my place.” Marcelina reached for the wooden ladle but Karen held it away.

“No,” she said firmly.

What could have escalated into a major confrontation died aborning as Maruja entered with Vance and True close behind. Karen, anxious for praise from her husband, turned to offer him a bowl of the chili. “No time for that now,” he said brusquely, and her smile turned to a worried frown at the sight of the forbidding armament he and True carried. Maruja spoke not a word but fell to clearing the heavy oaken table, shoving vegetables, spice and canisters of sugar, salt and flour aside. Vance and True laid the rifles and pistols on the table.

“I'll bring in the cartridges,” True said, turning to leave.

Karen felt her heart quicken with heavy pulsing beats.