Paxton Pride (45 page)

“
Señora.
”

Karen didn't answer, stared instead into the hearth, drugged by the unbelievable, horrifying conflict outside so tellingly announced by the sullen, continual roar of gunfire. “You've been protected.…” Vance had said, and now she couldn't tear herself from the waking nightmare. Graceful fingers trained to etiquette now gripped the heavy wooden handle of a revolver, unconsciously clasped its weight as one might cling to a branch in the middle of a raging current.

“
Señora.
” Maruja's incessant voice, so terribly calm, brought her back from the flames, from the hearth, from the corridor of her inward escape, back to the situation at hand.

“
Señora!
”

“What is it?” she snapped, immediately sorry for the tone of her voice. She stared wide-eyed at the Mexican woman. “I'm sorry. It's just … I …” On the brink of collapse, her voice trembled. She put the gun on a back table and embraced Maruja, seeking to share the woman's strength. “I'm so frightened. Vance … what if he … the noise … why don't they stop?”

“It's all right,
Señora
. I understand. I am afraid too. All of us are. But we … see to our duties. I must take these rifles to the walls and help the wounded to the house. You will stay here. I will need your help when I get back. Put another pot of water on. You stay here.”

“Yes,” Karen replied weakly, standing alone now.

“
Señora
. Many times we fight. We are still here.” She gathered an armful of rifles, started out the door, then turned momentarily. “I am glad you come here. It was hard to understand your ways, but we have learned. And you have learned.” Maruja turned again and disappeared into the dining room.

A moment later a gust of wind blew through the kitchen from the opened front door. The fire popped and sputtered and Karen flinched at the sound. The wind stole around the side of the house and rattled the door leading to the patio, trying to enter, striving to extinguish the warmth of the kitchen. Only it wasn't the wind. The door latch turned and Karen's eyes widened with apprehension. Suddenly she thought of Marcelina. Of course! But how long had she been gone? The door opened. It was not Marcelina! A man … a strange man.…!

The wind rushed in with him, billowing his
serape
like wings of a giant bird of prey, adding to the terrible apparition that was Jaco. “You are the whelp's woman. You are indeed beautiful, as hungry men have said.” His face formed a cruel semblance of a smile.

Karen shuddered beneath his stare. “Go … go away,” she managed.

Jaco laughed. “No,
Señora
. I think perhaps I stay. Maybe I put something else in your belly besides what you got there now.”

Karen glimpsed the handle of the revolver she had placed on the rear table near the door to the root cellar and began edging toward it. A smattering of gunfire sounded from, she thought, within the walls. The noise diverted Jaco's attention and Karen grabbed for the gun and brought it to bear.

Jaco's face remained singularly calm when he looked back to her. His laughter was brutally mocking. “Your hand trembles,
Señora
. I do not think you have the strength to pull the trigger.” Slowly, confidently, he walked toward her.

The sounds of gunfire and storm faded to dull confusion before the onrushing panic loosed within her mind, screamed for her to shoot yet clouded her vision with tumbling images of Bodine, face taut, puzzled as the blood spewed from his chest. The face of the man before her shifted, wavered. Who was he? Why did he look so familiar? “Shoot him! Shoot him!” the voice within her screamed over and over. “Shoot him!”

“Like a dance,
Señora
, you back away as I draw near. Our movements match in this our dance of death. But I think you do not kill Jaco, eh?”

Jaco! No!
“No … no! Stay away from me!”

He laughed again, white teeth shining in the firelight as he reached for her, toying with her, knowing she would not fire. A sharp explosion sounded behind him. Jaco winced under the impact of a bullet, whirled about, drawing and firing in the same motion. Karen froze as she saw Maruja slammed against for door jamb, a look of incredulity and horrified understanding sculpted on her face. “Look what you have done, Marcelina, my evil daughter,” she moaned, then crumbled to the floor, dead.

Karen dropped the pistol, screaming. She lunged for the door to the root cellar with Jaco, roaring like a mortally wounded beast, behind her. Gunshots and a man's voice calling drove her deeper into the dark maw. The cellar was icy cold. Its depths blotted her vision and she lost her footing. Darkness reached for her and steps rushed up to meet her, jutting stone bruised her face and slammed into her abdomen. She clawed at the air and toppled into searing pain and merciful unconsciousness.

Her child was a boy. And the boy was dead. Lying in the soft comfort of her bed the thought came to her unbidden out of the terrible quiet. How did she come to be in bed? In her room? She remembered. The laughing face, unknown but familiar … Maruja's pitiful collapse … hands reaching for her and her panicked descent into the cellar … falling … pain … quiet.… emptiness. Her swollen abdomen was dramatically decreased now, but no child suckled at her breast.
Another grave, Elizabeth, to be added to the hill
… graves … quiet … It was quiet now.

The door opened. Karen tensed as the light from the hall fanned across the bed. “Vance?” Her voice trembled.

He took a few steps into the room, his face, only faintly discernible in the lamp's soft glare, weary and old. He stood at the edge of the bed, a lantern held high. “My son is dead,” he said hoarsely, his voice a mixture of grief and accusation.

She had known for hours but no tears would come, not even now before the man who so grieved. Her sorrow defied release, hid itself in a hollow place in her heart, beyond the touch of tears.

“I know what happened. For three nights and days I've been here fighting your fever with cold cloths and listening to you repeat the story over and over again. You had a gun. You could have stopped him.” He placed the lantern on the table, leaned over and gripped her by the shoulders, his fingers bruising the flesh of her arms, his voice quaking. “Karen. He killed Maruja.
You
let him.
You
ran.
You
… killed our son.”

He held her there in silence, his eyes burning with the fever of unspeakable agony. Suddenly he sagged and his arms went slack. He backed away from the bed, his face lost in the shadows of anguish.

“Vance!” His name was a plea for absolution, raised from the vast lake of despair threatening to drown her.

He paused in the doorway, his back to her. “
You
killed our son,” he repeated, his voice a hollow whisper.

Like the rush of raven's wings against an interminable night, his words reverberated in her mind, punishing … punishing … long after the door closed and his footsteps faded from the house.

PART III

CHAPTER I

The charred remnants of the bunkhouse and the black patch of ground once a barn and stable were ugly scars on the valley's pristine wintry floor. The snow stayed for four days, during which time ragged lines of soot-darkened footprints radiated from the dark circles like spokes of a broken wheel. Little moved during those first days, for a numbness had settled over the ranch. Upstairs in her room, Karen gradually regained her strength. Downstairs, the front room took on the aspects of an infirmary where the wounded ranch hands were treated by True, for only he and two others had escaped unscathed and the two were busy outside. After two weeks had passed the men, with the exception of Ted, had healed and the front room became the new bunkhouse. The same two weeks saw five PAX riders buried. Brazos, the good-natured jester, and Hogan, the quiet one whose squeezebox was destroyed in the fire in the bunkhouse, died quickly on the night of the raid. Of the three others, Emilio lingered the longest, finally succumbing despite heroic efforts to the body-searing complications of pneumonia. His death was a sad blow. Never again would his talented fingers coax a sad or lilting melody of Spain from his guitar. Of Vance there was no word. He left the night her fever broke, the night he uttered his brutal malediction, and had been ten days away from the ranch, away from Karen.

Only when she was up and about did Karen learn of what happened on the night of the coyote wind. Marcelina had betrayed them, or at least such was the distasteful presumption, for someone within the walls had shot Emilio in the back at close range and then opened the hidden rear gate. Proof there was none, for Emilio never regained consciousness, but no one could believe he would ever allow anyone other than a trusted friend to walk up behind him in the dark. Supposition of her guilt was compounded by her continued absence, during which no one had seen nor heard of her. The gate opened, Jaco with three confederates entered. The plan, evidently, was to hit the wall from behind in conjunction with the heavily mounted frontal attack. The men of the PAX boxed and fighting for their lives, Jaco would force entry to the house and wipe out opposition there, hopefully killing the old man in the process. The plan could well have worked had it not been for a series of flukes, the first of which was the unexpected absence and return of Maruja and the bullet she put in Jaco. Worse, Billy, intending to check on Emilio and report back to True, came face to face with the three renegades in the east courtyard. He reacted rapidly, killing one and holding the others at bay until Shorty came up and helped dispatch the remaining two. At the same time, Harley carried Ted into the house and Jaco, wounded and bleeding, was forced to withdraw. He luckily managed to pin down the older man in the dining room and make his escape through the patio, barely evading Shorty and Billy, hurrying to secure the back gate. Five minutes later the fight was over. The remaining renegades withdrew into the howling wind and driving rain, leaving the men of the PAX binding their wounds and waiting out a restless night.

The next morning dawned clear and bright, so cold everything was covered with a thin, glistening sheet of ice. Sun sparkled like diamonds from trees and stones and the awkward, huddled shapes of the dead. Twelve lifeless outlaws lay in and around the compound, and by the end of the day, six more were located in the immediate vicinity, some at the base of the nearby hills, others as far away as the banks of the Sabinal. One poor soul was in full view, sitting upright on the ground and, with sightless eyes, staring into the heart of the remnant of the coyote wind, the spirit wind. All was quiet and he glistened with the sheen of ice in a sparkling vigil of death.

Karen had been up and about for three days, during which, enclosed in the curtain of shock, she kept to her room save for occasional trips downstairs to eat whatever was available, careful at all times to go down only when the men were out and at work for she could not have borne the looks in their eyes. Once, on the stairs, Karen thought she heard Maruja humming as she prepared the evening meal. She hurried down the last steps, across the hall and plunged into the kitchen. The room was empty, chilled and devoid of life.

Two weeks to the day after the attack and on the fourth morning of her recovery, wan and drawn yet restless in spite of the desultory mood which gripped her, she ventured outside and climbed the ladder to the walkway, stood peering over the wall and into the distance. The snow was gone and the landscape a bleak brown, relieved only slightly by the dark green of cedar above her on the hills. Below her lay mute testimony of the fight—pocked, chipped and ragged adobe, a legacy of the many bullets that had spent their fury against the sturdy battlement. She straightened when a wisp of movement caught her eye and a rider to the south came into view and stopped, outlined on the crest of a knoll.
Vance?
Horse and rider stood unmoving.

“Mighty chilly, ma'am.” Harley Guinn stood below her, climbed up the ladder. Of all the men left, only Harley seemed to bear no blame, hold no grudge against her. The others, she knew, shared Vance's estimation of her value, but, and for this she was thankful, to a lesser degree. But then, they had never expected as much from her.
What did I expect of myself?

“The sun will warm us some,” she remarked, eyes lifted to the cloudless sky. “Who is that?” Harley followed her gaze toward the retreating figure.

“That would be True. Saddled up an' lit out. Never seen him quite like the way he is, an' I been with True Paxton nigh on to twenty year. He's hit hard, ma'am. He's hit almighty hard.”

The decision to ride after him came quickly, from where she did not know. “Harley, saddle up my sorrel for me, will you please?”

“What …? Oh, yes ma'am. But.…” He paused, embarrassed.

“Yes?”

“We ain't got no saddles. That is, all we got is reg'lar saddles. Yours … all the sidesaddles got burnt in the fire.”

“A ‘reg'lar' saddle will be fine, Harley,” Karen said, smiling. “I'll be back in a minute.” She hurried down the steps and into the house, to Elizabeth's workroom where she dug into an old trunk, made up a small bundle and carried it to her room. Standing in front of the window, she faltered.
Am I strong enough? Will he want to see me, talk to me? What will he say when he sees me in …?
But the time was for action, not questions. Quickly she stripped and donned a washed-out pair of jeans and warm flannel shirt of faded red plaid, earlier Elizabeth's. The unfamiliar clothing felt strangely uncomfortable, but just as strangely exciting. She had wanted adventure and now she would seek adventure. A Hampton was not one to let tragedy stand in her way. Tragedy, rather, should lead to renewal of life, reassertion of strength. She squared her shoulders, confronted the new image in the mirror and smiled at the reflection. “I shall never wear men's clothing,” she had said, such a long—or was it short—time ago. The statement was an earlier, empty, mistaken piece of society-bred silliness. If men's clothes were what it would take, she would wear them with a will. Determined, she pulled the silver pins from her hair and tossed them negligently to the table. “Let them lie there. They've done me no good,” she told herself sternly. Shaking the curls down around her shoulders, she stepped out of the room and headed downstairs, without a look back at the gown crumpled in the corner.