Sun God (11 page)

“Put this on. You look real sweet in pink.”

Amy narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”

“It’s not yet ten o’clock. Why, I wonder, are you so tired?” Baron started to grin. “I’ve got an idea I know the real reason, baby sister.”

Amy’s face flushed hot. “You know nothing.”

Baron gave her a smug look. “Don’t I? You and the son of that crazed old Aztec woman slipping off every afternoon where nobody can find you. Honey, you might fool Dad, but not me.” He moved a half step closer. “You’re letting that half-breed get to you.”

Amy turned quickly away and tried her best to sound indignant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Baron chuckled. “Honey, your secret is safe with me. You came back from New Orleans all grown into a woman and I don’t blame you for wanting a little loving. But your dark-skinned Sun God is just a boy. You need a man. A man like Tyler Parnell.”

Amy whirled back around to face Baron. “Get out of my room!”

Baron’s evil smile remained in place. “Tyler likes you, Amy. He’s coming out here to see you tonight.”

“I have no intention of seeing Tyler Parnell tonight or any other night! I can’t stand him.”

“Better learn to like him, honey. If you don’t, I’ll have to tell Dad about you and pretty boy.”

Amy was trapped. She knew Baron. He would do it. And if he did, she and Tonatiuh would be in serious trouble. Their fathers would keep them apart. Worse, they might punish Tonatiuh.

“I—I’ll give Tyler Parnell an hour this evening. No more,” Amy said.

“Ty will be flattered,” said Baron, failing to mention that this was to be only the first of such Friday evenings she would be expected to spend with Tyler Parnell.

It was a miserable hour for Amy and a triumphant one for Baron. When Amy at last said good night to her unwanted guest, Baron emerged to invite Tyler Parnell to call on Amy again the next Friday evening. Parnell was more than eager. Baron was not worried about his father’s keen dislike of Tyler Parnell. An early riser, Walter Sullivan retired to his room each night at ten.

Amy thought about telling Tonatiuh of her predicament but decided against it. There had always been bad blood between him and her brothers. They hated Tonatiuh, especially Baron. She was afraid for Tonatiuh. If he intervened on her behalf, it would cause him serious trouble.

So she kept to herself the fact that each Friday evening she was required to spend an hour alone with the twenty-nine-year-old Tyler Parnell. It would be temporary. She would purposely behave so coldly toward Parnell he would soon lose interest.

In each other’s arms every afternoon at the Puesta del Sol hideaway, it was easy for the young lovers to forget that anyone else existed. For them, no one did. After their first total intimacy, the healthy young pair made love every day. They were wildly in love and gloriously happy and never dreamed that as the hot, hot days of an Indian summer gave way to the clear, beautiful ones of autumn, their innocence was not all that was slipping away.

Youth and trust and happiness was dying as well.

The beginning of the end came one cool October night after the most wonderful day they had ever had. Luiz, lying awake in his bed that night, thinking of Amy, grew restless. Rising, he pulled on his pants and went for a walk.

Circling the big hacienda, he strolled toward the west patio. The Sullivans’ patio. And there he saw Amy in the moonlight with Tyler Parnell. Heartsick, he turned numbly away, returned to his room, and paced the floor in agony.

Still, all would have been made right had the pair been allowed one more afternoon together. Amy would have told him the truth, that Baron was blackmailing her. That she cared nothing for Tyler Parnell.

But she never got the chance.

“D
OMINO!”

Pedrico Valdez, his one eye twinkling, grinned at the surprised man across the pine desk. “Domino,
patrón
,” he said again, and triumphantly crossed his arms over his chest.

Shaking his graying head, Walter Sullivan couldn’t believe it. Each night for over a decade, he and Pedrico Valdez had played a two-handed game of dominos. In all those years he had never been caught with this many bones left in his hand.

“You finally got me, Pedrico,” he said, smiling broadly, two unplayed ivory dominos held loosely in his cupped palm.

“Yes!” said the pleased houseboat. “How much,
patrón
? Lots of count, I hope.”

He lifted the pen from its inkwell and leaned over the white tally sheet, eager to write down the score. He waited. Walter Sullivan said nothing. Pedrico looked up questioningly and saw an expression of horror on the big rancher’s florid face.

“
Dios
,
patrón
!” He dropped the pen. “What is it?”

Pedrico jumped up from his chair so quickly it toppled over backward. Terrified, he circled the desk, anxiously asking what was wrong. But Walter Sullivan could not speak. He clutched frantically at his chest and his face contorted with pain.

Making gasping, wheezing sounds of agony, the big rancher’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped forward in his chair, dead of a heart attack. Clutched tightly in his big fist were the two unplayed ivories.

The 6-6 and the 5-6.

While a punishing Texas sun beat down with a vengeance, Amy stood between her brothers in Orilla’s small, well-tended graveyard. Directly before her was the heavy bronze coffin bearing the body of her father.

A black-robed
padre
conducted the service in Latin while vaqueros and cowboys and the townsfolk of Sundown tearfully paid their last respects.

Feeling strangely cold in the midmorning heat, Amy was in a daze of grief. She couldn’t believe that a man as vigorous and alive as her daddy could be gone so suddenly.

The brief service ended.

Amy stepped forward.

She stooped, picked up a handful of the dry Texas soil her father had loved so dearly, and slowly sprinkled it over the bronze coffin. She lifted the black veil from her face, leaned down, pressed her lips to the casket, and said soundlessly, “Rest well, Daddy. Orilla is in good hands.”

Throughout that long, hot afternoon callers filled the many downstairs rooms of the salmon-colored hacienda. Magdelena and Rosa and Pedrico passed among them, bearing silver trays of cooling drinks. In both dining halls, long buffet tables were spread with an array of foods to feed the lingering guests.

Amy graciously served as hostess, standing between her brothers, shaking hands, accepting condolences. But her blue eyes kept sweeping the crowd in search of Luiz. She finally spotted the gleaming blue-black hair, the dark, handsome face. But Luiz was not looking her way.

Inwardly sighing, she turned back to greet Douglas Crawford, the big, strapping, red-haired neighboring rancher and his pregnant wife, Shirley. She thanked the young couple for coming and accepted their expressions of sympathy.

Late that afternoon, Amy released a gentle sigh of relief as Pedrico closed the door after the last of the departing mourners. Fleeing at once to the sanctuary of her room, Amy stripped her hot, black dress away, bathed her prickled skin in cooling water, slipped on a fresh chemise, underpants, and lacy petticoat, then sagged tiredly to the bed.

Her head throbbing, her eyes scratchy, she stretched out to rest. In her depression she longed desperately for Luiz to hold her, to comfort her. To love her.

“Tomorrow,” she said softly in the gloom, “tomorrow we will ride to the river.”

But there would be no tomorrow for Amy and Luiz.

In his father’s library down the hall, a revengeful Baron Sullivan stood at a tall front window. He watched an Orilla buckboard roll down the long drive, kicking up dust in its wake. Pedrico was driving. Magdelena and Rosa were seated beside him.

Baron had sent the trio into Sundown to distribute baskets of food left over from the wake. He didn’t want them underfoot.

He had a score to settle.

Baron shrugged out of his dark funeral coat, yanked off his tie, opened his stiff white collar, and rolled up his sleeves. He instructed Lucas to bring him a piece of strong rope and the coiled black bullwhip he kept hidden under his bed.

While Lucas hurried to do his brother’s bidding, Baron took down his father’s worn gunbelt from the cedar coat tree. He eased from the holster the engraved Rogers and Spencer six-shooter. He loaded the long-barreled pistol and stuck it in the waistband of his dark trousers.

Lucas returned and Baron casually looped the coiled black bullwhip and rope over his left shoulder. He looked at his brother.

“No time like the present,” he said, his icy blue eyes determined. “Let’s go down and have our little talk with the half-breed.”

Lucas fully approved. Tipsy, he nodded eagerly. “Looks like you’ve got something in mind for the boy lover.”

Baron, crossing the room, said over his shoulder, “Yes, I have. An invitation to leave Orilla.” He headed for the staircase. “But first I want to hear him confess to his transgressions.”

Luiz was outside on the deserted east patio.

His discarded black suit jacket tossed over the back of an iron lace chair, white dress shirt half open down his dark chest, he lay on a padded yellow chaise. Stretched out on his back, hands folded beneath his head, he brooded alone in the late October sunlight. Melancholy and confused, he desperately longed for an opportunity to talk with Amy.

It was Monday and they’d not been together since Friday afternoon. Friday night he had seen her with Tyler Parnell. Had she betrayed him?

A movement in his side vision caused Luiz’s dark head to snap around. With the quickness of a cat he was up off the chaise facing the approaching Sullivan brothers. He knew by the look in Baron’s cold blue eyes that he was in danger.

His tall body tensed, black eyes flashing with unease, he said, “What do you want?”

It was a short conversation.

Drawing the engraved sidearm and pointing it directly at Luiz’s chest, Baron said, “Your immediate and lasting absence from Orilla.”

From that moment everything happened so fast there was no time for talk. Lucas sprang quickly forward and pushed Luiz toward the patio’s low gate with such force, Luiz lost his footing. He stumbled against a white iron lace table, upsetting it and its contents. A crystal water pitcher and glasses crashed to the rough brick floor, shattering.

Landing amid the broken glass, Luiz suffered cuts to the palms of his hands and his forehead.

He never felt it.

Angered, he shot to his feet with the agility of an acrobat and came at Lucas, fists raised, ignoring the gun pointed at him. He managed to tag Lucas squarely on the chin, but it was much like a pesky insect stinging a grizzly bear. Incensed, Lucas slammed a beefy fist into Luiz’s left jaw and sent him sprawling again.

Luiz felt the white-hot pain explode inside his head. Stunned, he was struggling to his feet as Don Ramon, hearing the commotion, came rushing out of the hacienda.

The
don
saw Luiz knocked backward by Lucas’s punishing blow, saw Baron holding the leveled gun, saw the coiled black bullwhip and rope slung over his shoulder. Fear gripped him and he pleaded with the vindictive brothers to spare his only son.

For his trouble he was backhanded by Lucas. Blood spurted from the
don’s
split lip. He reeled backward, but stayed upright by sheer force of will. Facing down the loaded pistol, he turned to Baron. Clutching at his shirt front, he begged for rationality.

Baron wasn’t listening.

He grabbed the
don’s
arm and carelessly flung him halfway across the brick patio. Don Ramon crashed into the overturned table. His head struck the table’s sharp iron edge and he slumped to the brick patio floor. Luiz, forgetting his own pain, hurried to his fallen father.

Bright blood oozed from the
don’s
silver hair and his green eyes stared sightlessly. Frantically Luiz felt for a pulse in his father’s throat. There was none.

Don Ramon Rafael Quintano was dead.

Stunned and immobile for only an instant, Luiz was totally enraged by his father’s senseless, brutal murder. His smooth olive face a mask of fury, Luiz leapt up.

He did not come at Lucas, but at Baron. Like a dangerous animal loosed from its cage, he attacked with such speed and lethal strength, Baron was too numbed with fear to fire the pistol. Clasped in a viselike bear hug, the gun hung useless at his side. Baron felt the breath being squeezed from his body. He was certain this maddened Indian was going to kill him before Lucas could pull him off.

“Goddamn you to hell!” Baron snarled, gasping for breath, when at last his brother was able to drag Luiz away.

Lucas had a hard time subduing Luiz. Finally he was able to pin the infuriated youth back against his big solid frame with one muscular forearm crushing Luiz’s throat. With his other hand, he twisted Luiz’s left arm behind his back.

Still unnerved from his unexpected brush with death, Baron glared angrily at the restrained half-breed. He moved up close and said in a low, cold voice, “You’ll pay for that.” To his brother he said, “Let’s get him down to the ranch gates.”

Lucas and Baron forced Luiz from the patio and out to the front drive. The pair dragged the struggling Indian down Orilla’s long palm-lined drive to the tall white ranch gates rising skyward in the blood-red rays of a dying Texas sun.

When the trio stood just below the white gates, Lucas held Luiz while Baron uncoiled the rope and tossed one end up over the archway’s high supporting beam, then slowly fed enough slack so that the rope dangled down within reach.

Lucas drew Luiz’s hands in front of him and tied his wrists securely with the rope. Then he yanked Luiz’s trussed hands high above his head, pulling the rope so taut the young man felt his arms would be jerked from their sockets.

Baron allowed the coiled black bullwhip to slide down from his shoulder. After shoving the gun back into his trousers, he smiled evilly, uncoiled the whip, and began to flick it slowly, making the long whip snap loudly in the air before Luiz.