A Lady Bought with Rifles (35 page)

There were straw mats in the hut and food. Wonderful food it was to Trace: cheese, tortillas, coffee, chicken stewed with rice, sweet rolls crusted with nuts. He told Domingo and Sewa how Lío had died and how Tomás and Rosalio had helped him, Trace, fill his quota of henequen leaves, but he didn't want to talk about the plantation. In turn, the youngsters told him how the remnants of the band—not a fighting-age man among them, except for Domingo (who must be all of fifteen, Trace thought grimly)—were living in their old palisaded mountain, making homes and cultivating small plots. Friends and relations at Mina Rara had stolen a few chickens and goats for them. With their men dead or enslaved, the women were prepared to live in the sierra as long as necessary, perhaps the rest of their lives.

“I'll get their men free somehow,” Trace said. “Maybe I can find a few men to come back here with me and break them out. We'll have to organize. Twenty can't get away as simply as one. The real problem will be avoiding recapture.”

“I will help,” said Domingo. His golden-brown eyes glowed in a face much too severe for his age. But he had seen—Trace didn't like to think of all these children had watched and lived through. “When the men are back, we will raid again. You will be with us, Don Trace?!”

“Whatever Lío would have done, I will do my best to perform,” Trace said, but he felt unutterably weary. What then of Miranda?

Sewa had been so quiet, shying away from any mention of Mina Rara, that Trace grew increasingly worried. The girl knew something she didn't want to tell him. He had a terrible fear that it concerned Miranda.

“Sewa.” She lifted her oval face, eyes like a fawn's. She was going to be a lovely woman, and he realized with a shock that it wouldn't be long. “You seem troubled about something,” he said as gently as he could. Astonishing strength behind that fragile look—strength to come this long dangerous way, plan his escape! He respected her as he had respected few men in his life. “Is it Miranda?” he went on, watching the child's face closely. “Was she injured beyond what you have told me?”

“Truly, Don Trace, she was sleeping when I saw her, but Chepa did not know of any hurt except the blow on her head.”

“Her sister? Does Reina mean her harm?”

Sewa winced as if at old pain. “Don Trace, the señorita was killed by Tula, who also died in the battle.” Trace drew in his breath. Reina dead? That tigress, Tula? Both women had possessed such blazing vitality that it was hard to believe they were extinguished, blown out like torches. And Reina—He had thought once he loved her, and even when her streak of cruelty repelled him, he had gone on taking her when she put, herself tauntingly in his way. With aheavy shrug he pushed thoughts of her away.

“Then what is wrong?” he persisted.

The way she stared at the dirt floor convinced him. His breath wedged solid so that when he managed to speak he didn't recognize his own voice.

“Tell me, Sewa.”

“He will find out,” Domingo said resignedly. “He might as well know now.”

“What?” Trace felt as if his body were clenched as tight as his fists.

Slowly, Sewa lifted her drooping head. “Oh, Don Trace, I don't know how to say it—” She made an inarticulate cry and turned away. Domingo stepped protectively in front of her. “Our lady Miranda has married Court Sanders.”

And he had thought the rope lash agony. “Married? Sanders?”

Domingo nodded.

For a moment Trace's head spun. It couldn't be. She hadn't even seemed to like or trust the mine superintendent.
And she loved me!
But over that inner cry jeered doubt and logic.

Sanders was an attractive man. He'd had weeks in which to court Miranda. A woman alone in Mexico, especially an heiress, needed a strong husband. Trace certainly hadn't anything to give her. Not when he was vowed to war for the Yaqui in Lío's place. Except for his love, the worship of his body.… Which remembered her now; in every nerve and muscle, remembered how sweetly she had given herself to him that day on the mountain.

Miranda, oh, Miranda! You belonged to me. How could you take another man?

Trace sat in silence for a long time while Domingo hunkered next to Sewa, his arm around her in sturdy comfort. One moment Trace felt as if he were bleeding inwardly, as if his force and manhood were draining away; the next instant he was gripped with rage, jealousy, furious hurt. But through the tumult, cold reason asked if he expected her to hide in the sierra with him or be content with the occasional furtive visit he could pay. His life for a while was not his own; he owed a blood debt. In a way he should be relieved she had a capable man to look after her, especially if the damned Army was going to quarter troops at the mine.

But—Goddammit anyway! While he had dreamed of her and when they could be together, she had been in Sanders' arms. Sanders would know how to make her completely his.

But I had her first, some fierce despairingly exultant voice insisted. She loved me first.

How could she? How could she marry him?

At last, rousing himself, Trace got to his feet. “We'd better sleep,” he said. “It's a long way to Sonora.”

Three

La Grulla

16

It was hard to get Jon to bed that night. How one small body could contain so much energy was beyond me. Kneeling by his bed, I regarded my son with a mixture of irritation and bemused tenderness. How like Trace he was! Straight black hair falling into storm-blue eyes, cleft chin, a sudden smile that dissolved any sternness he was about to encounter.

“I'm a big boy!” he was saying indignantly. “Almost
cinco años
. I want to stay up and see Papa.”

Would I never get used to his calling Court that, ever stop wanting to cry out the truth? After that single outburst when Court had learned I was pregnant, I'd schooled my tongue for the sake of Trace's baby. At least the man I loved wouldn't utterly perish if I could preserve his child, though as time passed and I heard nothing of Trace, I was forced to believe he'd died during his attempted escape from Yucatán. Surely if he'd come back to Sonora, he'd have found some way to meet me or send a message.

And Sewa? Domingo?

Ruiz and Court mentioned rumors of a beautiful young Yaqui woman called La Grulla, the Crane, because she perched like one on an artificial foot. She led raids with her young lover, but the band's operations were down in the traditional Yaqui country. They struck from the mountains, killing soldiers, seizing supplies. Even the dreaded
rurales
had pursued them, but this group seemed to have separated itself from families and couldn't be tracked to any permanent retreat.

“I want to see what Papa's going to bring me from Hermosillo,” insisted Jon. “Let me stay up, Mama. Please?
Por favor? Por el amor de Dios, una horita más.”

When he couldn't get his way in one language, Jon always used a second. He had tried persuasion in Seri, as well, till he realized no one understood it except Caguama, the brawny young soldier who had taught it to him. Caguama had wanted to learn so much that he'd come back to the school after Ruiz forbade such visits. Alarmed for him and touched by his loneliness, for as one of the primitive Seris he was shunned by his fellows, I'd got Court, indulgent because of my pregnancy, to buy Caguama's way out of the Army.

Since then, while learning to read and write, Caguama had done my errands, worked in the gardens I hopefully tried to nourish, and after Jon's infancy, had assumed more and more of the boy's care.

He taught him to shoot a bow and arrow, made a small harpoon with which Jon spent hours trying to spear quarry in the puddles left by thundershowers. On a leather thong around his neck, Jon wore a bone amulet taken from a giant sea turtle's flipper and shaped like a dolphin. Caguama said proudly that it would keep Jon free and happy like those sportive creatures I'd heard of but never seen.

Strange. Caguama told me stories of Tiburón Island, sang the songs his people used to call up whales and seals and fish, and I told him about England and the queen's funeral and sang ballads and snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan. I had to smile at the contrast but then put on a severe look and drew the covers up beneath my rebellious son's chin.

“Love of God indeed, you little rascal! Court may not be home till tomorrow, or even next day. It's bedtime, and if you wriggle out one more time—”

Jon went suddenly boneless and yielding as a puppy, cuddling against my arm. “I'll go to sleep if you tell me about the Ku bird,” he wheedled.

He had learned that even when I was very tired or cross I could be coaxed into reciting that particular story. And sure enough, as he nestled against me, I began the words he knew by heart, the litany that eased him into shimmering bright dreams.

“Once there was a bird so very poor that he had no feathers, no, not one …”

Ten minutes later, Jon's long black lashes didn't flutter when I gently disengaged myself and got to my feet. Probably I spoiled him. Yet in an odd way, the lonely child inside me was comforted by mothering him. I'd been only a little older than Jon when I was taken to Miss Mattison's. The very idea of being separated from Jon made me go ice-cold. But that was nonsense, it wouldn't happen.

Tears filled my eyes as I thought of that other child I'd loved, the one who had taught me the Ku bird story. Sewa was gone—it was all too possible she was dead or enslaved, all too likely we would never meet this side of Glory. If Sewa had become that lightning raider they called La Grulla, perhaps she had come to hate all foreigners.

Let her be alive and well. It was the prayer I made whenever I thought of my foster-sister-daughter. Blowing out the lamp, I decided to have a cup of tea before going to bed. Unlike Jon, I preferred to be asleep, or feigning it, when Court returned.

As long as he was at Mina Rara, he mightn't visit my bed for several nights, but if he made a trip, even for a day, his first act, sometimes before eating or bathing, was to possess me. It was as if absence drove him to prove to us both that he owned me. If he came back tonight, my sleep wouldn't delay his asserting mastery, but I'd feel it less, be able to merge it into a nightmare.

Court baffled me as much as ever. Though I was in fact a prisoner, most of the time he behaved like a doting husband. He
must
see daily that Jon was Trace's child, yet he seemed proud of the boy and indulged him at every turn. In these ordinary periods life was calm, and when Court came to my bed, he made love with quick efficiency. But every month or so, sometimes when he was drinking, sometimes not, he would lock the door and proceed to behave as if he'd just paid for every service of a skilled whore. Resistance excited him more. It was best to do as he said, get it over with, try to exhaust him. These were the nightmares—and the worst was when my body responded to him, when he made me want him and taunted me with that.

There had not been another baby. Dr. Trent said that my womb was tilted and that it would be difficult to conceive, which made it all the stranger that Trace had got me with child that one first time he'd had me along the mountain trail.

Oh, my love, I thought. You must be dead, I'll never see you again, you'll never see our son. But my dear love.…

The sound of footsteps roused me. Court's, lightly deliberate. Too late to escape to my room. He stood in the kitchen door a moment, golden eyes examining me. I flinched inwardly at that look I knew so well, the honed, voracious expression. I could never feed his spirit, give him what he desired.

Why wouldn't he let me go? I wished I could believe it was because he enjoyed the use of my wealth and property, which he did, but that wasn't the reason he kept me at Mina Rara, wouldn't let me take Jon and live elsewhere. With a certain amount of pity, I knew that just as I was Court's prisoner, he was mine. The ironic part was that if I'd loved him in the whole-souled, self-abasing fashion that Raquel did, he would surely have tired of me long ago and I could have bought my way out of the marriage.

“Tea, love?” He smiled. “The eternal English.” He started to pull the cord attached to a bell in Raquel's room, but I rose quickly. “Don't call her. I can heat the coffee in a few minutes and there's chicken stewed with rice that just needs warming.”

He sank down in a leather chair by the fireplace, worked off his boots, and sighed. “You're funny, darling. Servants are supposed to do what's needed, it's what they're for.”

It was probably his total disregard for other people's needs and feelings that kept me from developing some affection for Court. In some odd way, he'd incorporated me into himself so that he was exaggeratedly considerate of me except for those occasions in the bedroom, and by some feat of self-delusion for which I knew I should be grateful, he had included Jon in his self-love, insisting the boy was his. It was a maddening attitude but the thought of what could happen if he repudiated my child clamped a heavy weight on my scorn.

I lit two burners of the kerosene cookstove and set on coffee and a skillet of the spicy chicken. Court closed his eyes, feet resting on an ottoman covered with the skin of a panther he'd shot.

“How's Jon?” he asked when I sweetened his coffee and handed him the mug.

“Begging to go to the beach so he can harpoon sea turtles,” I said, glad to lighten the silence with something entertaining.

But Court didn't laugh. “He's becoming a savage, Miranda, constantly with that Caguama or the miners' brats. With your education and background I don't see how you can permit it.”

“Jon lives in a Sonora mining camp. He'll grow up understanding the people and language, and what Caguama teaches him will be very useful.” I didn't like the trend of this conversation and shifted it. “How did you find things in Hermosillo?”

“In an uproar. That damned fool Madero is chasing around Mexico forming Anti-Reelectionist Clubs. He didn't get into real trouble till he hit Sonora, and what would he expect in Ramón Corral's home state, and Corral Díaz's vice-president?”