Texas Woman (16 page)

“I cannot,” Ignacio replied.

“Why not?” the Englishman demanded.

There was silence, and Sloan knew the bandido was looking for a way to explain that the combined will of his band of cutthroats outweighed his own. “The woman says her father will pay a ransom for her safe return.”

“Bloody hell! You’ve jeopardized everything for a handful of
reales
? I’m paying you well for your help. If it’s not enough, I’ll find someone else to do the job. Get rid of the woman!”

“I will see what I can do,” Ignacio said at last.

Sloan had found a spot against a grounded limb of the live oak and settled down in the grass with Betsy in her lap. She had offered no threat to the bandidos since her capture, and she was certain that as far as they were concerned, she was nothing more than a helpless woman. She was sure they did not know she could speak their language—and that it might be just such knowledge that saved her life.

She listened carefully as Ignacio approached Felipe and spoke to him in Spanish.

“You heard the Englishman?”

“Who did not?” He turned and eyed Sloan, who focused her attention on the exhausted child in her arms. “Will the Englishman pay us for the ransom we will lose if we kill the woman?”

“We will be well paid for the work we do for him,” Ignacio said. “It is enough.”

“It is not enough for me,” Felipe replied curtly. “How will he know if we kill the woman or not? We will take her away and tell him we have done the deed. He will never know the difference.”

“I do not think—”

“You are an idiot! You never think,” Felipe interrupted. “She has not seen Alejandro, only the Englishman. I will take her away from this place. When you have finished your business and the Englishman is gone from here, we will send a message to her father and collect the ransom.”

Sloan held in her sigh of relief as Felipe walked away from her toward the other bandidos. It appeared the immediate danger was past. But she would keep her eyes and ears open—just in case things changed. She shifted Betsy into a more comfortable position in her arms. It was bound to be a long, long day.

Sloan didn’t see Ignacio’s eyes narrow or his nostrils flare in anger as he watched Felipe march away from him. She didn’t see him walk over to where Ramón was grooming his horse. Nor did she hear what Ignacio said in low tones to the boy whose features had been left distorted by disease.

“Ramón, you will go with Felipe. When you are well away from here with the woman, you will kill Felipe.”

The boy’s eyes flickered with the fiendish relish of a wolverine with its blood-rimmed jaws tearing at still-warm flesh. “And the woman?”

“You may use the woman if you wish, but when you are done with her, kill her.”

“And the
niña
?”

“Kill them both.”

Sloan had no explanation for her lightheartedness. After all, she wasn’t safe yet. She and Felipe and the boy called Ramón had left the other bandidos at noon and headed back in the direction from which they had come. Every step took her closer to home. Betsy was sleeping again, her breathing even. Sloan listened absently as Ramón argued with Felipe about the importance of not offending the Englishman.

“If not for the Englishman, Alejandro would be dead,” Ramón said.

“We could have rescued Alejandro ourselves,” Felipe retorted. “We had no need of the Englishman to save him from the hangman.”

“We would have been caught.
Los Diablos Tejanos
were watching for us. They knew we would come for him. The Englishman’s plan was best.”

Felipe snorted loudly through his nose. “Of course! If you do not consider that another bandido had to die in Alejandro’s place.”

“The Englishman did not kill Jorge,” Ramón insisted. “It was the Rangers who did the hanging.”

Sloan’s heart pounded in her chest like a Comanche war drum. She had naturally assumed when the name Alejandro had been mentioned earlier by the bandidos that it could not be the same man who had killed Tonio. But the conversation she had just overheard between Felipe and Ramón left her aghast. Surely it was not possible!

She had not waited in San Antonio to see Alejandro hanged, but Cruz had been there. Surely if Alejandro were still alive, Cruz would have said something to her. Besides, how could the bandidos have duped the Texas Rangers?

Sloan was so involved in her own thoughts that the gunshot at close range was a complete surprise. Her horse leaped sideways at the noise, and she had her hands full to keep Betsy from falling. When she had regained control of her mount, her eyes widened in horror.

Ramón had shot Felipe in the back! The bandido had fallen to the ground and lay in a widening pool of blood.

Ramón turned to Sloan, the gun still in his hand, his boyish face aged years by the lascivious glitter in his eyes. “Now,
chiquita,
we will see how much of a woman you are.”

Sloan had no time to indulge her sickened senses. She simply spurred her horse in a quick bid for escape.

Ramón’s hand darted quick as a rattlesnake’s fangs, catching the reins. Her horse shied at the pull on his mouth, and Sloan made a one-handed grab at Betsy, who started to fall.

It was too little too late. The child’s weight pulled Sloan off balance, and the sudden, unexpected scream that issued from Betsy’s mouth set the horse to bucking.

Sloan’s hands tightened in a death grip around Betsy, and she pulled herself into a tight protective ball around the child as the horse’s abrupt change of direction sent them both flying.

The last thing Sloan was aware of was the hard ground reaching up to meet her.

When Cruz saw Sloan riding toward him flanked by two disreputable-looking
tejanos,
his hand clenched into a fist around the reins, causing his
bayo
to sidestep. In the next instant Cruz heard a gunshot, saw the glint of sun off hot iron, and watched in disbelief as one of the two men fell sprawled on the ground.

The terrified scream that followed sent his stomach plummeting. He spurred his horse viciously as Sloan’s mount began to buck. By the time she hit the ground, his stallion had closed half the distance between them.

He pulled his rifle from its scabbard, his heart in his throat with fear that the
tejano
who had fired at the other man would turn his gun on Sloan.

Cruz didn’t offer the
tejano
mercy; he wouldn’t have offered a mad dog mercy. He raised his rifle and fired on the run. The bullet hit the
tejano
’s chest and shoved him backward off his horse, his hands outflung, his dying cry a sound of sheer terror and pain that reminded Cruz he was not a mad dog but a man.

Yet Cruz felt no pity, for at that instant he saw Sloan’s twisted body on the ground, curled around the little girl. A bellow of rage and pain erupted from his throat.

He was on the ground beside Sloan in a moment, unaware of his vaqueros, who had followed him down the hill. He gently turned Sloan over and tried to pry her fingers loose from the child, but he met with little success. He contented himself with searching Sloan’s body with his hands for signs of injury.

When he found no broken bones, he lifted her into his lap, along with the child in her arms, carefully cradling Sloan’s head on his shoulder. He felt savage and could easily have killed the
tejano
again. His lips brushed Sloan’s forehead before he laid his cheek next to hers.

She belonged to him. He felt no remorse for killing the man who had threatened her life.

Sloan’s first thought when she awoke was how protected she felt. She heard a voice murmuring and recognized it as Cruz’s. His rough-whiskered cheek felt good next to hers. Her eyes fluttered open to the sight of the pulse beating heavily at his throat beneath his ear.

She started as she remembered Betsy, but at the feel of the child lying in her arms, she relaxed. She looked down and Betsy met her gaze with solemn eyes.

Sloan smiled down at the little girl and said, “Everything
is
going to be fine now, Betsy.”

She looked up at Cruz, and saw that everything was not fine. Instead of the comforting look she had expected, she found the thunderous expression of an angry man.

“I told you to stay at the hacienda,” he said, his voice cold with fury. “If I had not arrived when I did—”

“I never asked you to come looking for me,” Sloan retorted, stung by his harsh welcome. “I don’t have to depend on any man—”

“I am not just any man,” Cruz snarled, his eyes blazing. “I am your
husband
!” He saw that Sloan was ready with another argument and cut her off. “Do not argue with me!”

Sloan opened her mouth to do exactly that and caught sight of Cruz’s vaqueros heaving Ramón’s body onto his horse. Her breath caught in her chest.

She shook her head in disbelief at what had happened. “He was only a boy. How could he have murdered Felipe in cold blood like that? When he turned to me afterward, his eyes . . . his eyes were filled with . . . pleasure.”

Cruz’s arms tightened suddenly, desperately, around her and the child. “Cebellina,
querida,
I thought I had lost you.”

Sloan reached an awkward hand up to his bristly cheek to comfort him. She did not know what to say. Her fingers lightly caressed his face, smoothing his brow and then his lips, where she felt his kiss against the pads of her fingers.

She waited, unmoving, as he lowered his head and found her mouth with his. His tongue came searching . . . And she gave freely what he sought.

Pressed uncomfortably between them, Betsy stretched restlessly, finally pushing them apart.

Sloan couldn’t meet Cruz’s eyes, even though she felt his gaze upon her. Instead, she concentrated on brushing the fine blond hair back from Betsy’s forehead. She knew she should get up, get away from Cruz, but she had no will to leave his comforting embrace.

At last, some buried shred of her independent spirit finally asserted itself.

“Let me up,” she said. She struggled to sit upright, but immediately felt dizzy and disoriented. She closed her eyes in an attempt to stop the whirling landscape. “Cruz . . . I think I’m going to . . .”

Sloan fainted.

“Cebellina!”

Cruz caught her head against his shoulder and searched her again with a frightened hand at this newest sign that she had suffered some injury in her fall. Again, he found nothing.

He met Betsy’s wide-eyed, fearful gaze but could think of no words to reassure the child. So he pulled them both tight against his breast and simply held them there.

“Cebellina,
mi vida,
” he whispered in her ear. “You must be all right. I cannot live without you.”

“You don’t seem to be able to live with me, either,” came the muffled response.

Cruz turned Sloan so her face was no longer hidden against his shirt and saw a wry smile form on her dust-streaked face.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked.

“I . . . I think I’m more tired than hurt,” Sloan admitted. “And maybe a little dizzy from the fall.”

“Then rest, Cebellina,
adorada, querida
.”

As he murmured love words, Sloan felt a blush rising from her throat to tint her cheeks a rosy pink. She cleared her throat and interrupted, “Uh . . . how did you find me?”

“Paco led me to the wagons. Can you tell me more about what happened there?”

“I don’t really know. I got there after the Comanches . . . Betsy’s cousins, Franklin and Jeremiah, were taken captive. We have to go after them, Cruz. We have to—”

“I have already sent my vaqueros to look for them,” Cruz said in a soothing voice. “If they can be found, my men will find them.”

He left unsaid that if the Comanches had escaped to the northern plains, there was little or no chance of the two boys ever being seen again—except as Comanche raiders themselves.

“Once the
niña
has had a chance to rest,” he said, “I will have my vaqueros take her to San Antonio so that she can be returned to her family.”

“No! I mean, her parents are dead.”

“Perhaps there is yet some family living who will want to claim her.”

“She has an aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania,” Sloan conceded. “But until they can be contacted, I’ll take care of her. She needs me.”

Cruz felt his neck hairs bristling. “You have a child of your own to care for at Dolorosa—whom you ignore. Will you give more time to a stranger’s child than you give to your own son?”

“Cisco doesn’t need—” She bit her lip on the denial of her son’s need for a mother’s love. She saw how neatly she had been trapped. “If that’s the price you ask for my keeping Betsy, then I’ll pay it. I agree to spend time equally with both children.”

“I did not mean to put a price—”

“There’s a price for everything,” she said. “I’m not so heartless as you think, Cruz. I have not denied my son a mother’s love and felt nothing.”

He looked down into her deep brown eyes and saw the suffering in their depths. “Tonio is dead. The past is past.”

“The past is always with us,” she countered. “But I promise to spend more time with Cisco. So long as you understand I will not open my heart to him, knowing that I won’t be staying long.”

Cruz’s features hardened at the same time as his grasp on her tightened. “You are mine now, Cebellina. I do not intend to let you leave Dolorosa.”

“You won’t dare to hold me there against my will!”

“Try running off again and see what I am willing to do,” he retorted. “Leaving the hacienda as you did was dangerous.”

“What I did I’ve done a thousand times before. If you want a wife who’s docile and obedient, one who’ll sit at home and wait for you to return and handle every little problem that comes up, you’d be better off with Tomasita.”

“I do not want Tomasita. I want you!”

Betsy’s whimper caused them both to stop and take stock of where they were. Although Sloan didn’t want to drop the subject, in deference to the child, she didn’t raise it again. Words wouldn’t change his mind.

“Will you help me to stand, please?” she asked.

It was a small step for her to ask him for his help, but in such ways were long journeys traveled. Cruz nodded before he set her down on the grass and stood up himself. Then he reached out his arms and said, “Hand the child to me.”