by John Jakes
Perhaps because of her city upbringing, Amanda couldn’t expose herself that way. She had to seek the privacy of a grove of trees, or at least some shrubs. Occasionally, the lack of such foliage near the campsite kept her in excruciating pain while she waited for darkness.
The other women laughed about her fastidiousness, just as they laughed about her cooking of the clothes. One soldadera in particular seemed not just scornful, but hostile. This was the coarse-faced young woman with the mole, the girl Amanda had encountered in the street the morning after the massacre.
Now and again Amanda would run into the girl at the sutler’s or along a creek at laundry time, and the girl would be sure Amanda heard some particularly filthy reference to her parentage, or her relationship with Cordoba.
Each time, Amanda met the girl’s ugly gaze squarely—almost daring her to lay hands on her. But she didn’t. Amanda asked a few questions of Cordoba’s men and learned that the girl lived with a captain of the artillery. For a woman belonging to a man of lesser rank to attack the soldadera of a senior officer was a violation of the camp’s rough protocol; and it was that which kept the girl’s hostility from degenerating into the physical. But Amanda was sure the ranks of their respective men fueled the girl’s fury; she was probably jealous of an Anglo woman enjoying the favors of a major.
If the girl only knew! Amanda thought. During their first weeks together, Cordoba didn’t so much as touch her.
She had frankly expected him to order her into his bed, despite what he’d said that first day. But he treated her with punctilious politeness. He complimented her often, praising the flour biscuits she baked, or the whiteness of his dress shirts.
“I swear to heaven, no man ever had a better soldadera. You take to this life as if you were born to it.”
“I wasn’t, and I don’t like it.”
“Nevertheless, you’re extremely skilled.”
She shrugged. “All it takes is making up your mind.”
In response to his puzzled frown, she elaborated. “I didn’t have a lot of schooling, Luis. And what I did have, I didn’t care for very much. But when I was growing up, I managed to learn something that’s as important as what they teach in classrooms.”
“What is that?”
“I can do almost anything I want if I want to do it badly enough.”
“Such confidence!”
“I’m not trying to brag—the same thing’s true of most people. They just don’t want to put forth the effort, that’s all. When I was young, I lived for a while with a tribe of the Sioux—”
His mouth dropped open. “With Indians?”
“Yes.”
“You continually astonish me, Amanda. Do go on.”
“I was the property of one of the dog soldiers—the warriors who police the buffalo hunts. To satisfy the man I lived with—and keep him from hurting me—I had to learn how to make love like a grown woman—when I wasn’t much more than twelve years old. I had to learn to broil the meat of a buffalo hump the way he liked it. I’d never cooked anything in my life—but I learned because it was necessary. And because I didn’t want to seem weaker than the Sioux women, I learned every game they played—and practiced until I was better than they were. The man I stayed with was so proud of me, he ordered his first wife out of his tepee forever. And whenever white traders came to the village, he put guards over me and kept me hidden. He was afraid I might be stolen away—”
“I trust you were appropriately flattered.”
“Yes—but maybe not for the reason you think. Not because of vanity. His attitude showed me I’d done what I set out to do. Survive. Even thrive. The man I was living with was killed, and I left the Sioux. But before I went, the old chief—the father of my man—told me he’d never seen a Sioux girl who could play the double-ball game—handle the rawhide and the sticks—as well as I did. He couldn’t give a higher compliment to any woman. The point is, I don’t think learning the game took special talent. Just the will to do it.”
“I think you underestimate your abilities.”
“Will counts for a lot in this world, Luis. I’ll trade money or education for will anytime.”
Cordoba was silent. There was a look akin to awe on his swarthy face.
His reticence about sex continued to bother her. At night, he seldom glanced her way as she brushed her hair and prepared for bed. She slept in the same black silk dress she wore all during the day. Could that be part of the trouble? she wondered. The dress, clean but ragged now, struck her as decidedly unfeminine.
One warm evening in the first week of April, she was awake long after Cordoba had fallen asleep on the cot. She moved her head from side to side, uttering a small sigh once in a while. There was a tightness in her body that she couldn’t deny.
Jaimie de la Gura had been dead a long time. And there had only been a very few men since then—an occasional customer of Gura’s Hotel to whom she took a fancy. The last one, a wandering trader bound for Taos, had slept in her arms more than half a year ago.
She alone was responsible for the unsatisfied hunger, she knew. It was ironic—the brothel madam who could no longer give herself casually. She had given herself that way early in her life, when it was necessary to use her good looks and her sex for survival. But after Jaimie, she changed. Without a basic liking for the partner, she was unwilling—even though her body made its need manifest in aches and sleeplessness.
The need this particular night grew almost unbearable. She finally rose on one elbow, whispered softly in the darkness, “Luis?”
The major answered with an exhausted snore. She stretched out again, uncomfortable and unhappy. She had come to like Cordoba. But beyond that, his lack of interest made her feel there must be something wrong with her.
True, she was dirty and unkempt most of the time.
That didn’t seem to make any difference to other men in the army, though. They rutted with women who smelled like a sty.
Cordoba stirred. Said something in his sleep. She propped herself on her elbow again, listening.
The major was mumbling a name. Her heart beat a little faster in the hope that it might be hers—
A moment later, she was ashamed of the foolish conceit. She slid her hands down her belly, pressing her palms against herself. She couldn’t go to the cot and waken him now. She knew it would have made him miserable afterward.
In torment, she lay still. It was an hour or more before she fell asleep and dreamed erotic dreams that left her grumpy in the morning.
ii
The army marched into San Felipe on the Brazos on the seventh of April. Once more the Texans were gone, though Cordoba said scouts had sighted Houston and three or four hundred men downriver at Thompson’s Ferry.
That the tiny Texas army had recently been in San Felipe was evident when Amanda went down to the Brazos in the red twilight. Carrying Cordoba’s laundry, she passed two pirogues with their bottoms staved in. The prow of a third poked up from reeds near the shore. Houston had destroyed any craft the Mexicans might use to cross the rain-swollen river.
Up and down the bank, chattering soldaderas kneaded and pounded their men’s clothing. As Amanda walked by a group of four, she noticed the girl with the mole. Kneeling in the mud, the young woman stared at her.
Amanda hurried on. She heard the girl and her companions talking. Suddenly she yelped, stumbling as a stone struck the back of her head.
She dropped Cordoba’s shirts and underdrawers in the mud, turned, saw the girl wiping her hands on her blouse.
The girl hoisted her skirt and began tucking it into the rope belt she wore, unconcerned about revealing her grimy thighs and a black tangle above. One of the older soldaderas caught her arm.
“Ah, let the white slut alone, Manuela. She behaves herself—”
“Which is more than can be said for your friend!” Amanda called, rubbing her scalp, then bending to retrieve the laundry.
Head lowered, Manuela started walking toward her. Amanda wo
ndered why the young woman looked even more haggard than usual.
“I’m sick of seeing her parade herself,” Manuela said to her companions. “She thinks she’s a queen, living with a major—”
Only a step away now, Manuela reached out and twisted a lock of Amanda’s hair around a stubby finger. She breathed out the smell of wine as she went on. “But she’s an ice queen, this one. I have a friend who belongs to a sergeant in one of Cordoba’s platoons.”
Amanda said, “Let go,” then pulled back. But Manuela held the lock of hair. Amanda winced.
“And I hear Cordoba’s marquee is silent all night long. Never any sounds of pleasure. Just the ice queen farting in her sleep.”
Amanda’s cheeks darkened as she realized she’d been spied on. She supposed she should have expected it.
Manuela kept winding the strand of hair tighter around her finger. “Probably the major regrets taking an Anglo into his tent. Anglos are as weak between the legs as they are in their bellies—”
Amanda wrenched suddenly, tearing away. Manuela stepped back with a curse. Then she squatted, fingers digging in the mud until they closed on a pointed stone.
A barking dog and half a dozen ragged boys from San Felipe came running along the sunset-reddened bank, drawn by the promise of a fight. Amanda’s stomach flipflopped. Manuela meant to do her physical harm—
“You’d better get her away,” Amanda warned the other three women. “I don’t want a quarrel. But if she pushes it—”
“Yes? What will you do?” Manuela demanded. She spat. “Nothing!”
“She lost her captain three days ago,” one of the older women blurted. “He was knifed in an argument over cards—”
Amanda understood the reason for the girl’s haggard look. But that didn’t lessen her fear.
Manuela held out the rock, showing Amanda the point. “After I finish with this, the major will need another companion.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do. He may be surprised when I come back in your place. But I don’t think he’ll be disappointed. I think he’ll welcome a woman who knows how to spread herself properly.”
Amanda’s racing mind sorted the ways she might deal with the situation. Appealing to logic wouldn’t work. Manuela obviously had a gut hatred of Texans. And now the loss of her captain had removed any reason for restraint.
The boys had stopped nearby, smirking and nudging one another in anticipation. Manuela shuffled forward again, her bare feet squishing in the mud.
“The fact of it is, I need a man. I’m sure you won’t mind surrendering yours since you bring him no happiness—”
Determined to try to bluff her way out, Amanda said, “Unless you want to get hurt, leave me alone.”
“Perhaps if you beg me, Anglo.”
“Beg! The hell I will, you”—unthinkingly, she resorted to the kind of slur she would never have used when she was calm—“you greaser bitch.”
Manuela licked her lower Up. “I am going to make you hurt for that, Anglo.”
“All right.” Amanda nodded. “Turn your wolf loose.”
“What?”
“I mean go ahead and fight. You’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Briefly startled, Manuela laughed with false bravado. “Eh, the ice queen shows a little fire! What are you going to use to fight me?” She ground her heel on one of Cordoba’s shirts. “Dirty laundry?”
Before Amanda was quite prepared, the girl rushed her. The point of the stone slashed toward Amanda’s eye.
Amanda lunged aside, lost her footing in the mud. As she fell to her knees, the stone raked her temple. A second later she felt the trickle of warm blood above her eyebrow.
Snarling obscenities, Manuela jumped around behind her. She seized Amanda’s hair with one hand, used the other to smash the stone against her scalp. Amanda pitched forward, gasping. Manuela stepped on the back of her neck, driving her face into the mud.
Sputtering and fighting for air, Amanda rolled aside frantically as the young girl started to kneel on her stomach. Mud clogged her eyes, her nostrils. But somehow she avoided the next swipe of the rock and kept rolling—straight into the shallows of the river.
Manuela stormed after her, kicking up droplets that glowed red in the sunset. The dog was barking loudly. The boys clapped and encouraged Manuela, who struck for Amanda’s head again.
Amanda grabbed Manuela’s forearm with both hands, jerked it to her mouth and bit. Manuela squealed. Amanda shoved her backward. The stone almost slipped from the younger woman’s grasp, but she caught it.
Soaked and moving slowly because of it, Amanda still managed to get behind the girl and use her own tactic—a yank of the hair. But Manuela was strong, strong enough to slither free and spin, hacking at Amanda’s face with the rock.
Amanda dodged again, laced her hands together, kicked Manuela’s leg. The girl doubled over. Amanda’s locked hands came down on Manuela’s exposed neck with terrific force.
Crying out in real pain, Manuela sprawled face first in the shallows. The stone flew from her fingers, splashed and disappeared under the water. Amanda thought about calling a halt. But if she did, she’d never be safe in the encampment. She had to defeat the Mexican girl completely, decisively—
She gazed around for a weapon. Something Manuela had said came to mind. She darted for the bank, grabbed one of Cordoba’s shirts, dipped it in the water and lashed Manuela’s cheek.
Floundering in the shallows, Manuela cried out. She tried to grab Amanda’s leg. Amanda whipped the girl’s face again. Again. Her eyes were red with the glare of the sunset as she struck—
She laid ten, twelve, fifteen strokes on Manuela’s face, neck and shoulders. When the shirt showed blood, she stopped. Whimpering, Manuela crawled away in the water—
Amanda was shaking. She stumbled up the bank. The boys and Manuela’s companions stared at her in amazement.
She wiped her brow with a soaked sleeve, then stared at the blood from the cut over her eye. She dropped the shirt she’d used as a whip, retrieved the rest of Cordoba’s laundry. Manuela was still on her knees in the water, shaking her head in a groggy way. Amanda hooked a toe beneath the bloody, ruined garment, and kicked it toward Manuela’s three companions.
“Clean her up. And tell her the major has a lot of other shirts.”
Walking as steadily as she could, she moved on down the bank in the stillness.
iii
“God above, what happened to you?” Cordoba exclaimed when she entered the marquee sometime later, the clean laundry bundled under one arm.
She put the laundry on the washstand, her hand none too steady. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m all right.”
Cordoba was bare chested. The black hair below his throat showed glints of sweat in the light of the hanging lantern. At the waist of his trousers, his stomach bulged. He laid a palm over the roll of fat, as if ashamed to have her see.
She sank down on the cot. “I’m afraid I lost one of your best shirts, though.”
Cordoba seemed not to hear. “How did you cut your forehead?”
“It isn’t important.”
“I insist that you answer.” She didn’t. “At least let me find some alcohol—”
“No, I only need to rest a minute.”
“Damn you, woman! Tell me who hurt you and I’ll see him flogged!”
If she hadn’t been so spent, she would have laughed. The major looked furious.
“Not he,” she said. “It was one of the soldaderas. She won’t bother me again.” Her generous mouth curved in a wry smile. “She had designs on you. She lost her own man, and—well, let’s just say she wasn’t thinking very clearly.”
She lay back. Closed her eyes. She sensed Cordoba crouching down beside her.
“I still want to know the woman’s name. I intend to see her punished.”
“It’s not necessary, Luis—I took care of it.”
“You might have been killed!”
“I wasn’t.�
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She studied him. His deep-set eyes seemed unusually dark in the shadows beneath his brows. Teasing, she added, “Maybe you would have preferred her. She claimed she could please a man better than I do.”
Cordoba gathered both her hands in his. She felt the weight of his forearm against her left breast. She was touched by the almost childlike tenderness of his expression.
“You have pleased me more than any woman I have ever known, Amanda. You have made this filthy campaign bearable. Brought me comfort just with your presence. You know I’m poor at talking like a romantic—I am a soldier. I’m trying to say you are the dearest—”
Swallowing, he stopped. The familiar redness tinted his cheeks again.
She smiled. “But I don’t seem very good at giving a man what he wants most from a soldadera—” She was only partly teasing now. His closeness—the warmth and hardness of his arm—stirred something in her that was part passion, part hunger for reassurance. “I’ve really wondered why you never touch me.”
“Because”—his eyes brimmed with pain—“because I have a wife.”
He bowed his head.
She reached her right hand across her breast, ran the palm down the faint stubble on his face.
“I know that, Luis.”
He jerked back. “You know?”
“Well, I guessed. One night, in your sleep, you spoke a woman’s name several times. I decided it was the name of a sweetheart or, more likely, your wife.”
Each word cost him effort. “I have wanted you very much, Amanda. But I dared not ask—”
“Always so honorable—” Gently, she touched his forehead. “That’s a terrible burden to bear in a dishonorable world.”
“I told you before—I can’t help what I am. I know I must go home to my wife in the capital one day—”
“That could be a long time in the future.”
He said nothing.
“Do you have children?”
“Alas, no.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to do anything that would make you feel ashamed later—”
“Stop!” he exclaimed. “It’s only on your account that I’ve held back. You’re a beautiful woman—and a decent one. If you were just a camp whore, I’d have taken you and thought nothing of it. Well—almost nothing. You deserve better. I could never dishonor you with lies. False promises—”