While Passion Sleeps

by Shirlee Busbee

  Beth and Mary were separated. As shots and screams filled the air, Beth was trapped in the midst of the crowd. Desperately she tried to escape, but the surging, shifting mass carried her helplessly along.

  The Comanches were intent only on escaping this place of betrayal. Always fearful of closed spaces, they were terrified, running and killing as they went. Most ran for the river. A few tried to commandeer horses, others tried to hide in nearby houses. Nearly every inhabitant of San Antonio had joined the fray by now—and, as they usually went armed, the fight became a slaughter, the Comanches heavily outnumbered.

  Rafael, Nathan dragged along with him, was one of the first from the Council House to reach the street, and he glanced around for Beth, praying fiercely that she was safe at the Maverick house. He scanned the fleeing throng, desperately hoping not to see Beth among them. He started to relax and shift his thoughts to getting Nathan to a place of safety, when he caught sight of Beth's fair head in the shifting mass. The silvery braids were a beacon to him, and, seeing her frantic struggles to fight her way free from the melee, hearing the shots in the air, seeing the arrows and lances flying on their paths, for the first time in his life Rafael experienced the dry taste of fear in his mouth. Everything was forgotten—Nathan, the whine of the deadly missiles, the leaping copper bodies with their knives flashing in the sunlight, the men of San Antonio with their smoking guns, everything disappeared for him except the small bright figure being swept along with the scattering mob.

  One second Rafael was next to Nathan in front of the Council House and the next he was flying down the street, the Colt pistol cocked and a hair trigger away from discharging. Oblivious of anything but Beth, he zigzagged down the street, keeping himself from becoming an easy target for either Comanche or white marksman.

  More frightened than she had ever been in her life, Beth saw an opening in the crowd and dashed for it. Gasping for breath, her heart pounding, she clung to the adobe wall of the building, barely aware of the brush of the others as they plunged passed her.

  Hands outstretched against the warm adobe, one cheek pressed tightly to the wall, she had her back to the street, the pink gown a vivid splash of color against the sienna walls. The cornet of braids had come unpinned during the scramble, one thick braid resting on her breast, the other undone and rippling down her back. She could not know that the shining fair hair was a dangerous enticement for the Comanche who thought to have its owner as his captive... or the scalp to swing from his lodge pole.

  Beth wasn't aware of the copper figure that swerved toward her, his scalping knife already whetted with blood. Her first inkling of his presence was the grasp of cruel hands on her shoulders as he whipped her around. Eyes wide with terror, she stared at a face that nightmares are made of, the broad stripes of scarlet and yellow paint distorting further the Comanche's savage features. Only for a moment did she stare, and whether the Comanche meant to take her captive or merely lift her scalp was never decided, because Beth, reacting with a courage and speed born of fear, attacked the Indian like a wildcat. The knife was her first objective and catching his forearm in both of her hands, she sank her teeth into his wrist. The taste of blood nearly made her gag, but she held on as the infuriated Comanche, twisting and dancing about in the dusty street, attempted to shake her off. His free hand tangled in the fair hair, and Beth's eyes filled with tears of pain as he tried to yank her head from his wrist.

  Like a dog with a bone she refused to release her grip as they fought, knowing that if she did, the bloody knife would be the end of her. In their struggle they crashed into the wall of the adobe, and with horror Beth felt her hold weakening. Frantically she tried to hang onto his arm, but the Indian was too swift for her and with a grunt of triumph he tore himself loose from her.

  Her back against the wall, the fair hair half braided and half undone, tumbling wildly about her shoulders, she faced him defiantly, her breast heaving. She wasn't frightened anymore, just angry, and she stared back at the Comanche, daring him to continue their unfair fight.

  Warily now, the warrior watched her, uncertain whether the gilt hair was worth the struggle. He no longer wanted her as a captive, if that had been his original plan. But that extraordinary silvery-blond hair...

  He crouched and one thought hammered through Beth's head—the knife, the knife, don't let him use the knife!

  The Comanche leaped toward her; like a bolt out of the sky Beth found herself flying through the air as a hard hand unceremoniously shoved her out of the way. She plunged full length in the street, the breath knocked out of her, her ears ringing from the terrifying blast of a pistol that exploded seconds before she hit the dirt. Her face toward the street, with wide disbelieving eyes she stared as the Comanche fell to the ground near her, a bloody gaping wound in his chest, his body writhing in a dance of death.

  Hands as powerful and cruel as the Comanche's jerked her upright and she was crushed to a warm, hard chest. "Sweet Jesus!" Rafael muttered into her ear. "I thought I was going to be too late."

  His arms held her with fierce protectiveness, their strength filling her with a lovely, warm sense of sanity in a world gone mad. He was breathing heavily, she could feel the rapid, labored rise and fall of his chest and hear the thundering beat of his heart against her cheek; her slender arms tightened around him. Dimly she was aware of the light ardent kisses raining upon her head and temples and the soft Spanish words being whispered in her ear. She didn't understand what he was saying, but it satisfied something within her and made her long for this sweet embrace never to end.

  His arms loosened and he moved her away from him. The dark face intent, the gray eyes scanning her face, he demanded in a husky voice, "You're not hurt? He didn't manage to strike you, did he?"

  Some of the horror of the day fading; her eyes misty with emotion, she looked up at him and said softly, "You saved my life."

  Rafael gave her a twisted, bitter smile and shook his head. "My own, I think."

  She frowned, not understanding but too shattered by the violent event to puzzle it out. Reality was intruding, and self-consciously she stepped away from his embrace. Avoiding his eyes, she concentrated on brushing off the dust and dirt from her skirts. Remembering their positions, she said stiltedly, "Thank you very much, Senor Santana, for your timely intervention. You saved my life, and for that I can never repay you. Please accept my profound gratitude."

  Rafael's face tightened and his eyes narrowed. Under his breath, he snarled, "Don't start that type of mawkish behavior with me—not now!"

  The violet eyes sparkling with sudden temper and pain, she asked sharply, "What do you mean by that?"

  As if the words were torn from him, he said savagely, "Simply that I think it's time we have the conversation we should have had four years ago."

  Chapter 19

  Caught by surprise, Beth stared up at him. Hesitantly she began, "I don't think I under—" when Nathan's voice interrupted them.

  "Beth! What are you doing out here?" he cried, rushing toward them.

  Seeing the man he'd begun to think of as a savage, unpredictable beast standing with his wife didn't please him overmuch. He was disenchanted with everything in Texas and eager to depart. A peevish expression marring his blond fairness, he approached them.

  Most of the worst fighting had ceased, although there were still sporadic sounds of gunfire and an occasional shriek or yell heard in the distance. Several people were peeking out of their hiding places and a few of the braver souls were stepping warily into the plaza and walking toward the wounded or dead that lay scattered about. Everyone was on edge, alert for any sign of stray Indians still in the vicinity. Determined to get Beth safely away, Rafael looked down at her. "This is no place for you." His eyes kindling with anger that hid his earlier fear, he snapped, "What the hell are you doing out here by yourself in the first place? You could have been killed, you little fool!"

  Nathan, reaching them by now, took umbrage at not only the familiar tone of voice but a
lso the high-handed way Rafael was speaking to Beth. Drawing himself up, he said testily, "I think you forget yourself, Santana! Beth is, after all, my wife, and I do not take kindly to you speaking so to her."

  Rafael went rigid, his face dark with fury, and for one terrifying moment Beth feared he would strike Nathan. His eyes mere slits of icy silver, he snarled, "And where the hell were you when she was fighting for her life? Hiding somewhere out of the line of fire?"

  The three of them were standing almost in the middle of the street, Rafael and Beth facing Nathan. At Rafael's words, Nathan's fair skin turned an unbecoming scarlet. His mutton-chop whiskers bristling with outrage, and stuttering with choler, he got out, "H-h-how d-d-dare you s-s-speak to m-me like t-t-that!"

  Contemptuously Rafael raked him with his gaze, but before he could reply, a movement where there should have been none on the top of one of the adobe houses just beyond Nathan's shoulder caught his attention. Not waiting to discover what caused it, Rafael was already drawing his pistol and throwing Beth to the ground when a Comanche warrior, his face hideously distorted by rage, a deadly lance in his hand, rose up from the roof of the house. Two things happened simultaneously, the warrior hurled the lance and Rafael's gun spat lead. Both found a human target. The Comanche, clutching his throat, his death rattle carrying with unpleasant clarity in the warm air, pitched sideways off the roof, and Nathan, his face the picture of incredulity, stared down at the vivid patch of blood on his vest, the iron tip of the lance protruding from his chest.

  "Why, I've been wounded," he said in a voice of wonderment. He fell face down in the dusty street, the long Comanche lance buried in his back.

  Her eyes wide with horror, Beth stared at her husband's still form and a silent scream echoed through her brain. No! He couldn't be dead! Not this way, not slain so uselessly by a creature that only inhabited nightmares.

  Nothing had seemed real from the moment Rafael had shoved her into the street a second time, not the exploding sound of his gun, nor the sight of Nathan lying spread-eagle in the dusty street, a Comanche lance sticking grotesquely out of his back. Numbly she stared at Nathan. Watching the spreading stain of blood defacing his buff coat, she thought foolishly, Oh, dear, his jacket will be ruined. He won't like that.

  Rafael knelt beside Nathan and after a moment he said in a quiet tone, "English, he's still alive! He's not dead."

  Beth felt a wave of thankfulness suffuse her body—He's alive! Thank God! But the shock and terror of the day was too much for her, and beyond comprehending that Nathan was still alive, nothing else made sense. Even when Rafael helped her gently to her feet and Nathan was carried to Rafael's house and the doctor arrived, nothing touched her except in a hazy way.

  It seemed like hours that the doctor worked over Nathan, and when he at last entered the room where Beth sat so white-faced and still, his words were not optimistic. "He is badly wounded, Mrs. Ridgeway. I have done all I can. With rest and care it is possible that he will recover, but..." His voice trailed off. It had been an ugly wound and the little German doctor had worked desperately to remove the weapon without inflicting further damage. At the moment Nathan was resting under a heavy dose of opium, but only the following days would tell if he would survive the wound. Gently the doctor said, "There is hope, my dear. His case is not hopeless."

  Beth clung to his words in the days that followed and over and over she repeated them—there is hope, there is hope! But the rest of the world receded from her—she ate when she was told, slept when she was told, and wore whatever was laid out for her. The remainder of the time she sat in Nathan's room, holding his hand and staring blindly into space until Nathan would moan in pain; then she would tenderly smooth his brow and whisper soft, comforting words. Beth didn't know what she said during those days, she just crooned meaningless little endearments that seemed to calm him temporarily.

  As soon as Nathan had been carried to the house and the doctor arrived, Rafael spared a few minutes to send a rider posthaste to Cielo with the news of what had transpired. With Beth's husband incapacitated, it was imperative, to avoid any talk, that he find a respectable woman to stay in the house. He chafed against the insanity of it, but to avoid the inevitable raised eyebrows and wagging tongues he must have another woman in the house to protect Beth's reputation. For his own he didn't give a damn, but for her sake he dredged up some obscure Spanish relative, a widow of about sixty years of age who lived in San Antonio; within the hour he had her installed in the house.

  There had been several other casualties besides Nathan, and during the long night that followed, what Mary Maverick would call in her diary "the day of horrors," the immigrant German doctor, San Antonio's only surgeon, had labored unceasingly through the night to save those that he could.

  The Comanche loss was the worst. Of the sixty-five Indians who had come to council, thirty-three chiefs, warriors, women, and children died in the massacre. The remaining thirty-two, all women and children, many of them wounded, had been captured and thrown into jail. Only seven whites had been killed, including the sheriff of San Antonio.

  It had been a bloodbath, the last stages of the fight becoming a hunt as the whites had scoured the town killing every frightened Comanche who did not immediately surrender. None of the Comanches managed to escape the town and were either killed on the spot or thrown into jail.

  After Rafael had Beth safely back at the house and he had done what he could about Nathan's condition, he turned his mind to the repercussions of the day's happening. It was not a pleasant contemplation. Rousing himself from visions of burned-out homesteads and the mutilated bodies of settlers' families, as well as the knowledge that the Comanche camps would suffer too, he sent another rider thundering off into the night. This one rode toward Austin and Sam Houston.

  His note to Houston was brief, a recital of the facts and the information that he would be staying in San Antonio. If Houston needed him, he knew where to find him. At the end of the note his frustration and rage showed through. "You know," he wrote in thick black strokes, "if Fisher and the others had deliberately planned to drive the Comanches straight into the arms of the Mexicans, they couldn't have chosen a better way. God help us all!"

  He had nothing to discuss with any of the military men involved—the time for talking was past—but he took a keen interest in their plans. Early the next morning, while Beth slept dreamlessly under the influence of the prescribed laudanum and San Antonio buzzed with shock and rumor, Rafael was at the jail when the Commissioners, their faces unyielding and rock-hard, took one of the Indian women, the wife of one of the greatest dead chiefs, and put her on a horse. In hostile silence they gave her food and water, and she was told bluntly, "Go to the camps of your people and tell them that the survivors of the Council House fight will be put to death unless all of the captives spoken of by Matilda Lockhart are returned. You have twelve days from where the sun stands now to deliver our message and return with the captives." The Indian woman listened impassively, her features never betraying her grief and rage. Watching her ride out of town, Rafael knew with a sickening sense of futility that she would deliver the ultimatum and the helpless captives would scream their lives away under the torturing knives of the wailing squaws in the camps, condemned to death by the treachery of the very men who sought to free them.

  He turned furiously on his heel and strode away, unable to look any longer at these men, who had with such righteous arrogance brought about the end of hope for any peace between the Comanches and the whites.

  He had done all he could, and if his conscience pricked him with painful regularity because he had not warned the Comanches of his fears and suspicions, he consoled himself with the knowledge that hindsight is always infallible. He had tried his best to convince the Indian Commissioners of the importance of this particular meeting. It was cold comfort to him when he thought of all the powerful men of the Pehnahterkuh who had died, leaving the largest group of Comanches virtually leaderless. There was only one chief who
had escaped the Council House Massacre, and that would be the great war chief Buffalo Hump. At least they have him, he decided bitterly.

  He had killed not one but two Comanches the day of the Council House Massacre. They had not been members of the Kwerhar-rehnuh, but they had been Comanches and he had killed them. He had killed men before—Apaches, whites, and Mexicans—but never a Comanche, and he realize now how firmly he was allied with the white man. And how intensely Beth Ridgeway affected his emotions.

  He hadn't forgotten the snake of terror that had slithered down his spine when he saw her fighting with the Comanche warrior, nor had he forgotten the burst of scarlet rage that had exploded through him when Nathan had taken him to task and said the words my wife.

  If he hadn't forgotten the terror or the rage, he also had not forgotten his own angry words to Beth only hours before Nathan's wounding—"He could be skewered by a Comanche lance for all I care!" What damnable luck that he should prove to be such an excellent prophet.

  Now Nathan might die, and Rafael was grimly aware that in death he might prove to be a greater barrier than in life. One thing Rafael knew for damn sure—Beth was not going away from San Antonio until they settled whatever was between them.

  He would have to have been a blind man not to know that there was a bond between them. Perhaps only a physical one; with one part of him he hoped it would turn out to be just that—that once they established an easy intimacy between them, the fierce emotions she aroused would disappear and after a few weeks he could pack her off to Natchez and out of his life. It was what he wanted, he told himself vehemently, his jaw clenching with anger. And yet...

  Where Beth was concerned Rafael was a tangle of conflicting, seething emotions. One moment jealousy the driving force, passion the next, and in between a curiously painful tenderness that disturbed him far more than all of the other emotions combined. Rage he could deal with, jealousy he could ignore and passion he could slake, but tenderness...?