He was not a tender man, had never been a tender man except perhaps with his young half sister Arabela. The emotion confused him and made him wary of the person who aroused it—wary and angry that she could make him feel anything except contempt. Walking toward the house, he thought coldly, What the hell do I care what happens to her—it would have been easier to let that damned Comanche take her with him, or scalp her.
It wasn't that simple and he knew it. But he chose to avoid her at the house for several reasons—her husband was gravely wounded, perhaps mortally, and now was not the time for the conversation or anything else between them. There was also the fact that he couldn't bear to watch her croon over Nathan. Even if the man was badly injured, Rafael didn't like his being the object of Beth's attentions, especially when the thought occurred to him that if it had been left up to her husband to rescue her, Beth would be dead or a Comanche's captive. There was one more reason he avoided her, and he acknowledged it reluctantly: Beth might not want to see him—he had in a moment of hot fury wished her husband dead. Consequently, Rafael stayed in the background, seeing that everything that could be done was done and that Beth had everything that she could possibly want, not only for herself but Nathan as well. I owe him that much, Rafael admitted bleakly.
Don Miguel, Dona Madelina, and Sebastian, as well as various servants and vaqueros from Cielo, arrived in San Antonio the fourth evening after the massacre. Beth hadn't known of their arrival until Rafael's relative, Senora Lopez, had forced her from Nathan's bedside, insisting in a mixture of Spanish and broken English that she eat something.
Finding the newcomers already seated at the table for dinner, Beth stopped in surprise. "Oh, I didn't expect to see all of you here. When did you arrive?"
The men rose instantly, and both Don Miguel and Sebastian approached her with concerned faces and a warm sympathy that made her eyes well up with sudden tears for their continued kindness. She recovered herself, though, and seated next to Dona Madelina, who held her hand tightly and coaxed her to eat a bite of this and that, she managed to get through the meal with tolerable composure. Everyone was considerate of her, and beyond mentioning Nathan's name once or twice the others kept up a soothing flow of conversation.
Rafael had made no move from his place at the head of the long table when Beth had entered the room, other than rising to his feet. Neither he nor she directed any observations toward the other except for commonplace remarks; they had exchanged no conversation of any note since Nathan had been struck down. But he watched her critically, the hard gray eyes not liking the pallor of her face nor the haunted, other-world expression in the violet eyes. Seeing how little she ate and noticing angrily the growing fragility of her face and delicate wrists, his mouth tightened. There was nothing he could do that he hadn't done already, and he was aware that any move he might make to settle things between them would likely precipitate an emotional crisis that she could well do without under the circumstances.
Beth was alone with Nathan when he finally roused himself and recognized her. The doctor had kept him heavily sedated with an opium mixture to ease the pain, but about eleven o'clock that night, just as Beth was thinking of seeking her own bed, Nathan regained some consciousness. His eyes were cloudy from the drug but he appeared to be remarkably clear-headed. Seeing Beth sitting by his bedside, he smiled, a sweet gentle smile that tore at Beth's heartstrings. "My dear," he whispered, "what are you doing here?"
Her throat aching with unshed tears, she returned his smile. "I was just keeping you company for a little while."
His eyes closed briefly and he murmured, "I am so tired, but it is pleasant to wake and find your lovely face nearby."
Becoming aware of the bandages about his middle and a feeling of pain, with anxious gray eyes, he asked, "I'm all right, aren't I?"
"Of course you are, love! You have been gravely wounded, though, and you must rest for now."
He relaxed and clumsily capturing one of her hands in his, he brought it to his lips. "What a sorry state this is. Just as soon as I am well, we shall go home—and Beth, if you don't mind, I would just as soon not go traveling in the wilds again."
Her smile wobbled. "I couldn't agree with you more, my dear." Sorrowfully she admitted, "I should have listened to you in the first place, Nathan."
"Oh, come now, such humility! It doesn't become you, Beth. You have always been a bit of a minx, and I shouldn't want you to change now," he teased her. He looked very young as he lay against the white pillows, his fair hair curling near his temples, and Beth's heart tightened painfully in her breast.
He moved as if in pain and Beth asked quickly, "Is something the matter?"
Nathan shook his head and kissed her fingers. Their clasped hands lying on his chest, he said, "I think I shall rest awhile, if you don't mind, my dear."
He spoke only once more to her that night. Fighting his way to consciousness again about half an hour later, he looked at Beth and said clearly, "I do love you, you know, in my way."
"I know you do, my dear," and she kissed him on the forehead.
He gave a small sigh, as if satisfied with her answer, and lapsed back into unconsciousness, his hand still holding hers. How long Beth sat there she didn't know... or even exactly when Nathan left her. One minute both of them were in the room together and the next she was alone with her husband's body.
The others were still up enjoying a last bit of refreshment before retiring, the gentlemen sipping their whiskey, the ladies drinking coffee laced with brandy, when Beth entered the room. The inconsequential chatter ceased abruptly and every eye swung to her. Standing wraithlike in the doorway, she said numbly, "My husband is dead."
There was a concerted murmur of sympathy from everyone, but Rafael turned away, fighting an overpowering urge to crush her protectively in his arms and to croon into the bright hair the same sort of gentle nonsense that she had to Nathan. At the moment he would have even willed Nathan to live, if it would erase her pain.
Both the ladies embraced her, murmuring words of condolences and comfort. Dona Madelina kept her arm around her and urged her to a long, green sofa. "Come, my child, come, you must sit down," she said gently, patting Beth's arm as she did so.
To Senora Lopez, Dona Madelina murmured, "Ring for a servant and have some milk warmed and mixed with the laudanum the doctor left."
Dutifully Beth sat on the sofa as she was told, and like an obedient child she drank the milk and laudanum when it was presented to her. She didn't speak again nor did she cry, she simply sat stunned on the sofa, her thoughts far away from the present. It was as if everything were frozen inside of her, so deeply frozen that she felt no emotion, only a great emptiness.
There were not many people at Nathan's funeral the next afternoon, just Rafael, the other Santanas, the Mavericks, Sebastian, and the German doctor who had tried to save him. There were one or two others but Beth, wrapped in her numbing emptiness, didn't recognize them. She was a beautiful zombie, her gaze blank, her movements slow and dreamlike. She didn't speak. Staring at her as she watched the first shovelful of dirt cascade down on Nathan's wooden coffin, Rafael would have liked to shake her furiously and slap her half silly, do anything to make her express some emotion even if it were nothing more than rage and fury at his insensitivity—anything would be better than the frozen, silent creature who now inhabited Beth's body.
She made a lovely widow. The black silk gown, easily procured in a former Spanish city like San Antonio, where the women frequently wore black, intensified her air of fragility and contrasted vividly against the alabaster skin and masses of ash-blond hair. The only bright color about her was the pale rose of her mouth and the purple hue of her eyes.
It was when they were preparing to leave the small cemetery that she did something on her own. Blindly turning back toward the half-filled grave, she walked to its edge and, standing there, she looked a long time at the gold band on her finger, and then with infinite slowness removed her wedding ring and dropped
it into the grave.
Time passed as it always does, but nothing seemed to shake Beth from her dreamlike state. She slept for hours and hours each day and night, hating to awake from the blessed blankness of the laudanum she took with frightening regularity. The laudanum helped make everything hazy and kept at bay the unwelcome reality that awaited her if she allowed its stupor to wear off.
Most people were highly sympathetic, believing that she and Nathan had been so madly in love that she was unable to cope in a world without him. There was a great deal of pity for so young and beautiful a widow, a lovely creature with no family or friends of long standing to share her sorrow with. Naturally the Santanas were doing all that was right and proper, but they were, after all, only chance-met acquaintances, and that wasn't the same as family, no matter how kind and considerate they were.
Rafael, if not content, was willing to leave the consoling to the women in his family. Let Dona Madelina and Senora Lopez hover over her and coddle her—it was what she needed most.
Rafael didn't believe for one second she had been so deeply in love with Nathan she couldn't bear the thought of the future without him. He refused to credit such a reason for her listless, shocked state. He chose to lay the blame on something nearer the truth—Beth's condition came as much from the horror of seeing Matilda Lockhart and the eruption of violence that followed, as well as her own brush with death, as it did from her husband's tragic demise. He didn't doubt she grieved for Nathan, but he couldn't accept the idea that it was only his death that turned her into a lovely zombie.
What he couldn't know was that Beth was suffering under a crushing load of guilt. It was to escape from facing it that she kept herself half drugged and kept any emotions from disturbing the soothing emptiness she felt inside.
It had been her idea to visit Stella. It had been her desire to travel the southern route instead of joining with the spring caravan to Santa Fe. It had been she who had wanted to visit Rancho del Cielo. She who had decided to terminate the journey and return to Santa Fe. In death she imparted to Nathan all sorts of virtues he hadn't possessed. There was also her fascination for Rafael Santana, and that tormented her far more than anything else. Nathan's death, she thought dully one night before the laudanum clouded her brain, was God's punishment on her for her lustful preoccupation with Rafael, that and her capricious and willful disregard of her husband's reasonable wishes.
In her orgy of guilt and condemnation, Beth chose to forget that Nathan hadn't been forced to come with her and that he had been the one who insisted upon attending the fateful meeting with Rafael. She refused to remember his selfish reason for marrying her, his philandering, and his gambling and drinking excesses. She remembered only the good—his kindness to her and his concern for her happiness—she made him into a saintly being who was unrecognizable as Nathan Ridgeway. Eventually her own good common sense would exert itself, but for the present she wandered in an unhappy haze through the days that followed.
While Beth drifted, Rafael had not been idle. The day after the funeral, to his surprise he received a note requesting his presence at the Mission San Jose, where Colonel Fisher and his troops had withdrawn with the Indian prisoners. Reading Colonel Fisher's curt missive, he had half a mind to ignore the summons, but curiosity got the better of him. What could Colonel Fisher possibly have to say to him?
The Mission San Jose was on the outskirts of the town, and it took Rafael but a short time to saddle his horse and ride there. Shown into the colonel's quarters by a grim-faced young soldier, he was disconcerted to discover that Colonel Fisher was ill. But when he would have excused himself, Fisher snapped, "My health is no concern of yours. I wanted to see you and I wanted to see you now."
It was not the most conciliatory opening for their conversation. But then, Colonel Fisher was not in a very conciliatory mood. He was ill, so ill that the young Captain Redd was in command of the garrison, and he was conscious that the meeting with the Comanches could have been handled with more tact. Not wasting any time in banter, he came right to the point.
"You are familiar with the Comanche ways. Do you think they are going to bring in the captives when the twelve days we gave them are past?" he demanded from his bed.
Rafael, who refused the proffered chair, stood with unconscious arrogance in the center of the room, his thumbs hooked on either side of the large silver buckle of the wide leather belt he wore, his black sombrero half-hiding the expression in the gray eyes. "No," he said bluntly. "Why should they? You murdered their chiefs who came under a peace truce to talk of a treaty, and as far as they are concerned, the survivors you hold captive are as good as dead. What inducement do you offer them to bring in their captives?"
"We will not be held to ransom! They had no right to abduct our women and children in the first place—and we will not be intimidated."
Rafael shrugged. "Then there's nothing to discuss, is there? If you will excuse me, I have other things to do." He spun on his heel and had started to walk toward the door when Fisher's voice stopped him.
"Wait!"
Looking at the colonel, his expression uncompromising, Rafael asked, "Yes?"
Fisher rested weakly against his pillows. Tiredly he admitted, "We had our orders and we followed them. None of us believed that a massacre would result."
"Oh? You expected the Comanche chiefs to meekly allow you to take them captive?"
"Damn it, they were only Indians. All we wanted was our captives. They'd been told not to come to council unless they brought them all in—your precious Comanches were as much at fault as we were." Hastily he clarified, "Not that there was any fault on our side—the Comanches started the fight, after all."
His eyes full of scorn, Rafael said harshly, "I don't see much point in this conversation. So, if you will excuse me...?"
"Santana, don't go!" Reluctantly Fisher added, "I need your help. Texas needs your help. You know about Comanches probably better than any man in Texas. What can we expect now?"
There was a time when Rafael would have refused to answer such a question. He would have felt a traitor. But his killing of the two Comanches made him irrevocably aware that his lot was with the white man. Still, the words came hard. "First, I would advise you to give up any hope of seeing the captives alive!" he snapped. "Any of the white women and children that haven't already been formally adopted into a Comanche family are probably dead by now. As soon as the Indian woman you sent to the Comanche camp arrived, their fates were sealed. The only ones who might escape death by torture are the adopted captives, but I wouldn't hold out much hope even for them." His gaze unforgiving, he snarled, "When you broke the sacredness of the council, didn't it occur to you, even fleetingly, that you could be sacrificing innocent women and children?"
Fisher wouldn't meet his eyes. With an effort Rafael controlled his temper and pulling up the chair he had refused earlier, he turned it around and straddled it, his crossed arms resting on the wooden back. "I can't tell you exactly what will happen," he began, "but I can tell you what I think they will do." He sent a hard look across at the other man. "I suspect that sooner or later you're going to have one wrathful war party appear on the horizon screaming for the blood of every Texan. As for the twelve-day truce you offered, I wouldn't hang any hope on it. The Comanches are outraged and furious, feeling betrayed. On the other hand, they are going to be confused and uncertain, something that may work to our advantage... at first." Unemotionally Rafael said, "You've killed all their great leaders, and I doubt that there are very many warriors of sufficient prestige within the tribe who can weld them into a concerted force. In time, yes, but at the present, no. That won't stop them from seeking revenge, though." His face increasingly grim, he continued, "You can also expect to have raiding and killing on the frontier the like of which you have never dreamed... not even in nightmares. They have no reason to hold back now. You have given them a just cause to hate us with all the ferocity and unforgivingness of their nature." His voice as unyielding as gra
nite and the gray eyes like flecks of obsidian, Rafael ended stingingly, "I'm sure you realize why they will not be willing to sit down to any peace talks you might want to offer them. The Council House Massacre will be viewed by them as the vilest treachery possible—they will never forget or forgive it. Worse, you, Lamar, Johnston, and all the others have given them a common cause that could—I don't say will—but could lead to the unification of all the Comanche tribes. In short, sir, you can expect a war with the Comanches that will not end until either the Texans are driven from the Republic or the last Comanche has been killed."
Chapter 20
Rafael left the Mission San Jose full of rage and frustration. He had enjoyed flinging those last words at Colonel Fisher, and yet inside he was sick. Everything that he and the others had sought to avoid would happen and all because of one senseless outbreak of violence.
His mood was surly for the rest of the day; he avoided the house, being in no mood for polite conversation. Instead he rode the big dapple-gray stallion out toward the limestone hills and spent the afternoon gaining peace from the clear blue sky and wide vista.
It was late when he arrived back at the house. The ladies had retired some time ago and even his father had gone to bed, leaving Sebastian the only one still awake except for a stray servant or two.
Rafael wasn't searching for companionship, but when he discovered Sebastian, nursing a brandy in the small study at the rear of the house, he was pleased.
Sebastian looked up when he entered. "Where did you disappear to? Everyone was concerned when you were not at dinner."
Rafael grimaced. "I keep forgetting to tell someone where I'm going. Blame it on a life spent in solitude on the plains."
Sebastian smiled in commiseration. They drank in companionable silence, Rafael lounging carelessly in a worn leather overstuffed chair, his long legs stretched in front of him, his booted feet crossed at the ankles. After a while they began to talk of Sebastian's plans for the future, specifically of the land he was going to apply for the next day.
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