In stunned awkward silence, Sebastian sat staring at him, uncertain whether he was appalled and outraged by what he had heard or strangely stirred and envious of the savage way that Rafael had lived. To his intense disgust he found he wanted unashamedly to know more, to learn even more of that time in his cousin's life that was never mentioned. In some dark, secret way it appealed to him, and he admitted unhappily to himself that perhaps he had inherited more from his father than just a physical appearance!
Rafael had looked away from Sebastian when he had stopped speaking, and, as the moments passed, he contented himself with smoking the slim black cigarillo. He felt drained; tonight had been the first time he had ever spoken to anyone about his life with the Coman-ches, and he discovered that it had brought back memories and primitive emotions—memories and emotions which he had thought he had conquered long ago. It wasn't pleasant to know that the blood lust still ran hotly in his veins. How easily I could revert, he thought grimly, remembering the wild, barbaric joys of that time. He glanced across at Sebastian, curious and yet oddly indifferent about the other's reaction.
Sebastian was still staring at him, but there wasn't the recoiling horror and furious condemnation that Rafael expected to see. Cocking an eyebrow at the younger man, he asked derisively, "No comment? You are
usually so quick with words that I find your silence
puzzling. Struggling to find just the right scathing observation, Sebastian?''
''No," Sebastian admitted honestly. '1 was just realizing how very thin is our veneer of civilization. What youVe just told me I find on one hand most revolting, but on the other..."
''On the other, you find that it calls to everything that is savage and untamed within you," Rafael finished dryly. ''You're not alone—more than one returned captive has escaped his would-be-rescuer and eagerlv hurried back to the Comanches."
"Why didn't you?"
Rafael laughed bitterly. "Because, my friend, my grandfather took every precaution to make damn certain I didn't!'*
"But when you were in Spain, surely you were not watched the entire time?"
"Oh, no... there wasn't the need." At Sebastian's look of surprise, Rafael added wearily, "WTien Don Felipe undertook to... recapture me from the Comanches, luck was on his side—not only did he find me, but when I was captured, the two Comanches with me unfortunately happened to be the men I had thought of as my father and older brother. If I had known who had captured us, that damming bit of information wouldn't have come out. But none of us realized that we had been neatly surprised and trapped while out hunting by something more than merely a band of Mexican bandits who asked a hell of lot of questions. The fact that I had been singled out and deliberately captured didn't occur to any of us until too late. Catching Buffalo Horn, my adopted father, and Standing Horse, his son, was a piece of luck that Don Felipe hadn't counted on, but he took advantage of it damn quickly—in order to insure my cooperation, it was explained very carefully and in eloquent detail exactly what would happen to them if I didn't do precisely what Don Felipe wanted."
Sebastian whistled soundlessly under his breath, realizing the reasons behind a lot of the inexplicable things that Rafael had done—such as marrying Consuela! He moved uncomfortably, not certain what to say, yet not
wanting to let the subject drop. Shooting a quick glance at Rafael's remote face, he wisely decided not to ask any questions concerning Don Felipe and instead murmured curiously, "Did you ever go back to the Coman-ches?"
"Certainly," Rafael replied promptly. "But by the time I did, I'm afraid Don Felipe and his priests and scholars had done their work too well, and I discovered that while the Comanches might welcome me back as a lost son, I could no longer live their way of life as I had once done. I knew too much of the world... I had, against my will, become the Spanish grandson that Don Felipe wanted—at any cost."
Sebastian wanted to question him further, but something in Rafael's face warned him that the other man had said just about all he was going to say on the subject. Sebastian was right, for a second later Rafael flipped the cigarillo on the coals and said quietly, "I think we've discussed my Indian past long enough, don't you? At any rate, I have no intention of talking about something that happened too long ago to make any difference now." As he finished speaking, almost angrily Rafael drew his saddle, which lay nearby, into a position that suited him, and then settled his dark head against it. The serape was roughly dragged over his body and, pulling the black sombrero down to where its brim rested on his nose, he said pointedly, ''Buenas noches"
Knowing that further questions would remain unanswered, Sebastian followed his lead. The leather saddle did not make a particularly comfortable pillow and, with his mind filled with thoughts of Comanches and Rafael's years with them, Sebastian found it hard indeed to fall asleep. But eventually he drowsed off and not too many minutes later he was deeply asleep, not once thinking of Beth and his aching heart.
For Rafael it was not quite as easy. The black sombrero, pulled low across his face, hid the fact that while he gave the impression of being asleep, he was wide awake. Too damned wide, he thought grimly, shifting slightly on the hard ground.
It had been extremely difficult to answer Sebastian's questions, to talk so casually of that time with the Co-
manches, not because of any painful memories—that period had been the happiest of his hfe. Then there had been no divided loyalties, no occasional black abyss of guilt to stumble into whenever he thought of the fact that he was allied with the white people, whose greed for land could very well be the death of the Comanche's proud and free way of life.
Rafael sighed heavily, thinking of the time with the Comanches. He had lived life as he found it, and in those days he had found it good indeed: the thrill of the buffalo hunt, the exultance of a successful coup, the almost frenzied excitement of knowing he had killed an enemy and that the eneray's woman lay beneath him in the dust as he had forced his will upon her. Rafael's mouth curved sardonically. Oh, yes, he had reveled in every aspect of the Comanche warrior's life— even the land itself called to him, those vast chapar-raled savannas, brushlands, and butte-studded limestone plateaus in an awesome sea of grass that reached belly-high to a horse and extended as far as the eye could see and beyond. It was impossible to describe the Great Plains, to describe the effect of blinding blue sky and vague horizons, the endless expanses of waving grass that seemed to run on forever. And the winds, the wind that blew eternally, cutting through the silence with a sullen keening. He sighed again, suddenly longing for it unbearably.
Realizing that sleep was impossible, Rafael threw aside the serape and sat up. Stirring the lingering coals slightly, he managed to find enough flame to light another cigarillo. He was restless, his mind and thoughts dwelling too much on a part of his life he had always kept tightly locked away. Almost murderously, he glanced at Sebastian sleeping soundly. Damn him! If he hadn't asked those questions...
Taking a deep drag of the cigarillo, Rafael stared blindly at the faintly glowing remains of their fire. No, he admitted slowly, it wasn't the memories of the Comanche years that troubled him, it was the agonizing time that had followed his return to the life he had been born into—the life of the son of a noble Spanish family.
Even now, some fifteen years later, he could still 234
recall his frantic fury in those first days, days he had spent chained like an animal in a dirty underground prison of Don Felipe's making. There had been no warm svmlight upon his yearning, thirsting skin, no brilliantly blue sky to fill him with delight and pleasure, just darkness and humiliation. Around his right ankle he still bore the scars of that brutal incarceration—he had fought like a maddened, wild creature to escape the iron manacle that chained him in his small, suffocating prison, fought until his ankle was a bleeding mass of torn skin and flesh. And all the while, safely out of his reach, Don Felipe had watched, his black goatee and curving mustaches giving him the look of a devil, the cold black eyes expressionless.
Rafael's hand trembled slightly, and seeing it, he cursed virulently under his breath. Mother of God, how he despised his Spanish grandfather!
The Comanches were a cruel race, Rafael conceded, but theirs was not the calculated cruelty practiced by his grandfather. Don Felipe had enjoyed trying to break him, had enjoyed watching him, day by day, hour by hour, almost lose the struggle to maintain even a pitiful remnant of his youthful, bred-in-the-bone pride. Rafael smiled viciously, remembering the punishments, the degradations the older man had devised to break his spirit, to make him a weakling who obeyed without question. But somehow, someway, he had managed to remain defiant and untamed throughout it all—the deliberate lack of food that had left him gaunt and barely able to stand; the systematic beatings, the petty acts of outright cruelty and the vitriolic abuse hurled at him daily. But when all else had failed, Don Felipe crushed resistance by the simple expedient of dangling before Rafael the fate of the imprisoned Buffalo Horn and Standing Horse.
For the continuance of their lives, Rafael had learned the pure Castilian Spanish that Don Felipe demanded; for them he had studied diligently the books and syllabuses devised by his grandfather's priests; for them he had allowed himself to be groomed and taught the manners and ways of the heir to a proud and distinguished name. Had Don Felipe not threatened his Co-
manche family, Rafael would have starved to death and let the maggots feed on his rotting flesh before he would have obeyed even one command.
Don Felipe, determined to have no interference in his plans, had kept Rafael's father in complete ignorance of his actions. And it was only some ten months later—with Rafael, his glorious braids sheared off, his Spanish understandable, and very ill-at-ease in confining pantaloons and white linen shirt—that Don Miguel had looked upon the openly hostile face of the son he had never thought to see again.
Don Miguel had been overjoyed, and even to Rafael's distrustful gaze it had been obvious that the other man's emotions were genuine. Remembering the tears that had filled his father's eyes, he moved uneasily. He had never wanted Don Miguel's love, but he was, in his own way, grateful for it—certainly his father's presence had made the following two years bearable and at times almost pleasant.
But there had been a great deal of unpleasantness, too, for Rafael still fought against the prison walls that were minute by minute closing in on him. He yeaimed with every fiber of his being for the high country, for the freedom that had been his for as long as he could remember, for the life that he still thought of as the one worthy of a man. But after the desperate abortive attempt to free Buffalo Horn and Standing Horse from their wicked captivity, with a heart full of black fury he had put it behind him. Don Felipe's revenge had been swift and savage—he had calmly ordered that Buffalo Horn be blinded in one eye, stating indifferently that the next time the other eye would go, and of course
then there was still Standing Horse Rafael had been
forced to watch the blinding, and after that, there had been no more attempts to escape the limits set by his grandfather.
The cigarillo suddenly tasted vile, and, with a sharp, violent motion, Rafael tossed it from him. But Don Felipe had not won all of the battles, he thought harshly. No, not all of them. With pleasure he recalled the look on his grandfather's face when he had flatly refused to go to Spain... unless his adoptive relatives were freed.
The glossy black goatee had nearly quivered with rage, his pale olive skin had flushed with choler, and Don Felipe had almost suffered a fit of apoplexy when Rafael had coolly dictated his terms. At twenty Rafael was no longer a wild savage animal fighting frenziedly to escape an impossible trap. Tall and aloof, the gray eyes already cynical and icy, he had learned painfully to play by his grandfather's rules, and Don Felipe had not liked it at all. In the end the older man had offered a compromise, furiously aware that this time Rafael would remain implacable—no matter to whom or what punishment was inflicted. Bad temperedly Don Felipe had agreed that Buffalo Horn would go free if Rafael went to Spain, but under no circumstances would he release Standing Horse. It had been a stalemate, neither man gaining an outright victory.
Rafael had hated Spain, hated the priests in the sprawling gray-stoned monastery where he had been sent for further refinement, hated the bleakness of the monastery itself, hated the condescending attitude of the Spaniards he met, but most of all he had hated Spain because it had bred his grandfather... and Con-suela.
The freedom of Standing Horse had been the price of Rafael's marriage to Consuela Valadez y Gutierrez. Again Don Felipe had been enraged that his grandson had dared to bargain, enraged that for the first time in his life he had met another man with his own steel-edged determination. It made little difference to Don Felipe that now, at last, he had a grandson who appeared to be everything one could ever want in an heir— he could never quite forgive or forget the Comanche blood that ran in Rafael's veins.
The grand compliments paid Don Felipe by his powerful aristocratic friends in Spain on his grandson's grace and manners gave him no pleasure, knowing full well that it was all a veneer, a thin, brittle veneer that could shatter the instant Standing Horse galloped away from the hacienda, a free Comanche warrior once more. But he'd had no choice—that was more than apparent in the icy gleam of determination in Rafael's gray eyes. And so Standing Horse went free after his long captiv-
ity, and at twenty-four Rafael married a woman who despised him for the same reason that his grandfather did,
A mirthless chuckle escaped Rafael as he sat staring at the dead fire. Consuela and Don Felipe should have married—what a mating of vipers that would have been!
Perhaps if Consuela had managed to meet him even part of the way they might have made the ill-matched marriage work, for in those first days Rafael hadn't hated her. He had not liked her, but there might have been buried beneath the hard, unyielding exterior he projected, the faint hope that he could grow to care deeply for this woman he had been forced to marry. In the beginning he had pitied Ker, for Consuela had been given no choice in her marriage partner—the Gutierrez family had been more than happy to see one of its daughters married into the powerful and rich Santana family, especially as it was the heir to the family fortune their daughter was marrying.
Thinking of her death at the hands of a Comanche raiding party, Rafael winced. Not even Consuela would he have condemned to that fate. But then he reminded himself that her own pigheadedness had brought it about. If she hadn't been in such an all-fired hurry to leave the hacienda, her path and that of the raiding party might never have crossed. And then again, who knew, fate had a way of catching up with one when least expected. Certainly her death had been a shock to him, and he had thought it one of life's grotesque ironies that she had died at the hands of the very people she despised most.
Aware of a slight cramp in his calf, Rafael stretched his long legs and glanced up at the black starless sky, feeling the night quiet steal over him, and with it came a certain amount of peace within himself. jDios! He must be mad to sit here brooding over events that had happened in what seemed another lifetime. It was all over now, so why did he let it haunt him this way?
Wryly he looked across at Sebastian's slumbering form, aware as he had never been before that affection and caring made one weak, that with fondness came a vulnerability he had never suspected, not even when
he had bargained for the hves of Buffalo Horn and Standing Horse. Caring for someone, he decided bitterly, was a trap he would avoid in the future.
The chill of the night gradually seeped into his bones and, conscious now of a great tiredness, he lay back down again and pulled the serape around him for warmth. It was strange, he mused drowsily, how thinking of the past tonight had in some peculiar way made him at ease within himself—as if by finally facing the past, the memories had lost the power to hurt him. His hatred for Don Felipe was not diminished in any way, but the pain and torment he had kept locked inside of him was inexplicably gone. Maybe, he thought sleepily, Se
bastian inadvertently did me a favor by asking those questions. A smile on his lips, he fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The ride back to the hacienda was much more leisurely than the previous day's journey out; Rafael stopped more frequently to point out the various advantages of the land they traveled through. His eyes narrowed against the bright morning sun, he said knowledgeably, "It's good land, Sebastian. Abundant water, and grass enough to feed as much livestock as you would ever want. As for cropping, I think you'll find the soil more than just adequate."
Sebastian nodded in eager agreement, his mind already made up. The young face full of enthusiasm, he confessed, "I knew yesterday from what you'd shown me that I wanted it. It's an incredibly appealing country, Rafael; and I can hardly wait to write my father of my decision."
Rafael smiled easily, his glance openly fond as it rested on Sebastian's face. /''Bueno! It pleases me to know that Cielo will have a member of the Savage family as its nearest neighbor. Miguel, too, will be pleased." His face becoming serious, he said, "If you do intend to apply for the free land, I would suggest that you also buy up as much additional acreage as you can afford. At the moment land is the only thing that Texas seems to have in overabundance—except for Mexican interference and Indians! But it will not remain so."
Sebastian nodded in quick agreement. "I had already considered that—I plan to buy considerably more land than that which is free."
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