“If you hurt Mama, I will hate you, and so will Andrea. I may no longer be your child, but Andrea is, and she will spit on you!” Tía cried, throwing herself at him. Before he could stop her she hit him hard across the face.
Mateo barely felt Teresa’s slap. Normally no one could have hit him and lived to tell about it, but the monster within was as confused as he.
Teresa looked like a wild thing—trying to hit him, to kill him, anything to save her worthless mother. In that moment, with her teeth bared and her face flushed, she looked even more like Rita.
Mateo captured Teresa’s wrists and pulled her close to glare into her frantic eyes. “Thirty years ago, when I was younger than you are now, I vowed to kill all gringos. Now I am married to one, like an ox in a yoke, and I find I have raised the blonde bastard she shamed me with.” His fingers tangled in Teresa’s blond curls and jerked her head back, forcing her to look at him. “If I had known, I would have smashed your head against a post…”
With her recently freed hand, Tía tried to hit him again, but he easily deflected the blow. Tears cascaded down her face. She swung again, blindly, awkwardly.
“She thought she had closed the snare on me forever, but now I am loose. Your mother will pay for this…”
“You can’t hurt Mama. Or me. You love me!” Tía cried.
“No! I loved a child I thought was mine!”
“You love me!”
Somehow Teresa’s fury stripped her of everything except her similarities with that bitch he had not killed when he should have. “I hate that gringa bitch I married, and I hate you,” he panted.
“No! No! No!”
Blindly, she struck out at him. Mateo captured her flailing arm and pinned it between their bodies. She squirmed in fury and frustration, much as Rita had that first time. The girl even felt like Rita. A familiar stirring quickened within him. He had always exacted his revenge on Rita in this way. It suited her. And him.
“What’s going on here?” demanded a shrill female voice.
Mateo whirled. Rita tossed aside a brown cassock, and her red taffeta dress blossomed from beneath it and filled the front door. As he watched, she stepped into the house and instantly took command the way she had always done, from the first moment he’d seen her.
A wave of energy flushed into Mateo, filling his loins with power.
He pushed Teresa aside.
“So, you dare to face me,” he growled.
“Haven’t I always?”
“Before, I did not know about…her.”
Rita looked from her husband to her daughter. From the look on Tía’s face, the hurt in her blue eyes, she knew that somehow Mateo had discovered her secret. Rita saw a piece of paper beneath the table, strode forward, picked it up from the kitchen floor, looked down at it, and saw Bill Burkhart’s name.
Mateo did know.
“And now that you know?” she asked, shrugging her long blond hair out of her eyes with a flip of her hand and a little tossing movement of her head that always enflamed her husband. Even through his rage, she could see the reaction in him, as if a flame leaped and burned within him.
“Now I will kill you the way I should have…”
Rita laughed. “The way you couldn’t have, you mean.”
Rage fairly crackled in the air between them. Tía stepped away until her back touched the wall. Papa started toward Mama.
“When did you plan to tell me? Were you saving it for a special surprise? Or had you hoped to get away with it?”
Mama shrugged. “Nothing you can do now will change it. I lay with him,” she said, crumpling the paper in her right fist and shaking it at him. “She is mine and his. She had nothing to do with you, and you were too blind to see it. You thought you could father a perfect blonde…” Mama shook her head and sneered. The look on her face caused the blood to drain from Tía’s face. It was a look calculated to drive any man into rage. Papa needed less provocation than most.
Papa crossed the space between them in one step and grabbed Mama by the throat. Tía screamed and flew at him, hit him on the back and head and face with her fists, but Papa seemed not to notice her. She hit him, pulled at his arms, and clawed at his hands to loosen them from around her mother’s throat. Mama’s face turned red and then blue, and Tía hit him harder, but he ignored her as if she were a harmless gnat buzzing around him.
In frustration and fear, Tía screamed. The sound was so bloodcurdling that Mateo let go of Rita’s throat long enough to slap the girl away from him. Tía hit the wall, fell to her knees, and struggled to her feet to throw herself back at her father. This time he raised his booted foot, planted it against her belly, and pushed her away from him. Tía hit the wall so hard that her head filled with sudden darkness. Her knees buckled, but she willed them to support her and struggled up again.
But before she could reach her mother, limp and blue-faced, Andrea ran in the front door, saw her mother caught in a death grip, and grabbed the butcher knife off the counter.
Then, her lips pulled tight in a grimace, the butcher knife poised over her head, Andrea ran at Mateo and plunged the knife into his back. Mateo’s eyes filled with surprise, his fingers loosed their hold on Rita’s neck, and he fell.
Andrea rushed to her mother’s side. Rita sucked in a breath and sagged to a sitting position on the floor beside Mateo, who lay still as death. Facedown, he sprawled on the floor in front of the bedroom door.
“I killed him!” Tía whispered.
Andrea looked up at Tía as if she had gone insane. “I killed him, and a good thing, too. Why didn’t you do anything? Why did you just stand there? Why did El Gato Negro come here? I saw him in town…the children…I couldn’t keep them in school…”
“Papa was going to…to…”
“Papa’s home?”
Tía closed her eyes. Andrea had not recognized Papa, either, and she had been too stupefied to tell her. Now Papa was dead, and it was all her fault.
Puzzled at Tía’s reaction, Andrea turned to look at the man lying on the floor. Her face contorted in disbelief and horror. “Papa!”
Tía slumped down beside Papa’s still form. Part of her seemed to be watching from a distance, seemed to know what had really happened. Beyond that one word, Andrea seemed too stunned and too stricken to speak. Mama dragged in a deep breath, rubbed her throat, and knelt beside her husband’s body.
Rita’s throat ached where Mateo’s fingers had tried to squeeze the life out of her. Blood welled up and soaked outward in a circle that covered Mateo’s right side. Rita shuddered.
She had seen Mateo ride past, heading for the house. She had grabbed the brown cassock, a souvenir of Ludie Nabakov’s, slipped down the back stairs, stolen a horse, and rushed home, barely avoiding Mateo’s men.
Blood from Mateo’s shirt ran onto the floor. Rita felt his wrist; a thin pulse beat there. She reached into his pockets, searched for the sack of gold coins, dust, or tiny silver bars he always brought for her, found it—a sack of coins this time—slipped it and the letter into her own pocket, and turned away.
“Hurry. Forget everything. We must escape before Mateo’s men return,” she said, her voice low and steady as she waved her stunned daughters toward the two horses waiting in the front yard, calculating how long Mateo’s men would search the town for her before returning, how far the three of them could get on two stolen horses.
When neither girl responded, Rita stamped her foot in impatience. “Come!”
Tía shook her head. “I’m going to stay with Papa.”
Rita stepped close and grabbed Tía’s wrist. Tía shook her head. “I have to stay with Papa. It was my fault Andrea stabbed him.” Grief swamped her. It was all a mistake. Papa wasn’t supposed to die because of a letter that should never have been written. She wanted to throw herself across his body and howl her misery.
“I’m not leaving you,” Rita said vehemently. “You come, or we all stay and die.”
Tía looked at Mama and then at Andr
ea. They would be killed—all of them. She didn’t care about herself, but she could not let Papa’s men kill Mama and Andrea. Andrea had slipped into a waking sleep. Her beautiful brown eyes were dry and open, but unseeing. Andrea had never been able to cry, even when tears would be a relief.
“He might be alive,” Tía whispered. She could not bring herself to touch him.
“He’s dead,” Rita lied. “Come, quickly, before they return…”
Tía remembered Bethel Johnson—his body limp as an empty sack—and her feet finally moved. No one had to tell her what Papa’s men would do to them for killing their leader. She had learned about his justice that afternoon. She could only imagine with dread the justice of his men, crazed by the loss of their beloved El Gato Negro…
Chapter Two
Her gaze fixed on the doorway to the corridor that lead to her father’s bedroom, Judy Burkhart huddled in her father’s favorite leather Morris chair. Knees pressed against her breasts, eyes downcast, she hugged her voluminous skirts and petticoats in front of her like a shield to protect her from the unaccustomed grief that hung over the room. Attended by Dr. Potter from Fort Bowie, her father lay dying. There was nothing she could do about it except cry; she was drained. They had known since yesterday, when Potter examined him, that her father would not leave his bed alive. She wanted to be with him, but the nurse kept making excuses to keep her in the parlor with the others.
From the corner of her eye she could see her brother, Steve. Next to him, Johnny Brago—tilted backward in a straight-backed chair, his booted feet resting on another chair—lounged in that particularly boneless, indolent posture that characterized him and all his actions.
Johnny glanced at her from beneath the sand-colored wide-brimmed hat pulled low on his forehead, his black eyes narrowed into handsome, cocky slits, and she felt a small jolt of shameful memory. He looked away and said something to Steve. The rich, husky sound of Johnny’s voice resurrected a painful piece of the past. For a moment she thought she would be sick.
Judy closed her eyes to shut out the world, but she managed only to shut out the present. The past—hers and Johnny’s—was there, and it was almost a relief to feel that old hurt. It was familiar, not frightening—while her father’s impending death terrified her.
Almost gratefully, she allowed herself to recall that day three years ago.
Johnny had been in the barn, preparing to leave her and Rancho la Reina forever. She had stepped inside, dragging the heavy, creaking barn door shut behind her, her skirts swirling around her ankles. Like everything her father owned, the barn was large, sturdily built, and well organized. Occasional soft explosions of thunder rumbled from the distant mountains. Her nose twitched with the wild, wet-dust smell of the first raindrops. Cattle bawled outside, and horses shuffled in their stalls. The windows were lit with winter paleness; there was no warmth to it.
Her feet hesitated as she stopped behind Johnny and stood awkwardly, twisting her hands together. He cinched his horse’s girth tight, not bothering to look around or acknowledge her.
“Hi, Johnny.”
“Yeah,” he said grimly.
“Why did you fight him?”
“Because I like the way it feels when I hit him.”
There was such fury in that simple statement, and it was so much like Johnny, she almost smiled, but her heart pounded so hard that her mouth only twitched.
“Johnny…” She reached out, touched his broad back, and felt him stiffen and turn to stone under her hand.
“Don’t.”
The way he said the word—his voice so tight and flat—sent her mind spiraling. “I have to,” she moaned. “I can’t let you go…”
“Nothing can change that. If I stay here, I’m gonna kill your lover.”
Judy flinched. She didn’t love Morgan Todd, but she knew it wouldn’t help to tell Johnny that. He would think worse of her than he did already—if that were possible. And Morgan—as tall and cocky as Johnny, and as capable with a gun—might kill Johnny instead of getting killed.
She felt like a fool, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I love you, Johnny,” she whispered to his taut back.
He turned slowly and stared at her as if he had never seen her before. One eye was almost closed; his lean, bronzed face was distorted and swollen from Morgan’s fists. Always evident in his high cheekbones and the blackness of his eyes, Johnny’s Cherokee heritage dominated his face at that moment. Although coldly controlled, his savage fury was evident in the level, contemptuous way he looked at her.
“Is that why you spent the night in Morgan Todd’s bed? Because you love me?”
Tears burned in her throat and behind her eyes—hard, heavy knots of pain. Remembering the events that had led up to this moment, Judy swallowed painfully. Was life so simple for a man like Johnny that he never made mistakes? Did her one mistake give him the right to punish her forever? She’d made mistakes before. He’d forgiven her other things. Would her life be changed forever because she’d left the dance with Morgan instead of going home where she belonged?
“Well,” she said, forcing a smile. “You really wouldn’t want to leave without kissing me good-bye. After all, everyone else does…”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed, and a tiny starburst of light flashed in his eyes. Watching his lips curl in disgust, Judy stiffened with rage. Without thinking, she hit him as hard as she could across the face.
Johnny stared at her for a moment. Her open palm print on his face flushed with color. Where Morgan’s fists had connected, bruises stood out against his rapidly paling skin.
Judy flushed with shame and remorse. “I didn’t mean to hit you! I…”
He ignored her words and dragged her into his arms.
At first his kiss stunned her. But after the initial shock, when she finally realized that what he was doing—kissing her in this angry way—was far worse than what Morgan had done, she began to struggle against him, raining blows on his head and shoulders. But he seemed oblivious to everything except the terrible kisses he bestowed. She beat at him until her arms ached, and still he kissed her. Strength gone, sobbing with fury, Judy finally collapsed in his arms, unable to resist. Her arms lifted and encircled his neck, and she felt him grow rigid at her touch.
“Johnny…”
Breathing as if he had run three miles, Johnny drew away from her. Instinctively her hands tried to pull him back, but he pushed them aside. Usually so strong and steady, his hands trembled. Staring at them, her mind still numb from his terrible kisses, she suddenly remembered so many things. Those same hands, covered with blood, had cradled a newborn shoat only seconds after they had reached into the birth canal to extricate it before it suffocated. It had been the last pig in the litter, and apparently old Panbread, the last brood sow on the place, had just worn out after birthing twelve pink little piglets.
Judy loved Johnny’s hands—their brownness and their strength. She had watched them stroke a kitten and lift a foal onto brisk, spindly legs. They were hands that had once cradled her face against his chest. Now, rejecting her, they trembled.
“No,” he said, backing away from her. He towered over her.
She expected him to say something more, something scathing that she would carry like a scar, but he only turned, walked to his horse, mounted, and rode away.
Unable to sit in the stuffy parlor surrounded by so many grieving people, Judy rose to her feet and paced to the window. Nothing moved outside. Looking back, that incident could have happened a hundred years ago. Was it only three? Now Johnny was back to stay. Steve and her father had written to him, asking him to take over as foreman, to replace Midas Curry, dead now, his neck broken by a wild mustang. Johnny had written back, saying he would come the week of the tenth, but he hadn’t ridden in until the seventeenth. He had been home four days, but he had avoided her. Even his dark eyes avoided hers. He looked different—older, harder. His new mustache added aloofness and a cocky toughness. Rarely put off by any man, Judy now felt s
trangely intimidated by Johnny.
She had heard the riders talking about Johnny. They called him a gun shark. Slim claimed to have seen him in blazing gun play. Slim said that Johnny was a man who took his time. No gun fanner, he’d said. Brago took his time. Only had to pull the trigger once. The other riders had nodded their heads as if they’d understood exactly what that meant. She had questioned Grant about it, and he had said it meant Johnny didn’t panic and fire wild shots that made him a risk to bystanders.
Curious, she had watched Johnny covertly, noting the quiet steadiness in his dark eyes and the purposeful way he moved, as if he had boundless self-confidence. He was not the same young man who had ridden away from Rancho la Reina.
Now he looked at her, and the way his eyes slid past hers—not lingering, not interested—caused a vise to tighten around her heart. She was nothing to him. Nothing! She hated him with every ounce of her being. A small muffled sob bubbled up from her stomach, surprising her. She covered her face with her hands, mortified at the pitiful sound that betrayed her.
His unwilling attention drawn back to Judy, Johnny squirmed in his chair. For once her passionate eyes displayed none of the fire and spirit that her father had complained of so frequently and with such bitterness. She had accepted her father’s dying. He could see it in her mouth. Usually downturning and expressively mobile, her silken lips were now stiff with desolation.
Nothing showed on his own face. He felt sure of that. He had learned to control what other people saw there, but a pang of protectiveness formed a tight, hard knot in his chest, reminding him that even though he didn’t love her, he still felt inexplicably bound to her. Judy felt everything passionately, and she expressed her feelings with the same unharnessed intensity. Other girls could cry, but only Judy could make crying a memorable event. Other women he’d known moved like stiff gray silhouettes against a pale background, with nothing sufficiently vivid about them to stamp his memory.
Except for Tía, who had disappeared so completely he would never find her again. Johnny had waited in Tubac a week for Tía to meet him, but she’d never returned. She’d just disappeared…
After Eden Page 4