After Eden

by Joyce Brandon

  “Is there a young man?” Rita asked.

  Tía looked away.

  “Tía, nothing happened back there to make you unfit for him.”

  Tía’s lips quivered. Her blue eyes flashed her absolute belief that Rita was wrong.

  “Even women have a right to survive, Tía. I know first love takes you hard and deep, but it’s not worth dying for.”

  Tears stung Tía’s eyes, but she ignored them. And as she witnessed her daughter’s fear, Rita grew angry and impatient. She used the only thing that might work. “Tía, I won’t leave you. If he catches us, he’ll kill me.”

  Tía searched her mother’s eyes and spurred her horse. Rita breathed a prayer of gratitude. Temporarily at least, she had won.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  A promise of dawn turned the sky a pale shade of gray. Irritated by the frustration of inactivity, Johnny rolled up his blankets. He would climb to the top of the mountain. The exercise would be good for him. Taking his field glasses and some biscuits out of his saddlebags, he began to climb.

  Enjoying the sweat of exertion, he climbed quickly. Halfway up he paused on a ledge and looked out over the valley below.

  Almost a hundred miles long from south to north and twenty miles wide from east to west, the Sulphur Springs Valley faded into dreamy ghostliness. To the south the valley appeared endless—a pale gray ocean fading into the pale gray stillness of the predawn sky. To the west he could see the dim lights of the Burkhart compound. A tiny tendril of smoke curled upward—a pale ribbon rising on an updraft. Carmen had already started breakfast. To the north the pale, squat walls of Fort Bowie perched on a hill.

  Turning east, he scanned the trail he had ridden to leave the mountains. In the path of the rising sun, the cleft between the two mountains glowed with light. He was almost ready to turn away when a movement caught his attention. Two riders entered the eastern end of the canyon, traveling fast.

  Even in the first flush of dawn his sharp eye recognized Tía’s silhouette. In his mind’s eye he could visualize her golden curls, misty and ill defined around her plaintive face. He raised the glass to see who rode beside her. The slender silhouette indicated a woman, but he had never seen her before.

  As he watched the two of them galloping their horses down the same path he had taken, a prickling sensation started in his neck: a nerve-end tingle that caused him to scan the terrain around him, the mountains behind him, the valley.

  There. To the south. The lighter shading of the valley floor was dotted by the dark shapes of an army on the move. It looked like half of the Apache nation on horseback. Johnny lifted the field glasses to his eyes. He’d been right: every face was dark with war paint. Glancing back at Tía and her companion, he calculated their speed and whether he would be able to head them off. He was too far up the mountain. They would pass below before he could reach the canyon floor.

  Probably timing their arrival to coincide with the rising of the sun, the Indians were moving steadily and slowly toward the Burkhart compound. No time to wonder why or even if he was right. Moving as quickly as he could, he raced down the mountainside. Afraid to fire a shot, he stopped when the two riders were almost directly below him and shouted, but they didn’t hear him over the pounding of their horses’ hooves. Tía and the woman passed without seeing him or his horse and rode out onto the gentle grade to the valley floor.

  Johnny hurried as fast as the brush and chaparral on the mountain would permit. Tía was in danger. He had to reach her before the Apaches did. He could see Matador tethered in the small clearing where grass grew in odd little patches.

  He reached the level breathless and panting. Because of undergrowth clogging the canyon floor, he lost sight of Tía and ran toward the spot where he had left Matador. Halfway there, the vibration of the hooves of many horses caused him to stop and listen.

  What the hell?

  Johnny saw them at the same time they saw him. Only minutes behind Tía, El Gato Negro and his army burst into view.

  His nerves leaped, then settled down. It was too late to try to hide. He walked to the center of the path El Gato Negro would soon be thundering over and waited, using the narrow span of time to catch his breath.

  They saw him. When they were fifty feet from him he held up both hands to stop them.

  Scowling, El Gato Negro held up his left hand. The tight knot of surging, plunging riders halted ten feet from Johnny. Dust swirled into a blinding fog, then slowly settled. The sky behind El Gato Negro was like a bright gold halo as the sun, filtering through the dust particles, peeked over the mountain. A welcome breeze leveled some of the dust.

  Hands on hips, Johnny affected his most challenging posture; El Gato Negro’s expression was contemptuous.

  “Well, Señor Brago. I thought you would be in Tombstone by now.”

  “Burned some bridges in Tombstone,” he drawled. “Reckon I won’t be going back there. Thought I might make a deal with you.”

  El Gato Negro’s smile was tight. “A man standing in quicksand is in a poor position to make deals, Señor Brago.”

  Johnny knew he was right, but he shrugged. Thanks to El Gato Negro’s generosity, he had no bullets in his gun. There were more than fifty bandidos with El Gato Negro now, and more coming—if he always hedged his bets the way he had at the ambush.

  “Señor Brago, I make no deals with you, except this: You will ride in and open the gates for us. I will take those who belong to me and no one else. Otherwise we will come in force, and we will spare no one. Then I will take those who belong to me.”

  Holding on while her horse skimmed the grassy plain, Tía used the last of her energy. The sky in front of them turned from dark blue to gray. Dimly, in the distance behind the compound, the Dragoons glowed with the rising of the sun. The labored breathing of the horses was a grim reminder that they might not make it. Leaning low in the saddle, hearing her mother’s shout but unable to make out the words, Tía clung with all her strength to the horse’s mane.

  The gates swung open, and Tía and Rita rode into the compound. The guards shouted to alert the house.

  Tía dismounted, looked toward the house, and saw Andrea on the porch, lifting her skirts to run headlong down the steps and across the fifty yards that separated them. Tía ran to meet her.

  “Teresa! Mother!” Andrea hugged Tía hard. “Oh, Tía! I’m so glad you’re safe. I was so worried. We were so afraid…” Andrea hugged her sister as if she could not believe she was alive.

  “Rider comin’ in!” one of the sentries shouted. “Looks like Brago!”

  “Johnny!”

  Tía ran toward the wall, scampered up onto the catwalk, and peered over.

  “It’s Johnny!” A feeling of joy almost overwhelmed her. He was alive. Her joy was followed immediately by a warning: He might not want anything to do with me. Johnny had survived, but his feelings for her might not have. He wouldn’t even make love to her before they were married. Perhaps he’d find her too soiled now.

  The gates swung open, and Johnny rode into the compound. Men spilled out of the bunkhouses, shouting as they pulled on pants, shirts, gunbelts. They loaded rifles on the run.

  “Johnny!” Tía wasn’t sure she had shouted his name aloud, but he looked up and saw her. His dark eyes held hers, and the blood coursed through her veins in savage spurts, making her dizzy. She searched his face for some sign, but the handsome, cocky slant of his eyes told her nothing. Men converged on him, and he turned away from her, abruptly.

  “Hey, Johnny, we thought you was daid.”

  “Listen up!” he shouted. “We don’t have any time to lose. There are two hundred nimble-blooded Indians heading this way, maybe more.”

  Johnny waved them toward the walls, and men scrambled to get into position. Tía looked as though she’d caught sight of something disturbing. She frowned and looked toward the casa grande. Suddenly her face changed from solemn to smiling.

  Two men carried a stretcher down the steps. Recognizing Steve
on the stretcher, Johnny left the riders by the wall and strode forward to meet the stretcher halfway and clasp Steve’s hand.

  “Glad to see you made it.”

  “Thanks,” Steve said.

  “Get ventilated pretty good, did you?”

  “I won’t die, but all the hinges and bolts got loosened a bit.”

  “There’s no time now for explanations, but I made a deal with El Gato Negro.”

  “What kind of deal?” Steve asked, frowning.

  “I promised to open the gates for him.”

  “Are you loco?”

  “I know he is. I might be.” Johnny cleared his throat and looked back at Tía. “We have someone he wants.”

  “Riders comin’!” shouted one of the sentries on the wall.

  “Riders hell! Looks like Santa Anna storming into Texas!” yelled another.

  “It’ll be hot enough around here to scorch a lizard,” growled a third.

  Johnny borrowed a rifle from Willie B. Parker and ran for the wall. Aiming for a spot close enough to Tía to keep an eye on her, Johnny ran to the catwalk and leaped up. In front of a heavy cloud of dust, a close-knit, surging knot of dark-garbed, high-sombreroed riders were charging straight for the compound. El Gato Negro rode at their-head, his lithe arrogance and slick costume setting him apart.

  Steve felt his wounds deeply. He was reluctant to take charge, but too much hung in the balance. “Carry me up to the platform.”

  “You’ll catch a bullet up there for sure,” Dap Parker protested.

  “Just do as I say.”

  Dap picked up one end of the makeshift stretcher and Leon picked up the other. They carried Steve to the foot of the platform. Then four other men lifted Steve and the stretcher up the stairs.

  “Lean me up so I can see over,” Steve directed. When he was positioned so he could watch, he motioned to Johnny. Andrea climbed up and stood protectively close to Steve.

  “What are you going to do?” Steve asked, adjusting himself on the stretcher to lean against the back wall of the platform.

  Johnny’s dark eyes narrowed into slits. “Let ’em in,” he said flatly.

  Still groggy from sleep, Andrea turned to confront Johnny. Visions of hulking black buzzards tearing at the maggot-infested remains of the men in the canyon filled her with revulsion. “We can’t let that man in here!”

  “We need them,” Johnny argued. “We can’t hold off two hundred Apache all by ourselves.”

  “No!” Andrea cried. “You don’t know that man! He’ll kill all of us, the way he killed the men in the pack train!”

  “We got no choice. Either we trust him to do what he says he’ll do, or we all die anyway.” Raising his right arm, Johnny shouted, “Open the gates!”

  “Hold it!” Steve yelled.

  The men poised beside the gate looked from Johnny to Steve. Frustrated, Johnny turned. From the south the Indians were closing much faster now. Soon they would spill over the Mexicans and around the compound.

  At the head of the oncoming riders, within twenty feet of the gates, El Gato Negro’s horse reared and pawed the air. His dark gaze darted from Johnny to the dozens of men who peered over the wall from behind rifle barrels.

  “Is this the way you keep your word, Señor Brago?”

  Ignoring the stab of pain that shot through his chest, Steve yelled, “He was overruled!”

  Andrea moved closer to Steve and put her arms around his neck in a way that was unmistakable. She lifted her chin defiantly and stared, with eyes cold and glittering with hatred at her father.

  Seeing that look, Mateo Lorca’s lips tightened into a grim line. He understood completely. His daughter had fallen in love with this blond gringo who had the power to overrule Brago. This must be the son of that bastard who had cuckolded him. His only daughter was rejecting him for this gringo. This particular gringo. A flame deep inside him flickered and died.

  “¡El general! Indians. Hundreds of them,” Patchy said, his voice low, urgent. Mateo turned in the saddle in time to see the Apaches rise up eerily on the horizon, less than two hundred yards from them, riding in a wide semicircle that would tighten to envelop them in a matter of minutes.

  Flashing Johnny a smile, admiration mingling with the strange, deep coldness spreading into his limbs, Mateo started to turn away. Brago had led him into a trap. But nothing mattered now.

  Johnny turned and pointed Slim’s rifle at Willie B., who was standing beside the gates. He had known Willie B. for seven years.

  “Open the gates!” Johnny yelled. “Open ’em!”

  Willie B. looked from Johnny to Steve and back. Johnny cocked the rifle. Ignoring Steve’s hard stare, Willie B. moved to obey. The gates swung open.

  Burying her face against Steve’s chest, Andrea stifled her cries. It was too late for tears now.

  Watching from her own vantage point, sure she was the only one among them who understood clearly what was happening, Rita, too, was caught up in the strange unreality of this unfolding drama. Seeing that one flash of loss in Mateo’s eyes, she knew instantly what he felt. He loved Andrea. Now Andrea had rejected him for the son of the man who had shamed him. Mateo might mask his pain from others, but Rita knew him too well.

  Marveling at this revelation, and that she cared, Rita watched in silence.

  At the head of his restive troops, Mateo scanned the wide, sweeping semicircle of Apaches, moving in rapidly now, tightening the death circle as they came. With a characteristic snarl curling his lips, he looked up at Johnny.

  “Close your gates, Señor Brago. We want nothing from you.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Every nerve in Rita’s body screamed for Mateo to ride into the compound, to ride into safety, but he would not relent, even in the face of death. The gates slammed shut.

  Fewer than fifty men rode with Mateo. The Indians were closing in on them from all sides. Mateo saw them, and his fine black steed reared. Rita watched as he controlled the animal with the same steely grip he had used on her so long ago. He was badly outnumbered. He knew it, yet it made no difference to him. He had been born to be killed. Only the time and place of his execution had been in question. He was El Gato Negro, the maverick panther. Now it was his time to die, and he would do it his way—outside the white man’s walls, at the head of his army, where he belonged.

  He was prepared to face death in the same way he had lived: proudly, fiercely, with contemptuous disregard for the quakings of normal men.

  An unfamiliar urging rose up in Rita—like a torch lifted in darkness. She jumped off the catwalk and ran for the small barred door beside the wide gates that had just slammed shut. Ignoring the yells of protest, she threw off the bar, dragged the door open, and, before anyone could move to stop her, ran through.

  “Mama! No! No!” Tía yelled, her arms flailing above the wall as if to reach out and drag her back, out of danger.

  Ignoring her daughter’s plea, Rita ran forward. “Mateo! Mateo!”

  Apaches had already engaged his men. They needed his attention, but hearing Rita’s voice, Mateo turned, and as he did, he swung his heavy Colt around to point it at her heaving breast. Slowly he nudged his horse toward her.

  Rita’s senses dimmed so that she was aware only of him: his fierce black eyes; his handsome, arrogant, scowling face; and the drawn gun in his lean brown hand.

  “It is fitting that I should kill you since you led us into this trap,” he told her.

  “Take me with you.”

  He would have laughed, but something shone in her face that he had not seen before. “We go to our death, no farther,” he said harshly.

  “I don’t care. I want to go with you.”

  Seeing his general’s preoccupation, Patchy Arteaga took charge and ordered his men outward to engage the enemy before the trap could be closed too tightly. Loyal capitán that he was, he positioned six men to guard El Gato Negro’s back and stayed close to be certain they did it well.

  Without surprise or gratitude, M
ateo Lorca noted these preparations and dismissed them quickly. His mind was occupied with Rita and his own response to her outrageous request.

  Perhaps his ears were not hearing correctly. This was Rita, the tiger bitch who had fought him in every possible way, betrayed him, caused him to be stabbed, flaunted her golden-haired bastard in front of him, dared him a dozen times to kill her. She had even ridden into his camp and rescued her bastard child, half killing him in the bargain. His head still throbbed with pain.

  Now, with tears shining in her wide blue eyes, she had the gall to stand before him and ask to go with him. She had never asked him for anything, not even when she had been great with his child. He had been the one to force her to marry him so their child would have a name and a place in heaven. He had known instinctively that he had to leave the money for their support on the table so she would find it only after he was gone.

  Rita faced him squarely, her eyes shining with an impassioned light. His finger felt leaden on the trigger. He wanted to kill her, but not like this. For Rita, a bullet was too impersonal. Her life should end with his hands around her throat…

  Mateo holstered his gun, leaned down, picked her up, and swung her into his arms. His men had engaged the enemy. The sound of battle was a din around his head. Tears sparkled on Rita’s cheeks. Gently, his hand brushed at them.

  “Why now, querida?”

  It was this she had fought all those years—this doom of love—not him. She had tried so hard not to admit it even to herself, but now, when he was about to die, only now could she admit to herself and to him the truth.

  Great blinding tears welled up in her eyes. “Because,” she sobbed, “because I love you. You are my husband.”