Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  A challenge was issued and answered in the outer room, followed by the entry of a small group of men. Words were exchanged, followed by the sound of a scuffle. Voices rose in a confused babble that died away as quickly as it had begun. One voice alone stood out clear, and recognizing it Eleanora got slowly to her feet. That faint Spanish inflection brought mingled hope and dread. What was Luis thinking of?

  “Back against the wall, you sons of Satan,” she heard him shout. “Move, and I will give you a personal introduction to your father!”

  Light slid along the wall. Luis appeared, striding along the corridor with a gun in one fist and the ring of jingling keys in the other. Another man followed, holding the lamp high, and in its light Eleanora could see the reckless smile that curled the Spaniard’s lips, the excitement blazing in his eyes.

  “What is this?” Jean-Paul asked in dazed tones, rolling to his feet.

  “Deliverance,” Luis replied, thrusting the key into the lock and opening it with a grating twist.

  Eleanora moved to the door of her cell. “Luis, you can’t do this. I can’t let you — not for me.”

  “Too late, pequeña,” he said with an infinitesimal movement of his shoulders. “It is done.”

  “Don’t you realize—”

  He threw the door wide. “Better than you, cara. It is the only way.”

  Was he right? In that moment she could not summon the strength or impartiality to judge, nor could she afford to endanger them all further by hesitating. With abrupt decision she stepped over the threshold and allowed herself to be hurried along behind Jean-Paul. In the main room she turned her eyes from the sight of the guards being trussed up like chickens in the market and she headed for the black rectangle of the open door.

  The night air was fresh, scented only by the smell of warm horseflesh. Once, as a young girl, she had had riding lessons. As she moved instinctively toward the horse bearing the cumbersome, unbalanced weight of a sidesaddle, she prayed she would remember those lessons for this moment.

  Luis gave her a leg up and handed her the reins. Around her the men, numbering six without counting Luis or her brother, were mounting. Eleanora pulled at her skirts, trying to settle her knee around the horn while staying on a horse even less used to carrying a sidesaddle than she was to sitting one. The sound of a distant shout sent such a jolt of apprehension along her nerves that she was nearly unseated. Flinging a glance down the street, Eleanora saw a uniformed officer running toward them, tugging at the revolver at his waist as he came.

  Beside her a man drew, leveled his gun, and fired. The officer ducked behind the corner of the building beyond the guardhouse, and from its protecting wall began throwing shots at the milling group about the hitching rail.

  A man cursed, spinning out of the saddle and scrabbling over the ground to avoid the prancing hooves all about him. Luis, just mounting, checked, hung for a moment from the pommel, then dragged himself upward. Before he had settled on leather he had kicked his horse into a run, slashing out at Eleanora’s mount to carry it with him.

  Bending low over their horse’s necks, they streamed along the street, trying to get beyond the range of the booming navy revolver. That was accomplished in a few hundred yards of hard riding. As soon as the guardhouse was lost to sight they left the main street for the weaving back alleys haunted by huddled figures sleeping in doorways and by fleeing cats.

  To the south of Granada lay Rivas, the transit line, and the armies of Walker and Mora. The direction Luis took when they left the town behind them at last was north. North toward Honduras, to the uncharted stretches of forest and jungle beyond Lake Managua, the province of the ancient Cookra and Toacas Indians, and to the beckoning heights of the Nueva Segovia Mountains.

  From time to time Eleanora, remembering the sound of a shot striking so close beside her, glanced at Luis. She could see no more than his dark outline, but he sat erect in the saddle. If his quiet directions lacked his former insouciance, they were still strong.

  The pursuit, disorganized, seemingly half-hearted at best, was soon outdistanced, though for good measure one of the men, a Nicaraguan, led them along a maze of twisting trails too faint to be called roads. They rode past silent fields of sugar cane and corn, past houses — haciendas — closed and tenantless, surrounded by bananas and breadfruits and avocados. The forest grew thicker, losing some of its jungle aspect in favor of large stands of oaks and an occasional pine tree. Still they did not stop, riding on and on through the predawn hours until the pounding of the horses’ hooves became a rhythm in the blood, an endless thunder.

  Daylight, gray with fog, caught them in a groove of ceiba trees. Throwing up a hand, Luis called a halt, They drew well off the track they were following and began to dismount. It was only as they gathered in a tight group beneath the trees that Eleanora took closer notice of the unwieldy bundle thrown across one of the horses. In the dark she had thought it provisions of some kind; now as it was unstrapped and dragged to the ground she saw it was a woman. Gagged and bound, her hair straggling in her flushed face, she was still recognizable as Juanita, still formidable in her venom.

  Jean-Paul, reaching to help Eleanora down, made a strangled sound in his throat. His grip lost its strength so that she fell against him before regaining her feet.

  Her eyes questioning, Eleanora swung to confront Luis. At that moment his right foot touched the ground as he left the saddle. He swayed, clinging to the pommel and cantle, his hat held on his back by a thong shielding his face. Blood, already turning black, overflowed the top of his boot, running in rivulets down the sides. His pant’s leg glistened, crusting dark in the creases of the soft, smooth leather breeches.

  The others, three Nicaraguans, a tall, thin sandy-haired man with the sun-dried look she had come to expect in a soldier from the Great Plains of the United States, and a blond man with saber scars on his face and a guttural sound to his speech, were gathered around Juanita. Eleanora was the first to reach Luis’s side.

  At her touch on his arm, he turned his head. The smile that curved his mouth did not quite erase the pain in his eyes. “So much for the heroic rescue,” he said on a breathless, regretful laugh and slid into unconsciousness.

  They stretched him out on a pile of horse blankets beneath a tree. The blond Prussian showed a tendency to take charge and Eleanora did not object, except when he tried to keep her away from Luis. At first she stood back while they stripped Luis of his breeches and wiped away the blood, but when the Prussian called for a knife to probe the wound she could contain herself no longer. She brushed under the arm thrust out to hold her back and dropped to her knees beside the man who had risked so much to help her.

  It was an ugly gash. The bullet had torn across the top of his hard-muscled thigh at an angle to lodge in the groin. The injury did not appear dangerous. The fact that he was still alive seemed to argue that none of the main arteries in the area had been severed. Still, he had lost too much blood during the long ride and it appeared likely he would lose more before the bullet was out. A knife was a clumsy instrument; she would have given much for Dr. Jones’s silver-handled forceps. In the end she had to introduce a second knifepoint into the wound before she could extract the lead slug nestled against his pelvic bone. Rye whiskey from the saddlebag of the plainsman was handed to her for the final cleansing. It was not carbolic but it was strong enough to have some of its properties. She used it before fashioning a bandage from strips of her apron and tying it into place with strings.

  Luis regained consciousness within the hour, long before the sun had burned away the mist. He came awake in a rush, pushing himself into a sitting position against the tree trunk, his dark eyes alert. With a sweep of his arm he threw the corner of the blanket over his nakedness, then turned his gaze to Eleanora sitting on her heels beside him.

  She was aware of the sudden silence behind her where the men stood about a small, smokeless fire that cradled a blackened coffeepot. The tension of their waiting filled the leaf-carpe
ted clearing under the trees so that the clattering of the leaves of the ceiba was loud above them. Eleanora thought, though with little foundation, that if Luis should falter too badly here they would leave him to take his chances while they rode on. What her own fate would be in such a case she did not dare to imagine.

  Rising, she filled a blue enamelware cup with steaming coffee, stirred in a generous splash of rye and several lumps of panocha with a twig, and brought it to Luis.

  He thanked her, adding an endearment that made of his soft tone a caress instead of a weakness. The hand that grasped the cup was steady, conveying the hot liquid to his lips without spilling a drop. Eleanora relaxed, letting out her breath in soundless relief. Ignoring the quirk of humor at the corner of his mouth, she sat beside him until he had drained the cup.

  “My breeches?” he asked when he was done. There was a faint sardonic inflection in his voice that seemed to reach beyond Eleanora toward the men behind her. As she took the empty cup he proffered and handed him the piece of clothing he had asked for, she was annoyed to find herself blushing. To cover it she turned on her heel and walked to where her horse was tied. She stood stroking it until Luis had pulled himself back on his horse and Jean-Paul approached to give her a leg up into her own saddle.

  The noon meal came out of the saddlebags. No inducement to hunger, it was a collection of squashed tamales, tortillas rolled around slices of greasy pork, and bruised fruit. The heavy fare was lightened only by the addition of a dessert of oranges they had found growing wild as they rode.

  Luis would not sit down. He leaned against a tree with one foot propped on the trunk behind him. Eleanora sat beside him on a log peeling an orange with a bowie knife and trying to keep the flies from crawling over her hands after the sticky juice. A frown between her eyes, she watched her brother. She did not like the brooding silence he had maintained during the morning. Jean-Paul had filled a cup with water from the canteen on his saddle and started across with it to where Juanita sat against a rotted stump with her hands tied before her. One of the Nicaraguans stepped in front of him as he passed their group near the horses and snatched the cup from his hand. Her brother protested but it did no good. The soldier poured the water out at his countrywoman’s feet so that it spattered wet grit over her ankles. With a laugh he handed the cup back to Jean-Paul, but there was no humor in his eyes and no relenting. The younger man retreated to sit staring into space, neither eating nor drinking himself.

  Eleanora glanced at Luis. His eyes, before he looked away, mirrored that same uncompromising hardness.

  Carefully she finished peeling the orange, halved it, and passed the man beside her a portion. Stabbing her knife into the log, she asked quietly, “Who are these men?”

  “Friends of mine, men from my regiment.”

  “Their names?”

  “The Americano is Jasper Quitman, otherwise known as “Slim.” The man with the scars is Kurt — his last name I find unpronounceable. The others are Sanchez, Molina, and Gonzalez. These last have, I think, a previous acquaintance with Juanita.”

  “I — doubt, somehow, that they are here for my sake.”

  “You mean you hope they are not,” he said, smiling briefly. “No, they are here for mine, and for reasons of their own I did not question when they volunteered. Their fate will not be on your head.”

  Her acknowledgment was wry. “Since your insight is so accurate I must now wonder if what you say is the truth or only what you think I would like to hear.”

  “You need not worry about such men as these. For Sanchez, Molina, and Gonzalez it is the Democrático ideal that exacts their loyalty, not Walker or the Falangistas. They recognize no wrong in saving a pair of innocents from the firing squad if I ask it. As for the others, the gringos, danger is breath to them and treason only a word. Their loyalty is to themselves first and then to a multitude of other things that includes the red star of William Walker only to the extent that it can benefit them. They see that star as on the wane. Leaving it was only a matter of time.”

  “Do you think it is on the wane?”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “You are thinking that is why I came for you?”

  “No,” she answered, meeting his gaze squarely. “I believe I know why you did that.” When he made no reply, she went on. “What I don’t know is where we are going.”

  “To the mountains,” he said with a gesture to the foothills rolling away to the northeast. “Hiding. It was not what I intended in the beginning. I thought to use my authority as commanding officer in the absence of Grant and the general to secure your release into my custody. I would then hold you under nominal house arrest until they returned to straighten out the situation. I was outmaneuvered. The guards had been given instructions to disregard my orders concerning prisoners, another of those orders signed by the general. It was necessary to use force.”

  “You must have suspected it would be necessary,” she said with a nod at the other men.

  “I could not be certain of things going as I wished. Niña Maria was even more thorough than I expected.”

  “Niña Maria? You think she was responsible?”

  “Who else? She had easy access to the official documents and excellent opportunities to learn to copy the general’s signature. She resented you and the popularity you were gaining both with the men and in the press. You made an excellent scapegoat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  It was a moment before he answered. “Someone was feeding information to the Legitimista forces in Costa Rica. Juanita? Niña Maria herself? I’m not sure. In order for the damaging leaks to the other Central American countries to continue someone had to be blamed with the crime. Why not kill two birds with one stone? They could be rid of you and divert suspicion from themselves at the same time. With you out of the way there was an even chance Juanita could be reinstalled at the palacio and their sabotage of the Democrático regime could go on as originally planned — if Walker was lucky enough to return from Rivas.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I don’t. I have only suspicions. It is possible, however, that our prisoner over there can be persuaded to corroborate them. With that knowledge in hand we can return to Granada, and all will be as before.”

  Would it? Eleanora found it hard to believe, found all of it hard to believe. “How could Niña Maria hope to justify my death, and Jean-Paul’s, to Walker?”

  “If he returned by some misfortune there was Juanita’s evidence, added to which would be the proof you and your brother could be expected to give — under torture.”

  Feeling more than a little ill, Eleanora looked away. “It seems I have much to thank you for. I am grateful, more grateful than I can tell you. I don’t know how I can ever repay—”

  He cut across her words with a fierce gesture. “Let there be no talk of payment between us. What was done was for myself, none other. How could I live if my soul were dead?”

  14

  In the scorching sun of midafternoon they crossed the narrow neck of water which ran between Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. They swam their horses, as much for coolness as to avoid the ferry further upstream. Soon afterward the land began to rise. The massed vegetation of the lowlands, the grassy savannas, were left behind for the stark green and brown and sandstone red of the pine and hardwood forest.

  Eleanora rode with her teeth set in the effort of endurance. Her back ached as though a knife was stuck between her shoulder blades, and she saw the bobbing riders ahead of her through the wavering, dancing light of a heat shimmer. The single bearable moment of the past few hours had been the sighting of a Flame of the Forest tree, a tall, dark evergreen with huge, orange, tulip-shaped blossoms springing from among its leathery leaves. Always at the back of her mind lay the knowledge of what Luis had sacrificed for her. She would have liked to have had his faith in Walker; she could not quite find it within herself. She swung back and forth from hope to despair, from the joy of being free and alive to the depressi
on of guilt. Endlessly on they rode, circling small villages, now and then passing the stick-and-mud houses of isolated Indian farmers who stared after them with flat, incurious faces. The inside of her knee about the horn of her saddle was bruised and there was no feeling in her foot or calf. The glare of the sun spread into her eyes. Beneath the square of a neckerchief she had tied over her hair her skull felt on fire. Her face and arms, every inch of exposed skin was sunburned. Toward sundown she ceased to think or to notice her surroundings. She was a part of her horse. Was there a word for a creature half-woman, half-horse? The male counterpart was a centaur. Surely there was a female—

  The sudden scream of a puma grated across her senses. Her horse shied, rearing. Only the quick grip of a strong hand on her bridle prevented her from being unseated. As the horse quieted she saw the cougar, a reddish-tawny streak disappearing over a rise ahead of them. Straightening, she turned to smile her gratitude and found herself staring into the eyes of the Prussian soldier-of-fortune. Thick lids hooded his expression, but she was aware of an intense, measuring quality in the stillness of his face that made her uncomfortable. Her nod was short and lacking in graciousness. Releasing her bridle, he fell back at once, but she was aware of him behind her from that moment until they made camp for the night.

  Jean-Paul helped her from the saddle. Leaving him to tend to her horse and hobble it to keep it from wandering too far, she limped away into the trees, following the twists of the small, free-running stream they had elected to stop beside.

  When she returned, a fire had been started and Juanita, watched carefully by the thin, long-faced man known as Sanchez, was making preparations for supper.

  The meal promised no surprises. Having no real provisions for such a protracted journey, they had stopped to buy beans, meat, and ground corn, a couple of pans and a few other utensils, from the wife of a farmer. The woman had been no fool. They had paid dearly.