Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  As Eleanora paused, wondering if she should offer her help, the black-haired woman looked up from the fire. Hate rose in her eyes and she raked Eleanora with a scathing stare before deliberately spitting on the ground. With the smallest lift of an eyebrow Eleanora turned and walked to where Luis sat against a rock with one foot stretched out before him. It was only as she took her place beside the lieutenant colonel that she recognized her uppermost feeling. It was relief bordering on gratitude that she did not have to force her aching muscles to perform the chores of the campfire.

  Whether Juanita was a better cook than anyone had expected, was trying to placate them, or whether they were all simply starving, the meal was amazingly good. The men wolfed the beans and tortillas down with zest and looked around them for more. There was plenty. Juanita ladled it out with an expression of indifference, but once Eleanora saw her smile into the bean pot.

  A vague fear they would all be ill did not materialize. The fire was extinguished as soon as possible; still, they lay around it, nursing the glowing coals while the men smoked a last cigarillo. The air cooled as the dusk deepened. Their clothing grew wet with dew instead of perspiration. A night bird called, a lonely sound. Juanita stirred, picked up the dirty dishes, and started in the direction of the stream.

  Sanchez, loosening his revolver in its holster, sauntered after her. After a moment, Eleanora followed.

  The woman walked fast. When Eleanora came upon her beside the brownish-green water she was already scrubbing a pot with sand. Eleanora knelt and picked up a plate. Sanchez squatted at a distance with his back against a tree, his cigarillo dangling between two fingers. Flicking a glance at them from the corner of her eyes, Juanita made a snorting sound through her nose, and sidled a few feet farther downstream.

  The dishes were few; they did not take long. Juanita gave the pot in her hand a last sloshing rinse, then rose to her feet with conscious grace. She dropped the rag she had been using and, with a sidelong glance and a defiant toss of her mane of dark hair, moved slowly toward a thick clump of scrub oaks and gum saplings.

  Eyes narrowed, Eleanora looked after her. Something in the Nicaraguan woman’s attitude struck her as peculiar. She was too fearless, too unwary for a prisoner. She exuded a sense of suppressed anticipation that put Eleanora in the mind of the mood she had seen in Luis as he dared to help her escape.

  Sanchez, she thought, would not have hesitated to go with Juanita save for her presence. There was in the mind of Luis’s men some doubt as to her exact position with their leader. For the time being they were treading warily.

  Pushing to her feet, Eleanora started after the other woman.

  The sharp smell of gum leaves lingered where Juanita had passed. Eleanora ducked under the branches, stepping over rotting logs crawling with termites. Ahead of her a bird whirred away in startled flight. She quickened her pace, jerking impatiently at her skirt as it caught on small thorn bushes and vines covered with briars along the stems. Rounding the trunk of a towering rosewood, she glanced ahead for some sign of Juanita. There was nothing, no flash of color, no unnatural movement. All was quiet, too quiet.

  The whisper of an indrawn breath alerted her. She whirled, but not in time to avoid the swinging shadow of a pine limb. The blow crashed into her head just above her ear. She sagged, and felt the abrupt hardness of musty leaf-mold beneath her cheekbone.

  She could not have been unconscious more than a moment. The noise of shots, three in succession in a signal for aid, penetrated the dimness of her mind. Sitting up, she was able to point out to Sanchez the direction she thought she had seen Juanita take as she was falling.

  He did not wait. Before his footsteps had gone out of hearing the others came into view to be directed after him. Only Luis was not among them.

  Eleanora touched the lump on the side of her head with careful fingers. That the skin was not broken was due more to the thickness of her hair than to Juanita’s lack of strength. Bits of bark sifted to her shoulders as she brushed at the deep wave that covered the lump. Dusting them to the ground, she levered herself up, then stood still until her senses steadied and the throbbing behind her eyes had slowed to a gentle pound. Moving with caution, she turned in the direction of the camp.

  Intent on keeping to the path that had been trampled in the grass and rocky earth, she flung her head up, startled, at a noise in the trees off to her left. The impulse to run gripped her, not wholly subsiding when the Prussian known as Kurt stepped from the oaks and came toward her.

  “I circled back to see about you,” he said, touching a hand to the brim of his hat. “I hope I did not give you a fright? You were so pale, so weak, sitting where we left you. I am glad to see you have made such a swift recovery.”

  “I — thank you.”

  He stepped closer, moving in front of her. “I am not certain you are recovered, after all. A woman of your sort needs a man to care for her. Permit me to go ahead and hold he branches for you.”

  “I am sure I can manage if you are needed in the search.”

  He smiled, a mechanical movement of too-firm lips. “I heard the woman running before them like a hare before the hounds. It is only a matter of time, and the Nicaraguans have more enthusiasm for the hunt than I — at least for that quarry.

  She refused to ask him for his meaning. Slanting a glance from under her lashes at the heavy humor in his face, she picked up her skirts and walked on. He made no attempt to stop her, falling in at her side.

  “You were lucky to have so faithful a cavalier as the lieutenant colonel, were you not? It is a great pity he was wounded.”

  Eleanora agreed soberly.

  In the pretense of pushing aside a limb with his outstretched arm, Kurt barred the way. “You realize this hurt makes him of little use to you — as a man?”

  “I don’t think I understand you,” she said, grimly certain she did but unwilling to have the man see it.

  “In this kind of situation strength is needed,” he explained, tightening the muscles in his forearm until they bulged. “A weak man, a man who is not whole, is a liability.”

  “I will trust Luis to be twice the man most are, whether he is injured or not.” Her back stiff, she tried to slip past him.

  Reaching out to grip her arm at the elbow, he held her just tightly enough to make her aware of the power in his hard, sturdy frame without hurting her. “Injured men cannot always protect what they hold,” he told her, a suggestion of thickness in his voice as his eyes raked over the thin material of her blouse and the flare of her red skirt over her hips. His fingers began to knead her skin as he waited for her reply. There was a dragging tension in his grip and she knew that if she relaxed her resistance for so much as an instant she would be pulled against that burly chest.

  “Sometimes,” she replied with slow emphasis, her green eyes steady, “it is not necessary to hold something to keep it.”

  “That is only if there are no thieves around.” Satisfaction with his own cleverness gleamed in his gray-blue eyes so that the scar near one crinkled lid was pulled like a bad seam.

  There was no need for Eleanora to answer. Before she could find words Luis stepped into view before them, his revolver swinging from his hand. “I think it might be helpful,” he said softly, “if I make it known that in my command the penalty for theft is death.”

  The eyes of the two men locked. For all the gentle quietness of Luis’s tone, it was Kurt who shifted uneasily, dropping his gaze to the gun held so casually against the Spaniard’s leg.

  When the fingers about her arm loosened, Eleanora twisted free. She crossed to Luis, and sending him a small, flickering smile, slipped her hand inside his free arm. He pressed it to his side before inclining his head in the most ironical of half-bows and moving off with her toward the encampment.

  By the time they reached the blankets Luis had indicated, placed well beyond those of the others, he was leaning on Eleanora for support. She was too involved with helping him to lie down comfortably and wonde
ring where Kurt had gone, since he had not followed them in, to more than register that her own saddle blankets lay beside those of the lieutenant colonel. Noticing at last, she took a step backward.

  Hoisting himself up to rest his forearm on his saddle in place of a pillow, Luis reached out to draw her down beside him. His face was serious; there was nothing in his manner to alarm her. She did not resist, curling her feet under her and tucking her skirt over them.

  When he was certain she was at ease, he turned from her to unbuckle a saddle pouch and take out what appeared to be a two-foot length of chain with a ring at each end. Shaking it out, he picked up her left wrist, and before she realized his intention, snapped one of the steel bracelets around it. With deliberate movements, he closed the other ring about the wrist of his own right arm. Only then did he meet her eyes.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It is the only way I see to keep you safe beside me until we can return to Granada. Grant gave these manacles to me. They are like those used by the military marshals. The key to open them I have safely hidden—”

  “You don’t mean for us to wear these all the time, night and day?” She cut across his plea in stricken tones, the heat of mortification rising in her face as the implications of such enforced intimacy struck her.

  “It must be this way.”

  “Why? I can fend for myself.”

  “As you did just now? What was to keep Kurt from taking you then and there among the leaves?”

  “He wouldn’t have—”

  “Wouldn’t he? Maybe not — yet. But there are long miles and days before us. We go deep into the jungle where the heat of the sun melts away the cool manners of the gentleman, and the strong prey on the weak as they choose. The nature of men like these who go with us is more nearly suited to the jungle.”

  “Must we go?”

  “It is possible the general will relent. If he does not, we will have to work our way over the mountains and across an area where white men have never gone in order to reach the Mosquito Coast on the Atlantic shore. The British are patrolling that coast, since they claim the region of the Mosquito Indians as a protectorate of the Crown and are loath to relinquish the area to William Walker. We may be able to get a ship to pick us up.”

  Eleanora mulled this information in silence. An ant crawled across the hand on which she was leaning. Without thinking she reached to pick it off, only to be stopped by the short chain. Abruptly she clenched her fist, bringing it down on her knee.

  “No!” she cried. “I can’t, I won’t put up with this. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  Without replying, Luis lay back, folding his hands behind his head. The action of the chain unbalanced her so that if she had not caught herself on one elbow she would have fallen against his chest.

  “I’m afraid,” he said smiling, “that you must.”

  “Please,” she began in a low voice.

  “Are you going to try to persuade me?” he queried. “As much as I would enjoy it, I have to tell you in all honor that it will do no good.”

  She stared at his face so close to hers. Was the redness beneath his skin the effect of the sun, or was he flushed with fever? Was he less well than he wished her to know? Did that explain these desperate measures?

  “This will be unbearable, you must know it.”

  His lips moved with a suggestion of bitterness. “I know it will not be easy, yes. But you, pequeña, have worked busily over my nakedness. Why should I cavil at revealing it again? As for you, nothing could lessen my feelings for you. Moreover, you have nothing to fear. I will not say I can stand your nearness unmoved, but I am incapable at the moment of taking full advantage of the opportunities you are so afraid will occur.”

  She heard him out without speaking. Searching his face, she asked at last, “And would you, if you could?”

  “A thousand times yes, mi alma,” he answered wryly. “Don’t you know a man judges other men by himself?”

  Night moved in, the moon rose, and still the men did not return with Juanita. Eleanora was too tired and overwrought, and above all, too conscious of the limit on her free movement for sound sleep. She dozed fitfully, waking at every rustle and night cry. Even in slumber she was aware of minor discomforts, of each bruise and blister and strained muscle, of every twig and pebble on the ground under her blanket. When she had been still for a time she grew cool, and reaching down pulled the corner of the blanket over the lower part of her body.

  The growl of voices roused her. Along her side the warmth was excessive. Had Luis moved closer in the night or had she? She did not know, but she eased away, being careful not to waken him. Only then did she turn her head.

  She went still. Two men were helping her brother across the small clearing toward his bedroll. Jean-Paul stumbled along between them with his chin resting on his chest like a man who has had too much to drink. They let him fall on his blanket facedown, and he rolled over, throwing his arm over his eyes.

  Eleanora pushed at the blanket, trying to get up. Beside her, Luis reached across with his arm, stilling her movements. She flicked a look at him, then followed the direction of his intense gaze to the wood’s edge where the rest of the men were emerging.

  Sanchez, Molina, and Gonzalez stepped into the open, carrying with them the unclothed form of Juanita. Her flesh shone ivory in the moon’s pale light, but though her eyes were tightly closed, she did not have the boneless look of death.

  As Eleanora watched, Gonzalez, paunchy, with drooping mustaches, pointed at Jean-Paul’s blanket with an obscene laugh rumbling in his belly. They threw the woman down beside him and flung a handful of clothes over her. She lay sprawled as she had fallen, unmoving.

  Gonzalez fished with difficulty in the pocket of his breeches and brought out a coin. Molina, the youngest of the Nicaraguans, a broad-faced young man of Indian blood who had been their guide during the day, lost the toss. With a resigned shrug, he took his seat a short distance from the blanket on which the woman lay.

  Jean-Paul gave no sign he knew the naked woman was beside him. After a time Juanita’s eyelids moved and she stared with dark and baleful eyes into the dark about her. When she saw that all had settled for the night, she sat up and slowly drew on her blouse and skirt. Moving stiffly, she lay back down again.

  Was her brother drunk, or hurt, Eleanora wondered? Had he tried to prevent the rape of his former mistress and met violence, or retreated from it into a bottle of rye? She could not tell. Watching, she saw the steady rise and fall of his chest. If he was hurt there was little she could do, and if drunk, there was nothing. In any case, there were times when the only thing that served was to be left alone.

  Dawn met them riding once more. They were a silent cavalcade, sunk in weariness and resignation. Fever burned bright in Luis’s eyes, making his temper uncertain with all except Eleanora. Clean-shaven despite the difficulties of using a sharp bowie knife and no soap, he did not look as villainous as the rest. Jean-Paul, with a purple welt spreading over the point of his jaw beneath his scanty beard, looked particularly bad. He was withdrawn, tailing the column for mile upon mile, not speaking unless he was spoken to. Often, when he thought no one was watching, his brooding gaze would fasten on Sanchez and the woman riding behind him with her bound hands gripping the cantle of the Nicaraguan’s saddle. She too wore bruises, especially about the mouth and throat. Her eyes were dark-shadowed and sullen, but she did not lower them when one looked her way.

  They climbed ever higher, winding among the rugged, blue-hazed hills, seeking always the passes and the downward slope leading northeast. Vultures, black grace in a hard blue sky, circled them with a worrying persistence, and flocks of ducks and geese passed, croaking, high overhead. A half-grown jaguar dogged their trail for several hours, though more in curiosity than with any intent of harm. They saw deer in numbers and an occasional peccary, the large wild animal with tusks like a boar used in Central America as pork. Slim brought down one of these with his rifle toward dusk. Takin
g the best cuts and leaving the rest for the vultures might have been wasteful, but it was all they could do. They had to have meat.

  Of humans they saw little. The Indian settlements they came across now were usually deserted. Not as civilized or domesticated as their lowland relatives, from long experience they had learned to avoid foreigners. The woven baskets of corn they left behind provided an agreeable addition to the larder, and the blankets woven to fit like a closed cape with an opening for the head were most welcome against the promised coolness of the night. Luis, his movements deliberate to disguise the trembling of his hands, had left Mexican dollars behind to pay for what they had taken. Looking back, Eleanora saw Gonzalez pocket the money but, pressing her lips tightly together, said nothing. This was not the time to point Luis toward a confrontation he might not be able to dominate. Just behind her Kurt was also aware of what had taken place. The expression in his eyes was unpleasant, and far too knowing.

  The last rays of the sun were still bright on the tops of the mountains when they followed Molina into the twilight sanctuary of a long, narrow valley. The stillness of a small lake mirrored the surrounding peaks and provided water for the horses. Tracks of animals laced its muddy verge, but there were no human footprints among them despite the thatched adobe house that backed against the side of a sandstone crag as if trying to blend into it. A fence sagged across the small yard in front, held up only by the Spanish dagger planted behind it. The door was missing from the dark rectangle of the front opening beneath the shadowy overhang of a porch supported by rough; unpeeled poles. In places the thatch had harbored the windblown seeds of weeds and wild flowers so that they bloomed in the mildewed straw.

  Molina, his young face anxious, looked to Luis for approval. Slowly the Spaniard nodded. “We rest here,” he said, and the weakness of his voice seemed to confirm the necessity.