Simon stopped at the doorway. "Do I detect curiosity -- or concern -- in that lovely voice of yours?"
"Neither," she said bluntly. "What you detect is sheer relief."
Her head bent low over the material, and she did not see the hand that tightened about the curtain in angry ridges. But his voice was even. "Then it should please you to know I'll be gone several days."
"Why? To put in your cursory appearance at the civilized ranchero? To woo the beauteous -- and wealthy -- Francesca Escandón? Or will your time be spent in the guise of the bandit vaquero -- profitably victimizing innocent citizens? How can you keep from despising yourself?" she asked him scathingly.
"I won't defend my actions to you or anyone, Kathleen," he said, his voice taut with the anger she knew he kept barely in check.
Still, she felt driven to provoke him that morning, why she could not understand. So when Simon said, "I've requested Renaldo to stay close by while I'm gone -- should you need him," she threw the mending down and bounded to her feet.
"To watch me, isn't that it? To keep me from escaping?" She flung herself against him with a cry of frustrated rage, beating with small clenched fists on his chest. "How long, Simon? How long will you keep me like this?"
He caught her hands in his, a feigned look of surprise on the rugged face. "Why, beloved, you know we vowed before God it would be for the rest of our lives -- 'till death do us part.' Wasn't that the way it went?"
"Then may God make your life mercifully short," she declared, her voice vibrating with a passionate loathing.
Chapter 22
"He's despicable! A-an abominable, mercenary beast!"
Kathleen changed the direction of her pacing and continued her tirade, "I loathe him, Concha! What kind of low animal is he to force -- to have his way with me and then leave me all this time at the mercy of these -- these brigands?"
Concha set the dinner plate on the wickiup's platform and, folding her arms, faced el jefe's amante, his golden mistress, his lovely wife. The young woman was suffering one of those dark moods that seemed to have gripped her since el jefe left.
"He's been gone little more than a week," she told Kathleen placatingly. "And those people you call brigands, I might remind you, are friends -- your friends, if you'd give them a chance.
"I'm sorry, Concha," Kathleen said contritely. "I-I guess it's the weather."
"No te preocuparás, niña. Armand says everyone gets that way just before a storm breaks. Now eat your dinner. Else you'll be as thin as the old woman of the village. And el jefe'll turn his eye elsewhere.
"God that he would!" Kathleen snapped. "And leave me in peace!"
"Concha shrugged fatalistically and muttered, "Quién entiende los modos de amor?" before leaving Kathleen to her dinner.
Reproaching herself for her rudeness, Kathleen put out a tentative hand to detain the woman, but decided against it. She would probably only say something else ungracious, and she certainly didn't want to anger the only friend she had in the camp.
That was untrue, of course. There was Imelda. And Margarita and her brother Temcal. Kathleen had to smile, remembering how the youth, who was famed for his skill at silversmithing, had ducked his receding chin until it touched his bobbing Adam's apple the morning he presented her with a silver arm bracelet.
And then there was Renaldo. Dear Renaldo, who every night in Simon's absence slept outside her doorway. But Renaldo's Old World politeness kept the friendship between them on a more formal plane.
Kathleen toyed with the refrijoles and cabrito, but could not bring herself to eat. What was wrong with her? An aching, oppressive loneliness gnawed inside her, matching the gloomy clouds that had overcast the skies the last several days.
And then there ws the boredome. At least when Simon had been there, there had been the challenge of sharp words, the duel of honed wits to lend excitement to the days. And then there had been the nights. The whispered words of sex in both English and Spanish to stir her senses; the knowing fingers, the burning lips that roused her to frenzied heights.
Damn it! Why must she torment herself with memories of the man who ravaged her body, despoiled her spirit, and ravished her very thoughts? She looked down at the ring on her third finger. She would never remove it! It would serve to remind her of the revenge she would one day take on Simon.
Resolutely she put the man's mocking face from her and went to the doorway, moving aside the curtain. Yes, there was the faithful Renaldo. The way he sat on his blanket -- with his back against the wickiup, his arms crossed at his knees, and the sombrero pulled low over his scarfed head -- reminded Kathleen of her original conception of the Mexican people.
It had been a political cartoon run in the Boston Times Herald at the end of Texas's war for independence against Mexico. It pictured the Mexican as indolent and lazy, believing that everything should wait on the morrow. But the men of the ranchería didn't fit that description. They were forever occupied with something -- their horses, their guns, and -- yes -- their women.
And Renaldo most certainly didn't fit that misconception. He seemed more educated than most of the men, more cultured. What was he doing living like a bandit? But then, what was Simon doing living like a bandit? she asked herself. Why did he run goods with Nathan when he obviously didn't need the money? Or was he indeed involved in an insurrection?
"Renaldo," she whispered.
Sí, señora?"
Then Renaldo had been awake after all. He must have known she had come outside, but, in that polite manner of his, was merely waiting for her to break the silence. She slid down opposite him on the other side of the doorway.
"Who are you really, Renaldo?" She gestured at the multitude of forms huddled at the various campfires that dotted the valley, taking their evening meal. "Why are you living a life like this?"
In the darkness she could barely make out his face, and she was not sure whether he had heard her, but after a minute he said, in that soft, precise voice of his, "I was born on a rancho. My father was a blacksmith there. Before that he was a soldier, coming from Mexico to serve under Lieutenant Luis Aguello. The company was posted at the then-new presidio of Santa Barbara. When my father had saved enough earnings, he sent to the Tepic for his sweetheart, and he and my mother were married at Santa Barbara's mission.
"My father had great hopes that things would be different here; that a man would be reckoned by his accomplishments -- not by his class. But he found it was not to be so. He and my mother were not of pure Spanish blood, but a mixture -- cholos they are called here."
Renaldo paused, and his sigh, a mixture of bitterness and wistfulness, was lost in the groan of the rising wind. Chilled, Kathleen wrapped her arms about her, patiently waiting for Renaldo to continue.
"When those hopes were dimmed," Renaldo said finally, "they set their dreams on me. Every real they earned went to pay the rancho's padre for my lessons. And so I became misfit -- too educated for those of my own class but too lowly bred for the Californios ... I, who can read and write, when less than a hundred of the grandees in all of California can even sign their name."
For some minutes the two of them sat wrapped in their own thoughts while the distant sky flickered with streaks of lightning and the nearby campfires burned lower.
But at last Kathleen could no longer contain her curiosity about the man who had bound her to him. "And Simon?" she asked in a voice that could just be heard above the rush of the wind through the tossing tree limbs. "Is his the same story?"
"That I couldn't tell you."
"Couldn't or wouldn't?"
"Both. Probably old Diego, el viejo, is th eonly one that knows the whole story. Maybe Father Marcos. I can only tell you that if it weren't for El Cóndor, the man you call Simon, I'd still be sitting feeling sorry for myself and those like me instead of doing something about it."
"Do you really think Simon's way is better?" Kathleen asked, not trying to hide the caustic bite in her voice.
"If you've e
ver been kept in one of the mission's compounds, then you could answer that fairly. There comes a time when rationalization and compromises won't reform injustice. I believe one of your own countrymen, Thomas Paine, put it much more succinctly than I."
"And where do you draw the line between the revolutionary -- the hero -- and the traitor -- the villain?"
"History draws that line. History and, in the final analysis, your own personal evaluation of the man, se)ora."
* * * * *
Overhead the lightning crackled. The first drops of rain pelted the Indian who sat bareback on the quarter horse. The animal danced each time the lightning zigzagged across the heavens, and the man bent forward, stroking the great beast's neck. "Gently, Salvaje," he whispered. "Home is just below."
From his lookout atop the glaciered butte, the ranchería could barely be distinguished. Only the smoldering ashes of the campfires betrayed its existence, and then only to the keenest eye.
"Home," he repeated to himself, with a mockery that contorted his face so that, had any God-fearing person seen his countenance at that moment, one would have sworn he was Satan wandering the earth that night and loosing the thunderstorm upon his chosen victimes.
Had there ever been a home? Simon wondered. No, that was the irony of it all. There had been a home -- one he had known as a small child. The security, the love, that had abounded in that mountain cabin.
What in God's holy name had made him take Kathleen there that first night? He remembered feeling as if it had been a desecration, allowing her in the cabin that had been his mother's. And his father's whenever the man could escape the responsibilities of the rancho -- and the eagle eye of his wife.
And now Simon had his own wife -- Kathleen.
What kind of welcome would she give him tonight? Would she quiver with fear when those moments of bitterness assailed him? Would her great, wine-colored eyes flash disdainfully, displaying the hatred for him that overflowed her heart? Or would she be in one of those rare moods when the pure pleasure of delight would erupt in her bubbling laughter?
His lips stretched in a grim line, and he healed Salvaje forward, holding the horse to a slow center, delaying his return. Regardless of her moods, he told himself, when they came together at night, the outcome was always the same. Her resistance, which he could but admire even while he strove to break it, and which always ended in her passive yielding to him as his will finally dominated.
And this angered him the greatest. Because there was a warm-blooded -- no, hot-blooded -- woman beneath that cold exterior. Dammit, he knew with every nerve in his body that there were moments when the real woman in Kathleen was just below the surface. Her passion, if released, would match his. But maybe it was to be another man that would taste the honey of her love, that would devour the pleasures she would willingly give.
The thought of her beautiful, tantalizing body spread-eagled for some other man to sample, to delight in, drove Simon at times to a feverish pitch. And he would turn it on Kathleen in perverse forms of mental cruelty -- and yes, wasn't his rapturous ravishing of her golden body a physical cruelty?
So what drove him to possess Kathleen? It was sheer foolishness to continue to keep her. Gemma was twenty times the lover Kathleen was. And Gemma knew all sorts of tricks to drive a man wild. And yet, didn't the mere mental image of Kathleen beneath him, her heavy tresses spread out like a feathered fan, drive him wild?
It was madness to keep Kathleen. And even crazier to try to trace this Edmund Woodsworth. To risk his life looking for a man who was nothing to him. But he, himself, must hold some interest for Woodsworth -- or else Gemma wouldn't have sent word that Kathleen's fiancé had been asking questions, had even wired for a detective out of New Orleans.
The trip had proved worthless. Woodsworth had disappeared by the time Simon reached Santa Barbara. Still, he felt instinctively that he had not seen the last of the man.
So much the better, he thought. For it would be just one more severed tie that bound Kathleen to her old life. And at the thought of her, Simon's hand came down hard on Salvaje's flanks, urging the quarter horse homeward.
Chapter 23
The sudden white flash of lightning illuminated the wickiup. But it was neither the lightning nor the rolling bombardment of thunder which followed that awoke Kathleen. Her heavy-lidded eyes opened to the dim vision of the dark face hovering over hers.
"Simon." It was a faint whisper, a half sigh.
The warm lips closed over hers, and the muscle-corded body slanted across her own. Even though each time before she had fought him with all her strength, her drugged-like sleep now weakened her resistance, and her arms came up unwittingly around her shoulders. Her fingers tangled in his rain-wet hair.
Startled at this unexpected display of passion, Simon raised his head to probe the deep purple eyes, but the thickly fringed lids fluttered closed to hide whatever secrets were to be found there. "Cataline," he murmured wonderingly as his forefinger lightly brushed the cleft of her chin.
And his lean hips once more claimed her own, but this time with a gentleness that caught the woman beneath him by surprise. Like the touch of butterfly wings, his kisses skimmed her lids, her cheeks, to linger at her ear.
Then, as another explosion of lightning flooded the wickiup, so were the tender moments exploded by the suddenness of white-hot passion. Simon's hand slipped downward to caress the taught, turgid crowns of her breasts, straining beneath her chemise to break free. Kathleen gasped.
His mouth silenced her low moans of pleasure before deserting her lips and burning a path along her slim-columned neck, nipping the delicate hollow of her throat. Kathleen's hands clutched at Simon's back, pulling him against her even as her nails dug into his skin.
But when he rose and shucked the breechcloth, she stiffened in remembrance of the pain and degradation and, as his body lowered over hers, tried to draw away from his embrace.
"Kathleen." The husky whisper of his voice against her ear crackled like the thunder in the heavens. "I'm not an ogre. I'm only a man. Here, feel me." His hand caught hers and firmly guided it downward along his flat belly.
Her tentative resistance of slowly gave way to wonder as she explored this man to whom she was united by the law, by God, and by the strange mixture of hate and passion. His deep groan told her of the pleasure a woman could give a man, and the knowledge was an overwhelming assault on her senses. Her limbs intertwined with his, and her fingers locked in his long curls.
"Love me, Simon!" she begged as the pain became unbearable pleasure and pleasure unbearable pain.
* * * * *
Somewhere out in camp a rooster hearlded the dawn with its onomatopoeic crow, even though the morning's first light had yet to filter through the slits of the curtained doorway. Kathleen stirred drowsily and nestled closer to the strong arms that enfolded her. Playful lips brushed the lids of her eyes, and the tip of a tongue tickled her ear, sending a flood of rapturous shivers coursing through her. Her arms came up to encircle him, and she whispered, "Mi indio, take me again!"
Simon laughed softly. "You're greedy, Catalina. And so am I. I can't get enough of you. Each time I make love to you, I dissolve inside. I drown in the warm wine of your eyes -- in the warm juices of your lovely body."
"Then show me," she whispered, and her body arched upwards to meet his, giving as he gave.
* * * * *
The morning was growing old when Kathleen finally awakened. She turned slightly and put out a hand, but the place next to her was empty. For a long moment she lay there, reliving the previous night. It was incredible! Unbelievable! That she could behave in such an abandoned fashion. What ever had caused her to make such wanton love, to let Simon have his way with her? Why hand't she realized the power of passion? She cringed with embarrassment. To think she had actually enjoyed herself -- in the arms of the man she most detested.
She remembered the first time he had taken her, at La Palacia, and she had thought with disgust that that was
what sex was all about. But to have Simon teach her! Irony of ironies. To be enslaved by passion to one's own husband! To be enslaved by a man whose dark, Indian skin and flashing, mocking eyes she found loathsome.
Ohh! She flushed with shame with each memory that assailed her. That she could have found that hitherto undiscovered pleasure in the arms of the scoundrel. Perhaps she indeed carried the taint of her mother's blood. How often had she heard the hurled accusations from her father that her mother had whoring blood. But, dear God, was her father any better, with his perverted lusts? And where did that leave herself but with the inherent passion of the senses?
Damn her senses. And damn Simon! She could imagine how out of proportion his male arrogance would be this morning. Well, she would show him! Let him just once swagger about her, and she would treat him as if he were dust beneath her feet!
But Simon did not return to the wickiup that morning, and when noon came Kathleen dressed and, taking a towel with her, went outside, ostensibly to bathe. She saw the grisly Angel, whom she noted had been careful to keep out of her way since he found that el jefe had claimed her as his wife. She repressed a scornful smile, recalling how quickly the bandido's bravado had disappeared.
Concha passed by, with the tiny Chela toddling behind her, and stopped Kathleen with an outstretched hand. "Niña, the worst has happened! Margarita's man, Najo, didn't return from the last raid."
"Oh, no!" cried Kathleen. "Should I go to her? Say something?"
"No, not now. She will be preparing for mourning. She's marking her face now with charcoal."
As Kathleen continued on toward the glade, sorrow for Margarita, heavy with Najo's unborn child, clouded her thoughts. Why, oh why, couldn't it have been Simon who didn't return? And with the thought of him, the memories of the night before returned. Fool! To have been so easy for Simon. Another conquest for his conceited male ego.
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