Alerted to the disturbance, the guard walked toward the bushes into which Pedro had disappeared to investigate.
This was her chance! Savannah scooped up her bags and darted toward the stables as fast as her weary body could carry her. Her heart kept time with her feet as she ran across the cracked ground and into the darkness of the stable. She paused to peek inside the door to make sure that no one was about. Satisfied that she was alone, she finally let her breath out in a sigh of relief and hurried to the tack room for a saddle and bridle.
Down the run, a horse whinnied and she recognized the welcoming call of Star Dancer. He was her last link to the life that she had left behind in Georgia. And the gelding was probably her only means of getting away from this life. She whispered soothingly to the horse while she carried the saddle to the stall. The gelding threw his head and nickered when she stepped inside the stall to caress his silken neck. Then, she lifted the saddle and blanket to his back and tightened the cinch.
But, as a wave of dizziness attacked her, she swayed and melted to the ground. She sat in the straw and put her back against the slats of the stall until she had the strength to stand again. As she was rising to reach for the bridle, she heard a rumble of commotion outside the stable. The noise seemed to be coming toward the stable. Quickly, she hid the bags in the straw and removed the saddle, shoving it into the straw and then dove in beside it. She held her breath when she heard the voice that she feared the most.
Don Diego was shouting orders in Spanish to a group of men that she could not see. From a year and a half of marriage, she had learned to comprehend some of the words that he spat to his men. He was telling them to find her as soon as possible. She heard a scuffle as the men hurried to saddle their horses for the search and then she heard Diego speak again, “She can’t have gone far in her condition. She must be somewhere close by. Probably flat on her pretty face with the amount of laudanum that she’s been taking.”
“Laudanum,” she breathed against her palm. It took her only seconds to realize that he had been drugging her all this time. Damn him! She swore under her breath. What kind of a monster had she married? Well, she would take it no more. No more would she lie down like a cowardly dog, letting him command her as he was commanding his men, hoping for a morsel of love that he might throw her way. As soon as she got the chance, she would light out of here and head back to the place where she knew she would be welcome.
Sure, the house was probably sold by now, knowing Diego. But, she had friends who lived nearby who would gladly take her in. That was her motivation when the chance for her to leave came after the last of the horses trotted out of the stable. She sprang from her hiding place and grabbed a rope to tie the two bags together, and then she slung them across Dancer’s withers. She coaxed him to take the bit and buckled the straps across his jaw, then, without bothering with the saddle, she led the gelding to a barrel and climbed onto it. Using the barrel for a booster, she mounted the gelding and stabbed him with her heels.
True to his name, Dancer sidestepped and then thrust his head forward as he galloped out of the stables. Savannah steered him in the direction of the village, which she knew was one village closer to her destination and one village away from the man that she hated. She kept him close to the shadows of the buildings as she guided the horse through the streets so that she would not be seen. She looked back to see that all of the men had gone off toward the mountains in search of her so she turned her mount in the opposite direction.
Savannah let the reins fall against Dancer’s neck while he plodded behind a little adobe hut. She reached back to bind her hair into a braid and secured it with a ribbon before she leaned to take up the reins again. The wind whipped around her, carrying with it the muffled sound of a baby crying. Her heart ceased its beating as the sound brought with it the memory of her heartbreaking loss. So anguished was her sorrowful mind that she believed that the cry belonged to her little Benito.
But it couldn’t be. Could it? Was she going crazy or was that actually her baby crying, calling to her in a way that only a mother would recognize?
Instinct, motherly instinct directed her mindlessly toward the sound that compelled her to find out once and for all if that was truly her child crying. A right turn and then a left took her to the tiny adobe hut that she sought. As the gelding skidded to a stop, she slid from his bare back and onto the ground, and then ran up the stairs. Without bothering to knock, she threw open the door and stumbled inside the house.
The startled woman who had been nursing her child while rocking in a chair, quickly arose, her eyes wide with fear. The woman hurriedly placed her baby into a cradle and began blubbering in Spanish, begging for forgiveness from this strange female intruder.
Savannah pushed by the woman and as if in a daze, she went to the second crib, where the baby continued to cry. Leaning over the crib, she saw the face that she knew as her Benito. Her heart leapt into her throat and her hands shook involuntarily as she reached inside the blankets for her Benjamin. Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks as she pressed him to her breasts and cuddled him as she had so many times before.
The wet-nurse recovered her shock of being caught nursing her own child and she rushed to take the Benjamin from his mother, scolding her in Spanish for barging in and taking the child.
But Savannah turned away from her, and told the woman, “He’s my baby. He’s my Benito.”
Realizing that the other woman spoke English and that she must be the Don’s wife and the baby’s mother, the nurse reverted to that language as she admonished, “You must not be here. You must leave here before Señor Fernandez returns. He is a very dangerous man!”
“Señor Fernandez has no control over my child,” Savannah said as she wheeled away from the woman who tried again to take the baby.
“But he will…” she protested, bringing her hands to her waist and rubbing them together in anxiety.
“He will do nothing. I am taking my son so far away that Don Diego cannot ever find him. Or me,” Savannah declared as she reached for the blanket in the crib, and with a swish of her split skirt, she stepped around the pleading woman and stalked out the door.
She led Dancer around to the adobe porch and slid onto the horse’s back, nudging him with her heels into a swift trot. As the gelding carried her and her son away from the house, she could hear the woman screaming her pleas to her. Ignoring the desperate shrieks from behind her, she nuzzled her son’s sweet-smelling head and carried him away from the place that she hated so much, vowing never to return.
Chapter Ten
The tiny adobe house at the edge of the village was no sanctuary for the wet nurse. She knew that when Don Diego found out that his son had been kidnapped, he would make her suffer for letting it happen. She looked down at her baby, who lay sleeping in her crib and recalled the words that the frightful man had drilled into her head. Knowing that her child would pay with her life, and fearing that Señor Fernandez would certainly choose a painful demise for the baby that she held dearly in her arms, she heaved a great sigh of misery as she prayed to Mother Mary and God for forgiveness. She kissed her daughter on her cheeks, on her lips and on her forehead before she asked the baby to forgive her also for what she was about to do, and then she placed her lovingly back into her crib.
She stepped to her bed and took up the feather pillow and let out a sorrowful sob as she went back to the crib and laid the pillow onto her baby’s body, covering the writhing child’s face. Great tears of guilt and regret fell down her cheeks and her shoulders rocked compulsively as she carried out the task that she knew she must. And when she felt no more movement from beneath the pillow, she lifted it up and let it drop to the floor before she reached into the crib to bring the lifeless child to her tear-stained face. Pressing the baby to her breasts with one hand, she touched her forehead and then each of her shoulders with an invisible crucifix. This death that she had given to her child was far more merciful than the one which Don Diego would have
sentenced her to, but it was still a sin and she was prepared to do her penance as a terrible sinner.
Leaning over the crib once more, she placed the limp baby inside and lovingly covered her with a soft knitted blanket. She bent to kiss the baby one last time before she backed into the rocking chair and waited for the return of Don Diego and the punishment that definitely would come for her.
A vulture circled in the sky, spiraling upon a thermal wave that he had found under the puffs of clouds that floated above the desert. It had been following the horse that stumbled over the barren and cracked land, waiting for the horse to fall, sending its rider to the ground in a heap of delicious death. The bird watched as the woman swayed, almost losing the burden that she clutched so closely. It screeched a victory cry as the horse stumbled for the last time, spilling the woman and the bundle onto the hot, dusty ground. Eyeing the meal that awaited him, the vulture swooped closer to the ground in anticipation.
Savannah clawed the earth, trying to reach the baby, who lay screaming his fear into the blanket that covered his head against the heat of the sun. She had not discovered that she had gone into the desert until it was too late to turn back. She could not—would not go back and face her husband. She must continue. She must get herself and her son to safety. She grunted as she crawled toward her son and, putting her arm around the bundle, she laid her head on the child in order to shield him from the sun and closed her eyes.
She had not meant to fall asleep, but she was so weak and so tired. When she awoke, she had thought that it all had been a dream in which she was in the desert, baking in the sun with a swarm of vultures hopping around her. But, as she opened her eyes wide, she found that it was real. She was laying in the sand, sprawled out like an eagle in flight, an eagle that was intent upon taking its young to safety.
She spread her fingers to caress her son, but there was no soft, yielding blanket beneath her as she remembered had been there before she had fallen asleep. Her son was not under her. She squinted and turned her head from side to side but he was not next to her either. She gasped in surprise when she looked in front of her and saw no bundle there. She craned her neck to look behind her and there, in the arms of the wet-nurse, was her son.
Savannah crawled painfully toward the woman in an effort to take her son back from her, but a booted foot slammed her body back into the burning sand and a voice that she had hoped to never hear again sent shivers up and down her spine.
“I am very disappointed in you, Querida,” Diego said in a voice that was not filled with malice, but that carried a tenderness that she knew was not really there.
Savannah took in a breath of fear as her mind cried, Oh God! He found us! She knew that she had failed to get away from him. She lowered her head to her forearm and wondered how he intended to punish her. Would he see to it that her son would go back with that woman and never know his real mother and make the child despise her while she wasted away again in the home that she despised?
To her surprise and disappointment, that was not to be the case. Instead, he ordered the party to go back to the village, to make sure that his son made it back to the house in safety. When the others had mounted up and the dust had swirled around her as she lay pinned beneath his foot, he smiled down at her and ignored her anguished pleas.
Raising his eyes to the sky, he spoke to the hovering vulture that was brave enough to light a few feet from her prone body, “Welcome, my friend. Would you like an invitation to your feast?”
He cocked his head then looked down at his wife’s frightened face as he continued to talk to the bird, “Well, then. I shall be more than happy to oblige you.”
He sneered at her as he stepped on her hand and pulled his sword from its scabbard, and then he very deftly placed it on the bone at the end of her wrist. As the blade inched up her arm, slicing the skin and muscle, his smile widened and he began to laugh a hideously triumphant laugh.
Savannah winced in pain as the blade ripped into her flesh, searing and tearing her arm inch by excruciating inch until a pool of blood spilled onto the scorched sand. She cried out in agony when the sword’s tip slid easily into the gap that it had created on her forearm just below her elbow. Then, she swore angrily at his laughing voice as the blade was lifted and his heavy foot left her hand.
“I believe that you owe me an apology, Querida,” Diego said in a soft voice as he swiped the blade with a handkerchief, covering the white cloth with her blood.
Angrily, Savannah rolled onto her back and tried to sit up, but his boot caught her in the chest, sending her sprawling backward onto the sand once more.
“I said, apologize to me!” He growled through gritted teeth. “If you do, I will leave you here to die.”
“And if I don’t?” she asked defiantly, holding the bleeding arm with her other hand as she looked up at him.
“If you don’t, my dove, I will kill you right here and right now and there will be no chance that you will ever see Benito again. If you do, maybe, just maybe, you will survive long enough to crawl back to me and to your home and our son.”
Savannah thought for a long moment, eyeing the vulture that flapped impatiently a few feet away and then at the man who towered above her with a most victorious smile upon his handsome yet devious face. If she died right now, she would never have a chance for revenge and to see her son again. Without thinking about it further, she spat sand from her dry mouth and said without remorse, “I’m sorry.”
“Good!” Diego exclaimed as he replaced the sword and folded his arms across his chest in delight. “Apology accepted.”
Savannah watched as her husband slapped his palms together as if washing his hands of her, and then turned on his heel. Before she could get to her feet, he was in the saddle spurring his horse away. An angry huff puffed through her lips as she threw a handful of sand at his retreating figure, realizing that he had left her there to die in this God-forsaken desert with nothing for company but her dying horse and the hungry vulture that eased closer to her with her every breath.
She lay her head on her arm and prayed that death would come quickly, more quickly than the death that poor Dancer was destined to endure, for the vulture had hopped toward the gelding and began to pluck at his quivering flesh. Relieved that the bird had chosen another body for its meal, yet sad that the only alternative for food was her beloved Star Dancer, she began to cry.
Death, for her did not come. Only the pain of the blistering sun and the gushing wound on her arm, which in a sudden yet short burst of energy, she had bound with her petticoat. Hours passed while she sat with her arms crossed over her knees and watched the vanishing figure of her husband and vowed that someday she would get her son back and make herself a gleeful widow.
Weighing her options as she cursed the tiny man on the horse that shimmered on the horizon, she considered which would be the best way to make that happen. If she was lucky enough to crawl her way back to the village and try again to get her son, Diego would certainly kill her. He had left her there to die and he would not hesitate to finish the job if she showed up back in their home. No, she would need some help, for she could not accomplish this feat alone. It would take an army to penetrate the guards that Diego would place at the courtyard perimeter.
She looked around her and at the horizon in the other direction. There was no one that could help her. There was no one for miles in any direction. She was alone in this endeavor and alone, she would walk until she found someone, hopefully an army. She knew that she would require a militia of men willing to risk their lives for her.
Rising to her feet, she shooed away the vulture and leaned down to pick up the bags that still lay across Dancer’s back. Talking softly to the horse, she reached into her boot and found the small Derringer pistol that she had hidden there, and then with an apology to the gelding and a sob of remorse, she squeezed the trigger and mercifully put an end to his suffering. Dropping her arm to her side, the pistol still gripped tightly in her fist, she looked fond
ly at her friend’s lifeless body. Then, with her heart filled with anger, she wheeled around and pointed the pistol at the vulture that had landed behind her.
Knowing that she should not waste a bullet on a shot that might miss the bird, she lowered the gun back to her side. She knew, too, that this bird was not alone, for circling above her were countless others just waiting for her to leave the dead body of her horse or fall in death at his side.
She replaced the gun in her boot. She would not use it to put herself out of the certain misery of dying in the desert. In her mind, in her blackened heart, she mentally etched a name in the one remaining bullet in the second chamber of the tiny pistol. Diego would die by that ball of lead, she vowed to herself as she flipped her split skirt over her boot once more.
She sniffed in determination and rifled through the burlap sack for some sort of nourishment before she slung both bags over her shoulder and took the first step toward what she knew would be the north and America.
For days, she had lost track of how many, she wandered the desert, keeping her face pointing toward the land that she loved. She had emptied the contents of the burlap sack, devouring every morsel of food and savoring the juices of the canned vegetables and fruit. When she opened the last can of tomatoes, she tossed the burlap sack onto the sand and tucked the silverware into her valise. She did not know why she was compelled to keep these items, but keep them, she did.
That morning, as she feasted on the tomatoes and sucked the juice out as if it was the most delicious delicacy, she wondered how much further she had to go. Deciding to save the leftovers for another day, she poured the tomatoes into the empty canteen and tossed the can into a patch of scrub brush. She knew that she would have to make this little bit of food last as long as she could, for she was not sure if or when she would ever find civilization.
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