The dim yellow glow showed a square room plastered with clay, benches of adobe built out from the wall, and a fireplace at one end. There was a rough table, a chair, and a bed spread with a serape in tones of brown and gray. A shelf by the fireplace held a few dishes and cooking staples. Clothes hung on pegs. The floor was hard dirt and there was only one window.
One of the vaqueros brought in the bedrolls, my valise, crumpled hat, and Reina’s saddlebag. “Can’t you send him after this witch doctor?” Reina inquired acridly.
“No.” Trace shook out the pallets, put one on his bed. I helped spread the others on the floor.
“Why not?” she persisted.
“The men won’t ride up his canyon at night.”
The green of her eyes was almost hidden by swelling black pupils. “Then he is a witch!” she breathed.
“Wise,” Trace corrected. “Though to be wise or even sensible in this world comes close to magic.”
“Surely it can wait till morning,” she urged.
Trace went to Sewa, who still huddled on the bench where he’d placed her. He undid the bandage. The stench made my stomach turn. Reina gagged and flung away in disgust. Trace’s nostrils twitched. He rewound the bandage and said briefly, “I’d better take Sewa with me. Now.”
“It—it’s that bad?” I asked, heart constricting. Blood poison, gangrene—terrible names I didn’t fully understand thrummed in my head.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then I’ll come, too.”
“Stay here, Miranda. You’re done in. There won’t be any way for you to help.” But when he spoke to Sewa, her dark eyes sprang to me.
She didn’t ask; she never would. But I dragged my body up and said, “I’m going.”
He started to argue, glanced at Sewa, and gave in. He shouted out the door for fresh horses and coffee, if any was left. In a few minutes Lázaro brought coffee that was at least lukewarm. Reina declined the bitter brew.
“You are mad,” she told me. “Trailing about in the dark to find a Yaqui witch.”
“Cruz?” demanded Lázaro. He stared at Trace. “That one is an onza! If you have business with him, leave it till morning.”
“We are friends,” said Trace.
“Perhaps by day,” retorted Lázaro. “But once in his cat shape, an onza has no friends.”
“Crazy talk,” snapped Trace. “Didn’t Cruz set that broken ankle for you? Didn’t he cure Roque when he was dying of snakebite?”
“He is still an onza,” Lázaro maintained stubbornly. “I beg you. Wait.”
“We cannot.”.
Lázaro cast a hate-filled look at Sewa. “All for this vermin!”
“Enough!” said Trace. He rose at the sound of horses.
“Am I expected to stay the night alone in this hovel?” demanded Reina.
“You may sleep outside,” suggested Trace. “Or ride with us.”
She stared at him, touched her full lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “And if I command you, as your employer, to stay here?”
He said softly, “I would tell you, señorita, to go to hell.”
As her green eyes dilated in shock, he picked Sewa up. We went out, Lázaro closing the door with flowery assurances to Reina that she would be as safe as if she were bolted in her chamber in Las Coronas. She shrieked something that might have made him revise his opinion of her, but I was too frightened for Sewa to care about Reina’s moods.
Lázaro helped me mount. My every bone and muscle ached, and this new horse, possibly vexed at being caught up after dark when all decent beasts can rest, moved in a jarring, jolting trot that was torture. Trace had decided to carry Sewa in front of him, which I took as an ominous sign—perhaps he thought she wouldn’t be coming back or, if she did, would be unable to sit a horse.
A short distance from the adobes, we seemed heading into, sheer mountain walls, but Trace led through a narrow defile that presently widened into another canyon, so deep that the moon reached only the center, casting a luminous trail with darkness on either side.
The valley of the shadow of death. Ice closed on my heart. Death hovered over Sewa, I was sure, or Trace would have brought the curer to her. “I will fear no evil,” I prayed desperately. “Fear no evil.…”
Our horses’ hooves echoed the words, mockingly pounding them into my mind. For I did fear evil. I feared the infection in Sewa’s body, but even more the chilling hate in Lázaro’s eyes, the venom in Reina’s. I feared the cruelty that could do this to a child more than all those bogies of the litany: battle, murder, and sudden death.
“Good Lord, deliver us,” I pleaded.’ “Let the child get well.” Onza or witch, I didn’t care what this Cruz was, so long as he healed the small figure cradled in Trace’s arms. I envied her that place of comfort as we rode on in the night of black and silver.
Evil, evil, evil. I … will … fear. Fear no evil. For thou art with me. My eyes kept closing from sheer fatigue. Then my raw-gaited horse stopped so abruptly that I would have gone on over his neck if strong hands hadn’t caught and lifted me down.
Shaking my head to clear it, I looked into a dark face that might have been carved from mahogany.
“Do not be afraid,” the stranger said. “The child will not die. But we must hurry.” He turned and I followed to the hut Trace was already entering with Sewa.
4
Cruz did not explain how he knew we were coming, but there could be no doubt he was prepared for visitors. A candle burned on a ledge. Water was boiling on a sort of brazier improvised from a Standard Oil can with a grate on top.
Cruz poured this water into a jug. An aromatic smell quickly filled the room. Trace had placed Sewa on a woven straw mat. Cruz, humming to himself, got something from a chest and gave it to her. It was a flute made of cane. I was astounded when he sat down next to the child and began to show her how to coax, notes from it. When she got her first birdlike trill, she gave the first laugh I’d heard from her.
Cruz went to pour his steaming brew into three earthenware bowls that he handed to Trace, Sewa, and me. I noticed he added something to her drink.
Why didn’t he look at her foot? Ask how she’d been hurt and when? He’d guessed we were coming, but I didn’t want him to guess about Sewa. Urgencies sprang to my lips, but I felt Trace’s eyes on me, bit back my questions. He would speak when it was time. I knew that more surely than I knew my name. It was a strange sensation. Following his example, I sipped the brew. Pungent, spicy, slightly acrid, it was amazingly refreshing.
Cruz unwound the bandage. Putrescent ooze showed in the dim light. The smell was sickening. Cruz spoke gently to Sewa. Her eyes seemed to grow even more huge. She drank her tea to the end, set down the bowl, and picked up the flute. Trace asked something. Cruz nodded.
Muscles stood out like steel cords in Trace’s jaw.
He spoke again, almost pleadingly. Cruz’s answer was terse. To me, in English, Trace said, “He says the foot is gangrenous. It must come off or the girl will die.”
“Off? Her foot? You mean—cut it off?”
“Yes.”
“No!” My voice started to rise. I choked it down, swallowed, looked from Cruz to Sewa to Trace again. It couldn’t be. A child that young to lose her foot, hobble all her life? She was watching me, big eyes grave but not fearful. “Does—does she know?” I asked.
Trace nodded.
“It really is gangrene?”
“Yes, Miranda. The infection has cut off the blood supply. What it amounts to is that the foot is dead, rotting. And if it isn’t removed, the gangrene will spread and kill her.”
I wet my lips, sicker by the minute. “How will Cruz do it?”
“He has a little saw.” Cruz was putting it in the kettle of boiling water.
“Is there anything to dull the pain?”
“Cruz put a narcotic in her tea. Jimsonweed. It can kill, but used with Cruz’s knowledge it will help. And he has a sort of hypnotic power.” Trace smiled thinly at my anxious
scrutiny of the hut. “She’ll fare better than in most hospitals, I promise you that. Will you go outside or can you help?”
How I cravenly wanted to stay out of sight and sound. But Sewa couldn’t leave. And she must live with the results for the rest of her life.
“What shall I do?” I asked in Spanish.
Cruz told me to sit by the girl and talk to her, hold her if necessary. I sat on the mat beside her, trying not to wince as Cruz put a poker in the fire. A saw—red-hot iron. Instruments of torture. And this would be torture, though done with merciful intent. Trace knelt beside us, took the flute, and after a little testing made bird sounds from it. Sewa laughed and reached for it, trying to imitate his notes. He showed her which holes to finger.
Soon she was making sounds like some of the birds we’d heard that evening, soft and plaintive or brisk and chatty. Cruz had been making another potion and handed it to me. “She should drink it slowly,” he cautioned.
So Sewa drank and played and sipped and fingered the flute, but her motions grew uncoordinated. Her eyes were brilliant, widely dilated. Cruz washed her leg with an astringent-smelling liquid, then placed it on a scrubbed board.
She did not seem aware of what he was doing. He talked quietly to her. Her body relaxed even more. I moved closer and she settled into my arms, still clutching the flute, though she no longer seemed able to hold it to her lips.
Trace stepped to where he could hold her leg and also block our view, for which I was grateful. He spoke to Sewa, who opened her mouth and let him slip a piece of wood between her teeth. He wrapped his doubled scarf a few inches above Sewa’s ankle, knotted it, put a stick through it, and twisted it tight as Cruz came over with the little saw.
The tourniquet stick between his teeth, Trace gripped the child’s leg so she couldn’t move, clamping down the other leg with one of his. She twitched. I knew the blade had started; I cradled her against me and spoke in her ear, English, Spanish, anything I could think of, just kept talking while clammy sweat rose on both of us, her teeth clamped on the wood with a grinding sound, and her heart pounded against mine, wavered, faltered, seemed to stop for those hideous moments while the saw gritted through bone, then beat faintly, distantly.
She went limp. I saw through my tears that her eyes had closed. If she could stay unconscious—For Cruz was bringing over the glowing poker.
I drove my teeth into my lip to keep from screaming but could not check convulsive sobs as there was a sizzling sound, a smell of searing flesh. The small body in my arms contracted and a moan came from her. I fought back the hotness that rose in my throat. Couldn’t get sick now—not yet. Pray God she’d stay in merciful blackness awhile.
Trace loosened the tourniquet, wiped his face with the scarf. Some blood had spattered on it and left marks on his face. It didn’t seem to matter. I felt drenched with blood, though it was only sweat, mine and the child’s.
Cruz was busy with salves and a coarse white cloth he got from a chest. “I think we are in time,” he said in slow Spanish as he bandaged the stump. “We will keep the leg raised for a day to keep the pressure off the healing part.”
“Will she wake up soon?” I asked, pressing my ear to the scrawny chest and receiving the slow dulled sound of her heart.
“Not for some hours. And for a few days I will ease her pain as much as possible with my brews.”
The body pain would go. But never to walk free and light again, to be maimed, reminded of it every time she tried to take a step—what a thing to happen to a girl named Flower.
“She can use a crutch,” Trace said roughly.
I cried out at that, a wail that made the drugged child flinch. “You must all sleep,” Cruz said. “Señorita, you and the girl rest here. Trace and I can spread mats in the ramada.”
“We have bedrolls,” Trace said.
We put Sewa on hers, injured leg propped on a folded poncho, the flute beside her. Trace put my pallet touching hers. I didn’t expect to sleep, but either weariness or Cruz’s tea sent me into quick heavy slumber with only a passing thought of what Reina would say about the necessity of staying here for several days. Compared with Sewa’s ordeal, Reina’s opinions seemed of very little consequence.
I woke with my sister’s voice in my ears, blinked, sat up, glanced around the dim room, knowing that for some reason I didn’t want to wake up. Then my gaze fell on Sewa huddled next to me and I remembered it all and broke out in shuddering cold sweat.
Reina shrilled on. She’d wake Sewa at this rate, a thing I hoped to postpone as long as possible. I had slept in my chemise and petticoat. Slipping into my thoroughly draggled riding habit, I fumbled shut the most strategic buttons, shoved my hair back, and hurried out to the ramada.
Cruz was nowhere to be seen, but Trace had apparently been repairing a saddle when Reina appeared. Lázaro, a good hundred yards from the ramada, stood between Reina’s handsome black and a jugheaded sorrel. Even in daylight he wasn’t getting closer than necessary to the witch’s house.
Reina’s green eyes swept over me. “You!” she exploded. “Dirty, crumpled, in company with outcasts, men even Texans and savage Indians reject—”
“Don’t shout,” I told her, too astonished at the grounds for her attack to be immediately angry, though I could feel blood heating my temples. “That child is sleeping. You can thank heaven you don’t have to wake and get used to having only one foot!”
“If it weren’t impossible, I’d think she was yours, got in a bush someplace. What a fuss, all for a Yaqui whelp!”
“Be quiet,” I said. The words broke in my throat. I heard the saw again, hacking bone, glimpsed the poker, smelled seared flesh. “Go away, damn you.”
“And leave you with him?” she demanded, pointing at Trace.
I walked some distance from the house. She hesitated, then with a toss of her fiery head, she came after me. “You must come back to Las Coronas at once,” she decreed “The witch will see to the girl. But no one can mend your reputation if this gets about.”
It was a good time to make it clear that my behavior would shortly cease to be any of her concern. “Sewa cannot travel for several days,” I said. “I want to bring her back to Las Coronas till her leg is fully healed. But then, my sister, I will take her and go away.”
Surprised relief showed in her face before her eyes narrowed, swung to Trace, who was out of earshot, then back to me. “Where? Where can you go?”
“Hermosillo is the capital of the state, is it not? I might live there. Do not concern yourself. It’s plain you don’t want me at Las Coronas.”
Reina’s jaw dropped. “But our mother asked—”
My eyes stung and my throat ached. Why did it have to be this way with my only kin in all the world? “Mother didn’t know you hated me,” I said. “I can’t help it. Maybe you can’t, either. But it’s plain we could never live at peace. So ride home. Put your mind at rest about my good name. It’s none of your concern.”
“That pistolero,” she said between her small perfect teeth. “Has he made you brave? Offered protection?”
There was no use talking to her. I turned to go. She caught my wrist, snapping me around. That did it.
“Take your hands off me,” I said.
Her fingers dug into my skin. I raised my free arm, meaning to hit her as hard as I could. Trace Winslade, who had come up soundlessly, stepped between us, moving Reina forcibly away.
“That’s it,” he said. “Miranda, the child is waking. Better go to her.” As I started for the house, he said to Reina, “Señorita, shall I tell Lázaro to escort you to Las Coronas?”
“Suppose I order you to take me?”
My ears strained for his answer, given in a politely expressionless tone. “I should tell you, señorita, to, as we yan-qui-tejanos say, go chase yourself.”
What she said to that I couldn’t hear, but as I stepped inside the hut, I heard voices, including Lázaro’s rumble, then hoofbeats. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw
the girl’s eyes were open, though she didn’t seem to be aware of anything.
“Sewa?” Dropping beside her, I took her small brown hand in mine. It was limp, gave a chilling impression of lifelessness. “Sewa!”
Cruz spoke from the door. “I have some soup for her, also a little honey. Can you hold her while I feed her?”
I raised her against me.’ She took wooden spoonfuls of a tasty-smelling broth, opening her lips when Cruz touched them like some sort of spring-wound toy. But after the honey had dissolved in her mouth, she chewed the comb as if to obtain more sweetness. So she could still taste, still desire, and when I moved a bit to ease my cramped legs, her fingers tightened on mine.
“She should drink a lot,” Cruz said. “And I will steep manzanilla, a plant that brings sleep, into her tea for this day and tomorrow. Sleep heals. But it cannot last too long.”
“What if you hadn’t been here?” I asked. “Or if Mr. Winslade hadn’t known you?”
“To ponder ifs is trying to find the first sand of a desert.” His face creased into deeper lines that I took for a smile. “If I were asking questions, I would wonder what brought you from a far country in time to save a life. For saving life is a heavy obligation.”
“I don’t understand.”
Cruz brought a bowl of tea and together we got Sewa to drink it. “Her life would have ended without your intervention. In a way, you gave her life. So you are responsible for what she does.”
I didn’t like his idea at all. “That’s frightening,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t believe it. It’s natural to help other people but quite something else to be held to account for whatever they do.”
Cruz’s smile only grooved deeper. I had been too disturbed to notice him much last night, but now I saw that he moved with the lithe wiriness of a young man. He wasted no motion. His plentiful coarse black hair was clubbed in back with a piece of rawhide and his eyes were a strange pale gray like the flake left on charred wood.
A Lady Bought with Rifles Page 5