A Lady Bought with Rifles

by Jeanne Williams

  After a frozen instant of shock, Ruiz ordered a squad to the cantina, the rest toward the mine. A figure was streaking from the rear of the cantina, dodging through the dwarfed trees and scrub. The major ordered his men to fire. Bullets hummed after a crash of firing. The running body leaped, turned around, and fell, arms swinging up as if to curse or embrace.

  Tula!

  Then the air came alive with hissing cartridges. From the low ridges and dusty thickets, men appeared, tattered wild men wearing bandoliers. Ruiz rallied his men, the bugler sounded, and the men straggling from the mine redoubled their pace, dropping some comrades, apparently wounded by the blast, in order to run forward and join the battle.

  “Run!” Court hissed at me.

  Lío’s band? It almost had to be. But their shots could kill me as quickly as could the soldiers’. I ran with Court for the cantina, slid inside past the captain’s body, and lay panting on the hard-packed earth a moment before I glanced around and sighted Reina.

  She lay by the counter like a broken doll. When Court turned her over, her head lolled and I screamed; that slender throat was cut from side to side. Her green eyes stared in glazed disbelief. Tula, an advance spy for Lío’s group, must have been rounded up with the villagers and taken her chance to kill the woman who had brought so much suffering on them.

  “But they can’t win,” I groaned to Court. “There are so many soldiers.”

  “Maybe not so many,” Court said dryly. “I didn’t see near as many coming out of the mine as went in.” He stared at me. “Was setting off that charge your idea?”

  “I couldn’t think of any other way to save the people if the soldiers started poking around in the place.”

  Court shook his head. “You’re crazy, Miranda. Really crazy. If word gets out of what you’ve done, you’ll be executed for treason.”

  “I’ll worry about that if we live through the next hour.” I shrugged. And for the first time it hit me. Trace had to be back with the ammunition and guns. He might even be with the attackers.

  And he might be dead.

  Court read my thoughts. “We’ll know in a while,” he grunted, staying low to the ground as he worked around the bar. “How about some wine?”

  “I’d rather have water.”

  “It’s wine or tequila.”

  I settled for a few sips of sour wine. At least it was wet Bullets spanged against the cantina. One flew through a window, drilled into the opposite wall with a shower of flaked adobe.

  “Damn!” said Court. “They’re taking cover behind the cantina. If we’re lucky, we can have them firing from both directions.”

  It was a nightmare; reality had stopped for me when Cruz went into the fire. I wasn’t afraid. All my interest was in what was happening outside.

  Were the people in the mine safe? Did Lío’s band have a chance? Where was Trace?

  These things chased through my head till it throbbed. Another bullet whirred above us, spanked into adobe, ricocheted a palm’s breadth from my head. Court swore.

  Would the firing never stop? From the yells and shots, the fray ranged from the general store to the mine. Where we sheltered behind the bar, I could hear the steady strong beat of Court’s heart, in strange counterpoint to the battle. Where our skin touched, it stuck with sweat. Even the earthen floor held little coolness.

  A bullet whined over, struck the wall, splintered adobe, and bounced. Impact. Court’s body lifted, shuddered.

  “Court!” I tried to rise up, but he pushed me flat, collapsed so that his body shielded mine.

  “Be still!” he panted. I could feel a thick warmth seeping from his hip. “I won’t have you scarred, marked up. You’re mine.”

  He would bleed to death. I rolled out from under what was almost dead weight, ripped off the flounce of my petticoat, made a pad, ripped the side of his trousers with a knife hidden under the bar. Blood pulsed from his upper thigh. I fitted the pad over the wound, bound it in place.

  If the blood would stop! Court had done his best to protect me. I couldn’t just let him die. Reaching for the wine bottle, I held it to his lips. He swallowed. His eyelids fluttered as I wiped the clammy moistness from his face.

  “Lie down!” he breathed, exerting his last strength to bring me next to him. “Stay low, damn you!”

  Pinned by his weight, I lay in the dust. Firing, shouts, and screams filled the air outside, now closer, now ebbing. Where was Sewa? Would she be safe in the tunnel with the women and children? Whatever happened outside, perhaps they might survive.

  And Trace! He must be out there with Lío’s men. If I could find a weapon …

  Keeping as much as possible behind the wall and the fallen captain’s crumpled body, I worked the heavy gun from his holster. It took both my hands to hold it. Aiming at the nearest soldiers spraddled behind some rocks near the cantina, I pulled the trigger.

  It clicked on an empty chamber. But there were a dozen men clustered in easy range, their attention centered on the ragged Yaquis who seemed to be firing with those rifles, the ones with which Trace had bought my life.

  Trace was out there somewhere.

  With any luck, dense and close as they were, I could pick off one or two soldiers before they learned they had an enemy behind them.

  I squeezed off a shot, wrist and fingers numbed by the recoil. A soldier pitched forward.

  “Miranda!” It was Trace, over among some rocks. “Get down, you little fool.”

  He was alive. Till I saw him, I couldn’t be sure. My heart swelled with thankfulness. I aimed once more. Then a mountain seemed to fall in on me as an explosion of pain was buried in unconsciousness.

  13

  When I tried to open my eyes, light stabbed through them to my brain in a way that made me moan and turn my face into the soft comfort of pillows. For a while I didn’t know who I was, where I was, anything except that it hurt to be awake. Then drifts of remembering swelled; I would hear a voice, glimpse a face against my closed eyelids, figures outlined in blood-red so dark it was almost black.

  There was a face I longed to see, not knowing whose it was, but it never appeared in my feverish half-dreams. If it did, I would know everything that my mind could not or would not retrieve. Till I remembered that face, I didn’t want to rouse at all, open my eyes to the world around me, the owners of hands that brought me food and drink, dressed me, and attended my needs.

  Reluctantly, I became aware of the hands. One pair was light and tentative, almost hesitant in the way they touched me. The other was strong, hard, deft. They held me more than was necessary, lingered in a way that, as I returned to reality, made my flesh chill. A voice that went with the hands talked at me. I couldn’t hear the words. I kept my eyes shut. But a name kept knifing into the soothing haze, jarring me to consciousness.

  “Miranda,” said the deep voice that belonged with the caressing hands. “Miranda …”

  My heart would seem to stop beating. And long warm fingers would stray over my face, my throat, pass to my breasts and down the rest of my body. What would they do if I came alive? I was afraid of the hands, though they cherished me. They didn’t belong to the face I desperately groped to remember.

  But the soft fuzziness muffling my thoughts and feelings began to fade. I began to want to see, even though it hurt. The face I wished for mightn’t ever come, I might have to search for it Only how was I to elude the hands that tended me?

  “Why shouldn’t I bed her, Doctor? It might help and it can’t hurt!”

  “A senseless woman!” protested a husky frayed tone interrupted by a harsh laugh.

  “I’ve been patient. Six weeks married and still no consummation. I’ll give it a few more days, but then I’ll have her.”

  “If she stays like this, you should have the marriage annulled,” said the other voice while I tried to understand the words.

  The owner of the strong hands laughed again. “I won’t lose her. I’d rather have her, even if she stayed just like this, than any othe
r woman.”

  “That—that’s obscene!”

  The voices went away. I opened my eyes slowly, winced at the light, but fought to pierce the murky veil shrouding my vision. Pushing up on an elbow, I bit back a groan at the sledging ache in my head. When I could bear to move, I sat up fully, stared through weaving red shadows at the white-walled room, dresser, and elaborate screen.

  Did I know this place?

  Nothing stirred memories. If I could only see the face, then I’d know, then I’d remember.

  Remember what? Sadness? My head throbbed, sending waves of nausea through me, and I lay back.

  There was a sound. The hands gripped mine and the voice that went with them said roughly, “Miranda, my darling. Miranda, my wife.”

  I looked up, through shifting mists to tawny eyes, a hard squarish face. I knew him.

  He saw that I did.

  But when a sound of pain tore from my lips as he bent over, jarring the bed, he said contritely, “Does it hurt so much, sweetheart? Never mind, just lying there as long as you have would make a person dizzy weak. Now you’re awake, you’ll soon feel good as new.”

  “Court,” I said slowly. “Your name is Court. You—you were hurt.”

  He touched his thigh. “Healed.” Strong white teeth showed for a moment. “And so is the hole you shot through my shoulder.”

  Then, as if parts of a scattered jigsaw suddenly fitted themselves together, I saw Reina dead, soldiers firing, and glimpsed, at last, the face I’d hunted in my fever dreams, a dark lean face with storm green eyes, as I’d seen it before something crashed in my head.

  “Trace!” I said.

  Court lost his smile. I felt a surge of longing and need for Trace, an equally strong fear of the big man leaning over me. His sun-bleached golden hair reminded me of a lion’s mane. I felt exposed to him, my softness undefendable, as if he might lower his mouth to my throat and tear at it.

  He did bend his head. I tried to move away, but he held me against the pillow, set his lips where the pulse leaped and pounded.

  “You’re my wife.” His words muffled against my flesh. “I’ll wait a few days more, help you get stronger. But then I’ll make you forget every man but me.”

  Though I dreaded the reaction my question might bring, I had to know. “Where is Trace?” I asked. “The fight—what happened?”

  Court released me abruptly, straightened, turned on his heel to the window. “Winslade’s dead and buried.”

  “No.”

  “Lucky for him. Or he’d be slaving in Yucatán on some henequen plantation. He wouldn’t last long. They’d beat him to death.” As I stared in puzzled horror, Court explained, and each word woke echoes in my aroused memory.

  Those of Lío’s band who hadn’t died in the battle were sent under heavy guard to Guaymas and shipped to Yucatán to be sold to great plantations, where they would work under brutal conditions till they died.

  “Yaquis don’t make good slaves,” said Court “I’ve heard two-thirds of them die inside the first year.”

  Another name stirred in the depths of my heart, a name I must call before I let myself think about Trace. “Sewa?”

  “Your little pet got away along with the women and children you hid in the mine. They’re back in the sierra.” Court smiled indulgently. “You’re thorough, sweetheart. It took the men two weeks to clear out the rocks and earth that dynamite shook loose.” He paused. “Major Ruiz doesn’t know you sheltered Yaqui families. I wouldn’t give him an excuse, love, to take a closer interest in you. He’s stationed here with a detachment that goes off Yaqui-hunting every week or so, but I believe he’s far more preoccupied with you. Most punctilious he’s been with his calls and courtesies. And unmistakably crestfallen at your slow recovery.”

  I scarcely heard all that. Sewa had escaped, and presumably so had Domingo. He’d look after her. The women and children would have a cruel time of it by themselves, but at least their men would not be attracting pursuit.

  Their men. Dead or enslaved.

  My man. Dead. Trace, to whom I was pledged with heart and body though drunken old Dr. Trent had spoken legal words binding me to this powerful man leaning over me. Court read my thoughts. His mouth twisted.

  “He’s dead, Miranda. Dead and tumbled in an arroyo where the soldiers tossed corpses and shoveled in the sides to cover them. By now worms will have eaten such of his brains as weren’t blown away with the back of his head.”

  “Trace,” I said. “Trace.”

  A vein stood out in Court’s temple, but his voice was soft, almost pitying. “Dead, Miranda. Dead and gone. Forget him. You’ll get well and strong and be happy.” His hand caressed my cheek. “I’ll take good care of you.”

  I felt cold at the words, colder at his touch, coldest when I thought of the future. Live without Trace? It seemed impossible, yet I knew I could. A matter of getting through an hour at a time, a day at a time, till there was a week, then a month, at last a year. People did it all the time. So would I. Somehow.

  But live with Court? I couldn’t and wouldn’t I’d get away. Perhaps find Sewa again and Domingo, get back to Las Coronas, and build some sort of life.…

  Life without Trace. It kept coming back to that. I needed to weep, to mourn him, but my eyes were dry. The heaviness pressing on my heart seemed to crush all feeling. Or was it the pressure of Court’s tawny eyes?

  “Rest now,” he said, trailing his fingers across my eyes. “You’ll be better soon, darling. If you knew how hard it’s been to wait—”

  I could almost have laughed. He expected me to sympathize with his frustration? Did he think I could stop loving Trace, just like that, on the snap of a finger, because he was dead? I closed my eyes against the smoldering flame in Court’s, but I couldn’t evade his lingering hands, which both chilled and burned, like ice-fire. That was the awful, treacherous thing. I wasn’t indifferent to him; in some hostile way he aroused my senses.

  That frightened me more than the inevitability of being taken by him. So long as he took without my response or encouragement, I believed I could feel separate from it, not really there. But if I answered him, even to fight, he’d have trapped me in the body he could handle and use at will.

  A sudden freezing question pierced my desperation. Court thought me a virgin. Only that had kept him from forcing me months ago. When he thrust for that membrane and found it gone, I doubted he’d believe I had lost it riding horseback or any of those other possible, implausible excuses.

  My breath slowed till it almost stopped. Court’s hand lay on my throat as a beast of prey might pin a victim. “We will be cautious,” he said. “You will get back your strength a little each day.” He buried his face against my belly and I felt his warm breath heat my skin. “For certain things, though, my energy will suffice at the moment.”

  Laughter rumbled deep in his chest. He kissed my mouth slowly, making it open to him. Then he went away.

  My head still ached and I could go only a few steps without tiring, but I was recovering from what Dr. Trent called a serious concussion caused by a soldier clubbing me with a carbine butt.

  Raquel and Chepa waited on me when Court was at the mine, Raquel with averted eyes and a resentful curve to her soft lips. When I was stronger, she might help me escape, but I dared not sound her out yet. When I asked Chepa if anything had been heard of Sewa or the others who’d hidden in the mine, Chepa gave a sad shake of her head.

  “The soldiers line up our men every week to be sure no Sierra Yaqui have slipped in. Major Ruiz’s order is that anyone giving food or shelter to the fighters will be hanged or sent to the henequen plantations.”

  “But Sewa’s a child and crippled besides!”

  “She’s with the rebels. That’s all Ruiz cares for.” We shared a heavy silence before Chepa brightened. “Domingo will take care of Sewa. She’s told me how brave and clever he is, that he will be a better leader even than Lío.”

  “Did Lío die?”

  “No. It plea
sed Ruiz to send him as a slave to Yucatán.”

  Lío a slave? He wouldn’t be one for long, I was sure of that. He would get away or resist till he was killed. Trace would have been the same; for the first time I was bitterly grateful that the man I loved had died quick and clean, been spared what Lío and the surviving men were enduring.

  And Sewa, my chosen sister-child? Domingo would look after her, and so would old Camilda. The women and children would be safer in the mountains than in settlements where they might be arrested simply because they were Yaqui.

  That evening Court helped me out on the veranda and filled goblets with wine. “To your recovery,” he toasted. He pulled a rawhide bench so close that his long upper leg pressed mine. “You’re beautiful again, Miranda. I’m rewarded for my patience.”

  “You’ve been kind.”

  “Be damned to that! I take care of my horses. Won’t I do more for my wife?”

  That was what I was’ if the words Dr. Trent had mumbled meant anything. Watching Court obliquely, I realized that if I were married to him in twenty cathedrals by twenty archbishops I’d still feel soiled and dishonored when he touched me. It wasn’t only that I didn’t love him—in my heart I belonged to Trace Winslade.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been such trouble,” I said, and changed the subject swiftly. “Court, everyone talks about slaves on the henequen plantations, but surely the Mexican constitution forbids that.”

  He stared, dumbfounded. “The constitution?”

  “Yes. Miss Mattison had me study it. She didn’t want me ignorant of my home country.”

  “As if reading a lot of high-flown words could teach you anything real!” Court scoffed when he finally stopped laughing. “All right, my earnest student On paper, Article One, Section One, it says: ‘In the Republic all are born free.’ It even adds that slaves setting foot on Mexican territory become free with a claim to protection of their liberty. And it says that no one shall be made to work without just compensation and his full consent and that no compact shall be tolerated in which a man agrees to his own exile. But my sweet naïve darling, those words mean nothing.”