Dr. Trent rode home one sunset when the mountain shone like gold. I was standing alone on the veranda, recognized the shape of his hat, the hunch of his shoulders as his horse jogged along.
Running to meet him, I caught his hand and squeezed it anxiously. “Did you find Lío, Doctor? Did you get him free?”
Grunting, the doctor slid down from his rawboned bay, turned it over to one of the boys who came running to earn a few centavos by rubbing down and watering the mount.
“Throat’s parched, my dear,” coughed the doctor.
“I’ll give you some whiskey, anything you want,” I cried in an agony of impatience, trying to hurry his steps. “But please tell me. Lío?”
“Drink first.”
I flew ahead and got out whiskey and a glass, added water, and handed it to the doctor as he came through the arch. His hands shook, but after several deep swallows he looked better, sank down in one of the rawhide chairs.
“Did you find Lío?”
I thought I’d scream as Dr. Trent took several long swallows. He set down the glass and folded my hands in his trembly ones.
“Lío’s dead, Miranda.”
“Dead? You—you’re sure?”
“You knew him. Can you imagine he would make a slave?”
“He might have if he thought he could get away sometime and fight again.”
The doctor sighed, stroking my head as hot tears squeezed from my eyes. “He interfered with the whipping of a friend too sick to work, killed the manager, and was overwhelmed.”
I bowed my head and wept. Lío had been a brave man and as tender as he dared. “But I bought out his men,” the doctor went on. “Those that were left after the journey by boat and six weeks in the henequen hells. I bought fifteen men for eight hundred dollars each and brought them by train almost to Hermosillo, pretending that they were workers of mine. For a small bribe the train engineer stopped an hour outside Hermosillo and let me and my ‘peons’ off. I gave them food and water and advised them to get as far back into the sierra as they could and stay there.”
“You warned them that Ruiz is stationed at the mine? If he knew they had come back—”
“He won’t learn from me,” the doctor vowed. “With Lío gone, I doubt they’ll do much raiding. There’ll be the women and children of their dead comrades to look after, and with winter coming on, they’ll care more about surviving than harrowing the federales.”
My heart was sore for Lío, but I prayed that somehow, in the afterlife the Yaquis called “Glory,” he could know his men were free and back in the sierra.
“The man for whom Lío killed the manager—did you buy him out?” I asked.
Dr. Trent shook his head. “That one escaped, God knows how. He must have had some outside help. Altogether strange how he got mixed up with them in the first place. He was an American who’d brought them guns—Miranda! What’s wrong, child?”
“His name?” I felt as if I were choking, as if iron fingers pressed my throat and heart. “What was his name?”
“Winslade.” Dr. Trent peered at me anxiously, forced me to take a sip of his whiskey. “Miranda, you look as if you have a fever. Come, my girl, let me tuck you in—”
“I—I’m all right. It’s just that I—I know this man. He got away? You’re sure?”
“He escaped from the plantation. That was all anyone knew.”
“I thought he was dead.”
The doctor shrugged. “He may well be by now. That’s wretched country and he’d have to hide from the authorities.”
“But he may be alive.” The blinding joy of that momentarily drove out all other concerns. Trace wasn’t dead. He’d survived the battle, escaped the plantation. There was a chance I might see him again. Dr. Trent’s watery gray eyes studied me shrewdly, touched my waist, then traveled back to my face.
“Miranda, aren’t you going to have a baby?”
“I—I think so.”
“Then shouldn’t your husband be the first to know?” chuckled a voice from the arch. Court strode in and drew me to my feet. “Congratulations, love.” Kissing me soundly, he held me close and laughed possessively as he turned to the doctor. “I’m glad you’re back, sir, to help me take care of my wife. I could have wished this to be a year or so in the future, but one must needs rejoice in what is, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, by all means,” fuddled the doctor. “By all means.”
“And we must drink to my son,” proposed Court expansively. “For it will be a son.” He filled the doctor’s glass, made a drink for himself, and the two of them toasted me while I shrank against the wall.
A baby. Yes, I was to have a baby. It might be Trace’s. And Trace was alive—or at least, he might be. He hadn’t died in the battle.
Court had lied to me. He had cruelly let me think Trace was dead. In that moment I loathed the tall handsome man who had let the one he knew I loved be sent to Yucatán. While Court had made love to me, yes, even sometimes when I was responding to his skill, Trace was being beaten or forced to brutal labor. Court had known. Known all the time.
He was asking the doctor about his errand, nodding approval that it was completed. “I’m glad Lío’s dead. The others shouldn’t create a problem, especially not after they’ve had a taste of Yucatán, eh?”
I leaned against the door, fighting waves of nausea, hatred so bitter that it left a taste like alum in my mouth. “Court, I must speak with you.”
“Of course, darling.” How that proud husbandly smile made me despise him! “I’ll join you in a moment and you can give me your news. Here, Doctor, tell me what you thought of Yucatán. Those hacendados live in great state, I’m told. American Cordage Trust buys half the henequen output of Yucatán, and from the way those plantations go through slaves, the demand must be holding up.”
My knees threatened to give way. There was scalding acridness in my throat. I fled to my room and was rackingly sick, vomiting into the washbasin till spasmodic heaving brought up only bile. I was still crouched there when Court came in.
“What, my love? Morning sickness in the evening?” He wet a towel and sponged my face, guided me to the bed. “Lie down. I’ll call Chepa to tidy up. Do you want the doctor?”
“N-no,” I managed.
“You had better have just clear broth tonight,” Court worried, drawing a chair up by the bed and taking my hand. “I don’t suppose you know much more about this than I do. We’ll have to rely on the doctor and take great care of you.”
Skin crawling at his touch, I jerked my hand away and sat up, strengthened by a furious sense of betrayal. “You lied to me, Court. You told me Trace was dead.”
Golden eyes dilated and the edges of Court’s nostrils went white. “Isn’t he?”
“You knew he wasn’t killed in the fight. You knew he was sent to Yucatán.”
“He was?” There was no doubt that Court was as shocked as I had been earlier. Suddenly, he swore. “Why, that money-loving bastard. He sold the same man twice.”
“What do you mean?”
Court didn’t answer, but I understood. “You—you paid someone to kill him. He lived through the battle, but you wanted to be sure he was dead.”
“Yes. Not that I wouldn’t have been glad for him to taste the lash and crawl, but I preferred to be sure he was out of the way for good.” Court stiffened. “My God, that fool doctor didn’t buy him out?”
“No. He got away.”
Court shrugged and looked relieved. “Then he is dead. No one comes back from Yucatán. He’ll starve or be caught and turned in for the reward paid for runaway slaves. Better for him if Ruiz had ordered him cleanly killed.”
“He’s alive. I’ll believe that from now on till I see his body.”
“Believe what you please.” Court shrugged. “What difference does it make?”
That mocking question, my impotence, and the danger of Trace’s position if indeed he still lived wrung from me the snarling moan of a trapped, defiant animal. “I’ll ha
te you more than ever. And despise you, too, for taking a woman you knew belonged to someone else.”
Court paled, though he retained his jeering smile. “Your ferocity will ebb as your womb grows with my child. A woman needs protection at such a time, a safe nest for her baby. You’ll be glad then that you’re here with me, not in the sierra with convicts.”
“It may not be your child,” I hissed. “Have you thought of that?”
“Whore!” He brought back his hand, slapped me so hard I reeled backward, fell on the bed. “It is my child. My child, do you hear?”
“Hearing has nothing to do with it.” Raising on one arm, I laughed in his face in spite of the slow warm blood trickling from my cut lip. “Being pregnant by you should sicken me, but not this quickly, I think.”
Court shook me till my wild laughter splintered to silence in my throat. Holding me in his bruising fingers, he spoke in a jerky guttural way. “This will be my child, damn you! And you will never hint again that it isn’t.”
Though I was frightened and in pain from his hands, the hope that Trace lived gave me courage. “You think too little of my love,” I said. “And too much of your power.”
“Do I?” The pupils widened till only a rim of hot gold showed around them. He laughed savagely. “Oh, no, beloved. It is you who hasn’t understood.”
“Understood what?”
“You will stay with me. You will bear my child. You will study to please me and deserve my favor and forgiveness.”
“I—will—not!”
“But you will, Miranda.” His tone was caressing but edged with steely finality. “This is why. Listen for I won’t explain again. Comfort yourself as an obedient wife and mother of my child, or I’ll tell Ruiz certain rebel Yaquis are in the mountains, and I’ll offer an irresistible reward for the head of a certain tejano. This time there will be no survivors, not even that little cripple you doted on.”
I stared at him, wanting to protest, to cry out that he wouldn’t do it. But I knew he would. He would kill my love, grind Sewa, in the dust, slaughter Lío’s remaining band.
So I must obey him.
The only comfort I had was that Trace might live and that his child was almost surely growing in me. Court placed one hand on my breast.
It was the motion of a lion claiming its prey.
Two
Trace
15
Man is a counting animal. At first Trace counted days. Four days packed in a government ship from Guaymas to San Bias. Twenty days of being driven on foot through the mountains from the port of San Marcos, then crammed into trains that traveled to Mexico City and changed lines for Veracruz. Three days from Veracruz to Progreso in a freight steamer. One day more to the plantation, Mariposa.
Thirty-six days from Mina Rara to Yucatán, from being free to being a slave, from counting days to counting henequen leaves, the lashes that fell on a man’s back before he fainted.
Two thousand leaves a day, or the lash. That was the kind of mathematics learned quickly by even the dullest malnourished man. Or woman or child, for they, too, hacked at the thick, saw-toothed leaves.
Forty-two leaves on a henequen plant. Twelve to be cut off at the root, the spearlike tip and edges trimmed and placed in a bundle, which, when big enough, was carried to the end of the row to be collected by a movable-track mule-car line.
Thirty leaves exactly must be left on each plant. You were beaten for twenty-nine, beaten for thirty-one. Other plantation counting was simpler. Hours were from the dimmest morning light to the faintest twilight. There was one meal a day and a lump of fermented dough.
No, the important numbers—two thousand leaves a day, twelve from each plant—were taught in the field by the foreman or capataz’s cane. More advanced lessons were given in the clearing by the living quarters.
The whips were made of henequen, braided thick and heavy for their special work, dipped in water to make them cut deeper. It was the fifth morning after Lío’s band arrived at Mariposa that Trace counted lashes.
They’d been given three days to learn their task before the full stint was required of them. On this day of their expected “graduation” they gathered in the clearing for roll call after the bell sounded at a time Trace knew was not yet four.
Lanterns hung from the commissary, flickering on the hundreds of slaves. Eight hundred, someone had said. Most were Mayas, descendants of the people who had once ruled this part of Mexico, but several hundred were Yaquis and there were perhaps forty Chinese. And one stupid gringo, Trace thought dourly. He ached all over from hacking henequen sixteen hours at a stretch, but he’d done his two thousand leaves yesterday, damn them, and he’d do whatever he had to in order to live and get out of this place.
Live to see Miranda. Hold her again. Fear gripped him as it always did when he remembered how she’d fallen, struck down by a clubbed rifle. He was trying to reach her when he’d been creased by a bullet. When he’d roused, guarded with the rest of the prisoners, he’d asked how she was, but the soldiers weren’t answering questions.
She was alive, though. Had to be. For he was going back, sometime, somehow. A whispering ran through the ragged crew.
“Going to be a cleaning up,” muttered the thin pockmarked man beside him.
The top bastards stood up front, facing the listless workers. Maybe thirty men with the power to beat, starve, or kill any or all of the slaves: the administrador, or manager, with his neat moustache; the mayordomo primero, or superintendent; his assistants, the mayordomos segundos; and the capataces, including the one who had already raised a weal on Trace’s shoulders for faulty trimming of a leaf.
We ought to rush them, he thought.
Trace looked around. Was it only because he knew Lío’s men that they retained individuality for him? The old-time hands—tall, short, Chinese, Maya, or Yaqui—seemed to wear masks, or perhaps the masks had become their faces. Hopeless and, except for the Yaquis, trained from childhood to work and obey, they would, at a word from their masters, overwhelm any rebels. Even Trace knew that killing overseers would bring ruthless retaliation from Army and police. If a man had to die, he might as well take along a few of those smug sons of bitches. But a man hoped not to die.…
Miranda. Miranda. Sweet and bracing as the scent of acacia after rain in the desert. Till he came to this thick-aired muggy green hell, he hadn’t guessed how the harsh clean beauty of the desert had entered his soul. And Miranda was honey in the rocks, a bloom among the thorns.
“Lío Tercero,” called the administrador, “step forward!”
Lío came out the crowd, squarish head high. Not a slave, Trace thought with a thrill of admiration. That one will never be a slave. And he understood why two-thirds of the Yaquis died during their first year on the plantations.
“Take off your shirt,” ordered the administrador. “You have not fulfilled your stint, lazy dog. But you will learn.”
Lío didn’t move. Several foremen tore off his flimsy white shirt. The administrador barked another name. A Chinese of immense proportions stepped into the clearing. He towered for a moment over Lío; then, face impassive, he stooped, gripped Lío by the wrists, and straightened.
Trace understood then.
The majador, or whipper, bent over a bucket and dragged out three dripping ropes. He chose one, dropped the others back.
No one was sleepy now. At sight of the whip, a moaning gasp stirred through the men as if their scarred backs cringed from that three-foot-long rope plaited from the fiber they slaved to harvest.
The administrador pulled out his watch, motioned with one slim finger. The majador lifted his arm, brought the whip down with slashing force. Lío’s body convulsed, a sighing breath rose from the slaves whose bodies seemed to sway in an echo of that blow.
The inside of Trace’s mouth filled with blood. He was biting the inside of his cheeks, clenching his fists. It seemed forever before the administrador signaled the second blow. More of the plantation’s arithmetic, Trace dec
ided, as he realized there was a precise space between each descent of the rope. It must hurt more that way, drag out the torment.
How long would it last? Lío had not made a sound, though his body, unsupported by his feet, contracted involuntarily with each blow. On the sixth lash the brown skin showed flecks of blood that expanded into trickles. On the seventh, Lío’s back seemed to spasm, go into muscular twitches as if it had become something separate from the man.
On the eighth …
Trace didn’t know how he reached the majador. Only that he had wrenched the whip away, lashed out with it at his own capataz, who closed in on him with the mayordomos and other foremen.
For a moment he held them at bay with the rope before he cracked it into the snarling face of the nearest man, let it drop and felled his capataz with a blow in the windpipe.
Heedless of the canes that whistled down around his head and shoulders, Trace fought savagely. He’d pay for this, they might kill him. So he’d better make it good. If he could just get through to that damned administrador with his needle-thin moustache and gold watch, his almost dainty finger that signaled down the rope till it dripped with blood as well as water.
Over the shouting men, the administrador’s black eyes met Trace’s, held a gleam of—mockery? Excitement? Then something struck the back of Trace’s head. He felt his legs dissolve, fell forward under a hail of blows and kicks.
Incredible pain seared his back, pierced him awake with his own cry. In spite of blurred vision and the sledging ache in his head, he knew where he was even before his mouth tasted the sweat of the back it pressed against. He ground back a scream, heard a swish close by, the unmistakable impact, once heard, of wet rope on flesh. Through a weaving red mist, Trace saw Lío, still on the Chinese’s broad back. A capataz had taken over the whip.
That meant …
The third blow. Trace’s body jerked. Was he bleeding yet? How many lashes?
A Lady Bought with Rifles Page 24