Dr. Trent appeared late that afternoon, slightly disheveled, for he’d come straight from the cantina where rumors of Court’s arrest were rife. He hadn’t had time to drink to befuddlement, so I explained that I was sure the colonel would release Court by the next day.
“La mordida, hey?” rumbled the doctor. “A bribe? Disgusting, but a wonder it hasn’t happened before, what with the mine working quite a few Yaquis.” His face clouded suddenly and his watery eyes fixed on me with unusual sharpness. “Ruiz has always fancied you, Miranda. Is that beggar—”
“He’s not asking what I can’t give.”
After six years with a man I didn’t love, another night wouldn’t kill me. I’d learned to handle the unthinkable by not thinking about it—not a good choice for free people, but a way for prisoners to at least endure.
I was tempted to tell this old man who’d shared his books and thoughts with me, much lightening my captivity, that I was going away, but I feared he’d never understand and might feel he had a responsibility either to stop me or to come along. So I gave him cakes and tea and kissed him affectionately on the cheek when he departed.
“Bless us!” he said in pleased confusion. “If having old Court off the scene gets me treats like that, I don’t know why I’m worrying about it. But if you have any trouble with the colonel, Miranda, break a window or scream or something.”
I laughed and kissed him again. “There won’t be any trouble, Doctor.”
That was more confident than I felt.
Court was often needed at the mine mealtimes so when Jon asked where he was, he accepted my answer that Court was busy. We had a simple meal of soup, chicken, and fruit in the patio, I read him a story, and by twilight he was rubbing his eyes and only put up a token argument when I tucked him in. Later, after Chepa and Raquel retired, Caguama would spread his mat by Jon’s door.
I had believed myself stoically able to receive Ruiz, but as the house darkened and voices ceased, a kind of horror grew in me, dread of the colonel, fear that he might trick me, fear of the journey we faced even if everything else went smoothly; mounting irrational terror where night and Ruiz and the unknown all mingled in cold threatening darkness, surging against my intelligence and will. Each time I fought it back, a bit more of my strength crumbled, and before I could brace myself firmly, it overwhelmed me.
Lighting lamps in the sala, I poured myself a shot of straight whiskey, though usually I didn’t drink except for wine, paced out on the veranda, and sipped it, welcoming the stinging warmth that spread from throat to belly.
Better, much better. I didn’t feel so cold. How did Ruiz expect the tryst to go? I still wore my daytime dress, but a robe and some perfume might hasten the inevitable.
The only part of the impending call that I’d prepared for was pen and paper prominently laid out on a table near the decanters. If Ruiz was willing to blackmail his way into my bed, he’d hardly expect an air of high romance.
Still, appearing too much the bookkeeper might push him into reverting to his original gamble for higher stakes. I must give him enough without enflaming him to try for more by murdering Court. God, how I wished it were over, with Court’s release signed and the colonel gone! Once the journey started, this last price of freedom would fade into the limbo of the last years, become a vague bad dream no worse than many others, not as bad as some.
Why didn’t Ruiz appear? Tenseness building every second, I changed into a flowing robe of ivory satin and lace, took down my hair and brushed it. My anxiety was by now so great that I longed for the officer to come, end this suspense during which I could do nothing but waif.
Another drink might help. My hand shook as I poured the little glass half full and went back to the veranda. My eyes smarted as liquid fire burned down through my body, but by the time. I’d taken a couple of swallows my head felt ridiculously light and warmth dissolved some of the icy dread in the pit of my stomach. I felt slowed, fuzzy, almost comfortable, but my legs were treacherously refusing to support me.
Then a figure took on solidity against the shadows, wavering as I started, mind suddenly clear, though my head spun and my pace was unsteady as I moved toward the arch.
“Good evening, Colonel. May I offer you refreshment? Fruit, perhaps? Coffee, brandy?”
In the dim veranda his eyes glowed. “Your presence is refreshment enough, Doña Miranda, but I could enjoy savoring some brandy along with your beauty.”
With tremendous effort I managed to keep my balance as I preceded him into the sala, gestured to the array of decanters. “Have what you wish, Colonel.”
“Then I would wish that you call me Armando.” He smiled, glancing at the pen and paper as he poured brandy into a crystal snifter. Saluting me with his drink, he watched me as he took a slow sip. “Now let me prove, most lovely lady, that where you are concerned I am clairvoyant.”
My heart skipped, then thudded painfully. Could he have learned that I intended to vanish, that there would never be any repetition of this night? He picked up the pen, wrote, and handed the paper to me.
It was a note to Captain Ortega, ordering Court’s release, since Ruiz’s investigation had established innocence. “Does it content you, little dove?” asked the colonel. “See, your husband’s freedom is guaranteed even if I should be sleeping late in the morning, even if I should die of joy this night.” Taking the order from me, he put it beneath a bowl on the bookcase and came to stand by me, noticing the glass in my hand.
“Whiskey?” he asked, frowning. “But surely that is not your usual drink.”
I had to laugh at his disapproval. “This is not my usual way to pass an evening, Colonel.”
“Armando, por favor.”
“Armando, Colonel, señor, Commandante, Excellence.” I curtsied shakily. “Have any name you desire.”
His breath sucked in. “You are drunk. Drunk, by God! So that is how you prepare for me.” He struck the glass from my hand. It shattered on the tiles. He caught me up with a brutal laugh. “Then let’s find your bed, querida. Once I have you there, it won’t matter if you are tipsy or sober.”
He tore the robe off my shoulder, burning my throat with his lips. I moaned and struggled involuntarily as his mouth settled on my breast and he ripped the satin from my body, caressing me with savagely questing hands.
“I will make you drunk indeed,” he whispered, laughing deep in his throat. “Fight if you like, Mirandita, it makes your honey sweeter. Ah, that honey! Soon I will have the taste of all of you—”
There was impact I heard and felt, a convulsion of his body, a tightening of his arms before he half-turned, dropped me, pitched forward on his face.
Caguama stood there, a rough ironwood mallet in his hand. Ruiz twitched forward, head lolling. Caguama struck him again at the base of the neck. The officer’s whole body shuddered and went still.
“You are not hurt, lady?” asked Caguama.
“No.” And I couldn’t be sorry Ruiz was dead. My thoughts flew past him to what must be done. “It would be well if Ruiz’s death seems an accident. Put a bottle of whiskey in his hand and tumble him off the nearest slope. I’ll dress and get Jon ready and we’ll go as quickly as we can.”
“The señor?”
I took the release order from the bookcase. “In the morning Dr. Trent will take this to Captain Ortega, who, I imagine, will be glad to have Señor Sanders out of his custody so neatly.” I wondered that I felt no regret or horror as I passed Ruiz’s corpse, but instead a trick of memory put me back in the crowd, unable to help, the day Cruz burned; he had made no sound, but the smell filled my nostrils till I forced that image away and tapped on Raquel’s door.
Half an hour later, Caguama holding a drowsy Jon in Cascos Lindos’ saddle, we struck northwest, avoiding the garrison and village, where a few lights and fires glowed.
Waterskins sloshed and I often got off and walked. We weren’t trying for speed. Court would almost surely echo Raquel’s assumption that we were bound for Hermosill
o and then Arizona. By the time he cooled on that scent, I hoped to be in California. Caguama obliterated our tracks by dragging an acacia bough over them, a precaution I thought we could safely drop after we’d traveled ten miles.
It had been a problem, what to tell Jon. Court to him was an indulgent demigod but not involved in his intimate small-boy life. I certainly couldn’t tell Jon, not for years if ever, the real story of my marriage, though I planned someday to tell him about his true father. It seemed best to stick to a few facts, answer questions honestly, and hope that Jon was so young that this flight would make sense to him.
I had told him as I helped him dress that Caguama was showing us the way to California because I couldn’t agree with Papa that he should go away to school.
“Papa will be angry,” Jon remarked.
“Yes, he will, but I don’t think he has the right to make such a decision.” A sudden thought struck me and I caught his hands. “Would you rather do what he says, Jon? Are you afraid to go with me?”
“Caguama’s going?”
“Yes.” Court would be furious to know that a Seri led him in his supposed son’s affections.
Jon hugged me hard. “I want to go with you, Mama. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. Maybe we can kill a shark with my harpoon.”
“Gracious, I hope not. Here, stamp down hard in the boot.”
Ruiz’s killing and the need for immediate action had dispelled my slight tipsiness. The air was cool and the summer heat wouldn’t become formidable till late morning when it should be safe enough to rest. The full moon washed rocks, brush, stunted trees, and cholla with luminous silver. We seemed to move in a dream across an eerie landscape that stayed remarkably the same, exchanging one line of small jagged hills for another as we kept to the passes or high plateaus.
Yet, though the surroundings seemed unreal, that sense of awakened life after years of mechanical functioning permeated every tissue of my body and brain. I breathed deep; my blood tingled, objects stood out in sharp relief. Could it make so much difference, acting from my own will rather than Court’s?
It seemed to. I was excited and eager more than afraid. Jon perked up and chatted with Caguama for a while, demanding to hear tales of the country we would traverse, before he nodded off to sleep again, secure on the back of his beloved burro. That reminded me of Cascos Lindos’ first owner, Sewa. Strange to think that a leader of warriors had once doted on a little donkey called Ratoncita, shot by Reina and replaced by the sturdy animal clopping surefootedly along.
Did Sewa remember those days? How did she think of me? In my rush of revived feeling, I ached to see her and wondered if that could ever be. If Court divorced me and lost his legal authority over me, it would be possible to return to Mexico, possible, perhaps, to find Sewa again. If she wanted to be found. Was she truly La Grulla?
But that lay far ahead. I walked till my feet hurt, rode till my thighs ached, then walked some more while the Big Dipper swung slowly around and the Polestar glittered. Out here one was very conscious of the sky.
At last I had to call a halt. Caguama could probably have walked till this time tomorrow night, but I mustn’t exhaust myself and be a hindrance later. We ate and drank sparingly, rested a half-hour, and started on, paused again at sunrise, took off the animals’ packs, and let them browse for an hour. I worried about their water, but Caguama said there was a seep-filled spring halfway through the next defile, and anyway the burros could last for several waterless days.
It was by this little water hole nestled between steep canyon walls that we made our long stop shortly before noon. The burros sucked up water and rolled in the sand, meandered along the valley, browsing off trees and shrubs. Even after six years in Mexico, I couldn’t believe how animals subsisted, and wondered what they’d do if they were miraculously set down in a lush English meadow.
Wetting a cloth in the seep, I washed Jon and told him to lie on the blanket Caguama had spread under a rock outcropping shielded by an ironwood tree. After I had cleaned off my own top layer of dust and perspiration, I wrung out the cloth in more water and stretched it over Jon’s forehead. He was flushed and there was no breeze at all.
I poured some of our drinking water on the dried fruit to soften and swell it. Caguama said that the seep water, though drinkable, could give us stomach cramps and that we should use our own supply since we’d reach sweet water in two days and could refill our bags then.
I looked at him with great respect and thankfulness, laughed ruefully. “Caguama, it’s good to know there’s water two days from here, and that you can find it. If you hadn’t come with us, I’m afraid that right about now is when I’d decide that I mustn’t risk causing Jon’s death and I’d turn back.”
“But I am I here,” Caguama pointed out. “And my people have lived along this coast since the world was set up, when the great turtle raised up the land on her back. We know what we must know to stay alive.”
We ate softened fruit and chewed the leathery dried meat. “Sleep, lady,” urged Caguama. “I will rest down the canyon a little way so that I will hear anything approaching.”
I scrambled under the ledge beside Jon, made a hollow in the fine silt for my hip, and was asleep before I could feel uncomfortable.
It seemed only minutes before I roused to the muffled sound of the burros’ feet. They were drinking again. Lifting Jon, I gave Caguama the blanket to go into a pack and helped Jon get on his boots. The sun was still too handbreadths above the horizon, but the grilling heat was over till next morning.
Freshened by his nap, Jon peppered Caguama with rapid-fire questions. How far was the sea? Would we meet Caguama’s family? Would he make a boat? Where were the sharks? To this flood of queries Caguama responded with patience, promising that when we reached the sea we would feast.
Cabrilla, pompano, pargo flamenco, blanquillo, ronco, sardina, salema, corvina—hundreds of kinds of fish whose names made a song; lobster, turtles, and there were clams to be picked up, scallops pried from rocks in the sea.
“We never understood why people bother with cattle and plowing when there is so much to eat in the sea,” said Caguama, grinning. “Ever since the Ancient of All Pelicans flapped his wings, there have been sea and sky. It was only later that the giant sea turtle heaved up from the sea to make land.” He added, being fair, “Of course, along the coast there is not much for cows to eat and the land is not good to farm. Those who want herds and crops must go inland, where they can’t watch the sea.”
The note of longing made me say, “You must have missed it very much, Caguama.”
“Yes. I was taken by the Army while I was working for a rancher near Caborca, saving for a bride. Brides are expensive. I thought to pay in silver rather than by working for her family for many years.”
“Do you think she will still be unmarried?”
“For sure she is gone by now. But I have saved most of my wages. If I go back to my people one day, I can have the prettiest girl to be found.”
“You won’t go back soon, Caguama?” beseeched Jon. “I’d be lonesome without you, especially since we’ve left Mina Rara.”
“Jon, don’t be selfish,” I admonished, but Caguama grinned pleasedly and gave Jon’s head a caress.
“I will stay till you no longer need me,” he promised. “The sea will wait. But it will be good to smell the water again and eat what we’ll catch in my net. I’ll show you how to cast it, Juanito.”
Jon gave a wiggle of excitement and I was glad he had the promise of adventures to help him endure the relentless traveling we must keep to for at least a few more days.
We rested that day in a cave hollowed by the elements in the side of a craggy mountain. Down in a wash Caguama dug in the silt till he reached wet sand. Gradually it filled with water, and the burros could drink.
“It’s the rainy season,” Caguama explained. “Water runs off fast, but some sinks down and it’s not too hard to reach it now. In dry time—” He shrugged expressively.
>
When Jon and I woke, a breeze was stirring the heat, breaking its suffocating intensity, and there was something else different, a tantalizing odor of a fragrant mesquite fire.
Jon sprang up, sniffing, and would have made for the small fire over which browning meat sputtered on a wood spit if I hadn’t hauled him back to put on his boots.
“Didn’t you sleep?” I reproached Caguama, pulling on my own boots and pushing back my hair. How stiff and dirty it felt! When we reached that good plentiful water promised for tomorrow, I would wash my hair and bathe. I had brought two bars of perfumed soap.
“I set a snare,” He laughed. “It took a rabbit while I dreamed of harpooning turtles.”
Very good rabbit it was, flavored with wild herbs, and we had dessert, too, for after we started out we found wild fig trees, roots white and gnarled as their trunks, exposed for a hundred feet down the side of the cliff. Caguama scaled up and brought down several handfuls of small figs. We munched some and saved the rest.
We had a rifle, but Caguama didn’t want to use it for fear of attracting attention. “Wild pig is good meat,” he said. “But not worth using a rifle and I don’t have a bow.” He touched the ironwood mallet with which he’d killed Ruiz. “I might kill pig with this, but they are mean and have very wicked teeth.”
“We have plenty of food,” I comforted. “Besides, won’t we soon be eating those wonderful fish?”
Next day, when the noon heat was making Jon look alarmingly flushed and my lips were so cracked and sore that I could scarcely move them, we ascended a ravine that dropped away into a small high amphitheater of rocks. Strange formations reared among clumps of real grass and several large mesquite trees cast inviting shade. Most delicious of all was a series of small pools scattered in rock hollows and fed from a spring in the cliff.
A Lady Bought with Rifles Page 31