A Lady Bought with Rifles

by Jeanne Williams

  We passed the place where I’d wounded Court a few days before Reina and the soldiers descended on the mine, but it was farther up among heaps of gleaming quartz-studded rock that I reined in the chestnut mare, turned to gaze at Mina Rara, glistening like a mountain of gold.

  Women always look back, even when fleeing Sodom. The settlement in the valley looked much as it had when I first saw it six years ago, except for the garrison sprawled above the village.

  “Will we be coming back, Mama?” asked Jon restlessly. Boys don’t look behind them. Or much ahead either. This was the first question he’d asked about the future.

  “I hope we can live somewhere at Las Coronas, Jon.”

  “Where he can’t find us?”

  Oh, most especially where he can’t find us.

  I nodded and we rode on. I wanted to say to Jon, Away from the trail is a shallow cave where powdery sand is blue and gold and crimson. That’s where your father made me a woman, where you were conceived by my dear love whose eyes and mouth and hair you have, whom you will never know.

  This high stony road I’d traveled with Trace brought him strongly back. His arms and mouth, memories I usually forced away, haunted me now. For a time I again tasted his loss, lived it in flesh that stirred at the thought of him and smoldered when my mind tried to quench its unreasoning need.

  I must stop that. He had given me a son, something of him to breathe and laugh and live; he hadn’t perished utterly, and for that I must be glad. Bringing my attention back to the trail, I realized that we couldn’t be far from where we should descend to the small hills stretching between these mountains and the palisaded ranges to the southeast where the Yaquis hid. As I stared, I seemed to recognize the distant silhouette of peaks by the gorge that led tortuously into the basin.

  With that for a guide, I studied the jagged hills between, the maze of arroyos, and tried to plan the best route. I knew all too well that once down where the small hills towered above us, where one arroyo branched into several or ended abruptly, finding our way would be vastly different from spying it at this eagle’s height. But it also seemed that if we kept to the right of the most continuous sawtooth of hills, we couldn’t fetch up far from the narrow pass leading into the Yaqui fastness.

  I pointed this out to Jon, who squinted his eyes and nodded gravely. He had smuggled a melon from the kitchen. Dismounting, I took this from the bag holding it behind my saddle and cut it open. Jon and I had a few juicy bites and he fed the rest to his burra and the mare while I got out cheese and tortillas. After a drink of water we left the high trail and started down the mountain.

  The only thing wrong with my plan was that ridges and arroyos that had looked unimpressive from above frequently became impassable and we had to loop out from the landmark hills. In spite of this we made good time. The sun was still above the crags when we approached the rearing granite cliffs. But where along this serried mass was the defile?

  As we rode along the escarpment and every fissure ended in solid rock, I began to worry. Had I been wrong about the guardian silhouette? Was the passage in the opposite direction? Suppose we couldn’t find it by nightfall and had to stay along the cliffs till morning, losing much of our time advantage?

  “Mama,” worried Jon dramatically, “do you think someone exploded up the pass and it’s not there?”

  “You’re a comfort,” I said tersely.

  “Cascos Lindos might remember,” he ventured.

  I smiled in spite of my growing concern. “She’s a fantastic beast, Jon, but that’s expecting rather much.”

  As if to refute my words, the burra slanted her ears and speeded its pace, passing the mare to round a spill of boulders and disappear.

  “She did remember, Mama!” Jon’s voice trailed back. “She found the way through the cliffs!”

  Heart lifting, I sent the chestnut after the little donkey. We passed by what seemed to be impenetrable barrier till a sudden jog revealed a narrow way. Not far from that was a spring—what the burra must have scented—where our animals drank and we rested for a bit, lying back on-smooth broad stones warmed by sun but not unpleasantly so since it only reached them a few hours in the middle of the day. A breeze whispered.

  So good to rest. But we must move along. If we approached the retreat after dark, we might be killed before we could make ourselves known.

  “Let’s go, Jon,” I said, stretching and sitting up.

  I blinked and looked again. Into the barrel of a pointed rifle.

  After the first shocked moment in which I instinctively drew Jon to me, I stared into the brown face with a hope for recognition while I tried to remember.

  Had I seen this man before? I thought I had but could not be certain. Slowly, I greeted him in Yaqui.

  He frowned, glancing about. The rifle never wavered. “You are alone? You and this child?” When I didn’t understand all the Yaqui, he repeated in Spanish.

  “We are alone. I seek La Grulla or Domingo or anyone of Lío’s band.”

  “Lío?” questioned the guard sharply. “What do you know of him?”

  “That he is dead,” I answered. “Dead in Yucatán. But I believe he was my friend. When I was here six years ago, my name was Miranda Greenleaf.”

  The man nodded and uncocked the rifle, swinging it over his back. His eyes lit with excitement his tone tried to suppress. “I remember you now. You were to die at dawn in place of your sister, and you were kind to La Grulla when she was a girl. You are the one Yaquis call the Lady Bought with Rifles.”

  He made a whistling trill like a bird, was answered, and gave a satisfied nod. “Rosalio will watch the pass.”

  “I have come to say that soldiers will be hunting you. I think they cannot start before tomorrow from Mina Rara, so there should be a day but—”

  “Rosalio will guard.” The sentinel handed me the chestnut’s reins. “Let us go quickly to La Grulla.”

  As we followed the labyrinthine way into the stronghold, our guide asked no questions and answered mine with monosyllables or “La Grulla can tell you better than I,” till I fell silent and watched how the highest peaks were tipped with gold though the rest were in shadow. It took me back to that morning when I waited for the sunrise and thought it my last.

  But Cruz had come. And Lío had traded my life for the rifles Trace had brought from Arizona. The day I went to what I thought was freedom was the last time I’d seen Trace, except for that one brief glimpse in the battle.

  We were entering a wider part of the canyon and were suddenly in the basin. Maize, beans, melons, and squash grew in fields protected from goats and horses by ocotillo fences. The makeshift shelters of six years ago were replaced with stone and adobe houses.

  At sight of us, children stopped playing and ran to their homes or the ramadas, where people stopped cooking or talking to turn toward us.

  I strained to make out faces, but none were distinct. Then a young woman came forward, moving with a certain unevenness, using a staff, a raven on her shoulder. It had to be Sewa. I swung down from my horse.

  The man behind her—tall, familiar in a way that wrenched my heart even as my dazed eyes refused to believe that black hair, long mouth, blue-green gaze.

  My knees went weak. I held to the saddle horn for support, trying to get my breath.

  Trace. He wasn’t dead. I started to call his name, then realized the shattering truth. He had escaped from Yucatán, been alive these years, and hadn’t tried to see me, hadn’t sent a message. While I mourned him for dead, felt the vital secret core of my own life had ended with him, he’d been here.

  I looked at Sewa, the strong but delicate flower face, the lithe graceful body that was very much a woman’s. The maiming of her foot only added a charming hesitation to her walk.

  Shocked with pain as if a broad curved sword had ripped me from belly to breast. I watched them come, knew they were lovers, but couldn’t hate them, though I ached with jealousy and hurt. They were both my loves; that didn’t change, tho
ugh for pride’s sake Trace mustn’t know how I felt.

  Commanding all my strength and will, I managed to let go of the saddle and clasp Sewa in my arms as Ku flapped down, squawking at being displaced.

  “Miranda!” she cried, and we both wept.

  But not for long. There was the sound of running feet. Jon’s voice shrilled, “I know you. You’re my real father. Mama thought you were dead.”

  “Jon!” I gasped.

  He plunged on, heedless. “Why didn’t you come get us?” Then, more slowly as if the terrible incomprehensible adult world was about to deal him another blow he couldn’t understand, “Don’t you want us?”

  Trace picked up his son, holding him close. “I didn’t know about you, niño.” He stared at me in bafflement. “What’s all this, Miranda?”

  Sewa looked from Trace to Jon and back to me. “There have been mistakes,” she said painfully. “We must find the truth.”

  My head was in a spin. Tears came to my eyes at seeing Jon where he belonged, in Trace’s arms. There could be no argument that they were flesh of each other’s flesh. But if Trace no longer loved me—I put away that jumble and turned to Sewa.

  “I’ve come to tell you soldiers from Mina Rara are hunting you. Court has bribed their commander to make a thorough job of it.”

  She was at once the leader. “How many? When?”

  I told all I knew and her brows knit together. “I must find Domingo, Rosalio, and Tomás,” she said. “You also, Trace. But first you and Miranda—and your son—must talk.”

  She moved away, collecting her bird. The limp seemed more pronounced, but perhaps that was a trick of my bewildered senses. Trace took a deep sighing breath and put Jon down, gripped me by the shoulders. His touch sent liquid fire coursing through me, burning out the welter of confusion.

  “Whatever, whyever, however!” he said huskily. “I’m going to do one thing if I die for it.”

  His mouth took mine, his hard strong body pressed achingly close, and I was the cup from which he drank, his sustenance, while my starved self received like physical nourishment his passion and need and tenderness.

  “You thought I was dead?” he whispered at last. “Oh, Miranda. Couldn’t you feel me wanting you?”

  I had believed him dead because he didn’t come for me. The reasons he hadn’t were simple enough, once explained, with Jon between us, his arms around this miraculously discovered father, who kept smiling at him, touching his hair as if he couldn’t believe he existed.

  Sewa hadn’t known under what compulsion I married Court, only that I had. Even then, when Trace returned from Yucatán, he’d longed for me and resolved after many struggles with his pride to find some way to speak with me, but the messenger he’d sent to arrange a tryst learned I had a baby and reported to Trace. Never dreaming the child was his, Trace concluded bitterly that I’d succumbed to Court’s charm and was content.

  Besides, vowed to aid Lío’s band, he couldn’t promise me even safety. So he’d tried, to put me out of his heart.

  “It didn’t work,” he said, tracing my face with his hand.

  All these years … A wave of tumultuous sorrow for the lost time swept through me but subsided in the ocean-deep joy and peace of being with him. Then I remembered Sewa. It was a question I had to ask.

  “Trace, it—it’s been a long time. Are you free?”

  He gathered me to him, bringing Jon into our embrace, though his mouth told me it couldn’t be long till we merged in a way that excluded all the rest of the world.

  “There has never been any doubt that I loved you. If we come through this alive, you’ll be mine.”

  “Sewa—”

  “Sewa is a wonderful person. And she loves you.” He glanced toward the group by the nearest ramada. “Come along. We’d better join the council.”

  22

  “Eighty soldiers,” pondered Domingo.

  Like Sewa, he was easily recognizable, though he had grown to man’s height and was muscled like a puma. He had bent his face to my hands, greeted Jon warmly, and now everyone was intent on Ortega’s invasion.

  I had expected them to melt away into the ravines and higher mountains, but no one suggested this, except as a luring tactic.

  “Court will suspect I’ve come here,” I said hopefully. “It may be that Ortega won’t attack if he thinks you’re warned.”

  “In that case, good,” said wizened, monkeylike Rosalio, who, with Tomás, had thanked me for buying his freedom from the henequen plantation. “But if he comes, that can be better. We are twenty-four rifles. We can pick them off once they are in the canyon. Not a one will live.”

  Tomás spat. “We can deal with eighty, maybe twice that. But then what? Ortega’s superiors would have to make reprisals for such a defeat. Our mountains would swarm with soldiers. Even if we survived by some wonder, the government would punish any Yaquis they could seize.”

  It was a forceful argument. No one spoke for a while. The germ of an idea worked in my mind, suddenly took form. “But if Ortega attacked a peaceful ranch,” I said, “if the ranch people, armed and vigilant because of frequent bandit raids, fought the soldiers, thinking them bandits, for surely the Army would not battle law-abiding citizens—”

  “What ranch?” Rosalio demanded. “What citizens?”

  Trace nodded slowly. “It might work. We could leave a trail even the Army could follow. Probably the best place to draw them would be to the horse camp. Most of us could take cover in the buildings, but enough could hide in the arroyo leading to Cruz’s canyon to make sure that no one escaped. For this plan to work, there must be no soldier left to say they followed Yaquis.” His mouth thinned. “Miranda, of course, must send a most indignant message to the general-in-chief of the First Military Zone, demanding to know why her ranch was set upon. What is it to her that this Ortega was reportedly planning to rebel, get a jump on other revolutionaries? Why should he decide to start his lawless career on her ranch?”

  Domingo said admiringly, “The general will most humbly beg her pardon. And if he wonders why a small ranch force could overcome trained soldiers, no doubt he will be too furious at their treachery to care much.”

  It was decided that the women and children would take the animals and refuge in a smaller, even less accessible valley till word came that the danger was past. If that word didn’t come, Yaqui women had raised children alone before, and when the young ones were grown, well, there would be warriors among them.

  So two parties left the basin that night, going in opposite directions, though the family group wouldn’t travel far in the dark, just to the next valley, from which they’d move on at dawn. I tried to send Jon with them, but he begged so hard to stay with us that at last Trace struck a bargain. Jon could ride with him to the ranch but then must let me take him to the women at the big house for safety.

  Jon, from the glory of his perch behind his father’s saddle, generously told Sewa she could ride Cascos Lindos, who did seem to remember her onetime mistress, though she’d heaved her flanks in a burra sigh at being mounted again after such a short rest.

  Cascos Lindos, like my mare, had been unsaddled, watered, rubbed, and given precious maize. Domingo strode ahead by Sewa, who had left Ku with friends. Rosalio had a raw-boned gelding as did two other men. The foot warriors went in front. Trace and I, with Jon, rode at the end of the column. Where there was room for us to ride abreast, we often touched hands; where we couldn’t, our hearts touched anyway.

  We reached the horse camp in the middle of the night. Dogs ran out barking, horses whinnied from the corrals, and someone shouted from the house that had been Trace’s, “Quién es?”

  “Miranda Greenleaf and her son,” I called, never thinking of styling myself Sanders. “I am here with friends. We require the camp for a few days.”

  “Forgive me, señora.” I recognized Enrique’s voice. “Can you and the small dueño come forward alone to assure us you are not captive or speaking under threat?”

&n
bsp; “Good thinking, Enrique,” said Trace. “I will escort them.”

  There was silence. “Can it be?” marveled Enrique. “Don Trace?”

  “No other.”

  We rode forward. Enrique stepped out of the door and Jon slipped from behind Trace and ran to the vaquero. “See, Enrique? It’s me, with my mother and real father.”

  Briefly, Trace explained how we hoped to draw the soldiers to the horse camp. “You had better move the horses till this is over,” he counseled. “And if anything goes wrong, if the soldiers take us, the people of Las Coronas are in the clear. You heard shooting but thought it was gangs of bandits.”

  “With permission,” said Enrique. “I will stand with you, Don Trace, My compañeros can move the horses.”

  Trace had dismounted and now he dropped his hand on the vaquero’s shoulder. “Thanks, my friend. But la señora must take Jon to the main house. Perhaps you will ride with them?”

  “I am at your orders,” Enrique promised.

  Three other men had come out of the houses. They all remembered Trace, greeted him with delighted awe, nor did they argue the situation. As soon as they could saddle, they began moving the horses from the corrals, the task simplified by the fact that it didn’t much matter where the horses went so long as they did.

  Enrique caught me a fresh horse and roped out a gray gelding he said he’d been gentling for Jon’s next visit.

  “Can you sit a saddle?” I asked the child, for we had been riding most of the day and night and I myself was exhausted and sore.

  “’Course I can,” he said proudly.

  After we had a drink and stretched a bit, Trace lifted him up and we made, for the headquarters of Las Coronas, twenty miles away, with Enrique leading.

  It was after sunup when we got there. Consuelo and Catalina were already in the kitchen and recovered quickly from their astonishment to give us chocolate and pan dulce and bear Jon off to bed when he fell asleep with the sweet flaky bread in his mouth.