by Nan Ryan
The transformation was swift and awesome. Gone was the petrified child awaking from a horrible nightmare. In his place stood a powerful man, rigid with the tautness of passion leashed. The change in him brought about a similar one in her.
Gone instantly was the need to comfort him as a mother, replaced with a craving to thrill him as a lover. Both emotions were equally strong. Only moments before she had been tempted to throw back the covers, go to him, and offer solace and understanding. No longer.
Now she yearned to throw back the covers, go to him, sensuously stroke those tensed brown shoulders and kiss that hard, cruel mouth until his unyielding stance crumbled. She longed to embrace him in the firelight, to brush tender kisses across his gleaming chest and down his flat abdomen. To press her open lips to his heart until it speeded out of control, and he trembled as violently with hot desire as he had with cold fear.
For what seemed an eternity, West continued to stand there staring, his naked chest shimmering in the firelight, his feet apart, his fists tight at his sides. Through it all Elizabeth silently waited, scarcely able to breathe, half expecting him to come for her as he had at Rancho Caballo. Praying she could turn him down, doubting that she would.
At last West moved and Elizabeth tensed.
And then sighed with relief and disappointment when he turned away, walked back to his bedroll, and stretched out on his back. She was thoroughly baffled by his behavior and had been since they had left Rancho Caballo five days ago.
Not once in all that time had he attempted to get her off alone. In fact, he ignored her, hardly spoke to her. She had quickly decided it was because he no longer wanted her. She supposed that her easy surrender at Rancho Caballo had forever ended the chase. There, in the darkened bedroom, she had given him what he had been after, so now he was no longer interested. She had been a challenge to his male ego. Then she had fallen right into his arms and ended the quest. It was as simple as that.
But he wanted her badly tonight; he wanted her right now. She was sure of it. Why was he holding back? The others were sleeping soundly. The two of them could easily have slipped away from camp and made love with no one the wiser. Why had he stayed away?
She didn’t understand him. Just when she was sure she had him figured out, he again surprised her. Elizabeth was still pondering West’s strange actions when at last she fell into fitful sleep.
Too soon, morning came in the wretched Land of the Dead.
Bright stars dulled and disappeared. Elizabeth moaned in disbelief when Edmund awakened her, saying it was time to get up: five-thirty already.
Shivering, she lay there for a minute. A glaze of hoar frost covered her blankets, and she was stiff and chilled to the bone. Shortly before six o’clock the sun rose.
Three hours later the temperature had risen to one hundred degrees. Like every other member of the expedition, Elizabeth wore a heavy, long-sleeved shirt, batwing chaps over her rust trousers, tall leather boots, and suede gloves. The drawstring of her flat-crowned hat was pulled tight under her throat, and around her neck was a silk bandanna, its flowing ends threaded through the silver and turquoise ring Micoma had given her.
The sun quickly climbed high into a cloudless sky each day, and the heat grew almost unbearable. It baked her brains and left her limp from midmorning to dusk. Her head ached relentlessly. Her lips were badly chapped and her fevered flesh itched so badly, she longed to tear off all the heavy smothering clothes and claw at her perspiring, prickling flesh.
But she didn’t.
To have done so would be almost suicidal in a hostile wilderness of cactus, quicksand, cutbacks, deeply etched canyons, jutting rock columns, cracked arroyos, sand-blown dunes, dry lake beds, and brutal mesquite. Without the added protection of the heavy clothing her slender body would have been torn to pieces by the vicious thorns that scratched the horses’ legs and fetlocks.
If she were to survive the pitiless heat and the blowing sands, the prickly pears and brittlebush and wavy thistles, the spiders and centipedes and scorpions, it was imperative that she stay covered from head to toe no matter how uncomfortable she became.
And so, miserable but uncomplaining, a well-protected Elizabeth rode the iron-gray stallion through the stark, awesome Land of the Dead, firmly resolved that the caravan would not be slowed nor hampered by having a woman along. In a harsh, mean region where physical prowess and deadly skill were needed merely to survive, Elizabeth pulled her own weight.
At least, most of the time.
She’d had more than one narrow escape in the five long days since leaving Rancho Caballo, but then so had Edmund and a couple of the Mexican peasants, and even one of the rugged vaqueros.
Elizabeth made a face. It seemed to her it was grossly unfair that when one of the men got a nasty cut or bruise or fell from his mount or came down with a touch of desert fever, nothing much was made of it.
But let her run into a bit of difficulty and West flared with anger and acted as though she were a terrible burden to him and the entire expedition. Which was doubly unfair since he was never the one who rushed to her aid. It was always Big Taos. The silent Navajo was unfailingly there when she needed him.
Like the incident a couple of mornings ago when her winded iron gray had struggled up a steep cutback through a thicket of mesquite. The stallion had made a misstep and tumbled into a four-foot-deep hole. She had leapt off and the gray had swiftly clambered out, leaving her frightened but unhurt.
Almost before she even realized what had happened, Taos was beside her, his gargantuan arms were gently lifting her up out of the crater. Eyes still wide with fear and surprise, she had looked up to see a mounted, scowling West Quarternight come to a plunging halt a few feet away.
He swung down out of the saddle, swiftly advanced on her, grabbed her upper arms so forcefully his fingers bit into the flesh, and said coldly, “You hurt?” Trembling, on the verge of nervous tears, she hadn’t answered soon enough to suit him and he had become unreasonably angry. The muscles along his tanned jaw rigid, he said, “When people don’t answer me, I get furious. Have you ever seen me furious?”
“Yes. I mean no—”
“No double-talk, Mrs. Curtin. I asked if you’re hurt?”
“No. No, I am not hurt,” she said, “and you can believe this or not, I am trying very hard not to annoy you.”
“I know,” he said, releasing her, “and that annoys me.”
Later that same day they had pitched camp against the western bastion of the San Andres Range beside the bubbling Turquesa spring. Sweltering and uncomfortable, she had anxiously stripped off her hat, gloves, and batwing chaps, then rolled her shirt sleeves up past her elbows and jerked the long tails up out of her pants.
She turned to see West watching her, his gray eyes narrowed with disapproval. Not caring a fig what he or anyone thought, she yanked the shirttails up and tied them into a knot around her bare midriff, then sank to the ground and stretched her weary body out on the pebble-strewn sand.
She closed her eyes, enjoying tremendously the deep shade cast by a rising spire of sandstone. She was about to doze when she felt a slight tickling on the exposed flesh of her midriff. Her eyelashes fluttered open just in time to see a small brown scorpion, its pincers thrust forward and open, its stinger-tipped tail arching forward over its body.
The scorpion was ready to inject venom with a lightning-swift forward snap of its stinger into her pale white flesh. Swifter still was the huge bronzed hand of Taos as he swooped down and plucked the scorpion from her trembling stomach, pinched it to death between his powerful thumb and forefinger, and flung it far away.
Before she could thank the protective Navajo, West stepped forward, grabbed her by an arm, and hauled her to her feet. His mean-looking face, inches from her own, was made meaner still by its dark growth of beard. His lips thinned, his voice icy cold, he said, “Do you know what happens when the Centruroides sculptureatus—the scorpion that was crawling on your belly—bites you, Mrs. C
urtin?”
“No, I guess—” Elizabeth began, only to be cut off by West.
“You thought it would cause a little swelling and inflammation, like a wasp sting, right?”
“Well, yes. I … I guess if the scorpion had bitten me, I would have been very uncomfortable for a while.” She clawed at the imprisoning fingers circling her upper arm.
“Uncomfortable for a while?” A muscle danced inside his tanned jaw. “The Centruroides sculptureatus is the most deadly scorpion in the Southwest. When it bites, the venom quickly diffuses into the body tissues. It acts violently on the nerves. You go into convulsions. You can’t breathe and your heart goes wild, then stops. It’s an ugly, painful way to die, Mrs. Curtin.”
Shaken, Elizabeth stammered, “If … if Taos … hadn’t been close by …” She trembled, adding, “I’m so grateful.”
“I’d be grateful if you’d keep your clothes on, Mrs. Curtin,” West said coldly, finally releasing her. “You can’t go around half naked out here without getting yourself into trouble. See if you can’t remember that.” He turned on his heel and stalked away.
Now, remembering that unpleasant episode, Elizabeth gritted her teeth and lifted bloodshot, scratchy eyes to the dark man who was becoming more disagreeable with every passing day.
Riding alone at the head of the contingent, West neck-reined his sorrel mare along the crusty edge of an escarpment and was momentarily silhouetted against a white-hot sun. Her stinging eyes clinging to him as he crossed the rocky ramparts above, Elizabeth frowned.
After lecturing her on the dangers of going about half naked, he was bare-chested in the fierce midday heat. He had removed his buckskin shirt and wrapped it around his head like a desert sheik. As dark as any Arab, his bare torso gleamed with sweat and a glaze of fine sand. His rapidly growing beard was scraggly, but as black as night. He looked mean and menacing. Had he been a stranger she happened upon, she would have been afraid of him.
Elizabeth made a sour face.
Back in Santa Fe and all the way down the Rio Grande to Rancho Caballo, West Quarternight had been an impeccable man. Meticulous about wearing clean shirts and pressed buckskins, he had bathed a couple of times a day and also shaved twice each day. His blue-black hair had always been shiny clean, well trimmed, and neatly brushed.
Not anymore.
While he did still bathe at least once a day, he was no longer well groomed. His black hair was shaggy and badly in need of a comb and a cut. A fierce growth of heavy black whiskers covered his lower face. Sweat ran in rivulets down his deeply clefted brown back. His soft buckskins were wrinkled, covered with sand, and torn by thorns. He lifted a long arm to rub at his neck, and black perspiration-soaked hair flashed under his arm.
He was, Elizabeth told herself, revolting. Without scruples or pride. He was everything she found offensive and contemptible in a man.
Dane Curtin was his opposite. Handsome, blond, and always immaculate, Dane was sensitive and caring. His morals were high, his deep respect for women unerring.
She wasn’t worthy of such a man.
36
“THEY WERE NOT WORTHY of me!” cried the pale, distraught madman perched atop his hard bed of gold. “I must have a beautiful young angel deserving of my attentions!”
The stocky, walleyed servant, down on his knees before the chalky-faced satyr, bobbed his dark head in agreement. “Sí, sí,” said Ortiz. “A beautiful señorita.”
“Yes, beautiful,” murmured the pale man seated atop the shiny gold bars. “Beautiful and sweet and innocent, like my wife. A fair, refined, red-haired woman like my lovely Elizabeth.”
A smile spreading over his face, the pale man lapsed into a kind of dreamy trance. Languidly raising a white hand to lift the hot, dampened curls from his nape, Dane Curtin was blissfully unaware he was no longer the man Elizabeth Montbleau had agreed to marry.
In his mind’s eye he was a fit, lean, blondly beautiful man of untold riches to whom any woman would willingly subjugate herself. His mouth slightly open, a finger idly twisting a damp curl, he clearly envisioned the sweet moment when at last the two of them, he and his trusting Elizabeth, would come together in all their splendid naked beauty.
As he daydreamed, he began to drool. A thin string of saliva dribbled from the left corner of his open lips. His bloodshot green eyes rolled heavenward. His head lolled to one side.
It had been less than six months since he’d left New York, three since finding the gold, but Dane had changed drastically. He would not have recognized himself had he looked into a mirror. His hair, down to his shoulders, no longer shone with golden glory. It was a tangled, dirty mass of limp ringlets, dulled to a drab brassy yellow-brown. His once handsome face was puffy with the first signs of dissipation, his jaws, chin, and throat covered with a growth of untrimmed brownish whiskers.
His superb physique—the hard, slender body—was gone. His pale arms and legs had lost their muscle tone and the pallid skin was beginning to sag. Along with his gluttonous indulgence in rich, fattening foods had come a paunch that protruded beneath his transparent robes where once the board-flat belly had brought sighs of approval from entranced lovers.
Worse, he was no longer immaculate. Dane had grown extremely slovenly in his personal hygiene. The flimsy, see-through robe he wore was soiled and spotted with spilled liquor, stale sweat, and grime. Beneath the thin, stained covering, his pasty flesh was unclean and smelly. Half drunk at all times, hallucinating with ever-greater frequency, he had no idea it had been days since he had last washed his ripe flesh.
His ragged fingernails had grown excessively long and dirt had collected beneath them. Dane never noticed. With those sullied clawlike nails, he scratched obscenely at his itching crotch and underarms, oblivious to the fact he had become a revolting, filthy animal. An unwashed, unhealthy, scabrous creature, unclean in body and mind.
In his state of deepening insanity, Dane vacillated between the exquisite satisfaction of knowing he possessed untold riches in gold and the insatiable hunger for a beautiful woman whom he could physically possess upon his golden bed.
It was the hunger that ruled him now.
Coming out of his stupor, Dane reached out for the black leather riding crop that he kept always within reach. He picked it up from the bed of gold and looked at the trembling man kneeling before him.
Flicking the vicious whip underneath his arm, Dane slid off the hard gold bed, rose fully, and smiled with pleasure on seeing a look of fear quickly spread over Ortiz’s brown upturned face.
Dane stood with his dirty bare feet wide apart, the thin, soiled robe indecently exposing the pale, naked body beneath. He tossed his head back, supposing he was still the beautiful golden-haired god worshiped by all his brown-skinned servants in this underground kingdom he ruled. He didn’t remember that, one by one, his subjects had fled. Didn’t realize that the terrified Ortiz was the only vassal left in his kingdom of evil. He looked down on the kneeling thrall and issued orders.
“Ortiz, turn and face the other direction, but remain on your knees.” The walleyed Ortiz swiftly obeyed. Never rising, he turned all the way about, so that he was facing away from his demented master. Terrified, he waited for further instruction from the madman standing behind him. “Take off your shirt,” said Dane. Ortiz stripped off his white shirt. “Now the sash at your waist. Remove it.” With trembling fingers, the walleyed Ortiz untied the knot resting atop his fat middle and pulled the wide crimson sash away from his stocky body. “Now lower your trousers to your knees.”
“Please, Pale Master, I—”
“You heard me,” said Dane as he took the riding crop from under his arm and began flicking it in the air.
The frightened Ortiz began to cry as he obediently lowered his white peasant’s trousers past his fleshy hips and down over his trembling brown bottom. Bawling like a baby, he reluctantly released the pants. They whispered down around his knees.
Ortiz’s stubby fingers had hardly let go of the whit
e linen fabric before he felt the first stinging blow of the whip on his bare buttocks. He fell over onto his hands and knees as the sounds of his screams bounced off the walls of the huge natural amphitheater and echoed throughout the dark reaches of the vast underground caverns.
It was over quickly. Dane tired, dropped the whip, and fell back, pleased and exhausted, atop his bed of gold. Breathing heavily and sweating profusely, he issued his final order. “Now get up, get dressed, get out of here. And bring me a beautiful young woman.” Dane sighed deeply, yanked the tail of his long, dirty robe up to wipe his perspiring face, and added, “A refined woman with fair skin and red hair. Go, now!”
In the western foothills of the Oscura Mountains, the afternoon shimmered in palpable waves of heat. West dismounted by drawing his right leg up over the saddle horn and sliding to the ground. Leaving his sorrel mare with reins trailing, he climbed a turret of red sandstone and stood looking out at the lines of mountain ranges through the layers of heat.
Elizabeth also looked through those distorting heat waves, but not at the distant mountains. Astride her iron gray she silently watched the tall, dark man who looked as if he belonged here in these low-lying broken mountains called the Oscuras. Grady had told her that oscuro meant “dark” in Spanish. Both man and mountains were oscuro and forbidding.
Her tired, stinging eyes clung to the oscuro man standing somber and alone atop the jutting turret. She couldn’t help but wonder, as she often did of late, what West was thinking. What was really on his mind? What thoughts filled his head at this moment? And on those occasions when he was silent and uncommunicative for long stretches at a time?
From the beginning there had been an aura of mystery about West Quarternight, and his tight-lipped refusal to discuss his past was maddening. Now, since his devilish teasing and easygoing manner had entirely vanished, he was even more mysterious.