But of course, she did not have a choice.
“Why don’t you let me take her down to the chapel?” Quiroz suggested. “You could stop there for her. Here, they are sure to find her.”
“That chapel is the first place they will look,” Luís objected.
“She didn’t tell anybody about the chapel.” Quiroz’s eyes mocked her with the knowledge of what he could have done in the tunnel chapel, with what he would do yet, given the chance. “She didn’t have guts enough to tell about the chapel.”
“I am not taking the chance,” Luís replied.
Quiroz shrugged. “Fine by me, but the mine is the first place they’ll look.”
“She isn’t in the mine.”
“They won’t stop until they tear this end of town apart.”
“It will take a few hours yet for them to realize she is missing. Then it will take more time to get their bearings. I know Domingo. He will spend the morning worrying over what has happened to her before he settles on a way to find her. By that time, we will have the silver bars loaded and be gone.”
“That Ranger hombre ain’t so easy,” Quiroz objected.
“He doesn’t know our ways, either. I know what you are after, Quiroz, and you can have her if Enrique decides he doesn’t want her.”
Luís frowned down at Aurelia. “Hear that, Relie. You have a chance to save yourself. Enrique is smitten with you for some fool reason. I promised him the chance to try to make a good wife out of you. It is up to you whether you live peaceably with Enrique or—” he jerked his head toward Quiroz, “or get yourself thrown to him.”
The morning sun accompanied by a brisk autumn breeze streamed through the bedroom windows Carson had opened the evening before. He stretched, limbering tight muscles. Lordy, he was getting soft, still in bed and here it was mid-morning. He bounced his palms on the side of the bed. Such a soft bed. If Aurelia were here beside him, he would be tempted to lie abed a while longer.
His body definitely liked that idea, so he rose in self-defense. He whistled while he shaved, knowing his high spirits came from their talk the evening before. He had worried over her not enjoying the wedding. Then when he discovered her reasons, he had gone weak-kneed at the thought of losing her. But he hadn’t lost her.
Nosiree. He surely had not. Rinsing his face, he patted his skin dry, then mopped up spills around the washbowl and pitcher. Here he was about to get himself hitched.
And Kale, too. The idea of it—two Jarretts bitin’ the dust at near the same time! What was the world comin’ to?
Downstairs, he was disappointed to find Aurelia still asleep, but she needed her rest. All the worrying she had done lately was enough to tire her out.
He grinned, taking his place at the empty table. The maid filled his coffee cup, brought him orange juice, then scurried off to fetch his breakfast.
She really beat all, Aurelia did, worrying over Santos and Pia that way. He had always known women were a bit like that, but lordy…His heart pumped extra hard, thinking about Aurelia and their future together.
When Don Domingo came to the table, Carson considered speaking to him about their situation then and there. He hesitated. Maybe he should wait until Santos returned. Likely he would need someone to back him up.
“What are your plans, Jarrett?” Don Domingo asked into his reveries.
“Well, sir…ah…your daughter and I agreed to go riding later this morning with Don Rodrigo and Señorita Tapis.”
“Later?” Don Domingo questioned. “We had better send someone to fetch that young lady, then.”
“No, sir, let her sleep. She’s been through a lot lately.”
Don Domingo eyed him, moving a shoulder when the maid set his coffee and orange juice down, while never breaking eye contact. “You were a big help in our little difficulty, Jarrett. Glad Santos asked you in on it.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m happy to have been here.”
Doña Bella swished into the room. “Buenas días, Señor Jarrett.”
“Good morning,” Carson returned. He rose until she was seated then settled back down. It took a moment for her frown to register as one of disapproval.
“Where is Relie?” she questioned him.
“Still asleep, I suppose, señora.”
Doña Bella’s frown deepened. She held his gaze. “She returned to bed after your rendezvous?”
“¿Excusame?”
Her expression hardened. By way of reply, she handed a folded sheet of notepaper across the table.
He opened it, read the message, then reread it, while his coffee settled like hard rock ore in the bottom of his stomach. When he tried to speak, he had to clear his throat twice to make himself heard.
“I didn’t write this. What does it mean?”
“You tell me. I found it on her bedside table when I looked in on her,” Doña Bella informed him. “Her nightclothes were strewn across her empty bed.”
Carson scraped back his chair, but when he rose, his legs trembled, and he grabbed the edge of the table for support. “The only thing I know about this message is that Aurelia is in trouble.” He regained his balance, turning to her father. “Who delivered it? Find the person. Now.”
While the Mazóns found and questioned María, Carson returned to his room, bounding up the stairs, throwing open the door, hoping she would not be lying nude in his bed, praying she would be. Next he checked the ballroom, the cubicle where she had dressed, each room down the hallway from it, staring finally, bleakly, into the one they had shared. The bed where they had loved lay empty, undisturbed.
He returned downstairs carrying his holsters and an extra cartridge belt. The Mazóns waited in the library.
“The message was delivered before dawn by some ragamuffin from the miners’ village.” Doña Bella’s voice broke. Don Domingo patted her shoulders, his own sagging. He watched Carson belt on his holsters.
“What are you doing?”
“Going after her, señor.” He heard his own voice quiver.
Don Domingo took a pistol from a drawer in the desk. “I will come with you. She is my daughter, after all.”
Carson turned in the doorway, eyed the troubled man and, before he could stop himself, replied, “And she is to be my wife, soon as we find her.”
If the words registered, Don Domingo did not betray the fact. He nodded toward a cabinet. “We should arm ourselves with carbines.”
In the foyer they met Rodrigo and Zita and hurriedly apprised them of the situation.
Tears sprang to Zita’s eyes. “This time it’s real.”
Carson’s jaws clenched against his own fears. “We’ll find her.”
“I’ll help,” Rodrigo said. “My horse is saddled.”
The three men rushed to the stable yard, where Carson and Don Domingo saddled their own mounts.
The women followed. “What can we do?” Doña Bella cried, wringing a linen handkerchief in a manner that reminded Carson so strongly of Aurelia that he had to look away.
Pray, he started to reply. He held his tongue. No need to suggest the obvious. “Can you find Kino and Joaquín, María’s brothers?”
“I will send her after them.” Doña Bella hurried back inside the mansion.
Carson stepped into his saddle, plunging the carbine into an attached scabbard. “I’ll start at the mine. Someone should go to that chapel in the tunnel.”
“Quiroz was last seen at the mine,” Don Domingo replied. “That is where I am going.”
“Where is the chapel?” Rodrigo questioned.
Suddenly, Zita reached for his pommel. “Help me up. I can show you.”
Serphino threw open the stable yard gates and the three horses bounded into the street. The instant they parted ways, however, a train whistle rent the silence.
Don Domingo frowned. “What the hell?”
“What’s the matter?” Carson asked.
“We have no departures today.”
The three men exchanged glances.
&nb
sp; “That train is the only sure way they have of getting her out of town,” Carson said.
“Why would—?” Don Domingo began.
“There are no answers, señor,” Carson cut in, “and we have no time for questions. Pray we guess right.”
He turned to Rodrigo. “Ride for the tunnel. If you can make it to the chapel, fine; in any case, get close enough to stop the train…if I don’t do it before you.”
Rodrigo quirked an eyebrow, accepting the challenge. “If I beat you, do I win the girl this time?”
“Not on your life.”
Rodrigo tightened his hold on Zita. “This time I wouldn’t even try.”
María ran from the house on her way to find Kino and Joaquín.
“Tell them to head for the other end of the tunnel,” Carson called after her. “Tell them not to let the train get through.”
Carson spurred his mount. “Go ahead to the mine, Don Domingo. We may be wrong. She may be there.”
“Where are you going?”
“To catch a train,” he shouted over his shoulder. Fears for Aurelia simmered like a boiling cauldron in the back of his brain, and he fought to keep them there.
Back behind his working mind. For to save her, he would need every whit of intelligence and common sense he had ever possessed. And a cool head, to boot.
He wove his mount in and out, up and down the narrow bricked streets of Catorce, cursing their slick surface, grateful for Sunfisher’s surefootedness.
Smoke plumes from the engine stack seemed hopelessly far away but drew nearer and nearer as he raced to intercept the train. When it came in view, he studied the cars—an engine, a passenger car, and a caboose. Was Aurelia in one of them?
Sunfisher’s hooves clattered against the brick streets. The train clacked along the track, smoke churning from its stack. Carson focused on the train one car at a time. First the engine. The engineer, a large man, stuck his head out the window, looking toward the tunnel.
A huge head, shaggy.
Quiroz.
Sweeping his gaze the length of the train, Carson saw another man inside the passenger car. A form, no more. In the caboose, nothing. No one.
Or so it seemed. The train could carry a hundred men, for all he could see from here.
Sunfisher galloped closer. Still they had not seen him.
Where was Aurelia? Was this a chase without meaning? Was she even now lying hurt and needing him somewhere else?
All doubts evaporated when the first shot ricocheted from bricks nearby. Carson shucked his carbine.
The man in the center car fired again.
Luís Reinaldo! The bastard. All they needed to complete the picture was Enrique.
All he needed, Carson corrected, was to find Aurelia safe and well. His blood boiled at the thought of what they might have done to her, at what they intended to do to her.
He drew closer. Another bullet. He dodged to the right, zigged to the left, all the time heading straight for the train.
And then he was there. The caboose whipped by and he turned Sunfisher in beside it. It gained; he pushed his horse.
Eyeing the window from where Reinaldo had fired, he saw no one. Quickly, he scanned the other windows. Nothing.
Reholstering the carbine, he unhooked his rope, limbered it, tossed a loop above his head, then zeroed in on the railing along the back of the caboose.
His loop caught.
“Take care of yourself, Sunfisher,” he mumbled, hefting himself from the saddle, clinging, climbing, reaching.
He grabbed the rail, landed with a thwack against the steps, then scrambled aboard. After a glance inside, he flicked his rope free, tossed it off beside the rails, and unhooked the thongs holding his revolvers in place.
His heart throbbed with every turn of the wheels. He glanced into the caboose, found nothing, then climbed up the side of the racing train.
Gaining the top, he flattened himself, got his bearings, and glanced toward the tunnel, which they fast approached.
Rodrigo was there. Did he know about Reinaldo firing from the train? Carson watched Rodrigo climb aboard his horse. His rope was attached to something; he headed off at right angles to the tracks.
The rails. He was pulling the rails apart.
Carson moved. At the juncture between the caboose and the single car, he peered through the doorway, saw nothing, then dropped to his feet on the other side of the coupling.
He peered inside. Reinaldo was nowhere to be seen. But Aurelia was there.
He rushed to her side, his heart pounding. He kissed her face, her frightened eyes. “It’s all right,” he tried to say, but his mouth was too dry for the words to come out.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and he kissed them away. Fumbling with haste, he removed the gag from her mouth. He braced his feet against the jolt they would receive when the engine hit the ripped-out section of track, fished his knife from his pocket, and cut her bonds.
“Where is Luís?” he asked.
She glanced toward the caboose. Her eyes pleaded with him. “Nuncio…”
“I know, angel. It’ll be all right.” Removing his second revolver, he handed it to her. “If one of them returns before I get back, shoot.”
She nodded.
“Shoot to kill,” he added. “Don’t take a chance on them living to—” He bit back the hated words.
She inhaled quivering lungfuls of fresh air, although her mouth tasted so foul from the filthy gag the air did not seem the least bit clean.
Suddenly, a shot ripped the air. She flinched; Carson gathered her to him. “Shhh. It’s Rodrigo. He’s at the tunnel. Brace yourself. The train is fixin’ to hit a section of ripped-out track. Hold on for dear life and don’t climb out until I come for you.”
Her smile was faint, but a smile nevertheless. He kissed her, then made for the front of the car. “Be careful,” she called to him, her voice trembling.
He turned quickly, a feeble grin on his lips. “Don’t shoot Rodrigo if he comes through that door.”
Rodrigo, it turned out, had shot Reinaldo, toppling the would-be governor from the side of the engine where he had gone for safety.
Carson stared at the man’s writhing body as the train passed. Only Quiroz remained a threat.
Carson crept forward. Hadn’t he known that sooner or later it would come to this? Hadn’t he dreaded it?
Didn’t he still?
While he was deciding whether to hold his ground and wait for the train to hit or to go after the man now, the decision was taken from his hands.
With a mighty jolt, the train plunged into the missing section of track. Surging forward undirected, it rammed into the side of the tunnel with a force that rattled his teeth. Desperately, he fought to retain his balance, his sense of direction, watching all the while for Quiroz.
Then, suddenly, Quiroz jumped free of the listing engine. Recalling the superintendent’s agility, Carson was on him in a flash. “I promised you something.” Carson jerked the man to his feet before Quiroz caught his balance. “Remember? I promised to uphold her honor with my life.”
He struck the man’s jaw, heard it crunch, and jumped to the side when Quiroz flailed back. Then he struck again at the same place, hoping to add injury to insult…or at least a little pain to chase the first.
Quiroz had not slowed down since their fight in the mine. If anything, he fought more ferociously today—likely from finding himself with nothing to lose, everything to gain, Carson mused.
They grappled, while behind them the train rocked to a stop. It did not topple to its side, but it came so close that Aurelia feared it would. As soon as she found her footing, she scrambled out the nearest door.
Where Carson was she had no idea, since she had been unable to see out the windows. The first person she saw was Rodrigo, who emitted a cheer at the sight of her, then raced to catch her when she crumpled to the ground.
He and Zita reached her at the same time.
“Where is Carson
?” she mumbled.
“Gone after the engineer,” Rodrigo told her.
“Quiroz.” Aurelia struggled to get up.
Zita held her down, cradling her head in her lap. “Rodrigo will see about Carson, Relie. You lie still.”
Rodrigo grinned. “Me see about Jarrett? That Ranger can handle himself.” But he spoke from over his shoulder, already heading around the caboose where he saw Quiroz land a near-knockout blow to Carson’s head, then take off running up the hill.
Rodrigo caught up to Carson, limbering his reata as he approached. Carson stood up. Together they watched the running, stumbling man.
“Want me to take him, or do you want to?” Rodrigo offered his rope.
Carson grinned, gasping for breath. “You loop him, I’ll hog-tie him.”
Both of which tasks were easier than hauling the man down the hill after they trussed him.
“By the saints, Jarrett, the man is solid muscle,” Rodrigo quipped.
Carson rubbed his aching jaw. “No need to tell me.”
Sunfisher had wandered up to the girls by the time the two men returned, dragging their captive behind them.
Aurelia managed to stand, then fell into Carson’s arms.
“Think they can hold each other up?” Rodrigo questioned Zita. “Or do they need our help?”
Carson grinned. “Get on out of here, both of you. We’ll be along.”
“What about our two friends?” Rodrigo nodded toward Luís Reinaldo and Nuncio Quiroz.
Carson’s mouth tightened. “How ’bout we leave ’em here? Send the authorities to fetch ’em when we get around to it?”
“Suits me.” With his arm around Zita, Rodrigo turned toward his horse. “Guess we can count you two out for that ride in the country this afternoon.”
“No,” Aurelia managed. “Wait for us.”
Carson led her to his horse. “Say hello to the señorita, Sunfisher.” He kissed Aurelia on the forehead, while he stroked one hand down the horse’s nose. “I would ask him to bow to you, angel, but he’s plumb tuckered after chasin’ that train.”
He helped her into the saddle, then climbed up behind her. For a moment they sat, letting the feel of each other settle their jangled senses.
“Where are Mamá and Papá?”
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 34