“You—you brute! You horrible wretch! You’re saying that on purpose to tease me!”
She squirmed over on top of him and began to pummel at him with her fists until he caught them.
“Hellcat! What are you trying to do—open up that wound of mine again? I can think of better ways for you to work up an appetite once more.”
Suddenly catching his meaning she began to frown with anger and then dissolved into helpless giggles until he pulled her face down to his and began to kiss her, his hands moving to caress her body until desire made her almost mindless and she did exactly as he wanted.
They ate their dinner very late, after all, because Steve had insisted on taking a bath and she went to find some fresh clothes for him in his saddlebags, which were still outside in the living room where Salvador had put them.
Ginny had resisted the urge to peek—to go through them to learn what he was carrying and where he had been, but the only thing she could find was lying right under the clothes he had asked her to bring him, and she stared at it, frowning, for a few minutes. An Arkansas “toothpick”—a knife she was only too familiar with, but which it was strange to find Steve carrying about with him. He preferred a Bowie knife, and had often told her it was the only knife worth carrying. “You can find all kinds of uses for a Bowie,” she remembered him telling her once on their travels. He had used his for cutting branches to make shelters for them; for skinning the animals that he had shot. And she had once stabbed him with that same knife.
She longed to pick the new knife up and examine it carefully, for it looked strangely and almost ominously familiar, but something stopped her, and with a shudder she left it where it was. No—let Steve tell her if he wanted to—she was not going to let him think she had been prying.
Ginny chattered almost nervously right through their dinner, longing to ask him questions but afraid to do so in case she brought that sarcastic, almost hateful look back to his face. She told him about small things—unimportant things—the repairs she’d made to the estancia, the herb garden she had begun. And all the time she sensed that he was watching her—even when he gave her a lazy smile occasionally and told her politely to go on, he was interested in her doings.
At last, when she had lapsed into an uneasy silence and began to drink her wine too fast, he leaned back in his chair and began to scrutinize her openly, as if he’d only met her a few hours ago.
“Domesticity certainly seems to agree with you, love. And I like that tan you’ve acquired. It gives your skin a certain bloom. You remind me of a peach—all over.”
Memory of the afternoon they had just spent in bed, thoroughly enjoying each other, suddenly made her blush and lower her eyes. Why did he look at her so strangely, almost as if he hated her, even while he was paying her compliments.
“What a shy, innocent look you can put on sometimes!” he went on. “Who, looking at you now, would think that you were once a whore?”
The suddenness of his attack made her flinch visibly, even while she raised her eyes challengingly to his.
“Oh God! What kind of cruel game have you decided to play this time?”
He shrugged coolly, his eyes capturing hers with their hard, inquiring look.
“Why should I want to play a game with you? It’s just that I ran into a friend of yours a few weeks ago, and his conversation about certain incidents in your past was most enlightening.” She gave a gasp, and his voice hardened into what was almost a snarl. “Tell me—what did Tom Beal usually charge when he rented you out to his friends? How many others did he share you with for free?”
Her voice was an agonized whisper. “Oh no—no!”
“You didn’t tell me everything, did you? You didn’t tell me he sold you to any man who could afford a few pesos to sample your charms.”
“Stop it!” She jumped to her feet, hands pressed over her ears. “Stop it—I don’t want to listen to any more!”
Like a panther he came at her with one long stride; catching her wrists, pulling them downward until he held them imprisoned before her.
“Goddammit, you will listen—at least until I’m through! How do you think I felt—to hear your sordid career discussed so casually in front of a roomful of gaping men? Your friend Matt Cooper—the same one who taught you to use a knife so well—he hadn’t forgotten you—nor how good you were. In fact, he and a friend went back to look for you, after they’d heard how you killed Beal. Oh Christ!” He flung the oath in her face savagely, his fingers tightening around her wrists until she screamed with pain and fear. “Why didn’t you tell me? What kept you from the truth? And how many other incidents like that are you still hiding?”
Suddenly she threw her head back, her eyes streaming with tears, but still able to glare defiantly at him.
“Isn’t there something that you’re hiding from me? Some—some incident so horrible, so impossibly vile that you can’t even bear to think about it? You have no right to sit in judgement over me—you’re not a woman, so you can’t possibly understand what terrible degradation a woman can be forced into—you can’t understand how it felt to be—to be exhibited like an animal to all those men—their eyes staring, their mouths open with lust—staring—yes, and screaming obscenities while he—while he told me I had to undress so that they could see what they were getting! And then when I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—he started to—to hit me and rip that rotten, sleazy gown he made me wear off my body—and all the while they were throwing money—it came at me from everywhere—money, to see the clothes torn off me as if I—I went crazy then! I remembered I had the knife—I didn’t even know what I was doing when I plunged it into his throat and heard the awful noises he made, with the blood spurting everywhere—everywhere!”
Her voice rose into a tormented scream, and she hardly realized that Steve had released her abruptly and was staring at her, his face whitening under the brown of his tan.
“Ginny.”
She thought he was going to sieze her again and backed away from him, her eyes staring.
“No—I don’t want you to touch me—not now—I’m dirty, remember? I’m a whore—dozens of men have used me—and you’ll never forgive me for that, will you? Not even if it wasn’t my fault—because I survived, even though I wanted to die—because you want to be the one to destroy me, where they couldn’t—and you know why you can, Steve? Do you know?”
“Shut up! Damn you—is that what you’re trying to do now? Make me feel guilty for the things you did?”
“Stop it!” She shrieked the words at him, panting with the force of her emotions. “Haven’t you been human enough to suffer from beatings and starving and—and torture until—until you’d do anything, anything, just to go on being alive? Have you never known what it was to be forced to do things your mind shrank from, because you had gone past the point of caring? I was a body, that’s all—a thing, to be used, to be sold—I was dead inside, and I stopped caring what happened to me, because you were dead—because I had loved you, and they had killed you, and nothing mattered…” She began to laugh wildly with the tears still slipping down her cheeks. “I used to tell myself that, all the time—like a litany of hopelessness—‘it doesn’t matter—it doesn’t matter—nothing matters any more.”’
“You’re hysterical. Can’t you see there’s no reason for you to cry?” She was suddenly in his arms, feeling their hardness like steel bands around her, pulling her against his body. She kept sobbing helplessly, her tears soaking his shirt.
“Listen to me,” he was saying in a strange, expressionless voice, “he’s dead. Do you think I could let him live after what he said?”
“Steve,” she tried to pull away from his encircling arms, but he only held her more tightly, pressing her face against his shoulder.
“I was in Orizaba looking for those damned counter-guerillas who had been giving us such a bad time. I ran into them—and him—your Matt Cooper. I waited for him outside in an alley. I knew where they were staying—they told me, the
damned careless fools! There were three of them—two more than I expected, but at that point, I didn’t care—the thought of you has always managed to chase away all the caution I’ve ever possessed! There was quite a battle, I can tell you—but I’d taken their guns first—they thought I wanted their money, the bastards!”
“Don’t—don’t!” she began to whisper. “I don’t want to hear it.”
His voice became harsh. “Why not? Don’t you want to know that you were revenged? That I was man enough to kill at least one of your lovers? The other two were easy—they were too drunk to put up much of a fight, but Matt Cooper—I’ll say this much for him, he’s a fighter. He went for his knife—and he knew how to use it. That’s where I got the new wound you were so curious about! But I’ll take a Bowie any day. I had to kill the others very quickly, so they wouldn’t make too much noise and bring everyone running, but I took my time with Cooper—I told him why I was going to kill him, and he fought like a lion—silently, too, as if he knew he’d had it coming a long time.”
“And you killed him. It was his knife I saw in your saddlebag.”
“I thought maybe you’d like a souvenir, baby.”
She said very quietly, “Oh—dear God!” And he laughed, a short, bitter sound in his throat.
“I admit it was a stupidly reckless thing to do. I was only supposed to find where the counter-guerillas were, and in which direction they were going next. But as things turned out, we fixed up a nice little ambush for them—that’s when I took a stray bullet in the shoulder. It was worth it, though, because we wiped them out.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, Ginny whispered, almost to herself, “You killed him—because of me! Poor Matt—he was the only one who was kind—he protected me from Beal, when he was sober.” She felt his arms tighten with the anger she could sense in him again, and said in the same husky whisper, “But why? Why did you bother, Steve? You’ll never forgive me—you’ll never forget what I became—you don’t even care about me any longer, if you ever did! So—why?”
“Why do you think I’m here? You’re right, I can’t forget any of it—it’s been like a festering, cancerous sore ever since you came back—your past! But all the same, I want you—you’ve become like a drug, like a sickness I can’t shake off—I want to punish you for what you’ve become, and still, at the same time, I want you!” His voice became hoarse, she felt his hands move slowly up her back, caressingly, until his fingers caught in her hair, grasping handfuls of it. “I crave your flesh, and your softness, and your firmness and the feel of your hair like silk under my hands—I want to hear you scream softly under me—to bury myself in you—I’ve never encountered another woman who’s satisfied and tormented me as much as you have. For God’s sake, woman, isn’t that enough for you? What else do you want of me, except the same thing I want from you?”
She began to sob again, and to beat at him wildly with her fisted hands.
“It’s not! It’s not that way! You talk as if I’m your whore, not your wife!”
In spite of her fury he lifted her easily in his arms, slinging her roughly over his shoulder when she continued to fight him.
“What’s the difference? Why not my whore for a change? And if you really want to feel like a wife, then you’d better start acting like one—there’s one wifely duty at least that you perform extremely well!”
“Oooh!” she screamed aloud with rage and frustration as he started to carry her off into the bedroom. He began to laugh.
“You want Salvador to think I have to rape my own wife? Be sensible, Ginny! After all the only way we really seem to hit it off together is in bed—why can’t we make the best of it?”
He laid her none too gently on the bed and lay over her, his eyes blazing down at her with passion and hate and desire—everything at once—until, as he knew they would, her struggles stopped. Still sobbing, she put her arms around his neck.
51
When Ginny awoke the next day she realized that some instinct had made her reach gropingly out beside her, only to encounter emptiness. She levered herself to a half-sitting position, squeezing her eyelids together against the bright sunlight that streamed into the room.
“Where is he? It’s late—perhaps he’s only gone outside—in a minute he’ll come back in and wake me,” but even as she tried to console herself with cheerful thoughts some deep-seated instinct made Ginny go cold with fear.
When Maria knocked gently at the door and then opened it, her eyes very large, her face solemn, Ginny knew, even before she saw the piece of paper that the girl held in her hand that her worst fears were about to be confirmed.
“I’m sorry, Ginny, but I never did get around to telling you I have to leave first thing this morning—c’est la guerre! It will probably be quite some time before I pass this way again.”
Why does he bother to write? Ginny thought savagely. Why doesn’t he at least leave me to draw my own conclusions?
All the bitter memories of the previous night came back and she covered her face with her hands; not sure whether she hated him or herself more. How cruel he had been! How unfair—how unreasonable! And he had admitted, bluntly, that he could neither forget nor forgive her past—he actually blamed her for everything, when it had all been his fault in the beginning! Oh God, what could she do? She felt as if she couldn’t possibly stand any more hurt, and she knew that he would continue to hurt her and continue to use her body, for as long as she’d let him. That was all she meant to him—a woman’s body for his use. And after all, she thought bitterly, why not? After all it was she who had followed him here and thrown herself at him, forcing him to accept her.
He’s never once told me he loves me—he’s been honest in that respect at least! And he’s even admitted he had no intention of consummating our marriage—not even in the beginning! So all the time it was I who cared, I who gave my heart to him—he only married me because of a promise he made his grandfather! Is it fair to him, to saddle him with a wife he obviously doesn’t need?
When Maria came back in the room with the Señora’s chocolate she found the Señora in tears. The girl’s eyes became sympathetic as she tiptoed out of the room. It was natural, she supposed—how sad to have just one night of love and then have one’s lover torn away by a war! Maria herself was too young, her mother said, to think about young men yet, but she had her thoughts all the same! She hoped that the Señor would return very quickly so that the Señora would begin to smile again.
Steve Morgan, however, at that very moment, was riding as hard as he could away from Tehuacan and towards the mountains that sheltered Puebla. He felt unutterably tired, and his mood was none too good, although it improved slightly when he caught up with his troop at the place they had decided upon earlier.
Sergeant Manolo Ordaz came to meet him, a wide grin on his face. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind!” He winked. “If I had a wife like yours I’d find it almost impossible to tear myself away from her arms!”
The familiarity that had been born between them when they were both guerrilleros, constantly on the run sometimes sharing the same canteen, made Steve force a tired grin.
“Well, I’m here, as you see! Let’s get moving—we have less than a week to get this job done.”
The men were already mounting up. A picked troop of twenty-five men, mostly ex-guerrilleros, men who knew these mountains and every narrow trail and bit of cover they afforded. At their head, Captain Esteban Alvarado, especially chosen for this mission because he had once been an inmate of the very prison they were going to visit.
This was an official sortie, so they were all in uniform. A matter of obtaining silver ore, badly needed in order to be exchanged for money to pay the Juarista armies—to pay for the guns that were still pouring in from across the border.
General Díaz had been very specific as to the procedure to be followed. It was to be an official, straightforward confiscation. The owner of the silver mine had already fled the country, leaving the smal
l military garrison and the prison guards to protect his interests. The silver mine now belonged to the State—and in effect, the State was now El Presidente Benito Juarez.
There were other mines that had been similarly taken over, of course, but they were far away. This one, nestled in the hills overlooking Puebla, would provide silver for the army of Porfirio Díaz and at the same time would not be allowed to make more shipments to Vera Cruz, to line the pockets of the Imperialist armies.
What this all really meant was hard days and nights of riding, especially since they had to avoid the highways and more frequently used paths and snaked their way through the mountains, using goat trails when they had to. It was like being with the guerillas again, the men often muttered to themselves. They were all travelling extra light, because of the silver they were supposed to carry back with them. Two men shared a canteen sometimes—they foraged for food wherever they could, sometimes reduced to eating cactus-pulp and piñon nuts.
As they penetrated further and further into the mountain fastnesses the air became colder and thinner. Sometimes a damp, chilly mist hung over everything, so that their uniforms seemed to stay perpetually soggy. Thank God the Imperialist armies were too busy trying to guard the four major cities which were all that remained of Maximilian’s empire, to spare the men to patrol such remote areas. Thank God, even, for the mists which hid their furtive passage! The men gave more attention to their horses than they did to themselves—the loss of a horse would probably mean disaster and death for the man who had been riding it. They snatched at their precious hours of sleep, spending most of the time in the saddle. The sooner they arrived at their destination, the sooner they would be able to turn back.
Steve Morgan found himself unusually absentminded during the long days and nights that followed his hasty, almost surreptitious departure from the hacienda. He told himself angrily that his preoccupation nearly amounted to an obsession. Damn it, why did Ginny keep obtruding herself into his thoughts even now? Why did he actually feel guilty that he had left her as he had?
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