by Pam Crooks
The thinking of fools, eh? It would not be long before they learned how wrong they were.
Hiding here in the valley, waiting for the weapons, was not easy but dangerous. He must keep moving southward, to meet his friend, Emiliano Zapata, whose reputation was growing as fast as his own. Together, he and Zapata would lead the rebellion against Díaz and the hacienda owners.
Joining forces, they would succeed.
Ramon shelled another toasted acorn and returned his attention to the map. He already knew every twist and turn of the country roads in northern Mexico. Zapata knew the south. They would meet somewhere in the central part. Along the way, Ramon would steal cattle, horses, money, just as Zapata would. He would show the farmers how to fight to get their ejidos back.
They would support him. Honor him.
In the future, when success was theirs, they would not forget what Ramon had done for them.
The door to the cabin burst open, and Ramon’s head lifted. Only Armando would enter his cabin without knocking first.
“Ramon. We have a visitor,” he said, looking grim.
“Who is it?”
“The Army soldier. Sergeant Bender.”
Ramon’s blood quickened. The sergeant and his partner, Corporal Nate Martin, had arranged the deal for the precious rifles. Had they come to deliver the weapons themselves? It had not been the arrangement for them to do so.
“Is the shipment here already?” he frowned.
“No. He comes alone.”
“Without the corporal?”
“Sí.”
“Without the rifles?”
“Sí.”
Unease filtered through Ramon. Why would the American soldier risk returning to Mexico, then enter his camp without permission first? And why was the corporal not with him?
Ramon had given them the location of his hideout, a necessity for the delivery of the weapons. He’d sworn them to secrecy of the information with their lives.
“Tell him to come in, Armando,” he ordered.
Ramon hid his apprehension the deal had somehow fallen through. He needed the rifles. Sergeant Bender and Corporal Martin had promised them. Ramon had paid them a generous deposit, and if they did not keep their end of the bargain, he would kill them for their sloppy way of doing business.
Sergeant Bender strode inside. Esteban and Fernando, two of Ramon’s cousins, followed him in, their revolvers trained on his back.
“We got trouble, Ramon,” the sergeant said without greeting.
It annoyed him that the man used his name with such familiarity. He ran a cold glance over the dusty, disheveled uniform. The soldier’s jaw was swollen, too, the skin raw and bruised. He talked with his teeth clenched.
“It seems trouble has found you first, Sergeant,” Ramon said. He folded his arms across his chest, over the belts of ammunition. “Where is your partner, Corporal Martin?”
“Dead, I reckon.”
“Dead.” Ramon’s eye narrowed.
“What happened?” Armando demanded.
The sergeant glanced at him. “We got found out. Leastways, I’m figurin’ we did.”
Ramon uncrossed his arms, sat up slowly. The dull thrum of ugly premonition pounded inside him. “Explain yourself, Sergeant Bender.”
“Nate and I got caught unawares a couple nights back. We was just mindin’ our business, taking a piss in the Nueces. Next thing we know, here’s Jeb Carson, armed to the teeth and itchin’ to shoot.”
“Por Dios.” Such stupidity from the soldiers.
“He forced us into his camp. I managed to get away, but Nate didn’t. Waited long as I dared for him to come out. Next thing I know, Carson’s wrappin’ him up and throwin’ him on his horse.” Bender spit on the floor. “Nate wasn’t movin’, either.”
Ramon’s mind sifted through the details, the possible repercussions. What had the soldier revealed before he died?
“Who is this Jeb Carson you speak of?” he asked.
The sergeant shifted, one foot to the other, as if just hearing the man’s name made him nervous. “Hell, Ramon. Ain’t you heard of him?”
“No,” he snapped. “I have not.”
“He’s a mercenary. War Department hires him out. Sends him where no one else wants to go.”
“He is a soldier?” Ramon exchanged a tense glance with Armando.
“Used to be, from what they say. Now he works on his own. Gathers intelligence for the Army. Undercover.” Bender forced a laugh through his injured jaw. “Guess that’s why you never heard of him, then.”
Ramon was not amused. “I guess not.”
“He carries a mean gun. Draws a hard line. Don’t make mistakes, either, from what I hear.”
“That so?”
“And that ain’t all.”
Ramon waited, his fury at the two soldiers’ ineptitude simmering.
“He had a woman with him. The baby’s mother.”
Shock rippled through his men. Through Ramon. No one moved. Breathed.
“Describe her to me,” Ramon commanded sharply.
“Blond. Green eyes. ’Bout yay tall. Real pretty.” The sergeant paused, as if remembering. “Carson called her Elena.”
Ramon’s nostrils flared. It was her.
He had to think. Nicky’s mother was an annoyance. But this mercenary….
“Why was Jeb Carson with her?” he asked.
“Reckon he’s helpin’ her find her boy.”
“But he is a soldier?”
“Mercenary,” Bender corrected. “He’s got ways of doin’ things the Army most likely don’t want to know about.”
“So he was not riding with the Army? Other soldiers?”
“Nope. Just them two, near as I can tell.”
“Where are they now? Texas? Mexico?” Ramon’s demand for answers fueled the rapid-fire questions.
“Don’t know. Like I said, I ain’t seen ’em for a couple of days.” Bender shrugged. “But if Carson’s with her…” He hesitated. “Let’s just say, she’s got a damn powerful ally in him.”
Ramon digested the information. Elena traveled around the country and performed in a medicine show. That much he knew for sure. He did not believe she had any association with the United States Army. Why would she?
He had underestimated her ability to find him, however. Perhaps with this Jeb Carson, she would. Still, one man and one woman should not be too much trouble. They would not be able to take Nicky, not with so many of his men to prevent them.
He should have been relieved by that.
Somehow, he was not.
Ramon leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.
“I am concerned your stupidity in being caught by such a clever man as Jeb Carson will affect my shipment of rifles, Sergeant Bender,” he mused. “Should I be?”
“I’m just tellin’ you, Ramon, that if she’s got Carson with her and she’s looking for her baby, and if Nate spilled his guts about the guns, then you got trouble. Carson ain’t no one to mess with.”
It was all he could do to keep from shooting the sergeant where he stood.
“So what you are saying, Sergeant Bender, is that Jeb Carson would inform your Army of the guns coming across the border to us?” Armando demanded, his voice stern.
“Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. Couldn’t say for sure.”
Armando glared. “Would he or would he not?”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility, damn it. They claim he’s as fine a patriot as they come.”
“Not unlike yourself, eh, Sergeant?” Ramon taunted, his smile cold.
Bender fidgeted, but he said nothing.
Ramon rose. “Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”
“Reckon there is.” Bender slid his tongue around his lower lip. He glanced at Armando, at Esteban and Fernando, and finally, at Ramon himself. “I took a hell of a risk comin’ all the way out here to tell you what’s happened. I figured you was entitled to a decent warning. Bein’s we’re in the mi
ddle of a business arrangement and all.”
Ramon inclined his head. “Your kindness is appreciated by all of us.”
“So I was hopin’ that—” he cleared his throat “—I was hopin’ you could let me hole up with you out here. If Nate spilled his guts about them rifles, the Army’s not goin’ to be too happy with me when they catch wind of it.”
Ramon made a sound of sympathy. “Treason is a serious matter for the United States, hmm?”
He frowned around his injured jaw. “Yeah.”
“Sí. We can find a place for you here.” Ramon smiled.
Relief slumped Bender’s shoulders. “Much obliged.”
Ramon gestured to Esteban and Fernando, a silent command to take care of the sergeant’s slight problem in a quick and efficient manner.
“Wherever you choose, compadre,” he murmured.
His cousins nodded in understanding, then prodded the sergeant out the door with the noses of their revolvers. Bender paused long enough to lift his hand in a grateful wave before they pulled the door closed behind him.
Armando spun toward Ramon in disgust.
“Stupido soldado!” he spit.
Ramon’s mouth tightened. “Sí. A stupid soldier.”
“Esteban and Fernando will see that he is never found.”
“So long as the women and children do not suspect. They will not understand how much trouble the sergeant has brought us with his carelessness.”
Armando nodded in somber agreement. “What now?”
Ramon did not know how much of a threat Jeb Carson would be. Perhaps Bender had worried them for nothing. Perhaps Carson, with all his skills as a mercenary, would not even find them here so deep in the hills.
Then again, perhaps he would.
The wild-haired peasant, the loco he knew only as Simon, slid a bowl filled with acorns in front of him, his twisted little body moving so soundlessly that Ramon hardly noticed his familiar presence.
He scooped out a handful of the nuts, anticipated their mild, roasted taste. “We watch, Armando. We wait. And we pray the rifles will arrive very soon.”
Jeb sat up slowly, a cautious test of his muscles gone tight from too many hours spent on the hard ground. He speared a hand through his hair, ran his palm over his whisker-rough jaw.
The fever was gone. The fire in his belly, too. The chills and headache. All of them gone.
Damned if he didn’t feel good.
Puzzled by it, he pursed his lips. The relapse hadn’t lasted long at all. Not like he expected. It should have.
Had he been sicker than he realized? Had more days passed than he knew?
He didn’t think so. It didn’t feel like they had.
He tilted his head back and gauged the light falling through the branches and leaves. The hottest part of the day had passed. Nightfall was only a few hours away.
Elena. Where was she?
He was alone in their little hideaway, but her presence was evident. Dishes were stacked off to one side, each one clean except for a bowl of what looked like broth. A pot of coffee simmered near the fire. He spied her hairbrush. Her shoes.
He felt no alarm. Instinct told him she wouldn’t have left him. Not now.
He noticed a brown bottle nearby. Next to it, a spoon.
He recognized the elixir, the container half-empty. Doc Charlie’s Miraculous Herbal Compound. Bemused, he removed the cap and sniffed. The smell registered in his brain. He dipped a finger into the liquid, tasted it. He knew that, too.
She’d given him doses of her father’s medicine when he’d been felled by the throes of the malaria. He’d resisted, but she had forced them down. Somehow.
Doc Charlie’s Miraculous Herbal Compound.
Had it saved his life?
Maybe she’d found some quinine, after all. But there was no evidence of it. And where would she have gotten it?
He tossed aside his blanket, noted he wore no boots, no socks, no shirt. He found them all by his saddlebag, clean and folded neat. The prospect of a bath and a fresh change of clothes appealed to him.
Finding Elena appealed to him more.
He rose, realizing he was amazingly steady. Strong. As if the ravage of malaria had never happened.
But it had.
Puzzled, he headed toward the sound of falling water, his first guess of where Elena would be. He found her just beyond their camp, standing beneath the stream of water babbling from a rocky ridge high above her.
She was washing her hair, her back to him. She wore only a thin cotton chemise, her legs slim, shapely beneath the hem. Water splattered the fabric, made it cling to the curve of her hips. Elena, he discovered, had a fine-looking butt.
Fire leapt to his loins. He strode closer, his focus riveted to the tug and pull of the chemise around her backside while she scrubbed. She turned, her eyes closed against the soap’s sting, and tilted her head back into the waterfall to rinse. Suds flowed from the top of her head down over the mane of hair hanging clear to her waist.
The front of her chemise was hopelessly wet. And damned sheer. He swallowed at the gossamer fabric pasted to the mounds of her breasts, darkened at the tips and pebbled from the cold.
The fire in him raged hotter.
She took a step forward out of the water, then bent at the waist to flip the dripping mass forward. She twisted the strands, squeezed out the excess…
Maybe she caught sight of his feet first. Or maybe she sensed his presence before she actually saw him. Regardless, she straightened bolt upright with a gasp.
“Jeb!”
“Don’t stop on my account,” he drawled. “I’m enjoying the show.”
She looked taken aback. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“I know.”
She looked beautiful, water sluicing down her arms, her hair hanging in sodden clumps around her shoulders, eyelashes thick and wet. He took a step closer, his toes finding water. She clawed the hair from her face and reached blindly for a towel.
Jeb plucked it away. He wasn’t ready to give up that view yet.
“Jeb,” she said, exasperated, and reached for it again.
She missed.
He smiled.
“You must be feeling better.” She eyed him warily.
He wondered if she had any idea how naked she looked in that chemise. How damned erotic.
“I am,” he said.
She leveled him with an assessing glance, as if to convince herself.
“You scared me, you know,” she said, her tone accusing.
“Did I?” He tossed the towel aside, onto a bush, out of her range. “When?”
“Last night. All day today.” She tucked a sodden hank of hair behind her ear and crossed her arms over her breasts, hiding them from him. “I thought you were going to die.”
“So how come I didn’t?”
“My father’s elixir saved you.”
He grunted. “You think so?”
“I know so.”
He cocked his jaw. She might be right, after all. He’d have to do some more thinking on it.
“It’s not quackery, like you claim,” she said, chin high.
He thought again how good he felt. How healed.
“Maybe not,” he conceded.
The secrets of the ancients.
“I didn’t have quinine for you, though you were certain I did.”
“Really?”
“You were delirious, Jeb. That scared me, too.”
“Delirious.”
“You thought we were in the jungle. That Creed was with us.”
“I don’t remember.” He’d been delirious the first time he’d been taken in by the malaria, too. Last year. Creed had stayed with him. Dosed him with quinine. Saved his life.
Just like Elena had.
Except the quinine hadn’t worked as fast. Not like the elixir had.
She clucked her tongue, her sympathy still strong. Fresh. “Your fever was so high, you were burning up.”
He patte
d his bare chest. “Is that why I’m not wearing a shirt?”
“Yes. I took it off to cool you down.”
“You took good care of me, didn’t you?”
“Someone had to.” She cocked her head. “Simon brought you some chicken broth.”
“Simon.” The wild-haired peasant. “He was here?”
“Yes. This afternoon.” She hesitated. “I saw Sergeant Bender, Jeb.”
The soldier’s name was a shot of grim reality. He stared. “Where the hell did you see him?”
“Down by Ramon’s hideout. He rode right past me.”
Bender’s return had something to do with the shipment of arms. Jeb could think of no other reason why he would leave Texas to head back to Mexico and de la Vega.
“They brought him into one of the cabins,” she went on. “A little while later, they brought him back out again. I never saw him after that.”
Jeb wondered if he was still alive. He didn’t deserve to be. He regarded Elena with a scowl. “What do you mean ‘he rode right past you’? You went down there? Alone?”
She stiffened. “I wanted to see Nicky.”
He exhaled a slow breath. The risk she’d taken…
“So, did you?” he said between clenched teeth.
“Yes.” Her lip curled in a pout. “They were giving him a bath. I wanted to march right in and take him away.”
“You were a damn fool to go there.” But some of his irritation left him. It was hard for her to be apart from her baby. “He doing okay?”
“Well enough, I guess.” Her expression turned beseeching. “I want him back, Jeb. I don’t think I can wait much longer.”
“I know, Elena.”
With the arrival of the illicit weapons certainly imminent, it was imperative to get the boy out. If they didn’t, de la Vega would once more be on the move, committing his acts of vicious banditry, all in the name of his revolution. He would take Nicky with him. Nicky could get hurt, an innocent in all that violence.
Jeb’s bout with malaria had delayed the rescue of Elena’s son. They’d lost too much time already.
“Tonight,” he decided.
“Tonight.” She pressed her fingers to her lips at his decision. Fingers, he noted, that had a tinge of blue.