by Jane Toombs
"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Jordan demanded.
"I quite understand." She faced him and spoke as calmly as she could. "I'm ready to ride when you are."
Jordan looked at her for a long moment, then he drew in his breath and let it out slowly. "At least we've gained a new pack horse," he said finally, "and an extra mount besides." He nodded at the bandits' two horses farther down the arroyo. "Come along," he told her, "and help me reload the gold."
By three that afternoon they were descending into the tropical lowlands, the tierra caliente. The country grew more arid and the heat became so intense that they were forced to stop near the trickle of a stream and rest until the sun dropped behind the mountains. They went on in the half-light of early evening along a road winding through a succession of boulder-strewn badlands and woods. After they passed an Indian village of cane cottages in an oasis of flowering shrubs, the country became even drier, with the only trees an infrequent palm or two.
As the sky darkened overhead and the first stars appeared, Jordan called a halt. They made camp off the trail on flat ground sheltered by huge boulders. Afraid to attract attention by building a fire, they ate bread, cheese and dried beef.
"Listen," Alitha said.
They heard a muted rumbling from a great distance. Thunder? Alitha wondered. Or gunfire? She glanced at Jordan's dark form seated a few feet from her.
"A storm in the mountains," he said, and in a few minutes she saw lightning, not jagged streaks but a dim, pulsing glow above the horizon.
"Good night, Alitha," Jordan said. When she looked, she could no longer see him in the darkness and knew he must be lying on his pallet.
"Good night," she said tonelessly.
She lay on her back, pulling a blanket to her chin as she felt a chill breeze sweep between the boulders. She stared overhead at the stars, reliving in her mind the long journey from California to Mexico with Esteban. She remembered making love beside a stream after Esteban had soaped her body, remembered watching the sailors throwing the hides from the cliff at San Juan Capistrano, remembered reaching out for Esteban in the night and feeling him enfold and comfort her as his hands moved along her body, teasing and caressing her at the same time.
She closed her eyes, imagining she was with him again, not the Esteban of these last weeks in Mexico but Esteban as he had been at first, loving and attentive. And passionate. She sighed as she drifted toward sleep.
She heard a slithering sound somewhere in the darkness to her left. Opening her eyes, she drew in and held her breath. As they had entered the tierra caliente earlier in the day, she had seen lizards scurrying away from the hooves of their horses to seek shelter in crevices in the rocks. Now she remembered Esteban telling her of the many and varied venomous creatures that thrived in the hot country.
"There are the scorpions," he had said, "whose tails carry poison deadly to a young child or to an old person, so you must always examine your bed and the walls of your room before you extinguish your candle. Then there is the vinagrillo, an insect like a large cricket, orange in color and always smelling of vinegar. And spiders without number, one in particular whose body is red and black and whose bite sends pain into all your bones. And, of course, there is the tarantula." Alitha had shivered when he said the word. "The tarantula is soft and fat and covered with dark hairs like a great ugly beast. And the coral snakes and the rattlers."
Again she heard the slithering and imagined snakes and scorpions crawling toward her in the dark night.
Jordan," she whispered urgently.
"Jordan," she said again. When he didn't answer, she repeated his name a third time, more loudly than before. She heard him stir, then sit up abruptly.
"What is it?"
"Listen," she told him. A moment later the sound came again, nearer than before.
Jordan stood and lit a lantern, and she heard him tramping about in the scrub brush near their sleeping place. She heard the sound of rocks scattering, and then it was quiet. When Jordan returned, he stood over her with the light from the lantern mottling his unshaven face.
"Just a lizard," he said. "I used a stick to toss him away from the camp."
"Oh," she said. She lay back on her pallet in some embarrassment. Jordan continued looking down at her. "Thank you," she said. "I'm not usually so—so nervous."
He extinguished the lantern, and she heard him return to his pallet. Why did she always encounter Jordan Quinn at the wrong time and in the wrong place, she wondered. In other circumstances she might have liked him. She shook her head. It was their fate, she thought, to meet and then go their separate ways, following their separate destinies.
"Jordan," she said, "why are you in Mexico? Why were you at Chapultepec Hill?"
She heard him sigh, but when he said nothing, she turned on her side, looking away from him, thinking he wasn't going to answer.
"I'd been following Don Esteban the night before," he said at last. "I lost him after he left the costume ball, or rather he lost me, and so I was watching his house the next morning when I saw you leave with Don Benito. I followed you, thinking you'd lead me to Esteban, but instead you led me up Chapultepec Hill."
"You were following Esteban? What on earth for?"
Jordan hesitated, then, seeming to make up his mind, told her of his meeting with the American navy captain in Santa Barbara and of his own trip south by ship to Acapulco, carefully omitting any mention of Thomas Heath. The missionary couldn't have survived the yellow fever, sick as he'd been when Jordan had left him in the Acapulco convent hospital.
"Then, in Mexico City," Jordan told her, "the American consul alerted me to the rumors of a plot to smuggle gold out of the country to Spain. The cafe gossip had it that Don Esteban was one of the ringleaders."
Esteban would never have told me if he hadn't needed my help, Alitha said to herself, yet everyone else knew what was going on. Everybody except me!
"The shipment to Spain," Jordan said, "was none of my concern, but I suspected that Don Esteban might have his own plans for the gold. Which he did. So the gold became my concern. I have to keep it out of the hands of the Californios. You know the rest—how I was lucky enough to be able to overhear Esteban when he told you of his plan. His ruse, I think he called it."
Alitha lay listening to the sounds of the night. She imagined Jordan smiling in the darkness, for he had managed a ruse of his own. Gold means so much to men, she thought. They kill for gold, risk their lives for gold, and it's really so unimportant.
She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes, the night was brighter and she saw a crescent moon overhead.
Certain that a voice had awakened her, she sat up, listening. Yes, Jordan's voice. What was he saying? As she strained to hear, she realized he was talking in his sleep. All at once he groaned, and she threw off her blanket and rose to her feet. A name, that was it, he was repeating a name over and over.
"Margarita."
He moaned as though in pain, and Alitha knelt beside him. Suddenly he shouted hoarsely and she shrank back, startled. His moaning resumed and again he muttered the name. "Margarita."
Alitha reached down and shook his shoulder. He muttered something, turning away, so she shook him harder. With an oath Jordan sprang to his feet, sending her sprawling to the ground. She got up, backing away.
"You—you were having a nightmare," she told him.
"I should have warned you." He stood a few feet from her, his face shadowed by the moonlight. "I often dream. At times I dread going to sleep because of the dreams."
"Do you want to tell me about them?"
When he didn't answer, she said, "You were repeating Margarita's name over and over in your sleep."
He drew in a long breath. "I still can't believe she's dead," he said quietly, sadly. "She was so alive and vibrant, so young—she had her whole life to live. Until I killed her." He kicked at the ground and dirt sprayed into the dry undergrowth.
"You mustn't blame yourself," Alith
a said. "You didn't kill her, Bouchard and his men did."
"If she hadn't sailed with me, he wouldn't have had the chance. It's all so senseless. Why did she have to die? There was no reason for her to die, none at all. It would have been a thousand times better if I had died in her stead." He reached down and she saw that he was picking a handful of rocks from the ground.
"Why?" he shouted into the night. He hurled a rock into the blackness. The rock struck a boulder and thudded to the ground. "Why did you let her die? Why did you?" He flung rock after rock into the darkness. When she heard him sob, she went to him and he turned and gripped her arm so fiercely she cried out.
"Tell me, Alitha. Why? Why did God, if God there be, let Margarita die? Answer me. Why did He?"
"God works in mysterious ..."
"No! I've heard that evasion too often. I don't want to be told that I can't understand God's ways now but that someday, in the hereafter, perhaps, I will. That answer's for children. I'm a man and I want to know. I deserve to know."
"Why do you deserve to know?" she asked softly, "when no one else knows either?"
He released her, and she watched him walk to his pallet and throw himself down. She wanted to run to Jordan, to kneel beside him to hold and comfort him. With a shiver she remembered holding Esteban in her arms only hours ago, after Jordan had almost killed him.
Alitha sighed and lay on her petate to stare, up at the stars. Jordan's question echoed in her mind.
"Why?"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jordan reined in his horse at the top of a rise and watched Alitha as she rode to join him. Damn, but she was beautiful. He never tired of looking at her. Not because of her hair, though its soft blondness made him want to reach out and touch it, not because of her eyes, though they seemed to change from one entrancing shade of blue to another. Not because of her fair skin, nor her small yet sensuous mouth, nor her full figure.
No, none of her features in and of themselves so intrigued him. Rather it was Alitha herself, the harmony of her features, her steadfast good cheer, her spirit, her intelligence. The reason, he thought, mattered little. All that was important to him was that she held him in thrall more than any other woman ever had.
Even more than Margarita? Despite a twinge of guilt—the feeling that he was betraying his beloved Margarita—he admitted the truth to himself--Alitha had come to mean more to him even than Margarita.
Alitha stopped beside him, and they looked around at the desolate landscape. A steep slope rose to their right, and a ravine fell away to their left.
"We're entering rebel territory," Jordan said, deliberately keeping his eyes on the vista before him, tempted though he was to stare admiringly at Alitha. "I saw fighting not far south of here on my way from Acapulco to Mexico City last month. The rebel general Guerrero was raiding government convoys sent to bring supplies to their outposts in the provinces. Guerrero had his men under control for the most part, but there was so much killing and looting that the rich landlords were abandoning their haciendas and fleeing to their homes in the cities till the fighting ended."
"That may be soon," Alitha said. "If what Esteban heard is true, then the viceroy's own general, Iturbide, will make peace with the revolutionaries. Without consulting the viceroy. With the idea that he might eventually join the rebels against the Spaniards. If General Iturbide does, Esteban said it would mean a quick end to the war."
"Once a revolution succeeds," Jordan said, "you have rejoicing in the streets for a time and then a short while later the revolutionaries begin quarreling over the spoils and there's more fighting and bloodshed, until the people forget their grand-sounding slogans as well as the reasons they fought the war in the first place. That's when they look for a man on a white horse, a strong leader to bring peace to the country. The result is that a tyrant takes over. Like Napolean. The same will happen here. The only question is who the tyrant will be. Guerrero? Iturbide? Santa Anna?"
"You're too cynical. Look at the United States. We fought a revolution without a civil war afterward. And without a tyrant."
"The army wanted Washington to become king," Jordan said, "but he turned them down. America's the exception, not the rule. Mexico won't be an exception; the army's too strong here, too powerful. The first revolt ten years ago was led by priests like Hidalgo—now it's the generals fighting one another here in the south. We'll have to be on our guard every minute."
They rode on side by side. For the last two days, as they made their way across the countryside, shunning the villages and the well-traveled roads, Jordan had treated Alitha as he would have treated another man, a trusted comrade-at-arms. At times he had seen her glance at him in surprise when he asked for her opinion. Knowing Esteban, Jordan guessed the don had treated her as he would a chattel. Esteban was a pompous fool. Any other man would be proud to have her for a companion, not a bond maiden.
As the day grew hotter, Jordan saw beads of perspiration form on Alitha's forehead. Her dress, a heavy, high-necked black muslin, was streaked with dust. Finally she undid the two top buttons of the dress and, though he tried for the rest of the day to keep his eyes on the trail ahead, Jordan was acutely conscious of Alitha's white flesh leading in a vee down between her breasts.
The next morning Jordan woke first and, in the half-light of the predawn, knelt beside Alitha. He drew in his breath. Her dress and petticoats lay folded beside her. She faced away from him, her golden hair loose on her bare shoulders, wearing only her chemise. The thin garment had pulled up on her body as she slept, revealing her long, slender legs while barely covering the curve of her hip. Desire stirred in Jordan, forcing him to stand and turn away in order to marshal his self-control. Only after long minutes was he able to kneel beside her again. He put his hand on her bare shoulder to wake her, feeling her warm skin quiver beneath his touch.
Alitha came awake with a startled cry. Sitting up, she clutched a blanket to her.
"It's time to ride," Jordan said gruffly, standing and looking away before she could see the pain of denial in his face. As he began saddling the horses, he heard the rustle of her clothing as she hurriedly dressed. When he turned to look at her, he saw that she had buttoned her dress to the neck once more.
The day proved hotter than any that had gone before. A wind came up in mid-morning, and dust devils swirled across the dry land, the dust coating their faces with grime, streaking their clothing, even filtering through the handkerchiefs tied over their mouths and noses. Dirty and thirsty, they rode on with the sun rising ever higher in the sky overhead.
Just as Jordan was about to call a halt to rest, Alitha spurred her horse ahead, stopped and turned to him, removing the handkerchief from her face. "Water," she called back. "I've found a stream."
As she trotted ahead, lie was about to shout a warning, then hesitated. They had seen no other riders, friend or foe, all morning. He was being overcautious, Jordan told himself; the rebels had probably left the area weeks before to move south.
Digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, he followed Alitha, swinging to the ground beside her tethered horse. She knelt a short distance away beside a fast-flowing rivulet. When she heard him behind her, she looked up, frowning.
"The water's hot," she said, "and has a strange salty taste."
The small stream, he noticed, was clouded. A hundred feet ahead of them a rutted track followed the stream. His gaze went along the track up the side of the mountain and, behind a cluster of trees partway up the slope, he saw the wall of what appeared to be a building.
"The water must come from a mineral spring," he said. "That building might be an old Spanish bathhouse."
"A bathhouse! Then I can wash. I feel so dirty after all these days on the trail." She looked at Jordan. "Let's ride up the hill and see." When she noticed him hesitate, she said, "Please."
"When you look at me like that," he told her, "I can't deny you anything."
She glanced sharply at him. As soon as he'd spoken, he regretted his words, for
he had promised himself that he would treat her coolly, with indifference. After all, she loved another man, Esteban. Hadn't she been prepared to die for the don when Jordan had ambushed him on the trail?
"We'll take a look to find out if the baths are safe," Jordan said, his tone again distant. "They'd make a good hiding place for bandits or rebels."
They rode up the side of the mountain in a great circle so that they approached the building from above. They saw no signs of life at all.
"Look." Alitha pointed to three cone-shaped hills farther up the mountain. The hills were barren and littered with black rocks.
"They must be volcanic," Jordan said. "I've read that there's a great fissure running beneath this part of Mexico. Humboldt says that from time to time molten rock from the center of the earth forces its way to the surface to create volcanoes and hot springs."
"Oh, Jordan," she said, smiling, "you sound exactly like a schoolmaster."
Despite himself, his face reddened.
"Jordan," she said quickly, "I meant no harm. I've always liked schoolmasters, as a matter of fact."
When he saw her pause in confusion, he rode ahead, examining the ground for tracks of either men or animals, smiling to himself. Finding no evidence of life, he said, "I think it's safe."
They rode slowly from a fringe of trees, crossing open ground to the low stone building. The scene was one of complete desolation: shards of earthen jars lay scattered on the ground; the walls of the bathhouse were cracked, as though by an ancient earthquake, and the thatched roof had been darkened by weather and time. At the downhill side of the building, the stream flowed sluggishly from a stone duct with steam rising from the yellow-green water.
After they tied the horses to a dead tree, Jordan held out his hand to keep Alitha behind him. Pistol ready, he went to the doorway and peered inside. The interior was dark, for the baths were enclosed by stone walls with only small apertures near the roof to admit light. As Jordan stepped inside, a great whirring sound erupted. Swinging his gun up, he was about to fire when he saw a large bird take flight, circle the room and fly through a rent in the roof and disappear.