Bride of the Baja

by Jane Toombs

  Presently a black-robed sister appeared, nodded to Jordan and opened the gate. She led him through a garden of flowering vines and along dim corridors to the top of a stairs, where she tapped on a rough-hewn wooden door. When a woman's voice bade them enter, the sister opened the door, smiled at Jordan and slipped silently away.

  Mother Superior Angelica was alone in the sparsely furnished room. She nodded to a chair. "You seek your friend," she said, looking at Jordan across her bare oak desk.

  "I do, Mother Superior. For months, while I've been in Mexico City, I've feared the worst. As you are aware, he once saved my life."

  "I have good news for you. Your comrade, Senor Thomas Heath, recovered from the yellow fever. His strength returned, and he left the convent hospital more than a week ago. I must say he is a most determined young man."

  "That is good news. When I rode into Acapulco earlier today, I kept a weather eye out for him. I didn't see him in the village then and I haven't seen him since. Do you know where he lives?"

  "When he left here, he told us he intended to travel to Mexico City, and I presume he did so. I have heard no more of him since he left here. In the convent, as you know, we receive little news from the outside world."

  "Thank you for all you did for Senor Heath. When I carried him here, I thought he was dying. Your sisters have performed a miracle in saving his life."

  She smiled. "I must correct you. Only God can perform miracles, Senor Quinn."

  Jordan stood up, reached into his pocket and crossed the room to place a pouch on the mother superior's desk. "This is a small offering to help with the work of the hospital," he told her.

  "May God bless you. A thousand thanks, Senor Quinn."

  "You shouldn't thank me." Jordan smiled. "You should thank God."

  After leaving the convent Jordan went directly to the harbor, where he hired a boat to row him to the schooner. The ship, the captain told him, would sail north the next day, intending to trade at the ports along the Mexican coast. Jordan frowned as he listened. The schooner would be of no help—he had to get as far from Acapulco as he could. The brig, though, held out more hope. "She's bound for South America and will visit New York before she sails for London," Jordan told Alitha when he returned to the inn. "We can probably book passage aboard her to the States, though I have to talk to the captain first. He was ashore visiting at a hacienda some miles from here. They expect him back on board to the captain first. He was ashore visiting at a hacienda some miles from here; they expect him back on board tomorrow."

  "When does she sail?"

  "In two or three days."

  Jordan began taking tropical fruits from a net bag.

  "The dinner I promised you," he said. When he had piled all the fruit on the table, he went to the corner of the room and knelt beside the gold.

  "That Indian we saw in the courtyard," he said over his shoulder as he removed coins to pay for their passage. "Enrico. There was no sign of him while I was gone?"

  "None. As far as I could tell, no one has the slightest interest in us."

  When Enrico left the inn after having his offer of his services spurned by Jordan, he walked along the dusty road to the center of the village, where he entered a cantina. At the bar he asked, as he always did, for pulque. The cantinero—the bartender—a grossly overweight man, nodded, waddled away and returned with the drink.

  "Thank you, Juan, my friend." Enrico leaned over the bar and lowered his voice to a whisper. "I think the fish are beginning to run," he said.

  "You have always had an eye for the fish, Enrico. What do you expect, a large run or a small?"

  "Large. Perhaps the greatest we have ever seen." He put his empty glass on the bar for Juan to refill.

  "Large enough to interest those who hunt only the biggest of fish?"

  "Yes. Though only God can say for sure." He hesitated, wondering how to put the words. "There is also a golden-haired mermaid of great beauty," he said finally.

  Juan laughed and poured him another drink. "If you are right, Enrico, my friend, you will be rewarded with a portion of this spectacular catch. As usual."

  Enrico smiled as the pulque sent fire through his blood. He closed his eyes, imagining riches—singing, dancing, drinking, women. Life was good, he told himself.

  As he walked unsteadily back to the inn, he heard a horse approaching from behind him. When the rider galloped by, Enrico raised his hand in greeting. The horseman ignored him, riding on toward the south, leaving Enrico coughing and cursing in the dust raised by the horse's hooves.

  Juan wasted no time, Enrico thought as he entered the courtyard of the inn. He glanced in the direction of the stranger's room, the man who had walked eight times from the stable to the inn, his back bowed beneath his heavy packs. These fish won't get away, Enrico told himself.

  The messenger from Juan's cantina galloped south along the shore of the Pacific in the gathering dusk. After more than an hour's ride, he left the road to follow a trail, slowing when he saw a tree felled across his path. A harsh order to halt came from the darkness.

  "The password," the same voice demanded.

  "The fish are running."

  A light flared. A lantern was raised and the rider saw a bearded face. "Give me your message," the sentry said.

  "No, I speak only to the captain."

  "I'll take your message to him myself."

  "No, I must speak to the captain. Those are my orders."

  The sentry shrugged. "Your message best be important," he said. "Jorge," he called over his shoulder. A man walked his horse out of the darkness. "Take this one to the camp," the sentry told him.

  The two men rode on with the rumbling surf to their right. They were passed through two more guard posts before coming to a row of fires burning in front of huts clustered above the beach. In the light of the fires, the messenger saw men sitting about drinking and gambling. A ship lay careened on the shore for repairs, another was anchored in the bay.

  Jorge led the messenger to a thatched hut set apart from the rest. When he rapped on the door, they heard a man curse and a woman laugh. In the ensuing silence Jorge stepped aside. After some minutes the door opened and a man wearing a red sash stood facing them. He stared coldly at the messenger.

  "Your message had better be worth my while," Hippolyte de Bouchard said. In spite of himself the messenger felt a quiver of fear course along his spine.

  The next day Jordan booked passage for himself and Alitha on the British brig Redeemer bound for Valparaiso, New York and London.

  "Valparaiso," Jordan said. "That's where I first saw you." He was lying on his pallet on the floor of their candlelit room. Alitha was in the single narrow bed.

  "It seems so long ago," she said. "So much has happened since then, so much has changed. It's almost as though I'm a different person."

  She sighed and closed her eyes, remembering Valparaiso. Her father had been alive then, and she had been on her way to the Sandwich Islands to marry Thomas. She had never heard of Esteban Mendoza. And Jordan Quinn was a handsome sea captain sailing from the harbor aboard the Kerry Dancer.

  Where was Thomas now? She asked herself. Lately she had thought of him often, wondering how he had fared in the islands. Life in the West was nothing like she had imagined it, and probably not as Thomas had imagined it either. She and Thomas had expected the dangers, the storms, the turmoil of the times. The greatest danger, she thought, to a person like Thomas, a man who was gentle and trusting yet unbending, would come from a more subtle source. Neither the Indians nor the Spaniards viewed life as the Yankees of New England did. They lived more fully, more passionately, as though there were no tomorrow.

  "You seem to be miles away," Jordan said. He leaned over and blew out the candle on the floor beside him.

  "I was thinking of Boston and whether I could ever be happy living there again."

  "You don't intend to go on to the Sandwich Islands?"

  "Someone must have told you about Thomas. I don't kn
ow whether he'd still consider us betrothed. It must be over a year since he last heard from me."

  "I have a confession to make." Jordan paused, then plunged on. "Thomas came to Mexico looking for you. In fact, he sailed with me from Santa Barbara and I had to leave him here in Acapulco when he came down with the fever."

  "Thomas followed me ..." she began.

  "I visited the convent hospital where I left him and found out that he'd recovered and set out for Mexico City some weeks ago."

  Alitha sat up in bed. "And you never told me," she accused him, her voice shaking with anger. "How could you have been with me all this time and never told me?"

  "I didn't know whether he'd live. Besides—" He stopped. "Listen," he said.

  "What is it?"

  Footsteps pounded along the corridor. A door slammed in another part of the inn.

  "Do you smell something?" Jordan asked.

  She sniffed the air. "Yes, smoke. I smell smoke."

  "Fuego!" a voice cried from outside their door. "Fuego!"

  Jordan scrambled to his feet and ran to the window, a bandana shielding his nose and mouth from the smoke pouring through the grate. He gripped the iron bars with both hands and shook them, but they refused to budge.

  "Alitha," he called, stumbling to the bed, "give me your hand. The inn's on fire."

  She reached out and touched his arm, and his fingers closed on hers.

  "Stay as low as you can," he told her. "We'll be all right once we're outside."

  They groped their way to the door, coughing in the now dense smoke. Jordan slid the bolt aside and opened the door. The smoke was even thicker in the corridor. They ran to the outer door. Jordan threw it open and they staggered into the courtyard.

  A club thudded down on Jordan's head and he fell face forward to the ground. Strong hands grasped Alitha, and though she struggled a gag was thrust into her mouth and tied behind her head. She was lifted, kicking and flailing, to a waiting horse and thrown across its back. Rope bit into her wrists and ankles, and the bindings were tied beneath the horse's belly. Men shouted. She still smelled the acrid odor of smoke.

  "Oro!" someone shouted. They had found the gold. A rider sprang into the saddle behind her and with a cry of triumph urged the horse from the courtyard and into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Jordan Quinn opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling above him and a white wall to his right. His head throbbed and he groaned as he shifted his body on the narrow cot.

  "The wound, while painful, is superficial. At least that is what I am told."

  Jordan jerked his head to his left to stare at Don Esteban, then glanced quickly about, looking for his pistol. His clothes were draped over a chair, but the gun was nowhere to be seen. Had Don Esteban been the one who had attacked him? Was he being held prisoner?

  "Do not seek your weapon," Esteban said calmly. "I have declared a truce in our personal war. For the time being I suspect I need you, my friend, as much as you need me."

  Jordan struggled up to sit with his back to the wall, the pain in his head blurring his vision. Esteban observed him coldly from a chair next to the bed. Jordan recognized his cell-like quarters as one of the sick rooms in the convent hospital. So he wasn't Esteban's prisoner. If he could only remember what had happened.

  "The gold," Jordan said. "What became of the gold?"

  Esteban raised both hands, palms up, in a shrug. "I thought you might be able to enlighten me, Senor Quinn. About the gold and the present whereabouts of Senorita Bradford."

  "Alitha? Alitha's missing?" Wisps of memory began to return. When Jordan touched the bandage on his head, he winced. "I remember the fire at the inn. Alitha was with me. We groped through the smoke to the courtyard. I heard someone behind me. After that—nothing. Nothing at all."

  "Because you were struck on the head and have been unconscious ever since. After the attack on you, the gold was taken and Senorita Bradford was abducted." Suddenly Esteban leaned close to Jordan, fire in his brown eyes. "You fool. You let them dupe you. They set small fires among rags and you thought the entire inn was aflame."

  "They have Alitha." Jordan spoke as though realizing the fact for the first time. "When did this all happen? I've lost track of time."

  "Last night. The entire charade was over by the time I arrived at the inn. I've been sitting here since five this morning, over an hour, waiting for you to become conscious."

  "How did you track me down?"

  "I suspected the gunman on the trail was you because anyone else would have killed me. You wouldn't have, not from ambush and not in cold blood. And then the Indians in the villages told me of the foreigner who rode with the woman of the golden hair. Once I found that you and the senorita were journeying west, I knew you must come at last to Acapulco."

  Jordan swung his legs from the bed. Standing, he swayed on his feet, but when Esteban stepped to his side, Jordan shook off his steadying hand. He began pulling on his clothes.

  "We must act without delay," Esteban said. "Already we've lost valuable time. Have you any idea who attacked you? I learned nothing at the inn. It was too dark, they told me; it happened too quickly, they said."

  "I have no idea who it was."

  "Who knew you had the gold?"

  "No one. Only Alitha and myself. We'd only arrived the day before."

  "Whom did you speak to?"

  "No one." Jordan paused to think. "That's not true. I talked to the mother superior here at the convent. I'd left a friend in their care the last time I was in Acapulco, But he had gone. And I talked to the captains of the two ships in the harbor. About passage."

  "Did you pay them in gold?"

  "No, I hadn't paid for our passage yet." Jordan rubbed his forehead in an attempt to ease the pain as the events of the last two days began falling into place in his mind. "I gave the mother superior a pouch of gold coins to repay her. You don't think—?"

  Esteban shrugged. "Anyone else?"

  His head whirling, Jordan closed his eyes and leaned against the wall beside the window. When he opened his eyes, he was looking through the grated window. He remembered another grated window, the one at the inn.

  "There was an Indian," he said slowly. "Name of Enrico. A gap-toothed Indian who offered his services at the inn, I turned him down. He was there in the courtyard when I carried my packs to my room. But he had no way of knowing I had gold inside."

  "I'll start with him. Can you walk to the courtyard? I have a horse for you outside."

  "I can walk. No," Jordan said when Esteban started to take his arm. "I don't need your help."

  "I think you need my help as much as I need yours. How else will we find Alitha and recover my gold?"

  "Your gold, Don Esteban? Somewhere I remember hearing that the gold belonged to the Spanish government."

  "Let us say our gold. If we are so fortunate as to recover it."

  "Fifty-fifty? Half for each of us?"

  "I agree," Don Esteban said. "Fifty-fifty."

  They didn't find Enrico at the inn. "Look for him at Juan's cantina," they were told.

  "What do you intend to do to him?" Jordan, remembering the attack by the two knife-wielding vaqueros at Santa Barbara, nodded at the knife on Esteban's belt. "Use that to make him talk?"

  "Torture has its place, but only in an extremity. Have you any of the gold left?"

  Jordan hooked his finger in his money pocket and brought out four coins. "These were for our passage," he said.

  "One should be more than sufficient to entice Enrico to tell all he knows. You must wait here at the inn. I'll speak to Senor Enrico alone."

  Esteban's face was grim when he returned to Jordan's room. Shutting the door behind him, he went to the window and glanced into the courtyard before sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "It is much worse than I feared," he said. "They are not bandits who attacked you and took Alitha. It is the pirate Bouchard and his men."

  "Bouchard!" As Jordan breathed the name,
his hand gripped the butt of the pistol in his belt. He clenched his teeth thinking of Alitha as a captive among that crew.

  "I'll kill him," Jordan snarled. "Kill that bastard Bouchard and all the scum who follow him."

  "We'll ride to his camp at once," Esteban said. "Wait until nightfall and then swoop down on them and carry Alitha and the gold off with us."

  "No." Jordan shook his head. "First we have to plan, to reconnoiter their camp so we know the lay of the land. We have to find out how many men Bouchard has, how well armed they are, where they have Alitha, where they've cached the gold."

  "We can't wait!" Esteban spoke passionately, pounding his fist on the small table. "Such as they are not fit to even look on Alitha, much less touch her with their filthy hands. Men lower than dogs! We must count on surprise to overcome them. If we pause to deliberate, they may scatter to the four winds, each with his share of the gold, and we lose all."

  "By God, Esteban, I'm surprised you've managed to stay alive as long as you have. They might have two hundred men in that lair of theirs, all armed, all desperate, all hungry for the gold and willing to kill us on sight. I don't like to think of Alitha there any more than you do, but we'd be fools to attack them as though we were a cavalry troop when we're but two men. I favor the sea--they'd never expect that."

  "Are you afraid of Bouchard?" Esteban mocked.

  "Afraid?" Jordan took his gun from his belt and slapped it on the table. "Pistols at twenty paces. Now, in the courtyard. Does that suit you, Mendoza? We'll decide matters between us once and for all."

  "I do not want to take advantage of an injured man."

  "Are you a coward as well as a rash fool, Don Esteban?"

  Esteban's face flushed a dark red. "Pistols at twenty paces, then. I don't fight you for myself but for Margarita. For Alitha. I should have killed you long ago."

  As they turned to leave the room, the door swung open and a blond man stood barring their way.

  "From what I've heard, gentlemen," he said, "this is a time for prayer, not for dueling."

  Jordan stared. "Thomas!"

  "Your friend from the hospital?" Esteban asked.