In front of her, Bingham’s mount danced nervously. When its hooves drew perilously close to the trail’s curving rim, he reined hard on the horse. “You son of Satan,” he cussed, “I’ll strip the worthless hide from your flanks!”
Mattie scanned the trail immediately beyond Bingham and saw nothing—until she looked up, and up. “Sonofabitch,” she whispered.
The plumes projecting from navy blue hats were only less ominous than plumes from Apache war bonnets. A score or more of rifle barrels winked wickedly in the sunlight. They were trained on her and her fellow travelers. Even if they could outrun a hail of bullets, the trail was too narrow in which to turn the animals. “Federalistas!” Bingham said.
“Aye,” she agreed. The grim image of being lined up against an adobe wall and executed by the Mexican soldiers did not improve her attitude. “Any suggestions?”
“Given the alternatives,” Gordon said behind her in that dry voice of his, “it would seem there’s nothing we can do but brave it out.”
Her heart thumping, she kneed her horse onward.
The four of them and their caravan cantered on up the steep, pebble-strewn slope. By the time they crested the canyon’s rim, it looked as if a whole company of Mexican soldiers were lined up to greet them. They wore less than friendly smiles and appeared eager to test their bayoneted rifles.
Gordon rode up beside her and said sotto voce, “Our only consolation is that none of the three soldiers whose horses we have stolen is among our official welcoming committee.”
An officer in charge sat astride a magnificent white stallion. He nudged his horse toward them. Closer, she could see that he had the bulbous nose and florid coloring of a heavy drinker. “Buenos dias.” He nodded toward Gordon. “You are Americans, eh?”
Gordon rested his hands over his saddle horn, as if making himself comfortable. “That we are, colonel.”
“And I am Colonel Morales, prefect of the district.” He flicked a leather gauntlet-clad hand toward their string of horses. “You have a large remuda for so small a party, no?”
Unsure of what a remuda was, Gordon glanced at Mattie. At that same moment, she noticed that the horse her son rode sported the brand of the Mexican cavalry—and knew that the colonel had also spotted the brand.
“They’re not all our horses, Colonel,” she said with what she hoped was an easy smile. “The two I and my son are riding we found grazing in a cornfield. Empty saddles and all.”
The officer’s raisin-brown eyes narrowed on the saddle. She realized then she had tripped up. All three saddles clearly had the stamp of the Mexican army engraved on their saddle skirts.
“I think,” he said, “that you four will enjoy the hospitality of our hacienda. It is not far from here. Maybe two hours’ ride.”
“We have other plans—” Gordon began.
“We’d like that very much,” she broke in.
Gordon turned one of his black looks on her, clearly annoyed by her contradiction of him. Obviously, he didn’t realize that if they didn’t accept the offer, the colonel would enforce it.
She returned his glower then flashed the colonel a gracious smile. “We are very tired, colonel. We lost two of our horses in a sandstorm and were afoot until we recovered them. We would very much welcome a respite at your hacienda.”
She could only hope her story satisfied him. As they fell in with the troops, she glanced at Bingham and Gordon. Both wisely said nothing to dispute it.
The two-hour trip required crossing the Plains of Janos, which were peppered mostly with dull sagebrush. Tired and annoyed by her aching ankle, Mattie rode lax in the saddle. Her muscles felt as stiff as new leather.
Quail scattered as the company of soldiers passed by and wild geese took flight. Albert surprised everyone by drawing a bow and letting fly an arrow he had fletched with an eagle feather. While he rode the dozen or so yards to retrieve the bird, the colonel watched him with eyes that did not reflect amicable feelings. “The goose will be welcome at the dinner table tonight. The boy is adept in the ways of the Indian, eh?”
She knew he was suspicious about Albert’s heritage. “My husband and I,” she deliberately nodded at Gordon, “felt that our son should be raised to hunt game on his own.”
Gordon’s hands tightened almost imperceptibly on his reins, but he did not betray her.
“Ahh, then you, señor, are an avid hunter?” the colonel said.
Beneath the flow of his mustache, he smirked. “Unfortunately, Colonel, I do not have Albert’s remarkable skill.”
“The four of you have been in Mexico long?”
“Not very,” she replied quickly, deciding to use Gordon’s recounting of his travels as a basis. “We’ve been visiting mining towns in the Southwest for investment purposes. Mr. Bingham here is our guide.”
“Then you are familiar with Mexico, señor?” the colonel asked the preacher.
This was coming close to being an inquisition. Bingham cleared his throat. “A little. I had a vision of the Virgin. It led me to seek her out here in Mexico’s pastures.” He finished by genuflecting. “I never found the virgin I was seeking.”
The colonel slapped his thigh and chortled. “Ah, very good, señor. Very, very good!” But the stony expression in his eyes stated clearly that he didn’t buy the story. Mattie could almost feel the adobe wall at her back.
§ CHAPTER ELEVEN §
When it came within sight, the hacienda appeared to be more fort, or presidio, than home. The presidio and the outcropping of baked adobe homes composed the pueblo known as Tres Amigos.
The hacienda’s high adobe walls were pockmarked by age, their mud brick exposed. They were capped with shards of glass. A cannon’s snout poked from a guard tower.
However, inside the walls the main building was a handsome old home with a span of lovely arched arcades. A cool retreat from the beating rays of the sun, directly overhead.
The colonel led his company of straggly soldiers on past a line of hay racks to the stable yard, where wagonloads of beans and corn were corralled.
Mattie forgot to favor her injured ankle when she dismounted and would have fallen had it not been for Gordon. For one timeless moment, the feel of his arms around her waist, supporting her, was something wonderful. A respite from the bleakness of her world.
“My sergeant here will find some sort of accommodations for your guide and your son,” Colonel Morales said to her and Gordon, “and relieve him of his dead goose. If you two will come with me, I will provide a room for you.”
Gordon’s arms stiffened, and he released her at once. She was afraid he would make a protest, but the colonel walked on past them.
With misgivings, she watched the little man lead Albert and Bingham off in another direction. What if Albert made a bid to escape without her watchful eye upon him?
After they collected their saddlebags, they followed the officer across a colonnaded courtyard that contained a large fountain in its center. The air was cooler and scented with hibiscus and oleander.
They passed through a portal that opened into an office of sorts. The colonel picked up a hand bell from the cluttered desk and rang it. “Liliana will show you to your quarters,” he said with a smile that would indicate only the most congenial of hosts.
In only a matter of seconds a gnome of a woman appeared. Her face was as brown as a prune and almost as wrinkled. From her features, Mattie concluded that she was either of the Tarahumara or Yaqui Indian tribes. She appeared to be middle-aged, and the legs that showed from beneath the fringe of her knee-length deer-hide skirt were heavy.
After receiving instructions from the colonel about dinner time, they followed Liliana down a cool, tiled corridor. She admitted them to one of the small wooden doors opening off it.
The room was as proportionately small but, surprisingly, comfortably furbished with, among other pieces, a staved hip-bath, a copper-paneled trapadero for clothing, and a dressing bureau.
Its mirror revealed to Mattie jus
t how unkempt she looked. Dear God, any man would be repulsed by a woman whose hair looked like snarled barbed-wire, whose clothing was as stained and torn as the town beggar’s, and who hadn’t had a full bath in weeks.
Her gaze drifted from the mirror to the bed. The large four-poster bed draped with jute netting stared at her like a corpse risen from the dead. She might just as well have eaten jimpson weed, so crazy she must be to pretend she and Gordon were husband and wife.
After the old Indian woman departed, Gordon turned on her. “Mattie, what in God’s name prompted you to lie to the colonel? You’ve gone and gotten us in a—”
The way he balled his hands low on his hips and glared at her through his thick fringe of lashes infuriated her. “I saved our hides, Halpern!”
Despite her statement, he was backing her into a corner, with only the bed on one side of her and a shuttered window on the other. “Did you now? Or did you have another motive?” He looked so fierce, so brutal, so angry.
“Ye ever heard of adobe-walling? That’s what the Mexicans do to their prisoners. They blindfold you and put you up against a wall. Then they fire bullets into you, execution-style. The three horses we took from those three infantrymen all sported Mexican army saddles as well as brands.”
He towered over her now. The muscle that twitched in his jaw frightened her. He was big enough to do anything he wanted to her. “Your explanation was superb, Mattie. And sufficient.” His voice had dropped to a quiet tone; much too quiet. “You didn’t have to make us out to be husband and wife in the bargain.”
“As if I’d want to be your wife,” she said, hoping her tone was more defiant than her cowardly heart. She felt as if she actually was up against a wall. She could back no farther.
“Then why?” He canted his head. “Unless, now you are figuring on double-crossing me. Tie in with the Mexicans. I don’t know. Something isn’t right, here.”
“It’s Albert,” she blurted.
“Albert?” His scowl relented, if only a little. “What does he have to do with this?”
“The arrow he shot . . . the way he looks, all Indian . . . I was afraid the Colonel would realize Albert was . . . the Mexicans would as soon kill an Apache child as squash a worm . . . I had to . . . . ” She knew that she was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m so bloody tired of battling enemies on all sides of me, Halpern!”
How much pain was enough? When would she be able to say to herself that she knew all of sorrow and no longer chose it as her own? She had built barricade after barricade to halt the fire of fear, to save just a small portion of herself. Was there no stopping or escaping the burning?
Gordon’s hands dropped. He sat down on the bed and stared at his open palms. “Look, Mattie. Don’t burden me with the kid. Any kid. I don’t have any background to draw on for being responsible for children. I got by on my own. You’re just going to have to let Albert do the same for himself.”
She stepped in front of him. “Never. Do ye hear me, Halpern? Never. As long as I am alive to watch a sunrise, I’ll be there for me son!” She paused. “That’s what loving is,” she said more softly. “Seeing only the love in others and giving only love.”
He took one of her hands that hung at her side and turned it over, palm up. His fingers traced the calluses and scars. “It hasn’t been easy for you, has it, Mattie McAlister?”
She stood rigid, hardly daring to breathe. “’Tis never easy. For anyone. You know that.”
His eyes darkened to a deep black, as dark as a mine. “Up until Diana was captured, I would have said differently. Her life seemed to be one eternal moment of whimsical self-indulgence.” With that, he released her hand. “Speaking of self-indulgence, a warm bath would be wonderful. Do you think we could persuade that old Indian woman to bring us warmed water?”
“You’re going to bathe? Here?”
A slow smile twitched his mustache. “Mattie, I told you I’d help remind you that you’re a grand lady if you couldn’t remember. A grand lady should bathe regularly.”
The flush of mortification heated her cheeks. “Circumstances don’t always make that possible, Halpern. Unless nature fills Tucson’s arroyos, one has to have money to use the public shower bathhouse.”
He came to his feet. “Well, today we have been blessed by circumstances. In place of nature and an arroyo, that old Indian woman can fill the tub. While I go in search of her, I want you to undress.”
“But—”
Grinning, he shrugged out of his coat and tossed it to her. “Shroud yourself in that if modesty overcomes you.”
He left the room, and she stood gaping after him. The man was quite clearly serious. She could refuse. What would happen? She was coming to know him well over the past fortnight. Despite his brutal profession—well, one of his professions was brutal, anyway—she doubted that he would force her. That sensitive, passionate side of him—his other profession—would not permit it.
So what would he do? And what should she do? Playing the coy maiden would be preposterous for her. Yet, despite all she had been subjected to, there was still that core of modesty within her that Nantez’s crudity had never been able to obliterate.
Considering the repercussions of this coming bath, she began to disrobe. Her clothing was stiff with grit and dried mud and sweat. Just in time she peeled away her shirt and slid into his jacket, which hung well past her knees. The jacket must have cost a fortune. It was lined with satin, cool to the touch, and had black jet beading edging the lapel.
With only a brief warning knock, he entered, followed by old Liliana. She carried two pails of steaming water. At the sight of Mattie, clad only in a man’s jacket, she grinned. Her mouth reminded Mattie of a gate’s iron grillwork.
Liliana dumped the water into the staved tub, then padded over to the trapadero to take out a wash cloth and soap for Mattie’s use.
It was then that Mattie noticed the welts on the back of the woman’s thick legs and heavy arms. Some appeared to be recent. “Liliana? Have the soldiers been mistreating ye?”
The woman looked at her stolidly, and Mattie repeated the question in Spanish.
“Pendejos,” Liliana replied. “Their raping and murdering will not go unpunished. One day my people will turn on them.”
Mattie said something in Spanish to console the woman. She could understand the hate that blazed in those Indian eyes. But it would take more than her people’s revenge to make a difference. The fire in the heart would have to be put out first. Mattie still had her own fire of hate to quench.
After the Indian woman departed, Gordon closed the door and turned back to her. “What was that all about?”
She told him about Liliana’s mistreatment by the soldiers. “The Tarahumara and Yaqui warriors can be crueler than the Apaches. The problem is that they burn their anger in the marihuana weed. They lose themselves in its mists as they try to recall centuries ago when they lost their glory with the arrival of the mounted white man. But one day, they’ll rebel, and no one’s scalp will be safe.”
A wicked gleam graced Gordon’s eye. Apparently, he knew she was delaying. “Well, Mattie? Are you ready to be scrubbed down like a baked potato?”
“Like a baked potato?”
“Maybe that’s not a good analogy. How about like a sacrificial virgin?”
At that, she laughed aloud. “A virgin? Aye, that is good, Halpern! I tell ye now, if the town of Tucson sacrificed virgins to ensure rainfall, I’d make bloody certain its good citizens knew I was the town tart.”
He chuckled. “Well said.” He strode up behind her and took the coat’s dusty lapels in his hands. “Quit stalling, Mattie. Give up the jacket and get in the tub. I’ll close my eyes, if that’s a problem for you.”
She glared at him over her shoulder. “Ye know it is.” It was a problem for her with him standing so close.
Obediently, he closed his eyes, but the twitching of his mustache betrayed his amusement.
She lifted her arms from the droo
ping sleeves and, free of the jacket, quickly stepped into the tub. “Christ thorns, Halpern! This is the devil’s cauldron! Did ye want a boiled potato?”
“Oh, quit grumbling.”
Glancing around at him, she realized his gaze was on her backside. At once, she slid down until the water topped her breast. Still, the steam offered little coverage. “Ye are a blackguard, Halpern. Soap? A wash cloth? Do ye mind passing them to me?”
“Oh, I plan to do more than that.”
His tone was suggestive. She turned her head again to see that he was rolling up his sleeves. “Oh, no ye don’t! I can wash meself, thank ye.”
“Your dirt-smeared chin and leaf-bedecked hair doesn’t indicate an affinity for water.” He advanced on her with soap and cloth and purpose.
“Why are ye doing this to me?”
He swished the cloth in the water and briskly buffed it with the bar of soap. She noted that the soap was made not from the harsh lye used by the fort laundresses but herbs and soft tallow. “Maybe to pay you in coin for your own devilish deeds.”
“Me devilish deeds?” He was unsnarling her matted hair with his fingers. “What about your own shenanigans? Ach, what are ye doing?”
“For instance, flicking your cigarette ashes in my Scotch.” Without warning he dunked her head beneath the water.
She came up sputtering, “Ye bloody—!”
“Hold still.” His powerful hands massaged her scalp with the sweet-scented soap.
“Ahhh.” Was that her, purring like some tamed household cat?
Another dunking!
“Damn ye, Halpern!” she gasped, coming up for air, her hair rinsed free of soapsuds.
A wash cloth swooped down between her breasts. They were small, but fully rounded, likely looking to him as if God had taken two pomegranates and appended them to her chest. They were hard little knots, maybe because they were untouched. Unnoticed. Unheeded. They yearned to be stroked by a lover, though she would deny such a thing. Mattie McAlister didn’t need any man to make her feel better.
Tame the Wildest Heart Page 13