by Janet Dailey
“Thanks.” Sheila flexed her numbed fingers and wrists. There were raw red circles where the tight rope had chafed her skin, but her hunger was too overpowering to feel any discomfort at the moment.
“I only followed orders.” He shrugged indifferently and picked up his plate.
With unsteady hands, Sheila followed suit. For the next several minutes, she concentrated on filling her empty stomach, scooping up the thick beans with the chunk of bread and tearing off bites of the leathery meat with her teeth.
Not a crumb was left on the plate when she finished the meal off with a swallow of coffee. Replete, she curled both hands around the tin and stared at the dying fire.
Laredo did likewise, drawing her glance. In the soft glow of the waning light, he looked younger, a touch of loneliness in his haunted blue eyes. Sheila’s curiosity was aroused again.
“You don’t really belong here with them,” she told him quietly.
His sideways glance was cynical and mocking. “Don’t I?”
“You’re not like them.”
“Why?” His mouth crooked. “Because I can speak English?”
“No, of course not.” Tipping her head to the side, Sheila studied him. “Why are you with them? I can’t believe it’s by choice.”
“You don’t want to believe it,” he corrected her.
“Are you with them by choice?” She was determined to get a straight answer to her question.
“Yes.” There was absolutely no regret in his voice. “They’re my friends.”
“Even though they killed a man and made you a party to it?” Sheila couldn’t accept that he actually meant what he was saying.
“You’re referring to your husband? He was killed by his own stupidity. If he hadn’t reached for the gun, he would have been unharmed and just minus some money—that’s all.” His blue eyes glinted in quiet speculation. “I notice you’re not overly grief-stricken by his death.”
Sheila ignored the last comment deliberately. “Because he defended his property, he provoked his own death?” she said, rephrasing his words in a taunt. “Is that the way you rationalize his murder?” Her fiery gaze slid to the renegade leader standing a few feet away. “Or are you mouthing his words? Your boss, who mercifully spared my life so he could hand me over to the same mauling pig who murdered my husband!”
Sheila hadn’t spoken softly or tried to disguise her poisonous contempt. Laredo sipped at his coffee and didn’t respond.
“What’s the matter? Are you afraid I’ll remember that you didn’t argue at all when your boss turned me over to your fellow outlaw? I can’t blame you for that, can I?” Sheila jeered. “All you do is follow orders.”
“That’s right,” he acknowledged calmly.
“Regardless of whether you think they are right or not,” she added in disgust. “Who is he? The devil reincarnated?”
“Names aren’t important around here.” It seemed impossible to provoke Laredo into anger; he neither defended his boss, nor denounced him. “I told you that before. Drink your coffee.”
“What do you do? Just bow very low and call him boss?” Appealing to him seemed useless, but it was her only hope. “You’ve got to help me, Laredo. You’re an American and I’m an American. You can’t let them do whatever it is they plan to do with me. Please.
“Oh, my God.” Sheila swallowed a panicked sob. “Can’t you feel them watching me, watching us?” Her skittish glance encompassed the circle of men sitting closer to the campfire. It was not her money that kept drawing their looks. “Help me get away; help me escape.”
“So you can go to the soldados, the policia, and tell them what happened?” Laredo scoffed at her request, hard amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth. “You forget I was there with them. The noose would go around my neck, as well as theirs.”
“I wouldn’t tell them anything, I swear. Please help me.”
“Forget it,” he said, draining his coffee cup.
Hot tears scalded her eyes. Sheila widened them, hardly daring to breathe for fear her breath would turn into broken sobs. It was several minutes before she could regain her poise.
“Where are you taking me?” Her husky voice grouped Laredo with the others now.
“Tomorrow?” His gaze touched her briefly, then looked to the west. “Up there.”
Sheila turned, catching the red glow of a cigarette tip, a reminder of how close the bandit leader was to them. Her gaze shifted to the looming, black outline of the Sierra Madre range.
“Into the mountains?” she asked for confirmation and received a curt nod.
It explained their reliance on horses for transportation. Vast stretches of the northern range were accessible only on horseback or on foot. This forbidding, primitive land would offer a perfect hideout for the outlaw band. Her heart sank lower in despair.
“How will you contact my father?” she asked, fearing for the first time that she might never be allowed to leave.
“There are ways.”
“What will happen to me when you get the money?”
“That’s not up to me.” He shook his head, apparently unconcerned about her fate.
“Him. I suppose.” With a jerk of her head, she indicated the silent figure standing a few feet away. “Do you jump whenever he says so, or do you first ask how high?” Sheila snapped with an acid bite.
“You talk too much.” There was a hint of impatience in his voice to indicate he wasn’t as impervious to her tiny barbs as he appeared to be. Rising to his feet, he offered a hand to help Sheila up. “Come on. It’s getting late and it’s time we turned in.”
She had reached out to accept his hand, but the rest of his words checked the movement. Her fingers were suspended in the air, inches from his open palm.
“We?” Sheila repeated, every nerve end instantly alert.
“You’re sleeping with me tonight.” Laredo nodded.
Rage billowed in a red mist before her eyes. She had appealed to him for help, made known to him her fears of what might happen to her in the dark of night.
Had he thought she would offer no resistance? Because he was an American and had talked to her, did he think she would be grateful it was to be him and not one of the others?
His extended left arm held the loose poncho away from his waist and hips. In the dim light, Sheila saw the hilt of a knife protruding from the leather sheath hooked to his belt. The securing flap wasn’t snapped.
Pretending a bitter resignment, Sheila took hold of his hand with her left one and let him pull her onto her feet. Under the cover of stumbling forward, she grabbed for the knife and pulled it from the sheath before Laredo realized what she was doing. She twisted free and retreated two steps. The knife blade flashed menacingly in the flickering light of the campfire.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed.
“You little fool, give me the knife,” he muttered in a low, angry voice.
“Come near me and I’ll ki——” A sharp cry of pain ripped through her throat.
Steel talons circled her rope-burned wrist from behind, twisting it until the knife slid from her paralyzed fingers. Instantly, Sheila was jerked around, her arm bent high in the middle of her back as she was pinned against the solid wall of a man’s chest.
Another set of fingers grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her head backward. Her lips parted in a second gasp of pain while her rounded eyes looked into the lean, hard features of her captor’s face. The glittering black coals burned first her eyes, then blazed a fiery trail down her cheeks to her lips, moist and trembling.
Any moment Sheila expected the ruthless set of his mouth to brutally smother hers. Every pulsing fiber in her body felt the savagery of his kiss, although he had not yet claimed it. But her mind reeled in shock from his imaginary possession.
As roughly as she was crushed against him, she was cast away, staggering to the ground near his feet. Reaching down, he picked up the rope that had bound her wrists and tossed it to the silent Laredo, snapping
a low order in Spanish.
Laredo’s mouth was grim as he began retying her hands. “You crazy fool,” he muttered. “Why did you pull a stunt like that?”
“I’ll do it again,” Sheila vowed, but her voice shook.
“He knows it.”
When Laredo straightened up, a blanket was thrown over Sheila, accompanied by a crisp flow of Spanish. She wanted to cower beneath the blanket, but she couldn’t take her eyes away from the towering man watching her. Laredo walked away and returned within seconds to set his saddle next to Sheila. Shaking out his blanket, he lay down on the ground beside her and pulled it over him, tipping his hat forward to rest his head on the saddle.
“Get some rest while you can, Mrs. Townsend. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow,” Laredo said coldly. “Someone will be on guard all night, and I sleep very light.”
Catching back a defeated sob, Sheila watched the tall figure carry their cups and dishes to the fire and return to stand a few feet away in the darkness. A match flared, cupped by a pair of hands to a cigarette. Then she couldn’t make out his shape at all, but she knew he was there, her new devil-master.
There was no sensation of safety or relief that Laredo was merely lying beside her and not forcing himself on her. She was still quivering from the punishing arms that had held her. Closing her eyes, she doubted if sleep would come.
The knotted rope irritated the raw skin of her wrists. Beneath her, the hard ground poked at her sore, aching muscles. Sheila caught the scent of burning tobacco. Survive, she thought, and she wanted to laugh.
Chapter 7
Her knees were quivering from gripping the horse’s flanks. The stiff leather of the saddle skirt had rubbed sore spots on her inner thighs. Sheila’s tied hands no longer had the strength to hold onto the cantle for balance. She longed to rest her head on Laredo’s broad back, knowing it would bounce like a ball if she tried. The dark leader was beside them. He’d been in the saddle all day, yet he looked fresh and alert, not bone-tired and half-deadened with pain, as Sheila was. Her gaze hurled gold-tipped daggers at the seemingly indefatigable man.
The ground rose sharply and Sheila had to concentrate her energies on staying astride the horse and not sliding off its rump. Rising before dawn, they had reached the mountains shortly after first light.
Following no trail that Sheila could discern, the riders had snaked up mountains where it seemed only a mountain goat would go, then down through valleys and mountain passes and up again.
It appeared they were solely guided by their leader’s instinct. In a moment of bitter hatred and resentment, Sheila hoped he was lost. The feeling didn’t last long as she started to slip back on the horse’s haunches.
“Help!” Sheila gasped.
Laredo reached an arm behind him to pull her back. It stayed half around her waist for support as the horse began galloping to the top of a steep rise. Sheila sagged against it. Atop a narrow ridge, the horse again resumed its trotting pace.
“Can’t we stop and rest?” Sheila protested wearily. “Or at least slow down?”
“Hang on. We’re almost there,” he promised without sympathy.
“Where is that? Hell?”
It seemed an eternity later that they turned to ride through a mountain corridor. Twisted, stunted brush clung tenaciously to the rocky walls closing in on the riders. The horse quickened its stride, pulling at the bit as it sighted home.
Looking over Laredo’s shoulder, Sheila tried to catch a glimpse of their destination. The mountain corridor emptied into a small, narrow canyon carved deep in the bowels of the Sierra Madre range. A visible trail wound down to the canyon floor, where loosely clustered adobe huts dotted one side of the canyon.
It was in front of one of these that Laredo reined in the horse. Swinging a leg over the saddle horn, he stepped to the ground. Sheila swayed into the arms that reached to lift her down. Absently, she noted the other riders were heading off to other adobe structures, dimly hearing cries of greeting and figures hurrying to meet the returning band.
Laredo’s arm stayed in a supporting curve around the back of her rib cage as he escorted her into the shadowed interior of the adobe building. They paused inside and Sheila disinterestedly inspected the room.
A primitive kitchen and eating area occupied half of the room. She supposed the crude furniture in the nearest half depicted a living room. An arched opening in one wall led into a hallway, suggesting rooms beyond.
A familiar Spanish voice spoke behind Sheila. She turned as Laredo’s arm dropped from her back to meet the shuttered dark eyes of her captor. Cold metal slid between her wrists and she glanced down as Laredo cut the rope that bound her hands.
A word of thanks started to form on her lips until she remembered what Laredo had told her before. He was only following orders. So she flexed her stiff fingers and said nothing. Sheathing his knife, Laredo walked to the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked with a slight toss of her head, trying not to show her apprehension at being left alone with the renegade leader.
Laredo paused, glancing from Sheila to his boss, then back again to her. “To take care of the horses.”
He walked out and her gaze ricocheted from the pair of glinting, dark eyes. She had the uncanny sensation that he was reading her mind and pivoted away. Her spine prickled with awareness. Sheila wasn’t surprised when she heard him speak only a foot behind her.
“Señora.” The low, commanding tone was accompanied by a hand appearing alongside of her to motion her toward the hallway.
It branched into two rooms. He indicated with a gesture for Sheila to enter the last room. Surveying it, she guessed it was to be her new prison. The monk-like cell consisted of an uncomfortable-looking cot, a crude dresser with a basin and water urn on top of it, and a chair. A coarsely woven curtain in a dull orange material hung at the lone window.
Her sweeping gaze stopped at the rectangular mirror hanging above the dresser. Sheila stared at her reflection in shock. She looked like a haggard tramp. Her face was streaked with grime and sweat. Her hair was matted and straggly, its glossy sheen hidden beneath clotting layers of dust. The dusty serape covering her made her figure seem shapeless.
Unconsciously, Sheila touched a hand to her cheek, as if to be certain the reflection she saw really belonged to her. She felt the grit that coated her usually creamy-smooth complexion. It awakened the rest of her senses to the filth that soiled the rest of her body and the stench of perspiration and horse odor that clung to her skin and clothes. She barely looked human and turned from the mirror in distaste.
“Is there somewhere I can clean up?” Sheila asked quickly.
Not a flicker of understanding crossed the carved mask of his features. Sheila sighed impatiently, wondering how she was going to get her request through to him.
“I want to wash. Do you understand?” She rubbed her hands together in a cleansing gesture. “Wash. Take a bath.”
He studied her miming action and walked to the dresser to pour water from the urn into the basin. A wave of his hand indicated Sheila was to use it to wash.
“No. No.” She shook her head determinedly. “Look, Señor—whatever your name is.” She hesitated before filling in the blank with a disinterested shrug.
“Ráfaga,” he interrupted blandly. Not a whisper of emotion was evident in the lean, masculine face or the flat, black eyes.
Sheila stared at him curiously, not certain if he had actually furnished his name. Considering the way Laredo had avoided giving it, she had almost decided it was going to remain a secret.
“Señor Ráfaga?” she repeated to determine if it was his name. There was a faint slightly arrogant inclination of his head in acknowledgment. “Señor Ráfaga.” Sheila began again, “I don’t want to just wash my hands.” She again repeated the rubbing gesture. “I want to wash all over—my hair, my clothes, all over. Do you understand?”
His expression was inscrutable. Surely he could understand what she meant, Sh
eila thought in irritation. She wondered if he wasn’t deliberately being obtuse when he waved a hand again toward the washbasin.
“It’s too small,” she snapped and sat down in the middle of the floor, pretending to splash water and wash. “I want to take a bath—in a big tub of water. Do you understand?”
Laughter came from the door. “What are you doing?” Laredo asked with obvious amusement, his blue eyes silently laughing at Sheila.
Her cheeks flushed red in embarrassment. Stiffly, she scrambled to her feet, dusting the seat of her pants as she tried to regain some measure of dignity.
“Would you explain to this Spanish-speaking imbecile that I want a bath?” she demanded coldly.
“The plumbing around here is strictly the outdoor type,” replied Laredo, his mouth still twitching in silent laughter.
“Surely there has to be something around here bigger than that stupid washbasin. Where do you bathe?” Sheila challenged. Then she added caustically, “Or don’t you?”
An insertion in Spanish kept Laredo from answering her question as he responded instead to his boss. Their exchange was brief, musically fluid, and low.
“My bath?” Sheila reminded Laredo when their conversation appeared to be finished.
“Baño,” came the low Spanish word.
“That means ‘bath.’” Laredo supplied the translation.
“At last my message has gotten through,” she sighed impatiently.
“As I said before, the facilities around here are primitive,” Laredo continued, “but there is a spring we use for bathing.”
“Am I allowed to use it?” she asked stiffly.
Her answer came from the leader, who had identified himself as Ráfaga. A dresser drawer was opened and a folded cloth was removed. Ráfaga carried it to Sheila, a used bar of soap atop the coarse fabric of a towel.
Warily, she took it from his hands, tensing under the aloof appraisal of his dark gaze. He motioned her toward the hall to indicate Sheila should lead the way while they followed.