by Shirl Henke
“To bring me back to New Orleans, to my old life, to heel” he interrupted her tightly. “Well, he gambled and he lost, Mother.” Then a sardonic grin split his face. “But I am grateful to keep the estate from being squandered by the Beaurivages, I will say that, even if I don't want or need the money.”
“Now see here, Rafael. I've called many a man out for less.” Philippe rose, red color infusing his cheeks.
“Really, cousin?” Rafe said, turning to stare Philippe down. “Would you like to challenge me? It would be my choice of weapons. I fight with a bowie knife now.” He grinned like a shark, and Philippe quickly subsided.
“Please, children—Rafael, Philippe—you grew up together. We're all family. We must act together,” Celine remonstrated.
“Caleb is family, too—my only sister's husband and a damned honest and sensible banker. He'll handle the estate for you, Mother; but you'll have to face your daughter and your grandchildren—something you resolutely refused to do while my father was alive. This is your chance. I won't stay here tied to the Flamenco wealth. I've made my own life in Texas, and that's where my family and I choose to live.”
“You and your Yankee wife and your daughter kissed by the tar brush,” Jean said mockingly. “Texas must be a very liberal place, indeed.”
“The place we live is. Renacimiento is larger than some of the eastern states,” Rafe replied levelly, his black eyes piercing his old drinking companion's facade, daring him to pursue the dangerous topic further.
“Nothing will change your mind, will it? You're going to give huge sums of money to your father's second family and let that odious American dole it out to me as well.” Celine's voice was amazingly calm. Yesterday, she had cried and pleaded, but Rafael had calmly moved Melanie into his apartments with Deborah's children. Deborah treated the girl as if she were her own. It was obvious that every social and cultural imperative under which Celine's world operated had been abandoned by her son. “Like a snake, you have shed your skin in the hot Texas sun. You are no longer Rafael Flamenco, but some American, Rafe Fleming, whom I do not know.” With that, she turned and swept imperiously from the room, leaving Rafe facing his two Beaurivage cousins.
Having lived a lifetime with Celine's theatrics, Rafe knew nothing would ever change between them. Sighing, he turned to Jean and Philippe. “Gentlemen, the well has run dry. You can inform the rest of the family that my father's money will go where his son-in-law wills. I somehow doubt that Caleb Armstrong will be well disposed to subsidize your carousing.”
“And what of you, cousin?” Jean asked of his boyhood companion, now grown a stranger.
Rafe grinned in relief, glad to be quit of the whole troublesome scene. “My family and I are GTT,” he replied in English, then switched back to French. “We're gone to Texas, from where I plan never again to return!”
Chapter Five
Santa Fe, 1851
Dust hung suspended in the pale golden light filtering through the grilled window of the cantina. The air was still, dry, and very hot. It was late afternoon and a motley assortment of men were trickling into El Escondedero after their siesta. Despite its name, the barroom was not at all hidden, but a rather popular, if sleazy, gathering place off the main square of the bustling trade capital of New Mexico Territory.
Two big Americans, burly and bearded, swaggered over to the bar and demanded beer. A handful of New Mexican vaqueros and the cantina owner played a highly vocal game of Chuza in one corner. Rosa and another plump, pretty young girl served drinks as they swished their brightly colored skirts and flashed their silver bangles at the customers, especially several off-duty American soldiers.
Lee Velasquez slouched in a chair in the rear of the room, his long buckskin-clad legs stretched indolently beneath the table in front of him. He'd taken his siesta in his seat, watching the play of light and shadow across the iron grillwork. He had nowhere to go, at least not until Fouqué arrived.
“Hot today, no?” Rosa, the barmaid, inquired as she leaned forward to place a glass of whiskey in front of him, hoping the gunman would take notice of the bountiful charms spilling out of her loose white blouse.
His black eyes narrowed in concentration on a shaft of light as he replied offhandedly, “Weather's the same as always.” Without seeming to see it, he reached a slim dark hand toward the drink and tossed it off. Rosa swished away in irritation.
How much longer, Fouqué? As if in answer to his unspoken question, a small, wiry man in greasy buckskins strolled in the front door, spotted Lee, and motioned to Rosa to bring his usual drink to the table.
“Ah, mon ami, you are the smart one, here in the cool while like our mad English employer I ride in the heat.” He spoke English, their common language, with a heavy Gascony accent. Gold teeth gleamed as he smiled.
“He's not my employer anymore, Fouqué,” Lee said wearily. “I just want the money he owes me before he runs off with it like Armijo did.”
Raoul Fouqué shrugged philosophically as he sat down. “That was the government; this is private business. Businessmen pay better than military governors, Mexican or Yankee.”
Lee's face grew hard. “It's the same line of work.”
“Merde, you rode with McGordy's bunch only a few months before the Mexican government fled and the Americans came. It was no surprise when the governor general took off without paying us. Bristol will not.”
“Bristol better not,” was the soft reply.
Fouqué looked at the younger man, studying his hard, dangerous face. Most women found his classically handsome features irresistible, so unlike Raõul's own irregular ones. But there was more to Leandro than a pretty Castilian face. He had the scars to prove it—one narrow white one vanished into his hairline, and another left a small line across his left cheekbone. They were indications of the kind of life he led, but not nearly so much as were his eyes, black and fathomless, like onyx polished to a pitiless sheen—eyes that no twenty-seven-year-old man should possess.
The Frenchman watched Lee surveying the room with seeming indolence, missing nothing, especially the two large and loud Americans at the bar. As a rule Lee didn't like Americans, although he'd ridden with a few under McGordy. Wanting to distract his companion's attention from the obnoxious pair, Fouqué said, “Where do you go if you leave Bristol?”
Lee shrugged. “Maybe California, maybe Oregon.”
“Not Chihuahua, I know, since the governor still has a price on your head; but you could go to Mexico City, where you once lived.” Fouqué's face was intense with curiosity.
“My uncle died three years ago, Raoul.” Lee smiled grimly. “Besides, I'm not likely to fit in with the cultured academic environment I left there. I don't want to.”
Fouqué chuckled. “Men like you and me, we make our own rules. You want a wild, open place, why not go back to Texas? There must be as many Anglos here as there by now.”
Lee sighed. “That's true enough, but I'm afraid I've got a little problem with the Yankee law there. Besides, like Mexico City, it holds memories...” His voice faded away as he gazed down into the empty whiskey glass.
Fouqué knew Lee's wife had been killed in Texas and that he had fled into Mexican territory five years earlier. The rest he only surmised, but it explained why Lee could not return to the land of his birth. “Speaking of Texas, I ran into a man yesterday with a Texian wife. Quelle femme! Big as a cottonwood rising by a wide river, with a voice to match. The two were returning to Texas, at the woman's insistence.”
Lee smiled. ”I knew a woman like that years ago. She owned a business back in San Antonio—don't get that look on your face. It was a very respectable boardinghouse.”
“Speak of the devil, there is the Amazon's husband. No small fellow himself,” Fouqué added, watching the man's immense girth fill the door frame. His long bushy red beard and hair to match almost obscured his face, but his blue eyes were merry and piercing. An arsenal of skinning knives and a Hawken rifle proclaimed him a trapper from the no
rth.
“He looks familiar,” Lee said pensively, realizing that for a man on the run, the blur of years and miles made many men seem familiar.
Just as the big stranger headed for the bar, a small Englishman clad in black broadcloth entered the cantina. He appeared hot and harried.
“Over here, mon ami,” Raoul motioned to Kenyon Bristol, owner of the largest silver mine in the territory. He was here to trade with the large American caravans from Missouri, buying supplies for his mines. Bristol was a very shrewd bargainer.
He took the chair Fouqué offered and waved away the barmaid. “Damned rotgut swill,” he muttered beneath his breath. “I'd sell a carload of bullion for one decent bottle of gin.”
His precise English enunciation carried across the room to the nearby bar, where the two big Americans had been steadily drinking that very rotgut whiskey with beer chasers for the better part of an hour.
“We got us good American corn whiskey, all the way from Kaintuck. It ain't good 'nough fer his lordship here,” one of the men announced to the assembly in a poor imitation of Bristol's accent.
A wealthy and powerful man, Bristol detested being in wretched places such as El Escondedero; but he had promised Velasquez and Fouqué that he would bring their money here. Now, he was glad he'd brought two of his bodyguards as well. Although he was small and rumpled, there was a biting edge to Kenyon Bristol's personality that had warded off many a prudent man, but not the two drunk Americans.
“I scarcely think my drinking preferences are open to critique by a pair of oafish colonial ruffians.” With that, he turned back to the table and shoved two heavy leather sacks across to Lee and Raoul. “It's all there,” he said, dismissing the mountain men from his attention.
“For all the mules and horses alone, you owe us more than this,” Lee replied in a tight, low growl as he hefted the gold-filled pouch.
“This here Bristol's a welsher?” one mountain man asked, shambling toward their table with a menacing scowl.
“We will settle our differences without your help, mon ami,” Fouqué said softly.
The man scanned the two sitting at the table contemptuously. “Too damn many ferriners round Santy Fay—English lordships, Frenchies, ‘n greasers.” He looked at Lee as he said the last.
“My ancestors were in New Mexico long before yours ever saw the east coast of North America. I'd debate who's the foreigner with you.” Lee spoke levelly and remained seated, but the tension in his body had changed subtly as he watched the two drunken men and a number of other Anglos in the cantina who were observing the confrontation with increasing interest.
“Funny.” The mountain man spat a wad of tobacco onto the hard-packed clay floor and said almost conversationally, “Yew don't talk English like no greaser.”
“You scarcely speak English at all,” Lee replied with deceptive geniality. “It's hot and the hour is late. Go back to your drink at the bar.”
“I would do as he suggests, mon ami,” Fouqué said. Bristol made a small hand signal to two inconspicuous gunmen at the far side of the room. They inched closer very slowly.
“We don't take no shit from froggies er greasers—er any other ferriners. Do we, Joe?”
“Wal, how ‘bout from another Green River man?” The big redheaded hunter had moved with catlike grace from where he stood at the far end of the bar. “Chambers, I niver liked yew when we locked horns at th' meets 'n' yew ain't improved one lick o' spit on a buffalo's tongue since't.”
The man called Sam Chambers asked in outrage, “Yew sidin' with them ferriners, Wash?”
Lee's eyes had left the two Anglo drunks to fasten on the red-haired giant. Wash. Where had he heard that name before? Then he remembered words Fouqué had used: quelle femme, when referring to the American's big Texian wife. “Wash Oakley?”
Lee recognized the big stranger, but it was obvious that the other man did not recognize him. “Last time you saw me I was a skinny seventeen-year-old kid at your wedding back in San Antonio,” Lee reminded him.
“Shit, yore Jimmy Slade's friend from Bluebonnet,” Oakley rejoined.
“Now ain't thet touchin', Wash. Niver did figger a good Kaintuck boy like yew fer a greaser-lovin' son of a bitch,” Sam Chambers said nastily.
Washington Oakley swung so fast Chambers never even got his arm up to block the blow that sent him catapulting across the floor. The whole room erupted in chaos as the long-simmering tension between the victorious Americans and the defeated New Mexicans once more came to a head. Violence, always a way of life on the frontier, was commonplace in this old trade center, held by Hispanic governments for over 150 years and wrested away almost bloodlessly by Kearney's American Army in 1846.
Wash Oakley dispatched two American soldiers with his big meaty fists while Fouqué's knife disabled Chambers's belligerent companion. The vaqueros gambling in the middle of the room fell upon another group of American teamsters, fresh off their wagons from Missouri.
As chairs splintered and glasses shattered, men swore and swung, grunted and grimaced while the two women shrieked in fright and dodged behind the bar, where they cowered in terror.
In the midst of the pandemonium, Kenyon Bristol's bodyguards materialized by his side just as he reached across the table to where the two sacks of gold lay. Lee, his back to the corner wall, grinned as he brought a large knife down between the Englishman's splayed fingers with an audible thunk. Then, he drew a .44-caliber Dragoon Colt and leveled it at Bristol's midsection.
“Call off your guard dogs, Kenyon, old chap, or I'll blow a hole through you and have five shots left over for them.”
White-faced, Bristol raised his hands, greatly relieved to see all the fingers on his right hand intact. Backing away from the table, he said, “I was merely attempting to keep your payment safe in the midst of this melee. If you want to contract with me again, you know where to find me, Velasquez.” With that, he and his men dodged their way through the cantina and slipped out a side door.
Lee was ready to take the gold and follow suit when an American soldier, reeling from a punch, lurched into him. Quickly sinking his knife into the straps of the leather pouches, Lee secured them to the table and turned to the soldier, delivering a knockout blow with one hand.
“Yew don't handle yerself half bad fer a runt,” Wash guffawed as he took two good-sized men, lifted them off the ground, and bashed their heads together.
Dodging a punch from a drunken rancher, Lee yelled over his shoulder, “Where's Obedience? Fouqué said he saw her yesterday.”
“I 'spect she'll be along shortly,” Wash replied as he let his two unconscious victims drop to the floor.
Lee hit a rancher a solid right to the midsection and then picked up a chair to block the knife of an enraged yellow-haired man in the denim pants and homespun of a Yankee teamster. Just then, a shotgun blast exploded deafeningly in the low-ceilinged room.
A woman stood poised in the doorway, filling it almost as completely as her husband had. Obedience Oakley stood six feet tall, solid as a stream-fed cottonwood.
“Now,” she announced as her sharp brown eyes skewered in turn each embattled male in the place, “I got me another round in this here scattergun. I don't figger ta piss it away on th' ceilin' a second time. Any o' yew gents care ta take th' next swing ‘n see whut I'll do with my cannon?” She paused and looked around, then said, “I figgered yew didn't. Git!”
The men, Anglos and New Mexicans, soldiers and civilians melted away like snow in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on a hot summer day. Finally, only Wash, Fouqué, and Lee remained.
“Quit pointin' thet thing, darlin', afore it goes off,” Wash said.
Obedience lowered the shotgun and uncocked it carefully. Then, peering across the debris-strewn room at the dark, slim man standing between the wizened Frenchman and the giant trapper, she bellowed, “Lee Velasquez, Jeehosaphat, if ‘n my ole eyes ain't failed me! Whut in tarnation er yew doin' here?”
* * * *
The th
ree of them sat in the bare room around a rickety table on crude pine chairs with high, straight backs. The remnants of a hearty meal of spicy mutton stew, corn bread, and a rich custard dessert had been shoved to the center of the table along with the coffee cups.
Sitting back, Lee smiled at the big woman across from him and said, “That's the best meal I've had since I left Texas five years ago.”
Returning the smile, Obedience noticed how the harsh, angular planes of his face softened when he was relaxed. She had scarcely recognized him as the boy with the sunny disposition who had grown up tagging at Jim Slade's heels or visiting her boardinghouse in San Antonio. This hard-looking pistolero bore scant resemblance to that Lee, until he smiled. But his smile was sad and haunted, and those fathomless dark eyes held pain as deep as a well. Obedience Morton Freeman Ryan Jones Oakley—for that was her full name after surviving her first three husbands and marrying Wash—had an intuition as big as all Texas when it came to sizing up people.
All through their jovial reunion supper, Lee had made pleasant small talk and urged her and Wash to describe their adventures in the Rocky Mountains. Always a spinner of tall tales, Wash had obliged. Lee had volunteered little about himself. But she knew that the Frenchman to whom Lee had returned one poke sack full of gold pieces was a cutthroat of the most dangerous kind. Everyone from Missouri to Mexico knew who Kenyon Bristol was and the kind of men he hired.
“I figger it's time fer somethin' stronger 'n coffee. Wash, yew wanna do th' honors?” Obedience cleared the table of dishes and cups while the red-haired giant poured three generous slugs of clear liquid into clean tin cups.
Grinning, he gave one cup to Lee and held the second one in a hand so big it completely hid the drink from view as he tossed off a swallow. “Whoowhee! Still th' best we ever bought, darlin'.”
Wiping her hands on her apron, Obedience took the last cup from where Wash had set it on the table. “It oughta be, considerin' yew traded a passel o' prime pelts fer a half dozen jugs o' this. Course, it shore is smooth,” she assessed, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve after taking a sip.