Everyone in the cabin hurried out into the yard to welcome the return of their hero.
But Sawyer had no intention of answering the many questions the elderly people put to him in such rapid succession as they crowded around Coraje. Still mounted, he lifted the deer he’d just hunted and killed from around his shoulders and handed the game to Maclovio. “Mama, meat for your table,” he told Tia.
At the sight of the deer, Tia burst into tears. “Oh, my sweet Francisco!”
Turning to Pedro and Lorenzo, Sawyer gave the old outlaws the knives he’d taken from the two men he’d killed. “Help Tia butcher the deer,” he told Pedro, knowing Lorenzo didn’t hear a word he said. “We’ll be back later.”
“We?” Zafiro asked.
Sawyer held out his hand to her. When she laid her palm across his, he pulled her into the saddle and quickly took Coraje out of La Escondida again. He didn’t stop the horse nor did he speak until he’d reached a sheltered cove bursting with long swaying grass and white and red wildflowers.
“Here,” he said. Gently, he lowered Zafiro to the ground, watching as her tattered skirt disappeared into the depths of the lush vegetation. He then dismounted and secured Coraje to the thick, woody stem of an overgrown bush.
“Here?” Zafiro asked.
He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around. “I found this place a few weeks ago. This is where all the grass I’ve been feeding the animals has come from.”
“I see.” She wondered when he’d begin to talk, then decided she’d waited long enough for him to start. “Tell me everything you remember.”
Her bluntness and the insistence he heard in her voice didn’t surprise him. Indeed, he was surprised she’d waited this long to start her interrogation. He thought she’d begin attacking him with questions as soon as he’d returned to La Escondida with the deer.
But she’d been silent as he’d take her to this pretty, flower-sprinkled meadow. Not typical of Zafiro by any means. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
She felt tears sting her eyes. “My body is fine.”
But her emotions were not, he knew. “You don’t understand the whole story yet, Zafiro. I haven’t told you.” He took her hand and walked through the grass with her. “I did kill them,” he said, his voice almost, but not quite, a whisper. “The four people in the house.”
Disbelief staggered through her. “No.”
“Yes.” He stopped by a large, weather-smoothed boulder and sat her down there. “But four are still alive. That’s why I have to go back.”
“Yes. Of course. I see.” But she saw no sense at all in what he was saying. “Sawyer—”
“Pretty Girl’s there in Synner, too,” he blurted, sitting down in front of the boulder. “But Apple Lover’s not.”
Zafiro felt like shaking him for making so little sense. “I am trying to understand, but—”
“Then I’ll start at the beginning.” One by one Sawyer picked the red and white flowers, laying the blossoms on his thigh. “When I was twenty-one the minister in Synner asked my parents if they would take care of an orphan girl until a permanent home could be found for her. They ended up loving and keeping her. Her name was Minnie, and she was the one who named my father’s horse.”
Zafiro took careful note of the fact that he’d said the girl’s name was Minnie and realized Minnie was one of the children who’d died. “Your parents had kind hearts,” she murmured.
Sawyer picked more flowers, adding them to the pile on his thigh. “Rumors began to spread that my parents had opened an orphanage in our house. One thing led to another, and they soon found themselves with five other children. Tucker was an infant when they accepted him. He’s ten now. Jenna and Jesse are twins. They’re twelve. Ira’s the oldest. He’s sixteen. And Nathaniel…Nathaniel was three when he came to live with us. He died when he was thirteen.”
Minnie and Nathaniel, Zafiro thought. They were the children who’d been killed in the house with the white curtains.
And the man and the woman shot down with the children had been Sawyer’s parents. “Your parents…”
“Russell and Mercy Donovan.” Two at a time, Sawyer tied the red and white posies together, making a flower chain. “They’d been getting on in years when they adopted Minnie. Father was a farmer and did well by selling his produce in Synner, but when the rest of the children came along things got harder. Even when my mother started taking in seamstress jobs and I contributed the cash I made by breaking and training horses at a nearby ranch, there was never enough money to provide for the nine of us.”
The flowers trembled in his shaking fingers. “That’s when I began to steal. At night. Like the Quintana Gang, I robbed the wealthy, but I never took more than my family needed. I told my parents I’d earned the extra money by teaching boys from rich families how to shoot and ride. Since I’d always been good with horses and weapons, my parents believed me.
“I usually had to steal only every two months or so. I liked taking gold because it was so easy to spend in towns where people didn’t know me. Jewels were a little more difficult. I had to sell them, and a few of the jewelers who bought them asked questions about where I got them. Somehow I always had an answer that satisfied them. Most of them didn’t ask anything at all, though, because I always sold the jewels for far less than they were worth.”
His flower chain broke. “You’re wrong about the diamonds, Zafiro,” he continued as he repaired the break in the string of blossoms. “The ones attached to my cloak. They didn’t come from any lady of royalty. I have no idea how that story was invented. The diamonds were a pleasant surprise I found in the false bottom of a hatbox. I’d just robbed and let go an elegant carriage that I’d trailed since it had left Synner two days earlier. As the coach sped away the hatbox fell off the top. I took it with me, but didn’t look inside until I’d almost reached Synner. When I took the feathered hat out, the box still felt heavy. That’s when I found the false bottom and the loose diamonds. They’d been fashioned into buttons, so it wasn’t difficult to sew them right on.”
“Why?” Zafiro murmured. “Why did you want them on your cloak?”
Sawyer took a deep breath and looked up at the sky as he sighed. “I didn’t like stealing, Zafiro. I had to force myself to make those midnight raids. As I kept doing it, it got harder and harder, and times came when I didn’t go at all for months. Then things would get so bad at home that I had to return to thievery whether I liked it or not.” He fingered one of the blossoms in the posy chain. “The diamonds helped me. They glowed like my mother’s eyes. Her eyes would do that when I brought home money to her. They’d glow. So whenever I’d set out to steal, I’d look down at the diamonds and remember how happy and relieved she was when I gave her money to feed the family. Thinking of that, I could do what I had to do.”
No longer able to be apart from him, Zafiro left her seat on the boulder and moved to sit down beside him.
Her nearness encouraged Sawyer to remember and relate the heinous memories of his past. “I continued to steal from the wealthy for ten years. Finally, I remember the last time I rode as Night Master.”
This was it, Zafiro sensed. He was about to tell her what had happened that had caused him to forget his past. She took his hand between her own, hoping he would feel, understand, and accept her support and concern.
“I rode into the yard just before dawn one morning, and knew instantly that something was wrong.” Sawyer tightened his fingers around her hand, but couldn’t meet her gaze. “In case I returned, my mother always left a lamp burning in the parlor. This time, when I rode up to the house, I found it dark.”
He tried to swallow, but couldn’t. “I drew my guns and went inside. I couldn’t see, so I lit the lantern my father always kept in the entryway. That’s when I saw the house had been ransacked. Mother’s little silver cream pitcher was missing from the table in the foyer. It was the only piece of real silver she had, and I knew then that every other valuable thing in the
house had also been stolen.”
With his free hand he picked up the fragile necklace of wildflowers and crushed several of the colorful blossoms. The red petals left a crimson stain on his palm. It reminded him of blood, and he squeezed his eyes shut before speaking again. “I went upstairs. To the bedrooms. I found my parents in their room. Minnie and Nathaniel were with them. They were all on the floor, shot to death, lying in their own blood, and the white curtains at the window made moving shadows over their bodies as the breeze swept inside.”
“Sawyer.” Zafiro felt his horror. It seeped into her, sickening her to such an extent that she felt physically ill. “But,” she whispered achingly, “you did not kill them. You are not the one who murdered—”
“I am!” Listening to his own shout thunder through the mountains, he bolted off the ground and stormed through the sea of grass and flowers. “I wasn’t there, can’t you understand that? I wasn’t there to protect them! If I’d been there—”
“But you did not know! You—”
“I killed them, same as if I shot them myself! It’s what I made myself forget! It’s why I couldn’t look in the damn trunk!”
“The trunk—”
“The clothes and the guns were in there!” Sawyer clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and sucked in a deep breath. “I killed my family!”
Deeply disturbed by his twisted belief, Zafiro stood and marched toward him. “You are wrong! You cannot believe—”
“I can believe anything I damn well want to believe!”
She reached for his arms, holding them tightly. “Sawyer, listen to—”
“There’s more.” He yanked her hands off his arms, and stalked away from her. “I found Tucker, Ira, Jenna, and Jesse in the barn. They were in the hayloft. When they saw it was me who’d come looking for them, Jenna fell out of the loft and broke her arm. She screamed with pain, and the others screamed with fear and horror. My own screams mixed with theirs, and if I live to be a thousand years old, I know I will never hear the sound of such grief and pain again.”
For a full five minutes Zafiro watched him pace through the meadow, kicking at the grass and flowers, and throwing stones and sticks as he found them. The brutality of his memories had crazed him, she realized.
She could do nothing but wait until he calmed sufficiently to speak again.
“My brothers and my sister… They told me what they knew about the men who’d broken into the house. A gang of five, they said, two Mexicans and three white men. One of the white men wore gold earrings, and one of the Mexicans stole Apple Lover. That’s all the kids could remember.
“After they told me what they knew I heard a whining sound.” He cast another rock as far as he could throw it. “Pretty Girl, my dog… She came limping into the barn then. She’d been shot in the leg, and I knew she’d been shot while trying to save my parents, Minnie, and Nathaniel. I don’t know where I found the reasoning or how I summoned the patience, but I hitched up the wagon and got all the children in it. Pretty Girl too. Then I ordered Ira to drive to the Ames’s house. Mr. and Mrs. Ames lived about five miles away, and Bonnie Ames was my mother’s best friend. I knew they’d be safe there. Before Ira drove away I gave him the gold I’d stolen two nights before and made all four of them swear not to tell anyone how they’d seen me dressed or where they’d gotten the gold. I…I sent the money with them because I didn’t know how long I’d be gone. It was for their support and for…to pay for my parents’, Minnie’s, and Nathanial’s burials.”
His emotions so ragged that he could barely stand, Sawyer drew one of his Colts. Sunlight glinted off the weapon and for a moment he allowed the flashes to mesmerize him.
“I set off to find the killers then,” he went on, quiet fury making his words sizzle as if made of fire. “It didn’t take long to find their trail.”
He raised his arm, holding the Colt out in front of his face and sighting along the gleaming barrel. “I found them on the fourth day. They were just heading out of a small town past the border in Mexico. In front of God and everyone in the town, I shot and killed four of them.”
The sudden, deafening crack of gunfire made Zafiro shriek. Her nerves stretched so tightly that she feared they would break, she rubbed her hands briskly up and down her arms in an effort to calm her jangled emotions. “Four of them.”
“I got them before they even saw me.” Sawyer lowered his gun, his arm dangling at his side. “But the man who’d taken Apple Lover escaped. He emptied his guns at me, but he didn’t hit me. As I saw him ride away on my father's horse, I could taste the flavor of hatred. It’s a metallic taste, Zafiro. Like sucking on a piece of rusty iron.
“I tracked the bastard deep into Mexico, but I lost his trail. I…I don’t know how I lost it. I was tired. Hadn’t eaten much. I couldn’t stop thinking about my parents and the children. I…I lost the son of a bitch somewhere in Mexico, and then suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t know anything anymore. I couldn’t ride my horse. The sight of my guns turned my stomach and filled me with a horror I couldn’t understand, couldn’t name. I took off my clothes, the satin clothes of a night raider, and I changed. My trunk… It was still on my saddle. The trunk of extra clothes I always took with me when I went out thieving as Night Master.” Slowly, he placed his gun back into his belt. “I sold my horse in the next town I came to and bought my mule. I wandered for months, doing odd jobs to support myself and trying to understand why such feelings of strange sorrow and pain came to me at such odd times. They even filled my dreams. I saw the house. The white curtains. The flowers in the yard. My parents, and my brothers and sisters. But even as I thought of all of them, I didn’t know why or how I knew them.”
Hesitantly, as if Sawyer might turn on her, Zafiro walked toward him. “And then you found the convent.”
“And you.”
She wanted to touch him, but dared not. She couldn’t read his expression or the sound in his voice. “Eight months. You have been away from your brothers and sister for a long time.”
He felt his eyes begin to sting. “They’ve probably given up on me by now. Lost hope that I’ll be back.” The moist glitter she saw in his eyes drowned her with compassion.
“Children are not like that," she tried to make him understand. “Children hope when there is no hope. I am sure that Ira, Jesse, Jenna, and Tucker—”
“No.” Sawyer gave her his back so she wouldn’t see the spill of his emotions. “If the news of Night Master’s death reached you all the way up here in La Escondida, then Synner has heard the news as well. Ira, Jesse, Jenna, and Tucker saw me that night, Zafiro. They knew who I was. And they have no way of knowing that the reports about my death are false.”
Zafiro longed to argue, but couldn’t. Sawyer was right. If his siblings had heard the rumor about his death, they’d have no choice but to believe their big brother was dead.
“I understand now,” she murmured. “I understand why you refused to take care of us when I first asked you.”
“Yes.”
“Something in your mind, or perhaps in your heart, it remembered the deaths of your parents and Minnie and Nathaniel. You felt you had not taken care of them, but you did not know why you felt that way. And so you had the same feeling about us. And again, you did not know why.”
“Yes. And there’s more. You. When I first came to La Escondida the sight of you taking care of your people caused me to slightly remember doing the same. I didn’t know why I remembered taking care of people, of being the sole means of support for them, but I remembered. Your caring for your men, Tia, and Azucar seemed familiar to me somehow.”
His ragged whispering tore at her. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes, but she would not let herself cry. It was Sawyer who needed to weep. To release all the grief he’d held inside for so long.
She touched his hair and felt its sun-warmed softness caress the tips of her fingers. “You have not mourned, have you, Sawyer? Since the night you discovered that your parents,
Minnie, and Nathaniel had been murdered, you have not grieved.”
He kept his back to her. “It won’t bring them back, Zafiro.”
“No.” Dios mío, how she hurt for him. “No, it will not bring them back, but mourning their deaths will heal you, Sawyer. Only when you allow yourself to grieve will your pain begin to lessen.”
He didn’t answer her, but she saw his shoulders shake. He was trying to battle his sorrow. Still trying to keep it locked inside.
She walked around him, took his cheeks into her hands, and aimed her gaze straight into his. The harsh words she would tell him were almost impossible to speak, but she knew in her heart he had to hear them. “You try to be brave by holding in your feelings. But you are not showing courage, Sawyer. You are being a coward.”
Stung by her brutal accusation given in the face of his torment, he spun on his heel and headed for Coraje.
“I am not going back to La Escondida until I see you grieve, Sawyer!”
He untied the horse and mounted. “Fine. Stay here then.”
She watched him canter out of the meadow and out of sight, his black cloak and golden hair whipping behind him. With more calmness than she felt, she returned to the boulder and sat down to await his return.
Five minutes passed.
Ten.
Fifteen.
But she refused to believe Sawyer would not come back for her.
Her faith proved true.
Sawyer galloped back into the meadow, then tugged Coraje’s reins so quickly that the horse reared to a stop. “I came back to tell you that you aren’t the woman I thought you were, Zafiro,” he bit down at her. “I thought you had a heart, but you—”
“I do have a heart.”
He glared at her, needing to strike out at something, someone. “I am not a coward, damn you.”
“You have a lily for a liver,” she goaded him on, returning his glare with a good hard one of her own.
“Lily-livered,” he gritted out.
“That is what I—”
Bed of Roses Page 27