A little less than an hour later, the column rode into a ranch yard.
A big one with a two- or three-story, tile-roofed Spanish style house abutting the far southern end, set off from the main yard by an adobe fence and what appeared a yard of tended trees, shrubs, and vines. The place shone almost eerily in the moonlight, its long windows dark.
There were what appeared to be two low adobe bunkhouses, many corrals including a stone-walled breaking corral, several log barns, stables, and as many more small outbuildings. A windmill loomed in the yard’s center around a large stone stock tank, the mill’s wooden blades tapping softly in the easy breeze.
Someone from the ranch had apparently been awaiting the procession, which stopped just after the wagon had entered the yard. Sartain heard voices. When the wagon continued forward as the soldiers spread out to both sides, the column dispersing, two men in drover garb and sombreros appeared astride horses. They watched the wagon pass, their faces dark although the crowns of their gaudy sombreros glowed in the moonlight.
The wagon stopped near the north wall of the house. Only a few of the other soldiers, led by the captain, had followed it this far. The sergeant climbed over his seat and dropped into the box beside Sartain.
“Raise your wrists, bucko.”
Sartain frowned up at the man, who had a face like seasoned cedar. “Huh?”
“I said raise your fuggin’ wrists, an’ be quick about it!”
Puzzled, the Cajun raised his wrists. The sergeant stuck a key in the lock and the cuffs fell away. The surge of blood felt like a swarm of bees stinging Sartain’s hands.
Wincing, he rubbed them, but he didn’t mind having been freed all that much. The sergeant had reached under his seat for a pair of steel jaws. After much grunting and cursing, he spread the ankle bracelets apart until they fell, one by one, away from Sartain’s ankles.
Sartain shuttled his befuddled gaze from the sergeant to the captain, who was still mounted and staring at him grimly, then back to the sergeant.
“You fellas, uh...have a change of heart?” The Revenger asked. “You lettin’ me go?”
“Shut up,” the captain snarled at him. “Come on, get him inside, Sergeant,” the officer said grimly. He sounded worn down and out of sorts. There was clearly something he hadn’t liked about this job.
There was something Sartain hadn’t liked about it, too, but now he was more puzzled than troubled. Where was this place? What was this place? What was he doing here?
He was helped a little more gingerly out of the cabin this time, young Davey steering clear.
“This way,” ordered the captain, who had dismounted.
He opened a wooden door in the wall. The soldiers, including the burly Irish sergeant, led Sartain through the opening and through a fragrant garden that smelled richly of citrus and sandalwood. The scent of wood smoke also hung in the air, and Sartain saw a large adobe brazier on an arbor-covered fieldstone patio with several comfortable-looking wicker chairs. Someone had been sitting out here not all that long ago.
Ahead, a torch burned from a bracket in the adobe wall near a stout oak door set deep in its frame. There was a small grilled window in the door, closed from the inside.
The captain stopped in front of the door. He sighed and shook his head, then tapped on the door with the back of his hand. He clicked the door’s latch. The door squawked free of the frame, opening a few inches on squeaky hinges.
Sartain looked at him.
“Sleep tight,” the officer said through gritted teeth. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He held up a key. “This door will be locked from the outside. You’ll be let out tomorrow. If you try to leave before then, you’ll be shot on sight. Got it?”
“I reckon,” Sartain said, his befuddlement showing in his voice.
He pushed the door wide, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. As the captain’s key scraped in the lock, Sartain faced the room. He was vaguely aware of the scowl lines deepening across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. He stood in a modest-sized but well-appointed room.
There was a full-sized bed to his right, a stout dresser and armoire to his left. A marble-topped washstand stood against the wall near the bed under a crucifix set just above a one-foot square mirror.
A red lamp, its wick turned low, threw watery umber light around the room, but mostly shadows. Though the room was dark, he could see a person in the bed. The sheets and blankets were lumped, and a mass of thick, curly, dark-brown hair was spilled across a pillow on the bed’s right side. A delicate brown female foot poked out from under the blankets near where Sartain stood, taking it all in—the long ride, his free hands and ankles, the room.
The girl.
She groaned, turned her head on the pillow, and stared straight off to her left. She swept her tangled hair away from her left cheek, turning her head more sharply until her brown eyes found the newcomer. She sat up suddenly, pulling the covers up discreetly.
Her heart-shaped face was brown and pretty. She had three very small moles on her neck, and another one off the right corner of her wide mouth. Sartain doubted she was twenty.
“You have come,” she said, her voice raspy from sleep, then cleared her throat. She spoke with a thick Spanish accent. Judging by the darkness of her skin and eyes, he guessed she had some Indio blood. Apache or Yaqui, most likely.
“Who’re you?”
“Sonja.” She blinked, tossing her hair back to reveal more of her round, cherubic face. “You are the gringo they call The Revenger.”
She smiled warmly and patted the bed beside her.
Sartain walked toward the bed and stopped at the washstand. “What’s going on? Where am I?” As he pulled a pitcher of water from the stand’s bottom shelf, he glanced at the girl. “Who’re you, Sonja?”
“That last question is the only question I am allowed to answer, Señor Sartain.” She smiled again. “I am your lover for the rest of the evening.”
“Had a feelin’ you weren’t the housemaid.”
Sartain poured water into the washbasin. He glanced at the door once more. No sounds rose beyond it, but the soldiers were likely out there, smoking, talking, killing time until their assignment—whatever that was—ended.
The Cajun shrugged out of his vest and hung it on a peg in the wall beside the washstand. As he did, he glimpsed a bottle on the dresser beside the smoky lantern. A bottle and two short, thick, green goblets. The bottle had a fancy label on it. He popped the cork and sniffed the lip.
The aroma was akin to spring roses, old books, and leather.
Spanish brandy.
The Revenger chuckled, splashing some of the brandy into a glass. “All right, I’m easy. I can be chained and hauled halfway across the west and still be plied with good Taos Lightning and a pretty girl. Why not?” He raised the glass to the girl in mock salute and threw back the entire shot.
The brandy burned pleasantly, leaving the taste of roses on his tongue.
“Forgive me, señorita.” Sartain splashed brandy into the second goblet, then handed it to her. Keeping the covers over her, she leaned toward him to take the glass and then sat back against the headboard. “Gracias.”
“Oh, hell, don’t mention it.”
He didn’t know why he was feeling owly toward the girl. She was pretty, and obviously and inexplicably for him. But there wasn’t anyone else around to take the brunt of his fury.
The girl had nothing to do with any of this, however. He doubted she even knew much more about what was happening than he did. He’d best mind his Southern manners.
He splashed more brandy into his glass, raised it to her, and dipped his chin. “To your beauty, Sonja.”
She crinkled her brow skeptically, then raised her own glass and sipped the brandy.
“Ummm,” she said. “Good, no?”
“Oh, very good.”
Sartain set his glass on the small table beside the bed. He pulled his shirttails out of his pants and unbuttoned the
shirt. When he’d shrugged out of the shirt, he went ahead and continued undressing until all of his clothes lay in a pile on the braided hemp rug near the door.
Barefoot, he walked back to the washstand. The girl’s eyes were on him, caressing his tall, broad, slim-hipped figure, a very faint pensive smile stretching her pretty lips. He took up a cloth folded beside the basin and soaked it. When he’d scrubbed himself thoroughly from head to toe, he dried himself with a towel.
When he was finished, he turned to see Sonja watching him, her chin propped on the heel of her hand. She was no longer bothering with the bedcovers. A flame appeared to burn in her eyes.
Slowly, her gaze climbed his torso to his eyes, and then she drew his side of the covers back and patted the bed beside her.
Chapter 6
Sartain grabbed his glass and the bottle from the bureau, then sat down on the edge of the bed. The girl crawled over to him, wrapped an arm around his upper torso, and ran her hand through the thick hair on his chest.
“You like me?”
“I like you just fine.”
“You...don’t seem happy to see me, amigo.” Sonja pressed her lips to his shoulder.
Sartain chuckled. “That’s not it at all, señorita.” He held her hand and pressed his lips to her arm. “Just been a long trip.”
“Come. Lie back.”
She pulled him down onto the bed. He lifted his feet off the floor and stretched out. She kissed his lips very tenderly, then his chin.
He stared up at the heavy-beamed ceiling, trying to let his thoughts surrender themselves to the girl’s ministrations. It wasn’t easy at first. He’d been hauled around like some zoo animal, then his chains had been removed and he’d been locked in a room with a comfortable bed and a girl.
What in hell’s name was going on?
Were they going to try him for murder in a federal court, kill him, or…
“Oh, hell,” he said and dug his hands into her thick, messy hair. “There’s always tomorrow, isn’t there?”
“Sí.” She smiled up at him. “There is always tomorrow.”
“Carpe diem.”
“What’s that?”
“Seize the day.” Sartain chuckled. “Or...night, rather.”
“Oh. Mmm-hmmm.”
* * *
When morning came, a wash of salmon light shone through the curtained window to the right of the bed.
“Re-ven-ger.” Sonja rubbed her face against his shoulder, catlike. “Why do they call you that?”
“Why do you think?”
“But it’s we Mexicans who love revenge so much.” She gave a wicked half-smile. “For us, it is an art. Like eating and lovemaking.”
“Señorita.” Rolling toward her and nuzzling her neck, “I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to your race, but I could teach you folks a thing...”
A knock came at the door.
The captain’s voice said, “Sartain.”
That was all.
The Revenger sighed and gave the girl a parting kiss before he crawled out of bed and took a slow, leisurely sponge bath at the washstand.
The knock came again. “Sartain?”
Leisurely scrubbing, “Uh-huh?”
“Breakfast.”
“Be right out, Captain!” Sartain grinned at the girl, who returned it.
When he’d thoroughly dried himself, he took his sweet time dressing.
“Come on, come on!” The captain pounded on the door.
Sartain whistled as he set his hat on his head, carefully adjusting the angle in the mirror over the washstand. He reached inside his shirt for a cigar, and Sonja rolled to the little table beside the bed and scratched a match to life.
Crouching, The Revenger touched the cheroot to the flame. Puffing smoke, he said, “Gracias, señorita.”
“Any time, largo!”
Sartain winked at her and opened the door. Fists balled at his sides, the captain was staring into the walled yard lit by the sun, which was just poking its lemon head above the eastern horizon. Orange trees grew among cacti, and wrens cheeped among the leaves. The captain swung toward the Cajun, his flushed face causing his pewter mustache to stand out starkly against it.
His light-blue eyes glinted angrily beneath the brim of his Hardee hat. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
Sartain rolled the cheroot from one corner of his mouth to the other. “That’s an odd question, Captain. I don’t rightly know how to answer it. Don’t we all think we’re smart?”
Davey and his young partner stood sneering up at Sartain, holding their rifles at port arms across their chests. The beefy sergeant stood behind them, a boyish glint in his eye as he slid his gaze from the naked brown body of Sonja on the bed behind Sartain to The Revenger.
The captain wheeled and said, “Come on, dammit. Let’s get this miserable crap over with!”
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Sartain said, falling into step behind the man.
They walked through an inner courtyard and then into an inside hallway. Sartain followed the captain through a door off the hall’s right side and then through a series of well-appointed rooms whose windows gave out onto the walled front yard.
The red tile roofs of the bunkhouses and the red wooden blades of the windmill shone vividly in the climbing morning sun. Dust rose from one of the corrals, around which men had gathered, their figures murky in the morning shadows.
As the small procession, trailed by the sergeant, tramped through a sitting room as large as many saloons but a whole lot better decorated, the Cajun’s stomach began to groan. His mouth watered. Touching his nostrils teasingly were the aromas of a succulent breakfast that included bacon, rich black coffee, and something spicy—probably Mexican-spiced gravy—cooking on a range.
Two heavy, scrolled doors were thrown back against the stout pink adobe wall that was cracked and pitted, showing its age. On the other side of the broad arched doorway, the two privates separated and moved back against the wall, clicking their heels together in military attention.
Holy crap, Sartain thought, impressed.
He stepped into the dining room between the two privates and stopped. The captain and the sergeant moved into the room behind him, the captain stepping to The Revenger’s left, the sergeant to his right.
Sartain studied the pair before him. One was the chocolate-haired young woman, sitting in a high-backed gold-and-wine upholstered chair on the far side of a twenty-foot-long dining table. The other was a middle-aged man with a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair, a matching mustache and muttonchop whiskers trailing down the sides of his overly fleshed face.
He stood near the woman, one high-topped, gold-buttoned black boot propped on a chair between them. He was smoking a dynamite-sized cigar and leaning toward the beauty, his right arm resting on his corduroy-clad knee.
He’d been favoring the girl with the grin of a sycophant when Sartain had first seen him. Now he turned away from the girl, the grin fading quickly. It was replaced by a faintly annoyed look.
The annoyed look just as quickly switched to one of vague sheepishness as he lowered his boot from the chair beside the girl and squared his shoulders, jerking his black leather waistcoat down with his fleshy, beringed hands.
“Ah...Mr. Sartain, I take it?” He lifted the stogie to his lips, then took a few puffs as he studied the big man in the pinto vest through the smoke.
“Who did you think you had trussed up like a trapped mountain lion in that wagon? The Pope?”
“Mr. Sartain,” the captain snarled admonishingly, “show some respect. This is the governor of New Mexico Territory, Samuel L. McDougal.”
“I don’t give a damn who he is.” Sartain massaged his backside. “My butt is still sore, and I don’t think all the blood has run back into my hands yet.” He glanced at the young woman—a real beauty even this early in the morning, and from closer up than Sartain had so far gotten—and winked.
Her peach-tan cheeks colored slightly,
but she did not look away from him. Her pearl eyes were vaguely defiant.
“Have we met?” The Revenger asked.
The governor glanced from Sartain to the girl and then back to Sartain, scowling. “I don’t much care what level of gutter talk you use in my presence, Mr. Sartain,” McDougal said, “but as you can see, you are in the presence of a lady.”
The Revenger grinned. “A man would have to be blind not to see that.”
Now the girl’s gaze flicked away, and her cheeks turned redder. Quickly, she shook her hair back from her face and met his cool gaze once more.
“No, we have not met, Mr. Sartain,” she said. “At least, we have not been formally introduced.”
Her voice, slightly husky and raspy, was like a fist clenching the Cajun’s nether regions.
“This is Miss Jasmine Gallant from the Pinkerton Agency. She is how we all came to be here...together...in this room here at my ranch.” The governor had pronounced her last name with the accent over the final syllable, so that it sounded like “Gal-AUNT.”
Sartain scowled through his tobacco smoke. “Could you explain that to me, Governor?”
Ignoring the question, McDougal turned to the room’s third original occupant—a portly, double-chinned, gray-headed man in a three-piece suit wearing a cloth napkin tucked into his shirt collar. He’d been working on devouring a plate spilling over with what appeared to be huevos rancheros, and had hardly slowed his work when the soldiers and their prisoner had entered the dining room.
He had some yolk and beans on his spade beard, and also on his makeshift bib. The eyes peering up at Sartain through small, round, silver-framed spectacles were sky-blue and only perfunctorily interested in what was happening before him. He was far more focused on his plate.
“This,” said the governor, gesturing toward the fat man with the hand holding his big cigar, “is Lieutenant Governor Foster Briggs.”
Sartain didn’t say anything. Neither did Briggs, who merely continued to chew and stare at Sartain like a cow masticating its cud. The fat man tore off a piece of corn tortilla, swabbed it with the rich, brown gravy flecked with red chili peppers on his plate, and stuffed it into his mouth.
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