Rafael looked away when he stopped speaking, and he contented himself with smoking the slim cigarillo. He felt drained; tonight had been the first time he had spoken to anyone about his life with the Comanches, and he discovered that it had brought back memories and primitive emotions. Memories and emotions he thought he had conquered long ago. It wasn't pleasant to know that the blood lust still ran hotly in his veins.
Sebastian was staring at him, but there wasn't the recoiling horror and condemnation that Rafael expected to see. Cocking an eyebrow at the younger man, he asked derisively, "No comment? You are usually so quick with words that I find your silence puzzling. Struggling to find just the right scathing observation, Sebastian?"
"No. I was just realizing how very thin is the veneer of civilization. What you've just told me I find on one hand most revolting, but on the other..."
"On the other, you find that it calls to everything that is savage and untamed within you," Rafael finished dryly. "You're not alone—more than one returned captive has escaped his would-be-rescuer and eagerly hurried back to the Comanches."
"Why didn't you?"
Rafael laughed bitterly. "Because, my friend, my grandfather took precautions to make damn certain I didn't!"
"But when you were in Spain, surely you were not watched the entire time?"
"Oh, no... there was no need." At Sebastian's look of surprise, Rafael added wearily, "When Don Felipe undertook to... recapture me from the Comanches, luck was on his side—not only did he find me, but when I was captured, the two Comanches with me unfortunately happened to be men I thought of as my father and older brother. If I had known who had captured us, that damning bit of information wouldn't have come out. But none of us realized that we had been neatly surprised and trapped while out hunting by something more than merely a band of Mexican bandits who asked a hell of lot of questions. The fact that I had been singled out and captured didn't occur to any of us until too late. Catching Buffalo Horn, my adopted father, and Standing Horse, his son, was a piece of luck that Don Felipe hadn't counted on, but he took advantage of it damn quickly—to insure my cooperation, it was explained very carefully and in eloquent detail exactly what would happen to them if I didn't do precisely what Don Felipe wanted."
Sebastian whistled soundlessly, realizing the reasons behind a lot of the inexplicable things that Rafael had done—such as marrying Consuela. Shooting a glance at Rafael's impassive face, he decided not to ask any questions concerning Don Felipe and instead murmured, "Did you ever go back to the Comanches?"
Rafael nodded. "But by the time I did, Don Felipe and his priests and scholars had done their work too well. I discovered that while the Comanches might welcome me back as a lost son, I could no longer live their way of life as I had once done. I knew too much of the world... against my will, I had become the Spanish grandson that Don Felipe wanted—at any cost."
Sebastian longed to question him further, but something in Rafael's face warned him that he had said all he was going to say on the subject. Sebastian was right.
Rafael flipped the cigarillo on the coals and said, "We've discussed my Indian past long enough." Finished speaking, Rafael drew his saddle into a position that suited him, and settled his head against it. The serape was dragged over his body and, pulling the black sombrero down to where its brim rested on his nose, he said pointedly, "Buenas noches."
Knowing that further questions would remain unanswered, Sebastian followed his lead. The leather saddle did not make a comfortable pillow and, with his mind filled with thoughts of Comanches and Rafael's years with them, Sebastian found it hard to fall asleep. Eventually he drowsed off and not many minutes later he was asleep, not once thinking of Beth and his aching heart.
For Rafael it was not as easy. He was wide awake. Too damned wide awake, he thought grimly, shifting on the hard ground.
It had been difficult to answer Sebastian's questions, to talk of that time with the Comanches, not because of any painful memories—that period had been the happiest of his life. There had been no divided loyalties, no black abyss of guilt to stumble into whenever he thought of the fact that he was allied with the white people, whose greed for land could be the death of the Comanche's proud and free way of life.
Rafael sighed, thinking of the time with the Comanches. He had lived life as he found it, and in those days he had found it good indeed. His mouth curved sardonically. Oh, yes, he had reveled in every aspect of the Comanche warrior's life—even the land itself called to him, those vast chaparraled savannas, brush lands, and butte-studded limestone plateaus in a sea of grass that reached belly-high to a horse and extended as far as the eye could see and beyond. It was impossible to describe the Great Plains, to describe the effect of blinding blue sky and the endless expanses of waving grass. And the winds, the wind that blew eternally, cutting through the silence with a sullen keening. He sighed again, suddenly longing for it unbearably.
Realizing that sleep was impossible, Rafael threw aside the serape and sat up. Stirring the lingering coals, he lit another cigarillo. He was restless, his mind and thoughts dwelling too much on a part of his life he kept tightly locked away.
Taking a deep drag of the cigarillo, Rafael stared at the glowing remains of the fire. No, he admitted slowly, it wasn't the memories of the Comanche years that troubled him; it was the agonizing time that had followed his return to the life he had been born into—the life of the son of a noble Spanish family.
Even now, some fifteen years later, he could still recall his frantic fury in those first days, days he had spent chained like an animal in a dirty underground prison of Don Felipe's making. There had been no warm sunlight upon his yearning, thirsting skin, no brilliantly blue sky to fill him with delight and pleasure, just darkness and humiliation. Around his right ankle he still bore the scars of that brutal incarceration—he had fought like a maddened, wild creature to escape the iron manacle that chained him in his small, suffocating prison, fought until his ankle was a bleeding mass of torn skin and flesh. Safely out of his reach, Don Felipe had watched; his black goatee and curving mustaches giving him the look of a devil, the cold black eyes expressionless.
Rafael's hand trembled, and seeing it, he cursed. Mother of God, how he despised his Spanish grandfather!
The Comanches were a cruel race, Rafael conceded, but theirs was not the calculated cruelty practiced by his grandfather. Don Felipe had enjoyed trying to break him, had enjoyed watching him, day by day, hour by hour, almost lose the struggle to maintain even a pitiful remnant of his youthful, bred-in-the-bone pride. But somehow he had managed to remain defiant and untamed throughout it all. When all else had failed, Don Felipe crushed resistance by the simple expedient of dangling before Rafael the fate of the imprisoned Buffalo Horn and Standing Horse.
For the continuance of their lives, Rafael had learned the pure Castilian Spanish that Don Felipe demanded; for them he had studied diligently the books and syllabuses devised by his grandfather's priests; for them he had allowed himself to be groomed and taught the manners and ways of the heir to a proud and distinguished name. Had Don Felipe not threatened his Comanche family, Rafael would have starved to death and let the maggots feed on his rotting flesh before he would have obeyed even one command.
Don Felipe, determined to have no interference in his plans, had kept his son, Rafael's father, in ignorance of his actions. It was only some ten months later—Rafael, his glorious braids sheared off, his Spanish understandable, and ill-at-ease in confining pantaloons and white linen shirt stood before his father and Don Miguel had looked upon the hostile face of the son he had never thought to see again.
Don Miguel had been overjoyed, and even to Rafael's distrustful gaze it had been obvious that the other man's emotions were genuine. Remembering the tears that had filled his father's eyes, he moved uneasily. He had never wanted Don Miguel's love, but he was grateful for it—his father's presence had made the following two years bearable.
Rafael still fought against
the prison walls that were minute by minute closing in on him. He yearned for the high country, for the freedom that had been his for as long as he could remember, for the life that he still thought of as the one worthy of a man. After the desperate abortive attempt to free Buffalo Horn and Standing Horse from their captivity, with a heart full of fury he had put it behind him. Don Felipe's revenge had been swift and savage—he had ordered that Buffalo Horn be blinded in one eye, stating that the next time the other eye would go, and if that failed, there was still Standing Horse. Rafael had been forced to watch the blinding, and after that, there had been no more attempts to escape the limits set by his grandfather.
Rafael violently tossed the cigarillo from him. Don Felipe had not won all of the battles. No, not all of them. With pleasure he recalled the look on his grandfather's face when he had refused to go to Spain... unless his adoptive relatives were freed.
At twenty Rafael was no longer a wild animal fighting to escape a trap. Tall and aloof, the gray eyes already cynical, he had learned painfully to play by his grandfather's rules, and Don Felipe had not liked it at all. In the end the older man had offered a compromise, furiously aware that this time Rafael would remain implacable. Don Felipe had agreed that Buffalo Horn would go free if Rafael went to Spain, but under no circumstances would he release Standing Horse. It had been a stalemate, neither man gaining an outright victory.
Rafael had hated Spain, hated the priests in the sprawling gray-stoned monastery where he had been sent for further refinement, hated the bleakness of the monastery itself, hated the condescending attitude of the Spaniards he met, but most of all he had hated Spain because it had bred his grandfather... and Consuela.
The freedom of Standing Horse had been the price of Rafael's marriage to Consuela Valadez y Gutierrez. Again Don Felipe had been enraged that his grandson had dared to bargain, enraged that for the first time in his life he had met another man with his own steel-edged determination. It made little difference to Don Felipe that now, at last, he had a grandson who appeared to be everything one could ever want in an heir—he could never forgive the Comanche blood that ran in Rafael's veins.
Standing Horse went free after his long captivity, and at twenty-four Rafael married a woman who despised him for the same reason that his grandfather did.
A mirthless chuckle escaped Rafael as he sat staring at the dead fire. Consuela and Don Felipe should have married—what a mating of vipers that would have been.
Perhaps if Consuela had managed to meet him part of the way they might have made the ill-matched marriage work, for in those first days Rafael hadn't hated her. He had not liked her, but there might have been buried, beneath the unyielding exterior he projected, the hope that he could grow to care for this woman he had been forced to marry.
Thinking of her death at the hands of a Comanche raiding party, Rafael winced. Not even Consuela would he have condemned to that fate. If she hadn't been in such an all-fired hurry to leave the hacienda, her path and that of the raiding party might never have crossed. And then again, who knew, fate had a way of catching up with one when least expected. Her death had shocked him, and he had thought it one of life's grotesque ironies that she had died at the hands of the very people she despised most.
Aware of a cramp in his calf, Rafael stretched his long legs and glanced up at the starless sky, feeling the night quiet steal over him, and with it came a certain amount of peace within him. Dios! He must be mad to sit here brooding over events that had happened another lifetime. It was all over now, so why did he let it haunt him this way?
Wryly he looked across at Sebastian's slumbering form, aware as he had never been before that affection and caring made one weak; that with fondness came a vulnerability he had never suspected, not even when he had bargained for the lives of Buffalo Horn and Standing Horse. Caring for someone, he decided bitterly, was a trap he would avoid in the future.
The chill of the night seeped into his bones and, conscious of a great tiredness, he lay down again and pulled the serape around him. It was strange, he mused drowsily, how thinking of the past tonight had in some peculiar way made him at ease within himself—as if by facing the past, the memories lost the power to hurt him. His hatred for Don Felipe was not diminished, but the pain and torment he kept locked inside of him was inexplicably gone. Maybe, he thought sleepily, Sebastian did me a favor by asking those questions. A smile on his lips, he fell asleep.
Chapter 15
The ride back to the hacienda was more leisurely than the previous day's journey out; Rafael stopped more frequently to point out the various advantages of the land they traveled through. His eyes narrowed against the bright morning sun, he said, "It is good land, Sebastian. Abundant water and grass enough to feed as much livestock as you would ever want. As for cropping, I think you'll find the soil more than adequate."
Sebastian nodded, his mind already made up. The young face full of enthusiasm, he confessed, "I knew yesterday from what you'd shown me that I wanted it. It's an appealing country, Rafael; I can hardly wait to write my father of my decision."
Rafael smiled; his glance fond as it rested on Sebastian's face. "Bueno! It pleases me to know that Cielo will have a member of the Savage family as its nearest neighbor. Miguel, too, will be pleased." His face serious, he said, "If you intend to apply for the free land, I suggest that you also buy up as much additional acreage as you can afford. At the moment land is the only thing that Texas seems to have in overabundance—except for Mexican interference and Indians! But it will not remain so."
"I've already considered that—I plan to buy considerably more land than that which is free."
"Good! I suggest that we start back for the hacienda—Miguel is bound to be incensed already at the way I spirited you away from your guests, and to stay away another night would certainly bring down his wrath upon my head."
The brief trip away from the hacienda with its attendant entanglements had accomplished as much as Rafael could hope for in such a short time—Sebastian was easier with him now, and the old bond between them seemed almost as strong as before. Time was Rafael's best ally; he would have to stand back and allow it to work its healing process.
Sebastian said nothing as they rode toward the hacienda, although his face grew grimmer with every mile that brought them closer to a meeting with Beth. Something that had been bothering him since Rafael had first confessed that Beth was his mistress finally took shape. Twisting in his saddle to look at Rafael's impassive features, he said suspiciously, "It must have been a very long-distanced affair between the two of you. With you in Texas most of the time and Beth tucked away on a plantation near Natchez, you must not have met often."
Rafael didn't even glance at him. "We didn't... but it was often enough."
Rafael was not a liar by nature, and it galled him to be forced to continue to lie, especially to Sebastian. Nor did he like being accountable to anyone for his actions, and he found himself in an infuriating and uncomfortable position, caught up in a mass of lies and half-truths about English, further complicated by his undeniable desire for her. He hated her at the moment, as much for his belief in her entrapment of Sebastian as the urgent hunger to see her again that clawed through his body. He fought against that hunger, unwilling to admit that he was eager, for once in his life, to see the red-tiled roof of the hacienda come into sight, and that the reason for his eagerness was a silver-haired, violet-eyed witch who was never far from his mind. He was not, he thought furiously, going to be taken in by that lovely, falsely innocent face again. Once was all he could bear.
It was late afternoon when they reached the hacienda. The companionable silence between them was strained as they rode through the iron gates. Leaving their horses at the stables, they walked together toward the house, neither having a great deal to say to the other, and yet neither wishing to end what had been an enjoyable time on this uncomfortable note. Just before they entered the courtyard from the rear, avoiding the main part of the house, Rafael halt
ed, and facing Sebastian, he muttered, "This is a damnable situation, amigo! If I could change things, I would."
It was the nearest Rafael would come to an apology, and Sebastian recognized it. He was also aware that Rafael's involvement with Beth was one of those unfortunate coincidences... for him. There was no way that Rafael could have known that he would lose his head over a woman the other man considered his own. It was, Sebastian decided hollowly, just damned bad luck on his part that the first woman he had ever considered marrying had to be this one. His voice muffled, he said, "Forget it. I cherished notions about her that I can see now were absurd. I never received a bit of encouragement from her and that should have warned me." Painfully he admitted, "I've realized that Beth only sees me as a friend—has always seen me as friend—don't go thinking that she played you false."
"I am relieved. I would hate to damage that delicate hide of hers by beating her for playing the flirt with you."
Sebastian smiled feebly, his heartache easing and seeking their old footing, he murmured, "I'm sure that I could think of something better to do with that delicate hide, as you call it, than give her a beating—even a deserved one."
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