There were two more days until Cinco de Mayo and they all knew that they were that close to realizing their goal. Today, while Travis and Tito went to the ridge and set up their munitions store, Savannah was to stay behind and tend the jerky strips. Soon, they would begin their task of eliminating the deadly El Diablo once and for all and that knowledge sent all of them into a glorious fury to get what needed to be done in order to minimize the hours that they had to wait for that ultimate prize.
Although Savannah was adamant about not wanting Travis to go alone to her former home, she realized that that was the right thing for him to do and that he was not as foolish as she had believed him to be. And when it was time for him to leave them, she pulled him aside and whispered, “Please be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he assured her with a peck on her forehead. “It’ll take more than a mangy Mexican to bring me down.”
“He’s a madman,” she reminded him with a hand on his arm. “He won’t hesitate to take your life and I couldn’t bear that.”
Seeing her violet eyes well up with tears, Travis drew her into his arms and held her, chasing away the fears that she fought in her heart. He whispered words of encouragement while he kissed the top of her head and laid his cheek there to seal the promise that he would come back to her.
Savannah clung to him, afraid for him, afraid for herself if something did happen to him. The thought of never seeing him again stripped her of any dignity, any pride that she might have let grow inside her heart at the idea of him risking his life for people who neither knew him nor appreciated his efforts to ensure the freedom that they so enjoyed. She shivered with that dreadful thought and he tightened his embrace, pressing his head upon her raven curls.
In his heart, Travis knew what she was feeling and he wanted so much to reassure her, to show her that he needed her as much as she needed him. But the only way that he could show her at that moment was to hold her next to his body and let his heart say what he yearned to tell her. And with Tito just a few yards away from them, he could not demonstrate exactly what his heart yeaned to make her know, so he had to be content to just hold her in his arms and hope that she understood how he felt deep inside.
He pulled her slightly away and lifted her chin. Looking into her forlorn eyes, he said tenderly as a father would say to a child, “Dear Savannah, there’s so much I want to tell you. But, right now all I want to do is hold you. When this is over, I’ll feel better about it and you’ll know how I feel about you. I just can’t take the chance that I might not come back to you, as you said. So, what I am feeling inside will have to wait until I can tell you all of it, show you all of it.”
She pulled away to read his face, but Travis thrust her back to his chest, breathing, “I’ll come back. I promise I will.”
Savannah clung to him with all her might, with all her heart and soul as the morning drifted by in slow motion. Time’s gift of standing still was their sign to stand together, motionless, with the love that passed between them, while life around them waited until they had sealed their unspoken promise to each other.
She knew that he was putting off saying what he felt in his heart because of the danger that he was about to put himself into. And if he told her now that he loved her and was killed, she would mourn for that lost love and what could have been if he had survived. But by not telling her, she would be left with only an idea that he might love her and ideas fade quickly but reality burns deep into one’s heart and soul.
Travis looked down at her and let out a sigh of sadness at having to leave her in this state, but he knew that she understood his reason for not revealing his true feelings for her and the light in her violet eyes told him of her true feelings for him. That knowledge gave him the perseverance that he knew would carry him through this task and bring him back safely to her awaiting arms.
He lowered his head and enveloped her lips with his, conveying his innermost feelings with the power of his kiss and telling her with that gentle gesture that their love for each other was unwavering, undaunted by the fear of losing one another, for it showed her that even in death, they would carry that love through eternity.
Savannah searched his face, memorizing each nuance, each crevasse so that she would have that picture in her mind forever if something dreadful were to happen to him. Then, she raised her chin courageously and said, “I’ll see you off.”
“You don’t have to,” he told her with a squeeze of his arms.
“I want to,” she argued without anger, but graciousness. She lifted her hands to encircle his neck and she pulled him down for one last kiss and with this love-filled intimation, she released him, leaving him with a longing for more.
Travis turned and with his arm around her shoulder, he led her to the Palomino, where he bent toward her for one last kiss, one last chance to utter the words that he wanted so much to tell her. But, with a playful wink, he removed his arms from her body and lifted them towards the saddle and mounted. One final glance at her, and he spurred Blazer into a trot that took him to the home of the deadly El Diablo and, quite possibly, certain death.
Chapter Eighteen
Travis Corbett pushed his mount into a gallop, putting distance between him and the woman who had made him feel the way that he had fought against for too many years. After his beloved Melody had been killed, he’d sworn never to let another woman into his heart. But this little slip of a woman was a powerful contender to a heart that had borne nothing but bitterness and hate, for she had somehow, lifted that veil of hatred and had replaced it with emotion, with sentimentality and with tenderness. And Savannah made him want to cleave to her for all time, basking in those feelings and transferring them back to her.
But he knew in his heart that the very achievement of his mission to bring justice to the man who had mangled the lives of so many people would be the death of his relationship with her because she feared for his life and she had made it all too clear to him that she did not want him to go there alone. He knew too, that if he did not undertake this dangerous obligation, he would hate himself for canceling it and he would hate her for asking him to.
So pushing aside his alliance to her, he pushed the Palomino forward, onward to Casa de Flores, onward to El Diablo and his minions. And onward to his destiny and a conclusion to the torment that he had wrestled with these past years. His heart and Savannah’s desire to keep him safe would have to wait. He had waited much too long for the sweet taste of revenge to give in to the persistent craving for her delectable kisses.
He reached the ridge where he was to meet Tito and Savannah the next day and he looked around. No guards awaited him at the top of the ridge or hiding in the bushes and boulders. He reined Blazer toward a path that led to a crevasse in the rocks that Tito had told him would be a good site for their camp. He looked it over and, deciding that his friend had been correct, he urged the horse over the ridge toward the little village that would either put an end to this nightmare that he had been living since losing his wife and rid the world of the man who took her from him or put an end to his own life, taking his misery with him.
Savannah sat beside the dying fire and stared into the cup as if it held the answers to her prayers. She wished that she had talked Travis into staying or at least taking Tito with him to the village, but he had reminded her that if Diego saw them together, he would suspect something, for El Diablo knew Tito and anyone associating with him would be fair game for the madman. So, it was Tito’s mission to take all of the guns and ammunition to the ridge while Savannah stayed behind to watch the jerky cure.
It was a solemn undertaking for her, for she was not involved in something that would take her mind off of her worries. She put off cutting the meat into strips, instead, opting to sit beside the fire and pray that Travis would come back to her.
“You gonna drink that or wait ‘til it turns to mud?” Tito’s voice broke her concentration.
She looked up at him and smiled, shaking her head and then ti
pping the cup over the coals. The sizzle of liquid upon heat was barely audible in the dry air as she rose to her feet and placed the cup into the pile of dirty dishes that she had also put off doing. She sighed while she filled a pan with hot water from the coffee pot that she had put on to boil earlier.
As she ran a cloth over the dishes, she watched Tito gather the munitions and anything that she did not need at camp while he was gone. And as she watched him, she wondered if his wife hated his job as much as she hated what Travis was doing. When Tito leaned down to pick up a sack of food that he had removed from his pack horse last night, she asked him, “How does your wife do it?”
Tito shot her a questioning glance, then dropped the bag and put his hands on his hips to ask, “Do what?”
“Let you go off to God knows where and risk your life, knowing that you may never come back home,” she blurted out without remorse.
The tall and bulky half-Mexican man stepped closer to her and towered over her as he said, “I have a good wife. She knows that I have a dangerous job and that I may never come back to her and the young’uns. And she knows that I love her with all my heart and I wouldn’t jeopardize my life. She realizes that if I know that the situation would cause me harm, I will step back and analyze the situation until I know that it will come out in my favor.”
He hunched down onto his knees and looked at her with a knowing gaze as he assured her, “Travis will do the same. I know that because I have worked with him. There have been times when we both knew that we couldn’t win, so we waited a day or two and then went back and took care of things.”
Savannah dipped her head, ashamed of the way she had acted before and for fearing that Travis would put himself in danger. She nodded to Tito and accepted his assurances as she said, “Thank you, Tito. I understand now.”
Tito looked at the open range that had swallowed up his friend and he asked, “You love him don’t you?”
Savannah moved her eyes to the direction that Tito’s eyes were fixed and she admitted hesitantly, “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“It’s not something to be ashamed of, Savannah,” he told her with a smile.
She stared at her hands as she stammered, “I can’t…”
“You can’t admit it to him,” he finished for her knowingly.
Nodding and still staring at her hands, she said, “I can’t help it. I hate this obsession that he has.”
“Well, don’t you have that same obsession?” Tito asked with his eyes alive with accusation.
“Yes, but it’s different. All I want is to kill my husband and to get my son back. I’m not interested in taking him back alive to stand trial. I just want him dead. And that can be accomplished by ambush or by bribing one of his men to do the job for me.”
“Going in blindly, like you think would be the best way to accomplish the task, is just plain foolish. Travis and I are professionals who have learned how to strategize and stick to our plans, never deviating from them, and we have never had a bad outcome,” Tito explained to her with confidence.
“I know,” she admitted. “But the fear of losing him just when I have realized that I love him…”
“You can’t think about that,” he said as he moved closer to her and curled an arm around her shoulder. “What you have to think about is making him happy and making yourself happy. You must cherish the time you have with him and not think about what you’d do without him. When that time comes, you will find a way to survive.”
He took a long breath before he continued, “When he lost his wife, he lost his will to live. But then, revenge took over and that is what has kept him going all this time. And that revenge has brought him to you. And your need for revenge has brought you to him. There must be some unknown entity, call it God or call it Fate that has seen your future and has given you both the opportunity to find each other and to carry out your common goal. And when this is all over, you can both start a new life. A life filled with the love, and only that love, that will last forever.”
Savannah marveled at this bear of a man and his insight. Instantly, she liked him and knew why Travis liked him too. It seemed as if the honesty and wisdom should be coming from someone else, for this man was tall and thickly built and his mannerism and language suggested that he was more of a lonely mountain man than a personable and friendly family man who understood the affairs of the heart. His bushy gray beard and wiry mustache gave him the appearance of a vagrant instead of a Texas Ranger who’d swore his undying love for his country and who’d also swore to die for that very reason.
And though his clothes seemed a bit dusty and worn, they were decent dress for his profession considering he spent most of his time outdoors in the wilds of Texas. The large barreled pistol that swung from his hip was as long as her leg and she believed that he knew how to handle it by the looks of him.
As she continued assessing him, regurgitating and then reprocessing her first impression of him, he surprised her again by reaching into his shirt pocket. He removed a small patch of cloth and touched it to his lips endearingly as if it held his life force. Then he waved it in her direction and told her its significance, “She gave this to me the first time I left her behind to do my duty, right after we got married. It’s a piece of her wedding dress that she cut up into pieces and when I come home, she gives me a fresh one. As you can see, I haven’t been home in a while. But it gives me a part of her to remind me to watch myself and to make sure that I make it back to her alive. This little scrap of fabric and her love is what keeps me going. And that, Baby Girl, is what commitment means to me, my commitment to my job and to my wife. One motivates the other.”
He pulled in another breath while she waited for him to continue, “You see, she’s like you. She’s no bigger than a flea but she’s mean as a wolf when she gets riled up and I know that she can take care of herself and the young’uns. But still, I find myself wanting to protect her and my family and all the families that live out here in the open range. If it wasn’t for me and Travis and men like us, this land would be overrun by banditos and Indians and a whole rotten mob of unruly, unlawful wretches that would take over the state and beyond. So, it is our duty—no, it’s our privilege to clean up these desperados and make this a country where people can live peaceable and prosperous.”
Savannah felt like breaching the distance between them and giving him a hug to thank him for conveying to her the reasons and inspiration for his continuing to pursue his profession and she knew that Travis shared that sentiment and that this man would do everything in his power to protect his friend and her newly found love.
As if reading her mind, he stepped closer to her and encircled her with his burly arms and said, “I love that boy as if he was my own son and I will lay down my life for him. I know in my heart that he would do the same for me.”
Savannah lifted her head and looked into those silvery eyes that danced with concern and love for the man of whom he spoke and she smiled and admitted, “You’re right. I’ve been too selfish and too unmoving when it comes to letting him do what I know he must do. It’s just that I’ve never felt this way before and I am so afraid of losing him…”
“He’ll live. He’ll fight ‘til the fightin’s done and then he’ll find you and then you both can get off your chest what’s been inside there and finally start livin’ your lives and stop killin’ your chance for happiness with your confounded pride.”
She lowered her eyes and whispered, “I hope you’re right.”
“Damn right I’m right,” Tito said with a nod and a squeeze of her shoulder and then he set her aside to peer into her eyes and express his thoughts, “I know that boy like I know myself. I taught him everything he knows. And if he gets himself killed today or any day, it’s because he let his guard down and that, Baby Girl, is something that neither of us will ever do. So, you just keep in mind that he’s a tough, uncompromising and self-assured individual who knows how to take care of himself.”
“I will,” she said with a smil
e and then she touched his arm with her hand and said sincerely, “Thank you Tito.”
He smiled down at her, his burly, ruddy face reflecting the tenderness in his voice as he said, “My pleasure, Baby Girl.”
With that said, he left her to saddle his Buckskin stallion that seemed much bigger and broader than Travis’ Palomino. She watched him lift the saddle without any effort whatsoever and then tighten the cinch with one quick flip of the wrist. Taking the pack horse’s lead into his large fist, he stepped back to his mount. Then as he patted the horse on the neck, he turned to her for one more reassuring look before he mounted and guided the Buckskin onto the Palomino’s hoof prints.
Savannah sighed, half in happiness, half in despair at her new friend’s comments. She knew that what he had said was true and that Travis was destined to come back to her, but deep inside, she still feared the opposite.
Putting that notion out of her mind, she set about cutting the deer meat into thin strips that would dry in the sun while she waited for Tito to return for her that evening. When that task was completed, time seemed to stand still, for all she had to do was watch the meat wither and shrink in the heat of the sun.
Her mind conjured up situations where Travis would be hurt or killed and she quickly chased them away with the thought of his kisses, his caress, his lovemaking and that is what kept her going those long and lonely hours while she waited for Tito to return.
When he finally did, her heart jumped for joy, for his large figure looming in the distance somehow gave her the hope that she needed and she hurried to pack the now crispy meat into a bag and then scurried to her Appaloosa to saddle the mare. And when Tito came into camp, she was ready to go. She mounted the mare and spurred her into a walk as Tito turned his mount back in the direction from which he had come.
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