“Because I did not choose to,” the portly and graying little man said with a hard glitter in his eyes.
She stared at him for long moments. “Then whatever happens when Refugio comes, that too will be of your choosing.”
Don Esteban turned from her, motioning to Baltasar with a negligent gesture, as if her words had no power to disturb him. The two of them moved away, conferring in whispers. Pilar, feeling too helpless lying flat on the floor, pushed herself up by degrees to sit with her back against the wall. After a moment her head stopped pounding and settled to a dull ache. It became easier to think.
Would Refugio really come? The answer to that was simple; of course he would. He would come because he was the leader, and therefore responsible for her plight. He would come, possibly, for the sake of a night spent on a ship at sea, and another beside a rock on the dark plains. He would come because she would not be where she was if it were not for Don Esteban's vendetta against him. Oh, yes, he would come.
Would he come alone?
He well might. It was just the kind of sacrifice that he could consider it his duty to make.
How long would it be before he arrived? It must be close to dawn by now. If no one had seen Baltasar take her away, if no one had discovered her absence during the night, then she would not be missed before breakfast. She had no idea how far this jacal was from the hacienda, but assumed that it was within two or three hours; surely she could not have been brought farther than that. Any closer, however, would have been too dangerous.
The middle of the morning, then, or perhaps midday, was the soonest that Refugio could be expected. Surely there was something she could do to release herself, or change matters in some way, between now and then?
Under the trading blanket Pilar flexed the muscles of her calves slowly, putting pressure on the thong of braided leather knotted about her ankles. It bit into her skin, but she ignored the sting. She thought there might be a little give in the leather. Baltasar may have left it loose because he had not wanted to cut off the blood circulation to her feet. Or he may have only considered the possibility of any attempt at escape as unlikely. What she would do if she managed to free her feet, she did not know, but at least it would help her feelings to do something.
Don Esteban swung his head to look at her, demanding, “What are you doing?”
Pilar gave him her most limpid look. “Nothing.”
“Don't think you can fool me. Under the blanket. What are you doing?”
“The toes of my left foot are numb,” she complained.
“Too bad. Keep still, or I will see to it you are numb all over. Forever.”
Pilar obeyed, at least until he turned his back again. Then she began very carefully to stretch the thong once more.
Refugio came without warning. There was no sound of hoofbeats, no footsteps, no change in the night stillness. The ramshackle door of the hut simply creaked open on its leather hinges and he stepped inside.
Baltasar swung around, instincts honed by years with the band causing him to draw his sword in the same powerful movement. Don Esteban turned with a curse on his lips. Refugio faced them at his ease. With his cloak fastened at the neck and flung back behind his shoulders, it was easy to see that he was unarmed.
“I bid you good evening, gentlemen,” he said, “or is it morning?”
“How did you get here so quickly?” Don Esteban snapped.
“I rode, of course. Weren't you expecting me?”
Refugio moved a few steps farther into the hut. His gaze flicked to where Pilar sat. It rested on her for only a moment, but she felt there was no detail of her appearance that he missed; not her hair straggling on her shoulders with strands caught, glinting, on her linen gown; not the shadows under her eyes and the bruise shading her chin, nor the dingy trader's blanket that was bunched around her. She could only stare at him while her heart sank like a weight of stone inside her.
Baltasar, frowning, echoed Don Esteban's question. “How could you have found this place so fast, unless—”
“Unless I followed you? Did it never once occur to you, my former friend, that your midnight abduction was too easy?”
“What are you saying?” Baltasar growled.
“You thought you were baiting a trap, but you were only taking the bait left for you. Didn't you wonder why you were left as the only guard? I trusted you that much once, compadre, but that was long ago.”
“You wanted me to take Pilar? I don't believe it.”
Refugio's smile was placid. “You will think differently, I expect, when you discover that you are surrounded.”
Don Esteban exclaimed, his gaze going instantly to the night beyond the open door. He recovered at once. “It's a fabrication, it must be. But even if it were not,” he pointed out, “you are unarmed.”
Refugio glanced down at himself as if in surprise. “So I am. Will you take that as license to carve my hide into thin slices? Do that, and I can promise you the same fate before you can wipe your sword.”
“Empty threats,” Don Esteban sneered.
“Possibly. Shall we see?”
Baltasar gave a dogged shake of his head. “You would never let Pilar run the danger of being caught between us and anybody you might have brought.”
“You mean because of a few nights of sharing a berth or a blanket? She made a lovely companion for the journey, but all journeys end.”
Baltasar glanced at Pilar, then back to Refugio. “I don't think so, not for you when it comes to this woman. I heard you ask her to marry you just this morning; we all did.”
Refugio gave a quiet laugh. “It was well done, wasn't it? I'm delighted you appreciated the ruse, since it was for your benefit. Yours, and Don Esteban's, of course. I needed some way to force you, Baltasar, to expose yourself as the member of my band who had turned traitor. At the same time, I needed to persuade Don Esteban to tear himself away from the protection of the governor and official authority. I rather thought an abduction would appeal to my old enemy, that he would enjoy serving me the same trick I had served him in Spain. I needed to convince the two of you, then, that Pilar would be a worthy hostage. What better way than a proposal of marriage to indicate her value to me? What better way than a proposal to suggest that she was worth the taking?”
23
REFUGIO HAD USED HER. The knowledge burned in Pilar's mind, along with all the things implied by it. He had risked her life for his revenge; it meant no more to him than that. In that case, he could not possibly love her, and all his half-formed vows meant nothing. They were false coins dredged up to try to persuade her to surrender to him once more. Doubtless his pride had been hurt by her public refusal to be his wife, or else, seeing her on the point of slipping away from him, her value had suddenly increased in his eyes. His desire for her had been rekindled then, and he had sought her out to satisfy it.
None of it seemed like the Refugio she thought she knew, yet he had condemned himself by his own words. The conclusions she had reached had followed inescapably from that fact.
Baltasar was less easy to convince. He asked skeptically, “You will not mind if Don Esteban kills her?”
“What does killing prove, except that the killer has strength and a weapon?”
“Nothing,” the big man agreed, “but it would hurt you, as you hurt me. I should have taken Pilar back there on the trail, should have given her to the Indians and made you kill her, too.”
Refugio shook his head, his gaze steady on Baltasar. “I didn't kill Isabel at your command.”
“No? I remember it different.”
“That may be,” Refugio said, his voice soft. “For myself, I consider that I was forced to kill her because you failed her.”
Pilar, watching them, felt her own confused heartache recede as she witnessed the depths of the pain that lay between the two men. But she saw something more. She saw Don Esteban watching them, saw him smiling to himself.
She spoke quickly, before she could lose the conviction r
ising inside her. “I don't think either of you caused the death of Isabel. I think the man who is responsible is standing there beside you.”
Baltasar turned ponderously to face her. “What are you saying?”
“If it had not been for Don Esteban, none of us would have left Spain. It was he who started the long string of events that brought us here. His interference can be traced back to the death of Refugio's father, and beyond. It includes my mother, but the most important thing is this: if he had not kidnapped Vicente and taken him with him to Louisiana, none of us would have left Spain, and Isabel would still be alive.”
“If Carranza had not taken the emeralds—” Don Esteban began.
“An error, it has to be admitted,” Refugio said, “one more among many. And yet, Don Esteban, I think that Isabel's death can be brought even closer home to you.”
“How's that?” Baltasar's voice was wary, yet rough with suspicion.
“It's a trick,” Don Esteban said quickly. “Don't let him confuse you by twisting things to suit his own ends.”
“Twisting them how?” The big man's voice was dogged.
“There's no mystery,” Refugio said, “only an exercise of logic. Don Esteban was traveling with Indian traders, Frenchmen who were familiar with the various tribes, who spoke their language and had steel hatchets, knives, and muskets to exchange for whatever the Indians might have of value. The Apache war party trailed us first, you remember, tracking us as if theirs was a mission of vengeance — or as if they needed to be certain who we were.”
“You are saying they were paid to make the attack?” Baltasar's face was creased with thought.
“In muskets, with more to be provided, I expect, when they produced our scalps.”
Baltasar turned on Don Esteban. “You sent those murdering devils after the band? You sent them, knowing that I was with them, and Isabel?”
“Certainly not!” the older man said, drawing himself up as if he would overawe the other man. “You were attacked because you were traveling across Indian country. I had nothing to do with it.”
“But you and your party were not attacked,” Refugio pointed out quietly.
“A fact that proves nothing at all!”
“Refugio, doesn't say things without a reason,” Baltasar said, his voice dogged.
“Yes, and his reason is to put us at each other's throats,” the don declared.
“Could be that's where we should be,” Baltasar said.
“But what of him?” Don Esteban asked, his voice rising. “I thought you said he was the one who decided on the overland trail.”
Baltasar made no reply for a moment. In the silence, Pilar met Refugio's gaze. She knew then that what Don Esteban said was true: Refugio wanted the other two men at odds for some reason of his own. Did that mean there was no one else in the darkness beyond the jacal? She did not dare think it could be so, for it would also mean he was unarmed against two men who wanted him dead. And it would mean that everything he had said about setting a trap with her as bait was a lie.
But if it was true, then he might need her help in what he was doing.
Deliberately, she said, “If you are looking for someone to blame, Baltasar, what of yourself? If you had not shot Refugio during the attack, Isabel would not have left the barricade, and the Apaches could not have taken her. But you did, just as you hired someone to shoot him during the attack of the corsairs on the ship, and just as you replaced the mock sword in the duel in Havana with a sharp one. Why did you do it? What in the name of heaven made you join with my stepfather against the band?”
The big man gave a hollow laugh. “Refugio took my Isabel's love and treated it as if it were nothing. He took everything she had, but he would not let her go.”
“I tried,” Refugio said, his tone reflective.
“Oh, yes, you tried. You brought a lady to the cabin in the mountains to shame her. You brought Pilar to show Isabel how far she was beneath you.”
“To show her the kind of woman I needed, to convince Isabel that I meant it when I said that I could not love her. I thought she would turn to you.”
“She did, but for comfort, not love. I gave her all the love inside me, and all she had for me in return was pity.”
“That isn't true,” Pilar said to the big man. “She loved you.”
“She loved me as she might a pet dog.”
Pilar shook her head. “You think she loved Refugio? It seems to me she worshiped him because he had saved her, because he was the first man to make her feel safe. That isn't love.”
“Maybe. But that was what I wanted from her, that worship, and I knew that as long as the great El Leon was alive, she would never be able to give it. She as good as told me so the night you came, when Refugio forced her to accept you by giving you his bed.”
“So you offered your help to his enemy.”
“That was done weeks before you came, after Refugio let me have Isabel, after I saw how it would be.”
“You — it was you who killed my aunt, that night when I came to the hut in the mountains, when you were gone so long?”
“No, how could that be? The don sent others for that. Until that night, I only let him know, now and then, what little I could discover about the movements of the band; it wasn't much since only Refugio knew where we would go, what we would do. Then I saw how Refugio had hurt Isabel by bringing you. I saw she would never love me as long as he was alive, and I wanted him to die. I thought that if I arranged it, Don Esteban would reward me.”
“You tried to kill him, after all he had done.”
Baltasar looked away from Pilar. “I wanted the money for Isabel. For afterward.”
“Now there will be no afterward, for Isabel is dead; Don Esteban has seen to that.”
“How affecting,” Don Esteban said with a curl of his lips, half hidden by his perfumed beard. “But there will be no afterward for you, either, my dear stepdaughter. Or for Carranza.”
Baltasar stiffened, the frown deepening between his eyes. “You promised to let Señorita Pilar go if Refugio came.”
“Of course I did, because you would not have brought her otherwise,” the don said impatiently. “But it can't be. She would go straight to the governor with the story.”
“If Refugio is killed trying to keep you from taking her from him, that's one thing, since she's your stepdaughter and you can claim to be protecting her honor by saving her from him. But what excuse can you give the governor for killing her? You had better think again.”
Don Esteban's face tightened. “She's done nothing except make trouble since she left the convent, and I've been put to enough inconvenience because of her. It can be an accident. Possibly Carranza will attempt to use her as a shield from my wrath, or maybe Carranza himself will kill her in a jealous rage. No matter the story told, I want her dead.”
Refugio, his gaze steadfast on the face of the man who was once his friend, said, “You gave me your word in your note that Pilar would go free.”
“The note was written by Don Esteban.”
“But it was you who left it for me, you who gave me the terms of surrender. I hold you to them.”
“Pay no attention,” Don Esteban said in strident tones. “Think how glorious a revenge it will be, if he knows she will die with him, because of him.”
Baltasar studied Refugio, then turned back to Don Esteban. “It's not right,” he said doggedly. “I did give Refugio my word. He would not have come if he had not believed what I said.”
“What difference does that make?” the older man demanded, smashing his fist into his hand, his face growing purple. “This is no time for sudden scruples!”
“By all means let us dispense with scruples,” Refugio said. “If I can't have an honorable friend, let me at least have a suitably dishonorable enemy.”
Baltasar's brows knotted in a frown. “I wanted Refugio dead, but not Señorita Pilar. I don't hold with killing women.”
“It would make your revenge perfect,
much more than just killing him,” Don Esteban said in virulent persuasion. “If she is first, he will suffer for a few seconds as you suffered when your Isabel died.”
Pilar, watching the big man's face, saw the reluctance reflected there. She spoke in abrupt comprehension. “What is it, Baltasar? Do you find it hard to kill a friend when he's facing you? Especially when the friend is El Leon? The honorable thing to do would be to give him a sword and match yourself against him. You never wanted that, did you? You tried three times to kill him, and three times you failed. Are you sure you want to kill him at all?”
“Shut up!” Don Esteban said, the words vicious. Refugio said nothing, only watching her and the other two men with taut attention.
Pilar went on, her concentration on the big man and the struggle inside him, which twisted his face and made him clench his great hands into vein-corded fists. “It was Don Esteban who caused Isabel's death, just as he killed my mother and my aunt and now wants me dead. He finds it easy to attack women. They don't matter to him; their deaths trouble him no more than if they were animals.”
Don Esteban drew the sword that hung at his side. “Yours,” he said, “will trouble me even less.”
Pilar barely glanced at the naked blade pointed at her, though she spoke more quickly. “Will you let him get away with what he has done, Baltasar? Will you let him use you to get what he wants, even though he would have let you be killed by the Apaches with the rest of us? The solution is easy. Give Refugio your sword. Give it to him and let the two men who have injured you try to kill each other.”
“An excellent idea,” Refugio said, his voice soft, as if he feared anything louder would sway Baltasar in the wrong direction.
At the same instant, Don Esteban took a step toward Pilar, shouting, “I told you to shut up!”
Baltasar moved quickly to match Don Esteban's stride, and Refugio kept pace at his side. The lantern light ran in a silver-blue gleam down the length of the sword Pilar's stepfather held.
She pushed herself up with her back pressed to the wall behind her. Using its support, she rose unsteadily to her bound feet. She jerked at her right ankle with desperate strength, trying to loosen the thong. She felt the wetness of warm blood creeping clown her instep, dampening the leather binding. She increased the pressure, oblivious to the pain. Abruptly, the thong slipped. Her right foot was free, though it was so numb she was not sure it would hold her.
Spanish Serenade Page 34
