Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family)

by Georgina Gentry

  “I got it from a fellow who had no further use for it,” Bandit said easily, reaching into his pocket to fondle his lucky piece. Inwardly, he cursed his own stupidity. He should have realized right off that the fine stud was bound to be stolen, just like the money in the saddlebags. How had the Kid ended up with the blue-eyed pinto?

  The other man laughed coldly. “You’re a closemouthed devil, aren’t you, Texas? When the pinto disappeared a few months ago, we figured the comancheros took it on one of their periodic raids. The old man has been in a virtual fury ever since!”

  The Comancheros. Of course that was a reasonable explanation. Although the renegades were not as active as they once were, still they were known for running off fine-blooded stock, selling it or trading it. There was another explanation. “Maybe the Kickapoos or the Lipans or the Mescalero Apache stole it.”

  Romeros considered a moment, shook his head. “Not likely. Those three tribes enjoy the Mexicans’ protection because they raid north of the border. As you know, we don’t have much love for either Texans or the United States since you won that war and added all those millions of acres to your own territories!”

  Bandit wasn’t interested in politics. He was interested in getting the hell out of there. His saddle creaked as he stood up in his stirrups, tossed away the cigar. He considered which way would be a good path to take. To him it was no nevermind as long as he got far from the vengeful vaqueros of the old don.

  “. . . Did you not hear me?” Romeros asked.

  “What?” Bandit came out of his thoughts with a jerk.

  “I said the resemblance is amazing. That’s how he would surely look today.”

  Bandit glared sideways at him. “What the hell are you palavering about?”

  Romeros looked at Bandit long and hard as they rode along in the moonlight. “Sí,” he nodded, “you might be. . . .” He seemed to be considering some wild, impossible idea. “I should have noticed back at the cantina, but in the excitement. . . .” His voice trailed off again, and he looked Bandit over critically. “Who are you, Texas? Where do you come from? What’s your background?”

  Bandit studied him. “Who wants to know and why?”

  “Don’t be coy with me, hombre. I just saved your life, remember? Let me see your left hand.” He reined in and Bandit did likewise.

  Curious now, Bandit held his hand out to him. Romeros grabbed it, looked at it critically. Whatever it was he looked for, his expression said he hadn’t found it. Romeros studied Bandit for a long moment as if making a decision. “Hombre, how would you like to have more money, more luxury than you’ve ever seen in your life?”

  I’ve a fortune in these saddlebags I dare not spend. “Who’ve I got to kill?” Bandit laughed cockily, but the other man didn’t laugh.

  “I’m serious. Did you ever hear that tale about a poor peasant who looked enough like a prince to take his place, with no one the wiser?”

  “I’m a low-down peasant, all right, a saddle bum.” He grimaced, remembering the snooty, highborn girl at the stage station. Sí, he’d like to be a prince, be able to claim an elegant girl like that princess as his own.

  “You sound bitter, hombre. Disappointed in love?”

  Bandit smirked at him to hide his thoughts of the black-haired beauty. Amethyst. Aimée. Beloved. The circle of her little ring seemed to burn his finger as her body had burned his manhood when he’d slipped into that circle of ecstasy.

  Forget-me-not. No, sweet; how could I? He had a sudden image of her delicate face between his two big hands. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, remembering the wine-sweet taste of her mouth; the featherlike brush of her kiss along his hard knuckles, the back of his bronzed hand.

  Bandit laughed carelessly. “One woman’s the same as another, I reckon; a toy to pleasure a man when his groin hurts.” She’d been more than that. God, so much more than that! A princess. Aloud, he said, “Tell me about this prince.”

  “There’s a kingdom involved, a rich empire.” Romeros’s dark eyes shone with eagerness. “The biggest ranch in all northern Mexico, a fine hacienda, wealth, respect.”

  Respect. Bandit’s eyebrows went up in sudden interest. Respectability was the thing most unattainable, the thing he hungered for. He had a vision of children chasing a small boy, throwing rocks and taunting. “What’s the catch?”

  Romeros shrugged. “No catch. I have great sadness for my patrón.” He tapped his chest. “Sixteen years ago, his only child, the eight-year-old son he adored, was kidnapped and held for ransom.”

  Bandit felt a fleeting touch of envy. He had been a neglected, abused child that nobody wanted. His own old man had never even stepped forward to give him a last name. “So?”

  Romeros rolled the match stem between his teeth as he studied Bandit. “The exchange was botched; the don’s money was not picked up by the kidnappers; the boy was never returned.”

  Bandit swung his leg up across his saddle horn. He felt a sense of rage that anyone could have done such a rotten thing. “Tough!” he said, and absently fingered the beaded, cougar tooth and claw necklace.

  Romeros shrugged. “We’re all sure the kidnappers killed the little boy, buried him somewhere around, close. No one would dare say that to the old man, of course. But as I remember the child, if he had lived to grow up, he might have looked something like you, maybe a little younger. The resemblance is amazing. He was left-handed, too.”

  Bandit paused in tossing away the match. “Now wait just a damned minute; you aren’t suggesting—”

  “Why not?” Romeros leaned forward on his saddle horn. “The old couple would be so eager to believe their son had finally come home, they wouldn’t ask many questions. Believe me, since I care about them both, it’s grieved me all these years to watch them follow each clue, look up hopefully each time there’s a knock at the door.”

  Bandit raised one cynical eyebrow. “Any time someone starts telling me he’s doin’ something out of the goodness of his heart, I always figure that’s the time to watch my money!”

  The half-breed tipped his sombrero back, laughed. “You’re smarter than I thought! Sí! I’ll admit it! If I find the missing son, I’ll be a hero; the old couple will lavish money and an easy life on me. And someday, when they are both dead and you own and control everything, maybe you will find it in your heart to be generous to your benefactor?”

  Bandit considered. “It’s the most loco scheme I ever heard! It can’t possibly work!”

  “You won’t know ’til you try it.”

  “Suppose I don’t like being this heir, young Falcon?”

  “Then disappear again. But believe me, hombre, you’ll like your new mama and papa. Do you really not think you would want to live the life of rich young Tony Falcon? There’s even an heiress he was betrothed to as a child—”

  “I’ll pick my own lady, thank you!” Bandit’s thoughts went to the elegant beauty. Would she notice him if he were suddenly the highborn heir to a good name, a great fortune? Would a Falcon have the power and prestige to retrieve a girl from a convent? “Do I really look like them?”

  Romeros considered seriously. “It seems so to me. The señora is dark, but the old man is Castilian Spanish, as light haired and blue eyed as you are. They’ll see the resemblance because they’ll want to see it, comprende?”

  “It’s a dirty trick on them—”

  “They get their beloved son back. Is that so terrible?”

  Bandit turned everything over in his mind, but all he could think of was that pedigreed girl. A Texas pistolero could never have her; but señor Tony Falcon might. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Romeros shrugged. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “In Texas, this is what we call a Mexican standoff. I reckon I’m fixin’ to get myself in a helluva mess, but I’ll do it!”

  The other nodded with evident satisfaction. “Bueno! We’ll work out the details and I’ll tell you what little Tony might remember about his life as we ride to Mo
nterrey.”

  “Monterrey? Why in blue blazes would we go to Monterrey? I figured the ranch was close by—”

  Romeros gestured toward the brand on the stallion’s flank. “Did I forget to tell you about the small birthmark? It skips every other generation; the grandfather had it, the boy, too.”

  Bandit turned in his saddle, looked back at the pinto’s hip. Of course the brand was a flying falcon. He searched his memory for something he couldn’t quite recall. “Where is this birthmark?”

  “On the back of the left hand,” Romero said. “I know an expert tattooist who’s recently come to Monterrey, an old sailor.”

  A chill went down Bandit’s back. “Oh, my God!”

  “Is something the matter, Texas? You look a little pale. Afraid of a tattoo needle?”

  “Now wait just a damned minute—”

  “There’s no other way, cowboy. If the port-wine stain birthmark on the back of the hand is missing, the family will never accept you as their missing son.” A thought seemed to occur to him. “Since you crossed the border, has anyone noticed your hands, anyone who might recall later that you didn’t always have that birthmark?”

  He remembered the beautiful black-haired girl kissing the backs of his knuckles, commenting on his strong, square hands. “No,” he lied. “No one’s been close enough to notice my hands.”

  “Bueno!” The foreman smiled and whipped up his horse. “It was too dark back at the cantina for anyone to get a good look at your hands. I’ll tell the vaqueros it was only when I got you in the light that I saw the mark, realized you must be the missing heir!”

  Bandit had severe misgivings as they loped through the darkness toward Monterrey. But he suppressed the doubt that gnawed at him like a prairie dog at a buffalo-grass root.

  Hours later, as the pair dismounted before a tumble-down shack in the slums of Monterrey, Bandit still had misgivings. When they entered, he looked over the snaggled-toothed old Cockney. “Are you sure you’re a tattoo expert?”

  The old sailor cackled with glee as he ushered them in. “Lord love ye, gov‘nor! Of course old Tim knows what he’s doin’! I’ve tattooed in every port in the world!” He rolled up first one sleeve then the other, displaying a writhing dragon, a heart with a dagger through it.

  Romeros sneered as he looked around the cluttered, filthy place. “Someone told me of you. Can you do birds? A falcon?”

  “Can I do birds!” He reached down to pull up his worn trousers. “See this? There’s an old sailor’s superstition that a man who has sea gulls tattooed ‘round his ankle need never fear death by drowning!” He peered up at Romeros. “You’d like a nice sea gull for yourself, gov’nor?”

  Romeros made a gesture of annoyance, stuck a fresh match in his mouth. “Not me! Him!” He nodded toward Bandit. “And it has to look like a birthmark. Give me a scrap of paper and I’ll try to draw it from memory.”

  Bandit watched as Romero took a stub of pencil, then sketched a tiny falcon in full flight while the old man readied his needles, his dyes.

  Bandit looked critically at the design. “I think it’d be a little smaller than that, the wing span a little bigger.”

  Romeros snorted in annoyance. “How would you know? But now that I think of it, maybe you’re right, Texas. It’s been a long time. . . .”

  He began sketching again, and when the old man had his needles ready, Romeros had the design finished. “Old man, if it doesn’t look like a port-wine birthmark when you get through, I’ll not pay you!”

  The old man cackled with delight as he bent over Bandit’s big, square hand. “And what, may I ask, is this all about?”

  “You may not ask,” Romeros snapped. “Just do the tattoo.”

  The old man sketched it out on the back of Bandit’s hand. “Is that it?”

  Romeros pursed his lips, thinking. Bandit said, “I think maybe it should be a little more to the right; maybe just above the middle knuckle.”

  The half-breed foreman turned his dark gaze toward him. “Did I tell you that?”

  “How else would I know?” Bandit ask innocently, and then bit his lip against the sting of the needles. An hour later, a tiny falcon no larger than a Yankee dime flew across the back of his knuckle.

  The swarthy Romeros examined it critically, grunted with satisfaction. “Old man, you do good work.”

  Bandit suddenly felt very weary, very guilty. “I think I’ll wait outside, smoke a cigar while you pay the man, Romeros.”

  “Sí, I’ll take care of things in here.”

  Bandit sauntered outside, took a deep breath of fresh April air to banish the close sourness of the tiny shop. He patted the blue-eyed horse’s silky nose. “Good boy! Looks like we’re both going home after all. I’ll bet you’ll be glad to be back.” He felt a thrill of anticipation. Home. I’m going home. I’ve never had a real home before. Somehow, he already felt as if he belonged at Falcon’s Lair.

  He adjusted his red satin, sleeve garters, wondered if elegant Spaniards wore those, decided not. He examined the back of his left hand as he reached for a cigar, a match. It was good work, all right. But did it look enough like the real one to fool a grieving father?

  He flinched as he remembered, then struck a match to light his slender cigarillo, cupped his hands around the flame. The tiny ring gleamed on his right pinky finger. Forget-me-not. . . . He almost seemed to smell the slight scent of wild violets, to see her pale, delicate face with its smoky lavender eyes.

  He ought to throw that damned little ring away. It wasn’t very valuable. Yet even as he thought it, he knew he never would. Now that he was going to be Tony Falcon, could he claim her? She wouldn’t want him, that high and mighty miss! But Mexican girls were under the control of their papas and he had a feeling her papa would be very interested in an offer from a rich, powerful man of good family. After all, she was past the age when most Mexican girls had already married.

  Bandit shook out the match, tossed it away, and leaned against the rail and smoked. Absently he felt for the little lucky coin. Maybe it would bring him luck after all. He wondered what it had been that his mother was trying to tell him in her last moments, when she’d put it in his hand. “Sokol,” she had gasped. Was it the name of a town, a street . . . his father?

  The big pinto nuzzled him affectionately and he scratched it, enjoying the taste of the cigar. “We’re alike, Blue Eyes.” Bandit grinned crookedly at the horse as he rubbed it between the eyes. “Blue eyes on a horse are as out of place, I reckon, as blond hair and blue eyes on a dark, Injun face.” His mother had been Czech and Apache. He didn’t even know who had fathered him, much less his pedigree. Maybe it was ironic that a mongrel like him was moving into a blue-blood’s spot. With a trace of regret, he thought about the real Tony Falcon, and imagined the sad family that was soon to be his own. He turned and looked toward the shop. “What in hell is keepin’ him? They must be arguing over the money.”

  Inside, Romeros blinked at the tattooer, who shook his head at the offer of coins. “What do you mean, it isn’t enough?”

  The old Cockney cackled, then grinned through his gapped teeth. “You think I didn’t recognize that brand, gov’nor? I don’t know what your game is, but I knows that Falcon cattle brand. I figure there’s money in whatever you and your young americano cowboy are planning.”

  Romeros struggled to appear casual as he held out the money. “It’s blackmail, is it?”

  “Lord love ye!” The old sailor scratched himself. “Now, that ain’t a nice word, is it? I’ll take your money, bloke”—he held out his hand—“but if you don’t drop by regular like and give me more, maybe someone at the big ranch be interested in hearing my story.”

  Romeros’s heart seemed to knot up inside him. His one chance at power and money. He’d waited so long for this, no greedy tramp would stop him. “All right then.” He nodded. “I’ll bring more next week.”

  As he handed over the coins, he deliberately dropped one and it rolled under a table behind them
.

  “Gov’nor, I’ll get it!” The tattooist turned, knelt, and fumbled under the table. “I’ll get it!”

  Very slowly, Romeros reached down into his boot. There would never be enough money to satisfy the greedy little man, and worse than that, when he got drunk, he might tell the whole world about tonight’s happening. Romeros could not allow that. His hand closed over the hilt of the sharp, narrow blade called a stiletto.

  As the Cockney groped under the table, his back to him, Romeros brought the steel blade out of his boot, where the dim light caught it. He shivered with anticipation and excitement, felt his manhood come erect. The dagger is much like a man’s sex, he thought, hard, ready to penetrate soft, warm flesh. But one act is the giving of life; the other, the taking of it.

  As quiet as Death itself, he moved behind the little man, his heart pounding in sexual arousal, his breath quickening. If the penetration were not done quickly, carefully, the grimy little man would cry out, alerting the big Texian who was just decent enough to try to save the blackmailer’s life. It wouldn’t take much to get that cowboy to back out of this deal altogether.

  The grimy little man never even looked up as Romeros approached his back. With one quick movement, the foreman clasped his hand over the startled man’s mouth even as he jammed the slender blade between his ribs, right into his heart. The Cockney gasped once, tumbled over—dead before he hit the littered floor. He lay there, blood welling up warm around the handle. The sea gulls on his dirty ankle looked faded.

  “You’re right,” Romeros said softly as he smiled down at the corpse, “you don’t ever have to worry about drowning.” He leaned over, retrieved his dagger, wiped it carefully on the dead man’s ragged shirt, then took the money from his clenched fingers. Romeros was desperate as always to pay his gambling debts, so he took all the money he found in the place. But anyway it was better if this looked like a murder-robbery. Quickly he pulled out a drawer here and there, scattered a few coppers around before he went outside, closed the door behind him.