All they needed were stand-ins. And stand-ins were easily obtained with a little gold. Kino and Joaquín from El Astillero, an Indian village in the foothills, had always been agreeable to Aurelia’s schemes. Not only did her intrigues relieve the monotony of daily life in the hills—she had yet to come up with something that didn’t involve a measure of danger—but the boys could use the coins for serious things such as food, clothing, and medicines for their families.
Tonight María, a sister to Kino and Joaquín who was employed as Aurelia’s personal maid, and two of their other sisters waited in the vestry, robed in choir vestments. From the chancel, Padre Antonio Bucareli could be heard beginning the service.
“The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end. Amen.”
The organist’s prelude resonated through the cavernous cathedral.
Quickly, the girls grabbed robes.
“Not you, Pia,” Aurelia whispered. “Santos is waiting by the sacristy door.”
Pia frowned. “He’s already here?”
“I told him to meet you—”
“Aurelia Mazón, that had better be all you told him.”
Aurelia hugged her friend. “Suerte.” She and Zita turned toward the hallway and their clandestine meeting with Kino and Joaquín. “Good luck,” she called to Pia again.
Behind her Pia watched the two of them sneak down the hall leading from the vestry, while the three village girls crept into the three empty places in the choir loft and knelt to pray. She turned, a prayer of a different sort whispering from her lips.
Santos Mazón loomed as a giant shadow in the sacristy doorway. The moment Pia saw him, her anxieties fled in anticipation of being alone with him. Without a word, he reached for her and gently pulled her through the door where, leaning back against the wall of the cathedral, he enfolded her in his massive arms and kissed her fervently.
“I’ve missed you, little one,” he whispered.
“Yo también.” She snuggled into his embrace. “I missed you, too, but in less than two months we will be married.”
He held her close, reclaiming her lips, stroking them, feeling his need for her build. Finally, he caught up her hand and led her away from the cathedral. In the near dusk with the nuns at Vespers, he felt free to hold her hand. Above them the sky was turning dark, leaving only the surrounding hilltops illuminated by brilliant sprays of golden light from the sun, which had already set behind them. The same way his body was illuminated by fiery streaks of passion every time he was anywhere near Pia, he thought.
He guided her to a secluded part of the churchyard, where the nuns had planted a flower garden overlooking a precipice. One of the padres had built an elaborate little park with a fountain and a shrine to San Francisco, flanked by a couple of iron benches. Santos sat on the bench furthest from the cathedral and drew Pia onto his lap.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
She laughed, completely mesmerized by his presence, by his arms around her, by the moonlight on his loving face. “Attending to wedding preparations, of course. Today we had fittings. Señora Velez may never forgive me for having twelve bridesmaids.”
“Which reminds me,” he said. “You can stop worrying about my attendants. They have all accepted. Eleven charros and my friend Jarrett, the Texas Ranger. He agreed to serve as best man. You’re going to like him, Pia.”
“Jarrett?” she asked. “He has only one name?”
He laughed. “The Jarrett clan includes so many brothers, everyone gets their names confused. To keep from stumbling, we call them all Jarrett.”
“Padre Bucareli needs his complete name,” she told him. “Since he isn’t Catholic, the padre must petition the bishop for permission before he can serve in the wedding.”
“Carson,” Santos supplied. “Carson Jarrett’s the one coming. You’re going to like him.”
Resting her elbows on his shoulders, she played her fingers through his thick black hair. “I don’t have to like him, I love you.”
“Not like I love you.” He pulled her close, covering her lips with his own, smiling at her timid passion. She always returned his kisses eagerly but stiffened if his tongue touched her lips. She allowed him to hold her breasts through layers of clothing, but if he began to fondle them, she moved discreetly away. And she was always careful not to press the lower part of her body to his.
Not that he minded. He knew she loved him. He could wait for the rest. In less than two months she would be his wife; then he would teach her all the ways to please her man—and all the ways her man could please her.
Swaying against the sensual strokes of his lips, Pia nestled herself into his lap, feeling quite suddenly the firm evidence of his passion. It wasn’t the first time she had felt this, of course. Usually, she maneuvered herself a modest inch or so away, but tonight this physical reminder of what lay ahead brought Aurelia’s instructions to mind. Pia tensed.
“What is it, little one?” Santos held her face so that their lips brushed when he talked. “Am I going too fast?”
For a moment she could do no more than stare at him, recalling Aurelia’s instructions, Aurelia’s threat—her own problem. As usual, Aurelia’s outrageous solution was the only one that made any sense.
But she couldn’t tell him. How could she say such a thing? Suddenly, she began kissing him hungrily. At the same time, she wound her arms more tightly about his shoulders, pulling his chest to hers.
Once she began, he responded. Soon she realized all she had to do was reverse the tricks she had learned to avert his rising passion during these last few months of courtship.
Remembering his response when she had inadvertently touched one of his ears during an earlier tryst, Pia now ran a finger lightly around its outer rim, then behind it. The moan this elicited brought to mind another tactic she had used.
Recalling his tongue pressed against her closed lips, she opened her mouth and was delighted with the response. His subsequent exploration sent shivers down the back of her neck and caused her to wriggle with a far different intent on his lap.
Although she knew her face must glow at her boldness, his ardent reaction fueled an increasingly urgent demand inside her. This time when he reached to cup one of her breasts, instead of holding rigid, she pressed into him, inviting him to continue.
In the end, however, he shifted her to the bench beside him with a throaty apology. “I’m getting carried away.”
She pulled his face back to hers. “I am, too.”
He stared at her a minute, tempted, oh so tempted. “No.” He sighed. “We can wait. I can wait. It isn’t fair to you.”
“But?…” Now what was she supposed to do? “What if… I mean, what if I want you to continue?”
After a long pause, he clasped her to his chest. She heard his heart thump through his heavy shirt. “You are too good to me, little one. Still, it would be taking advantage of you.”
“It isn’t taking advantage if I…I mean, I want it to be good for you, Santos.”
His hands were so large he could cradle her head in the two of them. He did so now, looking into her face, loving her with his eyes. Then, slowly, he kissed her—her lips, her eyes, her chin. “It will be, Pia. Believe me, our wedding night will be the best night of my life—and of yours. Except for all the wonderful nights that will come after it. I may look like nothing but a big old clumsy lunk, but I know a little about romance. A park bench isn’t romantic enough for our first time.”
“Oh, Santos.” She hugged him tightly, rejoicing that she had found such a man. And since she had, she certainly couldn’t hurt his feelings by telling him she was afraid of him. Besides, knowing her fears would probably make him more determined to wait until they were married. Embarrassed over the boldness she had already shown, she sat back and shyly kissed his lips. “Relie said—”
Santos frowned. “Relie? What outrageous scheme is my sister cooking up this time?”
“Nothing. I mean, nothing about…” Pia h
edged. “Santos, you must persuade your father to send her to Guanajuato. She wants so desperately to go.”
“I know she does. But there is nothing I can do. When Papá makes up his mind, the Lord above can’t change it.”
“We have to find her a husband then.”
“Enrique—”
“She doesn’t want to marry Enrique. She wants to live someplace else. She wants to live like your Tía Guadalupe. She wants a life full of glamour and parties. If she can’t go to Guanajuato, we must find her something else. What about your Texas Ranger friend?”
“Jarrett?” Santos hee-hawed. “Jarrett provide a life of glamour and parties?” He shook his head. “No, Pia, we will have to look elsewhere for a beau for Relie.”
Chapter Two
The following evening after Vespers, the same three Indian girls waited in the dark wings of a side chapel to replace a confident Aurelia and a reluctant Pia and Zita. Not only had Aurelia persuaded the pious Lucinda to observe a novena for Señora Garcia’s dying child, but she had convinced the dueña to spend the entire nine hours of prayer in the cathedral, five of which had elapsed by the time Vespers was over. The four more required for the novena would give the girls ample time to carry out their scheme and return undetected.
“What if she becomes suspicious and investigates?” Zita questioned after the three girls had left the cathedral. They scurried up a side street, clad now in dark trousers and light shirts, with serapes over their shoulders and wide-brimmed sombreros on their heads.
“She didn’t last time.” Aurelia led her two companions toward the tunnel at the far end of town, by way of back roads and alleys. Darkness had begun to set in, and a few stars had come out.
“Things don’t always work like last time,” Pia reminded her. “I can read it now: The wedding of Pia Leal and Santos Mazón was canceled after the bride robbed the groom’s father’s train. She will spend the rest of her life in prison.”
Aurelia laughed. Her spirits were never so high as at the beginning of one of their adventures.
“Nothing can go wrong,” she assured them. “Kino and Joaquín have the difficult part. We will wait inside the chapel until the guards get off the train…”
“What if they don’t?” Zita hissed.
“Zita, you know as well as I do that when Nuncio Quiroz is on board, the train always stops at the chapel. Why do you think they call him padre instead of superintendent?”
“They don’t mean it like that?” Zita replied.
“He never passes up a chance to pray in the tunnel chapel,” Pia recited, adding, “except one day he might.”
“Some say he does more than pray in that chapel. What if he is meeting a—?”
“The plan is perfect,” Aurelia assured them. “Don’t worry.”
“I tell you, they won’t fall for the same thing twice,” Zita continued.
Aurelia cocked her head, tilting her chin at a jaunty angle—a gesture that either enchanted her companions or aggravated them, depending on the occasion. “Kino and Joaquín promised to think of something different.”
When her friends sighed, she laughed. “Come on, you sillies. We only have an hour until the extra guards arrive at the tunnel.”
“I’m not walking through that tunnel,” Pia insisted.
“We aren’t going through the tunnel,” Aurelia supplied. “We will go over the top like before.”
“I wish I had your nerve, Relie,” Pia sighed.
“I’m glad you don’t,” Zita told her. “If two of us were crazy, none of us would have reached the age of twenty-two.”
Carved into the mountain in the middle of the tunnel, Santa Bárbara Chapel was dedicated to the patron saint of miners. Her image was found on almost all the many tunnels in the area, but this was the only place where a duly consecrated chapel had been carved into the mountain itself.
Since this tunnel wound through the mountain, making it impossible to see from one end to the other, most engineers and any of their crew who had traveled the line into Real de Catorce more than a few times made the obligatory stop at the chapel. Their lives were in the hands of Santa Bárbara, whom they hoped would protect them against being hit head-on by a train traveling in the opposite direction.
The chapel had a second little known entrance on top of the mountain. No more than a set of steps dug into the mountain straight down to the floor of the chapel, it was entered by a small door to the right of the altar. Most people figured the door concealed a sacristy where the priest could change into his vestments. The ladies of the church made it known that neither valuables nor communion wine were left there between services. No sense tempting an otherwise honest person to fall into sin by stealing from Santa Bárbara.
The girls found the opening behind a rock shrine surrounded by mizquitl trees and cacti. Lighting a lantern, Aurelia led her friends down the steep, dusty passageway into the earth itself. She had taken a key from the ring her mother kept in a drawer, and although it had worked last time, she exhaled a long-held breath when the door creaked open on rusty hinges. After they stepped into the chapel, the other girls exhaled.
“It looks empty,” Zita whispered.
“It’s too dark to tell,” Pia objected.
Aurelia held her tongue. She never expressed concern to her friends, usually because the situations they found themselves in were of her own doing and she could hardly admit trepidation.
“We can’t see a thing,” Pia whispered. “What if someone is here?”
“Whoever is here tonight,” Aurelia assured them, “is sleeping off a drunk and won’t run tell our parents.”
“Or having a tryst,” Zita added, calling to mind the romantic stories that circled school about girls from the miners’ camp meeting their beaus in the chapel for a rendezvous. Nuncio Quiroz was rumored to meet girls from El Astillero here. Aurelia had always intended to ask María about that, but she had yet to remember. Reports varied concerning exactly what went on at such a time.
While they talked, Aurelia set the lantern on the altar, then searched for her tin of matches in the pocket of her breeches. Finally, she removed her serape and tossed it to the front pew, then withdrew the small tin she had brought from the Mazón kitchen.
“That reminds me of Santos,” she said. “Did you talk to him last night, Pia?” She struck a match and began lighting the candles that stood in permanently affixed iron holders on the altar.
“Of course, I talked to him,” Pia retorted. With a great deal of emphasis, she added, “We never left the garden, Relie. What else could we do but talk for a whole hour while our stand-ins sang Vespers and you plotted our criminal future?”
Zita giggled, a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “Kiss, of course.” She turned to Aurelia. “What are you doing? We don’t need the candles lighted.”
“Or more,” Aurelia suggested to Pia. With the altar candles lit, she removed the globe from a wall lantern by the side of their escape door, touching a match to the wick. “And yes, we do need the candles lighted.”
Pia favored her friend with a stern look. “Why?”
“Why more?” Aurelia teased.
“Why do we need light?”
“You will see.” Aurelia studied the bare altar. “I should have brought a chalice and cruets and a missal and—”
“A chalice?…What are you doing?” Zita demanded.
“Kino and Joaquín have an ingenious plan. I should have thought of it myself. Like you suggested, another accident so soon after the last would be too obvious. They decided to hang a lantern on the bracket outside the door. You know, the signal that Mass is being read. The engineer will be obliged to stop for a service, in case Nuncio Quiroz passes up a chance to pray.”
“I suppose you intend to play the part of the priest,” Zita accused.
“We won’t need a priest.”
“When the crew finds no priest, Relie,” Pia argued, “they will return to the train.”
“Not until they have waited a whil
e.”
“A while?” Zita’s voice quivered.
“Long enough,” Aurelia assured them.
At that moment the outer door of the chapel creaked open to admit two figures, one of whom carried a lantern.
“Kino,” Aurelia called. “Is everything in place?”
“Sí. As soon as we hear the whistle, I will hang the lantern. Joaquín and I will wait on the other side of the tunnel in that hollow made by the wreck of the Victoria Express.”
Joaquín studied the girls. “And yourselves?”
“We will kneel in one of the back pews,” Aurelia told him. “After the crew enters the chapel, we’ll come help you unload the coins. In the dark we should pass for members of the crew, don’t you think?”
The boys nodded.
“In case we are rushed afterwards, remember to bury the empty crates in a canyon where they can never be found,” Aurelia instructed them.
“Sí,” the boys replied.
“And this time,” Pia worried, “the money must be taken further away than Ciudad Victoria. At least to Monterrey. The Federales will certainly be out combing the hills for the money.”
“Papá will see to that,” Aurelia agreed.
At the sound of the train whistle, they all jumped. “¡Andale!” Kino called. “We must hurry and hang the lantern. Be ready to work quickly.”
The lantern stopped the train as the boys had predicted, only this time the crew was leery. Instead of everyone disembarking to pray in the chapel, Nuncio Quiroz left a guard with the crates of minted coins.
Fortunately, Kino and Joaquín were positioned on the opposite side of the train. When the girls sneaked out of the chapel and climbed on board, the guard challenged them.
Aurelia had no more than cleared her throat, hoping her voice would pass for a boy’s, when Joaquín swung a club from behind, felling the guard.
Pia gasped. “Did you kill him?”
“Of course not,” Aurelia hissed. “¡Andale!” She rushed toward the crates.
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 2
