She felt her parents’ eyes rivet on her from either end of the table. Could they see how she felt? Could they read her mind? How would she explain such an outlandish thing as never wanting to leave the walls of this house again?
“Your mother is right. You are ill, hija,” Don Domingo addressed his daughter. “When did you change your tune about going to Guanajuato?”
Aurelia picked at her food. “It doesn’t seem necessary.”
“I agree,” Enrique interjected. “Begging your pardon, Don Domingo, but so far as we know, the robbers have never set foot inside Real de Catorce.” He stared across the table at Aurelia with an impassioned gaze that set her hands to trembling.
Quickly, she set her fork down and clasped them in her lap. Guanajuato and Enrique Villasur be damned. She had enough worries just keeping her wits.
The look in his eyes caused her to wonder whether all men were not after exactly the same thing Nuncio Quiroz had attempted to take from her in the chapel.
The sight of Enrique’s lips brought on a quaking she was unable to control. The thought of those lips on hers…
The sensation of them on her breast…
“Daughter, are you ill?”
Serphino, the table servant, caught her shoulders just as she swayed from the chair. Across the table she saw Enrique jump to his feet. The last thought she entertained before she swooned was one of thanksgiving. Praise Saint Cecilia it was old Serphino who caught her in his arms, not Enrique Villasur.
Two days later a jubilant Don Domingo Mazón arrived home at midday with his familiar shadow, Enrique Villasur, following on his coattails. He shouted uncharacteristically up the stairs for his wife.
“Doña Bella! Doña Bella! Where the devil are you! I bring great news!”
Aurelia followed her mother down the broad staircase to the marble-floored foyer, where Don Domingo and Enrique awaited with beaming faces. She could not recall ever seeing such a smile on her father’s face, except at the opening of the Casa de Moneda Mazón.
“We have caught the train robber!” he exclaimed. “He is incarcerated even as we speak.”
“The Federales brought him in an hour ago,” Enrique added. “No one has been allowed to question him yet.”
Chapter Three
Only by exercising the greatest degree of discipline did Aurelia manage to sit through lunch with her parents and Enrique. She must, she cautioned herself, learn everything possible about the situation before deciding how to proceed.
Whichever of the two had been caught, Kino or Joaquín, she could not let him pay for a scheme she had hatched herself.
True, the boys had gained a great deal from the thefts—money to feed their families through the coming winter. Money that was badly needed in villages such as theirs.
And it wasn’t as though they had not discussed this eventuality. They had. And both boys had agreed the rewards were worth the risk.
“The Federales are guarding him in our jail?” Doña Bella inquired. Often referred to as the “Free State of Catorce,” this high-mountain town did not brook outside interference, especially not from the central government. Stories abounded of instances when the citizens had stood up against usurpers.
“Sí,” Enrique replied.
“Not for long, señora,” Don Domingo assured his wife. “The Federales will be replaced as soon as the alcalde posts the necessary guards at the jail.”
“Necessary?” Aurelia cleared her throat to cover the quiver in her voice. “How many guards does the mayor think necessary?”
“Enough to prevent the man’s compadres from breaking him out,” her father said. “We are not dealing with just any culprits.”
“Breaking him out?” Aurelia echoed.
“These are rough characters, Relie.”
“Even though one of them is a woman,” Enrique added.
Aurelia glared at him. During the last two days her aversion to his touch had changed from a physical disgust to something more integral. Fair or not, she now disliked Enrique Villasur’s looks—his fine black hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak, his arched black eyebrows, his thin but neatly trimmed mustache that peaked beneath his nostrils and arched down to the outer edge of each lip. She disliked his proper dress—she had never seen him without waistcoat and tie—and his cultured, precise way of speaking, even his choice of words.
Especially his choice of words. “You do not credit a woman with sense enough to plan a train robbery?” she questioned.
He frowned from what had become his regular place opposite her at the Mazón dining table. “Why would a woman want to rob a train, señorita?”
To escape a lifetime with a fool like you, she thought, enraged by his condescending manner.
“The town is already in an uproar,” Enrique continued. “Talk of lynching is heard on every corner. If you ask me, hanging’s too good for the fool.”
“I agree,” said her father, “but I cannot allow a hanging here in the middle of town. I must find some way to contain the situation. Let the authorities see justice served.”
“Still, for the misery those robbers have caused, hanging’s too good for them,” Enrique repeated.
Hanging’s too good for them. The words reverberated through Aurelia’s brain later while she rounded up Pia and Zita. The girls gathered beside the fountain on Careaga Street, a deserted part of town.
“We must do something.” Aurelia sat between her two accomplices on the edge of the fountain.
“What?” Zita asked. “Anything we do will bring the Federales down on us.”
“We cannot allow a man to hang for us, Zita.”
“For you.” Zita corrected. “I mean, what’s the use of us all hanging?”
“We won’t hang, silly.”
“No,” Pia agreed. “But we will be in serious trouble.”
“We are in serious trouble,” Aurelia reminded them. “And so is Kino or Joaquín, whichever one is in jail.”
“How do we know it’s either of them?” Zita questioned.
Aurelia tilted her chin. “Who else could it be?”
The girls remained silent for a moment. Thoughtful.
“Even if it weren’t,” Aurelia argued, “we couldn’t stand by and let an innocent person hang.”
Again the girls remained silent.
“What are we going to do?” Zita whispered.
“Whatever are we going to do?” Pia echoed.
Aurelia sighed. “The first thing is to get into that jail.”
The girls gasped.
“Send María,” Pia suggested. “She’s their sister.”
Aurelia shook her head.
“Yes,” Zita encouraged.
“No. We cannot draw attention to whichever one is still free.”
“You said yourself the Federales aren’t allowing anyone to see the prisoner,” Pia reminded Aurelia.
“So how do you propose we go about it?” Zita demanded.
Aurelia glanced up in time to see her friends exchange exasperated glances. “Don’t bother yourselves! I got us into this mess. I will get us out of it.”
“Relie,” Pia cautioned, “don’t go getting angry. When you get angry you usually do things you regret.”
“Things we all regret,” Zita corrected. But her voice was tender, and she hugged her arm around Aurelia’s waist.
“First I must get inside that jail,” Aurelia mused.
“Perhaps we will know one of the guards when the alcalde posts them,” Pia suggested. “We could ask him to let you speak to the prisoner.”
Aurelia shook her head. “We can’t ask anyone. That would draw attention.”
“I suppose you have a plan for getting inside the jail without drawing attention?” Zita demanded.
“I mean attention to the three of us,” Aurelia said. “Since it was Papá’s train he robbed—”
“We robbed,” Pia corrected.
“It might not seem strange,” Aurelia continued, “for me to try to see
the prisoner.”
Zita twittered nervously. “Not if you bring a handgun to shoot him with.”
“Mamá is always taking meals and medical supplies to needy people,” Aurelia plotted aloud. “It would be fitting for a Mazón to take food to the prisoner. To assure he is well treated, regardless of the misery he caused us.”
“We should send for Santos,” Pia suggested. “He would know what to do.”
“Santos would side with Papá.”
“Santos would not let an innocent man hang,” Pia defended.
“He couldn’t stop them. If the townsfolk don’t lynch the prisoner, the Federales will hang him.”
That idea left the girls even more despondent. Would the hanging take place here in Real de Catorce?
In the main plaza by the lovely fountain?
Which they passed every day?
Around which they held the San Francisco de Asís fireworks?
“We would never free ourselves of such an image,” Zita wailed.
“Even on my wedding day the memory would still be fresh,” Pia sighed.
Aurelia straightened her back, lifted her chin, and jumped to her feet. “That does it. I must do something.”
She started down the hill. Pia and Zita followed, catching up. They linked arms, and for the next hour the three girls strolled around the central part of town, their faces long, their hearts heavy.
In contrast to everyone they passed. On the whole the townsfolk were elated by the capture. The words the girls heard most frequently were “Lynch him!”
“Lynching’s too good for the scoundrel.”
“We’re civilized folk here in Catorce. Can’t do more than lynch.”
Across the bricked street from the jail, Aurelia stopped. Her friends halted beside her.
“I must get inside.”
“You can’t,” Pia whispered.
But Aurelia only nodded, and neither friend said more. Once Aurelia Mazón made up her mind, Saint Cecilia herself could not change it.
“I cannot let a man hang on my account.”
And they knew she was right.
Only thing, Aurelia’s solutions often left them in more trouble than they had been in to begin with.
The girls, staunch friends to the end, returned to their homes, bided their time, and expected the worst. By the time Aurelia reached the Mazón mansion, she had decided three things.
First, she could not expose her friends to the danger she would be bringing on herself.
Second, she could not disgrace her family by allowing the town to gossip about her visiting a common criminal.
And third, whatever she did, she must do quickly. This fact became clearer as she passed knot after knot of citizens who were up in arms about the crime that had been committed against their town. They did not want outsiders to receive credit for hanging one of their own thieves. They did not want the Federales invading their territory.
They wanted to hang the criminal in the central plaza in plain sight of God and all Catorceans.
Fortunately, this was her mother’s day at the mining camp, so Aurelia hurried to complete her mission before Doña Bella’s return. Dressing in a black cotton shirtwaist a couple of sizes too large, she padded it with a piece of flannel toweling. In her mother’s wardrobe she found a black bonnet with a mourning veil attached. Perfect. A widow helping the underprivileged. A pair of knitted black gloves would hide her youthful hands from view of the guards.
Stuffing both bonnet and gloves into a tapestry satchel, she hurried to the kitchen fifty meters or so behind the mansion, steering clear of the quarters where the Mazón servants were taking siesta. Grabbing the first basket she found, she stuffed it with food—leftover beefsteak wrapped in tortillas, tins of herring and salmon, a hunk of goat cheese. For good measure, she added an extra hunk of goat cheese, a whole loaf of sourdough bread, and a jar of agarita berry jelly.
Curiously, she began to wonder what foods the boys liked, then stopped herself. When a man was in jail, probably the only thing he wanted was out. Besides, this food was not for the physical nourishment of whichever one of her accomplices the prisoner turned out to be. She was making contact. Possibly he—Kino or Joaquín—already had a plan. She would serve as his messenger.
That thought greatly relieved her. Hopefully, she would be required to do nothing more than relay a message.
Delivering a message would be simple. A message to someone who could vouch for his whereabouts, thereby clearing him of any involvement.
Unless he had been caught with the coins. The thought came like a blow from a double-jack hammer. Had the boys hidden the coins before the capture?
Since they hadn’t both been captured, whichever one was still free probably had the coins. She hoped.
She prayed. Por Santa Cecilia, she prayed.
Why hadn’t she asked her father about the coins? Neither he nor Enrique had mentioned them. Surely Enrique, eager as he had been to discredit the woman involved, would have gloated over recovering the coins.
“Hold up, señora. What’ve you got there?”
Aurelia came to an abrupt halt. The guard barring the door of the jail lifted the cloth to peer inside her basket.
“No one is allowed inside the building today, señora.”
Her heart stopped. “I must enter.” She spoke from deep in her throat, hoping to sound a few years older than she was.
“Who is this food for?”
She cleared her throat. “The prisoner.”
“What prisoner?”
“The train robber, of course.”
“That good-for-nothing varmint? He certainly don’t deserve food from a widow like yourself.”
“Everyone deserves food,” Aurelia told him. “Let me pass.”
The guard was adamant. “No one is allowed to see the prisoner. Strict orders of the captain. I will take the food.”
Aurelia clung to the basket. “I must take it myself.”
“Can’t allow it,” the guard insisted.
“Listen to me, young man. I am a poor widow woman, and it is my duty to serve the underprivileged, including prisoners. I made a vow to our Lord to provide for the worst of His creations. You know what He said: ‘Judge not, lest you be judged.’ If you do not let me see the prisoner, my vow will be broken and I will burn in hell. And you, señor, will meet the same fate.”
For a moment the guard stood his ground. Then he turned away. “I will speak with my captain.”
After an unsettling length of time, during which Aurelia felt the eyes of the entire town upon her, knowing any moment one pair could belong to her father or one pair to her mother or, at the very least, one pair to Enrique Villasur, the guard returned. He searched the basket item by item.
“You may hand him the basket. Nothing more.”
Again her heart skipped. “I must pray with the prisoner. Food for the soul, that was my vow, along with sustenance for the body.”
Through the black gauze of her veil, she watched the guard speak to the captain again, watched the captain at long last nod his head.
“Five minutes,” the guard barked. “Follow the captain.”
Aurelia’s knees felt like the jelly she had packed inside the basket for her accomplice, but she managed to follow the captain to the second floor, where he pointed her toward a cell.
“Last cell on the left.” Through her veil and from the distance, the cell looked empty.
As the guard had earlier, the captain examined the contents of her basket. “Five minutes. Not a second longer.”
“Gracias.” After two steps, she glanced back to where he stood his ground. “I will pray with the prisoner alone,” she demanded, her voice no more than a hiss.
“It’s your time you’re wasting, señora,” the captain responded with an exasperated shrug. But he turned and trudged down the stairs.
Aurelia hurried to the last cell, lifting her veil as she went. She had expected them to limit her time with the prisoner, so she had o
rdered her thoughts on the way to town.
But the words she had carefully prepared died on her lips when she looked into the cell and saw neither Kino nor Joaquín, but a stranger. A total stranger.
A gringo, no less!
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“I would ask the same thing”—He rose from a cot in the far corner of the cell, taking a moment to limber first one knee joint, then another, all the while his brown eyes dancing across the distance to her—“but I never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
He was in jolly form for a man in jail, she thought. Even though his clothing was dirty and one sleeve had a large tear in it, she could tell he was no ordinary tramp. His shoulders were broad enough to belong to a miner, and his muscles bespoke a man who knew hard work and practiced it. With movements she could hear Santos call stove-up, the prisoner crossed the cell, slipped a hand through the bars, and lifted the cloth from her basket.
She slapped his hand away. “This is for the train robber.” She scanned the other cells—two across the way and one next to the stranger’s.
All were empty.
“I’m the train robber,” he announced in an amused tone of voice.
She jerked her attention back to him. “You are not.”
His wide eyes mimicked her own expression. Aurelia knew that the moment she realized he was staring at her. Laughing at her was more like it.
“But I thought—?”
“…you were my lover who has come to set me free,” he sang. Again he reached through the bars and lifted the cloth, this time withdrawing a rolled tortilla filled with beefsteak, from which he took a large bite, continuing to sing around his mouthful of food. “Set me free. Set me free. I thought you were my lover who has come to set me free.”
“You’re mad!” Her mind reeled with the shock of finding a total stranger in jail for the crime she had so carefully planned and executed.
“Wouldn’t you be,” he questioned, “if you were set upon by Federales and thrown in jail for a crime you didn’t commit?”
She nodded, thinking. Thinking. Voices reached them through the open window at the end of the room. Angry voices.
“From the sound of the crowd out there, I’m the most popular feller in town.”
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 4
