“They intend to wipe that smile off your face,” she agreed, “unless I discover a way to get you out of here.”
“You?”
She rose to her full height, lifting her chin in a manner that defied him to dispute her.
“Why you?” He scanned her clothing, taking in the mittens, the black costume, the gauze veil she had thrown back from her face. His warm brown gaze lingered on hers. “You are definitely an angel, regardless of the widow’s weeds.”
“It’s a disguise,” she insisted.
“A disguise?”
“Prayin’ time’s over.”
She listened in horror to the captain’s boots stomping up the stairs behind his booming voice.
“Praying time?” The stranger lifted an eyebrow, mocking her.
“I told him I had taken a vow to feed and pray with prisoners.”
He laughed.
He must be mad, she thought.
She pushed the basket through the bars. He reached out and pulled her veil over her face.
“Can’t have anyone else looking upon the countenance of my guardian angel.”
She gritted her teeth. What to do? What to do?
“Don’t suppose there’s a gun under all this food?”
She shook her head. “Do you have any friends around here? Anyone I can send to help you?”
The captain took her by the arm. “Time’s up, señora.”
“Only you,” the stranger called after her. “Your lovely countenance will travel with me on my dismal journey to…” His words faded beneath the angry shouts of the mob outside.
Leaving the jail, Aurelia headed for the fountain where Pia and Zita had agreed to wait for her, stripping off the bonnet and veil and the mittens as she went. At each corner knots of townsfolk discussed the prisoner. The word lynch resounded from the walls of the elaborately designed buildings—the civilized buildings of civilized Catorce.
Inside her brain the image of the prisoner remained imprinted as by the sure hand of God Himself.
Pia and Zita took the news in stunned silence, their faces showing the shock of finding a stranger—a gringo—in jail for an offense they had committed.
“How did you understand him?” Pia asked.
“He speaks our language,” Aurelia told them, adding, “except for the crazy song he sang. It was in English.”
“How do you know it was crazy if he sang it in English?” Zita questioned.
“The way his eyes danced,” she said. “He’s handsome all right. Handsome, but definitely mad.”
“How did they catch him?” Pia asked.
Aurelia shrugged, silent. Thinking.
“He must be guilty of something or he wouldn’t be in jail,” Zita reasoned.
“He said the Federales arrested him for a crime he didn’t commit. That’s all we had time for.”
“We already knew that much,” Zita said.
The girls stared at one another, their eyes telling the sad truth. The truth that an innocent man was in jail and in danger of losing his life because of their folly.
“Now we must tell your father,” Zita said at last.
They sat on the edge of the fountain, trailing their fingers absently in the water.
“Listen to that crowd,” Pia said. “They sound like a pack of wolves on the scent of blood.”
Aurelia agreed. “Even if we told Papá, he couldn’t convince that crowd. They want a victim.” She recalled Enrique’s statement at lunch. “They would never believe three girls could plot and carry through such a plan.”
“Whatever we do, we don’t have much time,” Zita said.
“We have to break him out.”
Pia and Zita stared at Aurelia, their mouths agape.
“You’re crazy,” Zita whispered.
“She’s serious,” Pia said.
After assuring them she would do nothing without consulting them, Aurelia hurried home to change clothes. Before any decisions were made, she had to learn her father’s plans. At lunch he had said he would prevent a lynching. If he had made plans, she must discover what they were. Surely she had a little time in which to plan an escape.
Even an execution took time to arrange, unless the townsfolk broke into the jail and hung the prisoner themselves. And that possibility was too dastardly to even consider.
Quickly changing her widow’s weeds for a mint-green afternoon dress with matching parasol and pinning her hair into curls that tickled her shoulders, she called for Serphino to drive her to the Casa de Moneda Mazón to visit her father.
Enrique, as she had expected, was beside himself with pleasure at the sight of her. Her father, as she had also known, was at the mine.
“My dear, you have at length come to life.” Enrique took her fingers and twirled her in a circle, admiring her gown. “Enchanting. Exactly the type of gown you should wear for the position you will have.”
She walked in front of him down the long aisle to the rear of the room. “What are you talking about, Enrique? What position could I possibly aspire to that I do not already possess?”
He was taken aback, as always, by her jesting, but he managed to hold on to the tips of her fingers.
“Wife of the president of Casa de Moneda Mazón,” he announced, bringing her fingers to his lips as he spoke.
“Oh? You have spoken to Papá?”
“Many times, my dear. He and I agree quite fully on that score. It is his daughter we seek to convince.”
Over my dead body. Immediately, she retracted that thought. It was in the cause of a dead body—or rather for the preservation of a live one—that she allowed herself to be handled by this snobbish man.
“I suspected you two of conniving against me,” she murmured.
“Never against you, my dear.”
She stood in the doorway to Enrique’s private office. The ornate furniture had been built in Mexico City especially for the president of the Casa de Moneda, and it was too large in both bulk and height for the slender frame of Enrique Villasur. “Then against Tío Luís,” she corrected. “He was the intended president of Casa de Moneda.”
Enrique coughed. “Until he decided to run for Governor of Potosí.”
“Until Papá found you…” she purred. She heard nothing but silence from Enrique, who stood close behind her. Coming from outside the building, however, echoes of the unruly crowd reminded her of the seriousness of her mission.
“…especially for me.”
Turning her attention back to the front room, Aurelia walked beside the glass cases, trailing her fingers along the counter, examining the coins on display. She ignored the confused face of Enrique Villasur. “Fascinating,” she mused. “Are these the same denomination as the coins taken in the robbery?”
At her elbow Enrique cleared his throat. “From the same lot, actually.”
“How much did you lose, Enrique?”
He sputtered at her use of his Christian name. “Why…ah over twenty thousand dollars worth, señorita.”
“Aurelia,” she offered.
His mouth fell open. He closed it quickly. “Aurelia,” he murmured, as though she had given him a handful of golden coins. “Twenty thousand dollars worth, Aurelia.”
“Ah, and were they all found on the prisoner?”
“We have recovered none of them as yet. But never fear. We shall find every last one. That culprit will show us where he stashed our coins.”
His inflection on the word our gave her pause, but she continued. “That might be a difficult thing to do, Enrique, if the townsfolk hang him.”
“Hang him?”
“Like you said at lunch: The town is talking of nothing else. Of nothing but lynching. Why, on every street corner a mob is gathering.”
“They will not accomplish such a thing,” he stated definitively. “Even though the fellow deserves it.”
She frowned. “How can you be so certain?”
“Of what, Aurelia?”
“How do the Federales know they
caught the right man?”
He stared at her, aghast. “The right man? Why would they have arrested him otherwise?”
“But they found no coins?”
He shrugged.
“Not even the crates the coins were shipped in?”
He shrugged again. “In time, Aurelia…dear.”
She stifled her disgust at his endearment. “They found nothing to connect him with the stolen coins?”
“I explained. The Federales intend to force the man to show them the exact spot before they…ah…before the trial. They have ways of extracting the truth, my dear Aurelia.”
Even without the endearment, his last statement would have sent a shiver up her neck. “I thought the Federales left town.”
“They did, but—” He stopped speaking abruptly.
“But what?”
“It isn’t…ah…”
“What, Enrique? It isn’t what?”
“I really can’t say. It is to be kept secret. Afterwards, Aurelia, perhaps—”
“Relie,” she whispered.
“Relie.” He seized the name as he would have a prize given at the fair. The fire in his eyes brought a tremble to her limbs. Had Nuncio Quiroz’s eyes glowed with such hunger that night in the chapel?
Her mouth was so dry she had trouble speaking. “Tell me, Enrique. I love a surprise. And I am very good at keeping secrets. You will see.”
“Well, your father has…ah, we have laid plans to secrete the prisoner to Matehuala on a fake shipment of silver. The Federales will escort him from there to San Luís Potosí for safekeeping until the trial.”
“Really? And until he can lead you to the coins?”
“Exactly, Relie. Exactly.”
Her face fell. “Oh, dear. I hope it will be soon. The crowd is growing ever more belligerent. I fear—”
Enrique had taken her hands while she spoke. He brought them to his lips. “Do not fret, Relie dear. I know you worry as much for your father and myself as for the prisoner, but all will be well. The train leaves at midnight, and by tomorrow the prisoner will be safely incarcerated in San Luís Potosí.”
Aurelia pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. “Midnight?” she whispered at last. “But…but what if?…I mean, his accomplices have not been caught. There were three of them or more, were there not? What?…”
“You worry too much, Relie. Nuncio Quiroz himself has volunteered to guard the prisoner.”
A chill like an icy mountain stream raced through Aurelia’s blood. It was what she had hoped to hear but also what she had feared.
“Well, Enrique, I have taken too much of your time. I must be on my way. I don’t want to become a bother.”
He lifted her trembling fingers to his lips. “My dear, dear Relie. You a bother? Never.”
At the door she turned and favored him with what she hoped was a radiant smile. “What about the woman, Enrique? Do you suppose she would try to rescue her lover?” She cast her gaze toward the floor, then lifted her chin to stare into his startled eyes. “No, of course not. A woman would never think of such a thing.”
“You do remember your promise, Relie?”
“Promise?”
“To tell no one of our secret. Only three people know the truth of it: your father, myself, and Quiroz.”
She stilled the tremor that started in the pit of her stomach. “Four, but don’t count me. You have my promise. Woman’s honor.”
Chapter Four
No one liked Aurelia’s plan, she least of all. But she did not tell them that. Pia and Zita were hard enough to persuade without learning how much she feared another encounter with Nuncio Quiroz.
Zita’s reaction was typically irate. “You have lost your mind, Relie.”
As usual, Pia cloaked her anger in concern. “Aurelia! You cannot mean such a thing. Why, only two days ago you lay in bed crying your heart out over that man.”
Aurelia shrugged. “This time I am forewarned.”
“Forewarned means nothing. That man is an animal.”
“Can you think of another solution?”
Neither girl replied.
“Well, I can’t either. Nothing else would persuade him to stop the train. He certainly won’t stop again for a lantern at the chapel.”
Pia chewed her lip. “He won’t stop for a rendezvous with you, either, Relie. His prisoner is too valuable.”
“He’ll stop.” Aurelia recalled the vigor with which Nuncio Quiroz had pursued her. She suppressed a shudder. “He will stop,” she repeated. “Enrique assured me they are posting two extra guards and securing the prisoner with a cable.”
“It won’t work,” Pia argued. “You are risking your virginity for nothing.”
Zita’s eyes flew open. “Her vir—?”
Aurelia gritted her teeth. “I am not. Nothing of the sort is going to happen.”
The girls looked unconvinced.
“Can you come up with a better way to save an innocent man’s life?” She glared from one friend to the other. “Even if…even if it did…come to that, I would still be alive. A man’s life is worth…worth something. Por Santa Cecilia, I put the noose around his neck. I must remove it. I don’t want his death on my conscience.”
The afternoon was spent in a flurry of activity. Kino and Joaquín had to be notified and the message sent.
Pia and Zita hovered over Aurelia while she struggled to compose the right sort of message to insure Nuncio Quiroz would stop at the chapel in the tunnel.
“Offer him a kiss,” Zita suggested.
“He already had a kiss,” Pia retorted.
Aurelia’s fingers gripped the pencil. “I will make it vague. Say I want a second chance to please him…a man of such passions…” Her fingers flew to keep up with her lips. “That his runaway passions released my own…that I cannot bear…” Her fingers paused when her body rebelled.
“Don’t get carried away, Relie,” Pia cautioned.
“Where did you get those clothes?” Zita asked later while the girls helped Aurelia dress for her rendezvous with the mine superintendent.
The message had been dispatched by a boy from the village, along with a gold coin and the promise of another when the answer was returned. The girls had nervously awaited Quiroz’s reply.
To insure the boy not learn their identities, Zita had met the child near the deserted fountain and instructed him to return the answer to the same place after dark.
Since Zita’s parents were the earliest to retire and since Aurelia knew her own father would pace the night away in his study awaiting word that the prisoner had been delivered safely, she and Pia arranged to spend the night at Zita’s house.
As soon as the Tapis family retired, Aurelia pulled the clothing from her tapestry satchel: a faded black skirt and several colorful but shabby petticoats, a low-cut white blouse, daring but dingy, and a threadbare woolen cloak to cover it all.
“From the clothesline,” Aurelia answered Zita’s question, tightening the laces of her corset. “They belong to Sophía, our new second-floor maid. I will hide them in the servant’s wash when I return.” Before stepping into the first of four petticoats, she jerked the corset strings one last time, then tied them in a double knot.
“You aren’t going to a dance,” Pia admonished.
“You can’t squeeze down the steps to the chapel in four petticoats,” Zita argued.
“I must keep him occupied long enough for you to do your jobs.” She slipped the blouse over her head.
“You don’t need to make it easy for him,” Pia chided.
“I’m not. My bloomers and these layers of petticoats will slow him down.” She threw the cloak over her shoulders, slipped her arms through the slits, and buttoned the multitude of black buttons that began at her throat and ended near her ankles. “He won’t have time to get through all these buttons.”
Checking the satchel for the supplies she brought for the prisoner once he was freed, Aurelia snapped it closed. “Let’s go.”
Confident? Inside she shook like a poplar leaf in a chill wind. Confident? Her heart fluttered in such an erratic rhythm she could only pray she would not swoon. She struggled to keep her brain occupied with the task confronting them—with the roles each of them would play.
After stopping at the fountain for the message from Nuncio Quiroz, the three girls made their way to the shrine. Once there, Aurelia took out matches and, by the light of the shrine’s candle, read the scrawled reply.
“It worked.” She choked back her fears, trying to hide them from her friends. But they had been friends for too long.
“He didn’t suspect us being involved with the robbers?”
Aurelia laughed. “Nuncio Quiroz es un bufón.” She read the smudged message. “Do not think to trick me tonight, puta. My men will guard the prisoner on the threat of death if he escapes, and you will pleasure me under the same terms.”
“Quiroz is a fool, yes, but so are we,” Zita said. “We can’t go through with this.”
“Call it off, Relie,” Pia pleaded. “Get in touch with Santos. He said there are more difficulties at the mine than the robberies. He would know what to do. I’m sure he could get the gringo released. Why, he even knows authorities in Texas. He could wire the Rangers to come for the prisoner.”
Aurelia rolled her eyes. “Be reasonable, Pia. The Federales are not going to release so valuable a prisoner to a foreign country, especially not to barbarians like the Texas Rangers.”
“Even so, we must call this off.”
“No. A man’s life is in danger because of me. I will save him.”
The message from Nuncio Quiroz held one heartrending surprise: The time schedule had been moved up an hour.
“Eleven o’clock,” Aurelia read. “Let’s hurry.”
“What if Kino and Joaquín don’t come in time?”
“They will. I told them an hour early, like before.”
“They had better be on time,” Zita said.
“They can’t be late,” Pia murmured.
They weren’t. The boys awaited them in the darkened chapel, where no sooner had the girls arrived than the rails began to clatter. No whistle tonight to alert the bandits.
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 5
