“We’re a long way from Texas.”
“Carson Jarrett isn’t in Texas,” Santos told her. “He’s on his way to Real de Catorce to be best man at our wedding, remember?”
“He wouldn’t come this early.”
“I will tell you something, but you can’t mention it to anyone, not even to Zita. My parents don’t even know.”
She waited expectantly.
“I asked Jarrett to come early to look into the difficulties at the mine. He was not to tell anyone who he was, why he was here, or that he knew me.”
“But if he were thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, surely he would give his name—or send for you.”
Santos shook his head. “He gave me his word that he wouldn’t reveal himself to anyone until we clear up the mine difficulties. A Ranger’s word is good as gold, Pia.”
“Is it possible that he’s the prisoner?”
Santos kissed her. “I hope it’s possible. He was in the vicinity. It sounds like him, too. Jarrett would never leave a lady in distress.” He kissed her again, more soundly this time. She put her arms around his neck and held him close, returning his kiss impatiently.
Later, he vowed he didn’t know what took hold of him. His lips stroked her lips, and when she opened to his passion, he accepted, urgently exploring the inner reaches of her mouth, delving, probing, exciting her timid passions.
When his hands roamed to her breasts, she nuzzled into his palms, and before either of them realized it, he had unbuttoned her bodice and clasped a warm, firm breast in his hand.
She gasped as her nipple reacted, sending a hot sensation of urgency down her body. When she moved her legs toward him, he reached around her, grasping her buttocks through layers of clothing. His broad hand spanned her with ease. She sighed into his mouth, snuggling to bring herself nearer to him.
Then suddenly he drew back, his face flushed. He retreated to a more acceptable distance. “I’m sorry, little one. I don’t know how I could have gotten so carried away.”
She kissed him without shame. “I do. I feel the same way.”
“You’re distraught. When you think about it later, you will fault me.”
“No.”
He nodded. “I caught you off guard. You are worried about Relie—we both are—and here I go taking advantage…”
Her laughter stopped him.
When he questioned, she kissed him again, openly. “Relie would be pleased.” She felt her face flush but continued anyway. “She suggested I persuade you to…ah…to make love to me before the wedding.”
Although she thought she had shocked him as much as she ever could with the story of their train robberies, she learned now how wrong she had been. His mouth dropped open; his eyes flared.
Then he laughed and hugged her. “I believe it. That outrageous sister of mine!”
“She knew I was worried,” Pia explained in her friend’s defense.
“Worried?”
“About…ah…” She ducked her head. “Relie thought if we tried it out before, it wouldn’t ruin our wedding night.”
With the gentleness of a much smaller man, Santos lifted Pia’s face and kissed her lips. “Let’s talk about this again after we find Relie.” He glanced around the garden, then winked at her. “I will keep my eye out for a better place.”
She fell against his chest, weak from the multitude of emotions that assailed her. “You really think she is all right?”
“I hope she is, but I’m hitting the trail to make sure. If she’s with Carson Jarrett, I know she’s safe. He will protect her with his life—both her life and her honor. Especially when he finds out she’s my sister. I have never had a better friend.” He tugged Pia to her feet. “Except you.”
They returned to the carriage, walking a discreet distance apart. “Santos,” she worried, “what if Relie doesn’t tell him she is your sister?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“I doubt she will. She’s determined not to drag the family name into this mess any more than necessary.”
“You said you called her by name. If it’s Jarrett, he will recognize Relie Mazón. I told him all about Relie and her schemes.”
“I didn’t call her either Relie or Mazón,” Pia wailed. “I only said Aurelia.”
“Don’t worry, little one.” Santos squeezed her hand as he helped her into the carriage. “Carson Jarrett would never take advantage of a woman…no matter who he thought she was.”
Chapter Six
For the next three days Carson and Aurelia traveled by night and found shelter during the day. The Federales were out searching for them. That much they knew. From their hideouts during the day, they saw search parties in the distance. At night, they saw the light from campfires.
When Carson questioned whether the fires could be Indians and if so whether the Indians would be hostile, Aurelia assured him their only threat would come from the Federales.
“Apache raids stopped long before I was born.”
To which he had cocked an eyebrow. “Long, long ago, I suppose. You must be all of an ancient twenty years.”
“Twenty-two.” She answered further personal questions vaguely, determined not to give away her family’s name or position. She wondered whether his curiosity was merely that, or could he have been as affected by their one passionate kiss as she?
Aurelia had thought of little else, and on occasion she rejoiced that his lips had so successfully erased the memory of those other dastardly ones. She knew she would not resist should he try to kiss her again.
He didn’t, but that didn’t keep her from thinking about it—and about other things. Since his kiss had so easily quelled her fear of kissing a man, would a more intimate experience with him erase the chills that gripped her every time she recalled the lengths to which Nuncio Quiroz had gone in the chapel?
If so, it was certainly worth a try.
Pry as she did, she could learn nothing about her traveling companion other than that he was skilled at providing them with food and water in this dry desert country—at least with enough to keep them from starving or from dying of thirst in the heat of the day.
He was a strange man. Mysterious. Without a doubt he was an outlaw of some sort. How else would he have instinctively known to steal the guards’ weapons?
Nothing seemed to worry him. He remained calm even when they sat in their hideout watching the Federales in the distance.
“What if they find us?” she asked more than once.
“They won’t.” His confidence was quiet. She hoped it was justified.
On one occasion she even asked him point-blank, “What were you doing when the Federales caught you?”
“Minding my own business.”
She ignored the suggestion implied in his tone and continued her probing. “If you had been minding your own business, they wouldn’t have arrested you.”
He favored her with his wry grin. “They were looking for a train robber, remember?”
“But you weren’t a train robber.”
“We know that. They didn’t. For that matter, they still don’t.”
“You must have looked suspicious,” she retorted. “They would not have arrested an innocent man.”
He merely shrugged. “They did.”
Nearing daylight of the third day, they crossed one of the rare streams in the area, this one near a high, narrow waterfall. While she filled their olla, he studied the flow of water and the deep pool in the center. Glancing to the top, he motioned.
“We’ll find a campsite up there. How does fish sound for supper?”
“I suppose you intend to spear it with that knife?”
He shrugged. “Could. Then again, I might lose the knife. How ’bout loanin’ me a couple of hairpins?”
She laughed, removing them from her hair. “That’s about how many I have left.”
Fascinated, she watched him straighten the two pins, twine them together—for strength, he explained—then fashion a perf
ect hook. Afterwards, he whittled a pole from a nearby branch and lashed the hook to it with a ribbon from one of her petticoats. She watched him tie a small pebble to the line for a weight.
“Don’t know how the fish’ll take to red,” he teased. “Then again, maybe we’ll get the biggest daddy of ’em all.”
He leaped suddenly into a stand of grass near the bank, and when he came up, he offered her a clenched fist. “Hold this grasshopper while I catch some more.”
She scrunched up her nose.
“You aren’t afraid of grasshoppers, are you?”
She grimaced. “Give it to me.” Taking the wriggling thing in her hand, she tore off a strip of petticoat and made a sack for it. By the time he finished, she held four plump grasshoppers neatly tied in blue cloth.
With the sky brightening overhead, Aurelia sat beside him on the bank. He dipped the baited hook into the water. The waterfall made pleasant splashing sounds off to the north. From its perch high in a huisache tree, a mockingbird serenaded the coming morning.
“Tell me again,” he suggested, returning to the topic they had discussed most of the past night: her role as a robber of trains. “You thought to convince this hard-headed father of yours to send you off to the city by robbing a train?”
She pulled her knees up to her chin, arranged her now frayed skirts, and lay her head on top of them. “You needn’t sound so skeptical. It was working.”
“Until I got caught in your trap.”
“It wasn’t my trap.”
“It was your scheme.”
She sighed.
“I take it you are good at scheming.”
“And you’re good at asking questions,” she retorted. Throughout the night, she had avoided supplying any details that might identify her family. But he persisted in asking so many questions about Real de Catorce and the mine that she began to fear he worked for the railroad or something.
“Never hurts to try,” he laughed. “Although you don’t answer very many.”
“You aren’t a fountain of information yourself.”
“Shh, we have a bite.” While she watched, relaxed, contented, he jerked a fish from the water and threw it with force to the bank.
“It’s huge.”
He chuckled. “Not big enough to keep the two of us from going hungry today.” He struck the fish with the shank of his knife, then strung it on another ribbon she obligingly tore from her petticoat and rebaited his hook.
“Good thing you wore so much clothing to stop that train,” he quipped, tossing the hook into the water.
“It was my armor,” she said, again resting her face on her knees.
“Armor?” He looked over at her. “Oh? From…him.”
She nodded. “I figured he wouldn’t have time to get through four petticoats, a corset, a corset cover, bloomers—” She jerked her head up, her eyes wide. “What am I saying? To you?…”
He laughed. “Don’t mind me. I’m your companion-in-arms.”
She lay her head back and watched him resume his fishing. He was right, of course. That was the reason she wasn’t embarrassed to discuss such things with him: They had been through a lot the last few days and nights. She felt secure and comfortable with Carson, as though she had known him a long time, when in fact she knew nothing about him except the obvious: He was silent, but he had a good sense of humor; he avoided the Federales with an adeptness surely learned on the outlaw trail, yet he was gentle, even compassionate when he spoke of the sacrifice she had made to save him from hanging for her crime.
And he was passionate. His one kiss had lighted a fire inside her, a fire she saw burning in his own eyes when she caught him looking at her unawares.
“Do you think they will come today?” she asked.
“The Federales? You can count on it.”
She glanced toward the horizon, where the sun was making a spectacle of rising.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find a place to hide.” He nodded toward the waterfall. “Behind there, maybe.”
Sure enough, high up the cliff behind the widest part of the waterfall he located a good-sized cave.
“It’s perfect. They will never find us here.” She surveyed the cave. Misty and damp from the falling water, it was even cleaner than the cave they had used the day before. “You certainly know how to spot a hideout.”
Ignoring her statement, he studied the area, then began piling sticks together in a dry spot near one corner. “While I cook the fish, I want you to draw a map.”
“Draw?”
“On the floor. Use a stick, scrape into the rock. It’ll work.”
“A map of what?”
He held her attention. “No matter what reasons you have for keeping our destination secret, I need to know approximately where we’re headed in relation to where the Federales are searching for us.”
She thought a minute. “I don’t know where we are.”
He raised his eyebrows, holding her gaze. “I think you do. You have been leading us west for some time now, whether you care to admit it or not.”
She sighed.
“We headed north out of Catorce, turned west,” he told her. “We crossed one stream not five kilometers from town. This cave is near the top of a cliff behind a waterfall. There can’t be many waterfalls in this neck of the woods.”
She squatted on the floor, a stick in hand.
“Start with Catorce, then work around it. Put in all the Federales Stations you know about. The one where they were taking me—Matehuala, you said. The central station they were going to transfer me to. Add any place you think they might look for us.”
After he roasted the fish, they sat together near the map, and while they ate, he studied it.
“We’ll save the other two fish for nightfall,” he told her when they had eaten one fish each. “Have any idea when we will arrive at this mysterious destination—wherever I, with my trusting nature, am letting you lead me?”
She grimaced. “You have put your life in my hands,” she whispered. “Without objecting.”
He grinned. “Figured I’d be better off with you than with those fellers bent on stretching my neck. You’re the one broke me out of…” His words drifted off. Their eyes held.
She knew he was thinking about the sacrifice she had made for his freedom. She had thought of little else through the long night’s walk.
Reaching toward her, he cupped her face in his palm, then leaned over and planted a chaste kiss on her lips. “I trust you, angel. And don’t think I don’t appreciate your…all you’ve done for me.”
She ran her tongue absently over her lips, savoring the warmth he left there. “I’m taking you to my home.”
His eyes widened. “Back to Catorce?”
“No,” she said quickly. “The place where we’re going is…ah…the home of my relatives…my grandparents.”
He studied the map, silent.
“I wouldn’t take you into danger, Carson. Not after—”
Without warning, his hand shot out and covered her mouth. After a tense moment, he exhaled. “Fair enough.” He turned back to the map she had drawn on the floor. “Provided your grandfather won’t shoot me on sight.”
A pang of guilt gnawed at her near-empty stomach. “He won’t be there.” Suddenly, all her years of disguises and deceptions overwhelmed her. She was tired of playacting. A warning issued by a distraught Sister Inéz, when as a young student Aurelia had been caught in one of her few unsuccessful deceptions, came to mind.
“Someday you will be sorry for your scheming mind, Aurelia Mazón. Some day you will wish you had learned to tell the truth.”
Carson tapped an index finger to the map. “Show me.”
She pointed to where she thought the ranch would be.
“Is there a Federales Station there?”
“At my home?”
“In the town?”
She held his gaze a moment, then shook her head. She dared not admit it was a ranch instead of a town. If her plan
worked, this stranger would never know who she was, would never know her family name. As soon as they arrived at the ranch, Santos would arrange for him to escape. Whoever Carson was, wherever he came from, he would never be able to tell that the daughter of Don Domingo Mazón robbed trains. That was one fact she must conceal at all costs.
“It isn’t really a town,” she added. “More like a…a community. But we have horses. You will have no more reason to complain about walking.”
At the suggestion, he began tugging at his boots. “It’s plain and simple, angel. I don’t like walking. Never have, never will. My feet don’t care for it, either. When do you think we’ll arrive at this…ah…home of your grandparents?”
For a brief moment she considered the fact that he might not believe her. That he might know the truth. “One more night should get us there. I think.”
Stacking his boots behind him, he lay down and used them as a pillow. “It’s daybreak. Better get some shut-eye.”
She watched him, wanting desperately to make a peace offering. Finally, she offered her cloak.
He raised himself on an elbow, staring at her. “I would never take a lady’s pillow out from under her head.”
“Go ahead,” she insisted. “I can use one of my petticoats.”
“I would never undress a lady, either. I mean…ah…”
His words faltered, and she laughed. “I would never let you. I can remove my own petticoat, thank you.”
He stared at her a moment longer, then settled back on his boots and placed his hat over his face. “Wouldn’t hear of such a thing, angel.”
They settled down. Her body began to relax from the taxing night of travel. But her mind would not be still.
“Carson?”
“Hmm?”
“You said you had never been in jail before.”
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t say you had never killed a man.”
She waited for an answer that did not come. Finally, she asked another question.
“You said this is the first time you have taken a lady on the trail.”
“Hmm,” he agreed.
“It isn’t the first time you have been on the run, though. Is it?”
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 9
