There was a furtive movement behind them and a faint, lapping sound. The boatmen, under the cover of the explosions, were making ready to shove off their boats.
“Hey, you! Wait!” Charro yelled as he turned, leaping down the gently inclined side of the levee.
“Sorry, my friend,” they called. “We can't waste our time here while there's money to be made ferrying people away from the fire!”
Charro's sword rasped as he drew it. Enrique and Baltasar whipped out their own as, seeing the problem, they took a running jump after him. Vicente, though unarmed, wasn't far behind them.
Charro reached the boats before the two other men, presenting the point of his sword so the boatmen jerked away from the dugouts, standing erect. However, Baltasar, holding his sword above his head, made no attempt to slow his progress, but slammed into the boatmen. They went sprawling. The big outlaw bent over one, catching the front of his shirt, smashing his sword hilt into the man's jaw. Enrique snatched his dagger from his belt and, reversing it, struck the other boatmen alongside the head. The bandits bent over the men on the ground, but they lay groaning with no fight left in them.
“Tardy but efficient,” Refugio said, his breathless, acerbic voice coming from some yards down the levee as he approached at a lope. He leveled a finger at the largest of the crafts. “Everybody into that boat and shove off. Now!”
He was covered with a coat of gray ash, and sweat made wet tracks in the soot on his face. Doña Luisa was draped over his shoulder, sobbing and pounding his back with a dull and monotonous thudding. Behind him, just storming out of the smoke cloud, was a rabble of men carrying scythes and rakes and shouting in rage.
“Arsonist! Murderer! El Leon! Kill him! Kill him!”
Charro swung with his sword in his hand, calling, “The guides?”
“Leave them. Shove off!”
As amazement made them slow to obey, Refugio, reproved them with imprecations that were inventive, virulent, and efficacious. They swung to fling themselves into the dugout even as Enrique bent in haste to toss aboard three or four of the most important bundles lying still unloaded. Baltasar used his great strength to free it of the muddy levee bank and push it out to float free. As it caught the current, Baltasar waded after it to leap aboard.
Refugio, never slackening his stride, scattered a few pieces of silver in the direction of the groggy boatmen as payment for their craft. He bounded down the incline and splashed into the river's flow, kicking water head high while Doña Luisa spluttered and choked and screamed in terror. He grasped the side of the boat with one hand and with the other heaved the widow up so that Enrique could catch her around the waist. The acrobat dragged her over the gunwale like a sack of wet flour, then dumped her in a heap at his feet. He would have helped her to sit up if she had not slapped him. Immediately afterward she burst into tears.
Refugio vaulted up with water streaming down his legs, then somersaulted over the side to land on his feet in the bottom. Baltasar and Charro, taking up the paddles, began to pull out into the race of the river. Behind them the shouting mob came to a halt ankle deep in the water and stood cursing and shaking their weapons after them. Refugio rose to a crouch. Keeping low, he made his way to the stem, where he took up the steering paddle.
The boat veered under his powerful strokes, leading away from the direction Baltasar had set. “What are you doing?” the big man called back. to their leader. “You're pointing us upstream.”
“What lies downstream?” Refugio replied, his voice carrying strained calm. “Spain is only a receding dream, and Havana will welcome us no more. We are wanted again, and not for joy. Can you think that — now Don Esteban has made us so well-known — Governor Miro will not set a watch for us at every ship, that our description will not resound around the West Indies? We are denied both passage and rest every direction we turn. Except one.”
“What place is this?”
“A distant land of myth and magic, peopled by strange beasts and savages, made lovely by golden sunsets.”
“The Tejas country,” Charro breathed, his face lighting so that his eyes glowed bright blue.
“Oh, mother of God!” Doña Luisa groaned, rocking with sobs. “We'll all be killed. Or worse.”
“Or saved,” Enrique said.
“Or forgotten,” Baltasar muttered.
“It will be a test,” Vicente whispered to himself.
Isabel, her voice small, said, “But it's so far.”
Pilar turned on her seat to stare at Refugio. She wondered what was in his mind, wondered if he was as certain as he seemed that he knew what he was doing.
He was looking back over his shoulder, staring at the burning town that was New Orleans. His grim-streaked face reflected the red of the flames, and the water that glittered on his lashes and lay beaded on the planes of his cheeks had the look of tears.
16
REFUGIO SENT HIS PADDLE plunging deep into the yellow-brown water of the river, steering the boat to the left to avoid a half-submerged tree trunk that was floating toward them. The boat responded well, the morning was bright and clear. The sun was warm and the wind at his back. There was relief in the hard physical labor of paddling, like a penance for the expiation of sin. The demands of the river, fighting the currents, watching for whirlpools and logs and staying alert for river pirates and Indians, required most of his attention. There was little time for thinking, for remembering. It was better that way.
He had gotten used to handling the boat the evening before. They had traveled late, making camp on the bank only when they were many miles upriver from New Orleans. They could have asked for a night's lodging from some planter along the waterway, and would probably have been made welcome, but it had not seemed worth the risk. The fewer people who knew which direction they had taken, the better it would be.
It had not been a comfortable night. For himself and his men it had not mattered that the ground was hard and damp and the mosquitoes like a hoard of tiny stinging devils. He regretted it for the women. They were not used to such rough living.
On the seat just ahead of him Pilar sat weaving hats for them all from the palmetto palm branches she had picked the evening before, only looking up now and then to watch the shoreline slip past. Luisa slumped down between the thwarts at Pilar's feet. In front of the two women were Vicente and Baltasar, with Isabel perched on a bundle in the hollowed-out section between the thwart on which they sat and the next, where Enrique and Charro were in the prow. The paddles wielded by the men rose and fell in a rhythm that was both soothing and invigorating. Luisa had fallen silent, apparently taking a nap, which was a merciful dispensation. It was the first time she had ceased to complain since he had hauled her on board. She was not a woman who was at her best in difficult situations.
Pilar was such a woman. She had demanded a turn at the paddles several times during the day, spelling Vicente. She had tended the various injuries of them all the night before, and lain beside Refugio, on his coarse blanket through the darkness hours, merely covering her face against the marauding insects when she could stand them no longer. She had even managed to sleep a little. She had sat on the hard boat seat hour after hour, weaving with palmetto that pricked her fingers and helping watch for hazards. There had not been a word from her about the discomfort or where they were going or how long it might take them to get there. Her forbearance did not make him feel less guilty at bringing her to this pass.
She deserved better. She deserved it, but it was unlikely that he would ever be able to give it to her. It was possible, even probable, that they might never see civilization again, much less Spain. He had brought her on this wild quest for a dozen reasons, most of them selfish if not actively base. He had made an outcast of her, had endangered her along with all the rest. The regret he felt was like a live coal in his chest.
The sun gleamed in Pilar's hair, turning the strands to filaments the color of old gold. Its rays caught the curve of her cheek, the turn of her neck, her slende
r forearm below her sleeve, touching them with a silken sheen. He thought of the way she had felt against him in the night, of the trust with which she had lain there with her back to his chest and her thighs alongside his. He dug his paddle deeper into the water.
She would be sunburned by mid-afternoon, earlier if the sun stopped retreating off and on behind the clouds that were drifting in from the southwest. They all would be burned. Perhaps the hats she was weaving would at least shade her face. His concern wasn't just the discomfort for her, but the danger of illness. For himself and his men, it didn't matter; they were used to the sun. Pilar was different. And Luisa and Isabel, of course.
Pilar turned her head to glance back at him. She said, “Is something wrong?”
Refugio realized he was frowning, and made his features relax with a conscious effort. “You see me as merry as a mule with a load of dry hay and nowhere to take it. What could be wrong?”
“A great many things,” she answered, “but none that can be helped by worrying about them.”
“But then, I have nothing better to do.”
“If you're thinking of New Orleans, it wasn't your fault it burned.”
“Now that's a possibility that had not occurred to me.”
“I somehow doubt it.”
“I see what it is. You're afraid that I'm going to lapse into a stupor again, and leave you to make your way alone.”
She stared at him with cool eyes. “Not at all, since I doubt your will was ever beyond your control.”
“You flatter me.”
“I think not. But you underestimate me, I think. I feel sure I could make my own way. Not totally unaided or in complete safety, perhaps, but one way or another.”
An odd emotion he recognized as fear seeped into his mind. His voice was more slicing than he intended as he answered. “You are warning me of some substitute arrangement already made, I presume. Do you intend to tell me about it, or shall I guess?”
“Neither. Not everyone is as complicated as you; I was simply stating a fact.”
“As you see it.”
“How else? There is no other person who can speak for me.”
“Meaning you will not be bound by my wishes.”
“Meaning you are not bound by responsibility for me.”
She was getting very good at picking up the tenor of his thoughts. He would have to watch that. “You are wrong. I have been responsible since I accepted your suggestion in a dark garden. Nothing you can say will absolve me.”
“If you insist on being a martyr, I can't stop you.”
“But I play the role so well, don't you think?” He heard the bitterness in the soft words, though he hoped she did not.
“Excellently, which is why I feel sure you think New Orleans is in ashes because of you.”
“It seems logical.” He pulled hard with the paddle.
She shook her head. “Because you think you should have stopped Don Esteban? I can't see how.”
“I could have killed him as I would a snake, without giving him a chance to strike.”
“You aren't made that way.”
“No, and isn't that a fault?” He waited patiently to hear what she would say.
Her eyes were clear as they met his. “Some might think so; it doesn't seem that way to me. To kill without thought would make you as ruthless as Don Esteban. But I could always claim my portion of blame. If I had not been with you, you might have approached my stepfather's house differently, with more quietness and better luck.”
“Or never have been able to approach at all? Never mind. The decision for how we went about it was mine.”
“But I caused you danger by my presence and contributed to the fire as well. There might have been no crossing of swords with Don Esteban if I had not interfered, no fight in the chapel.”
“That would have been a pity, since I required an excuse to kill him, especially after seeing Vicente. It wasn't your fault I failed.”
“Will you rob me of the pleasures of guilt, as well as responsibility for myself?”
“It was never my intention to rob you of anything.”
The words hung between them as their eyes, soft brown and cool gray, met and clung. Color that had nothing to do with sunburn rose slowly into her face.
“Intentions change,” she said.
He gave a short nod. “And people.”
“What are you two arguing about back there?” Vicente asked over his shoulder.
“Robbery and good intentions,” Refugio answered in clipped tones.
“The box of gold? I looked inside, you know.”
There was condemnation in the young voice. Refugio's reply was controlled, yet shaded with weariness. “Not exactly, no.”
“I think we should speak of it. You might have given some thought to how I would feel about being made a party to theft.” His brother's gaze was earnest, yet uneasy.
Refugio sighed. “I would have, if I had known they had turned you into a self-righteous dolt at the university.”
Vicente managed a grin. “That's right, take my head off. I'm used to it; Señorita Pilar isn't.”
“Your address for the lady,” Refugio said, “is informal for such recent acquaintance.” “I knew her before you, my brother.”
“Did you?”
The words held that degree of politeness that could be translated as a warning. Vicente ignored it. “She came to me first.”
“Then why did you not rescue her, bearing her off across your saddle like some gallant Moorish prince of legend?”
“She did not ask my help. Alas.”
The implication in his voice was guileful. Refugio ignored it, inclining his head in Pilar's direction. “Felicitations. You seem to have acquired a champion. Another one.”
“I'm honored,” she said.
“I thought you might be,” he answered bitingly before turning back to his brother. “But what of the gold? I haven't seen the casket.”
Vicente's face clouded again. He gave a swift shake of his head. “I couldn't take it, of course, once I knew what was in it.”
“You left it?”
Vicente gave a slow nod, his gaze caught by the amusement rising in his older brother's eyes.
“How brief is the reign of champions,” Refugio said, his voice choked with the rise of rich laughter. “The gold belonged to the lady, my gallant, and she had use for it.”
“You left it,” Pilar asked in disbelief. “You left it behind in Don Esteban's house?”
“It — It seemed the right thing to do.” Vicente squirmed uncomfortably on the boat seat, looked to his brother for support. Refugio was unresponsive.
“And the house burned,” Pilar said.
“I believe it did,” Vicente agreed, his voice weak.
Pilar stared at him, then the frown between her eyes faded as her gaze narrowed to the scar on his cheek. She shook her head. “I suppose I have no right to complain. I injured you far more by involving you in my troubles. I . . . should apologize.”
“There's no need. Refugio would never allow me to join him before, but now he can't deny me. I'm grateful to you.”
“He wouldn't allow it?”
Vicente flashed his brother a glance both defiant and warm. “He seemed to think one bandit in the family was enough.”
“It is,” Refugio said shortly.
Pilar and Vicente exchanged a wry smile, then turned away, facing forward once more.
Refugio, thinking of what Pilar had said, watching the determined straightening of her backbone, felt compassion and something more shift inside him. He was sorry for her disappointment, but at the same time aware of a niggling, shameful triumph. She needed him still, and would for some time to come.
After a moment he lifted his voice in a chanson that set an easy, even pace for the paddle. His men picked it up, and they sent the boat skimming north and west, following the river.
It was dark once more when they made camp. Afterward, when they should have been sleepi
ng, they sat around the glowing coals which were fingered by blue flames. It was pleasant to relax from the vigilance needed on the river, their hunger satisfied by a fish stew that Isabel had made from two peculiar-looking fish with whiskers that Vicente had caught using one of Pilar's hairpins. Besides that, the smoke helped to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Around them the night pulsed with the sounds of crickets and peeper frogs and other night creatures. The blue-black sky overhead was dusted with stars. The hunting cry of a swamp panther rang out once or twice, a sound like a woman's scream.
They had passed by the village of Baton Rouge not long after dawn that morning. In the hours since, they had seen little sign of habitation. They knew they must watch for the village and fort of Natchez on its high bluff, but for now it seemed they must be the only humans in this vast near-empty wilderness.
There was something intriguing in that thought for Refugio. It was not like Spain, this land; it was too flat and damp, the vegetation too abundant with its dense thickets of trees and tangles of vines that cut and scratched. There were too many strange animals, from alligators and snakes to pointed-nose, scraggly-furred creatures that carried their young in pouches in their stomachs. Yet the singing solitude had an insidious appeal. He thought he could grow used to the softness of the air and the dense quality of the nights.
Spain had had her day. For all the glitter of the court at Madrid, all the ships that sailed the oceans and the colonies still held in far quarters of the globe, the golden moment of supremacy was past. His country had been in decline for nearly a hundred years.
Spain had founded an empire based on being the best, the bravest, the most intelligent, the most noble. Having established it, the powers at the top had found it perfect. They felt it to be so perfect, in fact, that they refused to change, refused to accept new ideas. They had become narrow in thought and action, suspicious of innovation and bitterly protective of the old ways. The wealth gained in the new world had slipped away, dissipated in wars, lost as colonies changed hands with the signing of treaties. Spain was dying, and men such as Don Esteban, like relatives gathered around a death bed, were feasting on its dwindling estate.
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