by Jane Toombs
“We can get under the blanket,” he offered, pulling her down onto the cot.
She made no resistance.
Ezra lay on his side, holding her close to him, his throbbing sex thrust against the soft skin of her thighs. He caressed her back, ran his hand along the curve of her hip.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what came next. He did. And he wanted very much to do it. He was on fire with the need to thrust inside her. But he waited, stroking her. She yielded to every move he made, but he sensed her unwillingness. He wanted her to want him and he knew she not only didn’t but wasn’t even pretending she did.
“Is it me?” he asked hoarsely, pulling slightly away from her.
“What? I don’t understand.
“Is there something about me you don’t like?”
“No, Ezra, I like you very much. Better than most.”
“Then why are you so afraid?”
“I’m not afraid of you. Not anymore.”
He looked at her face in the flickering light of the candle on the wall. Her eyes were pools of shadow that told him nothing.
“But you were afraid at first.’’
She nodded. ‘“Because you are a tall man.”
Ezra tended to forget he’d shot up to six feet. Still, what did that have to do with anything?
“Big men sometimes choose me because I am so small. Because they like to hurt me.” She seemed to sense his confusion. “Not when they take me, not that. It is not very much different, one man from another, doing that.”
With her words, his desire lessened. She reached down and touched his sex lightly. He gasped as her fingers stroked him.
“I think we have talked enough,” she said.
Her hands urged him to move over her, guided him inside her. Everything faded but the overwhelming excitement of her inner warmth and softness. He moved and thrust, his passion out of control, mounting, peaking. Exploding. Yet when he was finished and lay resting on the cot, Ezra felt cheated of all he had wanted. He’d tried somehow to make more of this than Juanita was willing to grant him. He watched her wash herself, seeing for the first time a pattern of dark stripes across her bare back and buttocks.
He sat up. “What are those marks on your back?” he asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I told you. From a man who wanted to hurt me. He used his belt.”
Her voice was matter-of-fact. “I can’t tell which men will be like that until we come upstairs, and then it’s too late.”
He felt sick, the liquor sour in his stomach. He rose from the cot and dressed quickly.
Juanita, her dress covering her once more, put her hand on his arm.
“With you it was very sweet,” she said.
Her smile was also sweet, but Ezra thought her eyes were haunted. He realized with a shock he was seeing Violet’s face instead of Juanita’s, and he understood then that he’d chosen this girl because she reminded him of Violet.
Ezra leaned over and kissed Juanita gently on the lips. “I wish you didn’t have to work here,” he said.
She drew back. “It’s not so bad. I’ll soon have enough money so I can get married. Where else could I earn such money?” She smoothed her hair. “I don’t think you understand, Ezra.”
Hastily he reached into his pocket for his money, handed all he found to Juanita, thinking that, no, he didn’t understand. Anymore than he understood why Violet let herself be hurt and humiliated by Billy’s indifference.
“But I have given myself to Billy,” Violet had told him when he’d tried to talk to her about it. “It’s the same as being married. A wife must stay with her husband. Be true to him, no matter what.”
“You’re not married to him,” he’d protested, but Violet had said he was a man and men didn’t know how women felt about these things.
Ezra was sure Billy didn’t care one way or the other whether Violet was with him or not. And Billy certainly didn’t think of himself as Violet’s husband.
Ezra trailed down the stairs after Juanita. He found Billy at the monte table. Winning. He sat down and managed to lose what little money he had left.
He purposely didn’t look around, not wanting to risk seeing Juanita with another man.
He and Billy left El Paso just after midnight, following a road that wound downstream along the Rio Grande. The country was desolate under a sickle moon. Barren.
“Enjoy yourself?” Billy asked.
“Lost all my money.”
Billy laughed. “Maybe I got ahold of your luck tonight. How about the girl?” Ezra shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. About her.
“Well, amigo, you were the one who chose her. I have no complaints about my evening.” He grinned at Ezra.
“How’d you like to be a Texas Ranger?” he asked after a moment.
Ezra stared at him.
“We’re going to join up, Ez. Going to be full-fledged Rangers by the time we get to that San Elizario calabozo. First of all, though, we’ll find a horse for old Jose. As I remember, he’s partial to roans,”
“You think we look like Rangers?” Ezra asked.
“Why not? It’s all in the way you do the thing that counts.”
Ezra’s spirits lifted. It was plain Billy had one of his daredevil plans in mind. There’d be excitement and maybe fireworks. Nothing so dull as tying a rope to jail window bars and hoping your horse could pull them free from the adobe.
By the time they reached San Elizario it was past three o’clock. Ezra had gotten over feeling tired and his nerves were taut with expectation as he followed Billy along a narrow alleyway a block from the jail, leading a rangy roan Billy had separated from a remuda at an outlying ranch.
“We’ll leave the horses here.” Billy muttered.
They dismounted and tethered them to a gatepost at the end of the alley.
No lights showed. The entire town seemed to be asleep.
Billy and Ezra stepped out of the alley. Up ahead a dim glow showed from a window in the jail. As they neared it, Ezra saw it was a dilapidated, small adobe.
Billy strode directly to the wooden plank door and thumped his fist against it.
“Open up!” he ordered, then repeated the command in Spanish, easing his Colt from his holster as he spoke.
Ezra pulled his own pistol.
After a moment a man’s voice from inside called, “Quien es?”
‘‘Texas Rangers,” Billy said in Spanish. “Open up. It’s cold as hell out here and we’ve got two American prisoners.”
Ezra heard keys clank together. The door swung slowly open, Billy shoved in, thrusting the muzzle of his Colt into the fat belly of a sleepy-eyed jailer.
The Mexican raised his hands and Ezra, close behind Billy, disarmed the man, then grabbed his keys and handed them to Billy.
As Billy reached for the keys, a guard appeared in an inner doorway. His hand dropped toward his holster.
“I wouldn’t,” Ezra said, finger on the trigger.
“El Chivato!” the guard exclaimed, looking from Ezra to Billy. His hands rose into the air.
Ezra eased his finger off the trigger. After disarming the second man, Billy left Ezra guarding the two Mexicans and walked through the open door to the cells.
“Jose?” he called. “Como le va, amigo?”
“Nombre de Dios,” a voice said, “it really is you, Billy!”
Ezra heard the key rattle in the cell lock and Billy appeared with Jose Chavez behind him.
“I spit on this miserable hole!” Chavez said. “Give me one of those pistols, compadre, so I can make certain these bastardos never lock me in it again.”
“No shooting, Jose,” Billy warned. “We been nice and quiet so far. Find yourself a saddle and let’s vamoose.”
Chavez didn’t argue.|
Ezra went for the horses, bringing them to the jail. Billy held the guards at gunpoint while Chavez threw a saddle on the roan. They mounted and galloped out of town, heading back to El Paso.
As soon as San Elizario was behind them, Billy pulled up alongside Chavez and handed over a silver-handled Colt he’d taken from the fat jailer.
“Gracias,” Chavez said. “How did you find me?”
“Your cousin Miguel. You planning to join up with me again, Jose?”|
“I have a wife in Chihuahua now, Billy. You understand.”
“Sure. If you happen to be around Fort Sumner sometime, look me up.
“I’ll do that. Send for me if you’re ever in jail, Billy.”
“I don’t expect to be behind bars again, old friend.”
“Anyway, you don’t look much like a Texas Ranger.” Jose laughed, waved, and turned off the El Paso road to be swallowed up in the dark.
Ezra tried to relax, his muscles still tense from the confrontation with the jailers. Would he have shot the guard if the man had grabbed for his gun?
He’d never yet shot a man face-to-face like that. He set his jaw.
He could do it if he had to. Would have done it back at the jail if he’d had to.”
“Well, now, Ez,” Billy said. “We’ve got old Jose taken care of. I noticed some mighty nice looking horses at that ranch where I got the roan. I think we ought to bring a few of them back to the Territory with us. How about it?”
Ezra had almost gotten over his squeamishness about helping himself to other men’s livestock. Still, it was hard to forget his father’s teaching.
“A thief shall not inherit the Kingdom of God,” Papa had warned. “Heed my words, Ezra, for of all the sins, it can be the most insidious.”
He led a different life in a different land from Papa, he told himself. What he’d learned from his father had no bearing on the here and now.
“Let’s go find that remuda, Billy,” he said.
Chapter 17
By noon the sun had come out and Tessa’s spirits lifted. “I’ve no idea where we are.” she said to Vincente. “I was headed for the Pecos when I started out, but now I’m all turned around.”
He glanced at her and she managed a smile.
“The Pecos is that way.” He waved to his left. “We will stay away from the road along the river since my former companeros may seek me there. I think you would not care to meet up with them, no?”
Her grimace made him laugh.
She was determined not to let him know her true feelings. If he believed she wanted to be with him, he might relax his vigilance long enough for her to escape. But he’d reminded her that it was dangerous to be alone in this country.
She might run from Vincente only to find herself a captive of another gang of roving desperados.
“You have not told me why you were traveling to Sumner,” he said.
“I was looking for my brother. Pat Garrett has sworn to hunt down Billy and the rest of his men. He means to see Billy hang.”
Vincente scowled. “I would like to be there when it happens,”
“Perhaps Sheriff Garrett would arrest you for being an outlaw.”
After a moment Vincente half-smiled. “He might try. I will never be taken alive, 1 assure you.”
That evening, Vincente stopped at a small rancho nestled in a mountain valley. The Mexican family greeted him with shouts of joy and heartfelt embraces.
Tessa found, to her relief, that she was to sleep with the daughters. They spent two days at the rancho, resting the horses and themselves.
By cautious questions in her inadequate Spanish, Tessa discovered they weren’t far from the Mescalero reservation.
“I have watched the Apache women prepare mescal,” Concepcion, the eldest daughter, told Tessa.
“It’s made from a kind of cactus, that’s all I know,” Tessa said.
“The women cut off all the thorny leaves and then chop out the heart of the mescal cactus. They dig a fire pit, put in the heart, cover it with the leaves and dirt, then let it cook slowly. It is like sweet mush when they finish.
I have tasted it but it doesn’t compare to tortillas and frijoles.”
The tortillas and frijoles Concepcion’s mother prepared tasted delicious to Tessa. What would it be like to live in Mexico and be part of a Mexican family? In this one, the parents, their two sons and three daughters all worked hard and seemed happy.
“Soon I, too, will be married.” Concepcion smiled dreamily. “Diego is even now building our casa. He is very handsome. Of course Vincente is also a fine-looking man. I have no doubt he will make you a good husband.”
Tessa couldn’t respond to this. She looked across the room at Vincente.
She wouldn’t deny his good looks, slim, dark with a tinge of silver at his temples. He was even distinguished. But to marry him?
Tessa sighed. She longed for the warmth of a family, but she didn’t want Vincente, wouldn’t want him even if he hadn’t turned outlaw. His ways were not hers.
She hadn’t asked these friends of his for help, feeling they might refuse, and then
Vincente would watch her more closely. If she ever did escape him, she decided, she’d marry Calvin and let him take her and Jules to Santa Fe where he preferred to live. They would have a settled life. She wouldn’t ever be disturbed in mind or body by Calvin’s demands. It was what she wanted.
Not Mark, fiddle-footing over the country, with, for all she knew, a Susie in every hamlet.
But she might not ever see either Calvin or Mark again.
Tessa and Vincente rode away from the rancho the next morning. After an hour on the trail, they crested a rise and saw a group of nine riders below leading a string of horses.|
“Back,” Vincente warned. “Best not to be seen.”
Tessa, about to wheel her roan, held. She stared hard at one of the men.
“Ezra!” she cried, kicking her horse so he lunged ahead too fast, sliding and slipping downhill.
“Ezra!” she shouted again just as a shot rang out behind her.
The roan stumbled and fell, tumbling her over his head.
Dazed and short of breath, she struggled to get up. The horse didn’t move.
Men shouted below her. Vincente’s sorrel plunged toward her from the top of the hill.
Vincente was coming for her, Colt in his hand. He’d shot her horse. Would she be next?
He didn’t fire and Tessa realized he meant to scoop her up onto his horse.
Recapture her. She tried to run downhill, but she knew she’d never make it--he was too close, reaching out for her.
She heard the clean crack of a Winchester. Vincente jerked back. A red flower blossomed over his heart. Then he thudded to the ground and rolled past her to lie face up at her feet, unmoving.
Tessa stood frozen.
Finally she took a step. Another. Dropped to her knees beside Vincente. His brown eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. She covered her face with her hands, unable to bear the sight of his lifeless face. She’d wanted to escape from him, but not this way.
“Tessa.”
Ezra’s voice. His hand touched her shoulder.
She dropped her hands and allowed her brother to help her to her feet. Billy stood beside him, rifle in hand.
“Got him through the heart,” Billy said.
Men climbed the hill toward them. One was much smaller than the others.
Not a man, A woman. Tessa’s hand flew to her mouth.
“No!” she cried. “Don’t let her see--”
But Violet, ahead of the rest, was on them before either Billy or Ezra understood what Tessa meant.
Violet looked at the dead man. She fell on her knees, touched his face. Her mouth opened, but no words came. She swayed, then slumped across her father’s body.
“Jesus, it’s old Gabaldon,” Billy said.|
Ezra lifted Violet into his arms, carrying her down the hill. Billy offered Tessa his arm, saying, “Time to move on. One of the boys’ll get your saddle.”
“We just can’t leave Vincente like this,” she objected. “Think how Violet would feel.”
“He threw her out, didn’t he
?” Billy said. “But I reckon we can bury him.”
As Tessa watched the men pile rocks over Vincente’s shallow grave, her throat ached with unshed tears. “Flower of my heart,” he’d called her, this man she didn’t love, could never have loved. And yet she mourned him. She sent up a prayer asking for his forgiveness. It seemed there’d been nothing but deaths ever since she came to the New Mexico Territory. Her father, her friends, John and Alex. And now Vincente.
He’s the last, she vowed. I’ll stick to Ezra like a burr until he agrees to leave this life. They rode on, Tessa on a buckskin a good deal livelier than the roan had been. It was some time before she could devote much attention to Violet.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Tessa told her.
Violet turned to her. Tessa was shocked at her thin, pale face. The girl must have some sickness besides the upset of her father’s death.
“Even when he didn’t want me, I still loved my father,” Violet said.
“I think he loved you, too, despite everything.”
Violet shook her head. “He could only love those who behaved the way he wished them to.”
Tessa was silent. Violet might well be speaking the truth.
“You were traveling with him?” Violet asked.
“He rescued me from Comancheros,” Tessa temporized. “He wasn’t a bad man.”
“My Billy shot him,” Violet said. “Did you know that? He shot my father. It took only one bullet. My Billy is a very good marksman.
Tessa bit her lip. The girl spoke flatly with no emotion in her voice. She hadn’t yet shed a tear for her father. The change in her from the vivacious, pretty Violet she’d first met made Tessa’s heart ache.
Ezra leaned forward to look past Violet at his sister. “Do you mind telling me what you were doing that you had to be rescued from Comancheros in the first place?”
“I was on my way to find you.”
“What for?” Alarm flared in Ezra’s eyes. “There isn’t anything wrong with Jules, is there?”
She shook her head. “He’s fine.”
“Now you’ve found me,” Ezra said.
“Yes.” This wasn’t the time to go into her reasons.
