She asked him questions about Mexico, and about Juarez and for once he seemed to take her seriously, and gave her considered, honest answers. It was the big landowners, wanting to keep their miniature kingdoms, who had supported Maximilian. He told her of the system of peonage which rendered men slaves to their patron, working all their lives on land that could never belong to them. Juarez had wanted things to be different—he had broken the power of the church, insisted on schooling for even the children of poor Indians. He represented a threat to the way of life of the wealthy landowners, “criollas” most of them.
“And you,” Ginny persisted, “what about you? Surely you don’t consider yourself a Mexican? Why would you want to take sides?”
To this question, at least, he would not give her a straight answer. “Maybe I wanted to know how it felt to fight for a cause,” he said once, lightly; and the next time she asked, “You’re surely not forgetting I’m a half-breed?”
He continued to puzzle her. She was almost as familiar with the shape and texture of his body as she was with her own, and yet she knew nothing about him—who he was or what he was. He was no ordinary half-breed gunman, she knew that much. Sometimes he spoke like an educated man, and sometimes worse than any illiterate. He knew Indians, on both sides of the border, and he seemed to know the country they were travelling through, so he was as familiar with Mexico as he was in the United States. It seemed unusual, to say the least, that any man should have travelled so much in his lifetime—although, of course, she would tell herself with a little stab of contempt, he had probably spent most of his life running from the law.
“Where are you taking me this time? Dear God, I’m so tired of riding, of running!”
The plains, their emptiness slashed through by barrancas, or small canyons, seemed to shimmer under the heat, and Ginny felt unutterably dirty and weary.
Surprisingly, he stopped to draw her a rough map in the sandy soil.
“We are in the Meseta Central—here are the mountain ridges, the Sierra Madres, on either side—” he drew jagged lines “—and we’re here, somewhere in the center, in the province of Zacatecas. Ahead of us there are more mountains—Mexico City. But that’s quite a way farther, and don’t look at me so hopefully, sweetheart, I’m not taking you there, not yet.”
“But why? Why not? I’m of no use to you now, you can let me go, and travel more quickly without me, why do you need me now?”
She saw the way he looked at her and flushed, hearing him laugh softly.
“Blushes become you, do you know that? Even under the tan you’ve acquired.”
“Oh, damn you, Steve Morgan!”
She whirled away from him and ran for her horse, mounted it with her ragged skirts flying, not bothering to turn her head to see if he followed. She dug her heels into the animal’s side and felt it spring forward. A sudden, unreasoning fear, mixed with depression, seized her. What am I doing here? What will become of me? Why won’t he set me free? She leaned low over the horse’s neck and felt the hot breeze whip against her face. The hat he had given her to wear flew from her head, hanging from her neck by its cord.
She rode with a kind of desperate, mindless fury, feeling the fluid motion of the horse under her. It was only when the animal began to tire and slacken its speed that she became aware that all along, he’d been riding abreast of her. She lifted her head to scream her hate and fear at him and saw his arm come out, catching her around the waist and sweeping her from her saddle to his.
“I’ve missed riding with you and holding your body close this way,” he said softly in her ear. “Ginny, you fool, did you really think I’d let you run away? What were you running to?”
“Away—anywhere, it doesn’t matter—just away from you, from what you’ve turned me into.” She half-screamed the words at him, gasping for breath. “Haven’t you done enough? Do I have to be exhibited in cheap saloons and bawdy houses as your whore? Must I be dragged along wherever you go like a—a trophy of war? What are you trying to do to me?”
“Don’t forget, niña, that I only took what you kept offering me in the first place! And then there were the others—Carl Hoskins, your French lover, the debonair Captain Remy—do you think he’ll be waiting for you in Mexico City? Is that why you’re so anxious to get there?”
She had goaded him into anger at last, she thought, and didn’t care. Let him be angry with her, what could he do to her now that he had not done already?
“Whatever I am, it’s what you’ve turned me into! And if being some man’s mistress is all that’s left to me now, then I’d rather be a demi-mondaine and choose my own lovers than be your cheap camp follower!”
“In that case, Ginny, if it’s your ambition to be a puta, you’d best learn how one is treated! And remember, no fighting, no struggling, a man expects something in return for his money!”
Before she could say a word, he reined the horse up sharply and slid off its back, carrying her with him,
She would not yield, not this time. She would not let his arms and his kisses melt her. Perhaps, if she refused to fight, refused to feel, he’d tire of her and let her go.
He held her hurtfully by the arm, but at least he thought to throw his blanket-roll down among the clumps of sagebrush that littered the hard ground. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken her out in the open, lying on the hard, unyielding earth. She felt him push her backwards and lay stiffly and rigidly where he’d left her, noting almost with triumph the way the temper showed hotly in his eyes when she ignored his rude demand that she undress, and quickly.
“If that’s how you want it,” his muttered words were a threat—almost unbelievingly, Ginny saw him pull the knife he always carried in a sheath strapped to his leg. He used it on her clothes, then, while she forced herself to lie still—cutting them swiftly and savagely away from her shrinking flesh. When it was done, he flung the knife carelessly aside and stood over her, his hands unbuckling his belt.
“Spread your legs for me, puta,” he said almost casually. “Let’s see how much you are worth.”
The words, the way in which he said them, his assumption of being able to take her so cheaply, so easily, brought sudden life back to her body and she felt as if a tide of furious rage bubbled in her veins, rendering her almost insane with anger and hate.
As he bent over her, she flung her arms outward in a paroxysm of sheer frustration, and her fingers touched the knife he had flung so carelessly away. Hardly thinking, all reaction now, Ginny snatched up the knife, driving the point upward at his body. She felt it slice through flesh—with a shock that jarred her whole body she knew the blade had glanced off bone. Blindly, in a frenzy of fear and fury, she would have struck again, but this time he was prepared for her. His hand caught her wrist and twisted it savagely. When she looked up at him, she saw that the whole side of his shirt was soaked with blood—he sat back on his haunches, Indian fashion, and stared at her as if he hadn’t seen her before.
Ginny’s wrist throbbed horribly but suddenly, as she gazed back at him, she was only barely conscious of the pain. Something stirred in her as she lay there naked under the hot sun, with the sky like a deep blue bowl overhead—something strange and unfamiliar and primitive. Her eyes locked with his, finding them unfathomable.
“You should have been a Comanche squaw after all,” he said suddenly. “But if you had been, I’d be dead by now.”
She said nothing, watching his eyes. There was pain there, she could see that now; and a kind of puzzled wonder too, but no anger.
The blood dripped down his side, down his pants leg, but he did nothing to staunch its flow.
“I still want to make love to you,” he said quietly.
“You’ll bleed to death first!”
But the words were a whisper, and even as she said them he leaned over her again and her body moved to accept his. She felt the warm, sticky wetness of his blood on her breasts, and when she opened her eyes again she could see the buzzards wheeling abov
e them—tiny black specks against blinding blue.
He moved inside her and her body arched to meet his. Her voice sounded drugged, half-dazed.
“I might have killed you—they know—the buzzards. I can see them.”
“And I prefer another kind of death—the little death that comes each time I fuck you, Ginny.”
He spoke to her in fluent French and she gasped with shock and a return of anger, raking her nails down his back like a wildcat until he swore at her in Spanish and then in French, jamming his mouth down against hers in a kiss so violent that she forgot her anger, the words she wanted to scream at him, and became blind to everything but his body, and hers, and the savage hunger in both of them that had to be satisfied.
24
The knife wound, when Ginny looked at it later, appalled her. A deep, wicked gash in his side, under the arm—but Steve told her calmly as she washed it clean that he had survived worse wounds than this one.
“Lucky my rib deflected the blade, or you might have found yourself all alone out here,” he mocked her gently.
“You’re not angry?” she said with surprise as she pulled strips of cloth tight across his chest. He shrugged, wincing as he did so.
“Guess I had it coming. And it’ll teach me not to be careless with that knife in future.” He gave her a strangely thoughtful, measuring look. “Nor with you either. I underestimated you, Ginny. And that streak of stubbornness in you.”
She moved away from him sullenly, and stood with her back to him. She was aware how ridiculous she must look, wearing nothing but his shirt and a clumsy skirt improvised from a blanket.
“I suppose I underestimated you too,” she said waspishly. “You speak French after all, and all this time, all these months you let me think…” She bit her lip in vexation, remembering some of the things the French lieutenant had said to her. Why had Steve pretended? And how was it that he spoke such good French?
“Suppose we don’t underestimate each other any more, then.” He’d come up behind her, she was uncomfortably, tinglingly aware of his presence at her shoulder, but refused to turn.
“Ginny—” his voice was almost a sigh, surprising her. “Look—if you’ll just be patient for a while, maybe things will work out. I was going to tell you back there, when you took off like a wild thing, that by evening tomorrow you’ll be someplace safe. No,” he added hastily, when she swung around to confront him, “not a room over a saloon, or a place like Lilas’. A house. Belongs to a friend of mine, but you’ll have it to yourself. There’ll be a woman to take care of you, too.”
“And you? You’re going to leave me somewhere alone while you…”
“I would have thought you’d be relieved to be rid of me for a while!” His voice had turned flat and emotionless again, she could not tell what he was thinking. She was silent, waiting for him to continue.
“I have to go to Mexico City, Ginny. There are a few arrangements I have to make. And I can’t take you with me, for obvious reasons. But when I get back—”
“If you get back!” she flung at him. “If!! You’re a hunted man, Steve Morgan, and well I know it. Do you really think you’ll be able to ride boldly into Mexico City, of all places, and come back out alive?”
“I’ll come back. But even if I don’t—my Cousin Renaldo will see to it that you’re delivered safely back to your father.”
He would tell her nothing more, even though she alternately pleaded and stormed at him. Nothing that she really wanted to know. He would send her back to her father as soon as he returned, he promised her that much at least. Wasn’t it what she wanted? And if he didn’t come back, Renaldo would see to it. Renaldo was not really his cousin, he admitted. More nearly a kind of uncle, although they were almost the same age. “But in Mexico we call all our relatives cousin or uncle,” he said carelessly.
Well, at least he had promised to set her free, Ginny thought, leaning against him in the old way, sitting up straight again when she felt his almost imperceptible wince of pain. But along with the thought of freedom came a kind of fear, almost a kind of reluctance she was not ready to consider yet. When she did go back, what then? How would they all react—her father, Sonya, everyone who knew what had happened to her? I’ll go back to France, she thought at last, and tried to force herself not to think after that.
The foothills behind them were turning purple with evening when Ginny saw the cattle. A sizeable herd of them, this time, grazing peaceably in the long twilight shadows. And where there were cattle….
She shrank against Steve when she heard the sound of drumming hoofs. The two vaqueros, gaudily-colored neckerchiefs knotted around their brown throats under wide brimmed sombreros, reined up alongside them. They wore guns, both of them, and one of the men had his rifle at the ready, so they were obviously mistrustful, but before she could do more than draw in her breath sharply, they had pulled off their hats, waving them crazily, with their faces breaking into broad grins of recognition.
“Don Esteban!” one of them shouted. “We did not know you were coming!”
“sí, but I told Diego, I said no one else rides that way—and Don Esteban would not miss the birthday fiesta of el patrón. It has been a long time, no?”
Their eyes touched Ginny, slid away politely. For once she was relieved that Steve did not stop to talk at length. He grinned back at the men and made a joking comment about the fiesta and his thirst for aguardiente.
“But I cannot meet my grandfather or my friends looking like a ruffian—I will look for you tomorrow, my old friends, and share some pulque with you. Until tomorrow.”
“Hasta mañana.” The words were the essence of Mexico, Ginny thought rather wryly. Everything waited on tomorrow. And what would hers be?
To cover the embarrassment she had felt when the vaqueros rode up she asked Steve quickly, “Who were they? Did you know them well?”
“Very well. I used to ride with them, and get drunk with them sometimes. They’re my friends.”
“But they called you Don Esteban,” she persisted.
“Oh.” She could feel his shrug. “Don’s a courtesy title. Like calling someone mister in the States. Did you expect me to be something more than a poor vaquero? Does it disappoint you?”
“Since I’ve learned to expect the worst from you you could hardly disappoint me,” she retorted; but curiosity and the desire not to think about the place to which he was taking her made her persist in her questioning.
“Still,” she went on thoughtfully, “I would hardly expect an ordinary cowboy to have as much education as you seem to have. Or to speak fluent French either.”
“Ah, Ginny!” There was a faint tremor of laughter underlying his voice, “I’m afraid I am a disappointment. I never had any formal schooling, you see. I picked up what I could from books and hearing how people talked. And as for the French—I learned it from a French whore in New Orleans. Does that satisfy you?”
She did not believe him—she longed to ask him questions about his American father, but his last statement silenced her. A man like him! Frequenting whores—it was obvious he’d had no dealings with decent women in his past. Her back had stiffened involuntarily, and she felt his arm tighten around her waist.
“No need to be jealous, love—that was long before I met you. And perhaps you can teach me something too.”
His meaning was unmistakable but she refused to rise to the bait and sat in sullen silence until she saw the grove of trees.
They were tall, and looked very old, even in the deep blue light of late evening. Somewhere, she heard a dog barking, and lights showed between the trees as they rode closer. A strange feeling of desolation, almost of déjà vu swept over Ginny, and she heard herself sigh. A grove of trees, welcoming lights, somewhere ahead a house. Perhaps it had been home to Steve once, but she was a stranger. In spite of the odd feeling of familiarity, this place was not familiar to her. And this cousin, what kind of a man was he? How would he react to her presence?
Ther
e was no more time in which to ponder. They were through the grove of trees now, following a curved driveway that led to the house. Ginny had the vague impression of tall shrubs lining the driveway; the heavy scent of some night blooming flower hung in her nostrils.
A shallow flight of steps lit by twin lanterns, led up to a narrow porch that extended all the way around the two storied building. Expecting something smaller, Ginny was surprised first by the size of the house, and then by the sudden, unexpected presence of two armed vaqueros who seemed to materialize out of the shadows. Two dogs, barking wildly, ran ahead.
“I suppose I smell different,” Steve said dryly. Raising his voice slightly he called, “Sit, damn you, you hellhounds!” The barks turned to whimpers as the dogs obeyed, their tails swishing now.
“It’s Don Esteban!” one of the men said. “We were half expecting you, señor, but it’s so late, and the fiesta began yesterday…”
“Where the hell is my cousin? Renaldo! Isn’t he here?”
Steve slid off the horse, tossing the reins to one of the grinning men, and Ginny felt herself lifted off and held close to his chest.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she found herself whispering, “you’ll not take me in there to meet your cousin like this?’
The door opened, and light streamed out, silhouetting the tall and rather stooped man who stood there for an instant, and then ran lightly down to them, his arms outstretched in greeting.
“Esteban! I had a rather garbled message a day ago, but I couldn’t make sense of it. I was half afraid you’d be in Mexico City by now. But it’s so good to see you.”
“I cannot return your abrazo, Renaldo. You see, I have a guest for the little house. It’s unoccupied?”
By this time the man stood before them, but neither his manner nor his tone of voice betrayed any surprise or dismay.
“It’s unoccupied, of course. I hoped you’d come, so I made sure of it. By now, Rosa is waiting there, and you’ll find I had everything kept ready.”
“In that case, I’ll take my friend there directly. She’s tired, and rather embarrassed at meeting you when she’s not at her best, I think. You’ll be introduced later.”
Sweet Savage Love Page 29
