Sweet Savage Love

by Rosemary Rogers

  Two Mexican officers, catching up with the troop that was already a few miles out of Zacatecas, rode up and started to laugh.

  “Hey amigo—you got troubles? Caught yourself a wild one, eh?”

  “You ought to do like we do to those Juarista women we catch, when they’re not willing,” the other officer said, his teeth a flash of white under his mustache.

  “Won’t take me long,” Beal said between his teeth. He hit her again and she screamed. The imprint of his fingers flamed against the whiteness of her breast.

  “But why waste any time at all? With four of us to hold her down a man could do as he pleased with her, eh? And perhaps she would not have the strength to struggle afterwards!” The Mexican who had spoken first was persistent, his small, bloodshot eyes were fixed on the pale, squirming body of the copper-haired woman. Caramba, but this one was worth having! Even if he had to pay the Norteamericanos for a share in their plunder.

  “Ah, shit,” Pecos grumbled, licking his lips, “why not, Beal? Give her a taste of what’s in store for her—she might’s well get used to it!”

  With a jerk, Matt Cooper pulled the mules to a halt.

  “I’m so goddamn hard for her I can’t stand to wait another minute, hear? I say let’s get on with it.”

  His words were the last thing that Ginny remembered clearly of that night. For the rest of her life, she would try to push the memory far, far back into the recesses of her mind—so far that it wouldn’t come back to haunt her nightmares….

  They tied the lantern to the side of the wagon and threw her onto the ground beside it. When she kept screaming someone stuffed a dirty, foul-tasting neckerchief into her mouth.

  Strangely enough what seemed to hurt her most was the way they dragged her arms and legs apart and held them down. That and the thought of the obscenity of her position as they raped her, one by one. The degradation to her woman’s soul was worse than what they did to her body, for it would heal, eventually. The stickiness of the blood between her thighs mixed with the drying semen. The animal grunts, eyes glaring down into hers, laughter that was not really laughter but a mixture of lust and excitement.

  By the time the last man had his turn at her there was no longer any real need to hold her still. She was slipping into darkness, and did not even know it when Matt Cooper lifted her in his great, strong arms and put her down among the sacks on the wagon bed. Later, he came to lie beside her, while Beal took his turn driving the wagon. And it was in Matt’s arms that Ginny woke up, moaning with pain, feeling her body one great, throbbing ache.

  In his own rough way, Matt was kind to her during the weeks that followed—the weeks of gruelling, exhausting travel in the wake of the Imperialist Mexican armies commanded by General Mejia, who was far away himself, in Mexico City most of the time. Ginny found herself a camp follower, one of the wretched soldaderas who trailed their men, cooked for them, made and broke camp, and serviced their needs. “La gringa soldadera” they called her, and she gained a grudging acceptance from the other women when they saw that her lot was in some ways worse than theirs. For she, after all, had three men to take care of, after all, and one of them was that Norteamericano “fiero”—the man called Beal, who was liked by no one, not even his own compadres. A strange, coldly cruel man who loved to kill, but most of all to torture. It was he who questioned the prisoners they took. And when he took a woman there was always the pain he needed to mete out before his lust could be fully satisfied. Ginny was to learn this, just as she learned to tremble when he crooked his finger at her; to acquiesce quickly to whatever he wanted her to do, without question, because if she did not the agony of her “punishment” would stay with her for days. The man seemed to enjoy his absolute domination of her. Whereas Pecos was only interested in food and the fleeting pleasure he obtained by using her body as an outlet for his lust, Beal was more concerned with breaking her spirit completely. Time and time again, when she failed to satisfy him, or he found some fault he could accuse her of, he would beat her—using his razor strap with cold deliberation, laughing at her helpless struggles, until she was a collapsed, sobbing heap at his feet, pleading with him brokenly not to hurt her anymore. On one of these occasions Tom Beal did for the first time what he was to do again, when he thought she needed to be reminded who owned her. He knew that several of the Mexican officers wanted her—they would make excuses to ride back to the baggage wagons, and make bold, admiring comments, asking her to pull the ragged black rebozo off her head so they could see her hair…or to raise her skirts a trifle. She never answered them, and would look straight ahead until they got tired of their games and rode away. But Beal—Beal arranged to sell her to one of them, a capitan who fancied himself a great lover.

  “He’s promised me ten pesos,” he told her, grinning wickedly. “See you bring it all back to me, you whore!”

  She gave an uncontrollable cry of shame and fear and he caught her by the hair, tugging her cruelly back to her feet.

  “Ain’t so grand now, are you? I remember those fancy airs you useta have, just like you was a lady. But I knew you, bitch! I knew you for what you are, right from the beginning! An’ remember this, you’re mine—you’ll whore for me when I tell you to, and you’ll crawl to me if I say the word. Just you remember good!”

  He flung her away from him and she lay still, only her shoulders moving as she sobbed, quietly and hopelessly.

  But if Beal contributed to the hell that her life had become, Ginny found that Matt Cooper helped, in his way, to make it slightly more bearable. He seemed to take an almost childish pride in her, and if she had clothes to wear, such as they were, it was Matt who found them for her. It was Matt, too, who gave her a knife, and taught her how to use it.

  “Some of these women are pretty wild, tough customers. They’re always gettin’ in fights—pullin’ knives on each other. Wouldn’t want to see your purty face marked up, baby. Matt’s gonna teach you. Just be sure Tom Beal don’t know nothin’ about it, see?” Matt boasted he was the “best damn knife-fighter in the hills” and he taught her every trick he could think of. He enjoyed wrestling with her too, teaching her the names of various holds; shouting with laughter when her legs got tangled up in her skirt and she sprawled under him in the dirt. At times like this, all she had to do was haul the skirt up and “grab him a little bit” as he put it. The other women shrieked with laughter when this happened, but they forbore to start any fights with la gringa. “That one,” they would say, half-admiring, half-disparaging, “she has learned to fight just like a man, no?”

  Even the lazy Pecos began to think it looked like fun.

  “Teachin’ a woman to wrassle, ain’t that somethin’? Like to see one of them other bitches try tanglin’ with our little soldadera, huh, Matt?” He taught her some waterfront tricks he’d picked up on the wharfs in San Francisco.

  Mainly from a purely animal, primitive sense of self-preservation, Ginny learned fast. More, this same animal kind of furtiveness kept her from letting Tom Beal discover how much she was really learning. Beal, who took such pleasure in beating her, in slapping her around without provocation, reminding her she was a whore.

  “Ah—leave her alone! She ain’t done nothin’!” Matt would shout when he was around. And it was only the fact that Beal was the slightest bit afraid of big Matt and his temper that saved her from disfigurement or worse.

  The Imperialist armies, a sprawling, disorganized collection of men and their camp followers, kept falling back. The gray-tunicked counter-guerillas ravaged the fringes of the retreating army, like a pack of snarling, ravenous coyotes—striking in the darkness at anything and anyone they could find. Most of them had ridden with Quantrill during the civil war in the States. Now, in name at least, they fought for the Emperor Maximilian.

  Caught between opposing armies, the countryside lay bare and ravaged under an equally pitiless sun. This was the Meseta Central, the dry valley that sloped upward in a succession of plateaus until one came to the cool mountains
of the Central Highlands. Mejia’s army moved back and forth, trying to trap the army of Juarista General Mariano Escobedo. But Escobedo, who had learned guile, always managed to avoid an engagement unless it could not be helped. In the meantime Juarista guerillas harried the Imperialist soldiers in every way possible—striking; then fading back into the barrancas. Mejia sent a force to relieve Matamoras, the emperor’s port on the Gulf, and found it already lost to the Juaristas. Rumor had it that Mejia himself had been captured, but released by order of General Escobedo. He went back to Mexico City, licking his wounds, leaving his army to keep fighting.

  As the Juarists began at last to advance relentlessly, there came news that the French in their turn were pulling back even further. Chihuahua and Saltillo had been evacuated long before—Camargo had fallen. Durango was now their most northerly outpost to the west. And in San Luis Potosí the French bugles still blew over the parade grounds.

  All this meant very little to the undisciplined Imperialist hordes, who felt that they were now being called up to do most of the fighting. Refugees thronged the roads, overtaking the army in their headlong flight. These, of course were the supporters of Maximilian. Rich hacendados with their families and their most precious possessions, escorted by bands of armed vaqueros. Merchants, villagers who feared reprisals from the victorious Juaristas when their towns were taken.

  The women would screech with laughter when smart, closed carriages rattled past them. They would spit in the road and jeer.

  “They’re all piss-scared of the Juaristas, look at them go! Afraid they’ll steal their fat, ugly wives and daughters, pah, who’d want them?” They made obscene gestures at the ladies who watched through the canvas carriage blinds.

  Only Ginny kept herself apart from such sport. Her head and shoulders completely covered by a reboza that hid her hair, she would ride the wagon with her bare legs dangling—now as brown and thorn-scratched as the legs of the others. Sometimes she walked, especially when Beal was close. She never dared raise her head, on these occasions. Always the thought came to her that perhaps, in one of those carriages, someone she had met might have passed. What would they think, if they only knew? She tried to stop herself from too much thinking of the past, and did not much care what lay in the future. She had forced herself into a kind of numbness, in which she could accept everything that happened to her with a kind of apathy. And the only time she seemed to throw off this apathy, the air of sullen resignation that had become so much a part of her, was when she danced. It was the only occupation the women had to make them forget their weariness and the hard work—the endless marching.

  Someone would start to strum on a guitar, and demand that the women dance. After a while, some of the men would join in too. They danced the fiery peasant dances of Mexico—the jarabe, the corrido—and sometimes the fandango. Watching the Rositas, the Chiquitas and the Lupes dance, Ginny could hardly fight the need to do so herself. It was one thing she had always loved in Mexico—the music of the Spaniards. Wild, sobbing, primitive music—dances that spoke of love and desire, passion and hate and dishonor. Under the tutelage of some of the other women, and to the accompaniment of delighted “olés” Ginny actually found some pleasure in dancing—even in learning the sometimes intricate steps—the palmas, or hand-clapping, and the rhythmic finger-snapping. She would think, bitterly, it’s because I no longer have a soul that I pick up things so easily. And then she’d think, What do I care? I can lose myself in the music when I dance, at least.

  It was the only thing that made her forget that she had become dirt—lower than the whores who walked the streets of the cities. She despised herself for continuing to live—for wanting to survive, with the fierce natural urge of the starving and the destitute.

  As they drew closer to San Luis Potosí, the rumors continued to fly thick and fast, and no one knew what to believe. The French were not “concentrating” as Marshal Bazaine had pretended, but were retreating in earnest. Their Emperor Louis Napoleon had denied the Treaty of Miramar—under the deluge of angry notes from Secretary Seward he was beginning to have second thoughts about the wisdom of continuing the French intervention in Mexico. Soon Maximilian would be on his own, supported only by the Loyalist armies of Marquez, Miramon and Mejia—and in the meantime the Juarist armies were being strengthened by volunteers from the provinces.

  Ginny heard the gossip and its vehement denial with a kind of apathy. What difference did it make to her any longer? Now she had the Juaristas to fear as well, if she ever fell into their hands. They would rape and kill her without question and without mercy—was she not a camp follower of Mejia’s army, and worse, the woman of the hated counter-guerillas? If only that terrible, bloody day and night had not happened! If only Steve was still alive. If only she had something to hope for!

  They saw the flickering lights of San Luis Potosí late one evening, when the straggling “army” made camp on a mesa north of the town. Once a small mining town and a health resort of sorts it had suddenly become a city of bustling activity, surrounded by trenches and earthworks hastily thrown up by French sappers. Hotels were crowded, and cantinas did a thriving business. Performances were given every night at the small theatre, which was always packed. Here in San Luis, pro-French sentiment ran high, and the Juaristas confined their activities to the nearby mountains, where they hid in small Indian villages and swooped down to harass travellers on the mountain roads.

  Beal surprised Ginny with a present of a garish red dress, picked up on one of his “raids” on a small Juarista village. He tossed it at her carelessly with his wolfish grin, and she could not help wondering, even as she took it, what had happened to the woman who had owned such a dress.

  “Wear it tonight. We’re goin’ to town. An’ don’t get your hopes up either,” he continued viciously. “There are Frenchies around here, but your colonel friend is still in Durango, fighting off Juaristas.”

  She had learned to say nothing; to do nothing except what he told her to do. Under the pale scrutiny of his eyes, biting her lip to control her involuntary shudders, she began to pull off the ragged camisa and skirt. He watched her critically, noting the hollows at the base of her neck, and the way the thinness of her face exaggerated the high cheekbones.

  “Shit!” he commented, “you’re getting real skinny, ain’t you? Don’t forget to comb your hair out—an’ get some color in your face, or I’ll put some there like this…” and he slapped her, knocking her backwards. “An’ you damn well better be on your best behavior tonight, too. We ain’t been paid for quite a while, and I need me some dinero.” He grinned at her, knowing that she knew what he meant.

  “I’ll be ready to leave in about fifteen minutes,” was his parting shot. “Mind you’re all spruced up and waitin’ by then. Better take that new reboza Matt gave you—that one you bin wearin’ recently looks too dirty and raggedy for company.”

  Ginny had hoped desperately for Matt’s protection, but when Beal came to fetch her in a borrowed wagon, he was alone. He told her with a thin, evil smile that he knew very well what she was thinking that Matt and Pecos had already headed for a night of drinking and brawling on the town.

  Ginny shivered from cold, in spite of the fact that her new white lace shawl was wrapped closely around her head and shoulders. San Luis in the fold of the mountains, and the night air seemed to pierce chilly through the thin material of her gown. It had been sewn for a woman much smaller than she was—cut low in front and at the back, and reaching just above her bare ankles. It clung too tightly to her slim figure, revealing all too clearly that she was naked underneath it. A whore’s dress. But then, that’s what I am, after all, she thought dully. What did it matter, after all? There was no escape from Beal, and he could make her do whatever he wanted, anyway.

  French sentries hailed them, and she sat silently, her head hung under their bold scrutiny. Frenchmen. Even they seemed preferable to the kind of man Beal was—the kind of man he picked for her.

  They rode thro
ugh crowded streets, where well-dressed women strolled with their escorts, cocooned in their safe, pleasant world. French Legionnaires, laughing and bright eyed, strolled past, and the sound of their speech stirred a kind of nostalgia in her. A band played in the plaza; lights spilled out of the open doors of cantinas. But it was towards the other, shabbier part of town that Beal took her. Here the streets were narrower, the buildings closer together. Whores quarrelled in doorways—two drunken French soldiers, supporting each other as they reeled up the uneven sidewalk, sang a bawdy song off key.

  He took her to a cantina that did not even boast a sign over its open, cracked and warped shutters. Here was heat, at last, but it was the heat of unwashed bodies too closely packed together. The music, provided by two broken-down guitarists, was frenetic; the bar no more than a rough, wooden counter running the length of one wall. The laughter was loud, shrill and drunken. Men shouted at each other and called drunkenly for more tequila, for women. And the few women who frequented this place were, for the most part, sleazy slatterns, their dresses slit up the side to show skinny, bowed legs.

  As usual, Beal chose a table where he could sit with his back to the wall—not too far from the door. When it came to self-preservation, he was a man of careful habit.

  There were a few Frenchmen here—all soldiers. Some hard-bitten Americans, who seemed to keep to themselves. The rest of the crowd was composed mainly of cazadores of the Imperialist army, some of whom recognized Beal and shouted raucously at him, and a sprinkling of peons and vaqueros in their charro suits.

  Ginny found a dirty-looking tin mug filled with tequila slapped down in front of her. “Better drink up, it’ll make you look less sour,” Beal ordered. She sipped obediently, watching his pale, shiny eyes survey the crowd; noticing how he had gulped his first drink down and was already ordering another. Some soldiers had made room for them at their table and they leaned over Ginny, trying to see more of her breasts, leering at her as they made sly, whispered comments. She pretended not to hear. A Legionnaire, wearing corporal’s stripes, was leaning on the bar rather morosely. He began to stare at her and she found herself looking back at him almost pleadingly. Now I’m really becoming one, she thought sickly. But better a Frenchman than one of these pigs.