Steve was almost glad of the excuse not to sleep, afraid of the choking nightmares that might return. While the others huddled together, knees drawn up to their chins, he lay on his back and let the rain beat down on his face. Perhaps it would drown him! Ginny. Ever since he had seen her again he had not been able to think of anything else. All his instincts had told him to stay away from her in the first place, and yet he had found himself wanting her. Even in the face of her screaming hate he had continued to want her. And even now, torturing him, was the knowledge that even while he hated her, he craved her. Just once. To take her just once more, to wipe from her mind and her body the memory of all the other men she must have had, and then, when she began to moan her defeat under him, to squeeze the life from her lying, treacherous, beautiful throat.
“It’s too damned wet to get very much accomplished around here this morning,” one of the engineers was saying dolefully to the mud-spattered young soldier who sat astride his horse beside the cook wagon. He turned around when the prisoners shambled up; all of them looking bloodshoteyed and unutterably weary. “They’re a sorry lot, aren’t they? They send their prison dregs here to us—all lifers. Dangerous characters too, though they don’t look it. Still, they’re strong enough—look at all those muscles.” Used to being talked about as if they were animals that couldn’t even comprehend speech, the convicts showed no reaction as they waited, bodies sagging with tiredness.
“The Condesa de Valmes needs the wall around her hacienda repaired, and her peons are all off trying to save the coffee crop. We’re sending you along to build that wall—and you’d better have it done by nightfall!”
Just before midday, the Condesa de Valmes, who was a softhearted woman, sent her servants out with food and water for the toiling wretches who worked so hard at repairing her wall. A little later, she emerged from the house herself, trailed by two vaqueros; twirling a dainty parasol over the high-piled hair on her head. She wanted, she explained in a dear sweet voice to the overawed guards, to see for herself what progress was being made. Her husband was returning next week, and she wanted it to be a surprise to him.
“It was really very kind of my nephew, the Colonel Lopez, to arrange for your men to come out here this morning,” she said to one of the guards, a heavy-bodied, taciturn man they called Rodriguez. “I’m afraid I would not have been able to spare any of my men to repair it otherwise.” While she spoke, her eyes travelled idly over the men who labored so silently, muscles ridging in their backs, the sweat shining on their bodies. She could not help but notice the deep crimson, almost purplish scar in the shape of the fleur-de-lis that marred what would otherwise have been the almost perfect symmetry of muscle and flesh on one particular back. A young man, obviously, and taller than the rest. With the eye of a connoisseur, the condesa continued to study this particular man with interest. Aloud, she said to the guard, “Please don’t let me disturb you! If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just stay out here and watch for a little while.”
Touching his forehead to show his respect, the guard turned away to supervise, his growling voice raised now and again as he shouted threats or instructions.
Soledad de Valmes watched, with a little, thoughtful frown puckering her white brow. The one with the brand of a French criminal. Was he the one Miguel had meant?
“They have an American, a gringo, on that road gang I’m sending over to fix your wall. One with blue eyes. I know your tastes, dear Tia, and you might find him—interesting.”
She thought, What a beautiful body he has! Like a Greek athlete. She watched him heft a large boulder that no man should have been able to lift, gasping with the effort, muscles straining as he lifted it into place. She had seen how the muscles in his slim flanks, covered only by a ragged pair of bombaches had hardened and tightened as he levered the rock upward; noticed the broadness of his shoulders, and with pity, the raised lash weals that crisscrossed them.
He stood panting, after the effort he had made, head hanging with exertion, and suddenly one of the guards had raised his arms to bring the whip slashing down.
“Back to work, you gringo filth! Do you think we have all day?”
The man had raised his head, and for just an instant his pain-glazed, startlingly blue eyes gazed directly into hers. A strange shiver, almost like premonition, ran through her body. What eyes! she thought. He’s like a young god—under that filthy beard and hair he must be very handsome.
The guard brought the whip down brutally again. “Did you hear what I said, pig?”
With a wince of pain that was too close to a shrug, Steve Morgan turned away to take up the pickaxe he’d been using, and the guard, rattled by the presence of a lady, reading defiance into that shrug that had not even been preceded by a groan, lost his temper.
“You’re overdue for some real discipline, blue eyes! Now get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head. I’m going to make you scream for mercy like you did that day in the courtyard, when the ants reached you!”
With a horrified gasp, Soledad de Valmes pressed the back of her gloved hand against her mouth. Steve Morgan, his back rigid with a wave of hate and anger he could no longer suppress, stood without moving. If I’m going to die in any case, at least I’ll die like a man, not a crawling dog! he thought.
The guard’s flat-featured brown face had gone almost purple with fury. He forgot about the grand lady who was watching, he forgot everything but his rage and the need to punish this stubborn, mulish prisoner.
“You dare to disobey? Have you forgotten what happened to you in the prison? Move! Down on your knees, you doctor’s puto—joto!” His arms rose and fell in a passion of hate as the whip bit deeply into the prisoner’s brown back. But only once—His arm had risen again when Steve Morgan whirled around with an almost animal growl of fury. He swung the pickaxe in his manacled hands as he turned, and its point caught the guard full in the chest, piercing his heart.
“Get Fuentes!” Steve yelled, but the other convicts, desperate with rage and a crazy excitement, had needed no signal.
There were only three guards today, and the other two had been distracted by what had been happening. Before they could recover from their shock, they had been beaten down. The men used shovels, pickaxes, anything they had their hands on. One of them, half-sobbing with blind hate, brought a rock smashing down on the head of the man that Steve had just killed.
The condesa screamed shrilly, and it was like the breaking of a spell. Her vaqueros, both fully armed, brought their rifles up to point menacingly at these dangerous wretches who had suddenly gone berserk; and the convicts, suddenly aware of their peril, seemed frozen.
Only Steve Morgan had the presence of mind to move. He threw himself on his knees and gazed pleadingly into the horrified brown eyes of the lady.
“Condesa! In the name of heaven, tell them not to shoot. We wouldn’t hurt you.”
His flawless Castilian Spanish at least had the effect of startling her and making her vaqueros hesitate.
In a trembling voice she said, “Wait! Keep them covered, but—wait.”
She found she could not turn away from those very blue eyes that continued to look so piercingly into hers. He spoke to her again, his voice hoarse, shaking slightly with reaction.
“I beg you, Condesa de Valmes, only to listen. We’re not all such evildoers that they had to whip us and chain us like dogs and treat us even worse! You see what happens when men are treated like animals—they react like animals. We’ve killed those men who were our guards, it’s true, but they deserved it. It’s you who are our judge now, sweet Señora
with the face of a merciful angel—what will you decide to do with us? If you send us back to the others, we’re going to pray for a quick and merciful death. Could you condemn any man to such a fate? You can give us either life or death—but I beseech you, if you decide on death, then let it be quick, under the rifle bullets of your vaqueros.”
“He talks like an advocate, Condesa,” one of the
vaqueros growled in a rather familiar voice. A grizzled, straight backed old man, he held his gun with its muzzle pointing unwaveringly at Steve’s chest. “The question is, what are you going to do with them? You can’t release prison trash like these men to menace the whole countryside…”
“Oh God!” Soledad de Valmes said distractedly, “I don’t know—I don’t know! Do be quiet a moment, Hernan—I must think!” Her eyes kept clinging to those other eyes—how blue they were! Even when he knelt to her, as he had refused to do for that brutal guard, he was still beautiful, like—like Lucifer, she thought, like a fallen angel—surely he couldn’t really have deserved a fate like this!
“Condesa,” Steve said quietly, and then in an even softer voice, “Soledad.” He saw the muzzle of the rifle come up a fraction and caught the old man’s frown, but he continued to speak quietly, desperation tinging his tone. “I know I’m not fit to touch you, nor even to come too near you now, but once—once you let me put my arms around your neck while you kissed me on the forehead. I don’t expect you to remember—but I’ve never forgotten it. You were so far above me, even then; so unreachable! But you were the first woman I loved, and I’m asking you to spare us all—not for my sake, because I don’t deserve such bounty, but for my mother’s.”
The flowing Spanish language lent itself to the phrases he used, and Soledad found herself spellbound, her eyes widening as she continued to stare at him.
“Your—your mother?”
“For God’s sake, Condesa,” Hernan said roughly, “what kind of madness is this? How can such vermin presume to speak so familiarly to you? I tell you, we had better shoot the lot and make an end of it—they’re all murderers now!”
“No!” The condesa suddenly screamed the word, and her face had gone very white. “No—I remember! It’s your eyes—Luisa’s eyes! You must be her son. How can it be? What happened to bring you here?”
Still on his knees, Steve said in a voice that was steadier and less emotional, “It’s too long a story to tell, Condesa. But I can tell you this much, we’re none of us murderers, except for this. I’m here because I admitted to being a supporter of Benito Juarez—so are they all.” His head indicated the silent, gaping men who stared so imploringly at her. “They thought it would be a nicely ironic touch, to have a bunch of revolutionaries working on a railroad to bring supplies to the French. But if you will let us go we will manage to find our way to General Díaz and fight like men—” he shot a rather mocking look at Hernan, who looked nonplussed. “We certainly won’t ravage the countryside here—believe me, we’d like to see the last of it!”
“But—but Esteban—yes, that is your name, I remember you now, you were such a handsome little boy!” She clasped her hands together, almost wringing them in her distress. “But how will you ever contrive to escape? And in those chains…what can I tell them?”
“You can tell them we threatened you—that you were a helpless hostage, and we forced your blacksmith to file off our fetters. If we had horses—no, not even one apiece, I wouldn’t ask that much, and we could ride double—we could get away….”
“You should have been a general yourself!” She was half-crying, half-smiling. “For heaven’s sake, get off your knees! You don’t have to kneel to me, have you forgotten that I’m your godmother? But come quickly into the house, before the peons get back from the fields—I can trust my vaqueros—Hernan!” She turned to the dumbfounded old man, “You heard what the Señor has suggested…get the blacksmith!”
It took less than two hours, and Steve Morgan used part of that time, once his shackles were cut away, to bathe and shave, while Soledad cropped his hair. She insisted that she must talk to him and sat rather nervously on the edge of her bed while he took a bath, stepping out of it quite unselfconsciously to towel himself dry and get dressed in the clothes that Hernan, scowling, had found.
“You’re going to Porfirio? He’s a relative of mine, you know. I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for him, even though that silly husband of mine is so loyal to the emperor!”
He looked so different from the dirty, ragged convict he had appeared as only a few moments ago. He was positively handsome—yes, a young god—she found herself wishing that he could have stayed.
He was smiling at her, just as if he had read her thoughts. “So—you’re a Juarista at heart too, are you? I’m glad of that—I’d like to be on the same side you are.”
She said nervously, “You had better hurry, I suppose! Hernan will tell you the best routes to take, so you’ll be in the mountains before they look for you. I’ll see that you have weapons, all of you—no, don’t say anything! You could never hope to survive without something to defend yourselves with!”
“In a way—I wish I didn’t have to hurry away.” He took both her hands in his and kissed them. “Soledad—beautiful first love—can I come back and see you?”
“It would be madness for you to think of it!”
“I’d be crazy if I didn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. But I’ll come back…and I’ll bring you Don Porfirio’s regards, as well as my heart.”
He truly loved her at that moment, as she stood looking at him with tear-filled eyes. Yes, she had been his first love—his godmother, his mother’s lovely young friend.
“Esteban—you must go!”
But before he left the room he kissed her, deeply and passionately, with all the stored up desire in his starved body.
She remembered that kiss, and its promise, even after he had ridden away with the others. He’d come back—yes, somehow she was sure of it now.
“After all,” she told herself, “it’s not as if we were blood relatives! And if he was only a boy when I saw him last—he is a man now!”
44
The Condesa de Valmes sent a messenger, who conveniently managed to lose his way first, to the Frenchmen and the rest of the guards at the railhead. Such a terrible, terrible thing had happened! She was quite prostrated with shock—fancy these miserable convicts turning on their guards to murder them, and then daring to take her hostage!
“I can’t see anyone—I’m still far too upset!” she told the servant who came to announce a visitor the following day.
“Of course she’ll see me—I’m a member of the family, am I not?”
Colonel Miguel Lopez, looking extremely smart in his uniform, strode into the room and bent to kiss the condesa’s cheek.
“Tia—you always contrive to look beautiful—even when you are prostrated with shock!”
The servant had left, tactfully closing the door behind him, and Soledad looked weakly at her smiling nephew.
“Really Miguel, you’re so unsympathetic! You can’t think…”
“Come, Tia Soledad! Let’s not have any pretence between ourselves, eh? They escaped—how very convenient! I’m only surprised you did not keep the blue-eyed gringo behind here when the others rode away on their—um, stolen
horses! Are you sure you haven’t got him hidden away in the cellar?”
“Miguel! How dare you talk like that? And in any case,” she added a trifle sulkily, turning her face away from his mocking look, “there was no gringo among them.”
To her growing dismay, Miguel had seated himself on the arm of her chair and had taken her hand.
“Indeed? Well in that case dear tia, you must tell me all about it—every little detail, yes?”
For Ginny, the nightmare that had begun when Miguel Lopez had first informed her so offhandedly that her husband was still alive grew even more nightmarish following Miguel’s return from the home of his relative, the Condesa de Valmes.
Ever since he had told her that Steve, her Steve, had actually been one of the men on the chain gang they had passed on their way here, she had been in an agony. To have passed so close to him, without even seeing him! All she had seen from a distance was a collection of ragged, dirty men, chained together like animals, and she had turned her head away to look into Miguel’s eyes instead. No wonder he had given her
such a peculiarly intent gaze—no wonder he had dropped so many hints, asked so many questions. He had known—all the time, while she was so sure that Steve had died, that her capacity for love had died, Miguel had somehow known the truth!
“I hate you, I despise you!” she had screamed at him that night. “How could you have been so cruel? Why did you let him suffer and continue to suffer?”
“But my dear,” he had responded, quite unperturbed by her hysterical rage and grief, “I really thought you wanted him to suffer! How was I to know you didn’t have him sent to prison for some devious reason of your own?”
She raised tragic, streaming eyes to his face, everything leaving her but grief.
“Do you really think me such a good actress? Oh God, Miguel, why did this have to happen? Why didn’t I know?” Suddenly she was clutching his shoulders, clinging to him in a frenzy. “Miguel! Miguel, please! You can do something—you must save him! I’ll do anything you want, I swear it, anything at all! But I beg you, I beg you!”
Gently, he disengaged her frantic clasp, his eyes looking down at her with rather a strange expression.
“So you really do love him!” he said in a thoughtful, wondering kind of voice. “You’d do anything you said—and yes, I believe you at last! I believe you would do anything. Poor little Ginette! Poor little cortesana—so warm to touch, so frozen with grief inside! I’m really developing quite a softness towards you, you know! It’s seldom I’ve encountered a woman who has done everything you have and still continues to love one man. You’re really to be admired for that!”
“Miguel—Miguel, please help me!”
It was a wail of grief, of pleading, of despair.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said shortly. And for the moment she had to be content with that.
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