Shameless

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Oh, many times more than a good mule. Many times more. That is why the Army wants to see if they can be used to carry supplies. They could save money on mules and horses. And a camel can go for many weeks without water.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Ben answered.

  “Ah, yes, it is true, I assure you. Pekah Akim does not lie.”

  “Why do you wear that robe,” another man asked again.

  “It is how we dress in my country. Robes are much cooler than the pants and boots and such that you wear here. In my country it is even hotter than here. A man thinks only of how to stay cool. The cloth that is wrapped around my head protects me from the sun by day and keeps my head warm at night.” Clay had no idea if that was the reason Pekah had dressed as he did. He had simply made up the story, and he could tell that these Rangers, as ignorant of that foreign world as he was, believed him.

  “Sounds reasonable,” Cal said. “But you couldn’t get me in that getup if it meant I had to walk naked in the sun.”

  They all laughed, and Clay joined them. “That is funny joke, funny joke,” he said, swaying and nodding.

  “I thought all you people were dark,” Ben put in. “In this firelight, those eyes look blue to me.”

  “Ah, yes. My father, he had many wives. In my country a man does not take just one wife. He has many, and some are captive women from other countries. My mother was one such woman. She had hair like the sun and eyes like the sky.”

  Cal rubbed at his thigh. “Sounds like a pretty good life,” he said, glancing at Nina. “Let’s hear some more about the country you come from.”

  Clay sipped on some coffee Ben had handed him, trying not to look too often at Nina. Nina in turn struggled to look only curious, smiling at nothing he said, although she wanted very much to laugh and throw her arms around him. How she enjoyed watching him make total fools of the Rangers! Even if his plan never worked, they would have at least had this moment.

  She waited for Clay to signal when the moment was right. She knew he wanted to win their attention and trust first. Just when or how it would take place, she wasn’t sure, but Clay wanted her to get into that empty basket, that much she did know. It was up to her to help him make his plan work.

  Clay had them all laughing, whether at him or with him, he couldn’t be sure and cared even less. He looked around, studying their guns, their badges. “You men are lawmen? I have heard about men in this land called Texas Rangers. Is that what you are?”

  “Sure are,” George answered proudly. Even he had lost his original doubt and mistrust. “My name’s George Tibbs, and that there is Ben Gables, Cal West, Denny Hodges, and Bill Penny. We’re on our way to Fort Worth, taking this Mexican woman there to be hanged.”

  Clay’s eyes widened. “Hanged? What did she do?” He looked at Nina again, this time giving her a reassuring look. She looked down at her lap. God how she loved him! It was so hard not to show her joy. Tears came to her eyes, tears of love and adoration and relief. George mistook them for tears of regret and fear.

  “Stole horses, too many times to be forgiven for. Rode with a couple different gangs that committed robbery and murder. She escaped a couple of times from the Army, but she won’t get away from Texas Rangers. She can’t use that pretty face and those big breasts to fool us into letting her go like she’s done with other men. Only thing she might convince us to do is have a good time with her before we deliver her to the hangman.”

  They all laughed again, and Clay joined them. “In my country, women are considered to exist only for a man’s pleasure and to give him children.”

  “What do they do with women who break the law, Mr. Akim?” Ben asked.

  Clay shook his head. “Oh, it is bad. They are sold into slavery. Sometimes they lose their heads. We do not hang people in Arabia. They are tortured and beheaded.” Again, Clay had no idea if that was true, but he was beginning to enjoy feeding outrageous stories to these men. “If a man steals, his hand is cut off,” he added. “If he kills, his head is cut off. If he rapes…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Let us just say he would rather have his head cut off.”

  The men all roared, and Nina shrank back a little. Clay finished his coffee. “I thank you, Texas Rangers, for good coffee and a fine conversation. I will go now and make my own camp.”

  “So soon? Hell, we like talking to you, Mr. Akim,” George told him. “And it’s dark. Why don’t you stay till daybreak when you can see better?”

  Nina nearly panicked, not sure what she should do. Clay glanced at her again. “Perhaps I will stay, just this night. I am quite tired, you see.”

  “Good. Besides, we’re headed to Fort Worth ourselves. You can go along, if that camel can keep up. We can’t dawdle getting this woman there,” George told him. “Got to get an early start. I’ll be keeping watch over the prisoner for a few hours, then Cal will take over. Go ahead and get some rest, Mr. Akim. You sure that camel won’t make any trouble?”

  “Oh, no. And you know, when I travel with this camel, your wild Indians give me no trouble. I think they are afraid of the animal. They do not seem so interested in it as they are in horses. I do not understand why.”

  Ben snickered. “Even the Indians think that thing is ugly,” he answered. “Maybe they can carry more, but who wants to be seen riding one?”

  They all laughed again, rolling out their bedrolls. Ben prepared one for Nina, and she lay down near the fire, watching Clay when she knew George could not see her eyes. Clay gave her a wink, then stretched and yawned.

  “Ah, I am more tired than I thought. But before I take to my bed, let me share one drink with all of you, a special liquor from my country. You have been sharing the firewater, but you should try this drink. It is made from a special wild berry grown only in Arabia,” he lied.

  They all looked at each other, then back at the “Arab.” Clay was banking on them being like most Texans, men who enjoyed their whiskey, or anything resembling it.

  “Well, that’s real nice of you, Mr. Akim,” Ben said.

  “Just one swallow,” George warned them. “We have to take turns keeping watch, you know, and we’ve already had some whiskey. We aren’t supposed to be drinking at all.”

  “Hell, just cuff up the woman some more,” one of them suggested. “Cuff her ankles and tie them to her wrist cuffs. She won’t go anyplace.”

  “A good idea.” George looked at Clay. “Break out that booze, Mr. Akim. I’ll take care of the woman.”

  Clay struggled to stay in control, retrieving a bottle from his supplies while George retrieved another pair of cuffs from his own gear. He walked over to Nina and pushed her skirt up further than necessary, snapping the cuffs painfully tight around her ankles. He took a strip of rawhide and tied it around them, then drew it up to the cuffs on her wrists, tying it again so that she lay in an awkward position, unable to straighten her body. The man patted her bottom. “That should hold you,” he told her. He rubbed at her bottom then, laughing lightly, not noticing the murderous look in Clay’s eyes.

  “Come and try this,” Clay spoke up then, wanting to get the man’s attention away from Nina. He held up a blue bottle, then uncorked it and raised it. He put it to his lips, but unknown to the others he kept his lips pressed together as he pretended to drink some of the contents. He handed it out then to George. “May Muhammad bless you for your hospitality,” he said, faintly remembering something about Muhammad or Allah or some such religious figure being worshipped in the Middle East.

  George took the bottle, taking a swallow and handing it to Cal. He frowned. “Tastes about like our own whiskey,” he commented.

  “Ah, yes. But it holds the juice of the Gana berry,” Clay answered, making up the name. He smiled as they all took a swallow of plain whiskey mixed with a heavy dose of laudanum. That should make all of you idiots sleep soundly tonight, Clay thought, bowing and grinning at them. Bill handed back the bottle. “I go to my bed now,” Clay told them. “All of you, drink a little more if you wish. It
is my gift to you. I will make up my bed beside my camel. She keeps me warm.”

  “Your camel!” George shook his head. “How you can stand to lie next to that smelly thing is beyond me, but to each his own. Thanks for the drink, Mr. Akim. Feels nice and warm in the stomach.” He glanced at Nina. “You want some?” He leaned closer. “Might make things easier for you if I decide I can’t get through the night without a woman,” he added.

  Nina turned her head to look at him. “Go use your horse,” she sneered. She spit at him and the others laughed. Clay stiffened, hardly able to control himself when George raised his hand to hit her.

  “Better not, George,” Ben said. “We’ll be in trouble if she shows up with bruises.”

  Nina glanced at Clay, realizing he was nearly ready to give himself away. “What would they do in your country, you smelly foreigner?” she sneered. “Cut out my tongue?”

  The rest of the men broke into more laughter, and Clay quickly put on a smile, bowing and grinning. “I think you would be whipped,” he answered.

  “Hell, we can’t get away with that here, not Rangers anyway,” Cal said, moving into his bedroll. “We’ll get our satisfaction when she’s hanged. Then again, we just might have to forget rules and regulations about women prisoners before we get her to Fort Worth. After all, she’s just a Mexican—not worth much.”

  George backed off, glaring at Nina. He leaned back against his saddle, and the men bantered back and forth some more for the next few minutes, drinking more of the “foreign whiskey.” It was not long before the laudanum they consumed, mixed with the liquor, took its toll. Clay waited quietly in the darkness until they all finally fell into a heavy, drugged sleep.

  Nina waited silently, aware that Clay was just outside the firelight, surely planning something. She was wise enough not to try to speak to him. She waited for him to make his move, her heart pounding wildly as she feigned sleep.

  George struggled to keep awake because he was supposed to be watching Nina, but finally he began nodding his head in drug-induced weariness. Nina opened one eye just slightly to see his eyelids drooping, sure that Clay was also watching him. Finally his rifle slipped to the ground and he slumped sideways. In the next moment Clay was at her side. “I thought that stuff would never work,” he whispered. With the knife he held in his hand, he quickly cut the rawhide strap that tied her cuffs together. “Where does he keep the keys to these cuffs?”

  “The small pocket on the outside of his saddlebag,” she answered. There was no time to ask him what he meant by “that stuff.” Apparently there had been something in the drink he had given the men that made them pass out. Clay carefully walked around George and rummaged through his saddlebag. Nina prayed they were all as soundly asleep as they appeared to be. The night was strangely quiet. Only a wolf howled somewhere in the distant hills. Clay returned with the keys. He fidgeted with the locks on the cuffs, unable to see well because of the dim firelight.

  “Can you travel?”

  “You know that I can if it means getting away from here and going home.”

  The cuffs came off and he met her eyes, taking a moment to embrace her. “My God, Nina,” he whispered. “Thank God I got to you in time.” He helped her up. “Get in the basket!”

  Nina knew there was no time for talk, to ask how he had managed to find her, or even to let him hold her a moment longer. They had to move quickly. She quietly obeyed his request, moving into the darkness to climb into the empty basket. Clay helped her inside, then leaned close before putting on the lid. “Are you all right? Are you still carrying the baby?”

  She reached up to touch his face. “Sí, mi querido. I am still with child,” she whispered. Clay grasped her hand and kissed the palm. How he wanted to hold her, to celebrate their joy, to feel her next to him again. “Hang on tight,” he told her. “I’m going to have to get this beast into a run, awkward as that’s going to be. I don’t know how much time we have before they wake up and find you gone.”

  As soon as he put the lid on the basket, Nina felt it rising. She heard Clay softly give a command to the camel, and the basket began to bounce and sway. She curled up inside it, not caring that the ride made her feel nauseous. Clay was taking her home!

  She thought a camel the most beautiful creature God ever created!

  “There it is!” George Tibbs pointed to the camel in the distance. He and the other Rangers had painstakingly tracked the animal’s unusual-toed prints to the Colorado River, then lost them. They had picked them up again later on the other side of the river. Now they had finally spotted the animal itself. They rode hard after it, and the camel, frightened, broke into an awkward lope.

  Tibbs galloped toward it, determined to catch it and hoping to discover some kind of evidence that would help him find the escaped Mexican woman. He did not relish the embarrassment of admitting to his superiors that the woman had again escaped the law, and that a man apparently disguised as an Arab had made fools of all of them. He had hoped that when they found the camel, they would find the man who had stolen the Mexican woman away, but the animal had no rider.

  The Ranger formed a lasso and began whirling the rope, managing to get it over the camel’s head. The beast came to a scraping, dusty halt and let out a strange, frightened bellow. For the next few minutes all the Rangers scrambled to try to get the animal to settle down so they could look inside the baskets it carried. It was a wild battle, their own horses rearing in fright, the camel pulling at the rope. It reared back its head and spit a great wad of cud at Tibbs, hitting him on the front of his shirt and getting part of his face in the encounter.

  Tibbs cried out in disgust, letting go of the rope. Cal tried to grab it, and the camel promptly clamped its teeth around the man’s forearm, leaving a nasty welt. Cal screamed, then swore in a streak of chilling curses while the camel ran off.

  “What should we do, George?” Ben asked, afraid to go after it.

  Tibbs was frantically pouring water from a canteen over his face and wiping at it with a handkerchief. “Let the damn, ugly sonofabitch go! There’s nothing in those baskets anymore. We should have known.” He angrily dismounted, trying to clean himself up some more. “Goddamn it!” He ripped off his shirt and threw it on the ground. “Goddamn stinking cud! If I ever find that sonofabitch who posed as an Arab, I’ll kill him with my bare hands!”

  “Who do you think he really was?” Ben asked.

  “Who knows! Some bastard who rode with Nina Juarez at one time, I expect. All we have to do is keep going after horse thieves, and I’ll wager we’ll find her again!”

  “My arm! My arm!” Cal groaned.

  “Somebody get some whiskey on that arm and wrap it up,” George ordered.

  Ben went to help the man, and George took a clean shirt from his saddlebag, watching the camel disappear over the horizon at a clumsy lope. “Who the hell are you?” he grumbled to himself, referring to the strange “Arab” who had visited them two days ago. They had not awakened until well after sunrise the morning after “Pekah Akim’s” appearance. The Mexican woman was gone, as well as “Pekah” and his camel. All the men had awakened with excruciating headaches, realizing then that the whiskey the Arab had given them had been drugged.

  George Tibbs had never known such humiliation, and he did not doubt he would be fired for this. “We’ll check with the Army at Camp Verde,” he told the others. “Maybe they know something about that camel. That’s where they were originally kept. And they still have some there.”

  “We’d better find that woman or we’re done as Rangers,” Bill said in disgust. He hit at his leg with his hat. “Damn! How could we be so stupid?”

  George remounted his horse. “There’s nothing we can do about it now but ask around and give a report at the nearest station. We’ll conduct a search all through southern Texas. That little cautrero and her blue-eyed outlaw friend will slip up somewhere, and we’ll catch them stealing horses again. When we do, they won’t make it to any damn trial and public hang
ing. I’ll kill them both myself!”

  They gathered together, Cal holding his wounded arm and nearly ready to cry, then they headed back to Austin to deliver the embarrassing news.

  “Are we really here, really safe?” Nina asked. She turned on her back, snuggling into the sheets, comforted by the gentle rocking of the steamboat that carried her and Clay, as well as Julio and the rest of the men, south through the Gulf of Mexico.

  Clay moved an arm around her naked body, kissing at her neck, wondering if he would ever again be able to get enough of her. He pressed a big hand against her belly, which held only a slight swelling, but enough to make it obvious she was indeed pregnant. “We’re really here and we’re really safe,” he answered.

  Nina breathed deeply of her husband’s familiar scent. The journey by camel had been one to remember, especially when a Texas Ranger came upon them on the trail and talked to Clay for several minutes, asking the strange “Arab” about camels and what he was doing in Texas. The Ranger had obviously not yet heard about Nina’s escape. Finally satisfied with Clay’s explanation, the man had ridden on, never asking to look inside the baskets.

  It was a stiffening, miserable ride. Nina was forced to remain confined to the basket except for brief moments when it was necessary for her to relieve herself and eat, and then only when Clay could find a place where he was sure no one would see them. Next had come a quick change of clothes at the camp where Julio and his men waited. The camel was turned loose there, and Nina had put on a man’s pants and shirt and a big jacket, tying her long hair up under a hat. Her face had been oiled and dirtied, like Clay’s, and she rode with Clay and Julio and the others to the coast.

  Until finally boarding the steamboat and getting out into the Gulf waters, there had been no time for bathing or kissing, hardly any time for embracing or telling of their love for each other. They had not been able to celebrate Nina’s escape or the fact that she was finally carrying Clay Youngblood’s life in her belly. They were only grateful that through her entire ordeal, God had seen fit to let her keep the child.