“Maybe she thought it’d make me nervous—and it would! It does!”
“No need. He’s deep in Mexico by now. Doubt if he’s in any hurry to come back.”
That was probably true. Tracy decided not to worry about it, but she was glad of Le Moyne.
She had coffee with the Sanchez women when she dropped Geronimo off. They were astonished that she’d want or dare to photograph owls.
“Very bad luck,” said plump Inez firmly. “When they hoot, someone dies.”
“But they hoot every night,” Tracy protested.
“Not where a certain person can hear,” asserted the older woman. “One night there were many in a tree outside the house. Chuey and the boys shot at them. Two fell, but the others kept calling.” She paused. “And that very hour, in Los Angeles, my brother died suddenly! He hadn’t been sick at all. The owls knew.”
Tracy smothered the impulse to ask if the warning was adjusted to Pacific Standard Time, and turned the subject to Carla’s baby. “It will be a boy,” predicted Lupe.
Carla pulled a face at her sister-in-law. “Have your own boys! I want a little girl.” She was scarcely more than a girl herself, coltishly thin except for her burden. Her large brown eyes fixed appealingly on Tracy.
“Will you be the child’s madrina, the godmother?” she asked shyly. “Tivi and I want this very much.”
Patrick must have been godfather to half the children on the ranch, but Vashti had probably not inspired or encouraged such relationships. With a certain shock, Tracy realized that for a long time the Socorro ranch had lacked a mistress the people could feel close to. She was a poor excuse, but at least she was of the family.
“I’d be honored,” she said truthfully. “But do you want a long-distance madrina? I won’t be staying here after—”
She broke off, but Inez finished for her. “After Don Patrick dies? But why not, doncellita?”
“I will have no place,” Tracy explained. “I’m only his foster-daughter, you know. The ranch will go to his wife and sons.”
Inez sighed and shook her graying head. “If Don Shea were in charge—” She didn’t continue, but Carla smiled at Tracy.
“All the same, I want you for madrina.”
“Then I will be,” Tracy promised.
Strange, but accepting the responsibility, in this house beneath the dark madonna’s serene gaze, gave her a sense of linking with this place where she had been nurtured, of taking up the obligations other women of her blood had long fulfilled. But the ranch was not her inheritance. And, it seemed, neither was Shea.
Tracy dropped in to see Patrick and then drove back to Last Spring. It was about a three-hour ride to El Charco. She’d have to leave right away if she wanted to be home by dark—and she did, more than ever now that she knew the blond thug had broken out of jail. Geronimo was almost certainly right about the fugitive staying safe in Mexico, but it was still unsettling.
Geronimo had put both horses in the old corral and pumped water into the tank for them. Tracy got an apple which she divvied between Sangre and the mare, talking gently to them both. Getting the riding gear out of the little shed, Tracy bridled and saddled Güera.
“Behave yourself,” she told Sangre as he watched gloomily. “Mary’s coming Sunday and we’ll all go riding.”
He whickered disconsolately as they moved off. Horses were among the most sociable of creatures and hated to be alone. To keep one in solitary confinement without at least a dog or goat or some companion was actually cruel. Tracy talked to Güera, getting her used to her voice, and noted with pleasure that the mare tilted one ear and eye forward and one back, attentive both to the rider and the road ahead.
Tracy had ridden a lot as a girl. It was good to be on a beautiful smooth-gaited horse again, though she expected to ache that night. Güera shied once at a rustle in the brush, but Tracy kept a firm rein and soothed her.
“I think you like to get scared,” she chided. “If we met a big cascabel, do you suppose he’d want to lose his rattles under your hoofs?”
Steller jays screeched and made blue flashes among the big trees, but as they descended to the level, throngs of white-crowned sparrows and titmice hopped in the leafing bushes and mesquites. Gambel’s quail clockworked across a sandy draw. Farther along, a roadrunner was devouring a lizard. Even without rain, grass was trying to green, but Tracy rode the length of the western part of the Socorro without seeing any good graze. At one tank, vaqueros were unloading hay, an almost unheard-of thing at this time of year.
She made a wide swing around the Stronghold site and entered El Charco through a plain gate once used for cattle. Her heart thudded at a dizzying rate.
Was she a fool to come here? Knowing about Shea’s mother might embolden her to risk her pride as she otherwise wouldn’t, but wasn’t it likely that no matter how far she was willing to go to meet him, Shea would still lock her out?
She shrugged as she fastened the gate and climbed into the saddle. At least she was going to tell him to deliver his own gifts or she wouldn’t keep them.
If he were alone—Her blood raced. Arguments between them now could lead to only one thing. But did she want that if all he could ever feel for her was lust?
Pardo high-jumped out of the eagle pen, pant leg in tatters. “Man, that is one damn mean bird!” he panted. “The way she was taking pieces of that rabbit out of my hand, I though we were finally buddies!”
“I told you.” Shea grinned. “That wire’s up to protect us, not her.”
Pardo stared at the eagle in reluctant admiration. She was running around the pen, nabbing bits of the rabbit Pardo had brought her. Fascinated with the big raptor, Pardo had almost taken over her feeding.
Though he continued to marvel that Shea could be a “farmer,” Pardo had started coming by for a beer when he wasn’t busy at Stronghold. He wanted to talk about the war. Shea didn’t much, yet it was a relief to be with someone who knew how it had been.
“Think she’ll fly again?” Pardo asked, peering at the eagle.
Sated, she had picked up a soft ball Geronimo had given her. She seemed to think it was an egg and perched on it by the hour or hopped around with it clutched in her formidable yellow claws.
Shea shook his head. “Too early to guess. She can flop around some but a lot of feathers have to grow back. Those damn cats!”
“Dead cats, you mean,” chuckled Pardo. “What a scrapper!” He sobered, ran a hand through his sparse beard. “I know how she feels, man. Remember that time our ’copter was shot down? You and me got back to back. Figgered we’d rather die than get taken! And then that Huey picked us up just in time?”
“We were lucky.”
“Yeah.” Pardo opened a beer. “The cats could never quite get your number, sarge. You were the best shot in the company. But you never fired at those gooks who came cruisin’ out of the bush in their little black suits with their hands over their heads, even though they kept on running. Most of them had to be Viet Cong.”
Shea didn’t answer. During his last year, as well as being crew chief and door gunner, he’d been a platoon sergeant, assigning ’copter crews. He’d put a lot of energy into teaming gunners who shot at everything that moved, with careful pilots who’d keep them out of temptation, and he’d paired scrupulous gunners with killer pilots. But sometimes he couldn’t juggle it out like that.
There had been one pilot who loved to kill. Shea finally went to the chaplain. The chaplain reported Shea to the commander, who gave him a sharp little lecture on hurting “fighting morale.” But Shea and a couple of friends had gone to see the pilot. They told him he’d better flunk his next flight physical or he wouldn’t live to kill anyone else.
He had flunked the physical and been assigned to maintenance.
Yet in a way Shea had envied him. It was easier to be all-out than try to fight and be humane, easier to kill everyone than show mercy that could cost your life or prolong the hell. There were times that if he’d had the power to pu
sh a button and explode the whole world he would have done it out of despairing outrage.
Was there hope for a species so addicted to killing and war? To start with, wars had probably been kidnapping raids to get sacrificial victims to offer the gods. War was still human sacrifice. Thousands of Vietnamese had been immolated on the altar of a democracy they didn’t understand, or that of a communism equally remote. It was rotten. But you lived or you died. Shea had decided to live.
“It’s over,” he said roughly.
“Don’t shit me, man. It’s still in both of us.” Pardo crumpled the can, tossed it in the trash barrel. “Know what wakes me up in a sweat? I dream Jim Thomas—you remember that long lean kid with the big grin who was downed in Cambodia—I dream he’s working under guard and locked up nights. I dream he asks why I don’t help him.”
It plagued Shea, too, with renewed bitterness after the big fuss over the Iranian hostages. A government that seemed ready to get tough over all manner of distant threats seemed to care very little about finding out what had happened to those thousands of men who were missing in action. The country might want to forget the lost war that had divided it, but it had no right to forsake the men sent out in its name.
Pardo’s almond-shaped eyes riveted on Shea. “Why don’t you and me go find us a good, honest little war?”
“There’s no such animal. Anyhow, I thought you said you weren’t fighting for any more flags.”
“Not for flags, sarge. Money. By choice, gold.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Come work here.”
“Fixing fence? Planting grass? Thanks, but no thanks.” Pardo shaded his eyes with his hand. “You’ve got company—and I do believe it’s the chick Judd had at Stronghold the day you came steaming down about that deer.” He chuckled. “I’ll get along so’s you can give her your undivided attention.”
“No need,” said Shea, but the tightness in his throat made his tone gruff.
Pardo only laughed and moved off at an angle that would avoid the golden mare and her rider. Jaime and Aniceto had gone to town for supplies. Geronimo was helping the Sanchezes with some work. Shea was alone as Tracy approached, sun gilding the dark honey hair, modeling the strong, piquant face with those imperiously arched eyebrows and rather broad mouth. Through the thin cotton of her shirt, he saw the sweetly firm curve of her breasts.
He didn’t know whether to be glad she had come, or sorry. Sorry or glad, she was here. Before she left, he was going to have her.
Tracy reined in outside the ramada. Shea tossed a beer can aside and watched her with a challenging smile. “Light and have a beer? I guess you didn’t meet any snakes or you wouldn’t be so tidy.”
“Güera shied at something in a bush,” Tracy said, dismounting. She stared into those unreadable gray eyes. “Did you hope she’d throw me?”
He laughed. “Not at all. Since you’re both fractious, I thought you’d get along real well.”
This was not going the way Tracy had intended. “I came to thank you,” she said, still trying to startle or elicit some betraying reaction. “And to ask why you can’t deliver your presents?”
“Let’s water this one,” he suggested easily, taking the reins and starting for the tank shaded by the big black walnuts and mesquites. “Geronimo had to go help Chuey so it was simple for him to bring Güera.”
“And Le Moyne?”
Stripping off the mare’s saddle, he slung it over the corral, led her inside and slipped off the bridle. Coming back to Tracy, he stopped a few feet away. “Maybe I thought if I brought you presents, you might feel obligated.”
“I don’t believe that ever entered your head!”
He laughed coolly. “Then what’s your explanation?”
“If you didn’t bring the present,” Tracy groped, “it’s almost as if you didn’t give it. You aren’t taking any responsibility, damn you!”
“Now when did making gifts cause responsibility?” he mocked.
“You know it does. You sort of guarantee them and—and—If you give, it means you care—”
She faltered under that remote stare. Clenching her hands, she thrust up her chin. “Shea, if you don’t care about me, I don’t want presents!”
“Le Moyne and Güera aren’t exactly presents,” he countered. He took her wrists, holding them loosely. “Anyway, you’ve come. We both know why.”
She didn’t wrench free. Searching his face for some softening, she cried inwardly, Love me! Oh love me, and say you do! But he was silent, only smiled and drew her toward the house.
Blinded, she moved as if swept along by a fiery wind. As they stepped inside the adobe, a shadow struck. There was a sickening sound and Shea went down, bending slowly at the knees, trying to turn.
“Am I in luck!”
China-blue eyes gloated from a sunburned face surrounded by lank yellow hair. “Only thing better would be to get that Indian bitch, too!”
He had crashed the gun now pointed at Tracy into Shea’s head. Blood trickled from the thick red-gold hair. Tracy started to drop to her knees by Shea, but the blond man snapped her wrist up painfully, keeping her on her feet.
“Maybe you’ve killed him!” she cried.
“Maybe I didn’t. But unless you want me to make sure, sweetheart, you’ll come along like a nice girl and do just what I say.”
A frantic glance revealed no weapon in reach. The escapee tossed her a rope. “Tie him up—good, or I’ll fix him so he won’t need tying, ever.”
Tracy complied. At least Shea was breathing. “I’d guess those keys by the door are to that old pickup,” her captor went on. “Get ’em. We’re going for a little ride.”
“If you want money—”
He pulled Shea’s wallet out of his hip pocket, tucked it into his own. “Thanks for reminding me.” He gestured with the gun. “Now, baby, move!”
XIV
He made her drive. His sweaty odor was rank with a hint of decaying fungus. He kept the gun pressed in her side. “Don’t try anything cute. A gut wound hurts like hell. You’d take a long time to die.”
Her hands were clammy. She had to swallow before she could speak, but her mind was icily clear. “Why make a lot of trouble for yourself? Let me out and keep going.”
“I’ll let you out when I’m ready.”
“If you’re heading for Mexico, you can’t get me through the guards.”
He rested his free hand on her knee. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
That touch confirmed what she’d feared. He wasn’t just going to leave her on foot a long way from help. Grimly, she resolved that if they sighted any vaqueros, she’d sound the horn and take her chances. If they got on the highway, she’d take the ditch where someone would see them.
They never reached the highway. “Take this set of tracks,” he ordered, indicating a faint road turning off up a cãnon.
“It stops at an old corral.”
He chuckled in a way that made her feel as if a centipede were crawling over her. “That’s far enough, babe.”
He meant to rape her, probably kill her, and make for the border in the pickup. Tracy’s thoughts raced, seeking her best chance. She swung onto the tracks widely enough to, she hoped, make fresh prints on the slim chance someone might follow.
Should she hope for a second when they stopped and were getting out of the truck? Wait for an opportunity when lust might throw him off guard?
That might be smartest, but she thought of Houston. No, not that again. She’d ram the corral.
A useless windmill spun above an empty concrete tank inside the corral. This camp had been abandoned several years ago because the well was dry. Several of the big trees around it were dead, but half a dozen were showing new leaf.
“Shade and grass.” The blond’s voice rasped with excitement. “Now we’ll just have us a good time—Hey! You crazy?”
Tracy caught a deep breath and jammed down on the accelerator. “Bitch!” He numbed Tracy’s ankle with a kick, grabbed fo
r the wheel and tried to get his foot on the brake.
The momentum of the pickup was too great. As they fought for the wheel, it smashed into the corral, scattering poles and posts, glanced into the cement tank and turned over.
Tracy came slowly, foggily out of flame-shot darkness. Crushing pain in her legs sent her briefly back into the haze. Then she remembered what had happened. She tried to move, found that her legs were pinned beneath the cab.
A slow obscene cursing came from a few feet away. Painfully turning her head, Tracy saw that her abductor was also trapped, only his head and shoulders clear of the wreckage. With the nearest arm, he groped for her.
“Going to choke you like I should have at the start,” he gasped. “Feels like my ribs are all broke! When I get hold of you—”
His fingers brushed her arm. Desperately writhing as far as she could to the side, Tracy tried again to work her legs free. She gained an inch or two.
The dirty broken-nailed hand sought with a blind intelligence of its own. He had called her every filthy name she’d ever heard and was starting over.
“—split you wide open! Should of done it in front of your boyfriend, made you—”
Tracy’s searching fingers closed on a rock. It took all her strength to grip it. Her legs screamed with strained agony as she turned, half-raised and brought the rock down as hard as she could on his hand.
He shrieked. Maddened into superhuman effort, he heaved till the pickup moved a fraction. The effort must have done something to him. He collapsed and was still. Frothy blood bubbled from his mouth.
Punctured lungs? Tracy felt not a twinge of concern or pity. That awful, crawling hand! Horrible to think of lying here by a dying man, but that was better than being trapped while he tried to reach her.
When would they be found? Sometime, Jaime and Geronimo would find Shea, unless Aniceto got there first. If Shea didn’t have a concussion from that blow on the head, he could explain what had happened. Some of it would be clear, anyway.
If they’d just notice the tire tracks where she’d swung wide to follow the old tracks—Surely, she wouldn’t have to lie here and die of thirst.
A Mating of Hawks Page 16
