Destiny's Dawn

by Rosanne Bittner

  Tom waited outside the window with a pounding heart. Inside the sprawling main room of the Galvez mansion ten men had gathered, laughing and clapping, Emanuel himself strumming a guitar while Rosa whirled around the room, swaying her hips seductively, holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand.

  “My husband has not come back,” she had told them earlier, feigning tears, weeping against the chest of John Hughes himself. “I cannot forget what you did to me,” she told him in a sultry voice. “I pretended to fight you, but all the while I was on fire for you.”

  Emanuel interpreted her words for Hughes, and the man threw up a cheer and dragged her into the room. “I thought I’d had my fill of this one,” he told the others. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “Ah, that one is loose. She has had two babies. The one upstairs, she is better.”

  Rosa had begun turning about the room, moving her hips seductively in front of each man.

  “Well, I’m tired of that lifeless thing upstairs,” Hughes had answered. “I’m ready for a real woman—one who’s grateful and does some of the moving herself. And no woman moves like a hot Mexican señora.”

  They all began laughing and joking about it, some of them who had been playing cards dropping the game when Rosa stepped right upon their table and danced over the money and cards.

  “Hey, this could be good,” one of them spoke up.

  There were six of them in the room at the time. One of them went out and yelled upstairs. “Get down here, men. No sense guarding that little filly up there. She ain’t goin’ nowhere. Come see what we’ve got down here.”

  The one man who had been sitting outside the entrance to the house looked around a moment, then went inside, deciding there was nothing to guard and curious about the drunk Mexican woman who had come to their door.

  Tom watched the men fill the room. He waited, letting them become engrossed in Rosa’s dance, his heart aching for Andres, who also had to watch and relive the horror of what these men had already done to his wife.

  Rosa swirled and gyrated, lifting her skirts seductively, drinking a little whiskey. She looked down at Hughes then. “I will let you make bets,” she told him, letting Emanuel interpret again. “All of you can bet on whom I will choose tonight. Whomever I pick, he gets all the money, and the rest of you can watch us.” She rubbed a hand over her abdomen, breathing deeply. “Whomever I choose, I will wear him out.”

  There was more cheering, and the betting began. Rosa held John Hughes’s eyes, making him believe he would be the one she picked. Those who had not been a part of raping her the first time pulled out her skirt as she danced around the table, peeking under it and making howling noises. She had deliberately worn nothing under the skirt. Her ruffled top was cut low, revealing full cleavage. She looked toward one of the windows as they all put out their money, and she made a circular sign with her hands and arms, indicating to her husband and the others outside that all the men were in the room now.

  Tom crouched under the window and carefully laid a rose on the sill. Rosa saw the signal, and she moved from the table to the floor and swayed across it toward the doorway. “All of you line up for me,” she teased. “I want to look you over.”

  Emanuel told the Americans what she had said, and they all eagerly gathered in a half circle around the table. Rosa sauntered to the doorway, looking them over carefully, pulling the ruffled top down over her breasts to her waist. They all stared, grinning and waiting. Suddenly she ducked out of the door.

  All the men stood gaping at the doorway, momentarily confused. A fraction of a second later fire spit from rifle and pistol barrels and men screamed, bloody holes exploding in backs and chests and heads. The main room could be closed off by two polished oak doors, which Rosa quickly shut.

  Most of the men inside were not even wearing their guns, and those who had not been hit scrambled for holsters that hung over the backs of chairs, or rifles that stood against the walls. But good aim at close range and the element of surprise were all that Tom and the others needed. Bodies reeled about the room, none of them even making it to the doorway. Blood seemed instantly splattered everywhere. Wine and whiskey bottles shattered and furniture tumbled as men fell.

  In a matter of seconds the room was silent. Andres burst through the front door, and Tom could hear him say, “Rosa, thank God you are not hurt.”

  Tom climbed through the window, studying the bloody sight without an ounce of regret or revulsion. To him it was a beautiful sight. Someone in the corner moaned and started to rise, grasping for a rifle. It was Emanuel. Tom hurried over to where he lay and kicked him over onto his back. The man stared up at him in total shock. “Sax!”

  Blood poured from Emanuel’s legs and left arm.

  Tom grinned. “Nice to see you again, Emanuel.”

  The man’s eyes instantly teared and he began to tremble. “You . . . you have hurt me enough, Tom Sax,” he almost wept. “I did not kill her. She is all right. Please. You can just take her and go. Look . . . look what you have done to me. I will probably bleed to death. You do not need to shoot me again,” he begged.

  Tom lowered the rifle barrel, pressing it against the man’s privates. Hidalgo whimpered. “Don’t worry, Emanuel. I’m not going to shoot you again. And you’re probably right about bleeding to death.” The man looked somewhat relieved, watching Tom pleadingly. “You will bleed to death. But not from these wounds, and not from my gun. I will finish the job with my knife. And I will give you three guesses what gets cut off first.”

  The man’s eyes widened and he cringed backward, whimpering with pain. Tom turned to Jesus, who stood beside him. “We messed up, señor. Hughes is dead. We were supposed to save him for Andres.”

  “Are the rest of them dead?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  Tom looked over at Andres, who came in then with his arm around his wife. She cringed at all the bodies. “Watch him,” Tom told Jesus, indicating Emanuel. “I have to go see about Juanita. I will be back for this one. He’s mine. Remember that.” Emanuel sobbed as Tom walked up to Andres and Rosa. “I’m sorry about Hughes, Andres.”

  The man shrugged. “It was probably my own bullet that killed him. I tried to hold back, but when I leveled my rifle on him, I could not stop shooting.”

  Tom turned to Rosa. “Gracias. It is a good thing you did tonight. Go on back to your children.” Tom looked at her husband again. “Take what you need and go, Andres. Never mention my name, and I will never mention yours.”

  The man nodded, putting a hand on Tom’s arm. “We will not see you again after tonight, señor. God be with you. I will pray that one day you and la señorita Juanita can be happy and together.”

  Tom looked toward the stairway where all remained silent. The thought of what he would find upstairs filled him with absolute terror. She must still be alive. The men had talked about being tired of her just lying there and not responding. They apparently had continued to use the girl however they chose.

  “Perhaps that can never be,” he said sadly, his voice choking.

  Rico came out of the kitchen down the hall. “There is no one else around, Señor Sax. I think we got them all.”

  Tom looked back at Jesus. “Strip him down,” Tom told Jesus, regarding Emanuel. “I want him to lie there and think about what I’m going to do to him. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He turned and headed past Andres and Rosa, wondering how he got his legs to work at all as he climbed the winding staircase toward Juanita’s room.

  The door to her room was open a crack, and a lamp was lit inside. Tom pulled out his revolver, just in case of trouble.

  “Juanita?”

  He heard a woman whimper.

  “It’s me, Juanita, Tom.”

  “Please . . . do not hurt her,” came a woman’s voice from inside. Tom recognized it as Luisa’s. He pushed open the door to find the old woman sitting on the edge of the bed, bent over a young girl, cradling her in her arms.

  The woman looked at him in wide-e
yed terror, then blinked in slow recognition. “Tom!” Her voice almost moaned with weary sorrow. “Tom Sax!” She let go of the young girl and slowly rose, looking past him out into the hallway. “All the shooting . . . I did not know what to do. I thought you were someone come to kill us. But praise be to God, it is Tom Sax, come to save my Juanita.”

  He slowly holstered his pistol, looking at the pitifully tiny figure in the bed. Her bare arms were stretched over her head and tied to bedposts. The wrists were bloody from the rough hemp rope that held her. She was clumsily covered with a quilt, and she lay staring at the ceiling.

  “My God!” His words came out in a pitiful groan. He walked closer, moving to the bedside and bending over her. “Juanita,” he whispered.

  “She cannot hear you.” Luisa sniffled. “She has been like this for many days. They come . . . and use her. And she just lies there. They made me stay with her . . . made me wash her for them. They kept a man here all the time to watch over us. Many times they hit me, telling me if I tried to help her get away, they would do terrible things to me. Every day I thought they would stop coming. But every day they came again—first one, then another. Emanuel Hidalgo, he was the most cruel. He did such very bad things to her. He broke her spirit, Señor Sax.”

  “Juanita,” Tom whispered. He quickly pulled out a knife and cut the ropes that bound her, then was overwhelmed by her pitiful state. He collapsed over her body, enveloping her in his arms and weeping openly. He rocked her, repeating her name over and over. This was even worse than he had imagined. Luisa wept behind him, realizing the nightmare was finally over.

  Tom had no idea how long he lay there. Finally Luisa was touching his shoulder. “You must take her away from here, Señor Sax. You must take her out of this house and never bring her back.”

  Tom reluctantly let go of her, his whole body trembling. He threw back his head and breathed deeply for control. “She doesn’t . . . speak? Doesn’t know you?”

  “I am not sure whom she knows, señor, or what she hears. She only stares. She makes no sound, not even to cry. I cannot even begin to tell you how terrible it was . . . especially those first days when she was awake. I think it is God’s blessing she is this way . . . that her mind has slipped to another world.”

  Tom’s chest heaved in one great sob and he wiped at his eyes, leaning over the girl and gently stroking the hair back from her face. “Juanita? It’s me, Juanita. It’s Tom.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Nobody will ever hurt you again, Juanita.”

  There was no response. He moved slightly away, hunching over and feeling sick to his stomach.

  “You . . . you will help her, señor?”

  He rose from the bed, walking to a dressing table and in one swoop of an arm slamming everything off it. “Damn,” he growled. “Damn! Damn!” He picked up a vase and threw it at a huge mirror that hung on the wall, smashing it. Juanita made no move, no sign of being aware of the noise.

  “Tom! You all right up there?” Rico called up.

  He stared at the doorway, his chest heaving in great gasps of unbridled rage. He walked to the door, looking back at Luisa. “Clean her up and dress her. I’ll be back in a while.” He turned and went out.

  For the next forty-five minutes Luisa gently washed and dressed Juanita, while somewhere outside a man screamed in ways she had never heard—screams of horror that sent chills down her spine. Sometimes she could hear crying and begging. Once she moved to the doorway and looked over the banister downstairs, where two men stood. She recognized them as Galvez’s men—Rico and Jesus. “What is happening?” she asked.

  Jesus looked up at her. “Luisa. How is the girl?”

  “She is very bad, señor. Her mind—” She shook her head. There came another scream from outside. Jesus looked from Luisa to Rico and back to Luisa. “It is el señor Hidalgo. El señor Sax is repaying him for what he did to Juanita.”

  Luisa put a hand to her chest and nodded. She went back into the room, and several minutes later Tom returned. Luisa noticed he had changed clothes, from black shirt and pants to a blue calico shirt and brown pants. He had apparently washed for his hair was still wet, tied into a tail at his neck. The wild look still in his eyes was almost frightening, but the woman knew he meant it for Emanuel Hidalgo, not for herself.

  “Emanuel Hidalgo is dead,” he told her flatly. “He will never touch her again, nor will the others. They are all dead.”

  She nodded. “The screams of Señor Hidalgo were music to my ears.”

  Tom’s eyes moved to Juanita. “And to mine.” He walked to the foot of the bed. Juanita lay there dressed in a pretty yellow dress that buttoned to her neck. Her long hair was brushed out behind her over the pillows. “It is all my fault,” he said, great sorrow in his voice. “I should not have gone off and left her behind. But I wanted to do everything the proper way, for her sake. I wanted it all to be nice for her. I was going to give el señor Galvez some time to think about it, marry her the right way. If I had . . . only known—”

  “But you didn’t know, señor,” Luisa told him. “You had no way of knowing this would happen. You must not blame yourself.”

  “There is no one else to blame.”

  The woman stepped closer. “You loved her, señor. That love will help her heal. One day she will be well, and you can be together.”

  His jaw flexed as he tried to stay in control, and a tear slipped down his cheek. “What do I do now, Luisa? How can I help her?”

  The woman put a hand on his arm. “There was once an old priest in Sonoma that she liked very much. She has known him since she was a very little girl. Now he is at the Saint Christopher Mission in San Francisco. Perhaps you should take her there. Perhaps the old priest and the nuns there can help her get well. God’s love, and your love, will heal her, señor. You will see.”

  He blinked and swallowed. “Saint Christopher’s? What is the priest’s name?”

  “Father Thomas Juarez.”

  Tom looked away. “What about the cook—Yolanda? She was a nice lady.”

  Luisa looked down. “She ran outside when they first came. She was killed by a stray bullet.”

  Tom nodded, looking about to collapse. “She had a daughter.”

  “Sí, señor. Emanuel and his men—they . . . they raped her, too. She killed herself and they buried her.”

  The room hung in bitter silence.

  “Señor, they killed the patrón. Juanita has no one but you to help her.”

  Tom turned to face her, his dark eyes hollow-looking and circled.

  “I will take her to the mission in San Francisco. Will you go with her?”

  The woman nodded. “Sí, señor, of course. I will not leave my Juanita. But she will be a long time getting well, I am afraid. What will you do, señor?”

  He thought about the riffraff that would surge into California now that it had been declared a part of the United States. “I will continue to get my revenge,” he said in a near growl.

  “But you have done that, señor. You have killed el señor Hidalgo.”

  He looked at her, his dark eyes wild again. “That isn’t enough! It is more than what has happened to Juanita. My first wife suffered because of war and hatred. My whole family suffered. The whites just take and take and take, Luisa. I have lost all I can because of them. My life is destroyed, and people are going to suffer!”

  Her eyes teared, and she touched his arm. “Juanita needs you, señor. When she is well, you must be there.”

  “Until then I will be making up for what happened to her.”

  “I do not like what you are saying, senor. Your heart is bitter now. Someday it will heal. Do not do something foolish that will get you killed. What would Juanita do then?”

  He shook his head. “I have already failed her.”

  “No, señor. This is not your doing. It is the way life is. Nothing you do will change what a man feels in his heart.”

  “Perhaps not. But it will help heal my own heart! Once my own fa
ther rode a path of vengeance against the Crow Indians! Now I will do the same—only it will not be against Indians! It will be against white men!”

  He turned and went to the bed, gently wrapping Juanita in a quilt and lifting her. Luisa saw that there was no arguing with him at the moment.

  “Did you pack some of her things?”

  “Sí, señor. I have two bags.” The woman hurriedly threw on a shawl and picked up two carpetbags.

  “Do you know how to ride a horse, Luisa?”

  “Sí, I can ride.”

  “We can’t waste any time. I will carry Juanita with me. We have to get into the hills tonight yet. We will stay away from the main roads until we get to San Francisco.” He turned, Juanita in his arms, his heart aching at how light she felt. She was skin and bones. “You must never mention my name in any of this—nor Rico’s or Jesus’s or Andres’s.”

  “You know I would not, señor.”

  “They will know Mexicans did this, but they will never be sure who. The rest of Galvez’s men have scattered, and Andres and Rosa will also leave tonight.” He carried Juanita out into the hall and down the stairway. Rico and Jesus waited in the hall.

  “How is she, señor?” Jesus asked.

  “I’m not even sure. I’m taking her to a mission in San Francisco, Jesus. Then I will be back. Wait for me at the cave I told you about.”

  The man nodded. “We will wait.”

  “Did you find any money?”

  “There was much in those men’s pockets. We gave much of it to Andres. We found a safe but it was empty. We saved some of the money on the men, and we found more in their saddlebags. We put it all together. It is for Juanita. She will need it. It belongs to her. Most of it must have been her father’s money.”

  “You are kind and generous,” Tom told them. “Gracias. Take a little for yourselves. When you go, leave all the horses. You don’t want to be seen riding stolen horses.”

  “Sí.”

  “As soon as I get Juanita to the mission, I will let Luisa’s horse go. I am riding my own Appaloosa with my father’s brand, so my horse cannot be traced to Galvez. When I get back we will have to find some mustangs for the two of you and break them so you can have your own horses without someone else’s brand on them.”