“Do you like my legs as much as my breasts?”
He raised his gaze to hers, intrigued again by her candor. “I do.”
His answer pleased her. “How many other breasts and legs have you seen?”
He grinned. “You know, we’re talking about a lot of intimate things here, and I don’t even know your name.”
“Zafiro Maria Quintana.”
He took a second to think about the way she’d pronounced her name: Za-feer-oh. “Zafiro. How do you spell it?”
She spelled it for him.
“Nice name. I like it.”
“It means ‘sapphire’ in Spanish.”
“You’re named after the jewel you wear. It’s the biggest sapphire I’ve ever seen. Nearly as big as your fist.”
“I am named for the color of my eyes.”
Sawyer stared at the large gemstone. “You know, if you sold that stone you’d get enough money to last a long time. Then you could buy the supplies you need. The villagers and the nuns might be hurting, but I’m sure the mercantiles around here are stocked with the things you need.”
Zafiro picked up the sapphire and rubbed it over her cheek. “I cannot.”
“Why?”
“My grandfather gave me this jewel when a grasshopper was as tall as my knee, and I have worn it ever since.”
“When you were knee-high to a grasshopper.”
“That is what I said. My sapphire, it was once the knob on a walking stick that belonged to a very rich man in Puebla. One day Grandfather saw the man beat a dog with the cane, so he stole the cane from the man. Grandfather, he was a wonderful thief.”
“So you keep the sapphire for sentimental reasons. Because your grandfather gave it to you.”
She’d never heard of anything so selfish in all her life. If she could have sold the jewel she’d have sold it years ago and used the money to care for her charges.
But she dared not. The sapphire, large and unique as it was, would surely rouse a lot of talk. Word of the magnificent jewel would travel quickly through the circle of thieves, and the news would eventually reach Luis, who would know exactly who owned the gem.
And then he’d track her down.
She couldn’t sell the gem. Not for all the money in the country. Even in the world.
“Zafiro?”
“Yes?”
Sawyer wondered what caused the intense look in her eyes, then decided she was remembering her grandfather. “You must have loved your grandfather a lot.”
“What? Oh. Yes, I did. I thought I would be with him forever. But, as time is supposed to do to all of us, Grandfather became old. So did the rest of the gang. It is a very sad thing to think about. Maclovio was the best horseman in the world, Sawyer. There were times when I thought he worked magic on the horses. He even taught Grandfather’s horse to come when he heard Grandfather whistle. And Pedro never missed his target with his gun. Not once. Lorenzo could open any lock invented. But…well, when the men became old…Pedro began to believe he was Saint Peter, Maclovio started drinking heavily, and Lorenzo lost his hearing. Tia became more determined than ever to find her little boy, Francisco, who had died even before Grandfather met her. And Azucar—”
“She’s the old woman who tries to ravish me every night.”
“Yes,” Zafiro said, smiling. “Time caught up with her body, but not her mind. She still thinks she is the young seductress she once was. Anyway, when age began to slow down the men, Grandfather brought us all here to these mountains and built La Escondida. We are very alone here. Only the convent and a few tiny villages are close by. Piedra Blanca is the nearest real town. That is where there is a big store. But Piedra Blanca, it is too far from La Escondida.”
“This place is hidden, isn’t it? I remember seeing you slip inside a concealed—”
“La Escondida means ‘The Hidden.’ My grandfather fashioned the hidden entrance to keep us from being found. The men, they helped, but it was Grandfather whose cookie was clever.”
“He was a smart cookie.”
“How can a cookie be smart?”
Sawyer shrugged. “It’s only a saying.”
“You Americans say strange things.”
“Maybe, but they sound even stranger when you say them.”
Zafiro chose to overlook his criticism, especially since he tempered it with a smile and continued to shower Mariposa with affection. “My men, Sawyer. The Quintana Gang. You still do not think you have ever heard of them?”
He brushed his fingers through his hair. “Maclovio said they were famous. I guess I might have heard of them.”
“But you do not remember. Well, it has been ten years since they rode together.”
“And you’ve been hidden away here for ten years with them.” Hidden, Sawyer thought. No men, save the gang and maybe a priest or two down at the convent, had ever seen Zafiro in those ten years.
His finding her was akin to discovering a rare and radiant jewel in the crevices of a hidden mine. No wonder she was so bold of tongue, so totally candid when speaking about sexual things. It was more than likely that no one had ever taught her differently.
He certainly wasn’t going to be the one to enlighten her either.
“I will pay you if you tell me your thoughts, Sawyer.”
“A penny for your thoughts,” he translated. “So La Escondida is truly a den of thieves, huh?”
“That does not bother you?”
“If I said it did, would you try to kill me again?”
His answer made her laugh.
And Sawyer thought her laughter the softest, prettiest sound he’d heard in a very long while. “Whatever your men did ten years ago doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I don’t think I’m a lawman, but even if I were, I wouldn’t turn them in. What purpose would it serve to put three harmless old men behind bars?”
There was no mistaking his sincerity. It shone from his golden eyes like sunshine through a crevice, and Zafiro’s relief was of such depth that she reached for his hand, brought it to her mouth, and kissed his knuckles. “Whoever you are, I think you must be a very good man, Sawyer Donovan. Maybe you are a priest?”
He slid his thumb across her chin and smiled again when he saw her sapphire eyes darken to a dusky blue. Just as she’d been hidden away from the world for ten years, a wealth of passion was hidden away within her.
A pity he’d be leaving soon. He’d have liked to be the man to free her passion.
The thought convinced him he was definitely not a priest.
“Sawyer?”
“Hmm?”
“You know, although it is possible that you are a ballet dancer, you could be a farmer. The nuns said you knew a lot about gardening. You could also be one of other strong people. A logger, or a horse rancher, or a—”
“Fence builder,” he interrupted. “Or a riverboat captain, or a miner, or a cattle breeder, or a soldier. Or maybe,” he said, his eyes wide with mock excitement, “just maybe I’m Santa Claus!”
Before Zafiro could address his ridiculous guess her men entered the room.
“He could be a traveling salesman,” Maclovio said. “A schoolmaster, or maybe a gunsmith. But I wish he was a fighter. If he was, I would enjoy smashing his face and—”
“Whoever he is, he is like Abraham,” Pedro commented. “A man of brawn.”
“Fawn?” Lorenzo asked, looking at Zafiro and licking his lips. “Did Mariposa bring us a fawn? Will Tia be making meat pies tonight?”
Zafiro didn’t answer; she barely heard Lorenzo’s question. Instead, she concentrated on what Maclovio had said about the possibility of Sawyer being a gunsmith.
Gunsmith.
Guns.
Her mind spun with thoughts that hadn’t occurred to her before now. Was it possible that Sawyer knew anything about guns? But why wouldn’t he? Most all men did, didn’t they? Even Rudolfo, the nuns’ farmer neighbor, possessed a pistol.
Excitement welled within her, causing her to smile a smile so broa
d that she felt her ears move.
Sawyer was not the danger she anticipated, that she knew. Rather, he was the miracle she’d pestered God to send her.
It would be a long while before his wounds were completely healed, but when he was well Sawyer Donovan was going to turn her men back into the fearsome gunmen they’d once been.
Chapter Four
“I’m well. I want to get up now.”
Tia clucked. “You are not well, Francisco. You only wish you were. The wounds on your chest and shoulder are much better, but your leg still hurts you. I do not think you could even walk on it yet.”
Sawyer did, indeed, admit that his thigh injury still ached, but there was no way in hell that he was going to make the admission out loud. “I’ve been stuck in this room for months—”
“Barely three weeks have passed since Mariposa attacked you. You will stay put in this room.”
As if he could leave, Sawyer complained silently. The door was always locked. Opening it would require kicking it down, and he couldn’t do that because his injured leg simply wasn’t strong enough to use for kicking or for supporting his body weight while he kicked with his good leg.
Besides that, every time he as much as turned over in the bed, Jengibre squawked loudly enough to shatter glass. And each time the hen sounded the alarm Tia would soon appear to see what was the matter.
Sawyer spent a lot of time thinking about the many ways he could possibly get back at the spiteful hen.
There was fried chicken. Chicken and dumplings. Roasted chicken. Chicken soup. Chicken potpie…
“I will let you get out of bed in one more week, my little Francisco,” Tia said.
Lying on his side and facing her, Sawyer clenched his fist and punched it into his pillow. “I’ve been in this confounded bed for almost three weeks already! A gunshot to the head doesn’t take this much time to heal! And I’m not your little Francisco, dammit!”
Quick as her stoutness would allow, Tia leaned over him and delivered a resounding smack to his bottom. “Who taught you to talk like that, niño? I will not hear another nasty word come out of your mouth, do you hear me?”
Sawyer clenched his fist again. This wasn’t the first time the woman had spanked him. She’d done so the day before yesterday too, when he’d refused a spoonful of castor oil. “Don’t hit me again!”
“I will spank you whenever you need a spanking, Francisco, and do not yell at me. As your mother it is my duty to make sure you know right from wrong. Now, open your mouth and take this medicine.”
He watched her pour thick liquid into a spoon. “No. I hate that stuff.”
“It is good for you. Castor oil will make you strong.” Before he could resist, she pinched his nose closed and shoved the spoon into his mouth.
His insides rolled, and it was only with the greatest of effort that he managed to keep down the potato soup she’d given him for lunch.
“Good boy,” Tia praised him, then leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Now, go to sleep. And stay in the bed.”
He stayed in bed. Stayed in bed and stayed in bed. During the following week he didn’t know what was worse: his memory loss, the maddening fact that he had still not regained the full measure of his strength, his all-consuming boredom, or the group of people and the chicken whose bizarre eccentricities threatened what precious little sanity his mysterious past had left to him.
Day after day he tried to convince Tia he was not her little boy, fended off Azucar’s sexual advances, shouted so Lorenzo could hear him, untangled Pedro’s twisted Bible stories, listened to Maclovio threaten to smash his face, and fished out Jengibre’s eggs from within the folds of his covers. Once she even laid one in his navel while he was sleeping!
He saw little of Zafiro. From what he gathered, the chores around La Escondida kept her busy from dawn to dusk. On a few occasions, late at night, he heard her making noises in the yard. He’d get up and watch her throw armloads of kindling into the woodshed, toss hay to the horse in the paddock, and haul water into the barn. She hung wet clothes by moonlight, chased night-raiding rabbits from her garden, and tried to fix whatever Maclovio had smashed during the day.
Sometimes she’d suddenly stop whatever she was doing and stare into the distance for a long while before finally finishing whatever last chore demanded her attention. During those times it seemed to Sawyer as though she was looking for someone, waiting for someone.
Every now and then she came to visit him after completing her work, but after the first few minutes of telling him what she’d done that day she’d fall asleep in the chair beside his bed. Tia would then come in and escort her to her own room.
Something about Zafiro’s heavy burdens struck a chord in Sawyer’s memory. Something about the way everyone depended on her to take care of them and La Escondida. He had endless hours to wonder why her hard work and her caring for her charges pricked at his buried recollections, but no answer would come to him.
The vague scrap of memory didn’t merely bewilder him, however.
It haunted him with dark feelings that he couldn’t name no matter how hard he tried.
“You are strong enough to leave your bed now, my sweet Francisco,” Tia announced one sunny day as she arrived with an afternoon snack for him. “Zafiro brought your bag of clothes from the convent and washed them all for you. So you will have clean clothes to wear. Zafiro also brought your mule and your trunk. But your trunk, it is locked, and the nuns made her promise not to ask Lorenzo to open it. The sisters, they say that when you want to open the trunk, you will open it. I agree. Besides, I am sure that the trunk holds more of your treasures, the little things you so love to find and collect, like your pinecones and rocks.”
Sawyer tried to snatch the thought of his trunk from his mind, to no avail.
That trunk. What was inside?
God.
Just wondering set him afire with pain. An inner pain that felt like it would kill him.
He wasn’t going to open it. He couldn’t.
But he would keep it. Surely one day he would find the courage, the strength to open it and see what it contained.
For now, however, just the notion filled him with wrenching dread.
“Francisco, eat your raisin bread, drink your milk, and I will let you sit outside in the sunshine.”
Sawyer had never eaten so quickly. He even swallowed his castor oil without arguing. It occurred to him that he was acting exactly like the small boy Tia thought him to be—a child who chose to be obedient so he could have a treat—but he didn’t care.
Finally, after more than four long, tedious weeks of staring at the ceiling and watching spiders spin their webs, he was going to escape the bedroom. And soon—when his leg was sufficiently healed so he could ride—he would leave La Escondida and its eccentric inhabitants altogether, and…
And what? Wander again?
“Careful now, my son,” Tia said when she handed him his clothes. “Your injuries and the weeks in the bed have made you weak.”
“I am not weak.” And I am not your son! He grabbed his pants from her plump hands and started to stuff his right leg into them.
But a sudden attack of dizziness forced him to slow down, and he admitted that irritating though the old woman was, Tia was right about his physical condition. While she helped him dress, he vowed that he would begin exercising his muscles as soon as possible.
Outside, Tia sat him down on Pedro’s large rock in the yard. “Stay here, Francisco, and I will bring you some apple cider. Then I am going to make noodles because you like them so much. Lots and lots of noodles! I will dry them so that whenever you want some I will have them.”
When she disappeared into the house Sawyer lifted his face to the late-afternoon sunshine. He then began to survey his surroundings, taking careful note of the fact that most of what he saw was in sad condition. There were several large holes in the roof and the sides of the barn. He could hear a cow lowing from inside the shabby structure. There was a b
urro in there too, he remembered. Pancha the cow, and Rayo the burro. He wondered how the poor animals stayed warm and dry in the winter.
A rickety wagon sat near the bottom of one of the slopes that helped conceal La Escondida. Surely Zafiro didn’t use the conveyance. It looked to be older than the mountains themselves. The thought made Sawyer wonder what she did use when the need to transport heavy things arose.
Of course, she rarely left the hideaway. But still, how and where did she obtain supplies? Did the nuns provide everything for her?
Still pondering his mental questions, Sawyer continued to look around. All the fences around the place were falling down, including that which penned the stallion Zafiro called Coraje. The beautiful steed cantered around inside the paddock, bucking and rearing every so often and then disappearing into a tumbledown shed that was supposed to—but probably didn’t—keep him sheltered from severe weather.
There was a wildness about Coraje, a feral disposition that alerted Sawyer to the fact that the stallion was a mean one. He wondered how Zafiro fed the horse, then remembered that she threw his food over the broken down fence.
He looked around again, noticing that the cabin porch was missing a few planks and one of its front steps, and the woodshed door was attached by little more than a prayer. The door appeared to have been yanked from its hinges. A bit of Maclovio’s handiwork, probably.
Most of the vegetables in the garden were nibbled down to the ground, and the chickens were stuffed into some sort of enclosure made of pieces of broken fence and tree branches. The pen looked to have been built by a three-year-old child, and two of the chickens had already escaped its flimsy confines and were now heading happily toward the woods that surrounded the yard.
Still, the place was as tidy as it could be, swept and raked clear of all leaves, sticks, and other manner of debris. Pots and barrels of lemon-yellow marigolds and scattered beds of red and white roses brightened the area, and not one weed existed within the thick emerald grass that circled the cabin.
Although Zafiro could not accomplish everything by herself, she’d done an excellent job with those tasks she could handle.
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