Bed of Roses

by Rebecca Paisley

  “We’ll have to talk about this later, Azucar, darling,” he murmured into her ear. “Right now I’ve got to make a much needed visit to the stream.”

  Azucar drew away and examined him, not missing all the dirt and sweat stains that coated his clothing and skin. “Yes, I see you are very dirty. All right, my anxious stallion, go wash, and then we will go to my bedroom for a little morning delight.”

  Gently, he tweaked her nose, grabbed a bar of soap from a basket attached to the wall, then crossed to the door. Outside, he headed straight for the stream.

  And met Maclovio in the forest.

  “Sawyer,” Maclovio said, blinking as water dripped from his clean hair into his bloodshot eyes.

  “Maclovio.”

  Maclovio bowed his head and watched his feet shuffle in the brittle leaves. “I saw what I did.”

  Sawyer remained silent.

  “I am sorry,” Maclovio muttered. “I do not even remember doing it. It was Pedro who told me when I woke up. I cannot believe—”

  “You won’t do anything like that again, Maclovio.”

  Maclovio had no need for further explanation. The sound in Sawyer’s voice was sufficient. “You found it.”

  “And destroyed it.”

  “I cannot build another.”

  “I know.”

  Maclovio lifted his head. “I am sorry, Sawyer. If I could undo what I did, I would.”

  As Sawyer looked into the old giant’s eyes he felt compassion surge through him. “I know you would, Maclovio.”

  “We will be hungry this winter.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Maclovio’s eyes widened. “No? What are you going to do then?”

  It was Sawyer’s turn to bow his head. While absently looking at the toes of his dusty boots, he ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. I just don’t know yet.”

  Maclovio wrapped his hand over Sawyer’s shoulder. “I will help. Now that I cannot drink anymore, you will see how I can help.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Money is what we need, Sawyer,” Maclovio said, then wiped a dribble of stream water off his neck. “With money we could buy—”

  “But we don’t have any, Maclovio.”

  “I could steal again. About ten miles south of here there is a road that is well-traveled by wealthy people on their way to Mexico City. And to the north of here are several fine haciendas owned and lived in by wealthy Spaniards. I could—”

  “And how would you get there?”

  Maclovio smiled. “There is Coraje. No horse I have ever known could run as fast as he.”

  Alarm flashed through Sawyer’s mind as he imagined the old man trying to mount Coraje.

  The horse would kill him. “If I catch you anywhere near that monster I’ll smash your face, Maclovio. And that’s not an empty promise.”

  At Maclovio’s crestfallen expression, Sawyer tempered his next words. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  On impulse, Maclovio reached out and gave Sawyer a quick, strong hug, then released him. “You are a good man, Sawyer Donovan. It is an honor to call you my friend.”

  Sawyer clapped Maclovio on the back before resuming his trip to the stream. Once at the bank he swiftly took off his clothes, and with the bar of soap in hand he dove into the rushing water. After soaking for a few moments, he rubbed the soap between his palms to create a lather, then began to wash.

  A flash of red in the woods suddenly stole his attention.

  “Sawyer,” Azucar called as she exited the forest and tottered toward the stream. “I have brought you a towel.”

  He sank low into the stream; water flowed beneath his chin. “Uh… Thank you, Azucar.” Watching her warily, he wondered if she would soon rip off her gown and join him in the creek.

  “Oh, I see you did not bring clean clothes with you, my handsome buck.” Laying the towel on the shore, Azucar picked up Sawyer’s dirty clothes. “I will take these away and bring you back some clean ones.”

  When she doddered back into the woods with his dirty clothes, Sawyer relaxed and smiled. She really was a kind person, he thought. Insane, but kind.

  Insane. The word made him wonder where Zafiro was, where she’d gone to pick the berries with Tia. Well, wherever she was she’d be back soon, he decided, lathering his hair.

  He could hardly wait to tell her he’d found and destroyed Maclovio’s still. She needed to hear some happy news.

  Yes, today would be a good day for Zafiro.

  “See, Tia?” Zafiro asked, standing in the midst of a lush patch of vegetation. “I told you we would find berries here.” She looked around the area, a small grassy field that was about a ten-minute walk away from La Escondida. “Are you happier now?”

  “I am happier, chiquita,” Tia answered, bending over to strip another hill of plump red berries. “If I can get enough sugar I will make jams and jellies. And I will dry the berries too, and make berry candies, and of course we will have fresh berry pies.”

  “But you will need more flour, Tia.” For a moment Zafiro glanced over the landscape, frowning without really understanding why. She wondered where Mariposa was, then decided the cougar had returned to the cabin.

  For some reason she wished the mountain lion was near.

  She shook the peculiar feeling off. “I will see if I can get flour for us. I have not visited the nuns in a while, so perhaps I will…”

  Her voice trailed away when she detected what sounded like a distant rumble of thunder. Strange. Not as much as a whiff of clouds broke the blue of the vast Mexican sky.

  “It is too bad that we cannot pick other foods off plants the way we can with these berries,” Tia said. “Imagine if we could go pick a pig off a bush or shake flour, salt, and sugar from the trees.”

  Zafiro barely understood a word Tia said, so intently did she concentrate on the faraway noise that continued to hit her ears. It wasn’t thunder. She didn’t know why she was certain that it wasn’t, but she knew it was not thunder.

  The mountain wind whined past her, picking up her hair and blowing it all around her face. Her cheeks stung as the tresses whipped at her skin, and still the remote noise taunted her comprehension.

  A fine shiver crawled over her, not one of cold, but of apprehension. Her heart seemed to tumble, as if missing its rhythmic footing.

  “Tia,” she whispered.

  “I think we should bring Azucar, Maclovio, Pedro, and Lorenzo to this patch tomorrow morning,” Tia continued merrily, dropping another handful of berries into her basket. “There are so many! And we will ask my sweet Francisco to take some to the good sisters at the convent. The nuns, they will enjoy—”

  “Tia.”

  Slowly, Tia straightened from her hunched-over position. A slight frown wrinkling the wrinkles on her forehead, she looked at her young companion. “Zafiro.” She, too, looked in the distance, in the same direction as did Zafiro. “What do you see?”

  Zafiro parted her lips to answer, but stopped suddenly when her throat began to close. “Run,” she whispered.

  She struggled to breathe, to take in enough air to be able to shout. Deep foreboding caused her to drop her basket.

  Finally, she gulped in air. “Run! Tia, run back to La Escondida!”

  Tia’s basket flew into the air, spilling berries everywhere as she turned and fled toward the entrance of the hideaway. Hearing Zafiro’s racing footsteps behind her, she prayed they would find safety before the coming danger caught up with them.

  “Faster, Tia, faster!” Zafiro yelled. The noise became louder, her fear deeper. She turned to look over her shoulder.

  And stifled a scream of terror.

  Three mounted men followed on horseback, their mounts ripping up great clods of dirt. The horses ran at a breakneck gallop, their riders leaning low over their necks.

  Without a hint of hesitation Zafiro changed her course, turning to her right toward a grove of oak trees. Panic tore at her insides at the thou
ght of the men following her into the woods, but she did not know what else to do.

  It was the only thing she could think of that might save Tia.

  “Run!” she shouted again, hoping the wind would carry her instructions to Tia. “Run to La Escondida, and do not stop, Tia!”

  Tia did as bade, scrambling toward the safety of La Escondida as fast as her fat legs could move. When she was but several yards away from the entrance, she turned and reached for Zafiro with the intention of pulling her into the hideaway.

  She clutched at handfuls of air. Shock struck inside her breast, burning her into near collapse. Dazed by fear, she scanned the area where she’d last seen Zafiro.

  The mountains repeated her scream many times over.

  But the men who had captured Zafiro rode on.

  The scream Sawyer heard was like a live thing. An invisible monster, it clawed into his ears, lunged through his mind, and began to eat at his gut.

  He lunged out of the stream and grabbed up the towel from the shore. Dread pumped steadily through his veins, but even as his apprehension mounted so did his strength. He bolted through the forest as if blown and guided by the unerring breath of the wind herself and finally ran into the yard in front of the cabin.

  What he saw bewildered him and deepened his alarm.

  Tia stood by the barn, jumping up and down, screaming and weeping, Azucar by her side doing the same. Lorenzo was dragging a box out of the barn. When he opened it, Pedro began searching frantically through its contents, throwing various items every which way until he found what he’d been looking for: two pistols.

  Sawyer watched Pedro thrust one of the guns into Lorenzo's hand. The weapon promptly fell apart and spilled pieces of iron onto Lorenzo’s feet.

  Lorenzo hurried back into the barn just as Maclovio emerged with a saddle and a bridle in his hands. Thrust into one of the saddle trappings was Jaime’s rifle.

  “Maclovio, no!” Knowing full well that Maclovio was about to try to mount and ride Coraje, Sawyer raced toward the barn. Just as he reached the old man, Lorenzo came out of the barn again.

  Sawyer’s mouth formed a wide O.

  Lorenzo rode the little burro, Rayo.

  But Lorenzo rode backward, with his back facing Rayo’s head.

  Sawyer had to force himself out of his state of disbelief and confusion. “For God’s sake, Lorenzo, what the hell are you—”

  “Sawyer!” Azucar cried. “They have taken Zafiro!”

  Her information chilled Sawyer’s blood. “Taken—”

  “Do not bother Sawyer with this, Azucar!” Maclovio boomed. “He cannot shoot because he cannot make himself handle guns! Zafiro told me so herself!” Saddle and bridle still in his hands, Maclovio turned to Sawyer. “Stay here and keep Tia and Azucar calm, Sawyer. I will go after Zafiro.”

  A shred of logic stabbing through the chaos in his mind, Sawyer grabbed the tack out of Maclovio’s grasp. “What happened to Zafiro?” he roared.

  “We were gathering berries right over that hill!” Tia pointed to the bluff, behind which grew the berry patches. “Three mounted men arrived out of nowhere, and one of them caught Zafiro as she ran into the forest! She… She… Oh, I know she led them there to keep them from catching me!”

  “Caught Zafiro.” The words escaped Sawyer’s lips like a shot of flame.

  She was in danger. She could be killed.

  In danger. Killed.

  Hadn’t other people been in danger and killed?

  In his mind he left La Escondida and went back. Back to Synner, Texas, where the house with the white curtains stood.

  He remembered them. Everything about the people lying on the floor in the house.

  They’d been murdered.

  Because he hadn’t been there to save them.

  Every memory he’d killed and buried made a violent resurrection. He dropped the saddle. And the bridle. He thrust his fingers through his damp hair, and he gritted his teeth. He wanted to scream, but the scream clogged in his throat, thick, awful, too big to choke down, too horrible to release.

  He hadn’t been there to save them, and they’d died.

  He wanted to crumble to the ground. His knees began to shake.

  And then into his mind, shining through all the darkness, appeared a pair of sapphire eyes. They weren’t closed in death, but danced with vibrant life.

  Zafiro.

  With a will he’d never realized he possessed, he fought himself free from the crushing grip of grief and ran into the barn. There he found his trunk. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside.

  He knew now.

  Lifting the chest, he felt along its splintery bottom until his fingers found a crack in the wood. From the fissure he pulled out a key, then quickly opened the trunk.

  Inside lay his Colts. They gleamed in the dim light of the barn, and he knew they were fully loaded.

  He reached for them, then suddenly remembered that he wore only a towel. There was no time to go to the cabin for clothes. He would have to wear the clothing in the trunk.

  In only moments he was fully dressed, his feet and calves encased in shiny black boots, his Colts lying alongside his thighs.

  He grabbed a coiled rope off the floor in the corner of the stable and quickly fashioned a lasso. As he left the barn and strode outside, his sable cape flowed behind him.

  Maclovio, Pedro, Tia, and Azucar gaped at him. Lorenzo fell off Rayo’s back and tumbled to the ground, but never took his gaze away from Sawyer.

  Maclovio groped for a fence post. “Saw-Saw-Sawyer—”

  Ignoring the stuttering man, Sawyer climbed over Coraje’s paddock fence, tied the end of the rope to a post, and silently commanded the stallion to come to him.

  And Coraje did. With his ears laid back flat on his head, his nostrils flared, the black horse charged straight toward him.

  Sawyer stood as rigid as frozen steel, then tossed the rope toward the racing animal. Neatly, the lasso fell around Coraje’s neck, whereupon Sawyer shot across the paddock to the other side.

  Coraje stopped, turned, and started forward, intent on hurting the man in his pen.

  The rope halted his progress. He fought the rope, muscles bulging in his neck and hindquarters. And then he stood still for a moment, pawed the ground, and began to run in the directions the rope would allow—to the left and to the right.

  Sawyer crossed the paddock again and grabbed the rope. Walking his hands up the heavy twine and pulling with all his might, he shortened its length and gradually made his way nearer to Coraje.

  The horse stood motionless, watched warily as Sawyer approached, then lunged out his neck to deliver a vicious bite.

  But Sawyer was ready and faster. His motion a blur, he reached out, caught Coraje’s bottom lip, and firmly twisted the bit of flesh. He knew his action didn’t actually hurt the horse; it only delivered enough of a sting to render the animal incapable of concentrating on anything else.

  Coraje stilled instantly, his only movement the shudder of his nostrils.

  “Maclovio, bring me the tack!”

  Maclovio didn’t move. He simply stared.

  “Maclovio, now, dammit!"

  Pedro was the first to come out of the spell of astonishment. He snatched the bridle and saddle off the ground, opened the paddock, and took the tack to Sawyer. His eyes never leaving horse or man, he then backed out of the enclosure. “Do I shut the gate?”

  Working quickly, Sawyer made no reply. He slid the bit into the horse’s mouth easily, then drew the straps of leather over the horse’s ears and buckled the fastenings securely. Just as quickly, he saddled the steed.

  A pair of sapphire eyes glowing in his mind, he grabbed Coraje’s thick mane and swung himself onto the horse’s back.

  Dumbfounded, Maclovio, Lorenzo, Pedro, and the women watched Sawyer subdue Ciro’s savage stallion, unable to comprehend how Sawyer would manage to stay on the bucking, rearing, and totally enraged horse.

  But Sawyer did stay m
ounted, and Coraje soon realized he’d been mastered. The horse surrendered to Sawyer’s skills, pawing the ground gently and letting out a soft nicker.

  Sawyer glanced at the gate and saw that Pedro had closed it. His long legs wrapped around the steed’s barrel, Sawyer pressed in with his thighs and sent Coraje soaring over the fence.

  The powerful horse cantered out of the yard and began to climb the steep, pebbled hill that led to the hidden exit. Once outside La Escondida’s confines he responded to his rider’s commands, veered sharply to the left, and headed down a slope that spilled into an open meadow surrounded by oak and pine trees.

  Sawyer leaned low over the stallion’s neck, giving him his head and urging him into a ground-eating gallop. He knew exactly where to go.

  The riders who’d stolen Zafiro away had left a trail of beaten earth in their wake.

  A long time had passed since Sawyer had handled a gun.

  But as he continued to follow the path to Zafiro, he vowed that he would kill the men who’d taken her.

  Zafiro lost all sense of time as her abductors rode through the mountain passages. Her capture seemed to have happened only minutes ago, and yet La Escondida seemed hundreds of miles away.

  The man who held her next to him, his arm fairly crushing her ribs as he kept her in place on his thigh, wore his long, reddish-brown hair tied back with a strip of frayed rawhide. A filthy black hat on his head and streaks of dirt striping his face and neck, he’d narrowed his eyes against the sting of the wind and the lash of her hair, and he kept licking his thin, cracked lips.

  He smelled of roasted meat. Obviously, he’d eaten recently. She wondered where he’d gotten his meal, wondered if it had been good, and wondered if he’d consumed large portions.

  She didn’t understand why such trifling thoughts occupied her mind and tried to summon back her terror. She’d fought the man wildly when he’d caught and lifted her from the ground in the forest, but he’d subdued her instantly with a sharp blow to the side of her head. And now the fingers on the arm that held her were tangled in her hair. Every time she moved he yanked so hard that her scalp felt as though it was on fire.