Bride of Fortune (50 page)

      
“Hardly that, my boy, hardly that,” Marquez soothed languidly. “I have great need of your peculiar skills. The treasury is well-guarded and your men are loyal only to you as well as being the most ruthlessly effective of the
contre-guerrillas.
I should hate to have some Juarista sniper—or anybody's sniper—pick you off before we're able to achieve our goal.”

      
Luce regarded his mentor with interested black eyes, their irises glowing like molten silver. There was a pregnant pause. Then he replied with a careless shrug, “Very well. I'll return to my ancestral
hacienda
to while away a month or two. God knows it's isolated enough to be a perfect hideout. I wonder how my brother and my—or perhaps I should say
our
—poor little bride will react to my homecoming?” he asked with caustic amusement…

* * * *

      
The year had ended and a new one had begun with the rhythm of everyday life little changed on Gran Sangre. Crops were harvested and livestock fattened after the luxurious winter rains. Sonora settled once again into isolated tranquility now that the Juaristas were finally in control of Hermosillo and Guaymas.

      
Mercedes arranged to sell a small herd of cattle to a merchant in Hermosillo for a tidy profit. The household ran smoothly. But everyone wondered about their absent
patrón
. His lady had been bereft since he had ridden away over two months ago. No one believed he had rejoined the emperor's cause, but they wondered when he would return.

      
All but Hilario and the Juaristas who worked at the
hacienda
. And Mercedes. She had received word that he was on the border with Juarez and that any reports she heard regarding his death were fabrications. She was to communicate with no one. Taking orders from the republicans galled every principle with which she had been raised. Yet to refuse might well sign her love's death warrant. That she could never do.

      
Mercedes sat in the library clutching the letter from him. She had read and reread it until the paper was crumbling. He had signed it, “Your husband.” Nothing else. “It's almost as if he can't bear to use Lucero's name anymore,” she whispered brokenly.

      
Who was he, this stranger who fought on the side of her enemies? And what frightening intrigue was he involved in that kept him away from his land—the land he had labored so long and hard to rescue from destruction? He was responsible for their well-stocked larder, the sleek fat steers in the pasture and the splendid horses that Hilario and his men were preparing to sell as riding stock.

      
And he was gone.

      
Will he ever return?
The thought of losing him terrified her as she scanned the terse sentences on the frayed paper, trying to read between the lines once more:

My dearest Mercedes,

      
Please forgive me for not returning at once. I had thought to conclude my business in the north quickly, but it simply cannot be done. I bitterly regret our argument upon parting. Please understand that I had no choice but to leave. As soon as I can return, I will explain everything to you. Then you will have to decide whether or not you still love me. I pray for the sake of our child, as well as my own, that you will. You may hear reports that I have been killed en route to El Paso del Norte. They are false. I can say no more now. Only trust me for a little while. After that, it is in the hands of God. Never forget I love you.

Your husband

      
It was a plea for her forgiveness—not only for joining the Juaristas, but for assuming Lucero's identity. There was no way to deny or suppress it any longer. Mercedes could not call him Lucero anymore either. He said he was going to explain everything when he returned. But did she want to hear his explanations? Could she bear to have out in the open what until now had been cloaked in darkness?

      
Mercedes tried to pray with little success. Like murderous King Claudius in
Hamlet
, she felt her prayers flung back from heaven. She was the most heinous sinner, hopelessly in love with a man who was not her husband, an adulteress who carried a bastard child—and loved it with a fierce joy that no child of Lucero's could ever have given her.

      
She should confess her sin to Father Salvador, but how could she? The priest would demand that she never again lie with her love, that she denounce him to the world. He would be arrested, imprisoned, shot. The very thought made her shudder. No, there could be no solace in the confessional for her. She longed for his return with a fervor that was sheer agony, yet at the same time she dreaded it.

      
Sleeping alone at night made her feel such desolation that she had taken to reading into the early morning hours before retiring. His magical touch, the heat of his body curved protectively around her, the blissful oblivion that came in the culmination of lovemaking—she missed desperately. But more than anything, she missed his voice, his laughter, his companionship. He was both lover and friend. And the father of her child—a stranger.

      
Her belly had begun to swell now. Angelina fussed over her, yet understood her grieving. Everyone waited for the
patrón's
return, eager to greet him with joyous celebration. Only Mercedes knew the reckoning that must eventually come.

      
Their bittersweet idyll was over.

* * * *

      
Mariano Vargas reined in his horse and scanned the rocky terrain ahead of him nervously. His men had discarded the gaudy Vargas livery in favor of the drab motley clothing worn by
contre-guerrillas
. They were hidden at the mouth of a steep arroyo that transected the ancient caravan route called El Camino Real, old Spain's royal road stretching all the way from New Mexico to Mexico City.

      
A faint plume of dust in the distance indicated the approach of a sizable caravan. Among the wagons and riders was one small black carriage. Inside it rode the man Vargas was sworn to destroy.

      
Hernan Ruiz, who was a remarkably able rider in spite of his shattered right arm, reined in his mount beside Vargas. “Can we trust that infernal savage Emelio?”

      
Vargas adjusted the glass he was peering through and sighted in on the column emerging on the horizon. They were out in the open on a stretch of flat barren brush land, easily visible through the looking glass. “I see Juarez's carriage,” he said triumphantly, handing the glass to his companion.

      
“I still don't like this, Mariano. Your father—”

      
“My father is dead,” Vargas said flatly. “Killed by rabble like the ones who ride with that Indian. But soon they'll all die, too.”

      
“Including that treacherous Emelio. I don't trust any man who would turn against his own kind.”

      
Vargas shrugged cynically. “We paid him well. A pity he won't live to spend it.”

      
“And you aren't concerned about young Alvarado?”

      
“After the two men of my father's failed to kill him, I sent word to General Mejía. His men saw to it that Don Lucero never reached Juarez. I received a full report on his death.”

      
“Juarez's old companion Emelio Jaról is still in his position of trust, that much is true,” Ruiz said uncertainly.

      
“Now all we need do is dispatch those armed banditti accompanying Juarez.”

      
Ruiz smiled with veiled contempt. “Ah, Mariano, my old friend, you are far better at intrigue than fighting. It is I and our soldiers who will engage the enemy. You will only watch.” He turned his horse and issued crisp orders to the armed column.

      
Hernan's contemptuous remark caused a deep crimson stain to darken Vargas’ face, but he remained hidden behind the safety of the rocks while Ruiz formed up the men and prepared to fire on the approaching party.

      
Inside Juarez's coach, Nicholas Fortune rode, his legs cramped from sharing the small space with Lieutenant Bolivar Montoya. The young officer to whom he had shown hospitality the preceding year seemed not at all surprised to find the master of Gran Sangre working for Juarez.

      
Indeed, after spending the past weeks with the little Zapotec Indian, Nicholas was coming to understand how the remarkable man had held a republic together virtually single-handedly since 1857. Juarez was a man of unswerving integrity and the highest devotion to duty, tireless in his work, shrewd and patient, pragmatic when he had to be, but never one to compromise his principles.

      
The republic was founded upon constitutional law and he was merely its executor, a man of simple tastes and hardy endurance. Juarez inspired those same qualities in the people who followed him and fought for him. Fortune thought wryly that he would once have laughed aloud at the absurd idea that he would fight for free. Yet here he was doing precisely that. No, he amended to himself, he wasn't fighting for free, he was fighting for freedom.

      
“It is fortunate for me that General Díaz sent me to report to the president at such a propitious time,” Montoya said conversationally as they rode along.

      
Nicholas regarded him shrewdly. “There'll be a promotion in this for you, I assume.”

      
Bolivar shrugged. “Perhaps, but think of the opportunity—how often does a man get to impersonate a president?” He brushed an imaginary speck of lint off his black frock coat and adjusted the stovepipe hat on his head.

      
Fortune wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve, for it was stuffy in the small coach. “You don't resemble him at all.”

      
Bolivar grinned. “Do you think those assassins will get close enough to know before we spring our trap?”

      
“As Hamlet said, ‘Timing is all.’ That rocky ravine up ahead is the likeliest spot on the road. We have to hold them until our detachment can reach us to finish them off.”

      
“This should buy us some time, I think,” Montoya said, patting the Gatling gun on the floor between them.

      
The gun and Fortune had been hidden in the coach before they set out from Chihuahua City, where the real Juarez remained. Montoya, disguised in the president's clothes, face concealed beneath the turned-down hat brim, had publicly entered the coach for the next long leg of the ride to Durango. They were nearing the border between the two states.

      
Suddenly a shot rang out and the cry went up. Montoya flung open the door of the coach as it turned sideways in the road. Fortune leveled the multi-barreled machine gun and opened fire on the large column of heavily armed men who sped toward them. The gun belched smoke and made a deafening noise in the confines of the carriage. Through the sulfurous clouds, the two men grinned at each other when the approaching riders went down in rapid succession like a stack of dominos toppled across a board.

      
Nicholas recognized Hernan Ruiz screaming orders to his men to retreat and regroup. “There's one of the ringleaders, but where is that crafty fox Vargas?” he muttered, studying the chaos outside. Then he saw a horseman emerge from the mouth of the arroyo and ride hell-bent in the opposite direction. Shouting at Montoya, Fortune jumped from the opposite side of the carriage, yelling, “Don't shoot me by accident, for Christ's sake!”

      
All around him the small detachment of Juarista soldiers who had accompanied the coach had taken cover behind what scant ocotillo and sage there was along the sides of the road. Some lay behind their felled horses which served as a breastwork from which to return fire. Their reinforcements had come riding from the east and cut off what was left of Ruiz's men, who were now pinned between the two bodies of soldiers, well outnumbered.

      
Fortune seized the reins of a horse as it pranced nervously after its rider had been shot from the saddle. He swung up on the animal and kicked it into a wild gallop, dodging between men who were now engaging in close combat with sabers and pistols.

      
“Come on, Mariano. It isn't sporting to leave your own party this way,” he muttered as he cleared the fight zone and bent low over the bay's neck, urging the big horse to greater speed.

      
Vargas was well-mounted but not much of a rider, Fortune concluded within the first minutes of pursuit. The terrain was increasingly hilly and rough as they rode farther south. Vargas, afraid of the patches of catclaw and junipers alongside the road, remained on the carriage trail, but with each sharp rise, he lost ground to his pursuer.

      
Realizing that he was being chased, he turned to see who it was and blanched incredulously, then drew a pistol and fired. Bouncing on horseback, he missed by a wide margin. Don Lucero drew closer. Desperation drove Vargas to rein in and yank his rifle from its scabbard, but before he could raise it to take aim, his foe was upon him.