Bullet Creek (17 page)

In the main room, the men were still snickering.

“Go ahead,” Real said as Sanchez stepped through the bunkhouse door. “Let the women protect you!”

More guffaws sounded as Sanchez strode up the hill to the crumbling hacienda shrouded in darkness.

Later the same night, Doña Isabelle slipped fully clothed out of her bed, picked up her shoes, and opened the door of her private sleeping chamber, which was just right of her mother's, down a lonely wing of Hacienda de Cava.

She peered both ways down the silent hall penetrated by several shafts of pearl moonlight angling through high, arched windows. She stepped out, closed the door behind her, and padded lightly past her mother's door, bare feet tapping almost silently on the cracked stone tiles.

Outside a few minutes later, she climbed over a low rock wall, paused to step into her shoes, then, holding a black shawl about her shoulders, crossed her mother's small, neat vegetable patch before descending a long, gentle slope through high grass and oak trees. She crossed the creek at the bottom of the slope, skipping across the stones, arms thrown out for balance, and climbed the bank on the other side.

The boy waited for her at the lip of the slope—a tall, slender silhouette in a frayed serape and straw sombrero, the horse beside him cropping grass, the low munching sounds audible beneath the crickets' metronomic chirp. He hunkered down on his haunches, placed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled softly, beckoning. She ran to him, threw her arms around his waist, pressed her face to his chest.

He gave her an affectionate squeeze, then pushed her away from him and turned to the horse, his voice a raspy whisper. “Quickly. Real has posted more night guards. Fortunately, the two on this side of the house are drunk in the creek bottom.”

Chuckling to himself, the boy leaned down and laced his hands together. Isabelle thrust her left foot into the makeshift stirrup, and Pepe straightened, smoothly hoisting her onto the worn Mexican saddle with its big horn and cracked cantle and stirrups.

He leapt up behind her and clucked to the mustang. Then they cantered down the hill, the girl in the saddle, the long-limbed boy riding behind her, his arms around her, the reins in his hands. They dropped down from the low ridge and headed southeast into desert scrub and shallow canyons, where the night was as black as a burial shroud.

They rode for twenty minutes, threading their way through the canyons, the boy, having grown up here, knowing every rock and cactus along the paths, every knoll and precipice. They crossed a low plateau, then dropped into another, deeper canyon. About them, the eyes of nocturnal hunting beasts burned in the darkness, the brush cracking beneath padded feet, soft snorts lifting the fine hairs along the girl's spine.

At the base of a rocky cliff, Pepe stopped the horse and pushed himself straight back off the horse's rear, both sandaled feet hitting the ground at the same time. Dropping the horse's reins, he lifted Isabelle down from the saddle, his hands tightening around her waist as he nuzzled her neck from behind.

“Pepe!” she laughed, pushing him away.

Chuckling, the boy loosened the saddle cinch, shucked his old Burnside rifle from the sheath, and took the girl's hand. He led her up the long slope through the rocks and cracked boulders. The goat herder's shack huddled at the slope's base, shielded by rocks and dry scrub.

Pepe paused, dropped to his knees by a spring-fed pool in the rocks, and cupped water up for the girl. She knelt, held the boy's hands in her own, and drank.

“More?” the boy asked.

She shook her head, licking the water from her lips. “That's enough. It's good.”

“It's the best anywhere at Rancho de Cava. No one else knows about it but the Apaches, of course.”

“And the creatures,” Isabelle said, glancing at the tracks and scattered droppings etched by starlight around the spring. A shudder ran through her.

“Don't worry,” Pepe said, holding up the old but well cared-for rifle in his right hand. “I have this. The creatures respect me, as do the Apaches.”

“Oh, the Apaches respect you now, too?” the girl said, good-natured mocking in her lowered voice.

“They better,” the boy said. “I killed two broncos just last month, over there on the other side of these rocks. I was resting here after a long hunt, and they were trying to sneak up on me. Only two shots—pow, pow!” He grinned broadly and lifted his chin. “They're up there now, on the ridgetop—what's left of them after the birds have had their fill!”

Holding her shawl tightly about her shoulders, shivering against the chill, the girl beamed at him admiringly.

Pepe took another sip from the spring. “When we're married,” Pepe said, “I'll dig a well and shore up the sides with rocks, and we'll have all the water we'll ever need.”

“But not here. I don't want to be so close to the Apache trail.”

“No need to worry about Apaches,” Pepe said confidently, “but no, not here.” The boy's smile was bright and cunning in the darkness, the starlight glittering in his eyes. His long, thick, Indianlike hair, to which dust and plant seeds clung, hung down around his face with its flat cheekbones, broad mouth, and sharp chin. He was missing a tooth, but otherwise he was a handsome young man and was filling out nicely, his legs muscled from riding and hunting. “Ten miles south and west. Is that far enough? There's better grass over there, and the water is nearly as good.”

“That should be far enough,” Isabelle said. “Can we go inside now? I'm cold.”

Pepe lowered his head and drank, then rose and took Isabelle's left hand in his right, and led her the last few yards to the hovel, which boasted four walls but no roof. Over the low door Pepe had hung a deerhide stitched with talismans for keeping out witches and evil spirits.

“Wait here,” he said, releasing the girl's hand.

He walked into the pale boulders right of the rock house and returned a moment later with a rusty lantern. He set the lantern on a flat rock, fished a box of sulfur matches from a pocket of his trousers, lifted the mantel, and lit the wick.

When he'd trimmed the wick, he turned to the hovel's door. His rifle in one hand, the lantern in the other, he swept the door aside and raised the lantern, peering into the hovel's deep purple shadows.

He stepped inside, let the flap fall behind him. A moment later, he swept it back, poked his head through the door, and extended his hand to Isabelle, fingers splayed.

“It is safe.”

Inside the roofless hovel, by the lantern light, Isabelle prepared a pot for tea at the rough pine table Pepe had found in an old mining shack. From an abandoned army post, he had also scavenged two chairs and an army cot covered with a dusty green blanket and a pillow. A stack of neatly split firewood and kindling stood beside the hovel's fireplace, built into the rock wall. In it, Pepe laid a fire.

Stars glistened in the purple sky above the hovel's stone walls. Vagrant breezes curled over the rocks and nudged the smoky flames.

When the fire was crackling and the teapot was sighing on a rock wedged into the mesquite sticks, Pepe grabbed Isabelle brusquely around the waist, nuzzled her neck for a time, then led her over to the cot. They sat on the edge and kissed passionately, Pepe holding her tightly in his arms, Isabelle running her hands up and down his back, breathing deeply. She always liked the musky, slightly wild odor of him—his own sweat mixed with the smell of horse and the desert.

“I have missed you so much,” Pepe whispered between kisses. “I think about you all the time.”

“And I think about you, Pepe,” Isabelle groaned.

Pepe brushed her hair back from her face as he kissed her, then pulled her down beside him on the cot, resting her head against the pillow. Nuzzling her neck, he set his left hand against her right breast, gently squeezing. After a while, he began unlacing the front of her lace-edged dress.

“No,” Isabelle said, pushing his hand away. “We mustn't tonight, Pepe. It isn't right.”

The boy gently forced his hand back up, continuing to unlace the silk ties as he kissed her.

“Pepe, no!” Isabelle said sharply, pushing his hand away, sliding out from under him, and sitting up. She threw her mussed hair back from her face.

Propped on an elbow, Pepe looked up at her, his hair tangled, his face flushed. He ran his right hand along her shoulder, down her back. “I brought the sheepskin . . . like before.” He began digging in his pocket.

“No, leave it!” She turned to him gravely. “Pepe, Don Francisco is dead.”

He stared at her, his heavy black brows beetled over his deep-sunk eyes.

“Making love now isn't decent,” Isabelle said. “Can't we just be together?”

Pepe's eyes flashed darkly. “He's dead and buried. He doesn't know.” Pepe laid his hand on her upper left arm, tugged gently. The girl remained rigid. “Isabelle, we've met every week for the past four months. You're all I think about.”

“It's a very tragic thing,” she breathed, quickly crossing herself. “We shouldn't be here like this after such a thing.”

Pepe's gaze grew suspicious. “I didn't know you were so broken-up about it.”

She blushed faintly, looked down as she absently fingered the emerald-studded Spanish brooch around her neck—a gift from the don. Pepe watched her. “He gave that to you, didn't he?”

Isabelle shot him a scowl. “You know he gave me things.” The scowl deepened, the blush rising into her heart-shaped face. “Don't look at me like that. He regarded me as a daughter.”

Pepe sneered. “He wanted you.”

“Stop.” She paused, looked at the brooch in her hands. “His death is very tragic.”

In his mind's eye, Pepe watched the don move into Isabelle's sleeping chamber at Hacienda de Cava. Isabelle was standing naked in her copper bathtub, water dripping down her long, olive-skinned body with its pert breasts and finely turned thighs. He wasn't sure what expression Isabelle had on her face, watching the don amble toward her. He hadn't imagined that part yet. He didn't even know if any part of the vignette had actually occurred, or was just the product of his jealous imagination, but his instincts told him it, or something very similar, had happened. Or would have happened, had the don continued living.

“I won't be singing any dirges,” he muttered.

Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

“He molested you.”

“He didn't.” Isabelle turned away. “Just that once, when he'd had too much brandy, and he put his hand on my breast. I shouldn't have told you.”

“He wanted to marry you!”

Isabelle laughed. “Look at you. You're jealous.”

Brows furrowed, again Pepe looked away. “You probably would have married him, bore him some heirs. Your mother wanted you to.”

Isabelle looked at Pepe again, her eyes owning that patronizing cast they always acquired whenever she tried to soothe his jealousy. He didn't like it. It made him feel like he was being played like a musical instrument.

“Don't be so harsh,” she crooned. “He was a lonely old man. It drove him to crazy thoughts of marrying me and having more children, to replace those who turned against him.”

Pepe held her gaze with a probing one of his own. “You enjoyed his riches, didn't you, Isabelle?”

“Those are jealous words,” Isabelle said, leaning toward him and gently pressing her hand over his mouth. “Don't you know I would never let anyone come between us? It's you I love.” It was true. There, at that moment, she loved no one more than she loved Pepe.

The teapot was whistling. Isabelle stood quickly and put her back to him, before her eyes could give away her troubled, furtive reflections. She moved to the fire. With a rawhide swatch, she stooped, removed the tin pot from the flames by its wire handle, set it on the table, and into the steaming water shook some tea leaves from a small tin container. She had been ashamed of the thoughts that flitted through her head—the wealth offered to her as the wife of the old don, whose body had disgusted her. Would it have been better than an impoverished life on a dusty horse ranch with a young man whose passion inflamed her?

“Who do you think killed him?” she said, standing at the table and staring down at the teapot.

“Vannorsdell,” Pepe said irritably. “Who else?”

“It can't be. They were good friends. I've heard them talk and laugh together. They never argued.”

Pepe ran his left hand across the blanket, sighing fatefully. “Maybe they were friends only so long as the gringo thought the don would sell the ranch to him. You know how the Americans are.”

Holding the shawl about her shoulders, Isabelle returned to the cot, but instead of lying down beside Pepe, she sat on the cot's edge, staring pensively across the room. “Everything now is so uncertain.”

Pepe ran his hand along the girl's back. “What do you mean, my love?”

“The future of Rancho de Cava. Mama and myself. It isn't yet certain that we'll stay on here. We were here mostly for him. Lupita told Mama there may not be enough money to support us.”

Pepe swung his legs to the floor, sitting up beside Isabelle. “You cannot leave Rancho de Cava—at least not until we can be married and have a ranch of our own.”

“What about Mama?”

Pepe shrugged. “I suppose she'll live with us, no? You'll need help raising our babies.”

Isabelle turned to him, laid her hand on his smooth-skinned cheek. “You're so kind, Pepe.” But in her mind she was regarding the look on her mother's face when she announced she wished to marry a peon and move with her mother into a thatch hut, after all their privileged years in the sprawling Hacienda De Cava.