Trilby (28 page)

“I know how you feel, man, but you mustn’t endanger her!” the other man pleaded.

“I won’t,” Thorn promised. “But I’ll get her out. I swear I will—no matter what it takes!”

There was silence as they made their way through the crowd. “She was leaving you, wasn’t she?” Jack asked. “Over that damned Bates.”

“Yes.” Thorn’s voice was hoarse, bitter. “And she can still go. But I’ll have to get her out of Mexico first.”

“I’m certain she doesn’t love the man.”

“And I’m certain that she does. It doesn’t matter. The thing is to save her life,” Thorn said heavily. “Pray God we aren’t too late!”

W
HILE
T
HORN AND
J
ACK
were trying to think of a way to get across the border, past the hair triggers of the rebel sentries, a rested and refreshed Trilby was learning how to treat gunshot wounds. She’d wrapped a sheet around her as a makeshift apron and she was watching the Mexican physician stitch a wound by kerosene lantern. She was duplicating his technique on yet another wounded man, following the instructions by proxy. She understood no Spanish, so Naki was translating for the small, friendly physician.

“This is ridiculous!” Naki protested. “You’re not in any condition to do this sort of thing.”

“Do be quiet,” she murmured, nodding as the doctor demonstrated his tying-off technique and watched her repeat it on her very drunk and singing patient. “I think I’m doing very well.”

“Will you be reasonable? You’re jeopardizing your health!”

“You sound just like my husband,” Trilby said, ignoring him. “I’m all right. I’ve had some water and a piece of bread and cheese and I feel much better. Naki, I actually think I’m getting quite good at this!” she said enthusiastically as she began to stitch another wound with the doctor’s supervision.

“Thorn will kill me,” Naki muttered.

“I’m none of Thorn’s business,” she returned. “I’m leaving him. Will you be quiet? This is very tricky. Do ask the doctor if I should make two stitches here….”

Naki threw up his hands.

I
T WAS MADDENING
to have to wait, but Thorn and Jack had to send for Jorge’s brother and it took some time to find him. Going over the border in the dark without assistance was suicide, and no help at all to Trilby. With the help of Jorge’s brother and one of his cousins, Thorn and Jack Lang were able to don Mexican garb and slip across the border, just out of town, with a small group of rebels the next morning at daylight.

It had been hell, worrying through the night, hard on both men, especially on Thorn. The only thing that made it bearable was learning that Jorge had improved and seemed to be rallying. The Americans who had been captured on the train had long since been released,
and Thorn had rushed out to see if Trilby was among them. As he’d feared, she wasn’t. Their only recourse then had been to wait for dawn.

“We don’t even know where to look for her,” Jack protested as they climbed up the bank into the outskirts of Agua Prieta.

“Of course we do,” Thorn said impatiently. “She’ll still be on that damned train. There’s no way they could have moved her or the others in all this gunfire.”

“Well, you’re right,” Jack said, relieved. “Oh, dear God, I hope they haven’t harmed her.”

“If they have, they won’t live to regret it,” the Arizonan said grimly.

The very tone of his voice was menacing. Jack hoped the other man would restrain that violence until they could retrieve Trilby from her captors. Afterward, he thought angrily, he’d probably be capable of getting off a few rounds himself.

Music could be heard along with sporadic gunfire as they made their way into the city. Agua Prieta was no tiny border town. It was fully garrisoned and the government troops had been formidable. But almost at once it became apparent that the Maderistas had control of the city.

A relief column was said to be on the way from Fort Huachuca, with another two troops due to arrive within a day or so. But they could do little more than keep the border secure. Several sympathizers had tried to cross the border, and one of them had been winged in the shoulder by a soldier, which had the effect of stemming the enthusiasm of his fellows for the fight. They retreated. No Americans were allowed into Agua Prieta.
That was why Thorn and Jack had been forced to resort to chicanery in Trilby’s interests.

The train was motionless on its tracks. Some of the windows were lit. Thorn stared at it with narrowed eyes. Then, with a small laugh, he pulled out his pistol and checked it, spinning the cylinder before he reholstered it.

“Are you game, Jack?” he asked.

“Game as I’ll ever be,” came the quiet reply.

Thorn walked out into the light. He was challenged immediately by two men, but he replied to their challenge with the day’s password. The guns were lowered. Jack gave a sigh of relief, because the men had been very nervous and quick on the trigger.

“Don’t quit on me now,” Thorn said, glancing at his companion. “They think we’re sympathizers. Did you think I’d dare come across without knowing the password?”

“I was afraid we were goners. Is she in there?”

“They said she’s with the doctor,” Thorn replied worriedly. “Come on.”

He gained the entrance to the train and stopped suddenly in the doorway with Jack at his elbow. There was an audible gasp.

Trilby was hovering over a badly wounded man with needle and thread while a small man directed her movements with the needle in what looked to be a killing wound. The patient was, however, very cheerful and obviously intoxicated, singing as they sewed him up.

“Trilby!” Thorn exclaimed.

She heard his deep voice and looked up. A shock of warmth and color animated her face until she remembered vividly the night he’d left her. She glared at him.

“Hello, Thorn. Hello, Father.” She greeted them stiffly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“What are you doing?” Thorn demanded, aghast.

“I’m acting as assistant to this poor, harassed doctor. He can’t sew up everyone at once, you know.” She turned to Naki, who looked very self-conscious as he met Thorn’s furious scowl. “Tell the doctor I must speak with my father. I’ll only be a minute.” She handed Naki the needle and suture and stripped off her bloody apron as she approached the men.

“Trilby, girl, are you all right?” Jack asked worriedly, and went forward to embrace her enthusiastically. “Oh, thank God, thank God! When I heard they’d taken hostages, I was so afraid. Your mother is beside herself, and so is Teddy.”

“I’m fine, really, Father,” she assured him. She was pale and worn, her hair in wisps around her harried face, but she was managing quite well. She wouldn’t look at Thorn. It was much too embarrassing to meet his eyes and remember how they’d parted.

“I have to talk to you,” Thorn said formally. He took her arm before she could protest and escorted her out onto the platform at the rear of the car, aware of Mexicans patrolling around the perimeter. No one paid them much attention, however, so it was as much privacy as they were likely to get.

“Yes? What do you want? I’m quite busy,” she said haughtily, avoiding his eyes.

“Trilby, for God’s sake, you’re a prisoner in an enemy camp, not a doctor making a house call!”

“I am not a hostage. I am giving aid and assistance where it is needed. When they release me, and they’ve
promised that I can go whenever I like, I am going back to Louisiana. That is what you want, is it not?”

Thorn couldn’t manage to speak at all. He made a rough sound under his breath and caught the iron railing in his lean hands. It was cold and sturdy against his skin. In the distance, a guitar was playing and a fire was burning over which men were cooking beans and coffee. He heard voices all around them.

“I am deeply sorry for what I did that last night we were together,” he said formally. “I had no right.”

“That is true.”

He straightened. “At least they have not harmed you.”

“It would not occur to them. They are
gentlemen,
” she added, stressing the word.

His high cheekbones flushed. He turned and looked directly down into her eyes. “And I’m not. I’m a savage,” he said quietly. “I even proved it to you, didn’t I, Trilby?” he added, with cold self-contempt. “If you’re looking for genteel company, you won’t ever find it with me. Bates is more your sort. Maybe he was right in the first place. Maybe you do belong with him.”

She had no need to feel guilty, but she did. He looked torn apart.

She frowned slightly. She hadn’t considered the motivation for his violent behavior all that much. She’d thought he might be jealous that another man wanted her. But this went beyond jealousy. There was more emotion in that lean face than she’d seen on it since they married. He was tired and there were deep lines in his lean cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot. In them was wounded resignation, and something more. Something deeper, much deeper, than she’d realized. He’d come all this way, risked being killed, to get to her. He was
risking his life even now, gladly, just to be with her. It put things into perspective vividly, and at once, as she considered his motives.

She moved close to him and only then saw how her proximity reacted on him. He tensed all over. His face muscles drew up. His mouth compressed, as if he had to exercise a great deal of control not to show how she affected him.

“What’s wrong, Thorn?” she asked quietly. “Surely I don’t disturb you?”

She took a step closer, and he actually moved away, his face threatening.

“It’s Bates you want, or have you forgotten?” he asked coldly. “I’m please to see that you’re undamaged. I’ll talk to López and get you out of here.”

“Thorn,” she called as he started back into the train.

He turned with one of those lightning moves that had once intimidated her. “Well?” he asked testily.

“You never once asked how I felt about Richard,” she said, with dignity. “Or if I wanted to go to him. You didn’t ask if I wanted a divorce.”

“How could you not want one, for God’s sake, after what I did to you?” he asked harshly.

The pain in his dark eyes was unbearable. She moved close again, looking up at him intently. “You made love to me,” she said softly. “You were very passionate, but you were not cruel.” She dropped her gaze to his chest. “You have never been cruel to me…in that way.”

“I left bruises on you,” he said, his voice throbbing with emotion. “I didn’t have the courage to face you that next morning, don’t you see? I couldn’t bear to face you, so I ran!”

She gasped. The expression on his normally taciturn
face made her knees week. Why had she never seen it before? That wasn’t the look of a jealous or vindictive man. It was the look of a man who loved so intensely that it was killing him to lose her.

“Why…you love me!” she whispered, with sudden, stark realization.

T
HORN FLINCHED AT
the accusation. He turned away, his eyes on the Mexicans grouped around the small cooking fire nearby, unseeing as he fought for control. He hadn’t meant her to know. He didn’t want to be vulnerable.

But he was, and now she knew it. She went to him in a daze. Her hands went out and caught his long, muscular arm. She drew it to her breasts and held it there, coaxing his eyes down to her rapt face.

“Is it so difficult to admit?” she asked.

His face went even harder, but his eyes lingered helplessly on her soft features. “You don’t want me,” he accused harshly. “You never did! I’m not cultured and soft like that Eastern fellow you’re in love with.”

“No, you aren’t soft,” she agreed, smiling up at his averted face gently, radiantly. “You’re like your desert, Thorn, rock-hard and sometimes very harsh. But you’re twice the man Richard ever was.”

He’d averted his eyes, but that last remark brought them back. His face softened a little, and he looked as if he was hanging on every word.

“I couldn’t admit it, but I really knew the day Richard kissed me, when Sissy and I were out looking for relics,” she said matter-of-factly. “Because I felt nothing. Nothing at all. He held me and all I could think of was the way it felt to be in your arms.”

His thin lips parted. He seemed to barely be breathing.

“How could you not know?” she asked huskily, staring up at him raptly. “I gave myself away a dozen times. Especially in intimacy, when I adored you so much that I had to have the lights on, so that I could see how much you wanted me.”

His cheekbones went ruddy with color. “Did you?”

“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Even that last time,” she added, blushing as her eyes fell to his chest. “Especially that last time, when you wanted me so desperately that you could hold back nothing. I thought that I would die, the pleasure was so terrible.”

He felt shaky. His hand touched her cheek hesitantly, tracing its sweet curve. “I never meant to hurt you,” he whispered unsteadily. “I was jealous and desperately afraid of losing you. I lost control.”

“Yes.” She moved close to him and impulsively slid her arms around him. She pressed herself to his powerful body and felt him shiver.

“Don’t,” he said, trying to move her away.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m trembling, too. Can’t you feel it?”

He did. It only made his need worse. Unbearable. His lean hands caught her shoulders and bit in. “Trilby, I can’t make you stay with me if you aren’t happy. Bates loves you….”

“No, he doesn’t. He loves himself. But I love you,” she said, with total contentment. She lifted her eyes to his white face.

That was what she’d been saying all along, and he’d never realized it. He moaned softly and bent to kiss her eyelids shut. “Oh, God!” he whispered hoarsely.

“You truly didn’t know, did you?” she asked, tightening her hold on him.

“No! How could I? You seemed to want me, but I thought you were only making the most of our marriage. And when you asked me for a child,” he said unsteadily, “I thought you only wanted to make the best of a bad situation.”

“I wanted to give you a child because I love you,” she said, smiling against his broad chest. “Thorn,” she whispered, caressing his chest softly. “I’m carrying your baby.”

He was still. His body went rigid in her arms. “You are…what?” he asked, choking.

“I am with child,” she repeated. There was no chance at all that she was making the most of a bad situation, he thought dazedly, not with that radiance in her face.

Then he remembered the night before he’d left for Tucson. He made a rough sound. “You are carrying my child…and I took you…like that?” He groaned, terrified. “My God, Trilby! My God, I could have hurt you so badly! And the baby…” He sounded frantic.

She soothed him, putting her hand over his mouth and caressing it, gentling him. “Thorn, it’s all right. You didn’t harm either of us. Listen to me, please. I’m all right.”

He shook. Moisture stung his eyes. “Trilby, I’m sorry.”

She pressed into his body, clinging. “I love you,” she said fervently. “And you love me. There is nothing to forgive. I hurt you, without meaning to. You were only trying to show me what you felt, but I didn’t understand. Now I do. Thorn, you’re my life!” she whispered.

He shuddered. His arms gathered her close and still
he shuddered, washed in terror as he realized what he could have cost them both with his violent ardor.

“Oh, my darling,” she said softly, “please don’t be like this. I promise you, no harm came to me or to our child.”

“Never again,” he said, choking. “I’ll never touch you like that again!”

“Yes, you will, when I’m properly fit again, because the way we are with each other is passionate and wild and glorious.” She reached up and kissed his hard mouth hungrily. “I adore you,” she breathed. “Adore you, worship you…”

Her soft kisses melted his pain. He gathered her up and kissed her slowly, until kissing was no longer enough. He groaned with the fever that throbbed inside him.

“Ahem.”

The dry tone diverted them. They looked toward the doorway, where Naki was poised.

“Excuse me, but are you both deaf?”

Thorn frowned. As sanity returned, he heard sharp reports and there was suddenly a whizzing sound close by, followed by a hard thud.

“Do you hear that? Guns?
Firing
guns? Ricocheting bullets?” Naki prompted. “Pistols and rifles and that damned cannon they captured? If you both don’t want to be impaled by a bullet, it might be a dandy idea to get in out of the line of fire.”

“Why didn’t you say something, damn it?” Thorn raged, herding Trilby into the car. “She’s having a baby!”

“Yes, I know.” Naki grinned. “Everyone knows.
We’ve been taking turns guarding her. Juan over there thinks he’s in love.”

Thorn glared at the smiling little man. “He can go kiss his horse. She’s mine.”

“I’ll tell him— Get down!”

He shoved them gently, urgently, to the floor as glass shattered all around them.

“I do believe,” Naki murmured, with his lips inches from the floor, “that it’s going to be a very long day.”

I
T WAS
. B
Y AFTERNOON
, they were all worn out with nerves and lack of sleep. But the shooting had finally stopped, and according to the reports they were getting, a force of
Federales
was on its way to Agua Prieta. There would surely be more fighting soon. Hell was poised all around them, waiting for the chance to break loose.

She didn’t know Red López on sight, but Juan pointed him out in the distance. She had expected the local hero of the revolution to be tall and handsome and dashing, like someone out of a dime novel. But he was rather ordinary-looking, with a ready smile for his men and an unhurried, polite manner when he was introduced later in the day to Trilby. Nobody could have looked less like an officer. But like so many of the rebel officers, he had a sharp mind and a sense of strategy and tactics. He was like a mosquito, biting and running, biting and running. His very elusiveness gave him an edge against the enemy.

The general who had first spoken with Trilby came back to speak to the small group of Americans shortly thereafter. “We must return you to
Los Estados Unidos,
” he told them. “But it will require caution, because your captain across the border has sworn to make pris
oners of war of any
insurrectos
he catches on American soil. It is a dangerous situation.”

Trilby smiled. “I find that I am getting used to danger, sir.”

Thorn was so proud of her that he could barely contain himself. His gentle, sheltered Trilby had changed overnight, blossomed into a pioneer woman. He all but shook, just looking at her.

“My wife is with child,” Thorn told the general, his voice deep and worried.

“As Juan said a moment ago,” the general replied, sweeping off his hat to bow gallantly to Trilby. “
Felicidades,
señora,” he added, with a smile. “And it will be my pleasure to escort you to the border.”

“You are a gentleman, señor,” she said, and smiled back.

“I will regret your loss, you know,” he said surprisingly. “You have become one of my best medics. Who will take care of my poor men?”

“The hospitals across the border,” Jack Lang volunteered. “There are makeshift clinics everywhere—and plenty of people to look after the wounded and dying. They’ll take rebels, Federals, anyone.”

The general nodded. “That is as it should be.” He signaled to Juan, and, minutes later, after Trilby had wished the small doctor a gentle goodbye, they were on their way to the customhouse.

The general escorted them past the line of rebels along the embankment of the border under a flag of truce. The Mexican rebel general saluted the American army captain in charge there, who returned the salute with proper respect and walked back to his men. Jack Lang gave a sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” he said. “American soil!”

“Yes,” Thorn said, hugging Trilby close. “Thank God indeed. Naki, aren’t you coming?” he asked when Naki stayed just over the line, watching the American officer approach.

The Apache shook his head with a slow smile. “I am becoming part of the revolution, my friend. My people lost their bid for freedom, but these people still have a chance. Many of us who are non-Mexicans are fighting for their cause. I cannot desert them now, when we are so close to claiming victory.”

“But what about Sissy?” Trilby asked sadly.

Naki’s face hardened. “Tell her nothing. Nothing at all.”

“McCollum told her you were here,” she said, with anguish. “She thinks you’re dead!”

Naki’s dark eyes closed and a shiver went through his tall body. “So be it, then,” he said hoarsely. “It is for the best.”

“She loves you.”

Naki’s eyes opened and in them was the purest hell Trilby had ever seen. “I know,” he said fiercely. “How I know!”

“She would give up everything.”

“As I would. As I have,” Naki said quietly. He managed a grim smile. “When this is over, perhaps there will be a way.”

Trilby didn’t argue. She had no right to tell the man how to live his life. She hurt for him, for Sissy.

“Take care of yourself,” Thorn told him. “Don’t get killed down here.”

“I promise to try.
Vaya con Dios.
”

“Yes. And you.”

Naki waved and went back to join the others across the border, looking much more like a revolutionary soldier than a misplaced Apache.

Thorn, Jack, and Trilby continued on and were immediately surrounded by reporters and an angry American officer as they gained the American lines.

Thorn saw a way out and held up his hand. “Later, please,” he said. “My wife is in a delicate condition. She feels faint and I must get her home.”

That set the men, who were gentlemen, into a protective attitude, and Trilby was rushed to Jack Lang’s car through the crowd.

“Did the greaser devils harm her?” one man blustered as they reached the car.

Trilby stopped dead and glared at the man. “They are Mexican rebel soldiers, not ‘greasers.’ Neither are they devils. In fact, my treatment at their hands was much more gentlemanly than it might be at the hands of any American man in the same situation, I daresay!”

The man cleared his throat and belatedly removed his hat.

“Idiot,” Trilby said—loud enough for her voice to carry. She clasped Thorn’s hand in hers as he closed the door behind them. “‘Greasers,’ indeed!”

Thorn glanced at Jack Lang and smiled indulgently. After promising the American officer as many details as he could remember once Trilby was safely home, they left town in a roar of yellow dust.

A
GUA
P
RIETA BELONGED
to the Maderistas for only a few days. Three of the rebel leaders surrendered to U.S. troops, and when a column of twelve thousand
Federales,
under the command of Col. Reynaldo Díaz,
marched into Agua Prieta, they found the trenches deserted and the city looted. The siege was over. Fortunately for both nations, intervention and war were averted.

Shortly after the
Federales
retook Agua Prieta, two Maderista rebel officers, Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Pascual Orozco, led their forces against Juárez. Juárez fell, and Madero took office as president of Mexico. The rebels celebrated, and so did the others who had fought for Madero.

Red López died tragically not too long after the battle for Agua Prieta. It was noted in a newspaper story before the siege of Agua Prieta that while being interviewed he had given his bed to a reporter and slept on the floor. Possibly many of the unflattering things said about him were true, but Trilby, who had met him and heard about him from his own men, thought that he must have had some saving graces to inspire such devotion in his followers.

López was gone, but Orozco and Obregón and Villa and Zapata and many other rebel leaders were alive and heady with victory. The fiestas went on for days and days, even along the American side of the border. The first phase of the Mexican revolution ended on May 26, 1911, with the resignation and departure of Porfirio Díaz. Another election was held in November of the same year and Francisco Madero became president.

Trilby, rested and in the bosom of her family, was making a dress for Samantha and enjoying the renewal of her marriage. She and Thorn grew closer every day. There were no more doubts, no more sorrows. They loved, and their child ripened in Trilby’s body as the days grew longer and hotter with the end of summer.
There were no more secrets and no more uncertainties. When Thorn looked at his wife, the love in her eyes all but blinded him. He felt more like a king than a savage these days.

He told her so.

She laughed and reached up to kiss him tenderly. “The only savage thing about you, my darling, is the way you love me,” she whispered. “And I hope that never changes.”

He smiled against her welcoming lips. As he kissed her, he whispered back that it never would.

J
ORGE IMPROVED AND
came home to resume his duties at Los Santos. Sissy wrote regularly to Trilby, but her letters were sad and brief, and she never mentioned Naki. Nor did Trilby. There had been rumors, as there always were, that Naki had been one of the American rebel prisoners executed in Mexico. They had no word from him at Los Santos, and even Thorn had begun to believe he was really dead.