Wild Sierra Rogue (22 page)

“Do you like what you see?” he murmured and ran his thumb across her bottom lip.

“Yes, I like what I see.”

“Do you
love
it?”

“Who wouldn't?”

“Well, I guess that's better than nothing,” he muttered in a low voice.

And they made love again.

 

 

Their brothers, bearing venison and beans, arrived at the Eagle's Nest a couple hours after sundown. Being a soft touch for dogs, Tex took Caballo under his wing. Xzobal didn't have much to say, but Margaret suspected he knew what was what with her and Rafe, and he disapproved.
Through his eyes, we are sinners.
But she wasn't going to let a priest bother her, even if he was Rafe's brother.

After Tex and Xzobal retired to rooms on the opposite side of the house, Rafe led her back to his bed. Once more he proved his reputation as an unflagging lover. They got just enough sleep to refresh their bodies.

Streaks of dawn shot through the bedroom windows; Rafe buttoned Margaret's britches. “I've been thinking, Mexico needs women of your courage. I want you with me when I face down my uncle.”

“Don't talk craziness.” Forced airiness emitted from her. “You scare me with windmill-chasing talk, Señor Quixote.”

“What would you like to do, 'Rita?” He pulled her onto his naked lap, then he pressed her hand to the part of him that was swelling anew for her. “Besides this, of course.”

“What not this?” She trailed her fingernail along the head of his shaft.

“You'll get another go, don't worry about that. But I'm talking about something outside the bedroom. If not chasing windmills with me, what do you want for yourself?”

She turned her face. “I'm not certain I have the option to—”

“Nothing is certain in this life,” he replied. “But no naysaying in this chat, all right? Now, tell me. Will you ever write another book? Isn't there anything here in Mexico that piques your interest or imagination? Do you feel you must teach? You know, children in this country need an education. There are so many ways you could help my country. Before long you'll be thinking of it as your country.”

“Rafe, I am
not
a Mexican. And I have no desire—absolutely no desire—to stay here.”

He had that resolute look in his face. “At the cemetery you mentioned grandchildren. If you're thinking the normal life is for you, my
soldadita,
don't. You aren't meant for it.”

“That's not for you to say.” It hurt, his cavalier taunting. “How do you know what is good for me? How do you know anything about me? You mock me and act as if you don't know it. You don't even . . . You don't even seem to know I'm dying.”

“What silly talk. I'm the one with the death wish.”

Aggravated at his insensitivity, she left his lap to flounce across the room, but he grabbed her hand. Her withering glare should have given him pause. “Margarita, you aren't going to die. You'll live forever.”

She shook off his fingers and went through the motions of dressing.

“Do I have the wrong impression of you? Are you wanting children?” He paled under a thoughtful expression. “Damn, why didn't I think about . . . ? Margarita, you may get one whether you want it or not. If we continue to lay together, my babe will grow within you.”

A baby? She hadn't given such a possibility a thought. Not that the idea—
Don
'
t even think it.

“If we're to protect you, I, well, I must visit the
curandera
of Areponapuchi.” He thrust one leg, then the next into his britches. “The healer-woman has potions and herbs to prevent a babe.”

She wasn't believing her ears, though she had no trouble imagining his recurring need for such measures in the past. “Just a minute. Just a damned minute. You presume quite a lot, Rafael Delgado. Soon, you'll have seen the last of me. I have a career in New York. Even if I didn't, I am an American. My sympathies are with the United States. And with Spain. My family calls Porfirio Díaz friend.”

“That will change.”

“There must have been peyote in that jar you ate from. The very idea of riding against the legal and peaceable government of Mexico defies all my beliefs. I can't think of a worse fate than spending the rest of my life—”

“Shall we send for the cats?”

The backs of her knuckles parking on her hips, she shouted, “Cats? Send for the
cats?
Have you not listened to one word I've said?”

“I've heard each syllable of every one of them. New York is your past. You'll never see it again, except, perhaps, for a visit. Mexico is your destiny. If you want your Deniece and Denephew, I'll arrange for their transport. But let me warn you, our plans don't include coddling pets. You are here. You are here forever. You will change this country.”

“You are mad. You mistake me for Charity. She's the adventurous one.”

“Your crazy sister is a circus performer, not a Valkyrie of the battlefield.”

He continued his deranged praise, stressing her stout heart and invincibility; Margaret backed away. “What has possessed you to think such things?” she asked.

“It's the Aztec in me.”

The entrance to the silver mine of Santa Alicia stood halfway up the mountain, the office a stone's throw away. Gray dust shrouded everything. Margaret had expected a buzz of activity, with ore cars on rail lines going in and out of the gaping hole. She'd carried several misconceptions. Even from outside, the Santa Alicia could be compared only to Dante's levels of hell and purgatory

“Women are forbidden—bad luck,” Rafe explained in the late morning, after they'd quarreled over his deranged visions.

She had no desire to press
her
luck. All it took was one glance at the ashen-faced, skeletal workers as they held fast to the pulleys to ascend the vertical mine—great sacks of ore on their backs—and Margaret almost lost her breakfast.

A trail of cadaverous workers wearing little more than a few rags wrapped around their middles trudged by, on their way to hell's gate. Slave drivers with long whips made certain they didn't fall out of step. And when one worker stumbled, the lash bit into his back. Over and over. He didn't even, it seemed, have the energy to cry out.

“My God, how can this cruelty be allowed?” Margaret whispered, crying for him, and fell to her knees. “Those men are more dead than alive.”

“This happens all over Mexico.” Rafe, hunkering back on his booted heels, wiped her face with his finger. “They aren't men. They're slaves. Yaqui Indians, for the most part. When the Federales overwhelmed them in their home state of Sonora, your family friend Señor Porfirio Díaz gave them to Tío Arturo.”

“My father fought a war to end slavery. And now I understand why.” Trembling, she whispered hoarsely, “I never imagined it could be this horrible.”

Her gaze going to Rafe's tense face, she slid her arms around his waist and leaned in to him, needing his strength. In the hours since he'd revealed his visions to her, he'd repeated his sentiments over and over, until she'd begun to believe in her own invincibility. But even the strong needed the strength of others, at times.

“Face those pitiful wretches, Margarita. See and remember what goes on here.”

She forced herself to turn to the awful reality, shuddering anew when the whipped slave, runnels of red flowing into his ragged loincloth, grabbed a pick and an empty sack, then took hold of the rope pulley and disappeared straight down into the hole.

“Charity's husband inherited mines on the Eastern seaboard.” Margaret shuddered. “The way the workers were exploited sickened Hawk. But nothing—nothing! —he's ever said prepared me for
this.”

“You haven't seen the half of it.
Now
do you understand why conditions must change?”

“I understand quite a lot.”

She understood what had driven Rafe to rebellion. Injustice. She understood why the Mexican people moved with such lethargy. Despair. And she understood what motivated the likes of Arturo Delgado. Greed. One way or another, he had to be stopped!

For the first time in years, the excitement of a challenge set in. It was like when she'd first decided to study Columbus and the Catholic kings. It was like when she scrawled The End on her treatise, then finally seen it in print, even if the name Mortimer screamed from the copyright. Suddenly the idea of teaching history at Brandington College paled in comparison to being a part of history.

As if he could read her mind, Rafe took her hand. “Will you help us? Can I count on you?”

Yes was on the tip of her tongue. Yet her giddy, heady enthusiasm got dashed when the voice of good sense shouted the impulse down. Haring off in the name of social change took intestinal fortitude and rosy-cheeked stamina. She didn't doubt she had the guts for battle, but a good estate of body?

“I'll do what I can,” she replied at last.

“At least you didn't say no.” Winking, he tweaked her nose, then pulled her to him and kissed the tip of that nose. “I can accept one concession at a time.”

She started to say that pleased her, but a curse issued from him.

“Merdo.”
His grip on her shoulders tightened, then loosened. “Trouble.” He stood. “We've got trouble.” He helped her to her feet. “My uncle and his men.”

Six riders climbed the hill.

Six against two.

Six guns against one.

Why, oh why, hadn't she brought her firearm along? Just because it was five pounds of dead steel was no excuse!

Her heart knocked at the wall of her chest.
Tex, where are you when we need you!
A good two or three miles away, her brother—a sharpshooter
par excellence—
waited with Xzobal and the little dog. The horses were out of sight, tethered in a hiding place down the hill. On the other side of the riders. She prayed her strength wouldn't fail, that she wouldn't put Rafe in danger by holding him back.

“Let's go,” he ordered.

They feinted to the right, dodging the approaching Arturo and his
pistoleros
to make for Penny and Diablo.

 

 

“The criminal has returned to the scene of his crime,” Arturo Delgado said to his most trusted lieutenant, Diego Cantú.

His cadre of hired guns in company, Arturo led them onward, toward his murderer-nephew and his lover. The elder Delgado wasn't surprised to see them at the Santa Alicia. His spies in Chihuahua and Santa Eulalia, as well as his one good source of information in the village of Santa Alicia—the boy Carlos—had had much to say. Rafito had fallen in with Gil McLoughlin's daughter, the pair en route to Eden Roc. “I knew Rafito wouldn't be able to stay away from here.”

Glowering, Arturo watched his brother's miserable spawn and the
gringa
try to escape. The McLoughlin daughter, slim as a boy, wore a shirt and pants. Her long dark hair, as well as her arms, swung from side to side as she ran. Arturo knew Rafito could run like
a jaguar,
but his strides were slow, were in pace with his new woman's.

“What is wrong with the girl?” Arturo said to Cantú. “Why would she settle for a black sheep?”

Those lucky—or was it crafty?—McLoughlins knew the art of marrying up, since one of the daughters had snared the Count of Granada himself, not that he'd be any prize if his titles were stripped.

The head of the family—Arturo had met him in Washington a few years back. They had gotten to a first-name basis, though Arturo disliked being addressed as “Artie old boy.” Gil McLoughlin wielded power north of the Bravo, almost as much as Arturo wielded to the south. Tangling with McLoughlin could be costly. But so was tangling with a Delgado.

Cantú spoke.
“Patrón,
we await your orders.”

“I want to see some dancing.”

“Then?”

“Kill them.”

Cantú and the other Arturianos put spurs to horseflesh, firing at will toward the fleeing figures. Arturo headed the stallion Noche Negro down the incline, and drew his own revolver.

Gunfire exploded around the chased pair, in the air, on the ground, but they didn't dance around it. They kept to a steady course. Then Rafito turned. He lifted his arm, aiming at Arturo, yet he swung the revolver to the right, obviously unable to fire. Cantú shot the weapon out of his hand.

The prey froze for a split second; the six-shooter came apart, sending up a shower of shrapnel. The girl screamed. The shrapnel sprayed her arm, his neck.

“Let's go!” he shouted.

They took off in another near-torpid run. Arturo's slur “Fools!” got muffled by blasts of pistol fire. Bullets slammed into a tree trunk to the left of the couple, at their feet, and Arturo frowned. He kept seeing Rafito turning his aim away.
May the devil take the cur bastard.
Arturo ordered, “No more dancing. The hombre is mine.”

The reins in one hand, Arturo steadied his aim on his mestizo nephew.
In a moment he'll be dead.
Revenge tasted sweet, sweet, sweet. Yet, for some unexplainable reason, Arturo's hand began to shake. Dropping the reins, he lifted his left palm under the right wrist. Still, his hand quaked.
You can't do it! You
woman!
You can't kill him yourself.

Arturo ground his teeth together. What was wrong with him that he couldn't mete out punishment? Rafito had slaughtered his fair-haired son and heir. His only child. His reason for doctoring Constanzo Delgado's will. Arturo's wife, the late Yolanda, had insisted he do it. He had worshipped the domineering Yolanda, had never been able to deny the full-figured blonde anything. Had never wanted to.

But who said it hadn't troubled him, going to such lengths against the nephew he once loved and protected? After Yolanda had passed away, he had called his son to the office that lamentable day to ask Hernán to act as peacemaker.
Execute his murderer!

“Diego and the
niños
will do it.”

Arturo holstered his revolver, watching as the girl began to slow her pace, began to sway. Rafito's arm shot out to steady her. One, two. Pop, pop. He'd taken two bullets, one in the shoulder, one in the leg, both scattering flesh and blood, clothing and gunpowder.

He toppled to the ground.

The girl, her screams piercing the air, seemed oblivious to the bullets whizzing over her head. She bent over Rafito and lifted his shoulders from the rocks.

The Arturianos held their fire momentarily, each man looking to
el patrón
for instructions. He held up a hand. His men backed their mounts, turned them, returned to Arturo's side. “Go on,” he ordered. “Go to my office. I'll meet you there. I'll handle this matter.”

Cantú and the others did as ordered. With morbid interest Arturo walked Noche Negro forward, and watched his nephew and the girl. She worked tirelessly. With no regard to her own injury, or to the cough that wracked her thin body.

She jerked her blue shirt from her arms, leaving her torso in a camisole. She ripped the chambray into strips. She then tore Rafito's trousers above the wound and lifted his injured leg, and wrapped the bandages with the speed of a vaquero as he hog-tied a calf. Next she addressed her efforts to the wound at his shoulder and neck.

And all the while Rafito was arguing with her, shouting for her to “get out of here.”

She paid no mind. Once the bandages were in place, she steadied her breath. She looked up. And never had Arturo Delgado seen as much defiance and loathing in a woman's eyes. They weren't a woman's eyes. They were the eyes of a tigress.

Arturo found himself respecting her courage.

She got to her feet. “If you want us dead, all you have to do is pull the trigger. If you don't, Arturo Delgado, be warned. You haven't seen the last of us. And next time we'll be better armed.”

She reached down and helped Rafito to stand, though he slipped twice. The wounds looked bad, probably mortal. Winding his arm around her shoulder, she led him down the gravel path. Arturo followed, watching as she made for the horses tied behind the mining engineer's work shack. For a slender woman, she had the strength of five tigresses.

Arturo got a hardening in his loins from simply gazing upon the challenge of her. “You need a real man,” he called after her.

She ignored him.

“Tonta,
don't waste your time with trash such as Rafael Delgado. If he lives, he'll drag you down with him.”

She kept to her path. And once they reached their mounts, Rafito made a puny effort to put his foot in the stirrup. Leaning down, she helped him. Afterward, she gave a mighty shove that helped him to the saddle; he slumped over it.

Rafito reared up to brush her jaw with his wavering hand. He said something. For a moment she leaned against his uninjured leg. Turning her face—and it was a beautiful face!—up to him, she shouted, “
¡Viva los ciudadanos! i Viva Mexico!”

Long live the people. Long live Mexico.

Arturo didn't care much for her Spanish. But he knew at that moment he must have his way with her. He licked his chops, contemplating the taming of a tigress.

“Go on to Eden Roc,” he said, knowing she didn't hear him. “Let it work its magic on you.”

He turned his mount. A smirk accompanied his thought,
Yes, I'll
give
Eden Roc some time. Then I will deal with the tigress.