The Adventurers (86 page)

I didn't move from the steps.

"You could have waited," I said. "I would have been back in Curatu on Monday."

Her eyes were as green as the leaves of the forest as she looked up at me. "I know," she answered, her voice suddenly trembling, "but I couldn't wait any longer. I almost waited too long as it was."

I came down the steps. In the narrow-cut, clinging slacks, she was slimmer than I remembered. The open-collared, rolled-sleeved man's shirt made her seem like a little girl dressed in her brother's clothes. Except that the beautiful curve of her breasts would never allow a mistake like that. I stopped in front of her. "What were you waiting for?"

She returned my gaze almost defiantly. "For you to call me," she said, "and then when you did not I remembered what you said. Only children need to be told what to think. Men and women think for themselves."

"And what do you think?"

I could see the faint hint of color creeping up into her face from below the collar of her shirt. "I think—" She hesitated a moment. Her eyes fell, then came up to mine. "I think I've fallen in love with you."

Then she was in my arms.

I held the match to my cigarro and watched her leaning over the railing of the galena looking up at the night sky. I shook the match out as she came back to me. "Now I know why you love this place. It's so beautiful, you feel as if you were the only person in the whole world."

I smiled at her. "It's more than just that," I said quietly. "This is my home. I was born in that room at the head of the stairs. My mother and father and sister sleep in the soft earth behind the house. My roots are here."

She sat down opposite me and took my hand. "My father knew your father. He said he was a truly great man."

I looked away out into the night. I could hear the soft breeze singing in the field grass. "My father," I said, and stopped. How do you put goodness and warmth and love into words? I brought my eyes back to hers. "My father was a man, a real man. He found an excuse for everyone in this world except himself."

"You're like that too."

I stared at Beatriz for a moment, then got to my feet. "Time for bed. We farmers have to be up at sunrise."

Beatriz rose hesitantly. I saw her nervousness and smiled. She was still more of a child than she realized. "I've given you my sister's room," I said. "Fat Cat has prepared it for you."

I lay stretched out on my bed in the dark listening to the hum of her voice and the splash of water from the pitcher in her room. This time the sound was real, not a dream. I listened carefully. Fat Cat had been right. There was not another sound in the house. The ghosts had all been freed.

I smiled to myself and turned over on my side and closed my eyes. After a while the humming stopped and I fell asleep. Suddenly I was wide awake again, for someone was in my room. I turned over in bed and my hand touched the full firmness of her breast. I felt the erect, bursting nipple through the thin nightgown.

Her voice was low. "They warned me about you. Didn't anyone ever warn you about girls like me? I didn't come here to be alone."

The fire from her ran down my arm, inflaming my body. I felt the muscles tighten and harden. I pulled her over to me and kissed her so hard she almost cried out. It was the first time for her and in a way almost the first for me. Better than it had ever been, better than I had ever dreamed it could be.

It was the only time any woman had ever cried out to me in the midst of her initial pain and agony and delight: "Give me your child, my lover. Fill me with your children!"

CHAPTER
10

I awoke as the first golden streamer of sunlight came in the window. I turned slowly, holding my breath so that I would not disturb Beatriz. She lay partly on her side, partly on her back, the thin light sheet caught around her legs. Her lustrous, long black hair was spread out on the white pillow beneath her head. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly curved in a secret smile as she slept.

I looked down at her full strong breasts and I could see the faint blue tracings of her milk veins, leading to her nipples set in their plumlike frame. I let my eyes trace the lovely curve of her narrow waist over her hip and down the tiny moist forest of her mountain to the straight strong swelling of her thigh-

"Am I beautiful?" she asked softly.

I looked at her in surprise. Her dark green eyes were smiling at me. "I didn't know you were awake."

"Am I beautiful?"

I nodded. "Very beautiful."

She closed her eyes slowly. "Was I—was I all right?"

"You were wonderful," I answered quietly. And she was.

"I was afraid at first," she whispered. "Not for myself, but for you. So many things could go wrong. I heard such stories. You know. How painful it could be, how a girl could spoil everything for her husband. I wanted to be perfect for you. I wanted everything to be right."

"It was."

Beatriz opened her eyes and looked at me. "Did you mean it? What you said last night?" Then she stopped for a moment and added quickly, "No, you don't have to answer. It's not fair of me. I don't want you to feel you must he to me."

"I usually don't answer such personal questions." I smiled at her. "But I'd like to answer that one."

She looked at me, her eyes wide.

"I meant what I said last night. I love you."

Beatriz smiled slowly and closed her eyes again. "I love you," she said, reaching out and touching me with her hand. With her eyes still closed, she bent down and kissed me.

Then she opened her eyes and looked up at me, her lips still against me. "It's so beautiful," she whispered, "so hard and strong. I never dreamed it would always be like this."

I began to laugh. But I was ready to kill myself rather than disillusion her.

"That's it," I said, putting the last flower into place and tamping the earth down around it. I straightened up and looked at Beatriz.

She stood there leaning against the fence, then came over and kissed me. "The next time I will help. This time I understood. You had to do it by yourself."

"I should have done it a long time ago."

"You could not help it, you were not home." She went over and knelt beside my sister's grave. "So young," she said softly, "only thirteen. How did she die?"

I stared at her. "The bandoleros came down from the mountains," I said tightly. "They killed her, and my mother, and La Perla, our cook."

"Your father wasn't here?"

I shook my head. "There used to be a village a dozen miles from here. He was there."

"And you?"

"I was hiding in the cellar in back of a box my sister had pushed me behind."

"Then you saw—"

"Everything. And there was nothing I could do. When they finally discovered me I ran out into the road. Luckily my father was coming toward the hacienda with the general and his soldiers."

"The general?"

I nodded. "El Presidente. But that was a long time before he took over."

Beatriz got to her feet, and I saw the tears in her eyes. "Poor Dax," she whispered, "what a poor frightened baby you must have been."

"In a way it wasn't so bad," I said. "I was too young to understand really what had happened. But not my father, and he was never quite the same after that. Oh, he kept on living. Working. And taking care of me. But something had gone out of his life."

Beatriz came close and pressed her lips gently to mine. I could taste the salt of her tears. "Someday," she whispered, "this house will be alive again with the sounds of children. Your children. And then the memory will not be so bitter."

The sound of approaching footsteps came from behind me. I turned to see Fat Cat.

"It is past one o'clock," he said, "and Martinez is not yet here."

"Something must have held him up. Do we have food for lunch?"

"Yes, if you don't mind eating what you had for breakfast this morning."

Beatriz smiled and I laughed. "We don't mind. We like tortillas and beans."

He turned back toward the house and I gathered up the tools—the shovel, the hoe and the rake—and slung them over my shoulder. "Can you carry the rifle?"

"Yes," she said, picking it up, the muzzle toward her.

"Not that way." I straightened the rifle in her hand. "Always keep the muzzle pointing away and down from you."

"I don't like guns. I never liked them." Beatriz looked at me. "I don't see why you feel you need one here. There isn't anyone for miles."

"See that tall grass?" I asked, pointing.

Beatriz nodded.

"A hundred men could be out there and you would never see them until they were upon you."

"And if there were," she said, "what could they hope to gain by attacking us?"

"What did they gain by attacking my mother and my sister?" I asked coldly.

Beatriz didn't answer.

"The only excuse they need is the guns. The guns give them a feeling of power, and they are getting more of them every day."

"Some of them must have guns to defend themselves."

"Against what? Whom?"

"Against the terrorist soldiers of the government," she replied defiantly.

I looked at her. "You don't know soldiers like I do," I said dryly. "I don't know one of them who really likes to fight. They are perfectly happy to hang around their warm barracks and never go out into the field where they might be hurt."

We were at the house now and I put down the tools and took the gun from her. "No, the only reason men want guns is to make war. If we could stop the guns perhaps we could prevent the bloodshed that is bound to follow. That is if we're not already too late."

We walked silently around to the front of the house. Fat Cat was waiting for us on the galeria. He was silent until Beatriz had gone in to wash up, then he gestured to me.

"Look," he said, handing me a pair of field glasses. He pointed in the direction of Martinez' hut.

I put the glasses to my eyes and swept the horizon. "I don't see anything."

"In the sky, just above where the house is."

I looked again and then I saw them. Three condors floating lazily on the air currents. I put down the glasses. "So what?" I asked. "There is probably a dead animal in the field. You're getting to be an old woman."

"I don't like it," Fat Cat said stubbornly.

I stared at him. I'd known him long enough to trust his intuitions. In many ways he was like an animal of the forest. He could smell trouble before it arrived.

"All right," I said finally, "we'll go over there after lunch. O.K.?"

He looked at me with the quizzical expression he used whenever I dropped an English word into my Spanish. Finally he nodded. "D'accord."

"I don't want to leave here," Beatriz had whispered as we watched Fat Cat load our things into the car. "It's so calm and quiet and beautiful." She turned suddenly and pressed her head against my chest. "Promise me we'll come back here one day, Dax!"

"We'll come back."

But that had been before we got to Martinez' house and found what we did. Now she sat shivering in the seat beside me as we hurtled through the night toward the city. I wondered if she thought of returning to the hacienda now.

I glanced over at her for a moment. She sat wrapped in the car blanket to protect her from the chill of the night, her eyes staring straight ahead. I wondered what she was thinking, what she felt. And more than anything else I wondered if she regretted coming to me. But she didn't speak and I didn't press her. Beatriz had been through enough that day.

It was almost four in the morning when I finally stopped the car in front of her house. I got out and walked with her to the front door.

She turned. "You'll be careful, won't you?"

I nodded. I knew that she wanted to ask something more but had changed her mind. "Don't worry," I said, "I love you too much not to be."

Suddenly she flung her arms around me and started crying. "Dax, Dax!" she sobbed huskily. "Nothing makes sense any more. I don't know what to think."

"You did right. The guns must be stopped. And no one need ever know."

Beatriz looked up into my eyes for a long time. Gradually her tears stopped. "I believe you. Perhaps it's because I'm a woman, because I'm in love with you. But I believe you."

I kissed her. "Go in to sleep," I said gently, "you're exhausted."

She nodded. "Dax, I forgot to thank you."

"For what?"

"For my uncle. He told me what you did."

"Your uncle is a fool," I said harshly. "He might have killed you. And he should have realized he'd be caught."

"You don't understand. He worships my father and since my father is not here he thinks it is up to him to protect me." Beatriz laughed a little and I was relieved to hear the sound. "Actually more than half the time I have to protect him."

"Well, don't let him get into any more trouble."

She put her hand on my arm. "The amnesty? It's not just a trick this time?"

"It's not a trick."

Beatriz looked up into my eyes for a moment, then reached up swiftly and kissed me. "Good night."

CHAPTER
11

The hold of the ship was dark and full of the heavy stench of the fuel oil in its tanks. "Is there a light in here?"

The captain nodded and gestured with his flashlight. A sailor turned on a switch, and two bulbs emitted a sick yellow glow. The tiny hold was filled with heavy wooden cases. I turned to Lieutenant Giraldo. "This looks like it."

"Open a case," Giraldo ordered.

Two of the soldiers pulled one down and began to pry it open with their machetes. I watched the captain. His face was impassive amidst the ripping sound of the wood.

"Guns!" The soldier's voice was harsh and echoed in the steel hold.

The captain's expression did not change. I turned and looked at the opened case. The automatic rifles gleamed black and shiny under their light protective film of oil. I picked one up and examined it. The markings were tiny but clearly etched. No attempt had been made to disguise them, kuppen farben gesellschaft e.g. I knew what the small initials meant. East Germany. The old armament factory in the Russian Zone. They had kept the name because it still commanded respect in certain parts of the world. Who was to know that this company was under a completely different management than the one in the west which had been put out of the armament business?