A Lady Bought with Rifles (10 page)

I was throbbingly conscious of him as we cleared up after the simple meal. His voice was strained and husky when he told Cruz we were going for a walk and not to wait up for us.

Was it a trick of light from the dying cook fire or did Cruz smile? “I'll sleep in the door so I can hear the child if she rouses. Walk in moonlight.”

Trace took my arm. I had to fight to keep from swaying weakly against him. Trace mercifully appeared not to notice. After a moment, the heavy faintness left me and we started down the canyon. It was a silver-blue night, the grass and flat land luminous—cardones, arroyos, and mountains limned dark. Nesting birds, alarmed at our passage, winged from their homes in cholla and paloverdes.

“It's too bad they can't know we won't hurt them,” I said, and then blushed at such a childish remark.

Trace sat on a rock ledge, drawing me down beside him. “If we were hungry, we would,” he said, an edge of roughness to his voice. “It's one thing to be benevolent on a full belly and another when you're starving.”

“If you're going to extremes,” I began, surprised and somewhat hurt by his manner, “no usual rules hold.”

“They told you that in school, but you don't really know it,” he said. “You're in Mexico, Miranda, in the desert. Extremes are the rule.”

“You mean I have to change? Grow thorns or a poison sting?”

“God forbid.” His tone was fervent. “It's just that you don't—can't—have any idea of what goes on here, what can happen to a woman traveling or living alone.”

“I've watched Sewa,” I reminded him. “And if you've heard of Jack the Ripper, Trace, you know nothing worse could happen to me here.”

“Nothing bad should ever happen to a girl with a name like yours.” He laughed, soft and deep in his throat, as if with pure pleasure. “It's a nice name, Miranda. Fresh and springlike—English, the way you look. It hums in my mind like that other old song, you'd be surprised how often. ‘Greenleaf was all my joy, Greenleaf was my delight.…'”

“Trace!” I protested, though my heart sang. Did he think of me, even if it was only because I had a strange name? “That sounds ridiculous!”

“So does ‘Greensleeves' unless you're used to it,” he argued. “A leaf's a damn sight prettier than any sleeves I ever saw!” I didn't know how to answer. He turned and stared at the mountains. “May I call you Miranda, Miranda?”

“I wish someone would,” I said. “Greenleaf does belong to England, just as in a way my father always did. But Miranda's me.”

“That's a very proper name for what must be an explosive mixture,” he teased, shifting back toward me a little. “French and Spanish on your mother's side, English from your father.”

“The English is jumbled up, too,” I admitted. “There's Saxon crossed with Norman and Celt and some shipwrecked officer from the Spanish Armada memorialized himself in my grandmother from Cornwall.”

Trace chuckled. “Funny how purebred the English seem to Americans. Actually, I'm Scotch-Irish and Welsh, and that's it.”

“Those bad rebel bloods,” I joked.

“Reckon so. The men in my family always seemed to be jumping out of frying pans into the fire. They'd all have been hanged or shot long ago if they hadn't generally married peaceable women.”

It struck me with a pang that he was old enough to have married, that he might still be. “Have you?” I asked, trying to sound playful.

“Have I what?”

“Married a peaceable woman?”

Pale light washed the stone of his face. “No. I married one who loved to dance.”

My heart lunged. To hide how I felt, I bantered with him. “Surely a woman can dance and be peaceable.”

“It's the
way
she danced.” I could almost picture her, smiling, luring, glancing up at men from under lashes as she moved from one to the other.

Silence grew between us, heavy, full of questions I both needed and feared to ask. At last he said, “I don't know where she is. I killed a man who danced with her too often, and she must have thought I'd do the same to her. She ran away.”

“Was that why you left Texas?”

“No one blamed me for killing the man. But he was the sheriff's brother.”

“But that wouldn't make you a
pistolero
,” I said, then clapped my hand to my mouth.

Trace laughed bitterly. “Is that what Reina called me? She was right enough. I worked on a ranch in the Big Bend, where rustlers were busy, and sometimes I did more gunwork than cow.” He shrugged. “I've made my mistakes. But what we've got to talk about, Miss Miranda Greenleaf, is how to keep you from making very serious ones.”

“There's no use telling me to live at Las Coronas.”

He rubbed his chin. “Reckon not. But don't you have some relations?”

“Distant ones in England. Father quarreled with them years ago and the present squire has hosts of marriageable daughters. They won't want me—and I don't want them!”

The thought of going back to green, peaceful, shady,
dull
England was so impossible that I knew I never would.

Turning to Trace, I said urgently, “There really isn't
anyone
. I just have to make my own home.”

“We can do a little better than send you out blindfolded. I have some friends in Hermosillo. I'll take you and Sewa up there and get you settled, introduce you to folks who could look out for you. Chances are someone would have room enough for you to stay with them till you decide what to do.”

“You're very kind, but since I must rely on myself, perhaps the sooner I start the better.”

“Miranda.”

Something in his voice stabbed to my depths. Why, oh, why did he have to have a wife? I wondered if Reina knew and if there was anything between them. He had been kind. I could scarcely help loving him. But he mustn't guess that or he'd pity me, find me pathetic.

“Miranda,” he said again.

I slid down from the ledge, but he was suddenly before me, and though he kept his arms rigidly at his sides, I feared to move past him. I knew instinctively that a motion of mine could send him out of that tight control. Though I thrilled to the thought, whatever went on between men and women was to me a fascinating, somewhat terrifying matter of conjecture. The depth of my ignorance had me believing it was blood, not semen, that men discharged. In spite of what had happened after we watched the stallion, I still didn't know exactly what went on between men and women, both wanted and feared it. I waited by the rock, pinioned by eyes that had taken on the cool glow of the moon.

“I never worried much about my crossed trails,” he said, keeping his hands at his sides. “But they've got me where I can't say or do what I'd like to. I can't—won't—hurt you, Miranda.”

I
was
hurting, and I knew he was. A yearning that was more than desire was almost palpable between us. As if to break his silent intensity, he spoke in a louder tone. “I owe your parents my life. If you let me help you, it's the only way I can ever pay them back.”

It would be ungracious and foolish to refuse an offer made like that. Even though the future could not be guessed at, knowing this enigmatic man would be my friend made me feel much safer. I managed a shaky smile.

“Thank you, Trace.”

He gave a quick nod of satisfaction. “Good. When Sewa can travel, I'll take you to Hermosillo.” He slipped his hand beneath my elbow, turning back down the canyon. “Don't forget, Miranda. As long as I live, you have a friend.”

Friend?

I should have been glad of that, but I felt a surge of anger at his marriage, the woman in his past who barred him from me, everything that forbade my loving him. Overwhelmed, I looked up at him. “Oh, Trace!” I said forlornly. Then, in this strange world of moon and shadow, I could say what I never would have by day. “Trace, kiss me.”

A tremor went through him. I felt a surge of power, of confidence, almost as if I were the older, experienced one. Taking his hands, I kissed them, carried them to my breasts, excited by his hesitation. His breath escaped in a shuddering sigh. He brought me into his arms, bent his head, and kissed me, parting my lips, finding my tongue with his.

“All right,” he said in a funny, ragged tone. “All right, my sweetheart. I can do something for you. Make you feel good without hurting you for marriage.”

“But that doesn't sound fair for you, Trace.”

He shrugged. “Don't worry. I'll love it—just seeing you, holding you, doing what I can.” He had brought me down on a flat rock ledge, his hands opening my bodice, freeing my breasts, molding them with his fingers, which lightly brushed the tips till I arched against him, avid for his caresses, his mouth, the long hard length of his body.

He nuzzled my nipples with lips and tongue. One hand pushed aside my skirts, stroked up to the eagerness between my legs, toyed in a way that brought parts of me alive that had slept till now. Then, as the friction of his hand, though pleasurable, became a bit painful, his tongue left my breast, and in a second I felt a slow deep stroking, an incredibly sensitive yet virile exploration varied with light, swift flecks that sent liquid fire through me, centered it beneath that sure expert tongue that stroked faster, faster, coaxing till that secret part of me seemed to burst into lovely puslating explosions.

My own voice, moaning, called me back to reality. “Trace! Oh, that was heavenly!”

He laughed softly, held me with my head on his shoulder. I could hear the heavy pound of his heart.

“Am I a woman now?” I ventured.

He laughed, held me closer, stroking my back. “Almost. Almost, Miranda.”

“Is that what happens?”

“What you felt should happen, but it can be caused in different ways. What you had was the pleasure without the problems.”

I thought about that.

“Is there a way for you? A way you can feel good without whatever it is we mustn't do?”

He didn't answer. I sat upright and tugged at his shoulder. “Is there, Trace?”

“Yes,” he admitted slowly. “But—Oh, hell, Miranda! You shouldn't know such things! What are you getting me into?”

“Please?” The completion, the delight I had experienced, made me feel rich and generous, eager to make him happy, too. “Trace, show me what to do.”

“I don't need paying back.”

“Show me.”

He took my hand, did something with his clothes. My fingers encountered something hard and warm, vulnerable and eager. The sharp intake of his breath, the way he lay surrendered with that strangely independent part absolutely rigid, filled me with wonder. I stroked and fondled, keying the pace to his response, my own excitement mounting as he thrust against my hand, pushed and delved and gasped, crying out my name. He spent it all in a convulsive arching that reminded me of the golden stallion's final effort, lay back exhausted as a warm thick fluid filled my palm.

We lay under the moon on the stone slab. Whatever he said about virginity, I felt as much his as if we had been joined in front of an altar. I was only sad that the energy, the beautiful force he had vented in my hand, had not entered into me.

The next day was much like the one before, except that Sewa appeared a bit stronger, ate with more relish. Cruz taught her more tunes on the flute and she would practice to Ku's glee. When she was absorbed with her music and the raven, Cruz told me more about the Yaquis.

They had lived since remembered times along the mouth of the Río Yaqui, which twice yearly overflowed the rich land along its banks so that corn, beans, and squash could be raised in abundance. According to tradition, after a great flood, a group of angels joined Yaqui prophets and traveled from south to north, “singing the boundary,” and ordaining the sacred limits of Yaqui territory. After that, the Yaqui prophets had visions at eight different places, locations for “the Eight Sacred Pueblos.” Though the Yaquis bloodily repulsed Spanish military might, they had accepted the Jesuit priests who came to live among them in 1617 and the Indians wove the Catholic faith into their own myths and traditions. Spanish religious policy clashed with political, however, and the Jesuits were expelled in 1767. From 1825 till his execution in 1833 Juan Banderas, the great Yaqui general, fought the Mexican government's attempts to tax the Yaquis, divide their lands, and assimilate them. After his death, Cajeme and Juan Maldonado Tetabiate took up the struggle against the Mexicans.

Blending old patterns with the Jesuit mission system, the Yaquis had evolved a way of government that suited them very well. All matters of importance to a pueblo were discussed at a junta, or village council, attended by the five governors, church officials, members of military and ceremonial societies, and the elders. These leaders decided how problems should be settled; they could punish offenders by lashes of a rawhide whip, a time in the stocks, or even execution. Cruz had been sentenced to death by such a junta, but he still spoke of the system with respect. When more than two pueblos were concerned, a joint junta was held.

By 1900, the Mexican authorities had decided to settle the Yaqui rebellions once and for all. Yaquis would be, watched closely and any resisters would be deported to work far away. The Bacatete Mountains, where rebellious Yaquis hid out and from which they conducted their raids, were surrounded so that Yaquis from the north who wanted to return home to fight could not get through. Since most supplies came from the north, especially Tucson in Arizona, this seriously hampered Yaqui patriots.

“Now Rafael Yzábal, who became governor of Sonora last year in 1903, thinks he has the answer,” Cruz said. “Since soldiers, settlers, and extermination have not worked, he's got the federal and state governments to cooperate in a slave trade. Yaquis are sold and transported, men and women, for sixty pesos apiece, to henequen plantations in Yucatán or sugarcane fields in Oaxaca.”