A Lady Bought with Rifles (21 page)

“So here are my sweethearts,” he said, putting Sewa down, drawing back to gaze at me. “What a place to find you! Domingo says you were stolen off a train. What do you get up to when I turn my back?”

Dumbfounded anger eroded my delight. Coming through the narrow pass, I'd wondered who was escorting us to the mine, hadn't been able to completely repress a flickering dream that it might be Trace. Now here he stood. I was afraid to be as joyful, as I felt, afraid to trust him.

Stepping back, I said coldly, “When you left Las Coronas without a word, I decided you didn't choose to be bothered with my troubles. No one could blame you for that.”

Those incredible eyes, the blue of the sky mixed with sea green, widened in unmistakable shock. “Without a word?” he repeated. “Didn't Felipe tell you what I said?”

“No. In fact, a few days later, at my dear sister's bidding, he almost got me killed.” Then a memory of Felipe's last tortured words drifted back. “Wait! After he was shot, he tried to tell me something—called your name.”

“Belated conscience,” said Trace, mouth twisting. “My God, Miranda, what you must have thought. So that's why you struck off on your own.”

“There wasn't much choice. Reina wanted me dead.”

Trace scowled. “Did she, the bitch? But Cruz and I understood from Domingo that you put your life in pawn for hers.”

“I didn't think a military officer would sacrifice a rich woman like Reina for three guerrillas.”

Trace shook his head. “I wouldn't have expected it either. Even so, love, you were a fool to risk your neck for hers after what she's done. Well, let's clear out. I have to ride straight on from the mine. I'm to fetch those five dozen rifles, in case you hadn't guessed.” He laughed. “Cruz finally asked me for a favor, but I still owe him since it's my woman I'm saving.”

My woman
. I repeated the words, loving their sound, though, they weren't really true. His wife, his lawful woman, was across the Rio Grande. But for now I refused to worry about that. I was alive and with Trace. Sheer heaven.

He helped me up, swung Sewa and Ku on the other horse, and thanked our guard. The man smiled for the first time and I reckoned he was glad not to have to use the rifle in his saddle scabbard.

“God keep you,” he said in Yaqui, and turned back up the canyon, leading the riderless mounts.

As we rode through the foothills, I told Trace what had happened since he brought Sewa and me back to the hacienda and he explained that he'd received an urgent message that night and had needed to ride at once, stopping only to ask Felipe to tell me he'd been called away but would be back.

“If he mentioned it to Reina, she'd have told him not to tell me,” I said bitterly. “But why did you go?”

“My wife was in Hermosillo.”

My heart seemed to stop up my throat. “And you went to her?”

“Yes. She was dying. She'd wound up in an El Paso whorehouse, and when she was too sick to work, they threw her out. She knew from friends in Texas that I'd drifted to Sonora, so she begged and ‘worked' her way to Hermosillo. I'm fairly well known there, and when a woman claiming to be my wife turned up, a friend sent the message.”

I remembered that he said she had loved to dance. “I'm terribly sorry,” I said, ashamed of my jealousy.

“So am I.” He was silent a moment. “At least I could make it a little easier. Out of all that anger and hurt I'd had, there wasn't any left. Or love, either. She was just a poor sick woman dying young.”

We rode for a time without talking. Thoughts weltered. This changed everything. If he wanted to marry me, he could. Impossible to blurt out, yet it transformed the world. He had to perform his bargain, but after that we could start fresh.

“You can bet if I had time to find a safe place for you, I wouldn't leave you with Court Sanders,” Trace said abruptly.

And if there had been time, I wouldn't have stayed. But since I saw no real choice, I resolved not to worry Trace with the things Court had said to me that night when I stopped his assault on Consuelo.

“Sanders has asked me to inspect the mine,” I said matter-of-factly. “After all, it does belong to me.”

Trace gave a wry laugh. “Court's, been in charge so long that he probably thinks Mina Rara's his. Still, if he knows he'll have to answer to me for your well-being, I think he'll behave.”

“You make him sound dangerous.”

“Court loves women. Every chance he gets.”

That I could believe, remembering Reina, the way his tawny eyes had rested on me, lingered like a touch that had waked even my angry and distrustful body.

“Sewa will be with me,” I said. “And if he's too difficult, I can discharge him.”

Trace laughed outright, shaking his head. “What a child you are, Miranda, a proper well-bred English child! Who could enforce such a discharge? Court's not the man to bow politely and obey. Don't fire him, don't threaten him, unless you have the means to make it stick.”

“And when will that be?” I demanded.

“When I get back. Three weeks, maybe four. As soon as I can, I'll come to the mine and take you to my friends in Hermosillo. Keep peace With Court till then.”

At noon we rested for an hour, chewing some jerky Trace had, and paused again in midafternoon. Sometimes our way climbed, but mostly we stayed in the arroyos twining through the small hills till late that afternoon, when we began to ascend into raw mountains scantily clad with jojoba, dwarf mesquite, and scrub. I glimpsed the narrow-gauge railroad twisting up the grade like a serpent, and we struck a road running beside it, marked by wheels and hooves. We reached the top of the mountain at sunset and looked down at the settlement scattered across the valley floor, seemingly spewed out of the vast hole in the mountain side, which literally shone.

“What is it?” I asked Trace.

“Fool's gold—pyrite. All that stuff is tailings, the useless matter washed off the ore.” I stared at the two entrances to the mountain, the people gathered to harvest its depths, the loaded metal carts on the train track, and was filled with a surprise close to fear. This belonged to me, or would in a few months. In effect, dozens of people worked for me, drew their livelihood from the mine. I hadn't really given them a thought before: how they were fed or clothed, or the conditions under which they worked. I hadn't wanted to come here, but it was a good thing I had, for I was responsible for what went on at Mina Rara.

“Well, Miranda,” said Trace. “What do you think of your kingdom?”

“I don't know. It doesn't seem real yet.”

“It won't take long. Mines have a pretty convincing reality, though they're a world in themselves.” He lifted his reins, starting his horse down the winding road spiraling down into the valley.

“You have to ride on?” I called.

He turned to look at me. It was as if the essence of our beings rushed together when our eyes met. “We should wait,” he said. “I might get killed.”

I shook my head. “Do you know what I was most sorry for when I expected to die this morning? I wished that you had loved me.”

“I do love you.”

“You know what I mean.”

His eyes were lit with inner burning. The long line of his jaw ridged.
“Chiquita,”
he said to Sewa, who was catching up with us, “wait for us a short distance down the trail. There are some trees near a big rock.”

She nodded and rode on. Trace took a side path that led behind gigantic tumbles of glittering rocks. We came to a shallow cave where the sand was fine-powdered, hued blue and gold and crimson. He hitched our horses and lifted me down.

I was ready for him almost immediately, moist and yieldingly eager. It was he who held back, kissed my breasts and eyes and mouth, caressed me till I moaned and drew him onto me. There was a sharp piercing hurt. I cried out. He stopped, kissed and stroked me till I relaxed, accepted that hard questing part of him that fitted slowly, breathtakingly deep into me. He lay like that, covering me completely, little shudders wracking him.

“I'll finish in a minute,” he said. “First, Miranda my love, let's see to you.”

Withdrawing, he began to kiss and gently touch between my legs, send his tongue over that tiny delicate center of feeling that soon engorged till my earlier hurt felt soothed.

“Your rosebud.” He laughed, lifting his head.

I hadn't known people could talk while making love. That he was still Trace, caring, able to joke, made me wholly unafraid and happy. I stroked his hair and smiled, hoping he would go on with the exquisitely pleasurable thing he was doing.

“Let's make you bloom,” he said.

He did. This time it was even lovelier than before because he could be my man and now I was a woman, his woman. I cried out with delight, and while I was still trembling and soft, he entered me again, surged to his own peak.

For a few moments we lay resting. I felt at peace, calm, completed. Whatever happened now, I belonged to Trace Winslade. I wouldn't die without tasting this. When a flicker of fear shot through me as I remembered Court's warning that I had better be a virgin, I pushed it aside. Trace had claimed me; he would return. Court would hardly tamper with another man's intended wife.

I touched Trace's closed eyes. Starting, he raised on one elbow. “God, if we could stay here! If I could just take you and Sewa and get the hell out! But I've got to bring those rifles.”

“I know. We'll be all right.”

He kissed me, drew me to my feet. “Sure. Sure you will.” He grinned ruefully. “I hope you want to marry me, Miranda. Because now that I'm free, I'm asking you, even if I'm poor.”

“You'd better ask,” I said sternly. “After all those lectures on saving myself for a marriageable man.”

He helped me into the saddle and we rode down the trail.

Mina Rara. Company store, cantina, a tiny church with a belled steeple that seemed concocted of grimy frosting, a smithy, an infirmary, an office, two substantial houses and the homes of the workers honeycombed on the hill and valley opposite the mine.

We rode to the biggest house and Trace hitched our horses to the post railing, helped me down first, then lifted Sewa, steadying her as we went up a few steps to the large adobe with its massive doors.

A spicy odor wafted from inside and a woman's soft laughter floated out. “Sanders!” Trace called. “It's Winslade and some visitors.”

“Come on in,” boomed the answer. “If this visitor's as pretty as the last—” He broke off as I stepped into the room, dark as a cave after the light.

I stood, holding Sewa by the hand, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Court came forward, hands out. “Miranda! What in the world has happened to you? I heard you and the girl were on that train bandits looted.”

“We were.” I was too tired to go into it and felt reluctance to let him know any more about anything than was necessary. He seemed to have no self-consciousness about the last time we had been together. I tried to be equally relaxed. “Can we have a cool drink?”

“Raquel!” he shouted. “Bring wine and make some fresh coffee.”

“Isn't there some water?” I asked.

“There is, but you won't like it. Full of minerals.”

“Sewa needs something.”

“We can flavor the water with a little wine,” Trace said. “Sanders, I have to ride on. Can someone see to my horse while I have some of whatever that is that smells good?”

Court stepped to the front door, rang a bell, said a few words to the boy who answered. After Raquel, a large-eyed, voluptuous girl, brought water and wine, I briefly explained to Court what had happened.

“So Reina knows you're alive?” he asked, raising tawny brows.

“She saw me in the basin. But she'll probably learn that the Yaqui men were executed and believe that I was killed in reprisal.”

Court studied for a moment, nodded. “I suppose you'd prefer she think that, at least until after your eighteenth birthday. Before then she could fetch you back to Las Coronas, and if I tried to stop her, she could get the
rurales
.” He smiled, his golden eyes on me in an intimacy I found disturbing. “Mina Rara is a good place to be safely hidden away, Miranda. I'm glad you came.”

“It's her mine, after all,” said Trace. “I'll be back in three, four weeks. Then Miranda can stay with friends in Hermosillo till things settle down.”

“Winslade, things aren't going to settle down, not till this country blows wide open and heals back together.”

“Then Miranda will have to decide whether to stay or go to live in the United States or England.” Trace looked directly at me, probing till I felt exposed, emotionally naked. “If you want to go to the United States, Miranda, I could take you across the border now.”

Safety—distant from war and reprisal, beyond Reina's power. But it was not to live as a refugee that I'd left England. And my heart leaped as I thought this might be Trace's way of asking if I had changed my mind about marrying him.

“I want to stay,” I said carefully. “I want to have a country. Besides, Trace, wives should be with their husbands.”

“Wives?” Court's gaze leaped from me to Trace. Though when he spoke, his tone held a note of banter, there was a tension in him that frightened me in spite of all my arguments and reason. “Don't tell me you found a priest out in the brush?”

“No.” Trace stared into those lazy topaz eyes. “But we'll be married in Hermosillo.”

“When you return,” amended Court smoothly. He inclined his head to me. “You're either valiant or foolhardy to marry in this country after what you've just escaped.”

I took a long breath. Was he really accepting it so easily? Raquel and another girl brought trays that they placed on the drumlike rawhide table. Raquel served out bowls of thick stew and offered warm tortillas while the other girl brought wine and silver goblets.