A Lady Bought with Rifles (23 page)

“No.”

“Then Winslade won't come back. You condemn him to death.”

“You—you unbelievable—”

He set his fingers over my mouth. “And it won't keep me from having you, Miranda. Nothing will. What we're debating is whether you put a good face on it and let Winslade live.”

Sudden hope rose in me. “Is it the mine you want, Court? I'll make you co-owner if you'll let me go away with Trace.”

“What if only sole title would comfort me for my loss?” he drawled.

Then I would be penniless, with Sewa to look after, dependent on the charity of Trace's friends. But for Trace to die—or for me to yield to Court …

“I'll sign it over to you as soon as I'm of age.”

Court let me go and swore explosively before he calmed. “Well, Miranda, that means you really must love Winslade and have a strong dislike for me. It's not the mine I want and I swear that even if you marry me I won't use your money. But willing or fighting, married or not, I
will
have you. Soon.”

“When Reina finds out—”

“She won't. She thinks you're dead, my sweetheart.”

“How can she?” I demanded. “We all expected the commandant to let the Yaquis go instead of sending back their heads.”

“Not Reina.” His tone was grim. “One of my informants heard her send a messenger to the commandant to tell him to execute the prisoners since she had gotten away.”

My head whirled. Reina had tried to hurt me before. But to cause my death when I was at risk for saving her. “You're lying!”

Turning my head, I retched, spewing out the watery wine and supper, wracked till my empty stomach heaved, humiliatingly conscious of Court holding my head, supporting my shoulders.

“Makes you sick, doesn't it?” He wiped my mouth with his handkerchief, called for Raquel, and scooped me up. “No, little fool, I'm not taking you to bed—or at least not with me. I was sick, too, when my man told me what that bitch had done. I was starting for Las Coronas, ready to choke the life out of her, when you rode in.”

“So that's why you were so surprised.”

He put me down in a big chair in the main room, sponged my face with clean water Raquel had brought. “Yes. And when I heard you were almost surely dead, that's when I knew what you were to me. My woman. You rode back to me from the dead. I'll never let you go again.”

Weak and spent, I said desperately, as if I were shouting at him in a foreign language, “You don't love me or you'd care what I feel!”

“I do care. In a year you'll love me.”

Even in that moment, when I hated him, my blood quickened as he smiled. I cried defiance as much to my treacherous body as to him. “I won't. I'll hate you more than I do now.”

“We'll see.” He cupped my chin and raised my face. I felt devoured by those tawny eyes. “You're tired, darling. Sleep now. You can give me your answer in the morning.” At the hopeful lift of my head, he gave a thin little smile. “No, Winslade won't be out of reach. If I don't get him on the way to Arizona, my men will finish him before he rides through the pass into this valley. There's no way he can come unless I permit it.”

With amazing tenderness Court helped me up, walked down the hall with his arm around me. At my door he said, “Good night, love,” kissed my forehead, and swung quickly away.

It was almost better when he was menacing.

I couldn't let him kill Trace. But submit to those muscular, gold-haired arms? Let him do the things Trace had? And it wouldn't be for one time only, I was sure of that. Court might, after a season, let me go, but I had a frightening dread that if he possessed me long enough, he would drain me till I became his thing, his creature—that I wouldn't want to go, even if he allowed it and Trace would take me.

That possibility, not rape or death, was the real nightmare. But how could I resist him if that meant he would murder Trace?

11

During the next days Sewa and I grew acquainted with Mina Rara. Court was often with us, but when he was not, I felt we were watched. He hadn't pressed me further, and though his menace towered over me, tangible as the mountains about the mine, he seemed possessed of the certainty of ultimate success, which allowed him to wait. Meanwhile, he was a perfect host, indulgent, spicing his conversation with humor and fascinating lore.

He even produced a
burra
for Sewa, quickly beloved, cherished and named Cascos Lindos, Pretty Hooves, because its ears couldn't compare with those of Ratoncita. Ku, his leather nest fastened to the saddle, rode through the village, staring haughtily as a general reviewing troops.

About ninety men worked at Mina Rara, most of them Yaquis. The company doctor, Edwin Trent, gaunt, gruff, and given to drink, though he had been a minister before he turned to medicine, was the only other American. Not everyone worked at the mine. One Mexican family kept cows and lived by selling cheese and milk. Several widows baked bread, tortillas, and cakes for those who didn't want to bother as well as for the bachelors. There was a shoemaker and a man who hauled water around to the dwellings.

Services were held each Sunday in the little church by a Yaqui
maestro
and Court said the main
fiestas
were celebrated here just as they were in the Eight Sacred Pueblos.

“You've missed San Juan Bautista, June 23 and 24, when there are cockfights and horseracing,” Court said. “San Ignacio's past. So is Virgen del Camino, July 1, when people often marry after maybe having lived together twenty years. The Easter ceremonies come to a crescendo Holy Week. The mine closes down from Good Friday till the Monday after Easter. A deer dancer comes from one of the pueblos, but Mina Rara has its own
maestro
, chanters, and
pascolas
, which are sort of clown dancers.”

When he made assumptions like that, as if I would be there forever, I didn't argue. Better to make no resistance till I had to. Meanwhile, the mine was endlessly fascinating, though Miss Mattison would have fainted away with shock at the way the cantina filled every Saturday and Sunday with Mexican women up from Guaymas to help the miners spend their very good wages, eight pesos a day, compared to an average wage of thirty-five centavos plus rations for working on a hacienda.

Miners were paid in silver brought from the bank at Guaymas every two weeks, along with the mail, on the narrow-gauge train that ran from the main railroad to the mine. If a miner's money ran out before payday, he could get credit at the company store. Prices were high because of the difficulty of getting supplies, but I could detect no cheating. Meat wasn't expensive, for local ranchers brought it in nearly every day. I bought, or rather charged to Court, enough red and blue cotton to make dresses for Sewa and me, and the woman who made Court's shirts had us dressed respectably within the week, thanks to her sewing machine. Court wanted his things handmade, but I wasn't particular.

The mine itself was the passage to Pluto's dark, rich kingdom. A U-shaped tunnel went into the hill, with two surface entrances. At the bend of the U was a chamber, ventilated by a hole from above, with a hoist, compressor, and other equipment.

“The gold near the surface is found in this crumbly diorite rock,” explained Court. “The gold deeper down lies in veins. Would you like to see?”

I glanced at Sewa, whose eyes shone eagerly. That decided me to go down in the depths. “Can someone carry Sewa?” I asked. Court summoned one of the miners and got two candles on sharp-pointed holders about a foot long.

“I have the workers on a short shift down here,” explained Court. “There's no outside ventilation and it doesn't take long to get dizzy. We're dynamiting as we go along and it takes hours for the dust and smoke to settle after each explosion.”

“It sounds dangerous.”

“That's why the men get eight pesos a day.”

“Have there been any bad accidents?”

Court gave me a surprised stare. “You bet! Someone had a cigarette too close to the dynamite last year and the explosion plastered twenty men all over the tunnel. We collected the bits in a sack and buried them all together. And then a few months ago there was an underground fire, probably started by a candle. It baked three men black. When I touched one, his skin peeled away as if it was greased.”

We were approaching a shaft. I felt sick and took several long breaths before speaking. “What happened to the men's families?”

“Some went back to the pueblos. A few launder and cook for bachelors. Others, I reckon, earn their living on their backs.”

“I want them—and the survivors of any man killed in the mine—to be given a lump sum or pension, whichever they prefer.”

Court frowned and I braced myself for an argument, but he shrugged his wide shoulders and said smoothly, “If that's your wish. We'll work it out according to children, remarriage, and so on. Now take a good long breath. It's the last you'll get for a while.”

Candle in one hand, he descended a ladder, steadied me as I followed to a ledge where another ladder went down into deeper twilight. Court braced the ladder for the miner with Sewa. We descended in increasing blackness, what Court said was three hundred feet down, till the shaft was a tiny patch far above and our candles threw yellow dusty light into the tunnel.

My lungs labored, pleading for oxygen, but I controlled the wish to gasp. After all, men
worked
down here. We wouldn't die for lack of air, though it certainly felt like it. The miner put Sewa down and I helped her follow Court. He held out his candle and it dazzled on gold.

Gold in patches, gold in thin leaves, gold twisted like sculptured wire. I'd had no idea it could come like this, in such clear, bright shining glory. Court pried a piece of corded metal loose with the edge of his candlestick, gave it to me.

“Keepsake of your first time down,” he said.

“One for Sewa?” I asked, breathing fast in spite of all my efforts.

He pried off a filamented web the length of a finger, put it in Sewa's hand. “Let's get up,” he said. “I'll go first to help with the child.”

So we returned, ladder by ladder, to the comparative light and freshness of the equipment room. My head was ringing and I sat down dizzily on a box, gathering Sewa to me.

“Well,” said Court, head thrown back, hands on his hips as he filled his lungs, “queen of the golden mountain, how do you like your treasure?”

“It's fantastic! But I hate for anyone to work down there. Isn't there any way to ventilate?”

“Not at that depth. But the ore shoot, which averages four feet thick, is raking north. It may eventually run out on the other side of the mountain, which is, in fact, the side of a canyon on its north face. Then there'd be air on that side and perhaps some draft between it and the shaft that ventilates this room, though that's a long way to travel.”

“Can't you blast out to the surface?”

“Yes. But if we just barge ahead instead of following where the ore shoot goes, we may have to dynamite a whole new tunnel to get the ore and we might lose some through explosions.”

“Do it anyway, please.”

Court stared, jaw dropping.

“But the expense. After a charge goes off, I've told you nothing else can be done for a while. It could take a week to get through the mountain.”

“But then the men could breathe.”

“Hell, they aren't dying.” Court shoved back his hair. “They pull a short shift down there. Double their money if you want. It'd be a lot cheaper than what you're suggesting.”

“We're talking air, not money. Besides, it's my money. Isn't it?”

Those yellow eyes smoldered. Through my mind flashed the image of a giant cat, poised motionless except for its tail switching like a pendulum.

“If that's what you want,” he said finally.

It was strange to watch him give on matters involving his professional judgment and large sums of money, while I knew he intended to have me in his bed one way or another. But at least he was giving me respite. During it, I had better make changes that would improve life for the workers. Besides, by exercising power affecting Mina Rara, I took up my work as a human being, began to create myself as a person in the outer world.

One thing was sure. I wouldn't, even if I got away, forget the place and leave its running up to Court or his successors while I spent the yield. In this one spot I could make a good life possible for some people, and though it was a wavering candle in a whirlwind night, some Yaquis were safe here.

Raquel had a younger sister, Chepa, who helped at the house and, as our stay lengthened, shyly made friends with Sewa. Chepa was a strong, chubby girl of thirteen, with big angelic brown eyes and a heart-shaped face. Court observed casually that in a few years she'd be a beauty. She led Sewa about on the
burra
and soon, by getting acquainted with Chepa's family, relatives, friends, and ceremonial kin, Sewa knew almost everyone, Mexican and Yaqui, in the village.

The religious
fiestas
were not the only celebrations. There was the novena, nine days after a person's death, rather like a wake, the
cumpleaño
, given on the anniversary of a person's death, and
fiestas
given simply because someone had made a promise to give one if a wish were granted.

There were three shifts at the mine, and when the seven
A.M
. to three
P.M
. got off, a lot of the men gathered at Chepa's house for cards and storytelling. Sewa brought home many stories, mostly true, some old, some recent.

There were tales of Yaqui generals, heroes, and traitors, of how the great Cajeme had a woman in each of the Eight Sacred Pueblos and stayed busy going from one to the other. Then there were reminiscences of a great earthquake when the sun shone through a mass of red clouds and everyone was afraid. Epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever brought in by ships seemed to have ravaged the Río Yaqui pueblos almost yearly.