Bad to the Bone (25 page)

“I have fallen in love with Duane Braddock. It was not my intention, and I meant you no harm. You shouldn't blame him, because he was as afraid as I.”

Don Carlos examined his wife carefully, and she appeared a feral desert creature, her dignified manners vanished. “Are you happy?” he asked.

“Very,” she replied.

His heart felt whacked by a meat cleaver, while his wife had become more beautiful, glowing with good health, eyes sparkling, with new grace and confidence. But what Don Carlos lacked in youth, he made up in experience, deviousness, and low cunning. “You must love him very much to live like this,” he said, gazing at the ruined old pueblo. “How do you get along without your maids?”

“I don't require maids,” she replied, “and sleeping
on the ground isn't bad once you get used to it. Of course, the diet is fairly monotonous, and there's always the danger that an Apache will cut our throats, but other than that, life couldn't be better.”

“In other words, you're not coming back with me.”

“I am sorry to hurt you, but I am afraid that is so, Don Carlos.”

He smiled bitterly. “I guess you never loved me at all.”

“You were kind to me, and we've had wonderful times together. But I have fallen in love with another man.”

Don Carlos gazed at the pueblo where Duane was hiding. “What is it about him that you love?”

“Everything,” she replied without hesitation.

“But is love merely physical passion? What about the spiritual side of life?”

“We have that too.”

A new barb entered the nobleman's heart, because he'd believed that he and Doña Consuelo had enjoyed a sacred inner bond. “You don't miss the old hacienda at all?”

“I must be with my man.”

He reached his long bony fingers toward her face, then let his hand hang in the air. “Has he put a spell on my dear little Doña Consuelo? He's not mistreating you, is he? Has he threatened to kill you, if you don't say the right things?”

She looked him in the eye. “Don Carlos, I am aware that this is very difficult to accept, but it is not the end of the world. The Church will grant you an annulment, and you will find another young wife soon, because you are still a handsome man.”

“Do you really think so?” he asked, hoping against
hope that the morning sun revealed him in an attractive new light.

“Of course,” she replied, because his aging narcissism had been her companion for three long years. “Wherever Don Carlos goes, women throw themselves at him. Perhaps you should make a more intelligent choice next time.”

“But you were so beautiful, and you are even more beautiful now. I cannot live without you, I'm afraid.”

She tried to make light of it. “Soon you'll grow accustomed to another woman, and be happier than you ever were with me.”

“I do not fall in love every day,” he said darkly.

“Neither do I,” she replied.

“I've seen your kind before,” he warned. “One day that killer of yours will throw you out, and you'll go from man to man until your self-respect is gone. Then you'll drink yourself to death in some tiny little room, impoverished, toothless, and alone.”

“You say that you love me, but you do not know me at all. It would be funny were it not so tragic.”

He narrowed his eyes and pinched his lips together. “There's something you don't seem to understand, my dear little Consuelo. You have disgraced me, and I'm a proud man.”

“The Bible says that pride goeth before a fall, my dear husband, but it's not your fault that I'm a slut, and you should be glad to get rid of me.”

“But I'm not,” he replied. “I still love you in spite of myself.”

“You're not the first man whose wife has left him, just as my mother wasn't the first woman betrayed by her husband. You have many good years left, but you're
wasting precious time on someone who has proven unworthy of you.”

He leaned toward her, raised an eyebrow, and said, “It's not going to be that easy, because I have a reputation to uphold. You may call it conceit, but I will kill Duane Braddock for what he's done. After that, you can go where you please.”

The nobleman's eyes glittered with madness, and she shuddered uncontrollably. She and Duane were trapped, while the vaqueros were waiting with sticks of dynamite. “But I don't love you, Don Carlos. How can you force me to go back with you?”

“If I can't have you, neither will anybody else. And the most pathetic part is that you would tire of him after a few years. He's probably seduced men's wives before. What would you do if he left you?”

“He'd never leave me,” she replied adamantly.

He smiled, as he peered into her eyes. “But my dear—you've made the same solemn vow to me before the altar of Christ, in the presence of the bishop, and look at what
you've
done. No, none of us can trust each other—how about your mother and father, for example? You possessed wealth, reputation, and family, but you gave it up for a dab of cheap romance.”

“I love him,” she insisted. “That's all I know.”

“Come back to your husband, and all shall be forgiven. You can have your own apartment within the hacienda, and help me manage the
estancia.
”

The offer was tempting, and she'd be heiress to two great fortunes soon. Don Carlos saw her weakening. “You wouldn't have to sleep with me ever, if you didn't want to,” he whispered. “Just as long as you're my wife outside the bedroom.”

Doña Consuelo recalled Duane lying in the cave, a bullet in his leg. Duane represented ecstasy, whereas Don Carlos was a fine gentleman of the old school. Doña Consuelo was forced to admit that she preferred the ecstasy. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I can't leave him.”

Her remark struck Don Carlos like a slap in the face, and Spanish anger filled his veins. “You're trying my patience,” he said testily. “Are you
really
prepared to die for this vagabond killer? How'd you like to be crushed to death beneath tons of rock?”

“You must love me very much, to want to kill me.”

“Correct,” he replied.

She swallowed hard, and the little voice in her ear said,
Don't you think your child should have a say in the matter?
“There's something I haven't told you, Don Carlos,” she began. “You may be interested to know that your heir is sleeping in my belly even as we speak.”

His ears perked up. “You're pregnant?”

She nodded, and made her mysterious smile. Don Carlos felt as if the Pinta, Niña, and Santa María had fallen onto him. He gasped, coughed, and nearly choked to death, as he clutched his throat. “Are you lying to me?”

“You kill me,” she replied, “you kill your son or daughter too.”

“You mean Braddock's son or daughter.”

“Legally I am married to you. The boy, if he is a boy, will be the son that you've always dreamed of.”

Don Carlos was seldom at a loss for words, but his tongue felt welded to the roof of his mouth. He tried to peer into her uterus, to see the next of the proud Rebozos, born of the magnificent Doña Consuelo. As for the baby's father, no one had to know the truth. “Let's make a deal,”
said Don Carlos. “I'll let the gringo go free if you come back and have my child. I will give you my word and anything else you want, including your own hacienda.”

“And after the child is born?”

“You may go wherever you want, and I'll never bother you again. If you really love the gringo, it seems a small price to pay for his life, no? And yours too, for that matter, although you don't seem to care much about it these days. I give you the word of the Rebozos, but if you choose to be stubborn, I shall proceed to destroy you and your gringo Romeo. Think it over carefully, my dear Juliet. Three lives hang in the balance here, and you can save them all.”

Doña Consuelo shivered, terrified by the destructive power of love. Don Carlos had guns and dynamite, while her only resource was a boyfriend with a hole in his leg. “You're a swine to do this to me, Don Carlos. I will curse your name forever.”

“And I will curse yours, so we're even.”

She knit her brow in contemplation. A year without Duane would be better than seeing him dead, and the little creature within deserved a chance at life. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “I have your word that you won't kill Duane Braddock?”

Don Carlos raised his right hand. “On the bones of Don Diego de Rebozo, I swear it.”

“Would you let me say goodbye to him?”

“I'll give you a half hour, and I hope you won't let him talk you into dying for him.”

She returned to the pueblo, her heart heavy. She didn't know how to tell Duane the truth, because he was capable of rash acts. He sat in the room, tying a rag torn from an old shirt around his calf. “I took the
bullet out myself,” he said, holding it up. “What did your husband have to say?”

She kneeled in front of Duane and looked into his eyes. “Listen carefully,
querido mío,
because we are in a very bad situation here. My husband is madly in love with me, unfortunately, and is willing to kill the three of us, if I don't go back to him for a year, and give him this baby.”

“But it's
my
baby!” countered Duane.

“It is going to be a dead baby, unless we accede to the demands of Don Carlos. He is perfectly capable of blowing up this pueblo onto our heads. I have decided that it's better for all of us to live than die, and after a year, you and I can be together again.”

“You'll never come back to me,” he said in a low voice. “You'll get used to your big feather bed and your maids, and you'll forget about this poor old cow-poke who loves you so much.”

A tear came to her eye. “Let's not argue with each other,
querido mío,
because we have only a few more minutes left together. Kiss me, and don't make it worse than it is.”

He clasped his arms around her, but was dizzy from pain. Together, they dropped to the blanket, and lay on their sides, her breasts pressing his chest. “I don't know how I can live without you for a year,” he said.

“It's not so long. We can meet in any border town that you name.”

“I'll come for you, but I'm afraid you'll change your mind.”

“Never,” she replied. “I'll wait for you forever, and I swear it on my baby's life.”

D
OÑA
C
ONSUELO ROCKED FROM SIDE TO
side as her horse plodded across the desert. She turned in the saddle, and gazed longingly at the jumble of crags in the distance, as sand devils rose to the sky. She imagined Duane limping painfully, saddling his horse, and preparing to leave on his mission of vengeance.

It will be a long year, she realized, and many things can happen. She recalled a passage from I Corinthians:

Love bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.

She prayed that her man wouldn't be killed in the final reckoning, and feared that she'd never see him
again. Maybe the gringos will put him in jail, or perhaps he'll become a saint, for there still is the seminary student in him. What a strange man is the father of my child, she ruminated, as she touched her palm to her belly. Please spare his life,
Madre Mía.

Duane couldn't stop thinking about Doña Consuelo, as if his heart were riding in her saddlebags. He saddled his horse glumly, tied on the bedroll, threw over the saddlebags, and climbed into the saddle. “Let's move it out,” he said to Midnight. “We're on our way to Escondido.”

Not that shithole, Midnight seemed to reply, as he worked his way down the narrow mountain path.

“Got an old friend there,” explained Duane, “and I happen to know that the stable has a roof that doesn't leak.”

If we make it that far.

Duane's left leg was numb, and he feared amputation. Maybe I can find a doctor, he thought hopefully. Besides, lots of men get around all right on peg legs. They'll give me whiskey, tie me down, and saw it off. But what's a leg when true love is concerned?

He felt as though an elemental portion of his being had disappeared, as every step carried her and their child farther away. In a year, that old fart will twist her head around, and I'll never see her again. When the chips are down, no woman worth her salt will ever leave her child.

Doña Consuelo lay alone in the tent, while Don Carlos slept among vaqueros near the chuckwagon.
The blankets seemed cold, clammy, and dead, and she wondered how she could exist without her man. I've fallen in love, she surmised, and only God can help me now.

She placed her palms on her stomach, and felt the tiny being feeding on the juices of her body. You must always be brave, act honorably, and never be afraid to love, whether you're a little boy or a little girl. Then your father and mother will be proud of you, and you will truly be our child.