Deep Purple (14 page)

CHAPTER 18

A
t the nebulous gray of predawn Catherine awoke in the rancho's stables with the sour memory of Slovel’s death the night before. She found herself still enfolded in Law’s arms, her back against the shielding width of his chest. As if he sensed that she was awake, though she had not moved, his lips nuzzled the hollow behind her earlobe. His mustache tickled, but it was the knot in her belly his kiss aroused that made her shiver.

“
You said you liked my kisses,” he reminded her in a husky whisper.

She would have been anxious about what could follow but for the note of playfulness in his lazy voice. “
Yes,” she agreed, squirming away, “but I also told you I didn’t want you to kiss me again.”

“
You say a lot of things I don’t think you mean.” He sat up, resting one elbow on a bent knee. Chewing on a piece of straw, he watched her as she knelt, straightening her rumpled skirt and brushing the hay from her blouse and hair. "You want a husband. But why did you come out here to find one—to the territory? You’re a damned good-looking woman, Cate. You’ve fine lines that’ll weather age well. Surely all the Yankee males aren’t that blind.”

She smiled wryly. “
I take that as a compliment, coming from you. Law—the lines that weather well.” She chuckled then. “Oh, that’s priceless.” She smoothed the wisps of hair back into a knot, rearranging her hairpins to hold the heavy mass. “I told you. I came for adventure.”

"Adventure!”
He grunted. “Well, you’ve sure got it now, tramping along with a mercenary army, camping out in open fields. My God, Cate, I must have been out of my mind to agree to let you come along!”

He sprang lithely to his feet, and
for a fearful moment she thought he meant to leave her there at the rancho. But he only took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Well, if you’re set on this adventuring, you might as well do it in style.”

She trailed behind him as he strode across the c
ourtyard. Somewhere a cock crowed. She picked her way among the recumbent men who stirred with the first shafts of sunlight. A mangy dog nipped at her heels, and she hurried to catch up with Law, who leaned now against an adobe corral where a herd of maybe fifteen horses pranced and snorted in the brisk morning air, their breath steaming. “I'm buying them from Don Ynigo for a
remuda
—replacement horses for the expedition. Pick yourself one."

She grinned up into the rawhide countenance. “
If you think I'm going to say demurely that nice women don’t accept gifts, you’re wrong." She feigned a theatrical grimace. "One more day riding in the cramped wagon, and I think I would almost settle for walking."

"Then make your choice, Cate." He chuckled and added, "But don
’t consider this gesture that of a courting man.”

She settled on a steely blue mustang stud, a descendant of the Arab-Barb horses bred in Spain and brought into the Southwest by Coronado
’s conquistadores in 1540. It was a superbly built steed with a deep broad chest, small ears, and a silver mane and tail.

The mustang, Sonora (Catherine thought the name most appropriate for the animal's unfettered spirit), was indeed a big improvement over Loco
’s wagon. Catherine cantered along now in front of the wagons, thereby escaping much of the dust thrown up, but not too far ahead to mingle with the advance guard of soldiers. With the threat of Slovel eradicated, she was able to relax and enjoy herself. And for some reason, she could not pinpoint why, she was content—no, even happy—for the first time in what seemed like years.

Perhaps it was the adventurer in her. But she felt so alive
—the air there, unpolluted by civilization, was invigorating; the views, breathtaking colors shading narrow green valleys and orange-red canyons and deep purple mountains; the people, for the most part men and women enjoying the adventure as much as she, laughing in the day and dancing and singing by the campfires at night. It was almost impossible to conceive that these same people would leave her at Hermosillo and continue on to face possible death, to inflict certain death to others.

It was difficult to think the roguishly likable Law capable of destroying another human being, but she had witnessed his quick, efficient method of killing.
The hands had wielded the knife proficiently, just as proficiently as they dealt the horsehide cards in the poker game that broke out that evening after camp was called.

From her bedroll spread beneath the wagon she watched those slender brown hands riffl
e through the cards with consummate skill. Visions of those hands making love to her arose to pique her imagination. She remembered the way the fingers had slipped sensuously through her hair the night of San Juan de Bautista and the afternoon beneath the Joshua tree when for a brief moment one brown hand had cupped her derriere. Her heart had slammed against her ribcage with the memory of the unexpected pleasure he had engendered.

Did those same brown hands make love to some woman in camp each night before
he finally came to her much later? Perhaps the very seductive Filomena? The idea perturbed Catherine. With a huffy tug at her blankets, she rolled over in her bedroll, determined to sleep. When at last Law came to her, pulling her within the curve of his long frame, she drowsily wished he would tease her with kisses as he had done that morning.

Yet morning light brought only a vague memory of his warmth and nothing more. The blankets beside her were empty. At a far campfire he squatted, with Tranquilino, d
rinking a cup of coffee. With an inward sigh she retrieved Law’s blankets and rolled them with hers in the tight bundle that would fit behind a saddle. She reflected ruefully that she had become an adept
soldadera
in all ways but one, and that she would not be.

The creek that trickled through the camp provided only enough water to fill the canteens and water the animals, and she had to be content with washing her face. How dirty and sweaty she felt. She sorely regretted the b
ath she had missed at the rancho. She hoped the expedition would reach the villa of Magdalena that evening. A bed and a bath. How splendid they sounded!

As it turned out, Law gave orders for the brigade to camp outside the villa. He and Tranquilino intende
d to scout the village alone first. While there was some grumbling from the men, who were anxious to make forays on the cantinas and sample the delights of the dark-eyed women, the camp was grudgingly pitched on a broad plateau cut by the Rio de Los Alisos.

Catherine knew she could have performed a meager sort of ablution at the river, but she had so been looking forward to the hot bath that she gathered her courage and approached Law. Crouched beneath a shady sycamore tree, he was studying a wrinkled map w
ith Tranquilino and two Americans. She stood off to one side, waiting for the discussion to end. At last, the four men rose and exchanged a few words more before separating.

Then, though his back had been to her, Law rotated and crossed the intervening yar
ds toward her, as if he had known all along of her presence. He halted before her and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “You wanted something, Cate?”

The frown on his face unsettled her. Did he resent her disruption? "I want to go into Magdalena with you. I w
ant to take a bath, a real bath, Law.” She felt so strange, petitioning him for such a favor. Perhaps it was because he seemed a stranger to her, no longer the lazy, aimless stepson of Don Francisco but the fierce leader of mercenaries.

“
Do you realize French agents may be there?” he asked impatiently. “That they might decide to shoot first and ask questions later?”

“
All the more reason why you should take me,” she pointed out. “With my obviously Anglo looks and your fairness, we’d be taken as an American husband and wife. Who would question us?”

She waited while he considered. “
All right, get your horse.”

Delighted, she whirled to collect her horse and gear.

“And Cate—”

She turned around. “
Yes?”

He smiled. "Don't get any ideas about the husband-and-wife act
.”

She squinched her eyes at him and stalked away, his soft laughter following her.

La Villa de Magdalena was a picturesque villa situated on the Rio Concepcion where the river broke into the open Sonoran desert. Magdalena was famous, for Padre Kino, now buried there.  The missionary explorer had proved that California was not actually an island, as the Spanish had believed.

The houses, chiefly of adobe, though Catherine did note some of brick, were all stuccoed and whitewashed. Many were colored yellow. Th
ey were strung out here and there and, closer to the plaza, grouped in clusters. She half expected Law to make for the nearest cantina, but he halted his sorrel before a
tienda
. The small store appeared empty but for the flies that swarmed about the beef strung from the timbers outside.

He looped his reins about the hitching post and came around to her side. “
I’ll only be a few minutes,” he said, looking up at her. ‘‘Try to keep your mouth shut. Don’t speak to anyone. Got it?”

“
Got it.” She frowned, annoyed by his authoritative command. Five years ago she could have been in a classroom rapping the scoundrel’s knuckles with a ruler.

Looking around at the villa
’s indolence—the men who dozed on benches beneath the porticos, the lean flea-bitten curs that slunk through the sunbaked streets—she felt her hopes sink that she would find a place to rent a bathtub. True, Tucson was a slightly primitive pueblo without the Union’s military depot to lend it an American flavor. But the Villa de Magdalena looked even less civilized than Tucson, if that were possible.

When Law came out of the
tienda
, his face set in stern lines, she knew there would be no bath. “What is it?”

He swung up into the saddle and looked across at her. “
The French—under a Colonel Garnier—took Hermosillo the day before yesterday, Cate. Even now Governor Pesquiera and our republican troops are retreating to the capital, Ures.”

A cold sweat broke out on her temples. “
What will this mean?”

For the first time the lazy drawl was clipped. “
It means my men will now assume guerrilla warfare tactics. It means we’ll go into the mountains surrounding Ures. It means we can’t take you into Hermosillo.”

“
I’ll go by myself. I’ll explain—”

“
Bastada
! Enough! Garcia—the storekeeper—his niece, not even yet thirteen, was raped, her mother and father murdered. The Frenchman, Colonel Garnier, is sparing no one who supports the Juaristas. Do you think the Frenchmen will spare you? To them a woman is a woman. It doesn’t matter her nationality.”

The sun was beating down on her,
but her skin crawled with chill bumps as she considered her alternative—traveling back to Tucson alone. And that was out of the question. A woman alone crossing the countryside was exposed to as many dangers as she was riding into a besieged city.

Her gaze
locked with Law’s before she hung her head, beaten. “Don’t say anything,” she whispered. “I know I let myself in for this.”

“
Let’s go back to camp,” he said. A muscle flexed beneath the ridge of one high cheekbone, then he wheeled the horse around.

The expedition
’s festive spirit evaporated when Law returned with the news. At once preparations began for battle. Beside the campfires that night were no card games or drinking. Men cleaned their guns, sharpened their knives. The women talked in low, concerned whispers.

Filomena. pounding the cornmeal dough into a flat circle, talked quietly of the times she and her husband had fought off both the Apaches and the Mexican
bandidos
who raided their small rancho and burned the
milpas
, the corn fields—horrors that she never got used to—-and the final battle when the Apaches caught her husband and three others unaware at the shaft of the mine. His sudden death at the point of a lance. Then the onslaught of the cabin, the baby’s brains dashed—her own body violated.

The woman raised her gaze to meet Catherine's. “
So now I no longer have anything to lose . . . except . . .” Her gaze slid across the camp to fix on the two men who walked among the
remuda
. stopping every so often to run a hand over the flanks of one horse, pat the muzzle of another. One of them, a blond, was much taller than the other.

In spite of the deep sympathy Catherine felt for the young widow who had suffered so much, a streak of jealousy zigzagged through her. Why, she chided herself, should she
care if Filomena was in love with Law?

And she knew it was because she was drawn to the rogue also. It did her no good to tell herself he was a mercenary, that he had sold his mother's jewelry for guns! It galled her to admit it, but she was succumbing to
Law as easily as some frivolous woman to the vapors.

Yet, watching him move among the horses, she had to admit there was a strength of purpose as resilient as his knife, as indomitable as the Stronghold. He was as committed to Mexico as Sherrod was to Cri
sto Rey. It would never do to let herself become involved with Law, for he could offer her nothing.