Deep Purple (30 page)

CHAPTER 40

I
n March, when the anemones, gentians, and violets suddenly unfolded on the slopes in a painting of riotous colors. Taro made his next trip into Tombstone. He brought back for Jessie a set of small men's clothing that she had pestered him for, saying, "This way I can help in the mine.”

In addition, there was a short-barreled carbine in his pack. Knowing that he never carried a weapon, she looked at him inquiringly as she held the nickel-plated weapon. "You are often alone here,”
he explained seriously. "And more and more men now prowl the hills for the silver.”

Her mother
’s smile curved her lips. "If I didn't know better, Taro Shima, I would think you cared for this lowly woman.”

His smile matched hers. "It is only that I want to preserve your body to sell to
some old Chinese man when I grow tired of you. I am certain I would get your weight in silver.”

“
That I shall never let you do—sell me.” she said, putting down the carbine. She moved until she stood against him. Her forefinger went up to press against the soft inner rim of his lower lip. “I plan to keep you so occupied that you never grow tired of me.”

Still his arms did not slip around her. “
Show me,” he ordered.

Her fingertips worked at the buttons of his shirt. “
I will show you that I am much better at entertaining than those silly geisha women you’re always talking about.” Her hands slid inside his shirt, and though his expression never changed, she was gratified to feel the twitch of the taut stomach muscles beneath her fingertips.

A slow smile pirouet
ted on the ends of her mouth. She grasped his belt and tugged him over to the mat, pushing him down until he lay on his back. “I think it is time for the Chinese Rope Trick,” she said with feigned insouciance, her fingers playing with the buttons of his pants.

Beneath the fringe of thick lashes she saw the flare of his pupils. “
Where did you learn of such a thing?” he asked huskily.

“
The Crystal Palace’s ladies of the night,” she tossed off airily. “Then I did not understand this trick with the rope and knots.” Her lids drooped to veil her eyes and her lips parted seductively. “But now . . . maybe with your help, I can manage it.”

He joined the act now, displaying only desultory interest. “
We shall see,” he said. “It is an art that takes much practice.” He crossed his arms beneath his head. “But I would be willing to work with you. In time you may prove to be worth your weight in gold instead.”

“
I’m truly unworthy of your interest,” she bantered. “And am such a stupid pupil that I must ask you to show me the technique.”

“
Get the rope—the slender one—from the saddle pack,” he instructed thickly.

When she returned, she knelt at his side and did as he told her, knotting the rope in increments. The sun had set now and there was only the candle
’s flame to light the tawny-hued body of her beloved, to light the way for her hands as she performed the intimate task, to light the feverish concentration in her blushing, beautiful face.

She gasped when he gasped, sharing his ecstasy as the slipping passage of each knot tri
ggered another peak of pleasure for him. Then she knew she could wait no longer. Her body demanded its own release. “Taro, Taro,” she begged, “take me now. Now!”

Jessie sifted through the newspapers Taro had brought back from Tombstone the day before. Some of the dates were more than three months old. but it made no difference. She was eager for any news. The
Epitaph
carried nothing about Cristo Rey or the Godwins. However, she did notice that one subject, the headlines varying somewhat, recurred in all the issues. “Benson- Globe Stage Robbed." Or “Wells Fargo Messenger Held Up.” Now she began reading more closely. Another one: “The messenger who was transporting boxes of payroll money to the Patagonia mine camp was waylaid by two masked highwaymen. Reward is being offered for . . .”

It was the printed word “
mine" that jumped from the page into Jessie's imagination. For more than thirty minutes she sat staring at that one column. A plan slowly began to evolve in her head. There were risks to it, but as she considered it, tested it in her mind, she decided the odds were in her favor.

She knew the area between the Stronghold and Tombstone as well as Taro knew every darkened inch of the mine he explored. She visualized the road which the Cristo Rey ore
wagons would take from the Whetstone mines—traveling south, skirting the northern stretches of the Canelo Hills, bypassing the Huachuca Mountains, it crossed the San Pedro plains eastward for the Dragoon Mountains and Charleston's stamp mill. The only road that could sustain that kind of heavy wagon traffic, it twisted mile upon mile through empty country with lava hills, arroyos, canyons, and mesquite thickets to provide hideouts.

Taro, squatting on his haunches across the
kotaku
from her, made no interjection but slowly sipped the tea as she eagerly explained her plan to him. "I will simply see that no wagonload of ore reaches Charleston’s stamp mill. In six months’ time I calculate that Elizabeth Godwin—and Company—will be defunct. Cristo Rey can no longer survive without the mines to support the floundering cattle empire!”

“
For the first time there is the glow of the spirit in your eyes.”

She blinked her surprise. “
That's all you have to say?”

“
What would you have me say? No—that I don’t approve? I have no right over you—I cannot stop you.”

“
But how do you feel about my plan?” she persisted, leaning forward on the table. “I don’t want to know what is right or wrong. Because I no longer believe in a world of absolute black and white, Taro. I simply want to know how you feel.”

He sat staring silently over the rim of his cup. At last he said, “
I feel this is your karma I once spoke to you of.” He shrugged. Beneath the ebony tea robe his massive shoulders rolled with the movement. “It is something you have to do.
Shi-ka-ta-ga-nai
—it cannot be helped or changed.”

Anxiously her gaze searched his. “
I can come home to you when it’s over?”

He reached across the table and took her hands, pulling her to her feet with him as he stood. “
You will never be gone from me in thought.”

He took her to his mat then, and they lay together throughout the night. There was no need for either of them to demonstrate the love that surged like some gigantic, magnetic force between them. Sometime near dawn the plaintive, dismal
yip-yip of a coyote filtered up through the maze of gulches, and Jessie shivered. She clutched Taro to her. “I’m afraid of the future,” she whispered.

He kissed her cold temples, his lips lingering, his warm breath stirring her hair. “
There is no other woman for me, Lotus Woman. Our karmas are intertwined. Whatever your future,” he murmured, “I will wait to find you.”

A day
’s journey on the back of a burro brought her into Cristo Rey territory. Dressed in men's clothing, she rode clear of the basin, keeping to the lava rock trails that bedded the far eastern side of the Whetstones. Higher up, where the juniper and piñon and scrub oak fuzzed the bald caps, she set up camp in a small abandoned mine.

She had thought she would be frightened, sleeping alone, or u
ncomfortable, but she enjoyed the challenge. Lying in the cold darkness, she thought about the confrontation the following day would bring and smiled to herself before falling asleep.

Halfway through the next day she discovered that her raids would have to
be postponed until she studied the comings and goings from the main mine shaft. She had blundered in thinking that wagons left every day. It took a full seven days, watching through the field glasses from a position on a cliff above the mine, until she was able to establish a definite pattern to the movements of the men and wagons.

Once she thought she could make out Brig below, talking to three miners who wore the candle-sconced helmets, but she could not be sure And she realized, to her surprise, that he
r heart no longer hurt. Only one thing mattered She might never be able to prove that Cristo Rey was hers, but she would make certain that it became a millstone around the veined neck of Elizabeth Godwin.

Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, two or thre
e wagons, hitched together and pulled by ten to twenty teams of mules, left the main mine and began their snaking descent to the Tombstone-Charleston road.

Carefully she studied the way a driver would handle his teams. Usually he rode the near-wheel mule.
From his seat in the saddle he managed all the animals by a single jerk line attached to the near leader. The mules understood the jerks, short or long, and were thus guided. In addition to the jerk line, the driver manipulated the brakes of the wagons by another rope. Yet at the end of that first week Jessie thought she could master the technique— enough, at least, to accomplish her purpose.

When she thought she knew as much as was important to her plan of operation, she slid her carbine into the saddle
’s holster and left the brush-sheltered mine. With a bandanna covering the lower half of her face, she waited in the second of the mesquite-stubbled canyons through which the wagon had to pass. Long before the two wagons arrived at the bend, she heard the hoarse cursing of the driver mixing with the music of the chiming bells attached to the collars of the mules’ harnesses.

Her throat suddenly went dry, and the pulse began to pound at her temples. She realized she was about to embark on what could well be a di
sastrous undertaking. Yet she knew there was no alternative for her. It was her karma, as Taro said.

As it turned out, that first robbery was absurdly easy. When the two ore wagons rolled around the bend, she rode the burro out of the mesquite thickets ont
o the road. The musical “Whoop—whoop, haw!" broke off as the driver, this one an older, stoop-shouldered man, jerked back on the reins at the sight of the masked rider.

"Get down!”
she ordered as gruffly as her voice would lower.

The driver
’s hands shot up. He slid off the mule as if it were a greased pig. “You don’t plan to use that, do you, kid?” he squeaked.

“
Nope, not as long as you keep walking back where you came from. Now get those boots a-movin’.”

The old man hastily complied without even a backward
glance, and she felt shame lap at her feet for the fear she had seen in the rheumy eyes. Perhaps he was from the
rancheria
—one of the people she would have been feeding, ironing and washing his clothes. Her thoughts moved on to Marta. Was the dear old woman still alive? Jessie would never be able to return to the
rancheria
to find out.

For a moment the triumph was driven from her victory. Nevertheless, she quickly set about her course of action. The mules were unharnessed, and a smart slap on the rump sent
them scattering. The brake was released. Slowly, inch by inch, the wagons began to roll forward. A full five minutes passed before they gathered sufficient speed to be termed runaways.

The two wagons, joined like mating cattle, careened their way along th
e rutted road, bouncing off boulders. They came to the curve bordered by the deep gulch Jessie had marked earlier and missed the turn. Seconds later the splintering crash of the wagons fifty-five feet below echoed up the canyon.

Jessie smiled to herself an
d returned to the mine to await her next foray. Two days later a lone ore wagon began its descent, but this time with an armed guard. She reassessed her plan and waited until the wagon passed, then fired a shot into the air.

The driver tugged desperately a
t the reins to keep the mules from spooking. The guard whipped around his shotgun, scanning the thickets behind him.

“
Drop the firearm,” she shouted from her concealment.

The sombreroed guard complied. This time she had both men unharness the mules and sca
tter them before she sent the two employees walking back to the Cristo Rey mining camp. They had to dodge as the wagon began to roll rapidly backward. The bluff it sailed over was a mere twenty-five or thirty feet, but she believed the wagon’s contents, the precious ore, were lost to the swift flowing creek below.

She made two more raids over the next seven days, each time surprising the guards and drivers. But her supplies ran out in concurrence with a sudden instinct urging her to let a few weeks pass un
til Cristo Rey relaxed its guard once more.

And she needed the time, too. The triumph of her raids faded at night, leaving her lonely, empty; and it was with rising excitement that she rode the day
’s journey back to the Mule Mountains and Taro.

He was stil
l working at the mine when she arrived, and she took the opportunity to enjoy her first bath in over two weeks. Imagining how she must look—and smell—dressed as she was like a man, she had to laugh as she shucked the dirt-encrusted clothing and slid into the tub. The hot water steamed away her weariness with the dirt.

Later, the delicate woman wrapped in a yellow silk ceremonial robe who knelt serenely before the
kotaku
bore little resemblance to the wiry young bandit who plagued the Cristo Rey Consolidated Mining Company. When Taro entered, she bowed her head to the floor, touching her overlapped hands with her forehead and murmured, "
O-yasumi-nasai
, good evening.”

Taro removed his boots and crossed to the young woman. He took her hands and pulled her to he
r feet, his own hands cupping her shoulders. His dark eyes glided over her face, always returning to her eyes as if he sought to find her in their depths. “You have been ever on my mind.”

She stood on tiptoe to brush the lips that had showered passionate k
isses, bringing life to her body so that it blossomed as a desert flower beneath the spring rains. “I need you," she whispered.

His fingers slipped down to part the robe, exposing her slender, supple beauty to his touch. His hand slid around her waist and
crushed her to him in a savage kiss. There was no patient journey to the culmination this time but a frenzied seeking, a fiery explosive renewal of their love.

Taro
’s teeth cast tiny love marks into Jessie’s smooth, sleek skin, and her nails welted his muscles in crimson half-moons. They came together again and again throughout the night, as if they would never have enough of each other—as if they feared there might never be another time.

Sometime toward dawn they withdrew from each other
’s arms long enough to have tea and a cold dish of rice and vegetables. Over the meal, Jessie recounted to Taro her successes, giggling like a girl as she told of the bearlike driver who had soundly cursed her one moment, then yelped like a dog when she fired a shot into the air to send him galloping on his way back to the mines.

Taro listened, a faint smile on his lips. When she finished, he rose and crossed to the black lacquered chest. He withdrew a folded newspaper. “
You went into Tombstone?” she asked, taking the newspaper he handed her.

“
My concern was too great. It would seem that Elizabeth Godwin does not share your amusement at your success.”

Jessie
’s eyes scanned the print. Then, “Godwin Family Offers $2,000 Reward.” The small article went on to note the bandit’s description, a young male, and listed two of the four robberies she had made.

She would have tossed the newspaper aside but for the even smaller notation in the “
Condolences Column.” Her eyes burned as she read of Brig’s year-old son’s succumbing to some fatal childhood malady. She knew it could have been their child who had died.

“
You will destroy Brigham Godwin along with his grandmother,” Taro said. “You realize that, don’t you?”

She shrugged, trying to hide the old hurt she suddenly felt . . . a pain for w
hat was lost to her and Brig, a pain for what could have been. “Brig doesn’t covet Cristo Rey as his grandmother does. She will stop at nothing to keep it. And I will stop at nothing, Taro, to take it from her.”