Dorothy Garlock (15 page)

Johanna walked along in silence, then said dubiously, “I find it hard to believe Bucko is ten years old. I’ve had ten-year-old boys in my class who were almost as tall as I am.”

“When I first saw him, he was like a babe in arms. Burr’s brought him a long way.”

“You talk as if Burr had done him a favor,” Johanna said contemptuously.

Ben didn’t answer for a long while, and Johanna’s anger and disgust for Macklin’s older son flared anew.

“He could have left him there,” he said quietly.

“Indeed!”

E
ight

L
uis rode his tired horse down the dusty street of El Paso and paused before the shambling two-story hotel that had its sign dangling askew.

He sat his horse and his eyes took in every detail around him. The Mexicans in their loose, light breeches, and full shirts, their straw sombreros set straight on their dark heads, paid no attention to him. Three gringos in dusty trail clothes, leaning against the unpainted building, eyed him, but Luis dismissed their looks as mere curiosity. Chickens squawked and scampered from the road as a freight wagon went past with several dogs trailing it, barking and trying to catch the rolling wheels with their snapping teeth. Down the street a door opened and a drunk, with a well-placed boot at his back propelling him, went sprawling in the dust.

Still cautious, but satisfied that the street scene was as it appeared to be, Luis walked his horse to the rail and dismounted. The gringos turned to watch him, more than casual interest on their faces.

“Ain’t that the Mex they was talkin’ about up at Las Cruces?”

“By God if it ain’t!”

“What about him?” The third man picked his teeth with a long, thin-bladed knife. “He don’t look like nothin’ but a Mex to me.”

“Shut up!” the man standing next to him muttered.

“God, yeah!” The man who had first recognized Luis shifted his weight uncomfortably. “He’s a fightin’ son of a bitch! Fought in the Battle of Glorieta in ’62, and the general, he said he was just a wet-eared kid, but if’n he’d’a had six more like him he’d’a whipped the shit outta the whole Yank army.”

“They say he’s faster than greased lightnin’ with those guns.”

“Gunfighter, huh?”

“Wal, I don’t know if’n that’s what he is. Feller didn’t say he hired out or nothin’ like that. He said he ain’t touchy, but ya better not crowd him.”

“He seemed kinda spooked when he come in, kinda like somebody was trailin’ him.”

“Probably jist natural spooky. Them fellers allus got some fool wantin’ to try ’em.”

Luis walked up the worn steps to the porch of the hotel, paused and looked around, then went through the open door into the dim lobby. Beyond the desk a grossly fat man dozed. His dirty shirt lay open, revealing a hairy chest, and greasy whips of hair straggled across a nearly bald pate.

Startled, he peered through watery eyes, then struggled to his feet.

“Room?” And looking toward the street, “I can put your horse up, too.” The man thumbed his triple chins and the watery eyes became evasive. “Air ya stayin’ long?”

Luis signed the register.

The fat man looked at the name he had written, then squinted up at him. “Stayin’ long?” he asked again. Luis didn’t answer him, but the hotel man kept prodding. “Come a long ways?”

“Is the stable out behind?” Luis asked coolly.

“I’ll get a boy—”

“I care for my own horse.” Luis left the lobby, the heels of his boots sounding loud on the bare plank floor.

Later, in his room, he lighted a lamp on the scarred bureau and tossed his hat onto the sagging bed. He removed his gunbelt, then peeled off his shirt. The cracked mirror above the bureau showed his naked chest with its long red wound. He uncorked a bottle, had a swallow, then poured whiskey into his palm and applied it to the knife cut where a little dried blood indicated that the wound had opened. Next he spilled water from a cracked pitcher into a crockery bowl and washed. The mirror showed his lean, tired face, eyes bloodshot from days of dusty travel. He decided he was more tired than hungry. After checking the door, he stretched out on the bed, got up to blow out the lamp, then lay down again, hands folded across his stomach.

It was dawn when he came instantly awake and sprang to his feet. The floorboards in the hall had creaked. Quickly he put on his shirt, buckled on his gunbelt, and went to the window. The street was quiet. The hotel was quiet, but then the creak came again, followed by shuffling sounds. Luis edged to the side of the door. He had meant to camp out tonight and give his tracker the opportunity to catch up; but now that he was here, there was no need to delay the inevitable.

His door opened slowly and a rifle barrel appeared. In one quick motion, Luis kicked the door wide open, gripped the barrel, and jerked hard. With a startled oath the person holding the weapon was pulled over the threshold. The rifle fell to the floor as a bullet from the six-gun the man held in his other hand whizzed by Luis’s head. Luis drew his gun and fired. He heard the bullet strike the man.

Quickly he twisted through the doorway and went into the hall. He flattened himself against the wall and waited. He didn’t expect to find an accomplice, but it was best to make sure. A pale light came from the dirty window at the end of the hall. As Luis made his way along the corridor, the doors to the other rooms opened to reveal the cautious, curious faces of other lodgers. They watched calmly as the tall man with the silver-handled gun scanned the stairs, then, satisfied, turned back toward his room. They could see the dead man sprawled on his back, his arms and legs flung wide, and they had no intention of tangling with his killer.

Luis shoved his gun back into its holster, stepped over the dead man, picked up his hat and saddlebags, and left the hotel.

Wariness tightened his nerves as he stepped out onto the boardwalk. He looked both ways along the walk, then moved toward the cantina at the end of the street. The heels of his boots sounded loud in the morning stillness.

The cantina was empty except for a Mexican woman working over a stove and two customers bent over plates of food. He ordered tortillas and eggs and took a seat at a table with his back to the wall.

“
Gracias, señora,
” he said when the woman set the food in front of him. Her plump face wrinkled into a smile. Few strangers who were polite came into the cantina.

Luis ate hungrily. The woman, keeping an eye on the plate of the handsome stranger, brought him an additional egg wrapped in a hot tortilla and filled his tin cup with strong coffee.

The morning wore on. He sat quietly looking out the door and down the busy street. No one approached him, but he was eyed by everyone who came in. He suspected that his presence was the reason for the smile on the face of the plump señora as she served the customers and collected their pesos. Luis was used to sitting with his back to the wall or looking over his shoulder. That he had fought well in the Battle of Glorieta, not as a member of the Confederate Army but as a volunteer, had earned him a reputation as a fighter. More times than he cared to admit, he had been forced to prove his skill by facing some reckless fool who hoped to earn a reputation. That wasn’t the case, however, with the man he had killed this morning.

*  *  *

Sudden impulse had caused him to ride out of the valley and head for El Paso. His thoughts of late had been completely taken up with the small, dark-haired sister of the old man’s housekeeper. This protective longing he felt for her was a new feeling, and he needed time to think, to try to understand, to find out if it was just a woman he craved, or this particular woman.

The second night out he met two drifters. They seemed to be friendly enough and he endured their company. The first night he realized there was a suspicious intimacy between the two men. He was accustomed to sleeping with one eye open and was surprised to see one of the men creep over to the bedroll of the other. He watched long enough to become sick with disgust, then dismissed it as their business. The next night he was awakened by a hand caressing his hair. He came awake instantly. The man reached down to touch his face and then reached quickly for his crotch. Luis pushed the man away but the man persisted. Nauseated, Luis drew back his hand and slapped the man across the face. He sat back and whimpered, then swiftly drew a knife and slashed Luis across the chest. Luis’s reflex was instant: he pulled his gun and shot him.

The other man sprang to his feet and stared with horror at the dead man, then dropped to his knees and cradled his lover’s head in his arms and sobbed. Luis gathered up his gear, saddled his horse, and mounted. The man looked up, his dirty face streaked with tears.

“I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll kill you!”

He had tried.

*  *  *

Luis sat in the cantina and watched the children play in the street. They were a ragged but happy lot. Their shrieks of laughter drifted into the cantina, and the fat señora smiled indulgently and shook her head. Childhood memories came flooding back to him, sweeping him again into the good times and the bad; forcing him to remember his mother, the lovely and gentle Juanita Gazares, and his own tortured beginning.

*  *  *

Summer of 1844 . . .

Evening was drawing in. For one wildly desperate moment Juanita Gazares clung to the hope that the señor wouldn’t come. The weird shape of the trees against the evening sky, the endless shadowy folds of the tree-covered hillside, and the soft sound of the clear creek water as it traveled over the stones on its way to the river; it was all too peaceful. Her people now would be drifting along the dusty road toward their quarters, enjoying the pleasure of doing nothing after a hard day’s work. Even the half-naked niños were playing in the road or were being carried on strong shoulders. If she allowed the señor the use of her body they would have corn
meal for tortillas and pinto beans to boil in their pots. If she didn’t submit to him they were certain to go hungry. Her uncle believed it and said as much, and her aunt was of the same mind; and so her degradation had come about.

Juanita leaned her dark head back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes briefly. He was later than usual and she thanked the Virgin Mother for it, for it gave her time to recover her senses; time to control the screaming inside her, the revulsion she felt for what he did to her body. She heard a sound and her eyes flew open. It was only a ground squirrel scampering among the rocks.

She closed her eyes again. It was futile to believe that the señor would not be angry when he discovered the wee
niño
growing inside her slender body. Had he not sworn not to give life to a “Mex bastard”? He had taken the only precaution known to him to prevent such an occurrence.

Always he played on her body for as long as possible before allowing his seed to spurt on the ground between her parted thighs. The times when he had been unable to remove his swollen, throbbing member and had filled her with his life-giving fluid, he had forced her to squat in the flowing stream and wash herself. He would know soon about the
niño,
perhaps today, for her waist had thickened and her small breasts were swollen. In a sudden flurry of panic she prayed for the strength to climb the steep cliff and throw herself onto the rocks below. But she knew she wouldn’t do it, even if she’d had the strength. It would be a cardinal sin and her soul would burn in everlasting hell if she destroyed herself and the tiny
niño.

Her ears caught the sound of a horse’s hooves on the stones that bordered the stream. Any vague hope she had nurtured that he would fail to come was dashed, and her heart thudded hard against her ribs. Her eyes, now without expression, were turned in the direction from which he would come.

*   *   *

Mack Macklin, mounted on a dun gelding, left the ranch buildings and walked his horse past the stone house with only an uninterested glance. Calloway and the milk-pale bitch were sitting on the porch in the hide-covered chairs. His lips curled with scorn. Calloway could have her. A lot of pleasure the skinny slut would give him, he thought, and a caustic smile hovered about his mouth.

He turned his horse toward the stream, urged it to cross, then followed the stream down to where it widened and the grass and bushes grew thick and lush. He felt an excitement in the pit of his stomach and a hot ache in his loins. It was always the same when he was on his way to meet Juanita. He didn’t understand it, but when he thought of her his passion flared. At times he was disgusted with himself that he would give a second thought to a damn Mexican other than plowing her, but this woman’s body drew him like a magnet.

He remembered the first time he had seen her and was so aroused that his buckskin breeches became uncomfortable. He had been sitting on his horse watching a family of Mexicans come into the valley to work his irrigation ditches. She was plodding along on a little burro, sitting erect as a queen. He continued to stare at her for a long time, then she turned and looked at him. Her eyes were as black as night and as full of concealment. They rested on his face, then moved away. He felt hot and cursed her under his breath.

“Goddamn mestiza bitch!”

He couldn’t forget her. “A nice little piece of hot baggage like that with no stud bull in the barn!” he told himself wryly. This would take some thinking about.

It had been amazingly easy. A few hints to the uncle, a few extra days of hard work for him, and Juanita waited for him by the spring. What started out as a way to relieve himself developed into uncontrollable lust; he craved her, he hungered for her. At times he was so angry with himself for wanting her that his temper flared and he struck her. She accepted his blows without a whimper. She never cringed or cowered, nor did she allow him access to her personal thoughts or to arouse her so that she was a willing partner. This too infuriated him. During these angry periods he would force his thoughts to dwell on another time and another place, and he would use her roughly and ruthlessly, then push her from him and ride away.