Paxton and the Lone Star (41 page)

I send news of the most unfortunate circumstances. Your husband, True Paxton, is imprisoned.…

Elizabeth continued to read, but the world had come crashing down long before she finished.

Chapter XXVIII

Ciudadela. A waking nightmare of endless hours, empty hearts, and broken bodies. Fragments of survival.

The cells were more like pig sties buried within the bowels of the massive yellow stone building. The prisoners were fed like swine, watered like swine, herded like swine. Their language was a series of grunts, barely enough to communicate. Some, during the depth of night when the worst dreams came, squealed like swine. And like swine, they had reverted to a feral existence in which survival was everything.

Deprived of sunrise and sunset, True measured the passing of time by the severity of the headaches that plagued him. Only as he recovered from the concussion caused by the blow to his head did he learn to discern the difference between day and night. Day was when he could see the filth he lived in. Night was when he could not. Day was when he was let outside the inner building to walk with his scurvy-ridden fellow prisoners under the blazing sun. Night was when the iron gates clanged shut, and the darkness was so complete he could barely see his hand before his face. For a while, his fellow prisoners studied him. Gradually, he blended in and they took little notice. Only one prisoner, the one they called Tarantula, continued to keep him under surveillance. Tarantula was stockier and more powerful than the others, the type of man for whom Ciudadela had been created. True instinctively knew to be wary of him; he kept his distance, and waited.

Where there was space, a man slept in it. Where there was food—worm-eaten
tortillas
or greasy beans or half-rotten lettuce—men fought for the lion's share. And when the women came, men died for the choicest ones.

Trying not to, True listened. The darkness was alive with groaning men and women, the carnal noise of madness. The darkness seethed with the salt smell of sweat and semen. The darkness was a rutting beast that knew neither tenderness nor love nor temperance. Some of the women were wives become harlots. Others had never been anything but the cheapest whores, the destitute of the streets gathering the last sordid
pesos
of their waning, worried lives.

A hand touched his leg. True opened his eyes, saw a spectral shape at his side, and held up his hands to ward it off. A woman's voice crooned an obscenity at him. “No,” he croaked.

Clawlike fingers wrapped around his wrist, pulled his hand to a sweaty, oily-feeling, pendulous breast.
“Como que no?”
the voice asked. The woman moved closer and True could feel damp, coarse pubic hair against his arm.
“Gringo,”
she said.
“Mucho dinero, no?”

“Déjame!”
True hissed, as always having mentally to translate from English to Spanish before he spoke. Leave me alone.
“Déjame.”

The woman grabbed his testicles with her free hand. “They are very full, no?” she said in Spanish simple enough for him to understand. “I can make them empty.” She cackled. Her breast swayed against his hand. “No money. It is good. Another white man already paid me. For you.”

She started to crawl on top of him. True pulled up one leg and kicked, felt his foot sink deep into the fat, slippery flesh of her stomach. The prostitute gasped and, the wind knocked out of her, rolled onto her back. No sooner had she hit the floor than more shapes moved out of the darkness. Like vultures to carrion, the poorest prisoners, those with neither wives nor money, gathered around and one by one mounted her. Horror-stricken and yet fascinated, True watched the macabre, ghostly dance. When one finished, another took his place. After the third, he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

Pretended he wasn't losing his mind.

He willed his thoughts to Texas, to a simple cabin and a woman of warmth and tenderness.
Eighteen now, dearest Elizabeth, Elizabeth mine, Elizabeth of my heart. You are eighteen and I have been gone how many days and weeks and eternities from your life?

He tried to count, but the days and nights were all the same. A man soon learned not to tabulate the time, for such additions served no purpose save to feed the madness. Why know how much of one's life was being wasted and robbed? Thoughts were better placed elsewhere. Escape, for example. But how? It took strength to climb the high walls, purpose to overwhelm the many guards. Bad food and worse water soon robbed a man of both. Swine did not climb, nor did they plot.

There was only one escape.

He must picture hair the color of ripening wheat rippling in the summer sun. Picture skin like rich cream, sweet to the taste. Picture eyes wide and limpid, misting at the moment of consummation. Picture moist lips, the flick of a tongue. Relive the touch of soft fingers, now playful, now earnest and searching.

The mind soared when flesh could not, and triumphed over stone walls and armed guards and the cries of the forgotten damned.

The amulet looked valuable. But then, everything has value to a man who has nothing. He had been watching a long time and had glimpsed, twice now, the shining metal through a tear in the
gringo
's shirt. The medal consumed him, filled his dreams. He found himself lusting after it the way he sometimes lusted after a piece of meat or a woman. He knew he would think of little else until it was his, until he could see and feel it in his hand.

Juan Torres missed very little. His eyes were long accustomed to the dark, squalid inner cells of the Ciudadela. His nose was keen, capable of sorting subtleties from the general stench. His fingers were deft and well-trained, even if it was they which had failed him on the day he tried to remove the golden ring from the Archbishop's finger. Juan preferred the inside, went out into the main courtyard only when forced to, perhaps to bathe in the rain or when an official count of the prisoners was taken at the whimsy of some petty official. These occurences were minor inconveniences, but Juan took them in stride. He thought it was a fine idea for the Commandant to learn how many had died: such discoveries always led to an infusion of new prisoners, most of whom brought something that Juan found useful once he got it in his hands.

The time had come. Juan leaned forward slowly, peeled the ragged shirt he wore from the chalky moist wall. Moving smoothly, he straightened and stepped over a huddled, sleeping form, over a second and a third and—oh, so cautiously—a fourth. Soft as a feather, his right knee touched the ground at the
gringo
's side. His breathing was shallow, as silent as the flight of an owl.

Juan was the prince of thieves, a
don
among the
peónes
of Ciudadela. None were as silent as he. None were as quick, for he was like the lightning flash that is gone before its path is seen. None were as light of touch, for he was like a ghost that drifts along the lonely vastness of the Sierra Blanco, touches everything but is not felt.

See? The gringo sleeps.

See? Your fingers touch the thong around his neck. The prize is …

True's hand snared the wrist.

…
yours.…

True's fingers bit deep into the flesh, pinched muscle, tendon, and nerve. He heard the intake of breath between broken teeth. He twisted, levered down. Soon the arm bent and the shadow at his side leaned forward until its forehead touched the stone floor. “I will gladly break it,” True whispered in his clumsy Spanish.

Silence. A drip of water. The rustling of a rat, one of the lucky ones that had not been caught and eaten.

“Permit me to introduce myself,” Juan said. He was afraid his arm would be torn loose from the socket, but had known pain before and hid it well. “I am your humble servant, Juan Torres.”

The accent was strange to True's ears, but he could understand well enough. “Pleased to meet you, Juan Torres. My name is True Paxton.”

“Yes. I have heard the name. A
gringo.”

“And a light sleeper.”

“A man of many talents,” Juan agreed obsequiously, at the same time trying to ease the pressure on his arm. A twinge of fresh pain showed him his folly. He grunted in agony in the hope he could placate the
gringo.
“You are hurting me,” he said.

“Really?”

“I think you will break my arm.”

“Really?”

“If you do, my little Conchita, who visits me every Sunday, will mourn I can no longer put both my arms around her sweet flesh.”

True eased his hold on the wiry little man. “My heart is touched. I would not be the source of Conchita's grief.”

Juan sighed with relief, sat up, and squatted with his back against the wall. “It is rare to find compassion in Ciudadela,” he said gratefully, rubbing the circulation back into his numb arm. “I think you are a great man.”

True didn't know whether or not Juan was being facetious, but his nerves had been so keyed up that talking was a release. He slipped the thong from around his neck and dangled the amulet in front of the would-be thief. “This was a gift from my mother.”

The metal glittered dully in the dim light. It would never be his now, Juan knew. The moment had passed. “What isn't?” he asked with a resigned shrug.

“Would you steal such a gift? The last she gave me?”

“Of course,” Juan answered.

True sighed, replaced the thong around his neck and tucked the amulet under his shirt.

“But I would regret it,” Juan added.

“Small comfort.”

“All the comfort there is, in Ciudadela.” Curious, Juan lowered his voice and leaned close to True. “Tell me,
gringo.
You must have many enemies. The other
gringos
are kept apart, but you … you are here with us.”

True stiffened. “Others? North Americans?”

“Yes. I have heard names.”

“A man called Austin?”

“Yes. That was one.”

Silence. The drip of water. A muffled snore. So that was the fate of at least one of Texas's other emissaries.

“You know him?” Juan asked.

“No. Only of him. Where are they?”

“Another building? Who knows.” Juan waited, hoping the
gringo
would ask him to find out so he could ingratiate himself. A
gringo,
even one with enemies, could be a powerful ally. “And your enemies?” he asked at last, when True didn't speak.

There was a long wait. “I have only one,” True finally said. “But one is enough, no?”

“One is always enough when he is the right one.”

“Yes.” The water dripped. The walls seemed to lean inward. “Leave me now,” True said. “We will talk another time. Now I want to sleep.”

The Mexican was gone as swiftly as a thought. True waited a moment before he decided he really could sleep again, then lay back down. He grunted, rubbed the small of his back, rearranged the scanty pile of straw he had gleaned over the past week. Juan Torres, he thought. A slight man, darker complected than many of the others, a loner. True folded his arms over his chest, wiggled around to work a lump of, straw out from under his right kidney. Torres lived well enough, from all appearances. His clothes were better than most in Ciudadela. He looked well fed. A good friend to have, perhaps, if one wanted friends. Fifty other prisoners in the cell snored, shuffled, jostled for space. The ones with bad dreams tossed and turned, called out in their sleep. The others, those with access to
pulque
brought in by the prostitutes, slept as dead men. True closed his eyes and, willing one corner of his mind to stay alert, dropped off into a shallow slumber.

Four men away, Juan Torres crept to his own meager bedding, a ragged ticking, filled with corn husks, bartered from a guard in return for the favors of Conchita. As he stretched out, a hand bit into his biceps and a fetid breath touched his face. “Little fly had best watch the company he keeps,” a voice said in his ear.

Tarantula! Juan forced himself to relax. Tarantula was a permanent resident of Ciudadela because he had murdered his parents in cold blood. It was not wise to appear too confident when Tarantula talked to one, but neither was it wise to appear frightened, for then it could be reasoned that one had cause to be frightened. “Company, friend?” Juan whispered, somehow managing to keep his voice calm. “I spoke to him but briefly. We are not companions.”

“I hope not,” Tarantula hissed. “Flies sometimes overhear that which is not meant for their ears, and then buzz about where they should not be heard. I would hate to think that you were telling the North American things he is not supposed to know. If you did, I would have to wring your worthless neck, little man, and I hate to do things like that without being paid.”

Juan knew it was dangerous to ask, but he had to know the answer. “Then someone has paid you for him, yes?”

“Does a fly walk on the web of the spider? He had better grow fangs, first.”

“Juan Torres walks only where it is safe,” Juan said.

“Good. But just to be sure—for if he learns of this I will know who whispered in his ear—I will tell you.” Tarantula's hand groped for Juan's. “Soon, I will break this
gringo
as I break … this.”

He bent Juan's little finger back against his wrist. There was a tiny pop followed by a barely louder crack of bone, and Juan fainted. Tarantula rolled over, pulled his blanket around him and drifted easily off to sleep. His point had been made. The only thing left to do was wait for the money. Maybe it would arrive in the morning, maybe the day after that. It didn't really matter. Tarantula could wait. He had all the time in the world.

They had moved him. Why, he did not know. It was difficult to think. Two nights before, a fever and explosive diarrhea had come on him. His head spun, his gut rumbled with gas and ached continually. The cell he was in was as small as a closet. Stone walls on three sides. Bars on the fourth. Past the iron bars, the hallway was bleak and featureless in sallow lamplight.