Paxton and the Lone Star (57 page)

And then his lips were against hers, and there was nothing more she needed or wanted to say. He was there, he was real. Nothing more was necessary.

She woke to darkness and the sound of insects. For a while she lay without moving, just savoring being alive. That afternoon she had eaten ravenously and then fallen asleep immediately. Now she opened her eyes to see True sitting cross-legged beside the pallet and dozing. The second she moved her hand, his head snapped up and he was staring intently at her. “Awake?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” Elizabeth said, watching him.

“Something wrong?”

“No.” She found herself smiling. “I'm still afraid, I guess.”

“Of what?”

“That it isn't really you.”

True grinned, shifted to a kneeling position, and poured a tin cup full of water. “It's me. Here. Drink.”

She drank slowly, enjoying the taste of the water and the feel of his hand steadying hers. “Tastes good,” she said when she'd finished. She lay back and looked at the ceiling. “Did it stop raining?”

“For a little while. Wouldn't surprise me if it started again any minute.”

How long was I … sick?”

True started to answer, then stopped. A faraway look came into his eyes and he wet his lips. “Not as long as I was.”

Elizabeth tensed, had enough presence of mind to give him time.

“It's not something I want to talk about again, maybe ever, but I have to say it, Elizabeth.” His eyes closed and he swallowed hard. Tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and he could barely speak. “I knew you didn't enjoy it, Elizabeth. I knew all along, but seeing you there, and him, I … I …”

A lump burned in his throat and he had to fight to get out the words. “But there's knowing, and there's knowing. It had to be worse for you, him … doing … that.… But you got to understand …”

She was holding his hand, cupping it to her face, filling his palm with tears.

“… that for a man …”

“Shhh, love, shhh …”

“… for a man to see that …”

“Shhh. Oh, True, True. You've said enough.…”

“I love you, Elizabeth. I love you more than anything in this world, I love you.”

“True, True, True …”

A thousand repetitions. She could have sung his name a million times. Each heartbeat, each breath! Never such wild—such strangely soft and tender—exhilaration! She kissed his hair, raised his face to hers and kissed his lips and cheeks and eyes, kissed away his tears—his tears! Kissing and laughing. Laughing outrageously. Too much happiness for one person! “Oh, True,” she gasped at last, lying back and looking up at him watching her, at the curious, puzzled, faintly comic look on his face.

“Oh, True, True.” The laughter stopped, and in its place was more love than she thought any one woman could ever bear to hold at once. “Do you have any idea,” she asked, barely able to speak, “how happy it makes me to be your wife and friend and lover?”

The fire had burned down, but it didn't matter. Together they lay, almost like children, her head on his shoulder, his arms around her. “True?” she asked.

“Mmm?”

“You never answered my question.”

He sat up groggily, slid off the pallet, and stirred the fire to a bright blaze. “What question?”

“How long was I sick?”

“Oh. That question. Well, today's the twenty-third of March. You and the others ran into us a little west of here on the seventeenth. You've been pretty well out of it since then. We, ah—” He took her hand and held it. “We had to take you along with us. You gave me quite a scare. I was pretty worried there for awhile.”

“Pneumonia?”

True nodded.

“When I was fourteen, a lady two farms away died of pneumonia. There wasn't anything anyone could do. Are the others okay?”

“Everyone is fine. Bethann had a little cold, but she got over it.”

“Thank God. I remember worrying about Bethann, thinking she would be …” She trailed off, found another subject. “You have a scar.”

“My wound.” True laughed. “Which, my lady—” He laid her hand on the covers and took the lid off the pot he'd carried in earlier. “—I will tell you about while you eat. Part of the Mex army is right across the river from us. You need to build up your strength. No telling when we'll be moving again.” He ladled something onto a plate, set it by the pallet, and helped her into a sitting position. “This is stew. Joan fixed it and I promised her you'd eat every bite.” He placed a board on her lap, set the bowl of stew on it, and handed her a spoon.

“I got to San Antonio about a half hour before Santa Anna's advance did. They'd gone right past our place, I guess, without us or anyone else knowing the difference.” The story unfolded; the attack, saving the Thatches, Firetail so winded True had feared for the stallion's life. Elizabeth finished the stew, handed him the bowl, and received a cup of honey-sweetened tea in its place.

“At any rate, Travis sent me and another man out on the night of the third with messages for Houston and others. I was worried about Firetail but we made it through the lines. It didn't take long, but that ride was holy hell. I almost made it, though.”

He pointed to a scar on his forehead. “The last thing I remember is riding along a creek, and then I came to sometime before morning and didn't have any idea of where I was or what I was doing. My head hurt like blazes and I was too sick to do anything but hole up for a day and a night. The next morning I was trying to figure out what to do next when darned if that stallion didn't come back looking for me. A beautiful sight to see, especially since the place was crawling with Mexicans. We stayed there another two days. On Sunday the sixth, all hell broke loose. I could hear cannon, see a lot of smoke. Ran out of food that night, too. By Tuesday morning I figured I had to do something, so I tossed a blanket around me for disguise and rode into San Antonio.”

He paused and poured himself some coffee. “It was all over with. Had been Sunday afternoon. Mama Flores put me up in a back room and told me what happened. Then Wednesday afternoon I went to the mission, what was left of it, for a look.”

Eyes unblinking, face expressionless, True stared into the fire. “All that was left … was bones.… The Mexicans had built a pyre of alternating stacks of logs and bodies and set it afire. It was still smoldering. The stench made me throw up. Nothing but blackened skulls and bones like broken sticks. Travis in all his glory. Nels, Kevin, Dennis, Buckland … I found Buckland's Bible. Mila has it now. There was a letter to her in it.…”

“The only survivors, the only ones they hadn't slaughtered, were Captain Dickinson's wife—all the other women had left earlier, but she'd stayed—and a slave. Everyone else was dead. Every last soul. No quarter, they said. I knew then what that bugle call meant. Worst of all was Andrew. So young, part of that pyre. So full of life … that way he had of grinning like the world had been created for his amusement … Christ! Kind of takes the wind out of your sails, finding out that your little brother is dead. Like the order of things had gotten fouled up somehow. Anyway …” He poured the dregs of his coffee on a smoldering log, watched them boil away. “There was nothing else to do but try to find Houston's army. I had a map Travis had given me. It made the going a little easier. Ran into some Mexican families along the way. They were fugitives too. I brought them with me.” His eyes found hers. “I joined Houston the day before you did.”

Elizabeth waited, but he seemed to be finished. She set aside the board she had been using as a tray and lay back down. “They … You heard about Hogjaw?” she asked.

True nodded. The firelight played on his face, shifted its planes and angles and curves. “That old man,” he said in a low, soft voice. “Joseph told me. When he did, the map you were carrying made sense.” His face hardened. “Another debt to be accounted for.”

“Debt?” Elizabeth asked, worried. There had been a dangerously disconcerting timbre to his voice, one she had hoped not to hear again. “I don't want to lose you, True. When I thought you were dead, part of me died. Now you're here and we're together again. I don't think I could stand …” She turned away and blinked rapidly, trying not to cry.

“I meant what I said earlier, Elizabeth, but that was between you and me. This other is between me and them. I can't let it rest where it is. I can't let it go at that, Elizabeth.”

“Of course you can! There's no need to …”

He was staring at her. His face was divided, one eye in firelight, the other in darkness. It might have been the sickness that gave her such clarity, but she was seeing True—and herself—as she hadn't been able to before. The darkness was stubbornness, the stubbornness that had sent him to Mexico. The darkness was that malignant, base part of him that lurked in every man no matter how noble. The division of light and dark was the division of themselves that she dreaded even more than physical separation. Mila and Buckland were an example of that. Buckland was dead and Mila alive, but they were still together in a very real sense: much more than True and Elizabeth had been for the last months.

It was up to her. The choice was hers. A man and a woman came together. They married, made love, bore and raised children. They grew, became part of one another, or shrank into themselves and lived mean and petty lives of dissatisfaction and regret. Outside of running away or death itself, there were no other choices, and in that one moment, she knew she had to make hers.

She loved True. No other man she had met fit her so well. He was strong, he was capable, he was intelligent. She had seen him play with and teach Tommy Matlan and the Campbell girls: she knew she wanted no other man to raise her children. He was a hard worker, a good provider. He stood ready to defend her, his friends, and what he believed in, and would never shrink from doing so, no matter the danger. And she? In her heart, she knew she was worthy of him as he was of her. She had traveled the long road from Pennsylvania. She had risen above the ugliness with her father, not fallen prey to the weaknesses of her mother. She too was strong and capable and intelligent. She was tough, a good worker, a good housekeeper. It was not unseemly pride, but confidence and surety that told her he would never find a better woman to bear and raise his children. She too stood ready to defend, and would never shrink back. Life was not meant to be easy. It never had been, and most certainly not in toubled times or in untamed lands. Life demanded that one struggle to survive and build in the face of the ultimate realities one must finally accept. Life demanded joy in the process. Life demanded not a slavish condoning, but a reasoned compromise. Two people did not become one person. They remained individuals who saw past each others' frailties, ghosts, and hobgoblins without rancor, and gave of themselves withal. If this was a dark and troubled time for True, her own such time would come, and she did not doubt that he would stand by her.

All this was love. Without it, life would be a fruitless search through a succession of mates. Without it, the trembling in her loins, the fire in her veins, the tears in her eyes when he came to her, was a petty charade any two people could play. With it, a third entity composed of two singular individuals was born. With it, loneliness was held at bay and defeated. With it was life in the deepest, absolute meaning of life.

The choice was hers.

“Listen to me, will you,” she said. The tension in her voice was gone and she was at peace with herself. “Oh, True. I love you so much. Tomorrow you will do what you have to do, and I will face it with you. Tonight, True, come to me, please … now.…”

Only slowly did the anger in his eyes abate, and his face soften. He seemed hesitant, unsure of himself. “Are you sure you're … ready?” he asked, more of himself than of her, though not admitting it.

Elizabeth held out one hand to him, pulled back the covers with her other. Her gown was open at the top to reveal one breast, and had ridden in a tantalizing manner to her waist. “I have never felt more ready,” she said, with a strength he found surprising. “And you?”

True stared at her. For a moment, a slight frown creased his forehead, but then he felt a smile spread over his face. Slowly, he stood and stripped off his shirt, kicked off his boots, and stepped out of his trousers. Life stirred in him, and he knew he was whole again. “Never more ready in my life,” he said at last, his voice husky with love and desire. “In my whole life.”

Chapter XLI

They were tired, they were wet, they were hungry, they were angry. Part of Santa Anna's army—some of the selfsame men who had massacred the patriots in the Alamo—sat a mile away from them across the Colorado River, and they itched to fight. When their general refused, they whispered of mutiny and dubbed their campaign the Runaway Scrape, for running was what they seemed to do best. Not two days after Elizabeth's fever broke and she began to recuperate, word came that Colonel James Walker Fannin's forces had been defeated at Coleto. General Sam Houston, a mountain of a man and rugged as stone, held firm against the hotheads who wanted instant revenge. His ragtag army was all that stood between Santa Anna and the Republic of Texas, so he gave the order to retreat that they might fight another day when the odds were better. That night, they decamped and struck out across country thirty miles to the Brazos River. Hundreds of terrified and suddenly unprotected settlers, white and Mexican alike, struggled through the mud and rain in their wake.

Even then the running wasn't over. They were on the move again a day later, this time north along the flooding Brazos. The army was in a state of near mutiny. Houston's fourteen hundred shrank to less than nine hundred as soldiers deserted to save their families. Wagons had to be unloaded and half driven, half floated across swollen streams and gullies. Livestock drowned in fierce currents. Wagons by the dozen were abandoned in quagmires. Food was scarce: what could be found and half cooked was cold and unpalatable. On the morning of the first of April, they were camped on high ground at Groce's Crossing, twenty miles north of San Felipe, and surrounded by water that had risen during the night. It was apparent they would be there for some time, but if anyone had thought about rest, he was sadly disillusioned. The rain persisted. An epidemic of measles broke out. Colds, influenza, and diarrhea affected everyone to one degree or another. Only Houston had any idea of what Santa Anna was doing or where his scattered armies were, and Houston wasn't saying.