The Beloved Woman (40 page)

Abruptly she snatched at the necklace, trying to lift it over her head. “Here. Neither was mine to keep. Take it. Give it to your real wife.”

“No, dammit. Proud hellion.” He wound the leather thong around his fist so that it was too snug for her to remove. “Forget about Amarintha. She’s not my real wife. You are. You and me still got a lot to share—a fortune to build. I came clear to the end of nowhere to bring you back.”

Disbelief turned quickly to fury. “One wife for profit and one for respectability! You were forced into your first marriage by the threat of jail, but the second one you chose of your own free will! Now go back to the wife you picked voluntarily! And your child! Your other child, the respectable white one. Was it yet to be born when you left on this vengeful quest to find me? Didn’t Amarintha protest your leaving her before the birth—or did you desert
her
without warning too?”

He grasped her shoulders roughly. “The babe wasn’t mine! I never touched Amarintha!”

Shaking with anger and grief, she sprang at him and slapped his face. “Don’t insult me with more lies! Tell me the truth! Even though you didn’t love me, how could you dishonor me? How could you break your word?”

“Katie! Listen to me!” He grabbed her in a confining hug and pinned her between his knees. “There were reasons—”

“I trusted you!” she yelled. Popping sounds echoed from somewhere in the valley. Justis’s head jerked up as he listened to them. “I believed in you!” she continued, trying to break free of his embrace. “Oh, God, God.” She groaned in defeat. “I loved—”

“Quiet!” He pressed a hand over her mouth. His eyes alert, he tilted his head toward the noise in the distance.
Breathing heavily, Katherine frowned in bewilderment as it registered in her mind.
Gunfire
.

In a smooth movement he lifted her out of his way and vaulted to his feet. With two long steps he was at his gear, pulling pistols and rifles from it. The popping sounds continued, growing louder. She heard shouts and screams and ran toward the heavy log door.

“No,” he said, blocking her way. “Here.” He pressed a pistol into her hand, then laid a rifle on the table. “I reckon you remember how to use ’em?”

“Of course, but—”

“I’m goin’ outside.” He tucked a pistol in his belt and cradled a rifle in his arm. “Slam the door behind me.” With no more warning than that, he flung the door open and disappeared into the black, overcast night.

Katherine could no more hide in the cabin than he. She ignored the long rifle, knowing that she was likely to trip over it. With the pistol clutched calmly in one hand she stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind her.

At the other end of the valley she saw the bright flare of torches carried by men on horseback. The torches threw hellish yellow light over more than two dozen vaqueros, several of whom were shooting into the livestock corraled in a large communal pen beyond the missionaries’ cabins.

The others were setting fire to the cabins. The missionaries and their families, including children barely old enough to walk, had been herded into a tight knot at the center of a group of vaqueros, who were brandishing pistols and yelling orders in heavily accented English.

Katherine’s heart stopped when she saw a particularly tall rider on a stallion whose coat gleamed like new gold under the torchlight.
Vittorio
. He had come to drive the Americans out and take her back. Even Justis couldn’t win against the mob of men he’d brought with him. Terror surged through her. Vittorio would love an excuse to make certain her “dead” husband remained dead.

“Justis!” she called in a low, desperate voice.

A moment later he was beside her, gripping her arm angrily. “Woman, if you ever do what I tell you to do, I’ll probably faint from shock.”

“We have to run before they come this way!”

“Who are they?”

“Some of the rancheros didn’t want Americans settling here. I’m sure that’s why they’re destroying the settlement.” She turned to him frantically. “We can’t fight them—surely you see that! There are too many! We can hide—”

“Is it Salazar?”

She trembled inwardly. “What difference does it make?”

“Have you got anything to fear from him?”

“I—I don’t, but he’ll kill
you
!”

“Thought he was a damned gentleman. A dandy. An educated—”

“I haven’t got time to argue with you! Follow me!” She shoved past him, grabbed his arm, and tugged him toward the wooded hills a hundred paces away. “Please, Justis, please!”

“All right, but move careful in the dark. Gimme your pistol.” He tucked both his and hers into his belt. Carrying the rifle, he grabbed her hand and they ran toward the woods. Already Katherine could hear the sound of horses galloping up the trail to her cabin.

She and Justis made the edge of the forest and stopped. When they looked back they saw five or six vaqueros, led by Vittorio, stop near the cabin door. Vittorio dismounted from his palomino and strode to it, then knocked gently.

Justis cursed softly and viciously. “Thinks he’s comin’ to Sunday tea, looks like to me.”

Vittorio opened the door and glanced inside. Obviously agitated by her absence, he turned and yelled
something in Spanish to his men. Katherine jumped. “He’s telling them to spread out and look for us.
Us
?”

“He must’ve found out I was at his ranch yesterday.”

She moaned. “I told him you were dead.”

“Pretty damned thorough about puttin’ me out of your life, weren’t you?”

“You
were
dead to me.”

The horsemen scattered, but two started toward the woods. Justis took her arm. “Move slow and quiet.” They eased up a low rise. The two vaqueros guided their horses among the trees, their torches held high.

“Señora Gallatin!” they called. “
Por favor! Vamonos, Señora
!”

To Katherine’s right, some kind of large night bird flew out of a tree with great commotion, rattling the branches. The vaqueros urged their horses into a trot and turned straight toward the sound. Katherine ducked, but the far edge of torchlight flickered on her face.

“
Señora!
”

One vaquero spurred his horse forward. Justis shoved Katherine behind a tree and gave her a pistol again. “Don’t shoot me by accident—or on purpose,” he muttered. The other vaquero pointed his rifle upward and fired to alert the rest. Then he, too, sent his mount loping forward.

Justis blocked the path. He swung the barrel end of his rifle into the first rider’s midsection, tumbling him off his horse in a groaning heap. The torch fell from the rider’s hand and sputtered on the wet earth. Justis turned toward Katherine. “Run!”

“No!”

The second vaquero quickly swung a well-oiled reata. It caught Justis around the neck as he lifted his rifle and fired. The shot went wild and the vaquero’s horse reared. Justis made a strangling sound as the rawhide lariat jerked him flat onto his stomach. The woods began to fill with men and horses.

Katherine leveled her pistol at the vaquero as Justis scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the lariat and heaved backward on it before the vaquero could anchor it to his saddle. The man yelped in surprise as the incredible power at the end of his rope snapped him off his horse. He crashed, facedown, on the forest floor.

But there were other vaqueros now, lots of them, their reatas cutting the air with vicious whipping sounds. Katherine fired the pistol, and one man fell, clutching a wounded arm. Another lasso settled around Justis’s neck, choking him. Two more pinned his arms to his sides. Still he managed to dig his heels into the ground and stay upright, struggling to reach the pistol tucked in his belt. Katherine ran to him and pulled it free.

“
Alto
!” she screamed, and pointed the gun at the rider nearest her. From behind her a vaquero brought the hard wooden shaft of his torch down on her wrist. The gun flew from her grip and she staggered against Justis, gasping in pain.

The attack on her wrung a deep primal bellow of rage from him. It startled the vaqueros for a second, and he jerked one arm free. He slid a knife from a sheath on his belt and sliced the taut lariat lines apart with a swift stroke.

The vaqueros yelled in dismay and closed in on him as a group. Katherine was hauled, kicking and punching, across a rider’s saddle. With the help of another he held her facedown while she struggled and screamed every oath she knew.

She heard the heavy thuds of the vaqueros’ fists and torches falling on Justis; she heard their agonized curses before they bludgeoned the knife out of his hand. Then there was only the scrambling and grunts of a dozen men intent on beating one man unconscious—and having a difficult time doing it.

“
Alto! Por favor
!” she begged. “Give him mercy!”

But they didn’t, not until he was limp on the ground,
his hands and feet tied. The vaqueros holding Katherine finally let her go. She tumbled from the horse and crawled to Justis. His face had several bad gashes and was covered in blood. Red spittle showed on his lips when he coughed. She cradled his head in her hands and ran her fingers over the knots already swelling beneath his scalp.

“Catalina, you brought this on him and yourself. It is your fault. If you had stayed at my rancho, all would have been well.”

She looked up to find Vittorio watching calmly from the back of his huge golden horse. “What are you going to do with us?”

“I am simply going to take you and your husband back to my rancho, along with all the troublesome Protestants.”

Justis stirred weakly. She wet her fingers and cleared blood away from his eyes. He looked at her, dazed at first, then with recognition. “Help me sit up,” he said in a tortured whisper.

She eased him upright and sat behind him, bracing him with her body. His hands were tied behind him and she bit her lip to keep from crying out when she saw their bleeding knuckles. Judging by the number of vaqueros who lay on the ground clutching various parts of their anatomies, he had put up even more of a fight than she realized.

“Greetings, Señor Gallatin,” Vittorio said pleasantly. “Welcome to California. I heard that you visited my rancho yesterday and coaxed some of my servants to sing for your gold. They have been punished for that. I thought you were dead. Catalina said you were killed in a mining accident.”

“Not … dead … yet,” Justis muttered, coughing. “Came to get Katherine away from you.”

“Away from me? She might have run temporarily, but she never intended to stay away for long. Hasn’t she told
you what she and I have shared? She was my mistress before she left.”

“Don’t believe it,” Justis answered.

Katherine bit her tongue to stop her own denial. Vittorio’s mind wasn’t normal. If she were going to save Justis’s life, she had to plan unusual negotiations. “My husband doesn’t understand our relationship, Vittorio. But I’m sure that once I explain it to him, he’ll leave us in peace.”

“Explain,” Justis ordered in a pained, rasping voice.

Vittorio smiled. “After we return to my rancho I will tell you what she and I did together, Señor. Perhaps I will even demonstrate.”

“God damn you to hell,” Justis said weakly, and spat blood at him. He tried to twist his head enough to look at her. “Explain.”

“Be patient,” she said. “Be quiet.” She cast a calm, inquisitive gaze at Vittorio. “What will you do with him? And the missionaries?”

Vittorio flicked a long quirt back and forth over his horse’s neck, making the stallion dance nervously. The Californio’s dark eyes gleamed at her, full of victory and anticipation. “The overzealous missionaries have to leave my country, I fear. They are troublemakers. I have already spoken to the governor about them. He agrees. As for your husband—he has bribed my servants, hurt several of my men, and insulted me to my face. I think he will have to be punished. Here we rancheros hold our own trials. I will have one for him. It will be fair.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I knew you would be reasonable.”

He nodded, mollified by her polite attitude. As always, he set great store by pleasant manners and gentility. “Now come with me, Catalina.” He gestured to his men. “Find a wagon and put this Mr. Gallatin in it.”

She almost sagged with relief. For the moment, at least, Justis was safe. Her worst fear had been that Vittorio
would shoot him on the spot. “Try not to cause any more trouble,” she told Justis sternly, and got to her feet.

“
Katie
.” He said her name like a warning. His ravaged face made her fight for control with every shred of her willpower. He was so badly hurt, he could barely sit up now that she no longer braced him. Listing to one side, his breath wheezing, he stared up at her groggily. “I don’t believe it.”

“I never asked you to come look for me. Do you expect wifely concern from the woman you humiliated and deserted?”

“Katie. Don’t.” He sank to one side, helpless.

Katherine walked to Vittorio and held up her arms. He lifted her in front of him on the saddle and reined his horse around. She forced herself not to look back. It was the most difficult thing she’d ever done.

CHAPTER 19