The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) (37 page)

Reaching up to the rock, she felt for the soap plant root. A hand closed over hers. She gasped in surprise, then smiled up at the man silhouetted by the setting sun.

"I thought you wanted to give me some privacy," she said, raking the hair from her eyes.

A gun glinted from the man's other hand and with slow, deliberate menace, he cocked it. "Pri-vacy?" said a voice distinctly not Reese's. "Oh, no, señorita." He gestured with the tip of his gun.
"Quiero ver mas.
I want to see more."

* * *

Reese's pulse staggered at the sound of Grace's terrified scream. He threw down the harness he'd just removed from Maximo and stumbled toward the pond, yanking his gun from its holster. His heart pounded wildly as his imagination filled in what he didn't know. With a thudding sense of doom, it occurred to him that the spring was a watering hole not only for humans, but for animals as well. Snakes, coyotes, even big cats frequented places like that. A shudder went through him. Why had he left her alone?

Gun ready, he plunged through the shrubbery surrounding the pond only to find a different sort of animal altogether facing Grace with a gun pointed at her head. Reese skidded to a stop, leveling his own gun at the man. The scruffy-faced hombre's eyes widened for a moment in surprise, then he grinned at him through a thick, unkempt mustache. A gunbelt rested lazily around his hips, and bandoliers filled with cartridges crisscrossed his chest.

"Buenas tardes, amigo,
" he greeted in an almost friendly manner as he held the gun steady at her head. In water up to her chin, Grace's terrified gaze slid to Reese.

"Drop your gun," Reese told him, "or I'll shoot you where you stand."

"But not before I kill her first, yes?" the man replied in heavily accented English. A sly grin split his face.

Reese contemplated shouting at Grace to duck under the water to give him a moment to blow the bastard's head off. But the man might have time to kill her before she could respond. His finger tightened on the trigger.

"What is it you want?" Reese demanded.

"Me?" The hombre shrugged. "I am a man of few wants." He gestured toward Grace with a leer and a slight lift of his pistol.
"Pues, son excepciones.
But perhaps it is I who should ask what you want,
gringo."

Reese frowned, sincerely confused now. "What are you talking about?"

"Put down your gun, señor."

Reese's pulse echoed in his ears. "Let her go first. Look, whatever it is you want, deal with me. Leave her out of it."

The man shook his head as if he were dealing with a child. "You don't seem to understand, amigo. You have no choice."

Grace's eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. Too late, Reese caught the flash of movement to his right only the instant before an excruciating pain exploded in his head. As he felt the ground disappear beneath him and he plunged toward the sinking darkness, he heard Grace scream his name. His last conscious thought was that he'd finally succeeded in failing her completely.

Chapter 19

Through a thick fog, Reese struggled to focus on the sound of voices in the hazy distance. The thudding pain in his head made it difficult to concentrate. Somewhere, behind his eyelids, a flickering light illuminated the darkness. "He is alive?" a female voice asked in Spanish.

"More or less," a man's voice answered.

Even in his state of confusion, the man's amused tone irritated Reese.
More or less.
At least he wasn't dead, he realized with some relief. That had been his first guess. He lay curled on his side. His hands were behind his back, and from the sharp pain that bit into his wrists when he attempted to move them, he assumed he was bound.

"You hit him too hard, Miguel," the woman accused. "We will get nothing from him like this."

"But, Magdalena, you told me to hit him," the man wheedled.

"I said hit, Miguel," she said patiently, "not bash." When she got no reply, she sighed and spoke to someone else in rapid-fire Spanish that went too fast for Reese's groggy mind to interpret.

Pain lobbed back and forth inside his head like a ricocheting bullet. He let out an involuntary groan. He tried to pry open his eyes, but the sound of Grace's voice stopped him. There was an edge of hysteria to it.

"If you've killed him, you'll be sorry! I'll have the U.S. government down here so fast it'll make your head spin, and they'll put each and every one of you—"

"Gag her!" the other woman's voice demanded.

"—behind bars!" Grace continued. "If you think you can just go around whacking people on the—" The rest descended into a muffled grunt of outrage.

He almost smiled with relief.
Grace.
She sounded unhurt and as mouthy as ever. She was a scrapper, all right. He recalled the taunting words she'd endured as a girl. "
Long on opinion
—" And quite adequately long on everything else, he amended. Not the least of which was loyalty.

With an effort he opened his eyes, searching her out. She wavered into focus from her spot propped beneath a mesquite. She was fully dressed, thank God. Whoever had knocked him out had tied and gagged her. She was wriggling furiously until she saw him watching her. Then her eyes went wide.

"Rrrmm-phh!" she yelled.

A gun cocked near his ear. He blinked hard and looked up at the person on the other end of the gun. A beautiful dark-haired woman returned his stare. Magdalena? The name suited her, he thought a little groggily. There was a winsome look about her face that the bandoliers across her chest adamantly belied.

Half of her thick black hair was stuffed under a broad-brimmed sombrero. Like the dozen or so men who hovered around the fire behind her, she wore wide chaps, heavy leather coveralls that shielded her legs from the spines of the jumping cholla and prickly pear common in the high desert.

"Como estas, señor?"
the woman asked with a smile. Then in perfect English, "How you are feeling?"

"I'd feel a lot better without a pistol growing out of my ear."

"All in good time.
Primero,
gringo, tell us why you are here."

He fired another look at Grace. "If you've hurt her, I'll—"

"Her pride only has been bruised, señor. But no harm has come to her from my men. That, I can promise."

For some reason, he believed her. He lowered his aching head to the ground with a sigh of relief.

"You have not answered me,
gringo
. Why are you here?"

"I could ask the same question."

She traced his cheekbone with the tip of her pistol. "So handsome to be such a fool. Do you know where you are?"

He couldn't see the pool, but could still smell the fragrant blooms of the smoke tree. They couldn't have taken him far. "I have no idea. Do you?"

She tossed a laugh back at her men. "You are in our
campamento.
How you say...? Digs? And we don't like strangers here."

He moistened his lips. "Perhaps you should post a No Trespassing sign."

She arched an eyebrow. "Why have you come?"

"Look," he said tiredly, "whatever your business, we have no intention of interfering. We're on our way to Querétaro. The señorita just wanted a bath."

"Rrrummph-phm!" Grace emoted emphatically.

The dark-haired woman's eyes went wide. "Ah-hah! Querétaro!" She turned to the others and said in Spanish, "Did I not tell you, amigos?" Returning to Reese, she prodded, "Why do you go there?"

"None of your bloody business."

"You are
un espia
perhaps? A spy for the emperor Maximiliano? Did Miramon send you to find us?"

"Who?"

"El General
Miramon—the Austrian fool's lapdog!" She turned and spat into the dirt. "You pretend not to know him?"

"This is ridiculous," Reese muttered.

"You are not the first,
amigo
. There is a high price on the heads of all
guerrilleros.
Perhaps it is this you seek, no?"

So they were Juarez's guerillas. At least something was starting to make sense now. "No," he answered flatly, losing all patience. "Look, I'm not after money, or any of your men. My name is Donovan. Reese Donovan. I don't know who you think I am, but—"

A collective gasp went up from the nearby men. One clattered his spoon against his plate of beans.

Magdalena gaped at him. "Reese Don-o-van?" she echoed, going pale as the moon.
"El
Reese Don-o-van? Of Texas?"

"Yes."

Her eyes widened. "The gunfighter? The man who saved the life of our beloved Benito Juarez from the bullet of an assassin?"

He glanced uncomfortably at Grace, whose eyes widened with astonishment. "Something like that."

"Dios!
Why did you not say this?"

That much, it seemed to him, was painfully obvious. "You didn't exactly give me the chance."

She untied the ropes binding his hands and helped him to sit up. All the while, he heard Grace's muffled rantings as she tried to get his attention. Better to keep her quiet for a while, he thought, until he could decide what to tell them. After flexing the life back into his hands, he rubbed his aching head.

Magdalena's mouth curved in womanly interest as she handed him back his gun. "You are almost legend here, Don-o-van. Permit me to apologize for the terrible mistake of hitting you on the head. Is it horribly painful?"

Gingerly, he touched the bloody spot on the back of his head. "I've felt worse." He holstered the Colt.

"Miguel," she accused in Spanish. "Do you see that you almost killed a national hero?"

"But, Magdalena, you told me to—"

Magdalena silenced him with a look and turned back to Reese with a wan smile. "My men apologize, too, I am certain."

Reese glanced up at them, wondering what it took for a motley group like this to follow a woman. She was certainly beautiful and strong-minded. But something about this picture wasn't complete.

"How many of you are there?" he asked.

"Here, we are twelve. Pablo and the others will return soon."

He was about to ask who Pablo was when Grace made herself heard again. She was furiously gesturing for him to untie her.

Magdalena lifted her chin toward Grace. "And she is your—?"

"Aye. That she is."

The guerilla leader sent him a sympathetic look and rubbed her temples. "I had to gag her," she confided. "She makes my head ache."

He knew the feeling.

Magdalena called out to a man named Tipo to untie Grace—slowly—then she settled on the ground, Indian style, beside Reese and propped her chin on her hand. "So, Don-o-van, you will tell us what business takes you to Querétaro? Perhaps we can be of help. It would honor us. In some small way, we could repay you for our mistake."

Reese was cautious. "No business. Just coming to see an old friend."

Her eyes lit up. "Juarez?"

He shook his head. "No one you'd know."

She frowned, her mink brown eyes studying him. Thoughtfully, she pulled cigarette makings from her pocket and rolled first one, then another. She lit them both and handed him one. Reese pulled the smoke into his lungs with a sigh of gratitude. He glanced at Tipo, who was leisurely working at the knot at Grace's wrists. She shot Reese a furious look as he took another languid drag on the cigarette.

"You know, of course," Magdalena went on, picking a flake of tobacco off her tongue, "that Querétaro is not a place for pleasure now, señor. Maximilian and his
generates,
Miramon and Mejia, are there under siege. The Imperialist troops are deserting to the countryside like rats from a drowning ship." She flashed him a smile. "Our forces outnumber theirs nine to one."

"Good odds," he observed laconically. Resting his forearms across his knees, he gazed at Grace through the curtain of smoke rising from his cigarette. By the look in her eyes, she was going to murder him when she got loose for letting Tipo torment her with the knot. But he didn't trust Magdalena or her men further than he could throw them, and from the swelling lump on the back of his head, he figured he had good cause. A half-day's ride out of Querétaro, he wanted nothing to muck up his plans for freeing Luke. No matter how good the odds.