The Outlaws (25 page)

He’d never yet shot a man face-to-face like that. He set his jaw.

He could do it if he had to. Would have done it back at the jail if he’d had to.”

“Well, now, Ez,” Billy said. “We’ve got old Jose taken care of. I noticed some mighty nice looking horses at that ranch where I got the roan. I think we ought to bring a few of them back to the Territory with us. How about it?”

Ezra had almost gotten over his squeamishness about helping himself to other men’s livestock. Still, it was hard to forget his father’s teaching.

“A thief shall not inherit the Kingdom of God,” Papa had warned. “Heed my words, Ezra, for of all the sins, it can be the most insidious.”

He led a different life in a different land from Papa, he told himself. What he’d learned from his father had no bearing on the here and now.

“Let’s go find that remuda, Billy,” he said.

Chapter 17

By noon the sun had come out and Tessa’s spirits lifted. “I’ve no idea where we are.” she said to Vincente. “I was headed for the Pecos when I started out, but now I’m all turned around.”

He glanced at her and she managed a smile.

“The Pecos is that way.” He waved to his left. “We will stay away from the road along the river since my former companeros may seek me there. I think you would not care to meet up with them, no?”

Her grimace made him laugh.

She was determined not to let him know her true feelings. If he believed she wanted to be with him, he might relax his vigilance long enough for her to escape. But he’d reminded her that it was dangerous to be alone in this country.

She might run from Vincente only to find herself a captive of another gang of roving desperados.

“You have not told me why you were traveling to Sumner,” he said.

“I was looking for my brother. Pat Garrett has sworn to hunt down Billy and the rest of his men. He means to see Billy hang.”

Vincente scowled. “I would like to be there when it happens,”

“Perhaps Sheriff Garrett would arrest you for being an outlaw.”

After a moment Vincente half-smiled. “He might try. I will never be taken alive, 1 assure you.”

That evening, Vincente stopped at a small rancho nestled in a mountain valley. The Mexican family greeted him with shouts of joy and heartfelt embraces.

Tessa found, to her relief, that she was to sleep with the daughters. They spent two days at the rancho, resting the horses and themselves.

By cautious questions in her inadequate Spanish, Tessa discovered they weren’t far from the Mescalero reservation.

“I have watched the Apache women prepare mescal,” Concepcion, the eldest daughter, told Tessa.

“It’s made from a kind of cactus, that’s all I know,” Tessa said.

“The women cut off all the thorny leaves and then chop out the heart of the mescal cactus. They dig a fire pit, put in the heart, cover it with the leaves and dirt, then let it cook slowly. It is like sweet mush when they finish.

I have tasted it but it doesn’t compare to tortillas and frijoles.”

The tortillas and frijoles Concepcion’s mother prepared tasted delicious to Tessa. What would it be like to live in Mexico and be part of a Mexican family? In this one, the parents, their two sons and three daughters all worked hard and seemed happy.

“Soon I, too, will be married.” Concepcion smiled dreamily. “Diego is even now building our casa. He is very handsome. Of course Vincente is also a fine-looking man. I have no doubt he will make you a good husband.”

Tessa couldn’t respond to this. She looked across the room at Vincente.

She wouldn’t deny his good looks, slim, dark with a tinge of silver at his temples. He was even distinguished. But to marry him?

Tessa sighed. She longed for the warmth of a family, but she didn’t want Vincente, wouldn’t want him even if he hadn’t turned outlaw. His ways were not hers.

She hadn’t asked these friends of his for help, feeling they might refuse, and then

Vincente would watch her more closely. If she ever did escape him, she decided, she’d marry Calvin and let him take her and Jules to Santa Fe where he preferred to live. They would have a settled life. She wouldn’t ever be disturbed in mind or body by Calvin’s demands. It was what she wanted.

Not Mark, fiddle-footing over the country, with, for all she knew, a Susie in every hamlet.

But she might not ever see either Calvin or Mark again.

Tessa and Vincente rode away from the rancho the next morning. After an hour on the trail, they crested a rise and saw a group of nine riders below leading a string of horses.|

“Back,” Vincente warned. “Best not to be seen.”

Tessa, about to wheel her roan, held. She stared hard at one of the men.

“Ezra!” she cried, kicking her horse so he lunged ahead too fast, sliding and slipping downhill.

“Ezra!” she shouted again just as a shot rang out behind her.

The roan stumbled and fell, tumbling her over his head.

Dazed and short of breath, she struggled to get up. The horse didn’t move.

Men shouted below her. Vincente’s sorrel plunged toward her from the top of the hill.

Vincente was coming for her, Colt in his hand. He’d shot her horse. Would she be next?

He didn’t fire and Tessa realized he meant to scoop her up onto his horse.

Recapture her. She tried to run downhill, but she knew she’d never make it--he was too close, reaching out for her.

She heard the clean crack of a Winchester. Vincente jerked back. A red flower blossomed over his heart. Then he thudded to the ground and rolled past her to lie face up at her feet, unmoving.

Tessa stood frozen.

Finally she took a step. Another. Dropped to her knees beside Vincente. His brown eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. She covered her face with her hands, unable to bear the sight of his lifeless face. She’d wanted to escape from him, but not this way.

“Tessa.”

Ezra’s voice. His hand touched her shoulder.

She dropped her hands and allowed her brother to help her to her feet. Billy stood beside him, rifle in hand.

“Got him through the heart,” Billy said.

Men climbed the hill toward them. One was much smaller than the others.

Not a man, A woman. Tessa’s hand flew to her mouth.

“No!” she cried. “Don’t let her see--”

But Violet, ahead of the rest, was on them before either Billy or Ezra understood what Tessa meant.

Violet looked at the dead man. She fell on her knees, touched his face. Her mouth opened, but no words came. She swayed, then slumped across her father’s body.

“Jesus, it’s old Gabaldon,” Billy said.|

Ezra lifted Violet into his arms, carrying her down the hill. Billy offered Tessa his arm, saying, “Time to move on. One of the boys’ll get your saddle.”

“We just can’t leave Vincente like this,” she objected. “Think how Violet would feel.”

“He threw her out, didn’t he?” Billy said. “But I reckon we can bury him.”

As Tessa watched the men pile rocks over Vincente’s shallow grave, her throat ached with unshed tears. “Flower of my heart,” he’d called her, this man she didn’t love, could never have loved. And yet she mourned him. She sent up a prayer asking for his forgiveness. It seemed there’d been nothing but deaths ever since she came to the New Mexico Territory. Her father, her friends, John and Alex. And now Vincente.

He’s the last, she vowed. I’ll stick to Ezra like a burr until he agrees to leave this life. They rode on, Tessa on a buckskin a good deal livelier than the roan had been. It was some time before she could devote much attention to Violet.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Tessa told her.

Violet turned to her. Tessa was shocked at her thin, pale face. The girl must have some sickness besides the upset of her father’s death.

“Even when he didn’t want me, I still loved my father,” Violet said.

“I think he loved you, too, despite everything.”

Violet shook her head. “He could only love those who behaved the way he wished them to.”

Tessa was silent. Violet might well be speaking the truth.

“You were traveling with him?” Violet asked.

“He rescued me from Comancheros,” Tessa temporized. “He wasn’t a bad man.”

“My Billy shot him,” Violet said. “Did you know that? He shot my father. It took only one bullet. My Billy is a very good marksman.

Tessa bit her lip. The girl spoke flatly with no emotion in her voice. She hadn’t yet shed a tear for her father. The change in her from the vivacious, pretty Violet she’d first met made Tessa’s heart ache.

Ezra leaned forward to look past Violet at his sister. “Do you mind telling me what you were doing that you had to be rescued from Comancheros in the first place?”

“I was on my way to find you.”

“What for?” Alarm flared in Ezra’s eyes. “There isn’t anything wrong with Jules, is there?”

She shook her head. “He’s fine.”

“Now you’ve found me,” Ezra said.

“Yes.” This wasn’t the time to go into her reasons.

Ezra shrugged. “I suppose you’ll get around to telling me what it’s all about sooner or later.’’

“You can be sure I will,” she said tartly.

It took them three days to reach Sumner. On the way Billy sold the string of horses to a man near Roswell, but he refused to accept money from Tessa for the buckskin he’d given her. “Hell, he didn’t cost me nothing,” he said. “You’re welcome to him.” Then she understood she was riding a stolen horse.

At Sumner she and Violet shared a room at Charlie Bowdre’s house, which had been the fort hospital. Charlie’s wife, Manuela, a plump and friendly woman, greeted Tessa warmly, then began to fuss over Violet,

“Ah, poquita, you must eat a little. You cannot get much tinier without disappearing altogether,” she scolded.

Later, when Violet had been persuaded to go to bed, Manuela confided in Tessa.

“She is encinte, I think—how you say, with child? Si, I watch her throw up her food and she says she is dizzy and I think that is what is wrong. I ask her and she admits she missed her

monthlies. Yet these men, they know nothing, they let her ride with them.”

Tessa nodded. Yes, it would account for Violet’s pallor, her look of illness.

She made up her mind she would get Billy alone and talk to him about Violet. And about Ezra, too, for that matter.

Her chance came the next evening when Billy dropped by to see Violet. Manuela Bowdre was busy in the kitchen.

“Violet’s sleeping and I don’t want to wake her,” Tessa told Billy. “She needs all the rest she can get. You really shouldn’t expect her to ride all over creation now that she’s carrying your child.”

Billy blinked at her, then grinned. “She never let on.”

“Well, what do you intend to do about it?”

He shrugged. “1 reckon you’re right. She can stay here with--”.

“What I mean is, aren’t you going to marry her? Give the child a name?”

“He can have my name--I don’t care. I ain’t planning to marry nobody. Didn’t marry the other two, the ones who had my girls. I hope Violet’s is a boy.”

Tessa was taken aback by his casual mention of other children, but she tried not to show

it.

“Billy, Violet can’t take care of a child all by herself. She needs a home, a father for the baby.”

“I’ll see she’s provided for.”

“Why won’t you marry the poor girl? God knows, she loves
you.” Billy eyed Tessa for a while. “Your folks get along?” he asked finally.

“Why, yes. They got along fine. Until my mother died when Jules was born.”

“My pa left my ma with me and my brother Joe. She waited for my pa to come back, but he never did. After a while she got word he’d died, and we came down this way and my mother met Bill Antrim. They got married in Santa Fe. Antrim didn’t cotton much to either Joe or me. As for Ma, she just sort of faded away and died the next year. I don’t think much of marrying and that’s a fact.”

“Violet loves you.”

“You know, Tessa,” he said, “I was taken with her looks. Violet’s a pretty little thing. But I never asked her to come to me here in Sumner. She did that on her own. I didn’t promise her anything. I ain’t going to marry her just because you think I ought to, but I swear I’ll take care of her.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Do you take care of the women who bore your daughters?”

His eyes flicked away from hers. “I go see them when I can. They get along all right.

Both of them live with their families.”

“Violet has no family. Not any longer.”

“Look. I was trying to do you a favor, shooting him. How the hell was I supposed to know it was Gabaldon?”

“I don’t blame you for that,” Tessa said hastily. “I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful. But the fact remains, her father is dead and she has no one except you.”