Treasure of the Sun (42 page)

"A trail even your cousin can follow," Damian assured her. ''That should deceive whoever is waiting for us to lead them to the treasure." Watching the female servant dressed in one of Katherine's dresses and the Indian wearing his own hat and coat, he worried silently. Surely it would.

From inside the hacienda, the sound of voices rose. Nacia and Julio were fighting again, and this morning the Rodriguez’s joined in. The battle continued without abatement until Damian and Katherine prepared to leave. Then their hosts stepped out.

On the veranda, Nacia stood with her chin jutting out, two bright spots of red in her cheeks. Her erect carriage rivaled her mother's, and her tiny figure quivered with an indomitable air that had been previously hidden.

Julio squinted against the morning sun, his face an odd mixture of excitement and mortification. He spoke quietly, as if loud noises were an agony for him.

From Senor and Senora Rodriguez Katherine expected a stiff reprimand; instead she got a bewildered dismissal. What their daughter had said to them, she didn't know, but they stood in magni6.cent disarray, looking as if somewhere, somehow, their correct world had gone awry.

Katherine thought, as she left the de Casillas home, that she'd love to blend into the walls and hear the controversy the rest of the day would bring.

But perhaps de Casillas thought the same thing about them. The land of grass gave way as they rode north and rode higher. Gradually the mountains grew rockier, rougher, and the occasional oak gave way to woods of pine and scrub. Neither Damian nor Katherine fought against the silence between them. They rode through the overhanging trees, along a narrow trail that climbed up, until their hunger grew strong. They could put it off no longer; they would have to eat. Talk would be the inevitable result, and after last night, talk wasn't something either one of them sought.

"We'll stop here." Damian indicated the little clearing with his whip.

In the sunlight that filtered through the cover of pine trees, the carpet of fallen needles appeared to be gold. The scent of spice filled Katherine's nostrils as she lifted her head to gaze up through the branches towards the cloudless sky. "Lovely."

He dismounted and unhooked the dinner basket. "The de Casillas cook packed a heavy meal. I hope she was happier this morning than the rest of that family."

"Why's that?"

"Because otherwise, we'll be poisoned."

She wasn't even moved to laugh. "Too true."

Damian relieved Confite of the saddlebags and loosened the flank cinch. Slapping Confite on the rump, Damian told him, "Go on. Graze to your heart's content."

Sliding down from the saddle before he could help her, Katherine led her mare to the grass. "Make sure you tie him," Damian ordered.

"Of course," she said coldly, looping her rein around a branch.

Strips of cold meat, cheese, tortillas, and fruit appeared from the basket, and a bottle of new red wine made from California grapes. The meal was quiet and polite, and for Katherine, uncomfortable. She wanted to say something to Damian; the words burned on her tongue. She didn't want to disturb their fragile truce, but she wouldn't rest until she'd told him. "Don Damian."

"Si mi mujer?"

"Last night you compared me to Senora Rodriguez."

"Not in so many words," he protested. He sipped the wine from a wooden cup.

"That is what you meant. Perhaps I am so slow to insult that I need to be flayed with my deficiencies, but I understood that."

He hesitated, uncomfortable with her bluntness. "That is what I meant."

"Very well. I've taken your criticism under advisement. Now I'd like you to do the same."

"A wife doesn't criticize her husband."

"A man who doesn't wish to be criticized shouldn't marry," she answered, and with a flourish added, "My father used to say that." The quirk in his cheek told her he agreed, and she relaxed enough to state her case boldly. "You feel that I'm becoming a Senora Rodriguez. Very well, I'm afraid you're becoming an Uncle Rutherford."

His head came up; his smile disappeared.

"Not in terms of cruelty or lack of responsibility," she added.

"In terms of your conviction that you're right about everything. Uncle Rutherford never allowed anyone in his home to disagree with him. He squashed all the initiative out of his children. He tried to squash it out of me."

"What has that to do with me?"

With a gentle tact she normally disdained, she laid one hand on his and stopped his determined drinking. "I am an American." When he would speak, she squeezed his fingers. "There's no room for discussion. I am an American. In your eyes, by your church, we're not yet married. Until I'm satisfied that you can accept me as I am, we will not be."

"What?" His roar shook the treetops, echoing down the mountain.

She bit her lip. She hadn't meant to say that. She hadn't meant to threaten him. She'd meant to approach him with the wile of a senorita, not charge him like a bull. But the damage was done, and she firmed her lips as she stared at him in challenge. "I said-"

"I heard you!" Rising to his feet, he dashed the contents of the cup against the rock beside him, splattering them both with wine. The crimson stain spread on his white shirt; she wiped the liquid off her face.

Staring at the raging hidalgo, she pulled the restraining scarf off her head and scrubbed absently at the wet spot on the sleeve of her riding costume. "It's not so difficult to understand. I just want you to change---"

"Myself." He tapped his chest with his forefinger. "You want me to change the man you married."

"Just what do you want? Who do you want me to be? Not myself. You don't want me to be Katherine Anne. You want me to be some mythical woman who transforms her heart into that of a Californian while retaining the outward appearance of an American. That is what you want, isn't it?"

"No," he denied, but he faltered just a little.

"Is Senora Rodriguez right? Is it my blond hair that makes me the wife of your choice?"

"Of course not." He sounded more confident now.

"Then what is it about me that you want? You don't want me to be an American. You don't want me to think for myself. You don't want me to criticize you. What is it you want? Why did you marry me?"

As if he saw her for the first time, he gazed at her with his heart in his eyes. Something about the way he stood, the way he stared, made her breath quicken. He wanted to say something, something that would change her, something that she'd never thought of before. Concentrating on her with all his might, he knelt in front of her, knees to knees. He wiped a drop of wine from her jacket. He caught at her hands; she awkwardly dropped the scarf into her lap. His intensity made her shy, and she looked down at the wadded material and wondered, in a distracted way, why she'd gripped it so tight.

"Catriona," he began, and took a breath. "Katherine Anne---"

She looked up, and as if he couldn't resist, he leaned toward her, his eyes melting her tension. Her own eyes fluttered closed; her lips parted in anticipation.

A rustle behind Damian, a hollow crack of a gun butt against his skull, and he pitched forward onto her chest. Confused, she scrambled to catch him, but his head struck her breastbone. She struggled against his dead weight, seeking the source of his unconsciousness and finding it as she looked up-up at Mr. Emerson Smith and the pistol he held in his hand.

Chapter 19

Damian wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. He'd been alive when they left him. Katherine clenched her teeth against the shudder that racked her and urged her horse up the ever-rising trail behind Emerson Smith. Damian wasn't dead, for he'd moaned and rolled beneath Smith's kicks. The skin on the back of his skull had been split open by Smith's gun butt. Dear God, Damian had been hurt so badly he never regained consciousness during Smith's search for the map.

That horrible map.

"Hey, Kathy, what do you suppose your lovey-dove has done with that map?" Smith drawled.

"I don't know," she answered, her voice dull with worry.

"Sure you do," he encouraged.

She raised her head and glared, jarred from her anxiety by his hearty indifference. "I don't know!"

"Well," he said, "we certainly searched for it. Remember?" She didn't answer.

"Remember?" he insisted. "First we looked in the saddlebags."

"Looted them," she muttered.

"Then we searched your lovey-dove. Searched all over his body and in his clothes, but that map wasn't there. Remember what we did then?"

She hung her head, embarrassed by the mere memory. From the horse behind her, Lawrence called, "Leave her alone, Smith."

"Naw," Smith refused. "I was just getting to the best part of the memories. The part when we searched our little lawyer." He smacked his lips, and the moist sound made Katherine's stomach heave. "Too bad you were along, Larry. You're like the skeleton at the feast. It would have been a lot of fun to strip her and check her all over for the map. All my vaqueros were ready to see that. You could tell by those kissy noises they made."

"These vaqueros are scum," Larry said with disdain.

''Yes, but they work cheap and don't ask no questions."

Smith turned and grinned at Lawrence, then at Katherine sandwiched between them. "Which is more than I can say for you, Larry.”

"Is he paying you for this, Lawrence?" Katherine asked, feeling pain struggling to break her numb despair.

"No," Lawrence denied. "He thinks I ask too many questions."

"Only thing that ever shuts him up is a good snort of liquor," Smith grinned at her again, showing the red gums around his teeth. He turned to face the front again. "I still say we ought to stop and search our Miz Kathy right now. Yes sirree, she could be concealing that map on her body."

"You're worrying that map like a dog would worry a meaty bone," Lawrence accused. "You know that map went off with de la Sola's horse. That horse ran off even before you hit de la Sola with your gun butt,"

"Yes. There's a good chance that map's on the horse," Smith admitted with sullen acceptance. "I sure would've liked a peek at it."

Katherine's relief was so thick she could almost taste it. Lawrence had distracted Smith, and he'd done it on purpose, she knew. Lawrence might be a worm, but he didn't want her to be used by Emerson Smith. She suspected Lawrence might turn into a reasonable human being, in thirty years or so.

Sickness washed over her again as she thought of Damian, his head bleeding into a little pool in her skirt. She hadn't fainted at the sight. In a futile effort to help Damian, she'd held onto all her senses. She answered Smith's questions, holding Damian's head protectively in her lap. She hadn't wanted to give him up. She hadn't wanted to let go of him, but when Smith threatened to shoot him . . . She felt so ill.

Her horse, thankfully, had been tied. Katherine had mounted in a hurry when threatened with a dual ride behind Mr. Smith. Five scruffy vaqueros grinned and shoved at the flash of ankle she revealed, but that was better than having one of them boost her up.

Now she watched the afternoon sun light the back of Mr.

Smith's head. She stared at his long neck, at his ears that stuck out too far and the bald spot usually hidden with his height. A real hatred boiled up inside her. Thick and rich, she could taste it on her tongue. A year had passed since she'd felt this way, but she recognized it.

This hatred she'd felt for her Uncle Rutherford when he threatened her mother; this hatred she'd felt for Aunt Narcissa when she'd insinuated her father was a wastrel. It wasn't the hatred Katherine felt when someone hurt her, but the hatred she felt when someone hurt the one she loved.

That frightened her. Frightened her more than almost anything that had happened. Almost more than the chance that she would die before she saw Damian again. Almost more than the thought of Damian, lolling unconscious in the dirt.

In front of her, Mr. Smith interrupted her thoughts, pulling back her futile remorse. "Larry? I never asked why you wanted this woman back so badly. She seems like a real nuisance to me.”

"Family duty," Lawrence said.

Pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket, Mr. Smith blew his nose with distressing thoroughness. "Ah, Larry, surely that ain't a reason to come all this way when you could have stopped her at the boat in Boston."

Lawrence
cleared his throat in sympathetic reaction. "We didn't realize how much we'd miss her."