Chapter Four #2
He stared at the girl and his mind flashed on his brother’s dying words: “You said one day a woman would be the death of me.…” The pain rose up, blinding in its intensity, cutting like a scythe through the numbness.
“On second thought,” he said, “the woman will walk. We will see if there is more to the gringa than her haughty eastern manners and condescending ways.” He started toward his horse, Viento Prieto, Dark Wind, but Sanchez caught his arm.
“You cannot mean that, Ramon. It is miles to Llano Mirada.”
Ramon pulled free of the old vaquero’s hold and kept on walking. “Enriquez!” Across the camp, the stout vaquero looked up. “Bring the girl to me.”
“I beg you, Ramon, do not do something that can only bring you more regret.”
“Stay out of this, Pedro.” He reached the big black stallion and swung up into the saddle.
Behind him, Esteban Enriquez arrived with the girl.
She was wearing a soft blue robe over her white cotton nightgown, her fiery auburn hair trailing in a long, thick braid down her back.
Her feet were bare, he saw, her small feet blue with the cold.
A ripple of guilt washed over him. She was so small. And as fearless as she seemed, he knew she must be frightened. Then he thought of Andreas, cold and blue beneath the blanket around his lifeless corpse, and the unwanted feeling slid away.
He untied his woven leather reata from his saddle, formed a loop, and settled it around her small bound wrists.
He tied the other end to his wide, flat saddle horn, all the while waiting for her to beg and plead, to cry and beseech him for mercy, knowing that it would not dissuade him.
Still he wanted to hear it. He would enjoy each groveling moment only the least bit more if the speaker were her uncle.
He thought of Fletcher Austin, of Rancho del Robles, of his family’s stolen lands, and his brother’s brutal murder.
He thought of Caralee McConnell, the eastern sophisticate who considered herself above them, who thought only of money and her own self-indulgence, and his anger grew more fierce, settling like a hot stone in his belly.
“There is quite some distance to travel, senorita,” he said, glancing down at her. “It is time we were on our way.” He tugged on the rope, expecting to see tears, but she only lifted her chin. Eyes like green fire scorched down his body, blatantly speaking her loathing.
He clamped down hard on his temper and nudged the stallion into a walk, ruthlessly dragging her forward.
She swung into line ten feet behind the horse and started up the trail.
They made their way through the small secluded valley then began to climb higher into the hills.
All the while, the rope remained slack, the girl easily keeping pace with the horse.
Four hours later, she was still walking, still glaring at his back with hot, hate-filled eyes. He could almost feel them boring into him.
Occasionally he turned, unable to resist the challenge, amazed at the fact that she had not begged him to stop, or even once complained.
They paused only briefly, at a stream where they watered the horses and ate a handful of carne seca, spicy jerked beef.
When the girl refused the portion Sanchez offered, Ramon dismounted and walked to where she stood at the end of her tether.
“You will do as Pedro says.” He handed her the jerky, a cold smile curving his lips. “I would not want it said we were inhospitable to a guest.”
She tossed the dried beef into the dust at his feet. “I’m not hungry. And even if I were, I wouldn’t eat with an animal like you.”
A hot jolt of anger speared through him. He caught her arms and dragged her up on her toes. “You will not waste food while you are among us. There are those who die each day for want of what you have discarded. But you would not know of such things, would you, senorita?”
She merely raised her chin. “Why would I?”
He flashed her a ruthless half smile. “Perhaps in time you will learn to appreciate the small things in life you take so much for granted. Perhaps you will even come to beg for them.”
“And maybe you will learn that I will never beg—especially not from you!”
His grip went tighter, then he let her go.
Cursing beneath his breath, he returned to Viento, mounted and started forward, the long leather reata tugging her into line behind him.
Twice in the late afternoon, Sanchez rode up beside him, beseeching him to stop, to let the girl ride with one of the men, but each time he looked back and saw her, he heard the sharp clang of the bell, saw the lead ball explode in his brother’s chest, heard the soft words Andreas had spoken as he died clutching Ramon’s hand.
It was dark when they reached the place they meant to camp, the girl walking blindly, stumbling now and then, but always moving forward, by sheer will alone, it seemed to him.
It angered him more than ever that she had decided to fight him, that she had not weakened as he had expected.
Yet part of him was glad for it, glad to pit the rage he felt inside against someone besides himself.
She was trembling with exhaustion, he saw when he climbed down from his horse, swaying slightly though she fought to stand still.
Her blue robe hung in dirty tatters, snagged on sharp rocks and thorny vines along the trail.
Her hair had slipped loose from its binding.
It tumbled in dark copper waves down her back and clung in damp curls to her slightly sunburned cheeks.
A knot of guilt twisted inside him. He had never been cruel to a woman.
Never lifted a hand against one. But this was not just any woman.
This one had murdered his brother. A bone-deep chill quelled the fires inside him.
She would pay for what she had done. Her uncle would pay. He owed that much to his brother.
Then he noticed the blood on her feet.
Madre de Dios. “Sanchez!” he called out, and Pedro came running.
“See to the girl.” The words came out thick and strained as something squeezed painfully inside him.
It mixed with the grief, stirring it up in agonizing waves, making it hard to think.
“You should have said something,” he told the woman darkly.
“I would have seen you had something to wear for shoes.”
She spit into the dirt at his feet. “There is nothing I want from you. Do you hear me? Nothing!”
She was everything he hated—he had discovered that the instant he had met her. She was grasping, hedonistic, spoiled, and self-centered.
Everything he once was himself.
Walking away, his head pounding viciously, he reached into the bolsa hanging behind his saddle and drew out a bottle of strong aguardiente.
He pulled the cork and took a long, mind-numbing drink.
He didn’t take more than one. He did not dare.
He knew if he did he would not stop. He would climb into the bottle, drink until he couldn’t feel the pain.
Behind him Pedro led the girl to the stream, knelt and helped her bathe her bloody feet. A few minutes later, one of the men approached, carrying a soft pair of knee-high moccasins. The vaquero said something to the girl and though he couldn’t hear it, Ramon was certain what it was.
Because as much as he hated to admit it, as much as he wished it weren’t the truth, the same grudging respect his men had begun to feel for the woman had begun to blossom inside himself.
* * *
Every noise in the darkness seemed magnified a thousand times.
Carly wasn’t used to being out of doors.
Her uncle had warned her not to go far from the house alone.
The woods, he said, were dangerously overrun with wild animals: mountain lions, poisonous rattlesnakes, huge sharp-horned wild bulls, feral pigs, and worse of all, giant man-eating grizzly bears.
Even now she could hear something growling in the darkness not far from camp.
A second night creature howled its vicious intent just down the hill.
Carly shivered to think of it. Even if she could escape, which there seemed little hope of, she didn’t know her way back home, and the animals would be prowling, just waiting to tear her in two.
And yet an even greater peril lay just a few yards across the camp.
He was stretched out on his bedroll, his black flat-brimmed hat tilted forward over his eyes.
He had only just returned to the clearing, having gone off alone into the forest while the others made camp.
He hadn’t returned until after the men had all gone to sleep, then sat in front of the fire and stared silently into the flames.
Sanchez had awakened and gone to the Spaniard’s side, but he refused the meal the old vaquero had tried to coax him to eat.
As exhausted as Carly was, as frightened, as resentful of the Spaniard’s brutal treatment, some small part of her felt sorry for him.
She’d had a sister once, a little girl named Mary, four years younger than she was.
Mary had died of a fever when Carly was nine years old.
She remembered her mother weeping, remembered the terrible, hollow ache she had felt that couldn’t be filled, the bitterness and sorrow of losing Mary.
She could easily imagine the pain the don suffered from the loss of his brother.
Carly leaned her head against the tree and closed her eyes.
She had eaten the chunk of roasted meat Sanchez had brought her and accepted the blanket he gave her even as he bound one of her ankles to the tree.
Snuggling deeper into the blanket’s warmth, she willed herself not to think of the don, not to think of her tired, aching muscles, scrapped shins, cut feet, or the darkening bruise on her cheek.
Instead, she thought of her uncle, willing him to come, certain that he would, and finally she slid into a heavy trancelike sleep.