Chasing the Texas Wind Page 11

  Maeve stared at the now-contented child and the radiant, smiling mother in disbelief. “How can you be so happy?” she demanded. “Your husband is dead, horribly murdered, and you’re left to raise a child all alone. Your brother’s a prisoner of the man who murdered him. I would go mad.”

  “God is with me, Miss Collinswood,” Jesse replied. “And I’m hardly alone. The whole Duvall clan is ranged around me and that’s a large crowd of helpers.”

  “The men finish their meeting, Mrs. Jesse, and Mister Jedediah, he asks if he can wait on you here when the little one be done,” Beulah announced, whisking into the room.

  “Yes, Beulah, Miss Collinswood’s been anxiously waiting,” Jesse said. “And this starving little man evidently just wanted a quick snack, because he’s already asleep. Thank you, Mammy,” she added as the woman took the child from her and swept away. She settled her dress and folded the shawl. “Please ask Daddy to come in, Beulah.”

  In fact, five men came into the sunroom. Maeve hastily threw an afghan over her bandaged feet.

  “Miss Collinswood, may I present to you my other son, Levi?” Mr. Duvall said courteously, bowing and indicating one man who was tall, handsome and blue-eyed, just like Matt and Zachary, though older than both. “And this is my nephew, John Duvall.” John was small, slightly-built and dark-eyed. “This is Lemuel McElroy, who is a trusted old friend of mine.” Lemuel McElroy was a much older man, older than Jedediah Duvall.

  “The first man who came to see you at your cantina was Jude Morrow,” Jedediah Duvall said to Maeve. “He’s my brother-in-law. He told us you found his son, James Morrow, and sent the falcon home?”

  “It was his son?” Maeve whispered. “He didn’t tell me. He just thanked me. I didn’t know why. But yes, I did that.”

  “But what made you want to get involved with this?” Levi asked.

  “I am half Tejano,” Maeve said. “And I realized I could live among the Mexicans and possibly learn things. This young man told me about shipments of arms moving in Mexico in preparation for the war with Texas. I contacted a man whom I had met through my charity work, an American who worked for army intelligence. He sent me in and out of Mexico regularly establishing contacts as a widowed Tejano lady with plenty of money doing some trading and looking to buy property and a business. Here in Texas I kept a house near Rio Grande City. I’ve lived in Coahuila, in the town of Avecita, for the last six months. When I settled in Avecita Chaco became attracted to me and we started a relationship.”

  “I’ve seen the lady down there, Levi,” John Duvall said quietly, and Maeve’s eyes flashed to his. “She plays the part with convincing realism.”

  Maeve was sure she had never seen John Duvall before. How had he seen her?

  “We don’t all come down to have a chat with you, ma’am,” John said, smiling at her confusion. “I just passed through looking for news about Dan. It was fiesta time, and I didn’t want to contact you directly because we try not to compromise anybody unnecessarily. And I didn’t exactly look like this. Some of the rest of us are pretty good at playing parts.”

  “Why didn’t you send us word what had happened to Dan?” Lemuel McElroy persisted. “We would have been more cautious about sending somebody else.”

  Matt Duvall spoke up. “She never knew how to contact us, Lem. We never bothered to tell her. It’s water under the bridge, anyway,” he said. “We can’t bring back the dead, and we can’t change what’s happened to Zach, except to try to get him out of there before Chaco gets too far along. And we can’t even do that if we don’t get moving.”

  “Well, let’s hear what Miss Collinswood can tell us that’ll help us get it done, then,” John Duvall suggested. “Where will Zach be when we get there? And what kind of support does this Chaco have? How many men, how well-armed – all that kind of thing. We need to know what we’re really up against.”

  “Chaco can call up a hundred men in half a day,” Maeve said. “He has access to guns, of course, because he’s the one doing the arms movement. He sometimes takes prisoners to the abandoned Spanish fort twelve miles southwest of town. I think he would take Zachary there.”

  “A hundred men?” Lemuel McElroy blurted out. “It can’t be done. We have nothing to counteract forces like that quickly.”

  “It’s not a thing that can be done by force,” Jedediah said. “It wants some craftiness, some cunning. Maybe creating a big distraction that would draw them all away while we move in. That’s a possibility.”

  “That’s an easy thing to do,” Maeve said. “I’ll simply go back to Avecita. Chaco will forget all about Zachary.”

  “That’s crazy,” Matthew exploded. “You said you thought Chaco connected you with Zach and the spying. If you go back, he’ll kill you.”

  “I’ve handled Chaco before,” Maeve said quietly. “You’ll have your distraction, and time to rescue Zachary.”

  “You expect that man to kill you,” Levi marveled. “You’re just giving your life up for Zach.”

  “I would have given my life up for Mr. Costain if I could have,” Maeve blurted out.

  “There’s no reason for anybody to commit suicide,” Jedediah said. “Least of all you, Miss Collinswood. We’ll let you know what we decide to do. It won’t be long. We know a lot depends on speed. In the meantime, Jesse will look after you.”

  “I don’t need to be looked after!” Maeve stormed. “I’m going home to get some things, and I’m going back to Avecita. You can use my diversion, or I’ll find a way to rescue Zachary myself. But I won’t have another death on my conscience, especially a boy like that. How could you send him to that place? He couldn’t have known what he was getting into. What kind of people are you, so casual about death?”

  “Miss Collinswood, please sit down,” Jesse begged. “We’re not casual about death, and we’re not indifferent about my brother. He is young, but he’s not just a boy, and he understands how important it is for Texas to stay free, as well as how important it is to serve God no matter what the cost.”

  “I think we should use her plan,” Jedediah said. Everyone stared at him in astonishment. “Men, look at her. She’s going to go whether she has our by-you-leave or not. She’s a determined little woman. Let’s use what she’s proposed, but refine it a little. Jesse, we need to talk to Miss Collinswood, and she seems comfortable here, so I must ask you to join my grandson in the nursery and let us talk some business.”

  Jesse swept out without a word. Maeve felt stifled in the room full of men. A packed cantina full of drunken caballeros was nothing compared to these men of Parmenos.

  “Now, tell us what you want to do,” Jedediah invited, looking straight at Maeve.

  Zachary let go a scream that subsided into a long, shuddering sob as the whip raked over his naked back and sides for the tenth time. He swung on the ropes and crawling wetness trickled down from his raw wrists. Chaco coiled the whip around his own body and came very close again. Zachary could see his blood streaking Chaco’s once-white shirt.

  “I can see you are almost ready to talk to me,” he said softly. “Almost. Please, don’t think you have to be a gentleman and protect my Vienta. I have thought for some time that she was tiring of me, getting restless. Perhaps she’s afraid I’m getting old. If she chose you, it seems she is looking for someone younger.”

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Zachary gritted. “You can strip the hide off me but I can’t tell you anything about where that woman’s gone because I don’t know. I would never have relations with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”

  “Are you so virtuous? You remind me of another gringo we had to deal with not so long ago,” Chaco said, his whole expression changing. He drew the knife Zachary had recognized as belonging to Daniel Costain and slid its edge along Zachary’s sweat-drenched cheek, past his ear, over his throat with its throbbing pulse, down the center of his heaving chest. “My boss cut off his fingers. He never told us what we wanted to know. But you are so young. You cannot endue so much. Have yo
u learned something about me, about Chaco, which they would wish to know up in el Norte? Did you send my Vienta to tell them for you, when you saw you would be captured?”

  Zachary tossed his head, trying to put some distance between himself and that leering face. Chaco grabbed his chin and forced his head back around. The ropes sunk deeper into his wrists and Zachary roared in anger and pain.

  “She took the death of that other one to heart,” Chaco said, as if he had suddenly had a revelation. “I saw her twisting that ring on her finger, looking at it. She wept for him. She thought I did not see. Now I understand. She wanted to help you. She thought I would come after her, that I would not bother with you. What did you tell her?”

  Chaco lashed him five more times in rapid succession. Zachary made enough noise to satisfy anybody’s macho, he was sure, still unable to believe Chaco had convinced himself that Vienta had somehow betrayed him and that Zachary was the cause, even if he had abandoned the idea that Zachary had bedded her. He had seen her furious eyes, heard her threaten him when he commented on her accent. Zachary almost laughed at the thought that she would have done anything to help him.

  “It’s – it’s a mystery to me, where she’s gone, I swear,” Zachary gasped, almost unable to speak at all. His throat seemed as torn as his wrists. “She ... offered to have me... killed, not help me. I gave her ... no information. Why would I have any? How would I get any? You had bird dogs on me every second since I came into town.”

  Zachary desperately wanted to turn Chaco’s mind away from the woman. He welcomed an interrogation about his spying, but he was afraid, very much afraid, that he might make a misstep somehow if Chaco kept harping on Vienta. He began to fear she was in some kind of danger, how or why he couldn’t even guess, but he did know at least one thing that would whip Chaco into a fury, the possibility that Vienta was no Mexican, and he dared not let that slip.

  Chaco stared into his eyes for a long time. Then he reached up, struggling on tiptoe, callously pulling on Zachary’s shredded wrists, and cut the rope above his hands, letting him plunge to the floor but leaving him bound. Fire flashed through every whiplash criss-crossing his body. Zachary groaned deeply as he hit the floor and had no strength to move. “I’ll send someone to make you food,” Chaco said, and left the prison.

  “Look out when they make nice and offer to feed you,” Jedediah Duvall’s voice rang in his ear. “That means trouble.”

  “You mean they’ll drug the food?” Zachary asked. “I won’t eat anything.”

  “No, not necessarily that,” his father replied. “You’ll be in a bad state, about unconscious, in more pain than you can imagine. All of a sudden they’ll act like they’re going to take care of you, dress your wounds, give you water, fix food right in front of you, something sizzling and smelling so good.

  “It’s another tactic. Sometimes men are reduced to tears, so grateful that they haven’t revealed anything, thinking the torture’s over, thinking they’re going to be all right, maybe even go free. Somebody new will be introduced. Often it’s a little old man, a mamacita, a pretty girl. That harmless person might just find out what the big strong men can’t beat out of you.”

  Zachary tried to find some part of his upper body that didn’t rack him when the dirt floor touched it, but there was none. He had to sit up to get any relief, but he was so exhausted he swayed and finally collapsed on his side. Remembering his father’s words in training actually gave him some comfort. He was prepared as well as he could be, spiritually, mentally, and physically, and there was nothing fretting was going to help. Especially fretting about Vienta. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her, Zachary wondered. It was dangerous for him and for her. He had to try to focus on the pain, on something else, anything else.

  Focusing on the pain was very easy. He sat up again, making his head spin, because the contact with the floor was too much but his weakness was too great.

  “Povrecito gringo,” cried the girl who came in at that moment, hands full of cooking supplies. Someone had pulled away some of the bricks above to make a doorway and sunlight slanted in. It was Mia, who had been at the house where he had stayed. She threw everything down and Zachary drew a long, ragged breath.

  The girl hurried to dip rags in water and bathe his injuries, tears dropping into her water. “Lastimoso muñecas!” She tried awkwardly to tend his wrists. She went on talking in Spanish as she worked and Zachary tuned her out, just trying to gather a little strength to beat this new form of interrogation. He understood why it was so effective. Right now he wanted to tell the girl anything she wanted to hear, just so that cooling water would keep flowing over his wounded sides. But Zachary was fairly certain she didn’t speak English, so he had to wonder how she could interrogate him.

  The girl turned her back on him and busied herself cooking. Zachary watched her movements for a few moments, mesmerized, smelling chicken and spices that drove him out of his head with pure animal desire. Harshly he pulled himself up into a sitting position, getting faint again, rubbing all the raw spots, and forcing himself into some semblance of alertness. The girl spun around at his noisy movement and she saw that he had seized the knife she had been using and was working at his ropes.

  “No good,” she warned in broken English. “Diez men.” She pointed outside and held up ten fingers.

  Zachary dropped the dull blade and tried to take a breath that didn’t shudder all through him. The girl was only being sensible, of course. She wasn’t trying to help him, just keep herself out of trouble. And he was sure what she said was true. Maybe there was no escape. But he tried to remain sitting up, tried to keep his wits from straying again.

  “Vienta?” Zachary ventured.

  The girl looked at him, clearly angry, though he didn’t know why.

  “Chollo,” Mia said reluctantly. Zachary took that to be a place name. So Mia knew where Vienta had gone.

  “Gracias,” Zachary said, dropping his eyes, dissatisfied but not knowing how to get any more information. The girl lunged forward, grabbed his face and kissed him with startling passion. Zachary jerked back, and the whip cuts burned anew. The girl was confused, embarrassed and angry again.

  Mia slid back away from him and grabbed the scorching food off the fire. She hastily rolled some of the mixture into tortillas and shoved one into his hands. Zachary spilled more than he ate. It was messy to begin with, and his hands bound across each other made control a difficult thing. Mia fed him the second one, sitting very close.

  “¿Porque mi – uh – prisoner?” Zachary asked around a mouthful. He hoped the word for prisoner was something similar in Spanish. Apparently it was, because Mia looked uncomfortable. He felt his strength slowly returning, the throbbing of his wounds growing less. The food was very good, and it was helping a great deal.

  “Espia,” Mia sniffed, pointing at him. “Tu.”

  “What’s an espia?” Zachary asked. Hmm ... Sounds a little like spy. No, no, cazador.” His father had taught him the word for hunter, as a cover. “Javalina.”

  Mia scowled at him. “Cazador?” she repeated, and almost seemed satisfied with the possibility that he was telling the truth. “Vienta y tu?”

  “No, no,” Zachary protested. She was on that tack, too. “I couldn’t find your house in the dark. I was lost. Mi perdido. Vienta direcciones.” Zachary gasped. This was too much work, considering the pain he was in, the exhaustion he felt. But this girl might be able to help him somehow, if he could get her to trust him. Obviously Chaco hadn’t sent her to pump him. She could barely understand him. Someone might be listening, so he had to be careful, but she seemed to be his only hope.

  Mia smiled tentatively, but then the tears started welling up in her eyes again. “Afligio,” she choked. “Perdone me.”

  Zachary didn’t know why she was so upset, other than pity for him. But something seemed to be bothering her beyond that. Her eyes showed something had occurred to her. “Vienta tiene papacito viejo – old, sick,” she stammered. �
�In Chollo.” She jumped up and hurried out.

  When she had left the hut Zachary scrambled to get on his feet. He grabbed the dull knife in his hands and sawed at the ropes, renewing all the old fiery pain in his wrists, while setting himself to one side of the doorway, hoping against hope he might at least have a chance to gut Chaco as he came through. It’d be some satisfaction even if he couldn’t get away. The ropes fell off his wrists and he whispered a prayer of thanks for the relief. He crouched and got the knife into position to drive upward hard and fast at anyone who came through the opening in the wall.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be able to do this?” Jesse asked as Maeve climbed up on the buckboard with John Duvall. Lacking the family height and blue eyes, he had been chosen to “go native.” Maeve had been impressed at his transformation into an elderly Mexican gentleman, lying in the back of the wagon. “You’re still limping such a lot.”

  “It can’t be helped,” Maeve, who had returned to her Vienta persona with borrowed shoes, responded. “I bring my sick old papacito into town, and Chaco is satisfied, if not happy. He’ll have to forgo the pleasure of my company because my father is so sick I’ll have to give him my bed and spend all my spare time caring for him.” As if on cue, John produced a racking cough and wheezing breaths that made Jesse burst out laughing.

  “That sounds so real,” she marveled. “You know, Miss Collinswood, I thank you for a peek at what our men do. I’ve never seen even the beginning of their adventures before. They protect us women so well, we have no inkling. Oh, you’ll need this.” She passed up Daniel Costain’s ring. Maeve hesitated to take it.

  “That man Chaco has to see it right where it should be,” Jesse said. “Otherwise he’ll know something’s wrong.”

  “I was going to tell him I sold it to pay for my sister’s burial,” Maeve said. “I don’t want to take it from you.”