Authors: Jennifer Blake
Charro hesitated no more than an instant, staring at Refugio with bafflement in his eyes. Then he said, “We ride.”
What followed over the next week was a marathon of stamina and wits and ragged, protesting nerves. The band slept little. A double watch was mounted on the horses; it was a favorite tactic of the Indians to leave their prey afoot and therefore easier to overcome. Every inch of their advance was carefully studied, as well as every foot of their back trail.
Perhaps because of their caution, the Apaches seemed aware of their knowledge of their presence. The Indian warriors began to show themselves for brief moments, flitting across the trail, ghosting through the outer darkness beyond the campfire at night, or else allowing themselves to be silhouetted against the skyline after the mesquite thicket was left behind them. The tactic was wearing, for every glimpse could as easily presage an attack as not.
Fear could only last so long, however, before the body rebelled and numbed that response. Exhaustion also did its work, so that after a while they all rode in stoic silence, watchful but once more enduring.
One of the hardest things was losing the illusion of freedom. There had been such pleasure in it, while it lasted, that its lack was painful. Pilar hated the sense of being hemmed in on both sides, of being contained and controlled and observed. Like Refugio, she often wondered in despair if she would ever be able to please herself, ever be able to come and go without trepidation, or build a life solely to suit herself.
They had stopped one evening in a small grove of scrub oaks, the only protection on what had once more become open plains with a hauntingly familiar look of Spain. The shade was welcome, for it had grown hot and dry as spring advanced into early summer. Flies droned around them with a heavy, indolent sound. The leaves overhead whispered in the constant breeze. The grove had long been a favorite stopping place, for the charred remains of old campfires were scattered here and there, and they found a rusted breastplate half buried in the sandy earth.
Pilar and Isabel sat somewhat apart from the others, sharing a seat on a tree trunk felled by some long-past storm while they ate their late meal of beans and bacon. After a time Isabel sent Pilar a glance from under her near colorless lashes.
“Forgive me if I pry into what doesn't concern me,” the girl said, her voice soft, “but is there something wrong between you and Refugio?”
“Wrong? What do you mean?” Pilar put a piece of biscuit into her mouth and chewed it slowly.
“You hardly ever speak to each other, almost never touch. You sleep beside him every night and he covers you with his blanket, but if he does more, no one can tell.”
Pilar gave the other girl a long look as she swallowed. Her voice cool, she said, “Should anyone be able to tell?”
“You are angry because you think I'm prying. I swear it's only that I'm concerned, as a friend.” Isabel tossed what was left of her biscuit away in the direction of a hovering bird before she went on. “I thought you cared for him; it seemed so on the ship.”
“A great deal has changed since then.”
“Has it? How?” Isabel persisted.
“How can you ask? With the fire, the voyage upriver, Don Esteban, and then the Apaches, there has been neither time nor strength for indulging in . . . lovemaking.”
“But would you, if there had not been all these things?”
“What do you care?” Pilar asked in hard tones. “You are only concerned about Refugio. Do you think I should serve him in bed simply because I am with him?”
“It isn't bed I was thinking of,” Isabel said in soft reproof. “He needs someone. He needs you.”
“I haven't seen he needs anyone, least of all me.”
“You are mistaken. You saved his life on the ship. He willed himself to live because of you.”
“Don't be ridiculous. All I did was force him to abandon his pose of illness.”
“You think so? There was more to it than that, much more. I don't know what you did, but you changed him. He isn't the same, not at all. I told you once that he is a man more sensitive than most, though he has learned to control it for his own protection. Because of you, he is living much closer to the edge than ever before, and the reason is because he is permitting himself to feel more than since his father and his sister died. You can't desert him now.”
“He has you to be his champion. Why would he need anyone else?”
“I . . . don't know the answer to that. I used to think he feared that his love would bring me harm because I might be used as a hostage to entrap him. Or else that he was holding himself aloof because he had nothing to offer except a name that had been dishonored. Sometimes I even told myself that he thought I was not strong enough to bear the great power of the love he had locked inside him. It was all foolishness. The truth, as I have seen since you came, was that he could not feel for me what I felt for him.”
There was such pain in the other girl's face that compassion rose inside Pilar. With it was an answering pain. “It may be,” she said, “that he feels nothing for me, either. Have you considered that?”
Isabel shook her head. “You have hurt each other, I know. There are things that he has had to do that are hard to understand, much less forgive. He makes a sacrifice of himself so easily that it sometimes seems he doesn't care. That isn't true. You must be careful not to hurt him anymore.”
Isabel spoke so logically that it was difficult to remember that she sometimes told artistic lies, that she lived in a world of her own fantasies. Isabel saw things not as they were, but as she wanted them to be. To believe what such a person said would be stupid. Yet for a brief instant Pilar wanted desperately to believe her.
Out of the irritation caused by her own weakness, she said, “What of Baltasar? You are hurting him, too, with this infatuation for Refugio.”
“I know, but I can't help it. I didn't ask him to love me. I don't know why he does.”
“You could help by not talking about Refugio as if he was your savior.”
“But he was!” Isabel cried.
“Was he really, or is that just a story you made up? And even if he did save you in some way, must you talk about it in front of Baltasar? Can't you think of his feelings, even if you can't return them?”
Tears rose, glistening in Isabel's eyes. “I don't hurt him on purpose, it just happens.”
“That doesn't make it easier for him to bear.”
“I know, I know. But sometimes I have to talk about what Refugio did just to make him notice me for a small moment. Refugio dislikes it as much as Baltasar, I can tell, but I can't help it.”
Maybe Isabel couldn't help it, Pilar thought, just as the girl couldn't seem to stop weaving her tales of being swept away from an existence of misery and humiliation by Refugio. People did strange things to soothe the hurting they felt inside, no matter what the cause of it might be.
It was a quiet night. No coyotes howled. The wind whispered in the leaves of the scrub oaks. The piece of a moon sailing overhead was pale and kept its face turned away. Pilar lay wakeful for a long time, though she slept finally with her cheek pillowed on Refugio's arm.
The Apaches attacked at dawn.
They rode down on them over the waving grass of the plains just as the light was turning from dark blue to gray. Charro and Enrique were saddling the horses, which were tied to the trunks of the stunted oaks they had camped underneath. Baltasar was making up the packs for the mules that had been brought in but were still hobbled. The three women were picking up and folding the bedrolls to be placed in the packs, while Vicente scrubbed out the breakfast skillet with sand. Refugio had already mounted and ridden out a short distance. It was he who saw the Indians coming, their bobbing black forms silhouetted against the skyline. Whipping his mount around, he sent it galloping back toward the camp.
They had made their plans, knowing it might be only a matter of time before they must defend themselves. Baltasar, the moment he saw Refugio turn and race toward them and heard the distant, pipping yells, pulled out his musket and shot the nearest mule. Charro dragged the other one into place and killed it. They threw the loaded pack saddles into the space between the dead animals, forming a bulwark. While Baltasar reloaded at speed, Pilar and Vicente yanked the extra powder and musket balls from the packs, then Vicente took up their extra musket. Isabel dug out the two rolls of bandaging they had with them, and she and Pilar laid everything out on a hastily spread cloth. Within seconds they were throwing themselves down behind the makeshift rampart.
Everyone except Doña Luisa. The noblewoman had been instructed in what she should do. It was her job to be sure their water barrel was conveniently to hand and not exposed to fire. Instead, she was standing with her hands clenched and her wide eyes fastened on the swiftly approaching enemy.
“Luisa!” Enrique called. “Get down!”
She turned toward him an instant, but swung back immediately toward the Indians. Her face was pale and her lips writhed in a soundless tirade of impotent rage.
Enrique leaped to his feet and ran to catch the woman's arm. He dragged her bodily toward the barricade of dead mules, shoving her down beside him. “Get down, I said,” he told her in rough tones. “You are to reload. Remember it, and think of nothing else if you value your life.”
Doña Luisa gave him an angry stare, but there was also a degree of comprehension in her face that had not been there before. Looking around her, she found the water barrel and rolled it closer behind the nearest pack saddle.
The shrieks and yells of the Apaches had a thin, eerie sound in the cool morning air. It was not a large war party; still, their painted faces, streaked with white and black and ocher, we're fearsome in the pale light. Five or six of them cradled muskets across their bodies. One warrior shouldered his and fired at Refugio as he raced ahead of them. The sound of the shot boomed across the rolling ground, though the ball went wide.
Refugio crouched lower over his mount's neck, looking back over his shoulder. The horse was running flat out, his eyes wild. Refugio looked back at the barricade, then swerved hard to his left out of the band's line of fire. A scattering of arrows whistled after him, burying themselves in the ground to one side of him. More arrows followed, whistling in every direction, an arcing fusillade that fell around the barricade in a deadly shower.
At that moment another Apache raised his musket. He held it steady against the motion of his horse, then got off a shot. The blue-gray smoke billowed back over his shoulder. In the same instant Charro gave a shout and the guns of the men of the band roared out in unison. Refugio was struck. The straw hat he wore was whipped from his head. He weaved, trying to stay upright, then fell in boneless grace to land facedown in the grass some thirty yards away.
Beyond Refugio two Apaches threw up their arms and catapulted backward off their horses, and a third reeled back before flinging himself forward to hug his mount's neck. The others came on, whooping and firing and brandishing lances.
Pilar, frantically pushing a patch and ball into Charro's musket, spared the attackers no more than a glance before twisting around to look toward where Refugio lay. He was stirring, lifting his head, trying to drag himself toward the barricade. Pilar rose to her knees only to be pulled down once more by Charro. Beside her Isabel was screaming, the sound grating with grief and fear. As Charro called in impatient haste for his musket, Pilar turned back to thrust it into his hands.
The band fired again at near point-blank range. Two more Apaches were flung backward off their mounts. The rest wheeled in ragged formation, pounding away to their right past the bulwark. They circled in a wide arc, streaming one behind the other in wild and reckless abandon.
“Refugio,” Isabel moaned, struggling up from beside Baltasar the instant the way was clear, her eyes blinded by the tears that overflowed down her splotched face. The big man tried to hold her, but she wrenched her arm from his grasp. She put her foot on the top of a pack saddle and jumped over it, running toward where Refugio was hauling himself along. Vicente also threw down his musket and leaped up, sprinting after Isabel. Charro was reloading his own gun, his attention on the Indians galloping in a wide circle just out of range. Pilar rolled away from him and came to her feet. Lifting her skirts, she cleared the barricade to follow Vicente.
Isabel was kneeling over Refugio, sobbing as she dabbed at the blood that gleamed wet and red in his hair. Vicente, as he reached his brother, caught one arm, trying to help him to his feet. Plunging forward the last few steps, Pilar grasped the other to draw Refugio upward with desperate strength.
The Apaches were charging again. The ground vibrated underfoot with the pounding of their horses' hoofs. Their shrill cries pierced the air, making the hair rise on the back of Pilar's neck. They were moving so slowly, she and Vicente and Refugio. They started and stopped and blundered over the ground. Refugio's legs would not quite sustain him, so that he staggered, keeping halfway erect only by fiercely sustained will. Isabel, trying to hold his hand, kept getting in the way.
Abruptly, Isabel released him. “His hat,” she cried, and whirled, running back the way they had come.
Pilar swung her head to stare back over her shoulder. The Indians were bearing down on them, screaming and yelling, firing wildly with bow and musket. Their faces were strained copper masks daubed with paint. More naked than not, riding without saddles or bits, they seemed like demonic creatures part man, part horse, and wholly malevolent.