Sloan had spent a great deal of time practicing the language after she had caught Cruz forcing Cisco to learn English so he would be able to communicate with his mother, and she understood the vaquero amazingly well.
“There are three covered wagons camped at the northern border of Dolorosa,” he said, “filled with
gringos
. A wheel is off one of their wagons. I do not think they know how to fix it.”
“Did you speak with them?” Doña Lucia asked.
“Oh no, señora. I came quickly to tell my patrón what I found.” His face filled with disdain for the
gringos
. “They cannot care much for their children. They have no sentry posted to watch for Comanches or—”
“They have children with them?” Sloan interrupted in Spanish.
The vaquero turned to her and Sloan saw in his wrinkled brow the same disdain that must have been accorded the white men with the wagons. “
Sí,
señorita. Two young boys and a little girl.”
Sloan turned to Doña Lucia. “We have to help them.”
The vaquero looked to Doña Lucia to see whether she agreed.
Doña Lucia bent her head slightly to the vaquero in dismissal. “You may go now. I will tell my son what you have seen.”
He never looked at Sloan again, only nodded his head in obeisance and left.
“It will be dark before Cruz comes back. We have to send help now,” Sloan said. “Those people are in danger every moment their wagon is disabled.”
“This is not your concern. My son will settle the matter when he returns.”
“But there are children—”
“My son will take care of the matter,” Doña Lucia said, her voice hard.
“If you won’t do something, I will.” Sloan was up and gone from the table before Doña Lucia could say anything to stop her. She ran outside after the vaquero, who had stepped back into his saddle.
“Wait!”
The vaquero paused at Sloan’s command, uncertain whether he should obey, but afraid to disobey.
“Where are the wagons? Can you take me back to them?” she asked in Spanish.
Startled, the vaquero’s eyes skipped over the dress she wore, wondering how a woman such as she could hope to be any help. “
Sí,
I can take you to them. But how—”
“Wait here while I change into riding clothes, and I’ll come with you. Don’t leave. Ask someone to saddle my horse for me.” She waited a moment to make sure the vaquero understood before she whirled and ran back into the house.
Sloan stripped quickly to her chemise and pantalets, then yanked on her osnaburg trousers, a long-sleeved gingham shirt, vest, socks, and Wellingtons. She stuck her flat-brimmed hat on her head and strapped on a knife with her belt. Grabbing the two Colt Pattersons in the holsters designed to fit across her saddle, she settled them across her shoulder. Finally, she picked up her Kentucky rifle and checked to make sure she had ammunition.
Sloan had seen the gruesome remains of a Comanche attack in the past and had no desire to be a part of such a tragedy. She would make sure the women and children were taken somewhere safe to wait until the wheel was repaired. A broken-down covered wagon in the Texas wilderness was not a safe place to be.
By the time she reached the dining room again, she felt more like herself. It was amazing what a difference it made to be wearing pants and boots. “I’ll be back as quickly as possible. If I’m not here when Cruz returns, tell him where I am.”
Sloan had completely forgotten about Tomasita, but the young woman’s frightened voice stopped her before she could leave. “Why are you doing this?”
“Those people need help.”
“But you do not even know them!”
Sloan smiled at Tomasita’s naïveté. “Neither do the Comanches. That won’t stop them from killing and scalping the men, raping the women, or taking the children captive. All I’m offering is simple Texas hospitality. I’m sure Cruz would do the same if he knew they needed help.”
“Why do you not wait for Don Cruz?”
“If I wait it may be too late.” With that, she turned on her heel and left.
It never occurred to Sloan to wait for Cruz, because she was used to doing things for herself, used to taking action where action was warranted. Nor did she consider what Cruz’s reaction would be to her precipitous journey. It simply didn’t matter. Delay might mean death to those who were stranded.
It took nearly two hours to reach their destination. By then it was late afternoon. But Sloan knew the fate of the immigrants long before they reached the wagons.
There were vultures circling overhead.
“There is nothing we can do, señorita. We must go back now,” the vaquero said when he spied the black cloud of birds.
“Someone may still be alive,” Sloan said.
The vaquero shook his head. “Those who may have survived the Comanches are better left to the vultures. It is not safe here. The Comanches may still be near. We must go back.”
“You go back if you must. I’m going on.”
The vaquero was clearly torn, but he remembered that Doña Lucia had agreed to tell El Patrón what he had found, and surely El Patrón could not blame him if he did not follow this strange, foolish woman to her death. “
Adiós, señorita. Vaya con Dios.
”
Sloan sat for a moment without moving. The vaquero was probably right. About everything. The danger was real. The possibility of finding someone alive was slim. And yet, what if someone had survived? She spurred her horse and headed for the immigrants’ wagons.
What she saw when she arrived at the camp sickened her.
A young man lay where he had fallen, an arrow in his throat and another in his chest. He had been partially scalped, and only patches of his red hair remained.
She forced her gaze away from him and found another young man sprawled not far away, an arrow in his leg and several more in his arms and chest.
She saw a woman on her side, with her arm outstretched toward one of the fallen men. She had an arrow in her stomach . . . but her back looked like a pincushion.
The bile rose in Sloan’s throat. She quickly searched the barren plains for any sign of the Comanches, but saw nothing. Were the Comanches still out there? She felt the hairs rise on her neck. Maybe they were watching her right now, so rocklike and still that she couldn’t discern them.
She steeled herself to walk farther into the pitiful circle of Conestoga wagons. Here she found yet another man and woman. The woman had been shot in the back of the head. The man had put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Flies buzzed around their heads, nature’s fanfare for two tragic deaths.
Sloan staggered a few steps away and dropped to her knees to retch. When she was done, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and turned back to survey the carnage.
The two boys and the little girl the vaquero had mentioned—the children she had come specifically to rescue—were not here. Sloan shuddered to think of their fate as captives of the brutal Comanches.
She wished she had never come here. And she was getting the hell out of here as fast as she could!
Sloan started walking toward her horse, which was tied to one of the high yellow Conestoga wheels. As soon as she turned her back on the dead couple, she heard a noise behind her.
She broke into a run.
The noise followed her.
Sloan was too afraid to look back and identify the danger, afraid of what she would see. She had nearly reached her horse when she heard a child’s screech of terror.
Sloan whirled in her tracks and was astonished to see a fragile little girl of five or six racing toward her at breakneck speed. The little girl threw herself into Sloan’s arms, which were open to receive her, and clung desperately to Sloan’s neck while her legs wrapped themselves in a death grip around Sloan’s waist. The child repeated one word over and over, sobbing hysterically.
“Mama, mama, mama, mama, mama . . .”
“It’s all right, baby,” Sloan crooned as she rocked the child in her arms. “Everything’s all right now. I have you now. You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Easy, baby. It’s all right.”
Sloan spoke the words without realizing what she said. Nothing in this child’s world was all right. Nothing was okay. But she rocked and crooned until the child was quiet, though the little girl continued to shiver in Sloan’s arms.
“Do you have a name?” Sloan asked.
The little girl nodded solemnly.
“What is it?”
“Betsy.”
“How would you like to take a ride on my horse, Betsy?”
“I’m not allowed to ride. I’m too little.”
“How would it be if I hold you in my arms?”
“Okay.”
Sloan carried Betsy over to her stallion and reached out to stroke the animal’s neck. “He’s a very friendly horse. Would you like to pet him, too?”
The little blond girl reached out a hand and tentatively patted the horse. When the animal turned its head toward her, she quickly snatched back her hand.
“He won’t bite you,” Sloan reassured the child. “He’s only curious. All right, now. I’m going to set you up here in the saddle and—”
Sloan froze as she recognized the sound of unshod horses coming at a gallop. She yanked Betsy down out of the saddle and settled the child on her hip. She grabbed her revolvers and a belt of ammunition and threw them under the nearest Conestoga. As the hoofbeats came nearer she crouched low to the ground, cocooning the child in her arms as she slipped under the wagon for the meager protection it provided.
As she did, the sun slipped beyond the horizon. It was the moment between “can see” and “can’t.” She knew the Comanches never attacked at night, afraid that if they were killed, their spirits would be doomed to wander forever in the darkness. If she could only hold off the savages for a little while, surely Cruz would come looking for her and find them before morning.
She curled her body around the child at the same time she reached for one of the Pattersons. The Comanches would not find her easy prey. She didn’t intend to be taken without a fight.
“I’
VE COME TO SEE
S
LOAN
S
TEWART.
”
Tomasita stared entranced into the gold-flecked hazel eyes of the young man who stood before her. His tall, lean body was slouched deceptively in an easygoing, loose-limbed posture. His thumbs were hooked into the waist of his fringed buckskin trousers, his right hip cocked at a comfortable angle. “She is not here.”
“Where is she?”
“I do not know.”
The young man flashed her a teasing, confident smile that took her breath away, and Tomasita realized she should not have answered the door. Never having greeted a man without her father or her duenna to chaperon, she had no idea what she should say or do next.
She was horribly conscious of the casual way she was dressed. Her short-sleeved embroidered white
camisa
had a wide yoke that tended to slip off her shoulders and hug the swell of her breasts and her plain black wool skirt didn’t come down far enough to conceal the simple leather sandals on her feet. She looked more like one of the
pobres,
the peasants who lived in the village, than the future wife of the don.
She couldn’t help staring at the stranger, noting the triangle of bare bronze skin at the opening of his navy blue linsey-woolsey shirt, the size and shape of his hands as they splayed across his belly, and the blunt fingertips that drew her gaze to the display of his masculinity in the form-fitting buckskins.
She followed the movement of his hands as he slipped his worn, flat-brimmed felt hat off his head, releasing a tumble of sun-streaked brown hair over his brow. Then he thrust his fingers through the silky stuff to shove it away from his sun-browned face.
Tomasita knew she should speak, but she found her senses occupied with the curious feelings roiling about inside her. Her abdomen pulled tight, as though someone had yanked a drawstring shut. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath and brought her hand up to her chest as though that might prod her lungs into action.
She remained silent, unmoving, overwhelmed.
The matter was resolved for her when the tall stranger pushed the door farther open and stepped inside.
“I’m Luke Summers. Sloan’s brother.”
“Oh.” Tomasita searched for something to say besides how relieved she was that he was related to Don Cruz’s guest and not some bandido who had come to rob the hacienda and ravish her. She chided herself for her vivid imagination, but with the wild stories she had been told since she had arrived in Texas, surely it was understandable.
“May I come in?” Luke asked.
Since he was already inside, Tomasita said, “But of course, come in,” and stepped back quickly as he closed the door behind him.
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately, Tomasita thought with a wistful sigh as she sneaked a glance at the handsome man from beneath lowered lashes—Doña Lucia heard her speaking to someone and came to investigate.
“Who is it, Tomasita?”
“Señor Summers has come to see Señorita Stewart.” Tomasita saw the censure in Doña Lucia’s eyes, and hurried to add, “I was going to come find you—”
“Go to your room, Tomasita.”
Tomasita dropped her chin to her chest and lowered her eyes, humiliated at being ordered about like a child in the presence of the handsome young man. But she did not dare disobey. She knew Doña Lucia was only acting to protect her reputation.
She had been wrong to open the door, wrong to speak to the stranger without a chaperon present. The only dowry she had to offer a husband here in this new land was her purity. Don Cruz would not want a wife who had been sullied by the touch of another.
Yet Luke Summers had not threatened her. She had felt only warmth as he had gazed into her eyes. She stole a peek over her shoulder before she left the room and found his golden eyes admiring her. And then—he winked at her!
Tomasita gasped in disbelief. No man had ever presumed to do such a thing! Was this the result of her wanton boldness in answering the door unchaperoned?
Not watching where she was going, she stumbled over a rough woven rug made of
jerga
. Her blush spread heat from her neck to her cheeks. Her hands flew to her face to hide the rosy marks as she fled the room.