Desperado

  She propped her elbows on the table and braced her chin in her cupped hands. “What about birth control?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “The way I feel, I know I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. We’d probably have babies coming out of our ears. A dozen, at least.” He shuddered. “It boggles the mind.”

  She smiled widely, not as appalled at the prospect as he. “Forget Pablo and the parachutes. Let’s stay.”

  His face went white. “Don’t even kid about that.”

  “Who said I was kidding?”

  He took her hand again and lifted it to his lips, nipping at the knuckles with his teeth before pressing a light kiss over them. “Behave, Helen. You promised.”

  “I did?” Geez, just that playful touch of his lips on her skin set all kinds of indecent thoughts racing through her mind. She tugged on his hand and reciprocated the gesture, giving his knuckles a little bite and a kiss, adding a quick lick of her tongue.

  He exhaled sharply.

  She inhaled sharply.

  A dangerous game, and they both knew it.

  Rafe started to lean across the table, his lips coming closer and closer to hers.

  “Well, don’t you two jist beat all—” a booming female voice interrupted them with fortunate timing—“making lovey-dovey all the time. Tarnation! How long did you say you bin married?”

  A strapping young woman of almost six feet, big-boned and dressed like the miners right down to her heavy boots, dragged a chair up to their table and straddled it from the back. Mary Stanfield, known only as “The Indiana Girl” because her father owned the hotel in which they were eating, smiled at them companionably. She had become a good friend to them this past week, delighting in their horror over the five-mile trek down the mountain. Last spring, she’d walked down that same dangerous trail carrying a fifty-pound sack of flour on her back.

  “What kin I do fer you folks?” she said, chortling as Rafe and Helen jerked their hands apart. “We got Hangtown fries on the menu today.”

  “What are Hangtown fries?” Helen asked, putting her hands on her lap under the table. They still trembled from Rafe’s kiss. She saw Rafe do the same thing, then wink.

  “You ne’er heard of Hangtown fries? Land’s sake! Where you been? They’s a mix of fried-up eggs and bacon and oysters. Mighty fine eatin’ ta fill a hollow stummick, iffen I do say so myself.”

  “Oysters!” she exclaimed.

  “No, I don’t think Helen and I need any oysters,” Rafe added drolly. “I’ll just have the usual. Venison steak and coffee.”

  “We’re out of taters.”

  “That’s okay. Just give me some extra bread.”

  “Is there any trout?” Helen asked.

  “There’s allus trout. If there’s one thing the Feather gives us, ’ceptin’ chilblains, it’s a good supply of fish. Lordy, sometimes I smell them scaly critters in my sleep.”

  “I’ll have the trout then. And coffee, too.”

  After delivering their food, and a special treat of blueberry cobbler, Mary sat down with them again. “You folks thought anymore ’bout my suggestion that you link up with Zeb on his claim?”

  Helen glanced over at the corner where Zebediah Franklin sat, snoring drunkenly, as usual. Apparently, the old man had a promising claim high up in the mountains that he’d abandoned after his wife died six months before.

  “You know we can’t leave Rich Bar until Pablo arrives,” Helen reminded Mary. They’d told her that the young bandit had an important possession of theirs without giving her too many details about their past.

  Mary shrugged.

  “Besides,” Rafe added, “Zeb’s claim is probably taken over by someone else by now.”

  “There ain’t too many men willing ta work that high in the mountains. It’s a mighty lonely spot, I hear.”

  “So, you’re saying that the spot is so remote and dangerous that even a Mexican could file a claim without pure-blooded Americans having any objections?” Rafe remarked caustically.

  “Don’t go takin’ that wrathy tone with me,” Mary snapped. “I ain’t got nuthin’ ta do with them furriner rules.”

  “I’m sick of rules,” Rafe muttered.

  “Me, too.” Helen flashed a secret smile at Rafe.

  He groaned.

  “I got some more of them dime novels,” Mary told Helen. “Yank brought ’em over yestiddy from his store on Smith’s Bar.”

  Gunfire rang out down the street, but that wasn’t unusual. Guns were always being fired. This time, though, a woman’s screams accompanied the repeated firing, and men started running down the street, past the Indiana House, toward the outskirts of town. One of the miners yelled in, “Some Mex greaser jist killed Frank Bollings and his partner, Hiram Flagg. They’s gonna be a lynchin’, fer sure.”

  More gunfire followed.

  Rafe and Helen exchanged wary looks, then rose to rush after Mary and the excited miners. Helen thought about her earlier teasing with Rafe, how she’d hinted that staying in the past might not be such a bad idea. She changed her mind now.

  Rafe put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. “Maybe we should go home. Maybe I’d be willing to jump off a cliff with a homemade parachute, after all. Maybe it’s time to leave this hellhole of the past.”

  Unfortunately, they soon learned that it was too late.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Babies soften even the hardest hearts . . .

  A high-pitched scream rang in the air, and went on and on and on.

  Mary rushed along with them down the crowded street, drawn by the wrenching cry. Even Zeb had awakened from his drunken stupor to lope behind them, remarking woozily, between belches, “Mebbe it’s the haints come ta punish us fer our fornicatin’ ways.”

  “Shut up, you old fool,” Mary called back. “You ain’t done no more fornicatin’ than I have in a good spell. If there’s any punishin’ ta be ladled out, it’ll come from the Good Lord’s pitcher and it’ll be fer all the corn likker you bin suckin’ up.”

  “Hell’s bells! Do you allus have ta talk so gol-durned loud, Mary? My stummick feels like the bottom of a milk churn.”

  “If you weren’t so rip-snortin’ corned all the time—”

  “Oh, my God!” Helen shrieked, stopping short. She couldn’t believe the horror unfolding before her.

  Rosalinda, the Mexican prostitute from The Lucky Dollar, was being held back by two men, one of them her boss, Jack Fulton, and the other, Curtis Bancroft, owner of the Empire Hotel. The wild-eyed young woman was covered with blood, although she appeared to have no wounds. She was alternately screaming and crying, then throwing out insults to the angry prospectors. “Ay, Diós mío! You bastards! You killed my husband. Damn you all to hell. Oh, Carlos! Mi esposo!”

  On the ground lay her husband, Carlos, Pablo’s brother. Blood poured from a fatal bullet wound delivered to his chest. Beside him on the ground were two white men, presumably Hiram Flagg and Frank Bollings, their faces and necks and chests covered with multiple stab wounds.

  Rosalinda held a bloody knife in her hand.

  In the background, near the canvas-roofed hovel where Carlos and Rosalinda had lived, stood a dry-eyed Mexican boy of about eight, holding a wailing, near-naked infant in his small arms.

  “Que pasa? What’s going on here?” Rafe said, pushing men aside to step forward. He addressed Rosalinda, who was still restrained by the two men.

  Her crazed eyes fixed on Rafe, recognizing a potential lifeline in this mob of bloodthirsty men calling for a lynching. She spewed out a fiery explanation in Spanish, at one point spitting on the two white men at her feet. This caused the miners to edge closer with raised fists. Rafe questioned her in her native tongue, gesticulating with his hands.

  Finally, Rafe told the crowd, “She says these two men broke into her home and tried to rape her.”

  “Ya cain’t rape a whore. Ever’one knows that,” one man shouted.

  Rafe ignored that ludicrous remark. ??
?She says the men were drunk. She was in bed with her husband. Her two children were sleeping on a pallet on the floor when the men barged in.”

  Mr. Bancroft spoke up then. “That’s no excuse for killing two men.”

  The miners heartily agreed, chanting, “Lynch the harlot.”

  “I’d like to remind you, Mr. Bancroft, that there are three dead men here. Not two,” Rafe said coldly.

  Mr. Bancroft’s face flushed red and his lips thinned into a surly frown. He did not like being corrected by Rafe. Could it be because he was a Mexican?

  “When Carlos asked the men to leave, they refused,” Rafe continued to translate. “Carlos declined to leave his home with his two children so these men could rape his unwilling wife. That’s when they shot him without warning or provocation.”

  His words prompted many shouts from the crowd.

  “That’s her word.”

  “Who sez a whore is ever unwillin’?”

  “He wuz jist a dirty Mex. A furriner. Ain’t like he wuz a real American. The Jezebel had no call ta stab Hiram and Frank. They wuz good fellers. Good American fellers.”

  Helen had met Hiram and Frank. In her opinion, the two men had been scum. Mary made a clucking sound of disgust next to her, obviously sharing her opinion.

  “Who are you ta be speakin’ fer Rosalinda?” Mr. Stanfield, Mary’s father, spoke up. He was a good-hearted, honest man, but clearly a product of his primitive time and place.

  Rafe raised his chin defiantly. “I’m her lawyer. Surely, even a Mexican has a right to a trial in this country. I thought that was the American way.”

  Some of the miners didn’t like the challenge at all, and their grumbling threats grew louder.

  “Perhaps we should string him up, too,” one red-faced New Englander said in a thick Boston accent. “In fact, let’s get rid of all these greasers in town. They’re always stealing our gold and our women. Maybe we need to teach them all a lesson.”

  “Now, now, we’ll have none of that,” Mr. Bancroft said, trying to be a voice of sanity in an insane situation. “Let’s take Rosalinda back to the Empire. Since we got no jail, we’ll lock her in one of my hotel rooms. Tomorrow we’ll call a miners’ meeting, and select a jury ta decide the case. By the law.”

  “You kin be her lawyer, if you want,” Mr. Stanfield added, sizing Rafe up with disdain. “And, yes, we got our laws. Even here.” He surveyed the mob. “Ain’t that right, fellers?”

  The disgruntled mob soon disbanded, following the keening woman and her captors to her “jail.” Mary went with them to help secure the woman in her “cell.” After a wagon came to cart off the three bodies for burial, Rafe and Helen stood, alone, staring at each other with dismay.

  Well, not quite alone. The little Mexican boy stood frozen near the hut, shifting from foot to foot under the heavy burden of the baby he held precariously on one hip. The infant’s cries had faded to a long string of unending whimpers.

  Helen went over and hunkered down in front of them. “Can I help?” she asked softly, reaching for the baby.

  He clutched the infant even tighter, causing the baby to start screaming again. All the time, his huge black eyes stared at her as if she were the enemy. The only sign of emotion in the boy was the trembling of his lower lip.

  Helen patted the baby’s filthy head and tried to calm its sobs, to no avail. “Shhh,” she crooned, “everything will be all right. That’s it, darling.” The baby’s gaunt face reddened and it screamed even louder.

  “Hell!” Rafe muttered and walked over to them, dragging his feet reluctantly. He shot out a string of words in Spanish to the boy, who immediately handed the baby over to him.

  “What did you say to him?” Helen asked.

  “I told him to hand over the kid or I’d kick his ass.”

  “Oh, you did not!”

  Rafe said something foul under his breath about not being able to escape babies, even in a nightmare.

  “What’s wrong?” Helen asked worriedly fifteen minutes later when the baby persisted in crying, even when Rafe cradled it against his shoulder and patted its back in an expert fashion.

  “Follow me,” he said, ducking his head to enter the little makeshift house.

  It was only a ten-by-ten-foot structure with a dirt floor, a homemade rope bed, a rough table with two chairs, and a Mexican rag rug on the ground. They must have cooked outdoors because there was no stove or fireplace.

  “See if you can find some soap and water and a clean cloth to diaper the baby,” he ordered Helen. He told the boy, who hesitantly disclosed that his name was Hector, to prepare a sugar teat until they could take the infant to be nursed by his mother at the Empire.

  Rafe laid the baby gently on the bed and undid the soiled cloth tied on either side of its tiny hips. It was a girl. With a grunt of disgust, he tossed the stinking rags to the corner. The baby’s cries died down to soft hiccoughs as she stared up at Rafe, who was alternately blowing on her grubby, sunken stomach and crooning soft Spanish words. “Hush, niña. Hush now.”

  Helen handed Rafe a tin basin with a scrap of cotton fabric and a pottery bowl of soft, pungent soap. Little by little, Rafe washed the still whimpering child from dark silky hair to perfect toes.

  He inhaled sharply when he was done. “Get a load of this.”

  The little girl’s sallow skin was covered with flea and mosquito bites, and her bottom was raw with diaper rash.

  “And she’s sick, too. The color of her skin isn’t right.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  He shook his head hopelessly. “I don’t know. Maybe jaundice. Maybe worse. Her ribs are practically sticking out.”

  On Rafe’s advice, Helen rushed back to their hotel room to get her ointment. She asked around for a doctor, but learned there was none residing in the town. Returning shortly, she stopped in the doorway, frozen with disbelief. Her heart expanded almost to breaking and her eyes burned at the sight before her.

  Rafe sat on the bed with his back propped against the headboard, softly singing a Spanish lullaby. The baby was cradled in one arm against his chest, sucking rhythmically on the hunk of sugar-coated cloth he held at its pursed lips. Hector cuddled against his other side, fast asleep, with a skinny arm thrown over Rafe’s waist, holding on for dear life. In sleep, tears made white tracks down his grungy face.

  Rafe looked up, noticing her for the first time, and their eyes locked for a long moment.

  “It doesn’t mean a thing,” he said finally. His face was blank, but his voice was raspy.

  “How can you . . . I just don’t understand you, Rafe. I mean, how can a man who is so good with children not want any of his own?” she cried out.

  “If I’m good with kids, it’s because I’ve been surrounded by them all my life. I had no choice,” he said bitterly. “But I’ll be damned if I make the same choice for my own future.”

  Hot air choked Helen’s lungs. She could think of no words to convince him he was wrong.

  The baby girl sighed, and the makeshift teat fell out of her darling angel-bow mouth. Then, reflexively, her tiny fist closed over Rafe’s finger, clutching. Her lips settled into sleepy exhaustion, her sunken chest wheezing up and down.

  Rafe gazed down at the infant and his lips curved with tenderness as he traced a knuckle along her downy cheek. He seemed to catch himself immediately. Glaring at Helen, he repeated, “It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  But Helen was hopeful for the first time in days. And she couldn’t love Rafe more than she did at that moment.

  Trouble followed them like vultures . . .

  The baby died the next night.

  They hanged Rosalinda four days later.

  Helen sat at the Indiana House with Mary afterward, shaking from the ordeal. “How could they? Oh, it was horrible!”

  “I told you not ta go,” Mary said gruffly, patting her on the shoulder. They were sitting in Mary’s small sitting room off the main dining area. “Besides, Rosalinda wuz a no-good slu
t. She din’t deserve yer pity.”

  “That’s not the point,” Helen said. “Over the past few days, you and I have gotten to know Rosalinda well. You’re right. She was a coarse, immoral, totally unlikable person. I couldn’t believe how unfeeling she was when her baby died.”

  “Yep. All she said wuz, ‘She’s better off dead.’ The woman was lower’n a snake’s belly.”

  Helen nodded. “Even so, I can’t fathom a society that would hang a woman—or a man—on so little evidence. That ‘trial’ yesterday before the Miners’ Committee was nothing but a kangaroo court.”

  Mary shrugged. “I mus’ say that yer man’s lawyerin’ wuz mighty fancy. I could see how puffed up with pride you wuz fer him.”

  “He did do a good job, didn’t he?” Helen beamed. “It’s not his fault that the jury was predisposed to convict any Mexican who killed an American. All they were interested in was rushing off to the nearest saloon to celebrate.”

  “Now, let me give you a bit of caution, honey,” Mary said sternly. “I wouldn’t be talkin’ thataway. Folks’re already fired up at yer husband fer interferin’ with the trial. And the feelin’s toward Mexicans is running high. Don’t be rilin’ ’em up no more. It’s over, and you gotta be thinkin’ ’bout yer own future.”

  Helen swallowed hard and looked toward the doorway. Rafe should be back soon. A short time ago, he and Zeb had gone with the boy to his old house to pick up any personal belongings that were left. The ramshackle hovel had been taken over almost immediately by four miners, even before the jury’s verdict.

  “What will happen to Hector now?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know.” Mary scratched her head. “He’s become real attached ta Zeb, fer some reason. Guess he kinda looks on ’im as a gran’pappy. Zeb lost two sons and a daughter ta the cholera years ago, an’ he’s been so consarned lonely since his Effie died. Well, who knows! The good Lord do work in mysterious ways sometimes.”