Bed of Roses (23 page)

“Yes, that kind of kill. That is why I need you to help my men with their shooting and riding skills, Sawyer. So that when Luis and his gang come we will be ready to defend ourselves from them. Luis, he is good with a horse and a gun, but my men were better. Once you have practiced with them we will find a way to fill their mouths with guns, and then—”

“What?”

“Yes, you know. Fill their mouths with guns.”

He felt so confused that he was almost dizzy. “Do you mean we’ll arm them to the teeth?”

“Yes, that is—”

“That is not what you said.”

“Well, it is what I meant to say. Luis will—”

“Stop.” Sawyer held up his hand, dragging Zafiro’s along as well. “Stop.” With his free hand he shoved his fingers through his hair, all the while staring at Zafiro. “I’m going to ask you one simple question, and I want you to give me one simple answer. Get straight to the point, and don’t get off the subject. Who…is…Luis?”

Relief coursed through her. Finally, after all these weeks, he was showing some interest in her dilemma. “Rogelio Luis Gutierrez. He did not like his first name, so he had everyone call him by his middle—”

“Who the hell is Luis?”
Sawyer roared.

“I am trying to tell you!”

“Well, tell me then!”

“A sheep can wag its tail three times faster than I can tell the whole story, so we’d better sit down.” Tugging him along, she walked back into the barn and sat down on a pile of burlap sacks.

Completely aggravated, Sawyer had no choice but to sit down beside her. “It’s three shakes of a lamb’s tail,” he flared.

“What?”

“Three shakes of a lamb’s tail. That means fast.”

“I meant that I could not tell my story fast.”

“I know, but you said it wrong. You said… Never mind. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“For the story about Luis!”

The story, pent up inside her for so long, tumbled from her lips. “Luis is my cousin, the son of my father’s sister. She and her husband died of a fever when Luis was sixteen. That is when he began to ride with us. But he was never like Grandfather and the rest of the men. Grandfather used to say that the best outlaw is the outlaw who does not use violence. But Luis was always trying to use his gun, even when it was not necessary. And Luis did not like to share the money the gang stole either. Because Luis was family, my grandfather tried to have patience with him, but in the end…”

When she faltered Sawyer realized the rest of her story was extremely difficult for her to relate. “In the end?”

“Luis… He… Luis is the very horrible man who killed my father.”

Sawyer saw a tear appear at the corner of her eye. Though it was only one tiny droplet it overwhelmed him with sympathy for her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She nodded, closed her eyes, and felt her tear run warmly down her cheek. “It was late one night. Everyone was asleep around the fire. I woke up suddenly because I knew something dangerous was about to happen. What I did not understand was that the danger was about to happen to me. As soon as I opened my eyes I felt Luis’s knife at my throat. He covered my mouth with his hand and dragged me toward his horse. Minutes later we were riding away from the camp.

“He hit me while we rode,” she said, “and I remember that my cheek stung as if he had burned it. Then he told me that I would be using my gift for him and the band of men he would soon form. He—”

“Gift?”

Failing to remember she was handcuffed to Sawyer, Zafiro rose from the ground, then had to wait a moment for him to get up with her.

He followed her around the barn while she paced.

“I do not know if my gift is a blessing or a curse,” she explained, passing the animal stalls. “It saved us from danger more times than I can remember, but it was also the reason why Luis stole me away that night. And,” she said, bowing her head, “if not for my gift, my father might still be alive. My father, he woke up and followed Luis that night. When Luis saw him, he let go of me, pulled out his gun, and shot—”

“Zafiro, wait,” Sawyer interrupted, taking her arm and forcing her to stand still. “What gift are you talking about?”

“I know when something bad is going to happen. Something dangerous. It is a terrible feeling that makes my heart pound, my mouth go dry, and I can hardly breathe. It will even wake me up if I am sleeping. There were many times when I told my grandfather and the gang about my feelings of a danger that was coming. We always had enough time to escape. The one and only time that my gift failed me was when Night Master found us and stole our gold. But I think that I did not feel danger from him because he was not going to hurt any of us. All he wanted was our gold. Once he got it, he left.”

Sawyer wasn’t sure if he believed in her sixth sense for peril, but the fear he saw in her eyes could not have been feigned. “This feeling you have for danger… I take it you feel it now?”

She fingered the handcuff; the rusty metal felt scratchy beneath her skin. “I have had the feeling for a long time, even before I first saw you at the convent. That is why I was going to kill you after Maclovio told you who we were. I believed you were the danger I anticipated. A lawman, maybe, or someone who would hurt us in some way. Now I know it is Luis who comes. It must be.”

“But how do you know he still wants you? After all these years—”

“He swore to find me,” Zafiro squeaked, more tears slipping down her face. “After he shot my father, Grandfather and the rest of the men arrived. Before they could even understand what had happened, Luis shouted an oath that he would find me if it took the rest of his life. He could not recapture me because I was already with my grandfather then. He left on his horse, and to this day I can still hear the way he laughed as he rode away. Maclovio, Pedro, and Lorenzo trailed him for days, but they did not find him.

“My father,” she said, “he died in my arms, just as I told you. I held his head in my lap. With one hand I touched his cheek, and with the other I tried to stop the blood flowing from the hole in his chest. His last words were that he loved me, that he was sorry he had to leave me, and that he hoped I would have a very happy life. I remember that my tears fell onto his eyes just as he closed them and died.”

When her shoulders began to shake, Sawyer gathered her next to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, patting her hair. “So sorry.”

His sympathy seemed to wrap around and hug her, his strength and warmth comforting her in a way that she had not been comforted in years, ever since she’d been a young girl and the Quintana Gang had all had their wits about them. The feeling made it easier to relate the rest of her story.

“About three years later,” she murmured into his shoulder, “we heard that a man fitting Luis’s description had robbed a bank in a small town in Mississippi. Before he left the town he killed four people. One of them was a woman who ran into the street to keep her child from being run over by his horse. After that we began hearing more and more stories about him. He killed so many people, Sawyer, and Grandfather became more and more careful about where our gang went. At night Grandfather would have me sleep right in his bedroll with him, and Maclovio, Pedro, and Lorenzo would sleep beside us.”

She drew away from him and peered up into his eyes. “So you see? Grandfather built La Escondida not only to hide his men, but me as well. From Luis. But he is coming, Sawyer. I—I know he is coming! I
feel
it, and that is why I need you to help my men recover their skills!”

Sawyer could actually feel her terror as it coursed through her body. She shook uncontrollably. “Zafiro,” he said softly, hoping his gentle tone of voice would soothe her, “I understand what you’re saying, sweetheart, but what are you going to do about weapons and horses?”

“We have Coraje. When he hears a whistle, he—”

“You know as well as I do that that horse won’t let anyone on his back. He won’t even let me
feed
him without trying to bite me. And coming on the sound of a whistle doesn’t make him any more useful.”

“Well, maybe we will not need horses. I have weapons, Sawyer. They are old, but perhaps you could make them work again. If you could, then all we would need are bullets.”

He followed her across the barn, where she opened the long wooden crate. From within the box she withdrew two heavy pistols and placed one of them in Sawyer’s hand. “There are more guns somewhere around here, but this is one that belonged to my father. Do you think it will still work?”

Sawyer looked down at the gun, deeply disturbed by the way it looked in his hand. Tentatively, he curled his finger around the trigger. The hard, cold piece of metal felt horrible. Almost painful, as if it had teeth and was biting him.

An image came into his mind, blurry at first, but it quickly sharpened into clear focus, and he felt as though he were truly seeing it rather than remembering it.

That house. The one with the white curtains. And he saw the couple on the floor, the man with the gray at his temples and the woman with the pretty eyes and musical voice. They lay beside two children.

All of them were dead.

Sawyer felt sweat bead on his forehead and trickle down his face and neck.

Gunfire.

He heard it. It seemed to explode directly from his heart, but memory told him it had cracked straight through a silent night.

Agony thrashed through him. He felt like a live crab thrown into a pot of boiling water.

He threw the gun down to the ground and covered his eyes with his free hand. “No,” he whispered. “I…I can’t teach your men. I can’t shoot.”

“Sawyer—”

“Put the guns away.”

“But—”

“Please. Put them away.”

The unmitigated torment she heard in his voice induced her to grant his plea with no further argument. “Sawyer, did you remember something?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. “The guns… What was it about the guns that made you—”

“I can’t take care of you,” he whispered raggedly. “Of any of you. Not with the guns. If I try… If I try, I’ll fail.”

“Fail? What do you mean? Sawyer, what—”

“Nothing.” He thrust his fingers through his hair.

“It
was
something!” She grasped his shoulders and tried to shake him. “You say you do not want anything bad to happen to me or my people. Well, I do not want anything bad to happen to you either! Let’s talk about what you remembered, Sawyer. If you talk about it, maybe—”

“Where’s the key to these handcuffs?”

A moment passed before his question registered. “Key?”

“Key.”

She hadn’t seen a key in the box where she’d found the cuffs, and belatedly realized there wasn’t one. “I… Oh, Sawyer…”

“Oh, Sawyer, what?”

Closing her eyes and swallowing hard, she tried to prepare herself for the explosion she knew would follow her admission. “There is no key.”

Chapter Eleven

S
awyer didn’t say a word.
He merely grabbed the two lanterns and walked out of the barn and into the night, uncaring that his long, quick stride made it difficult for Zafiro to follow along.

Sensing that a volatile mood lurked just beneath the surface of his silence, Zafiro quietly followed him into the cabin, whereupon he marched straight up to Tia, who was busy patting out potato cakes and slipping them into a pan of hot grease over the fire. A platter of freshly fried cakes sat on the table where she worked, and as the other cakes finished cooking she continued to add them to the platter.

“Where is Lorenzo?” Sawyer demanded.

Tia’s patting hands stopped in mid-action. “I do not like your tone of voice,
niña.”
She set down the cake, picked up a long wooden spoon, and pointed it at his face. “If you talk to me like that again, I will—”

Sawyer muttered a string of profanities under his breath and stormed toward the staircase.

“Do not go so fast, Sawyer!” Zafiro pleaded, the handcuff cutting into her wrist. “You are hurting—”

“You should have thought of that before you locked us together!” At the top of the stairs he stopped and turned toward her. “If Lorenzo can’t pick this lock how do you think we’re going to get out of these? These cuffs might be old, Zafiro, but they’re made of solid steel!”

“I would not have had to put them on you if you had listened to me when I first tried to talk to you! It was the only way—”

“You—”

“Step aside, Zafiro, and I will smash his face!” Maclovio boomed as he exited the room he shared with Pedro and Lorenzo. A bottle in his hand, he staggered into the hall, swinging his fist while still a good six feet away from Sawyer.

Zafiro quickly moved between the two men. Pushing the wobbly Maclovio aside, she pulled Sawyer into the room Maclovio had left and saw Pedro and Lorenzo inside.

“Lorenzo!” she shouted at the old man.

Curled up in a ball on the sagging bed with Mariposa, Lorenzo continued to snore.

“He is asleep,” Pedro announced from his spot on the floor, where he was busy adding to his net. “Dreaming about a land flowing with milk and honey. Poor Lorenzo, he is afraid that I am going to turn him into a pillar of salt. I thought about doing that when he would not help me get my net up here. But I did not do it. Maclovio brought my net up here for me. To thank Maclovio for his help, I am going to wash his feet with my hair and—”

“Lorenzo!” Sawyer shouted. He pulled Zafiro to the bed and shook Lorenzo’s shoulder.

The old man opened his eyes and smiled. “Tia is making potato cakes and she said I could have as many as I wanted. There is no one in the world who can make potato cakes like Tia—”

“Can you open this lock?” Sawyer shouted into the old man’s ear.

“Clock? No, there is no clock in here, but if you want to know what time it is, I will teach you how to read the hour by studying the way the sun makes shadows on the land. It is a simple way to—”

“Lock!” Sawyer shouted again, his lips so close to Lorenzo’s ear that the old man’s hair tickled his nose. “I need you to open these cuffs because Zafiro can’t find the key!”

“Pee?” Lorenzo scowled and pointed to a small pot in the corner of the room. “That is what Maclovio, Pedro, and I use, but I do not think you should use it in front of Zafiro because—”