Bride of Fortune (48 page)

* * * *

      
The following day when they arrived at Gran Sangre, Nicholas saw that Mercedes was taken under Angelina's care after the long ride. Although her bouts of morning indisposition had abated and she seemed in the bloom of health, he feared for the delicate woman carrying his child. Although they had slept together on the trail, curled securely like two spoons beneath the blankets, she had remained troubled and reticent since the violent death of Don Encarnación.

      
Once Mercedes was upstairs soaking in her bath while the old cook brewed her herbal tea, he headed to the corral for a fresh horse to make the short ride into San Ramos. With luck he would be there and back by nightfall if Porfirio Escondidas was a man of his word. Hilario greeted his
patrón
warmly but made no inquiry about the success of his mission at
Hacienda
Vargas.

      
“I will saddle you that fine black we captured last fall. I have been working him and I think you will be pleased with the results,” the old man said with pride.

      
“Bring the black up. I'll get my saddle,” Nicholas replied, turning to the long row of stalls where Peltre was peacefully eating now that he had been rubbed down. “Pity I can't ride you, boy, but you've earned a rest,” he said to the gray, rubbing his nose as the horse observed him through liquid intelligent eyes.

      
He gathered his gear, checked his Henry rifle and repacked his saddlebags. San Ramos was a republican village but the roads were always dangerous for a man alone. Just as he swung his saddle off the stall bar and turned around with it hoisted over his shoulder, Mercedes appeared in the doorway.

      
She was dressed in a peach silk robe, her hair still damp and curling from her bath. Her arms were wrapped around her waist and she stood very still. Hesitant and nervous, she looked at him, so tall and forbidding, with the heavy saddle slung so carelessly across his shoulder. Alkaline dust from their long ride still coated his clothing and clung to his skin. Those steady wolf’s eyes gazed at her hungrily, but he said nothing.

      
Nicholas could smell the lavender scent from her hair and ached to touch the damp softness of her skin at the open throat of her robe. A pulse beat rapidly and he could see her swallow for courage before speaking.

      
“You're going to meet the Juarista, aren't you?”

      
“I said I would. Time is crucial. Mariano may suspect he's been found out. He's no fool.”

      
“But he is dangerous. Don't go. Please, let the war be over for us.”

      
“I've already explained why I can't do that,” he said patiently.

      
She took a deep breath. He was not her husband yet she gave herself willingly to him, had forgiven his treason, had even killed for him. And now he repaid her love by going off to risk his life for a cause and a man she could not begin to understand. “You told me you were sick of war, of the killing.”

      
He could hear the plea beneath the accusation in her voice and it broke his heart. “I am, but the killing will never end if Vargas isn't stopped.”

      
“Let someone else stop him. You said you would always protect me—never leave me to go off to war again!”

      
“This is different. I have to deliver the information,” he replied doggedly.

      
“Send one of the vaqueros to meet your spy. I know there are men at Gran Sangre who are Juaristas.”

      
“This is my assignment, I'm afraid.” Could he dare to tell her about McQueen, about his bargain with the American? He longed to, but her next words squelched the impulse.

      
Stepping closer and placing her hands against his chest she said, “Please, Lucero, do this for me...your wife.”

      
Lucero. Your wife
.
So, the unspoken charade must continue.
The truth of his identity brought out in the open would destroy their fragile relationship. He could not bear that. “I love you more than anything, Mercedes, but there are reasons why I have to go. Reasons I can't tell you.”
You know why I dare not speak of it
.

      
“No, you can't. And I can't forgive you for leaving me this way either. Go risk your life for Juarez. Join the enemy. I was willing to give up my principles for you, but I see you aren't willing to do the same for me.”

      
She pushed him away from her and tried to run from the stable but he caught her wrist and pulled her back into his arms, more roughly than he had intended. “I can't abandon the republicans—don't you think I would if in conscience I could?” His voice was tight with anger now and his whole body felt stretched taut as a noose drawn around a hanged man's neck. He could feel her stiffening in his arms, frightened of his violence yet trying to hide her fear beneath a veneer of cool haughty control.

      
“Let me go,” she whispered, biting off each word.

      
His arms dropped away from her. She spun free and ran from the stable. Nicholas did not go after her. What was there to say? As if his impersonation of Lucero were not enough to contend with, now they were divided by loyalties to opposing causes. He would deliver his information to Escondidas and pray once the traitor in Juarez's camp was dealt with that McQueen would not ask more from him. Once the Man of Law had been returned to his rightful place as president, perhaps he and Mercedes could rebuild their lives together here in the isolation of the north, a thousand miles away from Mexico City.

      
The ride to San Ramos went swiftly. It was a small, shabby village like thousands of others the length and breadth of Mexico. Dusty yellow adobe buildings squatted in clusters, blistered by the late afternoon sunlight. A mangy cur chased several squawking chickens across the bleak little plaza where a well promised relief for the traveler's parching thirst.

      
Nicholas rode up to the small cantina, the most likely place to find word of Porfirio Escondidas. Perhaps he was inside, seeking relief from the heat with a draught of
pulque
. Just as Fortune swung down from the big black stallion, a grimy youth missing several teeth smiled hopefully at him, brushing greasy strings of hair from his forehead.

      
“You are Don Lucero, no?”

      
Fortune nodded expectantly, then listened to the boy Calvo's directions. As Nicholas remounted, he tossed a silver coin to the youth.

      
Escondidas was camped about a mile outside the village in a dense stand of pines and junipers. Because of the untimely death of Don Encarnación, Nicholas was several days early. As luck would have it, Porfirio had just arrived that morning and instructed Calvo to wait in the plaza until a man answering Fortune's description arrived.

      
As he neared the dense brushy swale, he veered off the trail into a clearing in the undergrowth. It looked just as Calvo had described. He could smell the faint smoke emanating from a small campfire. As a precaution, he called out to Porfirio, identifying himself, and received an answering welcome.

      
The wiry little man was standing in front of his fire with a coffeepot in one hand. “You are early. I'd expected to spend several nights on the hard rocky earth. I am grateful. What have you learned?”

      
Fortune dismounted and took a cup of the inky black brew Escondidas poured for him. They hunkered down on opposite sides of the fire. Nicholas had almost finished his report on the assassination plan when a shot cracked the still twilight. Escondidas slumped backward as Fortune dove for cover while pulling his Remington from its holster. A hail of bullets followed him as he rolled behind a large boulder surrounded by scrub pines and sumac. He returned fire only once. With no time to waste seeing if Porfirio was dead or alive, he began to work his way through the dense underbrush, circling toward the place from which the shots had come.

      
Nicholas Fortune had spent the past fifteen years surviving in brutal hand-to-hand combat, crawling over terrain better suited to reptiles and rodents than to men. Twigs ripped his clothes and fallen pine needles punctured his skin but he noticed none of it. Moving with the silence and speed born of hard-earned experience, he listened for telltale sounds to reveal where the assassin or assassins had moved since suspending fire.

      
Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a boot crunching on loose gravel directly to his left. Darkness gathered. He knelt down silently, concealed behind a sumac bush. That was when he heard the breathing, low and feral, coming from his right. There were two of them. He must get them both to one side of him lest he be caught in a crossfire. He selected several small stones, tossing them with a quick snap of his wrist in front of the man to his right.

      
“Julio! Here!” a voice cried out, moving toward the clatter. Julio grunted and emerged directly in front of Fortune.

      
It took one swift lunge with his knife to bring Julio down, his throat slashed cleanly. Fortune quickly sheathed his knife and drew his pistol just as the other killer broke into the brushy enclosure. The pistolero raised his Colt with a startled oath but before he could squeeze off a shot, Nicholas had fired twice. The impact of the .44 caliber slugs sent the second assassin hurling back into the brush.

      
After checking to be certain both attackers were dead, Fortune made his way back to Porfirio, who lay ominously still by the side of the smoldering fire. Kneeling, he examined the wound in the young man's chest, taking a handkerchief and pressing it to staunch the bleeding.

      
“No use, it is no use,” Escondidas rasped, his hand grasping Fortune's arm with amazing strength. “You have to get to Juarez, tell him what you told me. Stop the assassination.”

      
“Where is he? How do I find him?” Fortune asked, as the blood continued to seep from his companion.

      
“Go to Arizpe. Ask for Martín Regla at the Three Owls Cantina. He will take you to Juarez.”

      
“Is the president still in El Paso?” Fortune asked, aghast at the prospect of traveling over three hundred miles to complete his mission.

      
“Regla will know,” Porfirio replied raggedly and began to cough up blood.

      
“What about McQueen? Why can't I give this information to him? He's the one who recruited me.”

      
“Your
gringo
, he is like the wind. No one knows where he is or when he will turn up. Go to Arizpe, quickly, before it is too late. Long live Mexico!”

      
With that, Porfirio Escondidas' head slumped onto his chest. He lay dead in Nicholas Fortune's arms.

      
Fortune cursed savagely. He could return to Gran Sangre and dispatch Gregorio Sanchez in his place, but it would mean the loss of another half day. And Sanchez could not identify Vargas’ spy in the Juarez camp, nor had the green youth experience enough to be able to recount all the details Nicholas had learned or to clarify their tactical significance for the president.

      
There was nothing to do but to ride north as hard and fast as he could.

      
Would Mercedes ever forgive him for this desertion? The soughing night wind held no answers as he rose and began to kick dirt onto the campfire until the bright flames flickered and died.

Chapter Twenty One

      
The night sky was studded by a million stars, as it could only be along the Texas-Mexico border. A cold wind gusted, raising small swirls of dust. Nicholas pulled up his collar to keep the stinging particles from his eyes. A thin quarter moon hung on the horizon. The night would keep his secrets as he rendezvoused with the man who held Mexico's fate in his hands.

      
Juarez's headquarters was situated at the outskirts of El Paso del Norte. Fortune had ridden for nearly two weeks to reach the border, guided by a succession of Juaristas, mostly taciturn peasants who doubtless wondered why a
hacendado
had sided with their cause. He smiled grimly as he approached the small rickety frame building, little more than a crude two-room settler's cabin. If only his compatriots had known who he really was and why he had taken up their cause, it might have broken their stoic mistrust.

      
A tall, cadaverously thin man with a badly pockmarked face stood sentry at the door of the cabin, his eyes flat and wary. “You are the
hacendado
from Sonora?” At Nicholas’ nod of affirmation, the man stepped aside and opened the door. “The president has been expecting you.”

      
The interior was spartanly furnished and amazingly clean considering the relentless scouring winds outside. A large table served as a desk, it and a few chairs the only furniture. The surface was covered with books, papers and documents. A small man with shoulder-length dark hair streaked with gray sat behind the table drafting a letter by the light of a flickering branch of candles. Benito Juarez looked up and met the tall American's eyes, then stood and offered a gravely courteous handshake.