Deep Purple (11 page)

At the fury in her voice, he took a backward step and squinched his eyes as if to focus. “
It’s that blond-haired Mexican you want, isn’t it?” He lunged at her. “It’s gonna be me . . . me,” he mumbled as his arms wrapped about her in a bear hug.

Sh
e tried to wrench free. Jeremy wrestled with her, stepping on her gown. She heard the rip as the two of them fell. They rolled over and over on the dirt floor. A portion of her mind was chagrined at the thought of the ball gown's being soiled. But another part of her mind was frantic with fear. His hands tore at the bodice. His cold, wet lips groped for her breasts. One hand pawed at her bunched skirts.

She shrieked, and his hand clapped over her mouth with smarting impact. With a violent shove, she shrugge
d loose and scrambled to her hands and knees. Her fingers touched cold metal. The saber! Her hand gripped the blade in mid-length. “No, Jeremy!” she gasped. She held the blade out before her, trying to warn him off. Still he half crawled, half lurched toward her. Then, incredibly, she knew not how, he fell upon the blade.

His gargled gasp echoed her own small one as the blade
’s edge sliced her own palm with the force of his fall. She crouched over the suddenly inert body. Tears coursing down her face, she screamed and screamed.

CHAPTER 15

T
he cold February rain plip-plopped in the quagmire that had been Tucson’s main street. All up and down Calle de la Guardia the buildings’
canales
, drainpipes, poured water from the flat roofs to add to the deluge that riddled the street.

Catherine could feel the mud weighting her skirts. She knew she should hurry on to Warner
’s store to make her purchases— purchases that could have been postponed to another day. But she had felt herself going crazy in her small adobe hut. Besides, its roof leaked so badly that she was not that much worse off, standing as she was in the drizzle.

With the rain falling about her, she watched the men
—and a few women—who queued up before the mud-brick building across the street. Such activity was unheard of, especially during the siesta hour. A chunky young Mexican woman in braids passed by Catherine, heading toward the line, and Catherine called out to her "
Que pasa allá
?”

The woman explained to her that agents were enlisting colonists for the Arizona Colonizing Expedition to Mexico. “
They go to settle Hermosillo, in Sonora,” she finished and hurried over to take her place at the end of the line that now snaked past the Ciudad Cantina.

As if controlled by a puppeteer, Catherine's feet took her across the rain-sluiced street to halt behind the young woman. One by one the men in line turned to stare at Catherine as the word passed forward of the white woman waiting behind th
em.

She paid the incredulous stares no heed. Her bonnet
’s feather drooped above her brow despite the tattered parasol she carried, and the rain plastered strands of hair to her neck and cheeks like seaweed. Still, as the line moved tediously forward toward the narrow doorway, she remained in her place, politely refusing offers by some of the men to let her move ahead.

She was a cornered animal. Since New Year
’s Eve—the night she had accidentally killed Jeremy Rankin—she had little by little lost her students. Oh, even the
alcalde
, Aldrich, had condoned the killing, pointing out it was done in self-defense, thus saving her from the least of the punishments that could be brought against a murderer—a day at the whipping post. But that did not alter the attitude of the parents whose sons she taught. The number of her pupils dropped from twenty-three to eleven by midmonth. And by the first of February she had exactly four students left.

Sam and Atanacia had come to her defense, standing staunchly by her. “
If the baby I carry was old enough, I would send him to your school,” Atanacia told her the third day after Jeremy’s death, when seven pupils were withdrawn.

Catherine had buried her face in her hands and wept for the first time since the incident. She wept for Je
remy . . . and herself. For her lost dreams of romance and excitement. She had never meant to take another’s life. Just as she had thought she would never have been capable of giving herself out of wedlock. She, Catherine Howard, who had too high moral standards! How low she had sunk!

Only the week before, Sam had tried to lend her money. She did not know who was more embarrassed, she or the red-bearded giant. She had, naturally, refused . . . as she had refused Sherrod
’s offer of assistance that had come by letter a few days earlier.

Now her funds were almost depleted. She could, of course, marry. There were still a few loyal suitors, like Lionel, who had offered to defend her if she was indicted.

She knew the answer was, as always, Law. How could she be happily married when each time she ran into him she felt the magnetism of sexual attraction?

But perhaps away from the sight of him she could forget. The state of Sonora across the international boundary would be as good a place as any to forget him. More im
portant, many Confederate families were flocking to Mexico now that the Union seemed to be winning the war. In Hermosillo she could find employment . . . and maybe eventually a husband.

At last she reached the doorway and stepped inside the small, darkened
room. To the right of a makeshift desk of crates sat a swarthy old Indian. After Catherine’s pupils adjusted to the dark, she realized the old Indian was Loco. Those wrinkle-bound eyes never changed expression or betrayed that he recognized her. His gaze shifted from her to the mustachioed Mexican sitting behind the desk. Loco addressed the man, whom he called Tranquilino in a rapid-fire dialect of Spanish and Indian words that she had trouble following.

The Mexican looked at Catherine now. “
You wish to emigrate to Mexico, señorita?” he asked in a gentle voice that did not quite hide his astonishment.

“
Yes, of course. Are there any qualifications or conditions?”

Tranquilino looked to Loco. The old Indian shook his head in the slightest negative gesture. “
I’m sorry, señorita,” Tranquilino then replied, “but we really have no place in the emigrant train for . . . ladies. Later, you see, we will establish families. But, uhh—we mainly are signing up men who can shoot and fight for now. You understand, the Apaches and Yaquis are marauding Sonora, and it will at first be necessary to set up camps and build a fort. These sorts of things.”

The young Mexican, hardly older than Law, talked to her in a very reasonable voice, but she did not want to be reasonable.

She wanted to leave Arizona. “You are taking other women,” she pointed out, trying to keep her voice as rational.

“
Si
, but these women are
lavanderas
—washwomen—and cooks. They can ride—and shoot, as well, if they have to. They are called—”

"
Soldaderas
," she said. “Yes, I know the term.” A camp follower. “But I can wash and cook and ride. And with practice I can learn to shoot a pistol.”

Tranquilino made one last attempt. “
But you do not speak the different dialects. It would be very difficult to—”

She stamped her
mud-caked foot and pointed to the men lined up behind her. “Three-quarters of these men here don’t speak Spanish, much less good English!” She whirled on Loco. “I have to go, Loco! I can’t earn a living here—I can’t support myself.”

“
But, señorita," Tranquilino interrupted, “this is a delicate subject, but there are many men who will wish to—to make the love,” he finished lamely.

“
I have killed a man.” She enunciated each word clearly so there would be no mistake. “I can protect myself.”

Tranquilino looked at Loco with a shrug.

“Maybe it is better this one goes,” the old Indian counseled.

Tranquilino closed his eyes with a sigh. "
Bien
, señorita. If you’ll put an X here—ahh, yes, I forgot, you are educated. Sign your name then. You'll need your own bedding and a change of clothing. Nothing more. You’ll be assigned a wagon and duties on the morning we leave—February 14.”

How auspicious! For the first time since New Year
’s Eve she smiled.

I know you must think I've taken leave of my senses, Margaret dear, but for the first time in my life I'm doing something really adventurous. Unlike my brief period as a tutor for the Godwins, where I had a roof over my head and a guarantee of food and salary. I have no such assurances to carry with me on the undertaking I am about. I know not what tomorrow may bring. And in a way, it is a most liberating feeling. Perhaps I have more of my father in me than you or mother realized. I hope your next letter will bring better news of Mother’s health. In any case, you will have to find work to make ends meet, and for this I'm truly sorry. My love to you and Mother
.

She had one more letter to write before she left the next morning. To Don Francisco
—to Sherrod, really. But there was so little she could write; only to thank the Godwins for giving her the opportunity to come to the territory and tell them she was emigrating to Hermosillo, Mexico. So little she knew about the adventure on which she was embarking.

She had already made her goodbyes to the Hugheses. Sam had
come for her trunk that afternoon to store it until she could send for it. She and Atanacia had clung to each other, weeping, and Sam had given her a gruff peck on the cheek before the couple left.

For the last time Catherine prepared for bed. She did not
know how long it would be before she experienced that luxury again. She heated the water in a kettle over the fire and poured it into the tarred wooden half-barrel Sam had fashioned for her. After the bath, she donned the cotton night shift and braided her hair before putting on her nightcap. It was a ritual of civilization she might not know for a long time to come.

The fire was banked, the candles snuffed. She slid beneath the light woolen blanket, thinking she would not sleep that night with the excitem
ent of leaving occupying her mind. And she did not, for scarcely less than an hour past midnight, as she rolled to yet another position, a sound like gunfire burst through the small house. She bolted upright in the bed, instantly realizing the sound was that of someone banging open the door.

Concurrent with the realization, a shadow loomed before her, filling the bedroom's doorway. “
What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a masculine voice snarled before she could scream.

“
Law!” she breathed in relief, gathering the blanket up before her. Then angrily, “What do you think you're doing, breaking into my house in the middle of the night?”

In two strides his long legs carried him to her bedside. His large hands caught her about her arms and literally raised he
r from the bed. With her face on a level with his, she could smell the liquor on his breath. “You’ve been drinking,” she said with disgust.

He began to shake her. "
No vayas con la expedición
!" Then, realizing he had slipped into Spanish, he dropped her back to the bed. “You are not going with the expedition,” he said with a thick finality.

“
Yes, I am,” she told him as he turned his back on her and went to the bureau to light the candle. “And you can’t stop me!”

The small light flickered and danced through t
he room, casting Law’s giant shadow over her bed. He advanced on her. “Now you listen to me, Cate,” he said in speech as articulate as a sober man's. “This is no pleasure trip. Danger and hunger and death will be—”

She shot up in the bed again. “
I’m a grown woman, Lorenzo Davalos. I can handle myself.”

“
Is that why some Don Quixote is always sleeping outside your door?—for all the good it does you. The one outside now is dead drunk.”

Her lips puckered in an impish smile. “
I always forget that you’re an educated man, Law.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through the tousled butter- toasted hair. “
There’s a lot you forget, Cate.” He pulled up the one chair in the room and swung it around backward, straddling the seat with his arms resting on its back. “Cate, I’m an agent for Juarez—and this is no colonization. It’s a battalion I’ve raised to fight the French, who at this moment are knocking on Sonora's southern borders.”

“
You’re not going to Hermosillo?” she asked, incredulous that her plans might be thwarted.

“
It’s only a stopover on the way to the Gulf, to Guaymas.”

She frowned and chewed on her thumb, trying to assimilate what he was telling her. She knew, of course, that Napoleon III had put the Austrian duke Maximilian on the Mexican throne as emperor
—and that it had angered the Americans, who felt the French were violating the Monroe Doctrine. But with the Civil War raging in the United States, the Americans could do nothing about it.

Mexico and its own internal problems seemed so remote that she had never gi
ven the French intervention in Mexico's politics much thought. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. ‘‘With your Mexican heritage, why all this pretense? Why don’t you just cross the border and fight?”

“
Because,” he said impatiently, “the French have well-disciplined and well-armed troops. They're three to one over Juarez. They control three-quarters of Mexico, and they want Sonora now—mostly for its mines. And there’s nothing to stop them from taking the state except various bands of guerrillas . . . men supporting Benito Juarez who need additional men and arms.

“
And we can’t get men and arms across the border to them without violating U.S. neutrality laws. But as emigrants who need to protect ourselves against Apaches and Yaquis marauding on both sides of the border”—he shrugged—“it’s perfectly acceptable. ”

“
So that’s where you were off to all the time you pretended to be prospecting,” she accused. “In San Francisco and those other places—”

“
I was purchasing supplies and arms,” he concluded, rising from the chair. “Now that you understand—’’

"No, I don
’t understand!" She bounded to her feet to face the man, forgetting that her nipples thrust against the thin cotton shift. Her head tilted back to meet his scowl of irritation. "I don't understand why I can’t go. You need women. Tranquilino said so himself.”