Desperado (11 page)

“You are the most outrageous, egotistical—”

“Yep,” he went on, ignoring her tirade, “you were born to f—”

“No! Don't you dare utter that word!”

“What?” he asked with wide-eyed innocence. “I was going to say, You were born to fan a man's flame.” He blinked at her with exaggerated confusion. “What did you think I was gonna say?”

Fan a man's flame?
She glared at him warily. He'd done it again, disconcerted her, turned her knees to jelly and her brain to mush. The cad! “So, do I fan your flame?” she let slip before she had a chance to bite her tongue.

“Oh, baby,” he said in a silky whisper. His eyes held hers, and the expression on his face turned solemn. “How can you even ask that question?”

“How can I ask? I'll tell you how. You're always taunting me, making fun of me. You make me feel . . . inadequate.”

His eyes shot up. “Are you serious? Man, oh, man, maybe you should learn to listen to what people don't say sometimes, not what they do say. It might be a real education for you.”

“Stop talking in riddles.”

His eyes glittered angrily. “You're my impossible dream. Don't you know that?”

“No, don't say that—”

Rafe immediately seemed to regret his impulsive words, but he went on angrily, “I'll say it, all right. Damn it, you want to know the truth? Well, here it is. This is 1850, and thousands of men are rushing to California to find the pot at the end of the rainbow, their
El Dorado
. Well, you're my
El Dorado
, sweetheart, and always have been. The unreachable prize.”

“Oh, Rafe.” This man, this infuriating man, had a way of making her blood boil with fury, then, in the next instant, making her heart melt with tenderness.

He gulped visibly and stared straight ahead, clearly upset that he'd revealed so much. Finally, he murmured, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

“Rafe, you are driving me crazy with your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moods. One minute you profess to care about me, and the next you stalk me, like a predator.”

His lips twitched with mirth.

“Can I ask you one thing, and get an honest answer?”

He shrugged. “Depends.”

“If what you say is true, if I'm more important to you than gold, then let's go back to the landing site. I'm afraid to go into Sacramento. I have a bad feeling—”

He turned toward her. “And if we go back . . . if I give up the quest for gold . . . Will I have you?”

His question stunned her, and she couldn't speak, at first. “Of course not. I mean, I'm engaged . . . and, no, of course not.”

“Then we're not going back,” he said. He was obviously not surprised by her answer. “But let's get one thing clear. You have nothing to be afraid of if you come with me. In Sacramento or anywhere else. I promise you'll be safe. You
might not ever . . . Well, you might not ever care for me, but you can at least give me the courtesy of your trust.”

“Oh, Rafe.”

“Stop saying, ‘Oh, Rafe,' like I'm a pitiful little kid.”

“Oh, Rafe.”

He made a snarling sound, low in his throat, then informed her smoothly, “Before this trek is over, I'm going to teach you sixty-seven ways to say, ‘Oh, Rafe,' and they're all going to be accompanied by a sigh or a moan. Guaranteed.” And the heated look he cast her way was heavy with promise.

Oh, Rafe!

Helen realized, at that moment, that she was thinking of him as anything but a little boy, and that his promise held a tremendous, forbidden appeal.

I
t was a man's world! . . .

T
hey entered Sacramento City at dusk.

Having grown up in California, Rafe knew from his school studies that Sacramento City, as it was called then, had been the gateway to the northern mines during the Gold Rush, the staging place where most travelers stopped to rest and stock up for the grueling trek into the treasure-laden hills. But he'd never pictured it quite like this remarkable spectacle.

Truly, they'd landed smack dab in the middle of living, breathing history.

As they got closer, the roads and open stretches of land became thronged with teams of worn, weather-beaten emigrants coming over the mountains from the East or up from San Francisco. Most of the roads ran parallel to the coast, connecting the missions that had been built by the Franciscan padres in the previous century. When the exhausted Forty-Niners finally reached Sacramento City, they pitched their
tents by the hundreds in thickets around the outskirts of the town.

Bug-eyed with amazement, Rafe felt like he'd stumbled onto an old
Gunsmoke
TV set. He and his brothers used to watch old re-runs on Saturday mornings. Any minute now, he expected to see Festus saunter out of a saloon, hitch up his trousers, spit a wide arc of tobacco juice, and say, “Dagnabbit, Marshal Dillon, let's go round up some cattle rustlers.”

And James Arness would say, “Yep, but first I gotta go kiss Kitty good-bye. Don't forget to bring along Deputy Santiago, too.”

Rafe smiled at the image—a boyhood dream realized.

But this was no dream, he reminded himself as his horse nickered softly in the furnacelike heat and tried to edge away from the crowded clearing.

“Easy, boy, easy,” he crooned, nudging his horse with his knees. He was getting real good at judging F. Lee's moods and had learned he could control the fidgety horse with just the light pressure of his legs. Good thing, too, since his hands were still tied to the saddle horn. If it weren't for his sore muscles, Rafe would have felt pretty good about his improved riding skills. And the blister wasn't even bothering him anymore.

Ignacio led the way as their horses continued to weave through the tent city, being careful to avoid the briars and stumps of dead trees felled for firewood. Rafe followed, with Pablo and Sancho on either side of him. The stolen horses trailed behind them.

Ignacio had insisted that Helen ride with him on his horse once they neared the town, fearing the two captives would call for help or try to escape. Throwing a blanket over Helen's shoulder, the vicious outlaw had hidden his revolver pressed against her heart, warning, “One word from either of you, or one move to escape,
Señor
Ángel
, and Elena ees one dead
puta
.”

Rafe had every intention of taking care of the bastard, and soon. It wouldn't be much longer before he made his move. Then the rotten creep would pay for every insult, threat, inconvenience, and bruise he'd delivered to either of them.

But for now, Rafe couldn't help gaping at the men who sat about the numerous campfires, talking enthusiastically. Others leaned against trees reading letters from home or smoking thin cigars. Some strummed guitars and fiddles, singing poignant songs. A few curried horses. Many were eating meager meals from tin plates in front of their sorry tents and drinking large amounts of what must be hard liquor from metal cups or straight from amber bottles.

And while Rafe was doing all his gaping, the scruffy, sunburned, bearded prospectors, wearing the typical miner's garb of red flannel shirt; suspenders; baggy, snuff colored trousers; and high leather boots, gaped right back at him.

Actually, not at
him
. It was Helen who fascinated these googly-eyed men, most of whom were in their twenties.

Their passage was marked by a domino effect. The music gradually stopped. Voices stilled. And the raucous camp noises ground to a halt at first glimpse of that rare, and highly prized commodity in an 1850 mining town—a female. And an attractive one, at that. In Helen's wake, Rafe heard them murmur, with awe, “A woman!”

“She rides astride. Don't that beat all creation?”

“A woman! Hell's bells! And she carries herself like a highfalutin' lady.”

“But she's with greasers. Can't be no lady, 'ceptin' mebbe a fancy lady.”

Rafe bristled at the racist slur. He'd experienced more than his share of discrimination, but somehow he hadn't expected to find it here, too.

“A woman! Hot diggity damn!” new arrivals to the scene chanted to Helen's departing back.

“Would ya look at that red hair. Whooee! Bet she's a feisty one in the saddle. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Her legs look mighty fine grippin' that horse. I'd like her ta ride me the same way. Yessirree, I would.”

“Lordy, Lordy, I ain't had me a good diddling in a coon's age.”

“Me, neither,” a whole bunch of the gold seekers concurred.

“Did you see her titty juttin' out against that shirt? Oh, damn, I bet the nipple's pink, and I do like me a pink nipple.”

Luckily, Helen didn't hear the remarks that were made after she passed. Her attention was centered, like Rafe's, on the unusual historical view unfolding before them.

“Yep, redheads have brown ones, and they're big as grapes.”

“How would you know, Zeke? You ain't never had a woman 'cept in a haystack with her skirts thrown over her head.”

“Well, a man don't look at the mantel when he's pokin' the fire.”

More laughter.

“Gawdamighty, do you think her woman hair is red, too?”

“You'll never find out, you sons of bitches,” Rafe lashed out, finally fed up with the lewd observations. Whether Helen heard their comments or not, she was supposed to be his woman, and he couldn't allow the insults to go on.

The miners studied him for the first time, startled by his proprietary remark. Their eyes swept over his strange shirt and bound hands, questioningly.

Sancho and Pablo edged closer, their slitted eyes warning him to remain quiet. Their unholstered guns reinforced the message.

Rafe glanced forward to see Helen's reaction. Still unaware of the attention she was garnering or the suggestive utterances of the men, she pivoted her head from side to side, inhaling the fantastic sights from her vantage point in front of Ignacio.

Ignacio, however, noticed the dozens of prospectors who began to follow them on foot as they left the encampment and moved into the town itself, but he ignored their questions.

Pablo and Sancho were not so reticent.

“Who is she?” the miners asked.

“Elena,” Pablo announced with a wide smile.

“
Elena?
Really?” the miners enthused.

“Elena . . . Elena . . . Elena . . .” The name rippled excitedly throughout the campsite, like an echo.

A beautiful white woman was one thing. A beautiful white whore would be quite another to these sex-starved young men, Rafe realized.

“And she belongs to us,” Sancho told them, patting his pistol for emphasis.

“Will you sell her favors?” one grizzly trapper asked, scratching the groin of his buckskin breeches with anticipation.

“Maybe later,” Sancho said generously.

“After she's corkscrewed us a few dozen times,” Pablo stressed. “And done the ‘gargle' and the ‘forms' on us.”

There was a communal sigh of, “Aaah, the corkscrew!” Then, they all inquired, at once, “The gargle? The forms?”

Pablo explained, with relish, the new sexual tricks Elena could do for her customers.

“I'll give ya fifty dollars fer one night,” the trapper offered.

“A hundred,” another yelled out.

“Two hundred, if there's an extry corkscrew.”

“Five hundred, but she takes on the two of us,” a pair of towhead twins, better suited to an Iowa farm setting, threw in, blushing profusely at the hoots of their friends.

“I'll buy her from you for five thousand dollars,” a steely-eyed man with a French accent offered suddenly, throwing his cigar to the ground and stomping it with a polished leather boot. Rafe heard someone whisper that this was Pierre Lamoyne, who ran a brothel in San Francisco.

That last cash figure caught Ignacio's attention, and he halted his horse until they caught up. “She ees not for sale . . .
yet
,” he told Lamoyne. “And your price ees much too low.”

“Ten thousand, then,” Lamoyne countered, stepping close to examine the merchandise.

Ignacio licked his lips greedily in consideration. “Perhaps—”

“Like hell!” Rafe shouted, and Helen jumped, seeming to come out of her trance. “She's my wife, and no one's touching her.”

“I'll sell the
puta
if I want to,” Ignacio asserted, tossing aside the blanket, exposing his gun pressed to Helen's heart.

Rafe's blood turned cold at the peril. Ignacio might pull the trigger on a whim. Rafe bit his tongue to force back more angry words.
Calm down. Take it easy. Wait for the moment. The opening. Don't panic
.

“His wife?” the miners asked. “
Who
is he?”

“El
Ángel Bandido,”
Pablo said.

“Ooooh,” a number of the men said, and backed away.

“I'm
not
the Angel Bandit.”

“Who said anything about selling me?” Helen wanted to know, suddenly alert. Fearlessly, she pushed Ignacio's pistol aside with her bound hands and twisted in the saddle to look back at the bandit. “Did you dare to tell these men that I'm for sale?”

When he just glared at her, she jabbed him in the stomach with an elbow. “You male chauvinist pig! When I get loose, I'm going to pull out your tongue and karate chop it off so you'll never be able to lie again.”

Ignacio clamped his mouth shut real tight, but he pressed the gun back against her chest.

“I'm not the Angel Bandit,” Rafe repeated.

“What's a shove-nest-pig?” the two farm boys asked.

“I wouldn't sell you,” Pablo assured Helen ingratiatingly. “If I talk Ignacio out of selling you, will you gargle me tonight?”

“I do not gargle,” Helen shrieked.

“Yes, you do,” Rafe said. “Remember this morning . . .” His words faded off at the expression of outrage on her face.

Uh oh
.

“I . . . do . . . not . . . gargle . . .
men
,” she said real slow, so he and all the men would get the message loud and clear.

Rafe did. He wasn't so sure about the others.

“Exactly how does a woman gargle a man?” one of the miners asked another.

“Damned if I know,” his friend replied.

They both turned to Rafe.

“It's a Deep Throat kind of thing,” he started to say, then stopped at Helen's hiss of fury. “I mean, I'm sure Pablo is mistaken. There's no such thing as sex gargling.”

Pablo turned wounded eyes on Rafe. “But you told me—”

BAM!!!
A pistol shot rang out.

Everyone gawked at Ignacio, who had aimed into the air.

“Enough! I am taking the Angel Bandit into Sacramento City to collect the reward. Perhaps we weel have a hanging tonight.” He waited out the murmurs of enthusiasm at that gruesome prospect. “After that,
mis amigos
and I weel enjoy Elena's charms. All night long. Tomorrow, she weel be sold to the highest bidder. One night of corkscrewing at a time.”

A loud roar of approval met that announcement.

“I am
not
the Angel Bandit,” Rafe repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time. “And anyone who lays a hand on Helen will answer to me.”

“Why does he say he's not the Angel Bandit?” one man asked.

“I couldn't even ride a horse till yesterday,” Rafe told him.

“That ees true,” Sancho confirmed, bobbing his head up and down like one of those dashboard dolls.

“Perhaps he's not the Angel Bandit, then?” the trapper said.

“But he has the angel brand on his arse,” Pablo argued.

“He does?” The miners frowned with confusion.

“
Sí
. Angel wings, right here,” Sancho said, patting his own ample right cheek.

“Why are the Angel Bandit's eyes rolling up in his head?” the trapper asked Ignacio. “Is he havin' a conniption?”

“It's not angel wings, you idiots. It's a butterfly,” Rafe protested.

“Why would a man put a butterfly on his arse?” the trapper asked.

“I'm a lawyer, not an outlaw,” Rafe tried to explain. “I enforce the law. I don't break it.”

“A lawyer!” several men exclaimed.

Then one commented, “Hell, lawyers are just as crooked as thieves.”

“Did ya hear 'bout the two farmers who went to a lawyer, each claimin' to own a cow?” one man chimed in.

“Oh, hell, Harvey, not another one of yer infernal jokes!”

Harvey just went on. “While one farmer pulled on the head, and the other pulled on the tail, the cow was milked by the lawyer.”

Everyone laughed some more.

But one young man tapped his unshaven jaw, eying Rafe with consideration. “I don't s'pose you could advise me on a legal matter?”

“Shut up, Hank. There ain't no way yer gonna divorce that two-bit Mexican whore you married. Even if you was drunk.”

“Elena has the angel tattoo on her arse, too,” Sancho contributed irrelevantly to the crazy, fifty-way conversation, and was rewarded by a loud “Aaaaaah” of delight from the crowd.

“Can we see?” several men asked Ignacio. They were practically drooling.

Ignacio nodded. “Before the bidding mañana, she will show you the angel mark.”

“Have you all lost your minds?” Helen screamed. “My name is Helen Prescott, not Elena. I'm a major in the U.S. Army, and I demand to be taken to the nearest military
installation. Furthermore, if anyone tries to look at my bare behind, or corkscrew me, or stick
something
down my throat, I swear I'll bite it off. And don't think I'm not serious.”