Paxton and the Lone Star (31 page)

“You have freckles here,” a morning-deep voice said. True's hand touched her shoulder blade outside the covers, slid under the covers and cupped her breast.

Elizabeth rolled onto her back. “Is that so terrible?”

“Of course not.” He pulled down the cover, kissed the valley between her breasts. “And there, too. I never suspected.”

“I never suspected a lot of things,” Elizabeth said. She twisted a lock of his hair around her finger, closed her eyes and arched her back as his head moved and he kissed her under her breasts. The moment was as sweet as his touch, as warm as their bodies under the covers. “True?”

“Mmm?”

“What are you thinking?”

He sat up abruptly and the covers fell away from him. “Well …” He scratched his head, yawned and stretched mightily. “That I'm hungry.” He looked down at her with an impish grin. “What about you?”

“Oh, I don't know.” Elizabeth turned toward him and kissed his side. She walked her fingers over his thigh, took him in her hand. “Maybe a little,” she purred lazily. She smiled to herself as he hardened and, groaning, lay back beside her. “I guess I could fix us … some breakfast …”

“Ah …”

“If you want …” Her hair cascaded over her breasts and onto his chest as she hitched up on one elbow to look down at him. “You knew all along it would come to this, didn't you.”

True wrapped a lock of her hair around her breast and kissed the nipple where it peeked through. “I didn't exactly keep it a secret.” His other hand slid down her stomach, spread her thighs. “You knew it, too,” he said, slipping his leg under hers and slowly entering her.

“I never … True!”

“Confess,” he whispered, rolling to lie on top of her.

Her eyes widened, became misty. “True …”

“Confess.” His hips rose and fell, each thrust more demanding than the last. “From the first moment we met, you knew. Confess.”

No past, no future. Only the excruciating present, almost unbearable in its intensity. Rising to meet him, she wrapped her arms and legs around him. “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes.” And crying out, “Yes!”

The world hadn't gone away, only receded for a few moments. True fought into his boots, pulled his pants' legs down over them. “Well?” he asked.

Elizabeth moved away from the front flap, let it close slowly. “Helen Kemper is out there,” she said, a little apprehensively.

“I'll just sneak out the side, then, and circle around the Thatches' wagon.”

“She'll still see you. She's facing this way. Unless she swallowed her tongue during the night, everyone will know by noon.”

True held her face between his palms. “Do you care that much what the others think?”

“Do you need to ask?” Elizabeth retorted, her eyes flashing. “Of course …” She stopped and, suddenly subdued, sank back on her haunches. “Yes,” she whispered. “I do care. We're not married, and I don't want people to think that I … that we … Darn it, True!” Her eyes swam with tears. “I don't want anybody to say that I'm a loose woman, or that you … you hung around me just because I … we …”

True took her hands. The firm set of her mouth, the determination she exuded, the strength of character that had kept her going through the long miles, the beauty of their lovemaking … “You are a very special lady, Elizabeth,” he said. “I love you.”

Elizabeth laughed self-consciously and brushed a tear from her cheek. “I've never been called a lady by anyone else. Mother always thought of me as a little girl, and Father just … Lottie's baby sister, I guess …” She trailed off, hoping she had concealed the strain in her voice.

“I'll check on Mrs. Kemper,” True said, sensing her discomfort but not pressing the matter. If Elizabeth confided in him one day, so be it. Everyone had wounds of all colors and configurations that needed healing. Love was the one sure balm, and love needed time. “She's facing the other way,” he whispered, quickly unlacing the canvas and making a hole large enough to crawl out of. He gave her a quick kiss and disappeared out the side. “See you in a few minutes.”

The morning air was chilly. True ducked into the Thatches' wagon, where he'd been staying, made a few morning sounds, yawned hugely as he stepped out again, this time in plain view, and stumbled sleepily off to the latrine they'd set up at the periphery of the camp. “Morning, Mrs. Kemper,” he said a few minutes later, standing over the fire to warm his hands. “Pretty day. That coffee sure smells good.”

Helen Kemper had a nose for subterfuge. Glancing at True out of the corner of one eye, she tried to figure out what he was up to. “Left early last night,” she said, pouring him a cup of coffee. “Not sick, I hope.”

“No, ma'am. Thanks. Just had about all I could take of cigar smoke, is all.” He grinned apologetically. “That and tequila, of course. You have some extra bacon I could borrow? Pay you back this afternoon.”

“There on the sideboard,” Helen said, nodding, then swiveling her head to watch Elizabeth emerge from her wagon.

They wanted to laugh and shout, to dance about with joy. Never had the air felt so crisp, the sky seemed so blue. True felt ten feet tall, Elizabeth as if she'd been reborn. But Helen Kemper's eyes were narrow with suspicion, so they played at bored nonchalance while they wolfed down their breakfast. “Going into town,” True announced a while later after he'd scraped and washed his plate. “Anyone want to come along?”

“Who? Me?” Elizabeth asked innocently, biting her tongue to keep from laughing.

Almost everyone else was up by that time, stirring about making and eating breakfast, doing their morning chores. “Or anyone else?” True said, hoping there would be no takers.

“Maybe I'll check in on Mildred,” Elizabeth said. “Wait a second. I'll walk with you.”

“Scott left before daybreak,” Joan Campbell said. “Would you carry his breakfast to him?”

“Happy to.” True took the tin of beans and bacon Joan handed him, crossed to join Elizabeth at the edge of the road. “See you all later. Ready?”

The sun was just over the horizon by the time the first building blocked the camp's view of them. No sooner than they knew Helen Kemper couldn't see them, they dropped all pretence of propriety. “I thought I'd die!” Elizabeth said, dissolving in laughter.

“You're a born conspirator,” True said, laughing. “Good morning, Mrs. Kemper,” he mimicked Elizabeth. “Your biscuits smell heavenly.” He wrapped one arm around her and hugged her to him. “Lovely. Sugar would melt in your mouth.”

“Well, I
had
to say
some
thing.” She giggled. “You looked so painfully innocent.”

They chatted easily, at home with each other as they walked. The adobe buildings to either side brightened as the sun climbed above the horizon. A small black dog snuffled out from an alley and, spying intruders, immediately set in motion a progressive chorus of howls. True threw a stone at the pooch, who leaped in the air and scampered off yelping as if he'd been dealt a mortal wound. They delivered Scott's breakfast and, since they were at the stable, decided to spend the morning exploring the countryside. Elizabeth went to say hello to Mildred and ask Mama Flores to pack them a lunch while True saddled Firetail and another horse.

“Younker,” a voice called from above.

True glanced up to see Hogjaw peering out of the loft door. He held a rifle with a powder horn tied to the barrel. When he dropped it, True whipped out a hand and caught it just above the flint. “What's this for?”

“Keep it primed and close to hand. Graveyard's full of folks sent to perdition within sight of town. I won't be needin' it, seein' as I still got some of the happiness I was tellin' you about last night up here with me.” He cackled with delight. “By God, but there's a flash in the old pan yet!”

Leakey had a habit of popping up in the most uncanny ways, True thought, shaking his head. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and led the horses around to the front of Mama Flores's just in time to meet Elizabeth. True helped her onto her horse, tied the lunch behind Firetail's saddle, and mounted. “Pick a way,” he said. “Any way.”

With their horses fresh and trotting easily, they headed east. San Antonio was returning to normal after the Christmas holiday. Roosters were crowing, each trying to outdo the other. Women yelled at each other and at their children, who screeched back and raced along the street, trailing little dust devils. The smell of
tortillas
heating over hearths or outdoor cookfires permeated the air. They passed a woman in a black shawl making her way across the plaza toward the church. Unheeding of the grief in the woman's shuffling steps and bowed back, two children played tag around her as if she were little more than a tree trunk.

A goat bleated a greeting to them. A basketmaker waved to them from beneath a load of vines and reeds piled high on his back. A potter outside a nearby
jacalito
was busily firing his wares in a pit filled with wood shavings. Inside the eddying, swirling cloud of smoke, his bright
serape
glowed with a veritable rainbow of colors. True stiffened as a soldier, his face puffy from a night's carousing with one of the whores from a nearby brothel, scowled at them as they rode by. Unshaven, his uniform in disarray, the soldier reeked of stale
pulque
and the dank odor of sex. True did not relax until they were well past the man, out of his sight around a corner.

A few hundred yards past the last house on the edge of the city proper, they came to one of the aqueducts. The stone waterway had been built years earlier with priestly engineering and Pueblo Indian labor. Missionaries and Indians alike were long departed but their handiwork continued to carry water to the fields and the rapidly growing city. The temperature climbed as the sun rose and spilled bright light across the land and through the cottonwood trees that clustered at intervals along the aqueduct. The water overhead whispered as it flowed smoothly through the closely fit stonework. Both True and Elizabeth unbuttoned their coats and relaxed, content to let the horses lead them where they willed.

The aqueduct ended and still they rode until, her back stiff and her legs beginning to get sore, Elizabeth called a halt on the bank of a rocky, tree-lined stream. Puffy white clouds, mirrored in the smooth water sailed across the blue sky overhead. When the wind stirred, the barren branches clicked and rasped lightly, like a multitude of small, scurrying animals. After an initial moment of suspicion, True and Elizabeth caught each other listening, their faces knotted with concern. Laughing, they stepped close and kissed, kissed again, and yet again.

“It's getting hot,” True finally said, breaking the embrace and shedding his coat. “I'm hungry. How about you?”

“Ummm, not yet.” Elizabeth took off her coat and draped it over a shrub. Downstream a few yards, the water trickled musically over a tiny natural dam of round, moss green stones, polishing and smoothing, wearing them to perfection before eroding them away entirely as the final step in one of nature's age-old chores. Elizabeth hopped from stone to stone, found one path across the stream, another back, and then, lazy in the gentle winter sun, found a place to sit on a tree trunk jutting out from the bank.

“What'cha thinking?” True said around a mouthful of
tortilla
as he joined her.

“Oh, I don't know.” Elizabeth rested her head against his shoulder. “You. Me. The day. This place. Everything is so beautiful.”

True grunted and took another bite. “Wouldn't want to be here during a heavy rain,” he said, pointing to the piled remains of trees and boulders that had been carried by a current far more powerful than that which bubbled merrily underfoot. He reached to one side and plucked a tangle of grass from a bush. “The water was at least head deep right here during the last flood. Pretty dangerous.”

“We had floods in Pennsylvania too, Mister Paxton,” Elizabeth said.

“Sorry,” True apologized. “Didn't mean to—”

“No, no.” Elizabeth sighed, regretting her reply. “I guess I'm too accustomed to defending myself.”

“You don't have to defend yourself with me.”

“I know.” Elizabeth reached up and nipped him on the ear, at the same time tickling him. “You have to from me, though.”

“Hey!” True pinned her wrists and pulled her to him. “See what you did?” he asked, mock seriously.

“No. What?”

“You made me drop my
tortilla,
that's what.” His voice was deep and gently provoking. Softly, he kissed her lips, each eye, and her neck. “Now, aren't you ashamed.”

“Not in the least,” Elizabeth purred, her head back and her eyes closed.

“Oh, yeah? Well, then …” Suddenly, he grabbed her hat and sent it spinning across the creek.

“True!” Her hat arced up, caught the wind and curved back to the same side of the creek but further downstream. Elizabeth jumped up and ran to catch it, heard True giving chase, squealed and ran past the hat. True growled and almost caught her, but tripped on a loose rock. Elizabeth bolted into the lead and ducked beneath a low branch. She heard True grunt with surprise and looked back to see him wrestling with the branch. Finally he shoved it over his head, then returned to the chase.

A startled rabbit bounded away from a clump of greenbriar, zigzagged across open ground, and disappeared. Laughing, Elizabeth followed the rabbit across the tiny meadow and into the shaded coolness of a thick cedar grove. “I know you're in there,” True sang from somewhere behind her. Elizabeth heard him crashing through the dense growth, ducked around a matted wall of grapevines, and cried out in surprise as she almost collided with Ramez O'Shannon's stallion.

True burst from the thicket behind her. “Now I …” His voice faltered and died as he came to a halt. They were standing in one of the many concealed clearings that broke up the heavy brushland along the creek. Less than twenty feet in front of them, the white stallion and its companion, a brown gelding wearing a side saddle, yanked at their tethers and, unable to pull free, rolled their eyes in alarm.