Paxton and the Lone Star (32 page)

“What are you doing on my land?” a voice called to them.

True stepped in front of Elizabeth, checked his knife to make sure it was loose enough to draw easily, and watched Ramez emerge from the tangled brush on the far side of the clearing. His black and silver jacket was unbuttoned, his thick black hair tousled. His ruffled shirt was open and loosely tucked in at the waist. “Your father's land, don't you mean?” True taunted, regaining his composure quickly.

Ramez sneered. “My land,” he insisted. “One thousand hectares deeded to me to do with as I please.” Cocky, he posed with hands on hips. “And I please to be alone on it. You are intruding. It is fortunate for you I do not have a gun close at hand.”

“It is fortunate for
you
,” True responded, his eyes narrowing.

Ramez had the gall to laugh. “You frighten me terribly, señor.” He held out his hands and shook them violently. “See how I tremble?” The shaking stopped and one long, slender finger pointed arrogantly at True. “From now on,
gringo,
guard where you ride. Do not trespass again.”

“I'll ride where—”

“True!” Elizabeth placed a hand on True's arm. “There is trouble enough without adding more.”

The tension was palpable. Ramez stood smugly confident, sure that his own demeanor and his father's well-known reputation would protect him from harm. True's breath was shallow, his face white with anger. He was poised, ready to spring, restrained only by Elizabeth's touch and the sound of her voice. Slowly he relaxed, glanced sideways at Elizabeth to show her he was under control and that she needn't worry. “You're a lucky boy, O'Shannon,” he finally said, and turning on his heel, led Elizabeth back the way they had come.

Ramez waited until they were gone, then brushed a strand of hair from his face and stepped back into a hidden bare spot under the concealing cedars. There, crouching on a pallet made of
serapes,
Lucita awaited him. “They're gone,” Ramez said, switching to Spanish. “You needn't worry.”

“I thought it was Luther,” Lucita said, wide-eyed and almost sick with fear.

“Father gave me this land to do with as I please. He never rides on it. It's a point of honor. And you know he is an honorable man.”

“Still, I was afraid,” Lucita said, lying back seductively and drawing up her skirts.

Ramez knelt between her legs and touched her with his riding crop. “Do not be afraid of him, woman,” he said hoarsely. “Be afraid of me.”

A quarter mile away, True guided Firetail to the right, up the first long, low ridge of hills to the east of the creek. From his vantage point, the land spread out in a rolling, fertile-looking plain. Woodlands followed the stream back to the south. The undergrowth thinned rapidly on the western side and gave way to peach-colored grasslands broken by occasional groves of trees. “His land!” True exclaimed, the idea springing full blown. “By God! That's it!”

“What's it!” Elizabeth asked.

“Beautiful here, isn't it?” True said, not really paying attention. He pointed. “Good place for a house there. There, too, where that shadow of the cloud touches the hill. What do you think? Like to live there?”

“I think,” Elizabeth said dryly, “that it belongs to Ramez O'Shannon.”

“Yes!” True shouted to the hills, and threw back his head and laughed. Roared! “His to do with as he pleases!”

“Whatever?…”

The laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. True stood in his stirrups and looked across Ramez O'Shannon's land. “It's going to be ours, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice soft and strong. “All ours. Yours, Lottie's, Scott's, Kevin's … all of ours. It and more like it.” He reached across the short space between them and took her hand. “You'll see, Elizabeth. You'll see.” He kissed her fingertips. “But right now, let's get back to town. Like Hogjaw says, time's a wastin'!”

He whirled Firetail in a circle and slapped Elizabeth's gelding across the rump. A second later, galloping side by side down the slope, they were flying like the wind, a wind blowing fresh and clear and out of the west. A wind with the promise of hope after all. True Paxton had a plan.

Chapter XXII

Luther O'Shannon stood on Señor Cirilio Medina. It wasn't very difficult. Cerilio Medina was at rest six feet beneath the dry Texas sod, sleeping dreamlessly in the company of worms and slowly returning to the inevitable dust of the original Creator. Luther often came to this spot to think, to enjoy the private conversation of the wind, and to dream of County Kilgarry with its hills of emerald clover sweeping down in ripples to the white-flecked, cloud gray bay.

The geography and climate of the two locales contrasted vividly, but O'Shannon had somehow connected the two places in his mind on that evening he led Medina to his death. The mesquite grove had been picked almost by random. It was far enough away from the
hacienda
for privacy, yet close enough to reach without an undue waste of time. Time had, after all, been of the essence. Only three hours earlier, he had confiscated Medina's ranch with the help of a handful of soldiers borrowed from General Cos, and since these things, if done at all, were best done quickly, he had begun that final trek shortly thereafter. Medina had talked of his home during the walk. He had been born and brought up in a palm-swept village on the east coast, and remembered it vividly. As O'Shannon listened, he had realized that Medina hoped that his death might mean a sort of homecoming, and that his spirit would find that tranquil innocence again. The Irishman was not insensitive to these nostalgic wanderings and wonderings: he too had childhood memories. He too had known poverty and ached to climb out of it. He too had understood that the only avenue open to him was to learn to fight better than most men could. He too had left a small village and clawed his way to prominence, and yet wistfully desired that which had been left behind. Out of mercy—he called it respect for a fellow soldier—Luther O'Shannon had fired in midsentence, in mid-dream. Perhaps, if there were any justice or luck at all, Medina's soul would fly from his body and soar over that shimmering white coast lined with dusty green palms, and see himself below, still young and tan and lithe and unencumbered. The lead ball knocked him to the earth, sprawled in the lifeless frozen spasm of a collapsed marionette.

A man's birthplace sticks in his craw. Three months later, Luther O'Shannon stared down at the slight mound beneath his feet. “Did you find it?” he asked. “Was it as you remembered, señor?”

The dead man kept his answer to himself. The enemies O'Shannon buried stayed silent, stayed dead, except in his dreams, where the fallen marionettes often rose to dance again. Contemplative, O'Shannon pursued the metaphor, expanded it from the moldering Medina to the world at large as he walked back toward the
hacienda.
It was a simple metaphor, but it worked well enough. To regain control, a man had to manipulate many strings, keep in mind where each led, and what the consequences were of twitching it. Even his son Ramez was one string. What other children O'Shannon might have had were conveniently forgotten. One son was enough to keep in line. Lucita, headstrong and sensual nearly to a fault, was another. Santa Anna was far away but an important and difficult string: distance was necessary because the land he had bestowed was far away from Mexico City, and dangerous because one never knew who
el Presidente
was listening to at any given moment. Closer to home, yet another string attached to the settlers, whose numbers were increasing almost daily. Land-hungry, industrious, and imbued with a sense of individuality and self-esteem, they were an irritating thorn in his side—which was an apt description for General Cos, too, the final string.

Cos was one of those officers O'Shannon considered inevitable in every soldier's life. The general had no appreciation of the finer aspects of the art of warfare. He had been assigned the farflung outpost of San Antonio by Bustamente because his family was very wealthy and had to be placated, and because the former president believed he would do the least amount of harm there. Santa Anna had allowed him to remain for the same reasons. Unfortunately, the general appeared to be little more than a frightened martinet, one who gave too much weight to the
peónes'
love of Medina and their anger over his fall, and not enough weight to the disruptive influence of the settlers. The day would come when O'Shannon would have to advise Santa Anna that Cos needed to be removed. There was plenty of time, however, to mull over the potential dangers of that particular problem. Ah, well, O'Shannon sighed inwardly, letting himself in at the front door and starting down the hall to his study.

“There you are.” Dressed in a riding outfit, an angry Lucita stood in the doorway. “I've been looking all over for you.”

“Oh?” It still took the Irishman a moment to make the mental switch from English to Spanish. “I've been out, as you can see,” he answered waspishly. “What do you want?”

“Your son,” Lucita fumed. “Can you teach him no manners? Pah! He is as bad as his father!”

O'Shannon brushed her aside and entered the study, which he also used as an office. “Really?” he asked dryly. “What has he insulted this time, your honor or your intelligence? If either is possible.”

“He promised to escort me to San Antonio today to pick up my gown for the New Year's Fiesta, but he is nowhere to be found,” she explained indignantly. “Now I don't know how I shall ever—”

“Be quiet, Lucita. In God's name just be quiet.” O'Shannon poured himself a cup of coffee from the urn on his desk. “If you'd get up in time, these things wouldn't happen and I wouldn't have to listen to you chatter like a molting hen. Ramez left two hours ago.”

“Two hours?” Lucita sputtered.

O'Shannon sipped his coffee. “In order to be there by noon. Something about a horse race. Now, will you get out of here and leave me in peace?”

“Oh!” Lucita angrily stamped her foot and spun around, her face childlike with an ugly pout. “A horse race? He prefers a horse race?” she shouted to the house at large. Her voice rang through the hall, followed by a curse and the sound of breaking pottery as she knocked over a plant. “I spit on a horse race, do you hear me? What is so special about a stupid horse race?”

It was in a manner of speaking, practice.

Firetail had begun to pull abreast of the bay mare as they rounded the corner and entered
Calle de la Soledad,
then headed at a dead run toward the
Plaza de las Islas
and
La Casa del Rio.
The citizens of San Antonio,
mestizos,
Indians, colonists, and soldiers shouted bets at each other and cheered on the two horses. All knew that the
norteamericano
named True Paxton had wagered a substantial sum in this race against Don Raphael Sanchez's fleetest mare. Most of the onlookers waited in the plaza itself to watch the finish. Two poles with a banner stretched between them had been erected just for the occasion.

Joseph Paxton had positioned himself in the front rank of the spectators, about a hundred feet from the finish line. The second the horses thundered past him, he grinned with relief and, having seen enough, began to work his way through the crowd toward a wagon set a few yards from and in a direct line with the poles. His goal was Ramez O'Shannon, who was watching the race with two friends, young officers under Cos's command.

A cheer erupted from the crowd. A good head taller than anyone around him, Joseph could see Ramez leaning forward intently as Firetail stretched his lead to a full head and neck, and won the race. He could also see as Don Raphael, stationed on the balcony of the hotel, gave a disappointed wag of his round, good-natured face and, with surprising haste, vanished inside. All around, the crowd milled about, arguing about the race while they paid and collected on the bets they had made.

“What do you think of that, Ramez O'Shannon?” Joseph asked, stopping by the wagon and talking loud enough for the young man and his friends and anyone nearby to hear.

Ramez looked down at Joseph and scoffed. “A race between nags. And the
gringo
's nightmare of a horse barely won.”

“Poor sentiments from one of your station, sir.” An expert in his angler's role, Joseph knew exactly how much line to let go before he set the hook. “I would have thought you'd be as excited as everyone else to see such a magnificent contest between the best that San Antonio has to offer and a truly remarkable, if unknown, animal.”

“Best?” Ramez laughed aloud, and his companions joined in. “Why, only two months ago my Torbellino bested Sanchez's nag by better than two lengths.”

“Two months ago?” Joseph asked skeptically. The crowd was beginning to take notice. He gave a twitch to the line. “And where did this miracle occur? Was anyone present?” He smiled and shrugged. “I wasn't. Perhaps this happened in a dream. Your dream, for instance.”

Muffled laughter rippled through the crowd. Ramez colored. “Outside of town,” he was compelled to explain. “The ridge road that circles the city. A challenging course. One for horses of breeding.”

Joseph took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well,” he said with a wink to a bystander, “the roan
was
bred, I can assure you of that.”

Ramez's lips were a thin line. “Do you bait me,
gringo?
Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Neither. I state a fact.” Suddenly, Joseph sounded very businesslike. “It is a fact too that the roan can run anywhere, providing the wager is of interest.”

“Torbellino,” Ramez sneered, “would wait for that ugliest of animals at the finish post.”

“And turn to find that fastest of animals already there ahead of him.”

“Not one day in ten,
gringo.
But the question is meaningless. I would never disgrace Torbellino by matching him against that poor creature you so generously call a stallion.”