Sun God (30 page)

He chuckled and told her, “Darlin’, the only mansion I have is a rundown old hacienda in southwest Texas. If I ever go back there, I’ll take you with me.”

Now, five months later, Nacori knew all about her lover’s Texas home, had questioned him at length when he was drunk and in a talkative mood. She dreamed of returning there with him one day to be the mistress of his big mansion, to present him with beautiful blue-eyed children.

That the possibility of such an occurrence was remote did not dampen Nacori’s fond daydreams. Nor did the fact that her beautiful lover had so little money that she was called on to sell her body to many of the fine gentlemen who gambled at El Dorado or the Parker House or the Empire or the Arcade or any one of a dozen gaming palaces on the Barbary Coast.

She didn’t mind so much. For the most part the gentlemen were clean and smelled nice, and they were generally easy to please. Entertaining a different one every night was not half as bad as when she’d spent all her dreadful nights with the horrid Chief Snake Tongue.

And besides, the money she made had afforded them this fancy hotel room with its red satin bed and red-and-gold flocked walls as well as the custom-cut suits for her blond gentleman lover. Soon all this would be behind them.

Earlier this evening, as Nacori entertained a big, raw-boned Texan, she had learned some thrilling news, news she would share with her lover as soon as he allowed her to stop dancing.

At last her handsome blond sweetheart snapped his fingers loudly. Nacori ceased dancing, her limbs weak, her body drenched with sweat.

She smiled and said, “My love, I have exciting news for you!”

“Later,” he said. “Can’t you see I’m in no mood for talk.”

Nacori nodded happily and came to him. She started to put her arms around his neck, but he stopped her.

“On your knees,” he ordered. She obeyed, sinking immediately to the carpeted floor between his spread legs. She heard his loud groan of pleasure when she clasped him with her hands, licked her dry lips, and then enclosed him in her wet, warm mouth.

Afterward, she wiped her mouth across her forearm and said, “Now may I tell you my news?”

He smiled at her, twined his fingers through her wild hair, and said, “Tell me.”

Nacori told him what she had heard. That a customer, familiar with the land and the people of southwest Texas, had heard that his huge ranch, the Orilla, was again prospering. A half-breed Spaniard had led a troop of Mexican soldiers onto the ranch and had taken it over. A long dried up underground river was running again, grass was growing, cattle were getting fat.

She talked and talked and he listened with more interest than he’d ever shown before, his blue eyes narrowed in concentration.

Her hands affectionately rubbing his hair-dusted thighs, Nacori asked, “Will we go there now? Will we return to your big hacienda and be rich landowners? Will I have fine dresses and jewels and satin-lined bassinets for our children? Will I?”

“Will you … what? I wasn’t listening.”

“Baron, my only darling, will we go back to Orilla now?”

His fingers left her tangled hair. He brushed her hands from his thighs. He callously pushed her away with a foot to her chest. He stood up and said, “
I
may go back to Orilla. You? You think I’d take a half-breed whore home to Texas?”

Her face framed in a patch of shimmering moonlight, she stared at him. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and washed down her smooth copper cheeks.

“But I thought … what … what shall I do?”

Baron Sullivan put his hands on his knees, leaned down so that his face was inches from hers.

“You could always go back to Snake Tongue,” he said, the square of bright May moonlight capturing his smiling face and making a silvery crown of his shiny blond hair.

Fifteen hundred miles away, high in the Chisos Mountains of Texas, that same bright May moonlight shone down on the high meadow camp of a small band of Mescalero Apaches.

It was well past midnight. The camp was silent and peaceful. The Apache families were inside their wickiups, sleeping soundly.

Chief Snake Tongue was not inside his wickiup nor was he sleeping soundly. He was at camp’s edge, beside a gurgling stream. He was stretched out naked in the shimmering moonlight with a pretty, young Apache woman.

The chief was wide awake, and he was unhappy.

The woman was one of the camp’s prettiest young maidens, but she did not please him. Any more than the three others who had—one at a time—come and gone from his wickiup earlier in the evening.

When, unsatisfied, he had sent the last woman away, one of his braves had reminded him of the full, white moon, then quickly suggested that the chief take a woman he’d not yet had out in the meadow beside the stream. Beneath the high, full moon, she would appear almost as a white woman.

“Yes!” the chief had said excitedly. “Her skin will be pale white. Who will it be? Who have I not had? Who is pretty enough?”

The brave who had made the clever suggestion spoke up. “My sister, Doe Eyes, is thought to be fair to look on. She would be honored to have this opportunity to please you.”

“Wake Doe Eyes and send her to me at once!”

Now, lying on a blanket in a patch of day-bright moonlight, Chief Snake Tongue was annoyed. He had spent more than an hour with Doe Eyes. She had cheerfully offered her body for his pleasure, had willingly done everything he had asked of her.

She
was
a pretty girl and her firm, melon breasts and strong thighs were good to look on and to taste, but he was not satisfied. Although the moonlight made her appear appealingly lighter than she was, it was not enough. She was still very much an Indian woman with dark skin and dark hair and a submissive attitude.

Abruptly Chief Snake Tongue stopped licking Doe Eye’s toes. He dropped her foot heavily to the blanket and ordered her to leave. Hurt and disappointed, Doe Eyes gathered her discarded clothing and went running in tears back to her wickiup.

Moments later the entire camp was shocked awake by the sound of a bugle blaring in the night. Alert warriors reached for their guns and raced outside, and frightened women drew their children around them and waited.

Casting a black outline against the moonlit sky, Chief Snake Tongue, wearing his devil’s mask, blew on the old bugle taken in a long-ago raid on white soldiers. When he blew on his bugle, it was the signal for every man in camp to drop what he was doing and swiftly assemble before their chief.

Snake Tongue lowered the bugle.

He stood, his feet apart, the marble eyes of his mask glittering, the red horns appearing almost black. He darted his long tongue out atop the mask’s leather tongue, making him look like a horned devil with two tongues.

Suddenly he threw his horn down. He snatched off his devil’s mask and slammed it to the ground. Locking his hands behind his back, the chief marched back and forth before his waiting men. As he marched, he told them that he was not a content man. Told them that he was never going to be fully content until he had what he wanted.

The chief stopped pacing. He darted his tongue out of his slashed mouth several times. Then he gave them their orders.

“Bring me a white woman. I don’t care where you get her. Snatch a settler’s daughter. Attack a stagecoach. Steal a rancher’s wife. I want a pretty white woman with silky yellow hair and skin as white as milk.”

The braves all muttered and shuffled and looked at each other.

The chief’s voice raised to a eye-squinting shout. “Get me a white woman!”

A
MY WAS AWAKENED THE
next morning by the touch of warm May sunshine on her face. Wondering why she was so incredibly thirsty, and why she had such a terrible headache, she slowly opened her eyes. Pushing her tangled hair off her face and rising on one elbow, she groggily looked around.

She was alone in the master suite. Naked on the big white bed swept clean of pillows and covers, exactly as she was each morning. Except that the sun was higher and hotter. She had obviously overslept.

Swinging her long, slender legs to the carpeted floor, Amy reached for a silver pitcher of cool water on the night table, searched in vain for a glass, shrugged bare shoulders, turned up the pitcher, and drank thirstily.

Sighing, she then lifted the silver pitcher higher, carefully rolled it back and forth across her pounding forehead, then lowered it and pressed it to her breasts and bare midriff. The touch of the cold silver against her too-warm flesh made her gasp and quiver.

It also shocked her into remembering.

Everything.

Amy’s eyes widened in horror and her lips automatically formed the word no, though no sound came. Hugging the icy-cold pitcher to her, she shivered and shook her head and tried desperately to deny what had happened. She’d had a dream; that was it. She hadn’t … she would never have … oh, my God. …

A tiny straw of hay fell from Amy’s tumbled hair.

Amy recalled reading alone in the
sala
and looking up to see El Capitán standing in the archway. Dressing hurriedly and going out to the celebration. His taking her in his arms for a dance and telling her there was so little time. Making her assume that he was leaving.

The bastard! He had purposely led her to believe that he had been ordered back into battle. Had made her think that he would be gone with the sun and she’d never see him again. He’d planned the whole thing! He had arrogantly supposed that if she thought he was leaving, she’d let down her guard entirely and … and …

More memories rushed in.

Licking salt from El Capitán’s hand and he from hers. Dancing again and again with him, forgetting anyone else existed. Tied to him … with a handkerchief. The heat of the bonfire making them hot. Perspiring profusely. Leaving the party and … and …

With shaking hands Amy carefully placed the silver pitcher back on the night table. She pressed her trembling knees tightly together and hugged her arms to her sides. She shut her eyes and felt a sob of despair building in her tight throat.

Behind closed eyelids, she saw a shameless pair of human beings, naked and bound together with a red silk sash, mating in the hay on the stable floor, exactly like animals.

The strangled sob tore from Amy’s throat.

They
were
animals.
She
was an animal. There in the arms of El Capitán—a man who openly held her in contempt—she was a shameless animal. Why? What was wrong with her? Could her sanity have totally departed?

Dear God, what am I going to do? I am trapped in this unending nightmare!

For the first time, Amy noticed the neatly folded yellow dispatch lying on the night table beside the silver pitcher. She knew immediately what it was. El Capitán’s orders. The orders she’d searched for in vain.

Amy’s delicate jaw hardened as she reached for the dispatch. Quickly she read it. Sure enough, El Capitán had been ordered to remain at his present post. Rage rose red hot in Amy. He’d left the dispatch there to mock her.

Again he had made a fool of her. Again he had shown her that against him she was powerless. He could make her do anything, say anything, be anything he wanted.

Trembling with self-loathing, Amy laid the yellow Juarez dispatch back on the night table and rose to her feet. Suddenly it came to her that she must get away this minute. He was
not
going to leave, so she had to! She couldn’t spend one more night on Orilla.

Amy hurried to the dressing room. She badly needed a bath, but there was no time. By the slanting of the sunlight coming in her room, it was surely midmorning. El Capitán would return any minute, walk right in while she bathed, pull her to her feet, and …

Amy dressed as quickly as possible. She yanked a carpet bag down from a shelf and hastily stuffed extra clothes and underwear into it. Then realized she couldn’t take anything without raising suspicions. Her heart thumping against her ribs, she peered out into the hall and, seeing no one, stepped outside. She fairly flew down the stairs and through the empty dining room.

Amy hadn’t counted on Pedrico being in the kitchen with Magdelena. Her face turned crimson when she saw the pair drinking coffee at the table. She felt like a naughty child about to be lectured.

But instead they both smiled warmly, and their eyes twinkled as if they fully approved of her behavior. Perhaps they didn’t know. Maybe they, like everyone else, had been having such a good time last night, they never noticed when she and El Capitán slipped away to the stables.

“Good morning,” she said with as much composure as she could muster.

“
Señora
Amy.” Pedrico politely rose from his chair.

“You need a big breakfast today,” said Magdelena, chuckling as she poured a cup of steaming black coffee. Handing it to Amy, she told her, “I will fix you a special—”

“I’m not hungry,” Amy interrupted. She glanced nervously about and added, “I … ah … thought I’d go into town this morning.” She took the cup of coffee.

Magdelena’s hands went to her hips. “Why you go into Sundown? We need nothing. There is so much food left from the fiesta we will never eat it all.”

“Yes, I know.” Amy kept her voice level. “I was thinking … You could fill a small hamper with the leftovers and I’ll take it to Mac and his family.”

“You need rest, you look like … like …” Magdelena lowered her eyes for a second. Then said: “You sure you feel up to going into town?”

“I feel fine,” Amy snapped. She turned her attention to Pedrico. “You’ll drive me?”

“El Capitán has gone for a ride,” Pedrico said, smiling. “As soon as he returns, I will drive you to Sundown.”

“No!” Amy declared irritably. “I do
not
want to wait until El Capitán gets back. I want to go now.”

“But,
señora
, why the hurry? If you will just—”

“I am going into Sundown, Pedrico. If you refuse to drive me, then I will drive myself!”

Pedrico and Magdelena exchanged glances. Magdelena said, “He will drive you if you insist. I’ll pack the food; it will not take a minute.”

Not half an hour after Amy and Pedrico had driven away from the hacienda, El Capitán, astride his big stallion, returned from his morning ride. After dismounting, he led Noche into his special corral, holding the long leather reins in one hand, a brilliant bouquet of orange Mexican poppies in the other.