Page 23 of Sweet Savage Love
23
T he entrance to the jail, as d’Argent had stated earlier, was no more than fifty feet from the door of the jefe’s house that the lieutenant had commandeered for himself. Nevertheless, walking very slowly behind the shambling, hangdog American, d’Argent managed to whisper a stream of bold compliments in his companion’s ear. She did not reply, but she had permitted him to put his arm about her waist, and he did not think she would balk too much at allowing him further liberties later on.
“You are much too beautiful to be wasted on this clod of a man, dear madame! You need someone to appreciate your charms, your so-lovely lips and body. Believe me, you should be dressed as you deserve, in the finest gowns, with jewels in your ears and around your neck. I’m not the kind of man who believes in beating a woman—I’d rather storm your citadel, Ginette, with kisses. I’ll show you—I’ll make you happy tonight, I swear it!”
“Monsieur!” Her whisper sounded almost pleading, and d’Argent laughed, squeezing her waist, sure of his victory.
“There’s no need to pretend with me, little one. I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you at the window, your hair falling over your breasts, just as it is now. I knew then how it would be with us.” Carried away, d’Argent waxed poetic. “You’ll have no complaints of me as a lover, cherie. I’ll be gentle I swear it! And if you’ll stay with me, I’ll be generous.”
The big American coughed suddenly and seemed to stumble, and d’Argent jabbed the pistol viciously into his back, hoping it would hurt. He realized that the woman had drawn away from his arm and was staring at him with tears of emotion shining in her eyes.
“You actually believe all the terrible things this—this canaille said about me! You really think I’m a cheap woman, don’t you?”
He tried to calm her. Why were women so sensitive?
“But no, my sweet! You misunderstood me. Of course you are a lady, and I’ll treat you as one. But believe me, I don’t blame you for preferring any other man to this one.”
Again the pistol jabbed harshly into his captive’s back, driving him up the three shallow steps that led up to the door of the jail. He hoped the girl would not prove difficult at this stage—after all, she had encouraged him quite obviously, what did she expect?
“Come come, my little one, you must not think I don’t respect you,” he said soothingly. “Tonight I’ll show you just how much respect and yes, admiration I have for you—for that beautiful body you are hiding under a gown that does not do you justice.”
He replaced his arm around her waist rather roughly and pulled her along, knowing that some women preferred to be dominated and used thus by a man. And the next moment he had decided smugly that his judgement had been right, for she stopped protesting and came with him quite meekly.
The man known as Blue opened the door with his gun at the ready, a look of relief replacing the surprised one he’d worn when he saw the staggering, drunken prisoner the lieutenant had brought along.
The jail consisted of only two rooms—a makeshift office, and a large cell. The walls were of thick adobe, with the thick iron bars of the cell door and tiny window embedded into them. Behind the barred door, on a makeshift wooden bunk, a man sat hunched over; a dirty serape wrapped around his shoulders.
As the Frenchman and his captive walked inside the man in the cell jumped up and came to the bars, shaking them furiously.
“ Americano—gringo dog! I won’t share a cell with a dirty gringo! ” he began yelling.
“Shut up, you filth!” Blue shouted angrily, his fist raised threateningly.
What happened next was a blur—just like a nightmare and just as unreal, when the Frenchman looked back on it.
The big American—falling drunkenly against the bars as d’Argent pushed him forward. Falling, and throwing Blue off-balance as he did. One moment, Blue had been standing on his feet, head turned to shout at the Juarista prisoner. And the very next instant he lay writhing helplessly on the hard-packed earthen floor, clutching his groin and moaning like a sick animal. It was the bearded American who had done it, his drunkenness disappearing as his knee slashed wickedly upward, maiming the other man.
And now, his eyes cold and hard, his vacuous mask dropped, he held Blue’s gun in his hand as he faced d’Argent with his back to the cell.
“Better drop that gun you’re holding. Hesitate and I’ll gut-shoot you.” Still stunned by what had happened, d’Argent dropped his gun. The clipped, businesslike voice went on giving orders.
“Ginny—you get those keys and unlock the door. And try to hurry it, baby, we’re sitting on a powder keg.”
Silently, moving like a puppet, the girl walked forward, kneeling gingerly by the gasping, retching man on the floor to take the keys from his belt. Without being told again she unlocked the cell door and the prisoner walked out grinning; casually bent to pick up the gun d’Argent had dropped.
“Remind me to kiss you when we get far enough from town, Ginny,” he said softly as he passed the girl. She stared at him blankly—d’Argent thought afterwards that she had looked as if she was in a trance.
A few minutes later, leaving d’Argent and Blue bound and gagged; locked in the cell; three people walked casually and slowly down the steps of the jail. One was a woman. They mounted horses, and they rode openly out of town. Since the American and his wife had been guests of the lieutenant, none of the men under his command did anything to stop them.
Once they had left the outskirts of the town, they rode very fast. Neither Steve nor Paco spoke, although it was apparent, after a while, that they knew in which direction they would travel.
Ginny still felt dazed. Her tawdry yellow dress was unsuitable for riding astride, but the saddle on her horse would permit no other alternative. Her bare legs felt cold, and after a few hours her whole body felt stiff and numb. Still, she did not complain, or beg that they stop to rest. And after all, if the French came in pursuit, they would be looking for her too. It seemed unreal!
They were riding into the foothills again, into pitch-dark, forbidding-looking terrain. Sometime during the night they stopped to rest the horses in the shadow of an overhanging cliff, and Ginny had barely strength left to stumble over to a boulder, which she leaned her back against, her eyes closed. Steve had lifted her off the horse—he’d given her his black jacket to wear against the night chill, and a canteen to drink from. But now he and Paco, merely darker shadows that merged with other shadows, talked softly together.
She was too tired to listen, too tired to want to. The jacket smelled of cigar smoke, and the smell made her headache worse. She felt as if her skull would split open if she moved her head.
Why hadn’t she done what she should have done? D’Argent’s manner towards her would have soon changed if she had told him who she was, and that she was a prisoner. Or would he have preferred not to believe her, for his own reasons? And why had she meekly followed Steve’s curt orders and made herself a wanted fugitive too? She tried to tell herself it was only because she did not want Paco to be tortured and executed. Paco—but what was he doing here? Of course he had to have known Steve’s plans from the beginning, he was a thief and an outlaw too, in spite of—in spite of—she was suddenly aware that Paco was standing over her, that he was thanking her; telling her he was leaving now, going in a different direction.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again soon,” he said. “Who knows? And you were wonderful,” he added. “I’m grateful.”
She murmured something—she could not remember what she had said. But suddenly he was gone, and Steve was bending over her, his hands surprisingly gentle as he helped her to her feet.
“We’d better get moving, bébé, ” he said quietly. She glanced at him strangely. He’d called her “ bébé, ”—a French word? But then, it was only a word, and a man could pick up a word or two of any language easily enough.
He helped her up into the saddle and she said tonelessly, “How far this time?”
She saw him shrug in the darkness as they put their horses into a canter.
“Depends on how fast we can travel. We’re going to come out into some flat country now, and I want to put as many miles between us and our friends back there as possible first.”
“I have a terrible headache!” she said suddenly, with the first sign of emotion she had shown since they’d left the town. He laughed unfeelingly.
“It’s probably a hangover, Ginny. You drank too much champagne.”
She wanted to scream at him, hurl insults and abuse at him, but it would take too much effort. She relapsed into a sullen silence, closing her eyes against the pain that lanced through her temples with each movement of the horse.
Their travelling during the next forty-eight hours followed the old pattern that Ginny had been forced to become used to. Riding at night, hiding out somewhere to sleep during the hottest part of the day. The only other humans they encountered were an occasional peasant—a vaquero guarding a small herd of incredibly scrawny-looking cattle.
Once they had left the foothills behind them the country seemed to undulate, to stretch endlessly before them. And all this land, Steve explained briefly, belonged to the big landowners—the hacendados. His voice had sounded almost bitter, making her glance at him sharply. At times like this, she would remember that he had a Mexican mother, and wonder—was that why he was mixed up with the Juaristas? Had he felt deprived and cheated in some way?
She asked him questions about Mexico, and about Juarez and for once he seemed to take her seriously, and gave her considered, honest answers. It was the big landowners, wanting to keep their miniature kingdoms, who had supported Maximilian. He told her of the system of peonage which rendered men slaves to their patron, working all their lives on land that could never belong to them. Juarez had wanted things to be different—he had broken the power of the church, insisted on schooling for even the children of poor Indians. He represented a threat to the way of life of the wealthy landowners, “ criollas ” most of them.
“And you,” Ginny persisted, “what about you? Surely you don’t consider yourself a Mexican? Why would you want to take sides?”
To this question, at least, he would not give her a straight answer. “Maybe I wanted to know how it felt to fight for a cause,” he said once, lightly; and the next time she asked, “You’re surely not forgetting I’m a half-breed?”
He continued to puzzle her. She was almost as familiar with the shape and texture of his body as she was with her own, and yet she knew nothing about him—who he was or what he was. He was no ordinary half-breed gunman, she knew that much. Sometimes he spoke like an educated man, and sometimes worse than any illiterate. He knew Indians, on both sides of the border, and he seemed to know the country they were travelling through, so he was as familiar with Mexico as he was in the United States. It seemed unusual, to say the least, that any man should have travelled so much in his lifetime—although, of course, she would tell herself with a little stab of contempt, he had probably spent most of his life running from the law.
“Where are you taking me this time? Dear God, I’m so tired of riding, of running!”
The plains, their emptiness slashed through by barrancas, or small canyons, seemed to shimmer under the heat, and Ginny felt unutterably dirty and weary.
Surprisingly, he stopped to draw her a rough map in the sandy soil.
“We are in the Meseta Central—here are the mountain ridges, the Sierra Madres, on either side—” he drew jagged lines “—and we’re here, somewhere in the center, in the province of Zacatecas. Ahead of us there are more mountains—Mexico City. But that’s quite a way farther, and don’t look at me so hopefully, sweetheart, I’m not taking you there, not yet.”
“But why? Why not? I’m of no use to you now, you can let me go, and travel more quickly without me, why do you need me now?”
She saw the way he looked at her and flushed, hearing him laugh softly.
“Blushes become you, do you know that? Even under the tan you’ve acquired.”
“Oh, damn you, Steve Morgan!”
She whirled away from him and ran for her horse, mounted it with her ragged skirts flying, not bothering to turn her head to see if he followed. She dug her heels into the animal’s side and felt it spring forward. A sudden, unreasoning fear, mixed with depression, seized her. What am I doing here? What will become of me? Why won’t he set me free? She leaned low over the horse’s neck and felt the hot breeze whip against her face. The hat he had given her to wear flew from her head, hanging from her neck by its cord.
She rode with a kind of desperate, mindless fury, feeling the fluid motion of the horse under her. It was only when the animal began to tire and slacken its speed that she became aware that all along, he’d been riding abreast of her. She lifted her head to scream her hate and fear at him and saw his arm come out, catching her around the waist and sweeping her from her saddle to his.
“I’ve missed riding with you and holding your body close this way,” he said softly in her ear. “Ginny, you fool, did you really think I’d let you run away? What were you running to?”
“Away—anywhere, it doesn’t matter—just away from you, from what you’ve turned me into.” She half-screamed the words at him, gasping for breath. “Haven’t you done enough? Do I have to be exhibited in cheap saloons and bawdy houses as your whore? Must I be dragged along wherever you go like a—a trophy of war? What are you trying to do to me?”
“Don’t forget, nina, that I only took what you kept offering me in the first place! And then there were the others—Carl Hoskins, your French lover, the debonair Captain Remy—do you think he’ll be waiting for you in Mexico City? Is that why you’re so anxious to get there?”
She had goaded him into anger at last, she thought, and didn’t care. Let him be angry with her, what could he do to her now that he had not done already?
“Whatever I am, it’s what you’ve turned me into! And if being some man’s mistress is all that’s left to me now, then I’d rather be a demi-mondaine and choose my own lovers than be your cheap camp follower!”
“In that case, Ginny, if it’s your ambition to be a puta, you’d best learn how one is treated! And remember, no fighting, no struggling, a man expects something in return for his money!”
Before she could say a word, he reined the horse up sharply and slid off its back, carrying her with him,
She would not yield, not this time. She would not let his arms and his kisses melt her. Perhaps, if she refused to fight, refused to feel, he’d tire of her and let her go.
He held her hurtfully by the arm, but at least he thought to throw his blanket-roll down among the clumps of sagebrush that littered the hard ground. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken her out in the open, lying on the hard, unyielding earth. She felt him push her backwards and lay stiffly and rigidly where he’d left her, noting almost with triumph the way the temper showed hotly in his eyes when she ignored his rude demand that she undress, and quickly.
“If that’s how you want it,” his muttered words were a threat—almost unbelievingly, Ginny saw him pull the knife he always carried in a sheath strapped to his leg. He used it on her clothes, then, while she forced herself to lie still—cutting them swiftly and savagely away from her shrinking flesh. When it was done, he flung the knife carelessly aside and stood over her, his hands unbuckling his belt.
“Spread your legs for me, puta, ” he said almost casually. “Let’s see how much you are worth.”
The words, the way in which he said them, his assumption of being able to take her so cheaply, so easily, brought sudden life back to her body and she felt as if a tide of furious rage bubbled in her veins, rendering her almost insane with anger and hate.
As he bent over her, she flung her arms outward in a paroxysm of sheer frustration, and her fingers touched the knife he had flung so carelessly away. Hardly thinking, all reaction now, Ginny snatched up the knife, driving the point upward at his body. She felt it slice through flesh—with a shock that jarred her whole body she knew the blade had glanced off bone. Blindly, in a frenzy of fear and fury, she would have struck again, but this time he was prepared for her. His hand caught her wrist and twisted it savagely. When she looked up at him, she saw that the whole side of his shirt was soaked with blood—he sat back on his haunches, Indian fashion, and stared at her as if he hadn’t seen her before.
Ginny’s wrist throbbed horribly but suddenly, as she gazed back at him, she was only barely conscious of the pain. Something stirred in her as she lay there naked under the hot sun, with the sky like a deep blue bowl overhead—something strange and unfamiliar and primitive. Her eyes locked with his, finding them unfathomable.
“You should have been a Comanche squaw after all,” he said suddenly. “But if you had been, I’d be dead by now.”
She said nothing, watching his eyes. There was pain there, she could see that now; and a kind of puzzled wonder too, but no anger.
The blood dripped down his side, down his pants leg, but he did nothing to staunch its flow.
“I still want to make love to you,” he said quietly.
“You’ll bleed to death first!”
But the words were a whisper, and even as she said them he leaned over her again and her body moved to accept his. She felt the warm, sticky wetness of his blood on her breasts, and when she opened her eyes again she could see the buzzards wheeling above them—tiny black specks against blinding blue.
He moved inside her and her body arched to meet his. Her voice sounded drugged, half-dazed.
“I might have killed you—they know—the buzzards. I can see them.”
“And I prefer another kind of death—the little death that comes each time I fuck you, Ginny.”
He spoke to her in fluent French and she gasped with shock and a return of anger, raking her nails down his back like a wildcat until he swore at her in Spanish and then in French, jamming his mouth down against hers in a kiss so violent that she forgot her anger, the words she wanted to scream at him, and became blind to everything but his body, and hers, and the savage hunger in both of them that had to be satisfied.