Page 36 of Sweet Savage Love

36

Q uite a welcome, Steve Morgan was thinking sardonically as they marched him across the sun-baked courtyard. It was almost as if they had been sure he’d come. “Fool! Idiota! ” Concepción had screamed at him, and of course she was right. Riding into Zacatecas like a goddamn hero—a medieval knight out to rescue his ladylove. He had always been a cynic about women; why couldn’t he have guessed that Ginny would know instinctively how to take care of herself? And why did the thought that she had spent the night comfortably curled up against the fat colonel in his bed still have the power to make him almost blind with rage?

Hell, Steve thought now, feeling the rifle barrels jab into his back when he stumbled once, there was really a wry kind of humor in the whole situation! He’d made a fool of himself, and little Ginny got her revenge, in spades. Fancy coming to her “rescue” only to find that she hardly desired rescuing! No doubt she and the colonel had cooked up the whole scheme while they’d been dancing. And by marrying her so suddenly, he’d only played into their hands further. She deserved admiration for the way she’d waited until just the right time, the right moment. And what singleminded hate she must feel for him—no doubt it would give her real pleasure to see him punished for the way he’d messed up her life. “I’d like to watch you die, very slowly,” she’d flung at him once. It was too bad he’d underestimated her again; and this time, no doubt, fatally for him.

They had almost reached the far end of the courtyard now, its earth hard-packed from the marching of the Legionnaires who held Zacatecas. No point in resistance…But as he looked up and suddenly realized what they intended to do with him, Steve Morgan could not help a momentary hesitation, nor the crawling of his flesh.

“What’s the matter, Morgan? Just the sight of it make you nervous? Colonel told me I was to tell you you could save yourself a whole lotta pain if you decide to answer his questions. Me,” Beal’s voice dropped to a soft, gloating jeer, “I hope you stay stubborn. Think I’m gonna enjoy working you over.”

The two hard-faced Legionnaires who were part of his escort had moved up on either side of Steve, seizing his arms as Beal unlocked the manacles. He had the wild impulse to break free and run for it and fought it back, knowing how Beal would love that. No, there was no point in resistance, not now. The firing squad would have been better, Steve thought grimly as his arms were hauled upward and lashed firmly with wet rawhide to the wooden crossbar. A wide, beltlike leather strap buckled just above the waist pulled his torso flat against the thick-bodied wooden post. The soldiers worked fast, while Beal stood aside grinning his thin-lipped wolfish grin.

“Ain’t too comfortable now, are you? But don’t you worry none—pretty soon you’ll get to screamin’ and beggin’ so loud you’ll forget everything else. I ain’t worked on a prisoner yet I haven’t broke. Why, you bastard, you’re just going to be praying for that firing squad to put an end to your misery!”

They left him alone then—“to think about it” Beal said. The heat of the early afternoon sun was like a blow, and it seemed to reflect upward from the sun-seared soil as well. Steve felt the sweat break out all over his body, pouring down his face so that he had to blink it out of his eyes. He cursed his own inanity all over again. He could have been somewhere in the coolness of the mountains by now; circling around to make contact with the ragged Juarist armies under Escobedo, who were even now moving slowly and inexorably towards Zacatecas. And in Mexico City he had heard that Bazaine was calling his armies in; pulling them closer to the capital. “Not a retreat, of course, but a concentration,” his informant had said rather pompously. Why hadn’t Devereaux gotten his orders yet? A matter of time…and he could have waited. If he’d had any sense he’d have thought with his brain, instead of with his gut.

“But not me—Christ, what a complete idiot!” Steve swore savagely to himself. All he had been able to think about was Ginny—Ginny in prison; Ginny in the hands of men like Devereaux and Tom Beal—hungry and thirsty and frightened. He remembered, unwillingly, the little scene he’d witnessed. The breakfast table with its half-empty dishes; Devereaux still in his dressing gown, and she—she in that robe which did little to conceal the soft curves of her figure. She had been laughing the teasing giggle of a woman sated by a long night of love. But at least she’d had the decency to look white-faced and guilty when she saw him. If he hadn’t known better he’d have imagined there was an appeal in her slowly widening green eyes. The bitch! Why did the thought of her still have the power to cloud his mind and his judgement? Why, even now, did he still want her? And hate her so violently for having succumbed so quickly and easily to another man? Even if it was only to save herself; that’s still no excuse! Does she have to give herself to every man who wants her? Is that what she meant when she threatened to choose her own lovers?

The sun must be getting to him, Steve thought angrily. He was losing his detachment, all the rationality he had ever possessed. Yes, what he really found hardest to face was the knowledge that slowly, without his realizing it, she had become necessary to him. He, who had prided himself on being a cynic, on never trusting anyone, particularly a woman, he had allowed her to become his only weakness, and it was that thought he found intolerable!

But at least she needn’t have the satisfaction of knowing that, he told himself grimly. Not even the thought of the pain and torture that now faced him had the same power to affect his mind that she had. Even while one part of his mind mocked himself for childish bravado, he was determined that no matter what they did he wouldn’t cry out—that would be too much, the last straw! She would be watching, she and the colonel; waiting for him to break; but even if he died under their torture he wouldn’t speak.

The French soldiers flung open the gates that separated their parade grounds from the main square of the village. There was no love lost between the Frenchmen and Mexican Irregulars who strutted through the town as if they owned it, and the townspeople themselves—going about their daily business with sullen-faced resignation. When the French were gone, these same people who pretended loyalty to the emperor and cheered dutifully at the regularly held parades would not doubt run screaming their welcome to the Juaristas.

The French sergeant who headed the small detail that now marched from house to house, banging at doors, had long ago given up trying to understand the seeming apathy of the people of this land. He had fought in Algiers under the burning desert sun—had fought Arabs, who were the worst and most dangerous enemies in all the world. But of all the places he had been he hated this Mexico the most. You could not trust anyone here—they’d smile into your face, bow their heads politely, and knife you in the back if they ever got the chance. He had marched into villages where he and his men had been greeted with fiestas, like heroes, on the previous night; only to be met with rifle-fire. You could not even trust the little children here. A small boy, carrying a stick of dynamite, had blown up almost a whole platoon of Irregulars, once. What a dirty country—a land of hypocrites. He cursed his luck at having been posted here, instead of to Queretaro, or Mexico City, where at least you could walk the streets and find your amusements without being cursed at from dark alleys and fearing a bullet in your back at every moment. But a man had his duty to perform….

Sergeant Malaval’s duty, at this moment, was to fetch as many citizens as he could find during this time of siesta to the parade ground—to witness the questioning of a Juarista spy. A public flogging—it was supposed to act as a deterrent to Juarista sympathizers, but hell, he was sure, privately, that more than half the townspeople believed in their El Presidente, anyhow. They would watch, as they had watched executions and other floggings before, and it would make no damn difference. This was a savage land, and life was cheap. Moreover, when they decided to hate, these people hated hard.

Sergeant Malaval thought only vaguely of the prisoner, left to bake in the sun while he “considered” what lay in store for him. There was no question but that the man would break, in spite of the fact that he had looked and acted different from the usual run-of-the-mill Juarista dogs they captured. He had blue eyes, he’d carried a gun on his hip when they’d captured him—or was it really true that he had given himself up as a substitute for the pretty green-eyed woman the colonel had brought back with him? It did not really matter, after all. Beal, the American counter-guerilla was an expert with what he called a “bullwhip.” Personally, for this kind of punishment, the sergeant preferred the use of the “cat.” It was traditional, at least, and tradition and habit were what kept armies on the move.

Herding their quota of silent, resentful townspeople ahead of them, the soldiers returned to the courtyard. Time for the colonel’s usual little speech, Malaval supposed, and then the main event. He cursed his luck again, having to stand at attention all afternoon in the sun, listening to the unfortunate prisoner’s screams ringing in his ears. He hoped Beal would not take too long to break the man—he could use a nice, long drink.

The colonel had broken precedent by coming down himself to talk to the prisoner. The fact that he had done so only half-surprised Steve. Colonel Devereaux was a wily man, as well as being a dangerous enemy. No doubt he had some axe of his own to grind—and of course there was the fact that he had made Ginny his mistress. What man could resist the temptation to boast of a conquest like that, especially since she happened, unfortunately, to be Steve’s wife. He had had time to adopt an almost fatalistic attitude by now. What would happen would happen. There was no way he could escape it, so why not face the inevitable with as much fortitude as he could muster? At least, he felt he could maintain an attitude of indifference to the colonel’s inevitable needling. Or could he? The rawhide they’d used to tie him up with had already shrunk in the searing heat of the sun, had stretched his arms upward almost intolerably. Already he could feel the blood trickling down his arms where the strips of hide had cut into his wrists. It was like being stretched on a rack, and soon, to this present discomfort, would be added much more.

“Well, Senor? Have you reconsidered? I would hate to have to go through with this, all things considered, but you understand, you have hardly left me with a choice!”

“Are you offering me a choice, then, mon Colonel? What can I possibly give you that you haven’t already taken?”

Blue eyes clashed with yellow-brown, and Steve’s fluent French mocked the colonel’s rather pedantic Spanish.

“Ah. So you speak French as well. It explains a lot.” The colonel’s voice was thoughtful, rather than angry. He sighed. “I have a feeling you intend to go on being stubborn. For your sake, as well as your wife’s, I had hoped not.”

“My wife is hardly my concern any longer, monsieur, since you seem to have made her yours. And like your own marriage, ours was a matter of mutual convenience, after all. If all you need from me is my blessing for your little liaison, sir, you certainly have it! I’m an understanding husband—hasn’t she told you?”

“Enough! I didn’t come here to discuss your wife. It is your other activities I’m interested in—your spying, Senor. Who sent you to Mexico? Who is paying you? It could not be Benito Juarez, for he doesn’t have enough money. Why is your government so anxious to topple ours?”

Steve laughed, and saw the gleam of anger in Colonel Devereaux’s eyes.

“But you have all the answers already, Colonel. Why ask me?”

“You have given us a great deal of trouble with your meddling in our affairs here, monsieur! You were becoming quite a hero to a few ignorant peasants. But in a few minutes, that heroic image will, I’m afraid, be dispelled when you squeal under the lash and beg to be allowed to tell all you know! Dammit—I’ll have names from you—you’ll betray all your accomplices—the places where I can find them!”

Colonel Devereaux had begun to pace around, his hands behind his back in the manner of Napoleon, whom he had always admired tremendously. And in spite of the unpleasant position he was in, it was all Steve could do not to laugh at the man again, and drive him into a towering rage. Devereaux looked up again, and it seemed as if he deliberately softened the tone of his voice, so that it was almost pleasant.

“Come now, Morgan—you’re a reasonable man I’m sure. And so am I. What good does it do to lose tempers? You see, I have you. There’s no escape. Still, if you’ll have the good sense to tell me what I must know, you’ll find me a fair and just man. You like danger and action, do you not? You enjoy these things? You enjoy life? You can still have them all, on our side. Yes, we could use a man like you, and once you’ve turned against your Juarista friends, well, then we can be sure you won’t go back to them, won’t we?” The colonel’s eyes had begun to twinkle. “I believe that’s what your Americans would call ‘insurance,’ hein? You’d be well paid, too, if money matters. Believe me, it would be so much better for you if you turned your talents to the right side. I have great respect for your grandfather, you know— think how pleased it would make him to know that at last you’d come around to what he believes in! What do you say?”

Steve drew in a deep breath, half-tempted to say too many things he shouldn’t say. There was no point in uselessly flinging words of defiance, nor in continued fencing. Still, he realized with a feeling of distaste that he actually disliked this pompous, vain-glorious little man who had bedded his wife a few hours ago and now took it for granted he’d jump at the chance to turn traitor in order to keep his hide.

“Colonel—if I betrayed my friends I’d die anyway.” Steve kept his voice flat and even. “You’ve lost the war already, and you know it. It’s a matter of time now, that’s all. And you stand to lose a lot more, personally. You’re finished, as far as the big hacendados go. You were a guest of the Sandoval’s and you arrested a woman. I must admit, she’s very charming when she wants to be, my little wife—perhaps you managed to persuade her you could offer her more than I could—but what will happen when your wife’s family finds out? And whatever happens to me—remember you’ve made an enemy for life in my grandfather. We have our disagreements, he and I, but he’ll never take such an insult to a member of his family. He has enough money, and enough influential friends both here and in France, to have you broken. Your only chance to save your own skin is to apologize for the inconvenience and let me go.”

“ Mon Dieu, but your insolence knows no bounds! You dare to threaten me? I made a mistake, I see, in offering you a gentlemen’s agreement, but you are not one—you’re a dirty Juarista dog, a spy—and in case you’d forgotten it, my prisoner! We will see who will break!”

His face crimson with rage the colonel turned on his heel and marched away. Steve shrugged mentally. Well, he’d given it a try. He’d almost hoped that Devereaux’s practical streak might outweigh his stiff-necked military pride. Too bad he wouldn’t be around to see what happened to the colonel himself in the end.

Too bad he had to stand out here in the sun with his muscles strained uncomfortably and painfully, waiting…his only hope now that he would be able to endure their torture without giving way under it. But how did a man know how much pain he could stand until the moment when he was actually required to suffer it? The sunlight felt like a burning brand against his skin. The whip would be worse. Steve licked lips that were already cracked and dry and leaned his forehead against the wooden post, deliberately concentrating on nothingness. It was possible, Gopal had told him in that long-ago time when they had been friends, to isolate the mind and free the body of all sensation. It was necessary, by concentration, to enter a trancelike state.

Steve had tried it, on occasion. Once, when he’d been shot in the shoulder, the bullet lodged against the bone, and no doctor within miles, he thought he’d succeeded. It had been in a bar, and while the bartender had probed clumsily with a knife under the gun of Steve’s friends, he had sat, immobilizing himself, eyes fixed on a crack in the dirty ceiling. And had hardly felt the pain. Not until hours later, when his shoulder had begun to ache and throb agonizingly and he’d had to remain in what was practically a drunken stupor for days.

He became aware of the shuffling of feet, of muffled whispers, nervous movements, the rustling noise made by the skirts of women. A child began to cry and was hushed almost immediately. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know there were people surrounding him now. The damned French! Always having to make an example out of something. In this case, he was it. His screams were supposed to have a demoralizing effect on any of the poor devils here who might think about going over to the Juaristas. Let them all witness how the French treated their prisoners, and beware! God, what a farce this was turning into.

The soldiers, with their passion for orderliness were marshalling the unwilling spectators into rows. Feeling something like the prize exhibit at a zoo, Steve let his eyes rove casually over them—those that he could see, anyway. Anything to keep his mind off what was coming…

His eyes moved, stopped and came back to a particular pair of dark eyes. Without knowing he did so, he frowned. That woman with a black rebozo wrapped around her head, in the second row…he could have sworn—their eyes met, hers wide and dark and wet with the sheen of tears; his flashing a warning as he recognized her. Steve groaned inwardly. Concepción! Now who was the idiota? She had no business coming here, and for her own sake she’d better not have some wild scheme in mind. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he could escape now, under the guns of a whole platoon of French Legionnaires. He hoped she wouldn’t do anything stupid—these French would take pleasure in torturing her, too.

Booted feet marched up behind him. Stopped. Rough hands took hold of his shirt at the neck, ripping it away to bare his back. This was it, then. Now. No more waiting. Only a few seconds left of ghastly anticipation, and then the pain, wiping out everything else.

Steve felt his heart begin to pound, and the sweat that popped out on his body suddenly seemed cold. He was afraid. He was suddenly sick to the pit of his stomach with primitive, animal fear.

Tom Beal’s sneering voice, filled with a barely held-in gloating, sounded from behind him.

“You ready, Morgan?” Steve sucked in a deep breath, and was not able to prevent the involuntary shudder that ran through his body. Was a man ever ready for something like this, when it was inescapable and inevitable? He had seen what a bullwhip could do to a man and he suddenly knew he would not be able to stand it. In spite of all his resolutions, he wasn’t strong enough to stop this crazy, cringing fear that came from nowhere, urging him to cry out, to tell them to shoot him instead…

He heard Beal laugh and knew the man had sensed what was in him now. Beal knew, and Beal enjoyed the feeling of power it gave him.

“You still got time to change your mind, if you ain’t feelin’ as brave now as you pretended to be a while ago. See where the colonel is? Up on that balcony, with your wife. Guess she didn’t want to miss the show either. Watch his arm, Morgan. He’s gonna give a little speech to your sympathetic friends here, an’ then when he raises his arm, I go to work. Reckon it won’t take me more than a few minutes to have you beggin’ for mercy, will it? We both know how scared you are right now—I kin smell fear, you bastard, an’ you’re scared shitless, ain’t you? Ain’t so brave without them guns, are you?”

The crowd stirred uneasily as the French soldiers came to attention. In spite of himself, Steve had glanced upward and to his right, where Colonel Devereaux stood in the full regalia of his exalted rank. It was too far away for him to be able to read expressions, but he needed to be blind not to know that the woman who stood close beside Devereaux was Ginny. Her shiny ball dress looked oddly out of place here, and her hair, still worn loose, glittered with a fire all its own under the sun.

The colonel had begun his speech, his best parade-ground voice carrying clearly across the now-silent courtyard. Steve didn’t hear him. So she really hated him that much, did she? She had to watch, to gloat over his punishment. I’ll be damned before I give the bitch that much satisfaction, he thought suddenly, feeling the determination he thought he’d lost come back to stiffen him. Deliberately he looked away and met Concepción’s eyes again. She looked terrified, and he smiled at her encouragingly, seeing her mouth open in a soundless gasp of concern. “Don’t worry, chica, ” he wanted to tell her, “it’s not going to be that bad. And don’t do anything foolish. Try not to let them see you’re upset.”

In this instance, Colonel Devereaux did not bother with a long speech. Like Tom Beal, he was anxious to get started.

Warned by the sudden stillness and Concepción’s widening eyes, Steve Morgan clamped his jaws together as he heard the whistling sound of the whip, just before it landed, with sickening force, across his bare shoulders.

The pain was worse, even, than he had expected. Liquid fire, writhing snakelike over his cringing flesh. And before Steve had been able to catch his breath the biting strip of leather had slashed downward again, tearing into his flesh so that drops of blood flew into the air. “God!” he muttered, his body shuddering involuntarily, and Beal hearing, laughed wickedly.

“Whatsa matter, Morgan? Beggin’ already?”

Every ounce of stubbornness and willpower he possessed collected in Steve Morgan’s brain, filling him with a dogged determination that almost wiped out everything else. He closed his eyes, teeth gritted, feeling the splinters from the wooden post embed themselves in the skin of his face and chest as he pressed against it. Concentrate, you have to concentrate…the thought pounded at him, blurring even the nauseating crack of the lash every time it cut into his flinching flesh. Beal, disappointed that he hadn’t heard another sound out of his victim, went to work with determination.

The whip sang through the air, slashed through skin and muscle as Beal’s arm worked tirelessly. The man was an expert, no mistaking it, the French sergeant thought with grudging admiration. The only question was, how long could the prisoner last under this merciless onslaught?

The prisoner, had he but known it, was almost beyond coherent thinking. His body now sagging against the post, held erect only by his bound wrists, Steve Morgan fought almost by instinct against the purely animal, primal urge to open his mouth and scream aloud with agony until his lungs burst, if screaming would bring him some relief. The muscles in his arms felt as if they were slowly being torn apart; his wrists were cut so deeply that he felt sure the rawhide strips had already penetrated to the bone. He held his breath, hoping that the lack of air would make him pass out, and then the whip would come down like a crimson explosion of pain, crushing him against the immovable post, driving the breath from his body with a gasp. He couldn’t take this terrible punishment much longer—almost he prayed that Beal would strike harder, let his blows come faster, so as to make an end of it quickly, before he disgraced himself and still retained enough sense to face the bitter knowledge that he was a coward, after all, and just as weak as any other poor wretch who’d had to undergo this same ordeal.

Steve’s mind sought desperately to escape—to detach itself somehow from the helpless agony of his tortured body. There was a dull pounding in his ears—each hammer-blow of his own pulse sending a separate vibration of pain through his entire frame.

Concentrate! For God’s sake, for your own, concentrate on something, on anything other than this! The insistent screaming of his mind seemed almost to come from outside himself. He was on fire, if only he could find coolness somewhere, and peace! He fixed his dulling mind on water, deep and very cold. A spring in the high forest he came to once; so deep it seemed green and bottomless—dappled with pale sunshine filtering through the leaves high above. Rain forests, dripping with moisture; wet, dark—the only sound the steadily falling water. Miraculously, the pain of his racked and bleeding body seemed to be fading away, leaving only a creeping numbness in its place. He knew it, each time the whiplash connected with torn flesh and muscle, but only from the vibration and the helpless, involuntary writhing of his body’s attempts to escape. He saw the icy breakers of the Pacific Ocean at Monterey, tumbling over each other as they foamed their way to oblivion among the wet black rocks. Unconsciousness came at last in great, smothering billows, like fog…

“Monsieur Beal! There’s no use going on, he’s unconscious, he can’t feel anything now. The colonel says you are to stop!”

Tom Beal felt what was almost a kind of madness seize hold of him. His lips drew back from this teeth in a savage snarl of frustration. Dammit! Damn it to hell! This wasn’t going at all the way he’d planned it. Why hadn’t Morgan screamed out loud? Why hadn’t he broken like all the others, begging for mercy, begging to be allowed to tell everything he knew? It wasn’t possible that any man could resist the persuasion of the whip, especially when he, Tom Beal, the expert, was wielding it.

His arm ached—sweat poured down into his eyes, drenched his clothing. He was going to kill this bastard—he’d have them turn him around and tie him with his back to the post this time, so he could really go to work on him. When he got through, if Steve Morgan hadn’t talked, he wouldn’t even be a man.

“What does he think he is, a goddamn hero?” Beal swore aloud. He swung on the stony-faced sergeant. “What in hell are you waiting for? He’s shamming—throw some water over him an’ he’ll be ready for more; and I can guarantee you that this time he’ll start squealin’ like the Juarista pig he is!”

Beal was so maddened with rage that he raised his arm again, wanting to strike, to maim, and he was momentarily disconcerted when Sergeant Malaval’s steely fingers grasped his wrist, stopping his arm on its downward slash.

“I have said—it is the colonel’s orders! It is his place to make the decisions here, and we will wait. You understand?” the sergeant added in a harder voice, watching the expression on Beal’s face.

“Goddammit!” The American’s voice was savage. “I had him—another minute would have done it. Your colonel better damn well make the right decision, or we ain’t gonna be able to show our faces around here. Look at them—bunch of dirty peons starin’ at that spy like he’s some kind of God because he didn’t yell yet. I’m tellin’ you, Sarge—we better not back down, not now, or they’ll all think they can get away with the same thing.”