Page 43 of Sweet Savage Love

43

S teve Morgan was alive only because his body insisted upon survival. It was as simple as that.

He had very few recollections of the nightmarish, jolting ride; lying manacled hand and foot in the bottom of a wagon; when he had wondered distantly, in his few moments of lucidity, why he was still alive. After a while, he had relapsed into a black delirium of pain and feverish darkness, overshot by occasional flashes of more agony. Sunlight had almost blinded his eyes once; another time, someone bent over him—hands touched his back, intensifying pain, and he heard, with shame, his own scream of agony resounding in his ears as the blackness swallowed him up again.

Later, as his body began to heal and some power of understanding returned to his mind, he found that he had awakened to blackness; worse than that of unconsciousness. He was in a cell, alone, and his arms and legs were still manacled with lengths of chain; his arms behind his back. The floor of his cell might have been stone—it was cold. The only movement possible to him was crawling, and even for that there was no space, for the cell was hardly wide enough to take the length of his body.

His mind tried to remember what had happened, why he was here, but he felt too weak to make too much effort, and kept drifting off to sleep or unconsciousness. Once, during that first day of lucidity, a tin plate with some kind of slop on it that he couldn’t even see was thrust through a small opening at the bottom of the door. He heard a voice call, “If you are alive, gringo pig, you’d better eat.”

He was suddenly very hungry. He felt the uncontrollable knotting of his belly that told of emptiness, the saliva in his dry mouth as he crawled to the plate and ate from it like a dog, uncaring about anything but the assuagement of his terrible, gnawing hunger.

He ate, and slept again, and after a while the guards came for him and half-carried, half-shoved him down a dimly lit corridor to the prison doctor.

“So! You’ve decided to live, eh, blue eyes? It’s a good thing you have a strong body—it’s healing well.”

The doctor was a slim young creole in the uniform of the Imperial army. He smiled rather contemptuously under a pencil thin mustache.

“You should be really grateful to me for saving your worthless life, you know,” the man continued, long fingers probing the half-healed cuts on Steve’s back. “Whoever did this job on you was pretty thorough. You should have died—but you’ll live to work hard in our silver mine; our armies need money!” In the face of Steve’s silence the young doctor gave a rather high-pitched laugh. “You must have made that French colonel who had you sent here very angry, for some reason! A Juarista with the mark of the French fleur-de-lis—really ironical, don’t you think? And you—for a gringo, you’re rather a puzzle. You talked French and Spanish when you were delirious. Some day you must tell me all about it—why such a linguist should end up here! ”

It was a question that Steve too, in the weeks that followed, was to ask himself bitterly. And then, with the eventual dulling of his mind and spirit he could only wish that he had been allowed to die.

The mines were passages cut deeply into the bowels of some mountain, with cells opening off these same passages to accommodate the miserable wretches condemned to work here. Many of them died. There was no sun—they had no conception of night or day or even time itself.

Their leg and wrist irons were welded on, and when they were taken out of their cells to work, they toiled in a long, ragged file; chained to one another. Three men, also manacled to each other, shared each tiny, filthy little cell that was hardly larger than the one Steve had found himself in at first.

To Steve Morgan, who had always had more than his share of pride and arrogance, this living death, where men were reduced to a bestial level, was the hardest thing to endure. With a cowardice he hated to discover in himself, he longed for death, but his body forced life upon him. He tried to resist, at first, some of the unendurable conditions forced upon them, but the prison guards were used to dealing with recalcitrant convicts, and like the others he broke at last under the constant beatings, the starving, and solitary confinement in a pit where a man could neither stand, lie down or sit but was forced to kneel with his arms manacled to the wall behind him.

When he stopped being stubborn they put him back to work and his body performed all the required motions quite mechanically, while his mind closed upon itself and he almost ceased to think.

Reality was a darkness only slightly less than the inky blackness of the prison cell where they were put when the day’s quota of work was done. The flickering orange glow of lanterns or creosote torches lit straining bodies, streaming with sweat, nostrils and mouths continually gasping for air. The whips of the guards, curling around their bodies to leave scars on backs, bellies and thighs, reminded them that they were alive. Reality was constant agony, growling, half-starved bellies, eyes that cowered and closed at occasional glimpses of the sunlight “out there.” If a man didn’t groan or cry out under the lash the guards kept whipping him until he did—or was dead. They had no names, these animals who had been men. It was “you!” or “dog” or “filth” and this too they accepted dully. The only release they could look forward to was death, and quite often a prisoner would contrive to strangle himself with his chains.

The young doctor sent for the prisoner he insisted on calling “ ojas azules ”—“blue eyes” one evening. Wondering only what offence he had committed this time, Steve was brought into his presence soon after the teniente had eaten his dinner.

The sight of all the half-empty dishes on the table, the smell of tobacco, was almost like a physical blow. Steve felt suddenly sick and faint with hunger, so that he swayed. The guard hit him.

“Up against the wall, filth. The Senor doctor does not like to have pigs staring at him while he’s enjoying a meal!”

They shoved him against the wall and he stood there obediently like the animal he had become, hearing the doctor’s sneering, sarcastic comments with only part of his mind.

“A pity you’ve come to this—and you used to be quite a handsome specimen of a man, too. Now you’re as bad as the others, a dirty, cringing beast. But still—” the voice became slower, as if considering. Leaning his forehead against the coolness of the wall, Steve heard the doctor say, “You can leave him here for a while—I’ll be quite safe, don’t worry. I doubt if he’s capable of violence any longer.” And then he heard the soft snickering of the two guards and remembered the things he had heard them say about the doctor.

Later, as they prodded him, half-shuffling, half-stumbling back to his cell, the laughter and the gibes of the guards added to the demented, frustrated rage that had begun to pound in his brain.

“Why were you so stubborn, blue eyes? It’s seldom the Senor doctor takes such a liking to one of you pigs! Just think, you could have had a bath, clean clothes, a good meal—how long before the doctor makes you his puto, eh?”

The dregs that remained of his pride and self-respect fought against the gnawing pains in his belly and his body’s scream for survival, at all costs. How long had he been here?

A month—two months—three, perhaps? And how long before he’d give in, spirit completely annihilated; or before the doctor lost his patience and forcibly made his degradation complete?

He shuddered in the darkness, wanting to retch weakly, remembering; those soft, crawling hands on his body, assessing what the doctor had chosen to call his “potential.” If his hands had not been manacled behind his back he would have leapt at the man and smashed his smiling, taunting face against the wall. The young lieutenant must have sensed this in some way, for he had moved back slightly, his smile growing rather weak.

“I hate to see such waste,” he’d murmured. “You’ll find out that life, even in a hellhole like this, can be quite pleasant if you decide to make it so. Yes, even for me it’s rather lonely. I’m a man of some refinement, I used to enjoy the theater when I lived in the city; books, music. Perhaps we can find much in common, eh? You’re an educated man, even if you are rather a mystery.”

When Steve said nothing, the doctor had shrugged.

“Ah, well! I’m quite a patient man—I really hate to take by force what I’ll have in the end anyway. There’s nothing more exciting than a willing—uh—victim!” And he had given that high-pitched giggle again, grating on Steve’s nerves.

The whips of the guards seemed to come down more often, during the days that followed; the slop that passed for food grew smaller in quantity, so that he was constantly hungry, weak with craving for water that was doled out less often.

And then one evening when they were locking him back in the cell the guard said in parting, “Hey, blue eyes—you’ve got something to look forward to for tomorrow—the Senor doctor wants you in his quarters, first thing in the morning!”

He tried to strangle himself that night, with the length of chain that joined his wrists. The frightened shouts of his cellmates, afraid of the guards’ reprisals if they didn’t betray him, brought the guards running, and he spent the rest of the night in solitary, his arms doubled up and shackled to the wall behind him.

They came early to haul him out of the cell, barely able to stand by now, his brain too numb to care about their taunts, or whatever fate awaited him next.

“What’s the matter, gringo pig? You want to leave us so soon? Has death become so tempting to you that you go to seek it, eh?”

They dragged him out into the sunlight, with a black cloth hood over his head, like a condemned felon and he began to hope, with whatever capability of thought was left to him, that they were going to kill him at last.

But then they staked him out, spread-eagled, in the harsh, hot sun of the prison courtyard and he began to realize what kind of death they had in mind. The wet rawhide they had used to tie his wrist and ankle irons to the stakes dried out quickly and he felt his body stretched to almost beyond the point of endurance against a burning, blazing rack of pain. Too far gone in despair to do more than groan at first, he screamed with agony only when the ants, attracted by the smell of fresh blood, came to sink their millions of tiny pincers into his lacerated flesh.

The doctor came out into the sunlight only after the screams had died away into choked animal groans from a throat too dry and sore to do more.

He stood looking down at the tortured rise and fall of the prisoner’s chest, now the only sign that the man was still alive, and nudged him in the ribs with his polished boot.

“You—move your head if you can hear me—I have some good news for you.” He noticed the barely perceptible movement and his voice sharpened with anger. “You might easily have saved yourself all this pain, caballero! I had expected a little more sense from you, considering—yes, especially considering! You see—I know who you are, Don Esteban. Why didn’t you tell me you were a criolla, like myself? I have such an especial hate for gringos! ” The boot nudged Steve’s ribs again, more painfully this time. “You deserve punishment—for stupidity, more than anything else. But I’m really here to tell you that you obviously have friends in high places. Your life’s been saved again. Learn a lesson from this, if you can, and you’ll do better on the road gang, building a railroad for the French, than you did in the mines!”

Two days later Steve Morgan, together with fifteen other men, began the long march down to Cordoba.

He found that building a railroad, under the direction of a couple of French engineers, was infinitely preferable to the eternal darkness of the mines and the scheming attentions of the young prison doctor. There were still the guards who wielded their whips freely, but even they seemed in a better humor under the sky, and preferred to spend most of their time in the shade of the supply wagon while the convicts labored in the sun.

The sun! Once his eyes had again grown accustomed to its brightness Steve felt as if he couldn’t get enough of it. They worked out in the open and they slept outdoors, even when it poured with rain; but a man could still smell the fresh air, the scent of newly cut hay, the odor of cooking…. Even the food was much better here, for the Frenchmen insisted that well-fed men were capable of more and better work than starved animals.

They labored unceasingly from sunup to sundown in a fight against time; still manacled, chained to each other by the leg. But still they were outdoors, and slowly becoming aware of the world around them—a world that they had all felt cut away from before.

Part of Steve Morgan’s mind that had kept him numb and closed away from reality began to open again as he began to feel himself as being human, capable of thought once more. He was even capable of thinking about escape.

The thought began to obsess him, but along with humility he’d learned patience. He watched the steadily growing stream of refugees on their way to Vera Cruz when he could see for the sweat that streamed down into his eyes, and was sometimes lucky enough to overhear the French engineers talk about the war, and how badly it was going. Quite by chance he learned what month it was. October.

The railroad, snaking its way past Orizaba, was protected now by French and Mexican troops, since there had been rumors of guerilla activity in the vicinity. The filthy, ragged convicts were herded together under the rifles of the guards one day when the emperor himself came to inspect progress. Having just arrived in Orizaba after hearing the tragic news of his wife’s mental collapse Maximilian seemed a sad and withdrawn man, his golden beard blowing in the wind. How much longer could his bubble empire stand against the steadily advancing Juarista armies? Even the guards gossiped about it, and Steve heard names of battles that had been fought and won—names of Juarista generals suddenly sprung into prominence. Thirstily his starved mind absorbed it all, even while on the surface his manner showed no change and there were no more explosions of anger or defiance from him. He couldn’t take a chance on being sent back to the mines! So he accepted the whip, the taunts and the insults and the worse feeling of being chained up at night like an animal. Because now he knew he wasn’t an animal—he was past that stage of black, blank despair and numbness, he was beginning to think. And he wondered who had had him sent here, and why. Was Devereaux the “friend in high places” that the prison doctor had referred to? Had his grandfather discovered where he was? And if so, why was he still here?

The work they did, as backbreaking as it was, had developed a power and strength in his muscles that was almost unbelievable. The convicts worked, and baked, in the sun—bare from the waist up, their straining muscles standing out like cords along bare, scarred backs. There was no time to think or to ponder their fate, no time for pausing while the sun was up and there was work to be done. They obeyed orders blindly, knowing that to slow down or stumble meant the whip. Building a railroad, for the goddamned French invaders. To carry their supplies and ammunition to them quicker, to bring down the silver from the mines so that it would be shipped from Vera Cruz and bring more money with which to pay Imperialist mercenaries.

If I only had some way of laying my hands on some dynamite, Steve thought tiredly when he should have been sleeping. If only, among all those refugees I’d see someone I recognized. If, if, if! Again, he felt sheer physical strain and tiredness begin to push his mind into a kind of hopeless resignation. What chance was there of escape when they were chained together every night, more often than not, tethered to trees like cattle? And when, in the daytime, the railroad was so carefully guarded by armed soldiers? They were building now on the land of the Conde de Valmes, who had given his gracious consent, and the strip of land ran beside the roadway that led into Orizaba. And what chance was there of being recognized when he was as sun-blackened, as dirty and ragged, bearded and shaggy haired as the rest of his companions? In any case, when they worked alongside the road, they were always herded into ditches when a big convoy of carriages clattered past, throwing up clouds of dust. The fine, respectable people must not have their eyes or noses offended by prison scum!

Bitterness cut as deeply into Steve Morgan’s soul as the irons he wore on his ankles and wrists. With the power to think came memory, and with memory hate, as he cursed the fate and the circumstances that had put him here.

On the third day after the railroad ribboned out of the outskirts of Orizaba they had begun to lay trestles when they were ordered into the ditch, half full of dirty, stagnant water.

The French engineers climbed onto the side of the road to get a better view of the leisurely cavalcade that passed, with an escort of mounted soldiers in their spotless gleaming uniforms.

“More guests for the emperor’s hacienda at Jalapilla,” the man called Ledoux muttered to his companion. Only lately arrived from Mexico City, he was the source of all the latest gossip and scandals. “This time there are some beautiful women to cheer poor Don Maximiliano up! Perhaps they will persuade him to stay.”

“Isn’t that the Princess du Salm? I’ve seen her before, but who is that lovely vision riding the black horse? The one in white, with Colonel Miguel Lopez of the Cazadores. Bon Dieu, what hair! And what a figure,” the man continued in a lower voice.

Standing waist deep in filthy, odorous water, feeling the blood beginning to pound in his head, Steve Morgan looked up, staring like the others, and saw his wife. It had been a long time since he had even thought about a woman—that need having been replaced by the other, more urgent instinct of survival—but now he felt the ironic frustration of his predicament like a blow, and the need to live was replaced for just a crazy instant with the desire to kill. Ginny! Ginny laughing, her hand being kissed by the handsome Lopez—Ginny of the flashing green eyes, dressed all in white, like a virgin, like a bride, Ginny who had arranged for his living, slow death, because the firing squad would have been too quick and too merciful—he was sure of that now. Without conscious thought he made a sound in his throat and would have flung himself forward if not for the shackles that held him and the quick movement of the man on his right.

He barely heard the hoarse, urgent whisper. “For God’s sake! Do you want to get us all killed under the whip? What’s got into you?” He stood still, breathing heavily, like a man in the throes of a bad dream, and he hated her.

Agnes du Salm glanced towards the prisoners and said something in a pitying, rather high voice. Ginny continued to smile at Colonel Lopez.

“That’s Madame du Plessis. No one knows from where she turned up, but they say she’s a French courtesan. Would you guess that she is actually engaged to the Comte d’Arlingen?”

“Perhaps she’s the kind of woman who believes in having more than one string to her bow!” The Frenchman who had spoken gave a short, ribald laugh.

Their conversation penetrated dimly through the red mist that had collected in Steve Morgan’s brain. He saw the riders disappear in a cloud of dust, and they were ordered back to work. He stumbled along with the others, his movements slow and mechanical, barely remembering to respond to the whip with a groan.

“What is the matter with you, Americaine? Has the sun gotten to you at last?” The only reason that the Frenchman bothered to show any pity was because this man had blue eyes, and was, after all, of European descent.

Steve shook his head, not daring to speak in case he screamed his hate and his bitter frustration out loud.

Ginny! That she should have gone this far to be revenged on him—and he had actually begun to love her, once. “Fool! Idiota! ” The far-away echo of Concepción’s voice came back like a goad. Madame du Plessis—French courtesan—how far she’d come since the time he’d married her in such a hurry. Married her! It was really laughable. She was his wife, of all things, and now she had found her French count again and planned to marry him. She had had him sent here, and now she was going to have him killed, so that she could marry again. How long did he have left? She had sworn to make him suffer—how well he remembered that! No doubt she wanted him to go on suffering for as long as possible. Right up until her wedding day, perhaps, and then she would quietly get rid of one husband in order to marry another. How steadfast she was in her determination to be revenged. At least in that…

The rain, long overdue, slashed down in buckets one night, some ten days later, soaking the shackled, shivering men to the skin; washing off dust only to replace it with mud. What did it matter? They should be used to these sudden storms by now, and if it rained during the night the morning would surely be sunny; the air washed clean, the smell of freshly wet earth in their nostrils as they worked.

Steve was almost glad of the excuse not to sleep, afraid of the choking nightmares that might return. While the others huddled together, knees drawn up to their chins, he lay on his back and let the rain beat down on his face. Perhaps it would drown him! Ginny. Ever since he had seen her again he had not been able to think of anything else. All his instincts had told him to stay away from her in the first place, and yet he had found himself wanting her. Even in the face of her screaming hate he had continued to want her. And even now, torturing him, was the knowledge that even while he hated her, he craved her. Just once. To take her just once more, to wipe from her mind and her body the memory of all the other men she must have had, and then, when she began to moan her defeat under him, to squeeze the life from her lying, treacherous, beautiful throat.

“It’s too damned wet to get very much accomplished around here this morning,” one of the engineers was saying dolefully to the mud-spattered young soldier who sat astride his horse beside the cook wagon. He turned around when the prisoners shambled up; all of them looking bloodshoteyed and unutterably weary. “They’re a sorry lot, aren’t they? They send their prison dregs here to us—all lifers. Dangerous characters too, though they don’t look it. Still, they’re strong enough—look at all those muscles.” Used to being talked about as if they were animals that couldn’t even comprehend speech, the convicts showed no reaction as they waited, bodies sagging with tiredness.

“The Condesa de Valmes needs the wall around her hacienda repaired, and her peons are all off trying to save the coffee crop. We’re sending you along to build that wall—and you’d better have it done by nightfall!”

Just before midday, the Condesa de Valmes, who was a softhearted woman, sent her servants out with food and water for the toiling wretches who worked so hard at repairing her wall. A little later, she emerged from the house herself, trailed by two vaqueros ; twirling a dainty parasol over the high-piled hair on her head. She wanted, she explained in a dear sweet voice to the overawed guards, to see for herself what progress was being made. Her husband was returning next week, and she wanted it to be a surprise to him.

“It was really very kind of my nephew, the Colonel Lopez, to arrange for your men to come out here this morning,” she said to one of the guards, a heavy-bodied, taciturn man they called Rodriguez. “I’m afraid I would not have been able to spare any of my men to repair it otherwise.” While she spoke, her eyes travelled idly over the men who labored so silently, muscles ridging in their backs, the sweat shining on their bodies. She could not help but notice the deep crimson, almost purplish scar in the shape of the fleur-de-lis that marred what would otherwise have been the almost perfect symmetry of muscle and flesh on one particular back. A young man, obviously, and taller than the rest. With the eye of a connoisseur, the condesa continued to study this particular man with interest. Aloud, she said to the guard, “Please don’t let me disturb you! If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just stay out here and watch for a little while.”

Touching his forehead to show his respect, the guard turned away to supervise, his growling voice raised now and again as he shouted threats or instructions.

Soledad de Valmes watched, with a little, thoughtful frown puckering her white brow. The one with the brand of a French criminal. Was he the one Miguel had meant?

“They have an American, a gringo, on that road gang I’m sending over to fix your wall. One with blue eyes. I know your tastes, dear Tia, and you might find him—interesting.”

She thought, What a beautiful body he has! Like a Greek athlete. She watched him heft a large boulder that no man should have been able to lift, gasping with the effort, muscles straining as he lifted it into place. She had seen how the muscles in his slim flanks, covered only by a ragged pair of bombaches had hardened and tightened as he levered the rock upward; noticed the broadness of his shoulders, and with pity, the raised lash weals that crisscrossed them.

He stood panting, after the effort he had made, head hanging with exertion, and suddenly one of the guards had raised his arms to bring the whip slashing down.

“Back to work, you gringo filth! Do you think we have all day?”

The man had raised his head, and for just an instant his pain-glazed, startlingly blue eyes gazed directly into hers. A strange shiver, almost like premonition, ran through her body. What eyes! she thought. He’s like a young god—under that filthy beard and hair he must be very handsome.

The guard brought the whip down brutally again. “Did you hear what I said, pig?”

With a wince of pain that was too close to a shrug, Steve Morgan turned away to take up the pickaxe he’d been using, and the guard, rattled by the presence of a lady, reading defiance into that shrug that had not even been preceded by a groan, lost his temper.

“You’re overdue for some real discipline, blue eyes! Now get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head. I’m going to make you scream for mercy like you did that day in the courtyard, when the ants reached you!”

With a horrified gasp, Soledad de Valmes pressed the back of her gloved hand against her mouth. Steve Morgan, his back rigid with a wave of hate and anger he could no longer suppress, stood without moving. If I’m going to die in any case, at least I’ll die like a man, not a crawling dog! he thought.

The guard’s flat-featured brown face had gone almost purple with fury. He forgot about the grand lady who was watching, he forgot everything but his rage and the need to punish this stubborn, mulish prisoner.

“You dare to disobey? Have you forgotten what happened to you in the prison? Move! Down on your knees, you doctor’s puto—joto! ” His arms rose and fell in a passion of hate as the whip bit deeply into the prisoner’s brown back. But only once—His arm had risen again when Steve Morgan whirled around with an almost animal growl of fury. He swung the pickaxe in his manacled hands as he turned, and its point caught the guard full in the chest, piercing his heart.

“Get Fuentes!” Steve yelled, but the other convicts, desperate with rage and a crazy excitement, had needed no signal.

There were only three guards today, and the other two had been distracted by what had been happening. Before they could recover from their shock, they had been beaten down. The men used shovels, pickaxes, anything they had their hands on. One of them, half-sobbing with blind hate, brought a rock smashing down on the head of the man that Steve had just killed.

The condesa screamed shrilly, and it was like the breaking of a spell. Her vaqueros, both fully armed, brought their rifles up to point menacingly at these dangerous wretches who had suddenly gone berserk; and the convicts, suddenly aware of their peril, seemed frozen.

Only Steve Morgan had the presence of mind to move. He threw himself on his knees and gazed pleadingly into the horrified brown eyes of the lady.

“ Condesa! In the name of heaven, tell them not to shoot. We wouldn’t hurt you.”

His flawless Castilian Spanish at least had the effect of startling her and making her vaqueros hesitate.

In a trembling voice she said, “Wait! Keep them covered, but—wait.”

She found she could not turn away from those very blue eyes that continued to look so piercingly into hers. He spoke to her again, his voice hoarse, shaking slightly with reaction.

“I beg you, Condesa de Valmes, only to listen. We’re not all such evildoers that they had to whip us and chain us like dogs and treat us even worse! You see what happens when men are treated like animals—they react like animals. We’ve killed those men who were our guards, it’s true, but they deserved it. It’s you who are our judge now, sweet Senora

with the face of a merciful angel—what will you decide to do with us? If you send us back to the others, we’re going to pray for a quick and merciful death. Could you condemn any man to such a fate? You can give us either life or death—but I beseech you, if you decide on death, then let it be quick, under the rifle bullets of your vaqueros. ”

“He talks like an advocate, Condesa, ” one of the vaqueros growled in a rather familiar voice. A grizzled, straight backed old man, he held his gun with its muzzle pointing unwaveringly at Steve’s chest. “The question is, what are you going to do with them? You can’t release prison trash like these men to menace the whole countryside…”

“Oh God!” Soledad de Valmes said distractedly, “I don’t know—I don’t know! Do be quiet a moment, Hernan—I must think!” Her eyes kept clinging to those other eyes—how blue they were! Even when he knelt to her, as he had refused to do for that brutal guard, he was still beautiful, like—like Lucifer, she thought, like a fallen angel—surely he couldn’t really have deserved a fate like this!

“ Condesa, ” Steve said quietly, and then in an even softer voice, “Soledad.” He saw the muzzle of the rifle come up a fraction and caught the old man’s frown, but he continued to speak quietly, desperation tinging his tone. “I know I’m not fit to touch you, nor even to come too near you now, but once—once you let me put my arms around your neck while you kissed me on the forehead. I don’t expect you to remember—but I’ve never forgotten it. You were so far above me, even then; so unreachable! But you were the first woman I loved, and I’m asking you to spare us all—not for my sake, because I don’t deserve such bounty, but for my mother’s.”

The flowing Spanish language lent itself to the phrases he used, and Soledad found herself spellbound, her eyes widening as she continued to stare at him.

“Your—your mother? ”

“For God’s sake, Condesa, ” Hernan said roughly, “what kind of madness is this? How can such vermin presume to speak so familiarly to you? I tell you, we had better shoot the lot and make an end of it—they’re all murderers now!”

“No!” The condesa suddenly screamed the word, and her face had gone very white. “No—I remember! It’s your eyes—Luisa’s eyes! You must be her son. How can it be? What happened to bring you here?”

Still on his knees, Steve said in a voice that was steadier and less emotional, “It’s too long a story to tell, Condesa. But I can tell you this much, we’re none of us murderers, except for this. I’m here because I admitted to being a supporter of Benito Juarez—so are they all.” His head indicated the silent, gaping men who stared so imploringly at her. “They thought it would be a nicely ironic touch, to have a bunch of revolutionaries working on a railroad to bring supplies to the French. But if you will let us go we will manage to find our way to General Díaz and fight like men—” he shot a rather mocking look at Hernan, who looked nonplussed. “We certainly won’t ravage the countryside here—believe me, we’d like to see the last of it!”

“But—but Esteban—yes, that is your name, I remember you now, you were such a handsome little boy!” She clasped her hands together, almost wringing them in her distress. “But how will you ever contrive to escape? And in those chains…what can I tell them?”

“You can tell them we threatened you—that you were a helpless hostage, and we forced your blacksmith to file off our fetters. If we had horses—no, not even one apiece, I wouldn’t ask that much, and we could ride double—we could get away….”

“You should have been a general yourself!” She was half-crying, half-smiling. “For heaven’s sake, get off your knees! You don’t have to kneel to me, have you forgotten that I’m your godmother? But come quickly into the house, before the peons get back from the fields—I can trust my vaqueros —Hernan!” She turned to the dumbfounded old man, “You heard what the Senor has suggested…get the blacksmith!”

It took less than two hours, and Steve Morgan used part of that time, once his shackles were cut away, to bathe and shave, while Soledad cropped his hair. She insisted that she must talk to him and sat rather nervously on the edge of her bed while he took a bath, stepping out of it quite unselfconsciously to towel himself dry and get dressed in the clothes that Hernan, scowling, had found.

“You’re going to Porfirio? He’s a relative of mine, you know. I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for him, even though that silly husband of mine is so loyal to the emperor!”

He looked so different from the dirty, ragged convict he had appeared as only a few moments ago. He was positively handsome—yes, a young god—she found herself wishing that he could have stayed.

He was smiling at her, just as if he had read her thoughts. “So—you’re a Juarista at heart too, are you? I’m glad of that—I’d like to be on the same side you are.”

She said nervously, “You had better hurry, I suppose! Hernan will tell you the best routes to take, so you’ll be in the mountains before they look for you. I’ll see that you have weapons, all of you—no, don’t say anything! You could never hope to survive without something to defend yourselves with!”

“In a way—I wish I didn’t have to hurry away.” He took both her hands in his and kissed them. “Soledad—beautiful first love—can I come back and see you?”

“It would be madness for you to think of it!”

“I’d be crazy if I didn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. But I’ll come back…and I’ll bring you Don Porfirio’s regards, as well as my heart.”

He truly loved her at that moment, as she stood looking at him with tear-filled eyes. Yes, she had been his first love—his godmother, his mother’s lovely young friend.

“Esteban—you must go!”

But before he left the room he kissed her, deeply and passionately, with all the stored up desire in his starved body.

She remembered that kiss, and its promise, even after he had ridden away with the others. He’d come back—yes, somehow she was sure of it now.

“After all,” she told herself, “it’s not as if we were blood relatives! And if he was only a boy when I saw him last—he is a man now!”