Page 49 of Sweet Savage Love

49

S teve Morgan, never a very patient man under any circumstances, was also doing his share of waiting—in this case for Díaz’s huge army to move into a position where it could menace the twin fortresses of Puebla. But Díaz, sure of his objective and its eventual surrender, was taking his own time—preferring to play a cat and mouse game with the Imperialist garrisons who had the task of defending not only Puebla itself but Orizaba, Cordoba and Vera Cruz; to name a few of the more important cities along the thin strip of territory that was now Maximilian’s only pipeline to the ocean.

Steve continued to enjoy the danger and excitement of being a guerrillero, but he was getting rather tired of the constant moving around they had to do—the long hard riding that never allowed a man enough sleep or rest.

Since he could just as easily pass for American as he could for a Mexican, he was almost always the one who scouted for them—riding boldly along the highway or into towns and villages bristling with Imperialist troops or mercenaries who still fought for Maximilian. There were Americans everywhere, and they hardly excited curiosity any longer. Hard-bitten men who had fought in the Civil War and enjoyed fighting for its own sake—men who came to observe the end of a war and to write about it—men who were curious—men who hoped to make some profit for themselves when the empire toppled and there would be lands and estates belonging to Imperialist supporters put up for sale.

Usually, Steve did what he had to do with a coldly calculated concentration that could explode into ferocity when he had a gun or a knife in his hands and was about to use it. Women were instruments of pleasure—put in the same category as a good meal and a comfortable bed in which a man could get a safe night’s sleep—to be thought of only when he had the time. A few of them, like Concepción and the condesa, he could even think of with an absentminded affection.

But before Ginny had hurled herself so unexpectedly back into his life he had not let a woman affect either his judgement or his reactions.

Concepción had been dancing in a small cantina in Orizaba, when he had run into her again. Disdaining the risks he took, he had taken to visiting the Hacienda de Valmes as often as he could—especially since he had found out that Soledad’s husband was still trailing around behind his emperor. By the time he saw Concepción again, the wildly passionate affair that had started up between him and his godmother had tapered away into a loving friendship; particularly since Soledad was deeply religious in her own way and her confessor had spoken to her sternly about what he called an almost incestuous relationship with her godson.

Whether it was partly gratitude and partly because he had not had a woman for so long, Steve had found himself getting almost too involved with her. She was still beautiful, with the figure of a young girl still, because her husband had not been capable of giving her a child. She was experienced—and she was just as insanely attracted to Steve as he had been to her at the beginning. But after a few times, the flame began to burn out and they began to talk more than they made love; their relationship actually became more comfortable, and Steve had to admit to a feeling of relief. He hated ties!

Concepción with her wild gypsy ways was the direct opposite of Soledad. She had been almost out of her mind with joy and relief when she saw Steve, and it was she, catching him in a weak moment, who had persuaded him to take her along with him as his mistress. He thought at the time, Why not? The guerrilleros had no soldaderas to follow them around and hardly any time to stay in any place long enough to find a steady woman. He told himself that it would be nice to have a warm woman waiting in bed for him when he had a few free days. And at least, Concepción knew and understood him well enough not to expect any commitments on his part.

It had been a mutually pleasant, uncomplicated relationship, and he had almost managed to get his green-eyed tramp of a wife off his mind when she had turned up.

Now, in spite of himself, Steve caught himself thinking far too often about Ginny—when he should have been thinking of something else. The vision of her face and her peachtanned, softly sensuous body interfered when he should have been snatching what sleep he could.

He wondered bitterly how she had contrived to bewitch him, and why it had to be her, of all the women in the world, that he craved incessantly. He should have kept on hating her—even now he would not admit to himself that he felt anything more than desire for her; and that was bad enough! After all, how many other men had desired her? Every time her arms reached up to clasp him closer to her he had jealous visions of the number of other times she must have made exactly the same motions, offered her lips to other lovers in exactly the same way. He remembered how hard she used to fight him in the days when he had been her tutor in the arts of sensuality—but obviously, somewhere along the line she had forgotten how to resist and had learned to yield instead. And how passionately she yielded! Not only that— but she had even learned how to take the initiative in love making…

In spite of his irrational anger at Ginny’s newly acquired accomplishments, Steve could not help grinning when he thought of the way she had reacted to his first rejection of her. The little bitch! She had all but raped him! It didn’t seem possible that she could have changed so much in so short a time, but he had the uneasy feeling that the changes in her went even deeper than she would admit—that there were still secrets she continued to hide from him. What was she hiding? And why?

“Damn her—right from the beginning she’s managed to be an irritant in my life. She’s been the only woman who’s been able to confuse my thinking!”

Steve Morgan stared rather morosely into his beer, one elbow propped on the splintery wooden bar of the cantina he preferred to frequent during his visits to Orizaba. Ever since he’d been back at the hacienda he’d find thoughts of Ginny popping into his mind at the most unexpected moments—and usually at the wrong time. Why couldn’t he forget about her, just as he’d forgotten all the other women he’d taken and used and left when he was ready to move on? Why had he married her? But even as he damned her savagely, he found himself wanting her—wondering if she were still at the hacienda waiting for him, or had decided, after all to go back to pick up the threads of her old life. That was the trouble with her—she was completely unpredictable! But perhaps it was that very quality that intrigued him, and made him wish, even now, that he had not volunteered for this mission tonight. It was his own fault—if he hadn’t been so determined to prove to himself that he could still do without her, he would be halfway to Tehuacan by now, and in a much better frame of mind!

A man at the other end of the bar muttered in the local Indian dialect.

“Too many Norteamericanos in here—why can’t these gringos stay on their own side of the river?”

Some of the other Mexicans laughed; but softly, for there were just a few of them in this particular cantina, and besides the particular group of Norteamericanos their compadre had been referring to were hardly the kind of men one wanted to get on the wrong side of.

The group of counter-guerillas had ridden in only about an hour ago, and now occupied several of the tables at one side of the room. They complained of enormous thirst, and the room was filled with the noise of their laughter and loud boasting in their own language.

These were the same men who had been organized into groups by Colonel Dupin and paid well by Bazaine. Now that all but the last shipload of Frenchmen had left Mexico, their wages consisted of occasional payments in gold or silver from the severely-depleted treasury in Mexico City, and whatever else they could pick up in the way of booty from the haciendas or villages of suspected Juarista supporters. Hard looking, gun-hung men, their beards making them look even more dangerous, they stayed on in Mexico because the risks they took here were considerably less than the risk of going back to the United States, and the excuse of fighting a war gave them license to rob and plunder almost as they pleased. Most of the soldiers of fortune who had come to Mexico in droves after the war, attracted by the high pay and the prospect of being on the winning side for a change had already returned when the tide of war had changed in Juarez’s favor. Those that remained were the dregs—outlaws, men who had ridden with Quantrill’s raiders and enjoyed killing, deserters from the Union army who had nowhere else to go.

The gray-tunicked counter-guerillas were good men to stay clear of, but they had also been giving the small band of guerilleros that Steve rode with a lot of trouble recently. Having nothing to lose, these bearded killers took more risks than any troop of Imperialist soldiers would have dared—and did more damage. They were an annoyance—and more than that, a hindrance to the great, sprawling army that advanced towards Puebla. Therefore, they had, somehow, to be eliminated.

Steve drained the bitter-tasting beer in his glass and slid it across the bar. “Better make it two more,” he told the pock-faced bartender. “Tonight I have a great thirst.” He pretended not to catch the rather surprised look the man exchanged with the small group of Mexicans at the end of the bar. So this gringo spoke their language, did he? And quite well too, so they had better be careful what they said. He did not look like the kind of man who would take to insults kindly, this hard-faced, blue-eyed Norteamericano.

The bartender brought the two bottles of beer in rather a hurry, and Steve counted out his change carefully, giving the impression that he was short of money.

“Hey—you’re an American too, ain’t you? How come you speak their damn lingo so well?”

The American who had just come up to lounge against the bar next to Steve had short-cropped red hair and enormous handlebar mustaches.

“Just curious,” he said hastily when he met the hard blue eyes that seemed to narrow slightly as they bored into his. “I bin here about a year myself and still don’t know more than a few words, mostly for the things I want most!” He gave a coarse, meaningful laugh, but his eyes were still inquisitive.

Steve shrugged shortly, sipping his beer. “I had plenty of time to learn it,” he growled. “Didn’t have a choice.” He let his glance at the other man become openly suspicious. “Why’d you want to know?”

“Hell, no particular reason, I guess! Just tryin’ to start up a conversation with a fellow American. A man can get real homesick for the sound of his own language, sometimes.”

“I guess. Ain’t had the chance to speak it too much recently.”

Steve kept his answers short, slightly sullen, as if he was determined to remain suspicious. He finished both bottles of beer and grudgingly allowed the man to buy him a drink.

His name was Cole, and he was from Texas. He said that after the war he had “just drifted over here” and had ended up joining the counter-guerillas for the money. Steve, acting as if the liquor was just beginning to get to him, admitted that he was a Californian.

“My folks came down the Oregon trail from Missouri, though. One of the earliest wagon trains, my old man use to boast. They were dirt farmers in Missouri and they stayed dirt farmers in Oregon. But me—I got the hankerin’ to see California—an’ after that, the rest of the world. Shit!” he grimaced. “Shoulda known better!”

“I did all of my travellin’ in the States, with Quantrill—things seemed awful dull after that—that’s why I decided to join up with a couple of my friends and get mixed up in this shootin’ war.”

Expansively, he bought Steve another drink and took him back to one of the tables to meet some of his friends.

Predictably, their conversation seemed to center around wars and women. The presence of a stranger in their midst who was also an American seemed to make a few of them curious, although with their own strange code they didn’t press him too much. It just seemed natural, after a few more drinks, for him to admit that he hadn’t seen much of the Civil War since he had deserted the Union army in ’62.

“Got in a fight, one time—how was I to know he was an officer? He wasn’t in no uniform, an’ he was carryin’ a gun. Anyhow, after that I didn’t have no choice but to drift.”

“Hey listen, you shoulda joined our side! We were doin’ some real fightin’ then, weren’t we boys?” The laughter was boisterous, but not derisive.

Steve let his words slur very slightly. “I didn’t have too much sense, back then. Got back to San Francisco to celebrate missin’ the war and ended up on a damn ship…”

“You mean you were shanghaied? Happened to a friend of mine once, an’ he never did come back home. How’d you end up here?”

Steve let his eyes travel around the circle of bearded faces as if he was making up his mind whether he could trust them or not, and then he shrugged.

“Seems like I was just born to do the wrong thing! I jumped ship at Vera Cruz an’ managed to hide out until she sailed. An’ then I find that the pretty little Pepita I was shacked up with had a jealous husband, an’ he didn’t like gringos particularly. So—” he gave a wry, half-angry grin “—so I got myself thrown in jail, an’ they left me there to rot. Any of you fellers been in a Mex jail? I didn’t believe they still had dungeons until they put me in one. Some of those cells fill halfway up with water when the tide comes up—an’ they make you work like a dog for the slops they feed you. But I sure learned the language!”

“You bust out?”

Steve gave them all a wary look. “Hey—you fellers kinda work for the government, don’t you? I tell you, only way anyone’s gonna get me back in that jail is feet first, an’ I ain’t so slow with a gun that I won’t take some company with me!”

“Simmer down, buddy—ain’t nobody here going to turn you in. I’ll bet most of us here have seen the inside of a few jails ourselves, huh?”

The speaker, a big man with enormously strong shoulders winked reassuringly at Steve, and pushed a bottle across the table. “Here, have another snort. You oughta think about joining up with us, if you’re at loose ends.”

“Thanks, but I’m beginning to feel like I’m bad luck, even to myself. Guess I’m gonna try and make my way back to California.”

“Better watch out for them Juaristas along the way then! Them bastards even got an army pointed this way.”

Still pretending to be half-drunk, Steve listened as the liquor loosened the tongues of his companions and they began to discuss the war; their comments about the Imperial troops not only contemptuous but verging on being insulting.

“At least the French were fighters, an’ they knew what they was doing. It was them kept that Juarez in his place.”

“Only good thing I can remember about bein’ attached to Mejia’s army was the women—the little soldaderas. ” The big man who had spoken began to chuckle, his eyes crinkled with nostalgia.

“I recall when me an’ a couple of my buddies had our own little gal—an’ she weren’t no ordinary Mex whore either. Purtiest thing you ever did see—half French an’ half American, with hair like polished copper. Tom Beal took her off some French colonel—you remember Tom?”

“Heard he got killed in San Luis.”

“She killed him. Put a knife in his gullet, slick as a whistle. I taught her to use that knife, too.” Matt Cooper gave a reminiscent chuckle and Steve, every muscle in his body rigid, the rage almost blinding him to all reason, used every ounce of willpower he possessed to remain seated, his body slouched back in the chair. If he moved, he would kill Matt Cooper.

Unaware of the effect his words had caused, Cooper was going on with his story, bottle clutched in his hairy fist.

“Not that Tom didn’t deserve to get hisself killed. Funny guy, Tom. Mean and cold, and a deadly fighter. Hated women, in a way. Useta get a real kick out of hurtin’ them. Pecos and I, we kept him from hurtin’ our gal too bad, when we was around, but that day we had just got in town and while we was getting ourselves drunk, Beal took her down to some cantina —he useta make her whore for him when he needed money, see? Only this time he went too far, way I heard it later. Started to strip the clothes off her, right in front of that whole roomful of grinning apes—feller I knew said it was like a slave auction—he was goin’ to sell her to the highest bidder. Only she went crazy all of a sudden and let him have it with the knife…”

“You ever hear what happened to her?”

Cooper shrugged, his huge shoulders moving bearlike under his tight jacket.

“That was when the French were runnin’ everything back there. We went down to the guardhouse after we’d sobered up, Pecos and I, and all that sergeant would do was shrug his shoulders. Told us some French officer came in while they was questioning her, and took her off with him to Mexico City. But I bet she fell right on her feet there, just like a little cat. She sure was something!”

Steve kept looking at the buttons on Matt Cooper’s open tunic, planning just where he’d put his knife in. His mind had begun to function again, but the cold rage he’d felt when the big man started on his rambling discourse still remained, making his resolve implacable. Now that he knew where the counter-guerillas were going he ought to get out himself and plan a little surprise for them. But first he was going to kill Cooper.

It was a good thing they thought he was drunk, and were going on with their own conversation. He could feel the fury in himself, coiled like a rattler ready to strike, in the pit of his stomach. So that was part of her story she hadn’t told him. He remembered her saying, that first night, “I’ve killed a man, Steve,” but she hadn’t told him who the man was, or why. How much more had she kept hidden from him behind those slanted green eyes of hers? Ginny—his sunhaired darling, with her softly parting thighs, her seductive, temptress mouth opening under his kisses—how many men had experienced the same delights that he had? She had killed one of them, driven to God knows what depths of desperation and degradation; and another sat across the same table from him, swilling his liquor like the swine he looked to be. Had they vanquished her stubborn spirit, dragged her spitfire pride in the dust, broken her just as he had been broken in that wretched prison? He had never felt such a fierce, frantic desire to kill as he did at this moment, even though the rational, thinking part of his mind told him coldly to wait—the time would come.

It was easy to pretend drunkenness when he finally stumbled away from the table, chair scraping noisily as he did. They were all more than a little drunk by now and hardly noticed his weaving departure. Only Cole called after him, his voice a raucous bellow.

“Hey, Steve! You decide to join us, remember we ride out in the morning!”

He muttered something unintelligible and found himself in the coolness of the night air outside; sucking in great gulps of it, as if he’d been holding his breath a long time.