Deep Purple (16 page)

The lead rider watched the slender woman coming to him. So frail, so delicate . . . so strong, so determined. If he'd let her, she could make for him the kind of home he had never known. No, that was untrue. The home he had known before Frank Godwin arrived. And took Cristo Rey, took his mother for his own. His mother had been strong, but love had made her weak. Would love for this American woman make him weak? So weak that he forgot the need of his people, of Mexico?

Madonna, but he was tired! And the wound hurt! The warmth and softness of Cate
’s breast would take all that away.

He leaned over and effortlessly swept the woman up into the saddle before him, ignoring the flash of pain when her
buttocks brushed the bullet hole in his thigh. He wanted only to feel the welcome of her lips beneath his.

Catherine maneuvered about as he cantered the sorrel back to camp so she could see his face. “
The battle—was it successful?  Dear God, let it be. Let this be over. Maybe then . . . maybe . . . . “

His brows almost united in a straight line with the irritation he was feeling. “
Pesquiera fled like a polecat! The governor had over four hundred men, and he retreated to Hacienda La Concepcion. Garnier controls Ures.”

The rain was landsliding now, the wind screaming, and the lightning exploding its fireworks across the sky. He dismounted and lifted her down, while the heaven unleashed its fury about the returning soldiers. The two of them sought the refuge b
eneath the wagon, and he pulled her into the folds of his huge serape. "You’re shivering,” he said.

"You'd think I would be used to the cold after the New England winters, but it
’s a bitter cold up here . . . and I’m frightened. Law. I’m frightened of what you’ll tell me.”

He reached beneath the serape and withdrew a flask. “
Drink some,” he told her. “It’ll warm you. And give you courage.” She shook her head. She would face this on her own. “You’re sending me away.”

He took a long swallow and shoved in the
cork. “We’re going into guerrilla warfare, Cate. Deep into the valleys and the mountains of the Yaqui and Mayo rivers. Our headquarters will be in the jungles with our Indian allies, few though they are. You won’t like it. There will be mosquitoes and rain and a heat that’s nothing like Tucson’s. It steams you alive.”

“
And where would I go?” she cried above the roar of the rain and thunder. "There’s no place for me but here, at your side!”

He looked down at her before turning his gaze up at the darkened board bottom of the wagon. But he still saw the intelligent eyes, the warm, giving mouth. "Our headquarters, in San Marcial, will be only a day
’s ride from Guaymas. You’re going back to the States, Cate, where you belong—on the first U.S. vessel out of Guaymas.”

“
No,” she said with a calm assurance that he always found amusing. She leaned over him, her hands splayed on his chest. “If you’re trying to diplomatically tell me you no longer want me as your—at your side. I’m quite capable of keeping up with your expedition—or
guerrilleros
, as you now term yourselves. And I will. I can fend for myself if I have to, but I will not be driven away.”

He sighed. “
I fully believe you could convince Maximilian to give up and return to Austria if you had half a chance to talk to him. You’re so damn logical, Cate.”

She put her fingertip on the full bottom lip, and he felt that familiar rush of heat whenever with her in close proximity.
‘‘Dear God, I wish that were so, but it isn’t. I can’t be logical about you. And there’s only one person I want to convince. Not Maximilian, but you. Law, I came to the Arizona Territory with an empty cup, and you have filled it. I will not return to that arid life I led before.”

“
Then let me fill your cup again.” He laughed . . . laughter that died away at the passion shining in her eyes. He rolled her over on her back. His leg half-covered hers, his fingers freed the breasts of their constriction so that his mouth could taste the sustenance it hungered for.  His questing hand slid beneath the band of her skirt to entangle in the soft, dark down. She moaned as his fingers found that tiny knot of flesh. His lips deserted the tumescent nipple his teeth tugged at to silence her wild murmurs of ecstasy. It was not the time to make love, with nature’s elements shrieking in protest about them, with the wound throbbing at his thigh. But there was a greater throbbing inside him that had to be silenced.

He shoved the skirt up past her archi
ng hips. He could hear her urgent breathing, hear his own ragged breath drumming in his ears. He had to have her. Now. He had wanted to court her with the patience and tenderness she deserved.  But those noble thoughts were lost in the haze of compelling need.  He  thrust inside her, forgetting his pain, ignoring her own whimper of pain. He shoved deep. Deeper. Faster. Harder. And she cried out as her body answered. They moved in unison. Slamming. Pounding. Driving toward that ultimate fusion.

By ridding hi
mself of his seed, he would rid himself of her, his need for her . . . this great ache that consumed him whenever she looked at him with those eyes that burned with wanting. A final explosion. The blaze of colors. The temporary suspension of time and place. And Cate’s sweet, sweet lips, moving . . . giving . . . wanting again.

CHAPTER 21

I
mpatiently Law sat while Catherine, kneeling beside him, bandaged the wound. “You should have told me last night,” she reprimanded him. “It could have gotten infected.”

He grinned down at her from the camp stool which he straddled. “
You sound like a schoolmarm . . . Miss Cate. Besides, if I had let you attend the wound, then I wouldn't have discovered what a truly astonishing woman you are.”

Blushing, she gri
nned, a grin that faded as she began to shiver, the second time that morning a spasm of coughing had seized her. Law held out the flask from which she had so recently poured its fiery contents on his ulcerated flesh. “Drink,” he commanded. “It sounds as if you need it worse than my leg does. You must have caught a cold in last night’s rain.”

She hesitated, not liking the bitter, burning liquid. But the adamant set of his lips, beautiful lips with their easy grin, she thought, told her he would most likely m
ake her drink the mescal if she did not comply. She took a tentative sip and found that after the initial burning, it did set off a pleasant warming once it reached the stomach.

As the brigade moved out that day, traveling southwest toward the rendezvous w
ith General Morales’s Juarista troops, the chills abated, although she experienced periods of exhaustion and sapping weakness over the days that followed.

From Tucson's grassy Santa Cruz valley the terrain had changed to low brown hills, then a cholla wast
eland, and finally rock-strewn canyons. Now the landscape was altering again as patches of green valleys and tree-mantled mountains painted the horizon. The farther south the brigade traveled, the more thickly grew the trees beneath the warmer, more humid sunlight, and vines began to drop like snakes from palm and mahogany branches intertwined overhead, reminding her how her life was intertwined with Law’s.

Law at last led the brigade up out of the lowlands into the mountains, where the verdant foliage was
less thick and the air not so steamy. She could almost feel the cooler air inflate her shriveling lungs, so that it seemed by the time they reached the Indian
rancheria
her spells of weakness and chills were waning.

The guerrilla headquarters, hidden in o
ne of the many canyons that twisted and tangled through the Sierra Madre mountain range, afforded an unexpected view of civilization for her. The
rancheria
was a cluster of thirty or forty beehive-like brush
wickiups
peppering a tableland high in the mountains.

People were everywhere, mostly men, though a few children played before the
wickiup
doorways and several women with coarse Indian features talked and joked as they pummeled cornmeal with their
metates
. Yaqui and Mayo Indians, Mexican
peones
and bandits, American soldiers—even some Germans who had immigrated to the more lucrative Sonora mines after the first flush of the California gold rush had paled—these were the Juaristas who would liberate Mexico from the French invaders.

While Law and Tranquilino
met with General Morales—a short but darkly good-looking Mexican—Catherine and Filomena were led off to a lovely evergreen-shaded knoll by a smiling, flat-faced Indian woman with bangs that covered her brows. Through rudimentary gestures and broken Spanish, Meija was able to make Catherine and Filomena understand that the women were to construct
wickiups
for their men. The Indian women would erect
wickiups
for those soldiers who did not have their own women or wished for more shelter than that offered by the pup tent some possessed. At a stream nearby, two women wove reeds that would form the thatching for the
wickiup’s
roof, and Meija tried to demonstrate how easily the weaving was accomplished.

Catherine would have liked nothing better than a drink of coo
l water from the stream, rather than the brackish water Law had offered her from his japanned canteen, and then a nap beneath the shady aspen. But she would not be less of a woman than the other
soldaderas
. While the soldiers fell out to rub down travel-weary horses, she began the task of erecting the
wickiup
. Actually, she had to admit that she was taking a great deal of pleasure in the work, for it would be the first home she and Law would share.

The actual construction of the
wickiup
went much more quickly than she had anticipated, and by the time Law emerged from General Morales's
wickiup
with the general and Tranquilino on either side, she was installing the baskets for dried food and cooking utensils along the inside walls.

She had thought how dirty and disheveled she had to look with the calico skirt and blouse Filomena had lent her stained with dust and sweat and her hair falling from its knot and trailing about her shoulders. But Law crossed to her and took her hand, sayi
ng, “You are
muy hermosa
, Cate. Much more beautiful, much more alive, than that stiff young lady I first met in Tucson.”

She knew she would never tire of hearing the flowery compliments on his lips. If only he would say that he loved her. She let him pull h
er inside the
wickiup
.  Though it was but twilight, he scooped her into the cradle of his arms and, hunkering on one knee, lowered her onto the soft bedding of evergreens she had made. “
Mi corazon, mi alma
," he whispered, the true Latin lover now. “My mind has been diverted from its purpose all day long by thoughts of this time.”

She would have rained kisses on the fierce brown face, but he took her fingers, kissing each one softly, and next her palms, her right first then her left. She could not have imagi
ned so much time could be given over to the bringing of pleasure to a loved one. Then he took the pins from her hair, scattering them carelessly on the floor. “Always leave your hair down, Cate,” he murmured, burying his face in the cascade of her dark brown tresses.

After that he could it seemed as thought a feverish hunger seized him. He did not take his eyes off her while he stripped. “
I had not thought that the urge to possess you again, you above all others, would be so great.”

Why me, a woman a full f
ive years older, a woman who wants all the things in life he does not . . . a house and children and a structured life?

Catherine stirred the ashes and lime into the boiling coconut oil. The bubbling mixture certainly did not look or smell like the rose-scented soap she had known in Baltimore, nor the coarser castile soap she had used at Cristo Rey. But the fact that she was making it was a triumph for her.

The obviously pregnant Meija crossed the
rancheria
, waddling like a water buffalo toward Catherine. Watching the young Indian woman, Catherine mentally counted—five months since the brigade had arrived at the
rancheria
. That would make Meija due any day now.

Five months! Incredible, she thought. The passage of time in the
tierra caliente
was not to be measured by changes of season. Always the insidious green. Always the enervating heat.

What day was it? It had to be toward the last of September. Or was it already into October? It seemed to her that she measured time by the forays Law made. A wee
k away fighting in the southern part of the state near the pueblo of Alamos. Four days spent disrupting French communications between Hermosillo and Ures. Five days riding to intercept pack trains loaded with silver bullion from Sonoran mines bound for French ships at Guaymas.

Meija approached now, shyly holding out a gift wrapped in a bandanna. "
Café
," she said.

“
Oh, Meija,
gracias
!" Catherine could hardly believe her good fortune. How long had it been since she had had coffee? Almost three months, since Loco’s supply had run out. She wanted to say more to Meija—to ask her how she felt, if the baby had dropped—but Meija’s Indian dialect made it almost impossible to carry on any lengthy conversation.

Yet the language barrier had not kept Catherine from carin
g for the young Indian woman when Meija became ill in the first throes of pregnancy. It had been Loco who had recommended giving Meija lemonade, sumac, and powdered dry berries. After two weeks of feeding the nausea-weakened girl, Catherine had finally succeeded in restoring the healthy color to Meija’s bronze cheeks.

She opened the knotted bandanna. Inside was not coffee grain but ground corn and parched acorns. She tried to conceal her disappointment. And true, even this substitute for coffee was a welcom
e change of beverages from the water and fruit juices, or the fermented cactus brew which still flowed freely in the evenings.

She watched the young woman lumber away with something akin to envy. For a woman to know that she carried a child inside her
—and the joyous knowledge that it was the child of the man she loved—surely had to be the greatest experience life could give. The gift of giving. She recalled the night before when she had lain naked in Law’s arms and his hands had stroked the smooth indentation of the waist and slid down over her stomach. He had been gone three days, and she wanted him to take her, to make her forget the lonely days and nights without him

But his hand halted over the concavity of her stomach. "When was the last time you had yo
ur flow, Cate?”

Color flooded her face. “
Why?” she whispered, fighting back the tears of anger. "Are you afraid I carry your child?” She pushed away from him, so that in the darkness of the
wickiup
she could see only his thick wreath of yellow curls. “Are you afraid I'll force you to marry me?”

A light flared from a phosphorous match, and Law
’s sun-goldened body was briefly illuminated, then there was only the soft glow of the rice-papered cigar. “You know that not even a child will force me into marriage,” he said softly but with a cool distance to his voice, which had previously been warm with Spanish love words.

"Then it should matter little whether I
’m with child or not!” In the darkness his hand groped and found her wrist, and before she could pull free he tugged her back to his side. “Your health matters to me greatly. This is no place to have a child. Pregnancy can kill a woman, you know.” His voice grated low and harsh, though he held her gently in his arms. “Don Francisco’s unborn child killed my mother.”

She had not known how to respond to the grief in his voice. Instead, she laid her head against his chest, the skin warm and matted with curls, and let her hands show him her love. They had made love fiercely
—fighting like two mating tigers. The urgency of death hung over them. He rode her with a smooth fast power. And she bucked and reared, giving him back that scalding, delicious fire that streaked through the two of them at the last.

This morning, as he dressed to leave once more, buckling on the pi
stols, sheathing the knife at his side, she caught his hands, holding them close to her breasts, away from the weapons. “I’m frightened,” she said simply. “Of what tomorrow holds.”

He looked down at her. “
I think everyone is frightened before a battle.”

“
Even yourself?” she asked. “Somehow I have the impression you aren’t afraid of anything.”

He smiled gently. “
Me most of all. Sometimes to live when all those about you have fallen—I think it’s a torture worse than the quick blessing of death.”

She clutched at his arm. “
Why then, Law? You don’t have to. You have everything you could want at Cristo Rey.”

“
I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I myself don’t understand why. Cristo Rey, the Stronghold, the cattle, the mines. They’re things. Things that will erode and rust and wither with time. But abstractions like liberation, freedom, justice—they’ve been in my blood like a fever.”

He pulled her in his arms against him then and said softly, “
Just the same as you’re in my blood, Cate. I’ve told myself a hundred times over there is no room in my life for anything but the Juarista cause. Yet always thoughts of you creep into my mind. The prim, delicate Miss Howard with a strength of will that would defy an army.”

She knew it was as close to a declaration of l
ove as she would hear from him, and she gave herself up to his demanding kiss and forced herself to hold back the threatening tears as she watched him ride away.