Gold (23 page)

“
Make your bets.”

“
I’ll let it ride once more,” Danny said. “One
more win and I quit.”

“
You’re faded,” Rhynne told him, removing
the winning six from the box. Another six, the
six of diamonds, lay beneath it.

“
The six loses,” he said. “The ten wins. The
lad loses.”

Rhynne raked the money toward him. The men
around the table clapped Danny on the back,
shook their heads, drifted away. Danny walked
stiffly and precisely to the bar. He found only one
man there, his head resting on his hands.

Blearily the man looked up.
“Been bucking the
tiger?” he asked.

Danny knew he was asking whether he had
been playing faro. “Yes,” he said.

“
How’d you do?”

“
Lost five dollars,” Danny said. The man once
more settled his head on his folded hands.

Danny woke in his room at the Empire in the
early hours of the morning. His head ached, his
stomach churned, his tongue felt thick. He got up and groped his way outside to the privy. Then he walked to the well, raised the bucket and drank from the dipper. No more whiskey for me, he told himself, it’s the devil’s own drink.

The night air felt clean and cold on his face as he walked down the hill away from the hotel. Selena. He
’d promised himself he’d seen Selena. What matter the hour? Was he a man or wasn’t he?

Ahead of him he heard horses galloping away. Was it morning already?
he thought blearily, seeing the sun through the trees. No, he realized, not the sun. Fire. He ran a cabin was on fire, the flames licking up the the sides to the roof. He’d been to that cabin before. He’d pushed Selena in through that door.

It was Selena
’s cabin ablaze in the night.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN             

Danny ran to the cabin. The door hung from
one canvas hinge; smoke boiled from inside. Put
ting a handkerchief to his mouth, he plunged
through the doorway.

And tripped, falling to his hands and knees.
He groped behind him until he touched . . .
what? A body. He found a man’s arm, gripped
him under the shoulders and dragged him outside. In the flickering light from the fire he recognized
Rhynne, a red weal on his forehead. Rhynne
groaned and sat up, his hand going to his head.

Danny swore, tugged Rhynne several yards further from the fire, then left him and ran back
toward the cabin. In the distance the fire bell
clanged and he heard men shouting. On hands
and knees he crawled into the cabin. Though the air
was clearer near the floor, his eyes stung. He
could see nothing. Flames crackled in front of him and the heat seared his face.

His searching hands found a bed and on the
bed a woman. Danny stood and lifted her into
his arms, staggering toward
where he thought the door must be. The odor of
lilacs mingled with the stench of the smoke. He
saw the yellow tongues of flame  to his right,
then
he stumbled against the wall, choking, tears
filling his eyes. With one shoulder touching the
wall he walked toward where he thought the door should be. He almost fell through
the doorway when he reached it, lurching out
into the clear air. Hands held him, while others
took his burden from him.

“
Is it, is it Selena?” he gasped.

“
It’s Miss Pamela,” someone told him. “She’s
alive.”

Danny rubbed his eyes, looking behind him.
The entire cabin was ablaze. Flames licked up the
sides and leaped from the roof, and smoke was
whirling off on the early morning breeze. Men
began passing buckets from hand to hand, not to
save the cabin, for it was too late for that, but to
prevent the fire from spreading.

Danny ran to the cabin door. The heat struck
his face like a blow. Covering his eyes with his arm, he crouched and was about to dash inside
when hands grasped him. He shook them off.
Someone caught him around the legs, hurling him
to the ground.

“
Selena,” he cried out as he was pulled away.

“
She’s not in there.”

Danny blinked and looked up dazedly.

Rhynne stood swaying in front of him, wincing as he touched the bruise on his head with his
fingers. “They have Selena,” Rhynne said flatly.

“
What happened?”

It was Ned the piano player who answered.
“There were three of them. They burst into the cabin and overpowered me. I was there because
the women were afraid. Because of what hap
pened to Pike. One of the men held me while
they bound Selena. Pamela was . . . asleep. They
took Selena. I saw them. They must have knocked
me out before they started the fire. I don’t re
member.”

“
Bring horses. We’ll get them,” Rhynne said.

Danny pushed himself to his feet.
“I’m going along,”
he said.

Diego led the way, his two companions just
behind him. One, a woman dressed like a man, led Selena’s horse. Selena was slung face down
on the horse’s back with her hands tied to her feet beneath the animal’s belly.

A mile from Hangtown, Diego turned off the
trail and led them into foothills. The dark of night
slowly gave way to a grey dawn. Selena clenched
her teeth to keep from moaning. The rope chafed
her wrists and ankles, her arms and legs ached,
her head pounded. Every jounce of the horse sent
pain jolting through her body.

She opened her eyes to see the ground rushing
by in a blur of dirt and rocks and horse’s hooves.
She couldn’t tell where they were.

As they climbed into the hills they crossed deep
dry gulches where, during the winter rains,
streams had hurtled down into the valley. The
ground became rockier, the going rougher and
slower,
and the horses were forced to pick their
footing with care. Selena saw a scattering of boul
ders and shrubs on the slope behind them. Far
below in the valley, a dwindling finger of smoke
curled upward.

The trail turned abruptly back on itself in the
first of a series of switchbacks. They finally
crested a rise and came out on a rocky mesa. A
strong breeze there pulled at Selena’s hair and parted her dressing gown.

Diego held up his hand and they stopped. He
dismounted, climbing to an outcrop of rock to
gaze back along their trail. When he returned he spoke to his two companions in Spanish, calling one of them Ramon, then came to Selena, pulling
a knife from his belt. She shut her eyes.

She felt Diego cut the ropes binding her hands and feet. He pulled her from the horse. When she tried to stand her numb feet betrayed her and she stumbled and fell to the ground. She struggled to
her feet as Diego watched her with his hands on
his hips. She had to brace herself against the
horse to keep from falling again.

The woman dressed like a man came to stand
at Diego’s side. She was as slim as a boy, her face
lean and taut and beautiful, her hair black as the
night. Her brown eyes studied Selena and Selena
thought she saw a flicker of emotion in the sud
den downward curl of the woman’s mouth. Pity?
Disdain? She couldn’t tell.

“
Selena,” Diego said, “this is Rosita. She is my
wife.”

Selma
stared at the other woman. She was con
fused. His wife? Then why had Diego abducted
her from the cabin? She had
assumed, without
really thinking, that he had carried her off as he
had the year before in San Francisco. To marry
her by force. Or
...

“
What do you want with me?” Selena asked.

“
You deceived me,” Diego told her. “I have
vowed vengeance on you and on all Americanos.
You have no honor. You are all animals and I
must treat you as I would an animal. Americanos
killed my sister, Esperanza. Whenever I find an
Americano alone, I will kill him. I will kill
him without question, without warning, without
mercy.”

“
Diego,” she said, “I didn’t kill Esperanza. I
loved her. Diego
...”

“
I am no longer Diego. He is dead these many months. In English Diego is called James. Jamie.
J.M. It amused me to take J.M. as my initials.
I am now Joaquin Murieta.”

“
Diego,” she said, going to him. The name Joaquin Murieta, though the mere mention of it
would soon bring more fear to the frontier than
any other outlaw of the era, meant nothing to
her. He was Diego.

“
Joaquin.”

“
Joaquin.” She put her hand on his arm. “I
tried to save Esperanza. My heart ached for her.”

For a moment his eyes seemed to soften and
he looked at her almost with longing. Then he
stepped away and spat at her feet.

“
You’ll be no better than a bandit,” Selena
said. “You’ll be hunted down and killed.”

“
No,” he said, his eyes glinting. “Not a
bandito
.
Never. I’ll be a hero to my people. I will take
only from the rich and give only to the poor.”

Before she could answer he turned from her
and spoke harshly to Rosita. Taking the rope from
the ground, Diego’s wife tied Selena’s hands be
hind her back, then thrust a cloth gag in her
mouth and knotted the ends behind her head,
making the corners of Selena’s mouth sting.

Grasping the rope, Diego pushed her forward. Diego. She couldn
’t think of him as Joaquin. She would never think of him as Joaquin. Taking the
reins of his black stallion, Diego signaled to
Rosita and Ramon and the two mounted and
rode on along the trail.

Selena
’s bare feet stung from the rocks under
foot as Diego shoved her in front of him. They went down a narrow track among scrub pines.
After a few minutes Diego left her, tied his horse
behind a clump of bushes and returned with a
rifle. When he motioned Selena to the ground, she dropped to her knees and turned to look up
at him. He put his hand at the nape of her neck
and shoved her forward so she fell face down on
the rocks. She gasped with pain. Twisting around,
she saw Diego climb to a ledge where, stretched
full-length on his stomach, he looked back the
way they had come.

Only then did she hear the clatter of hooves
far down the mountainside. Diego, tense and alert,
waited with the rifle cradled in his arms. Selena
saw a rock near her foot. Just beyond the rock
the bank dropped steeply down into a jumble of stones, leaves and broken branches. She stretched
her foot until her toe touched the rock.

The horsemen—surely, she thought, they were
from Hangtown—came closer. Now she could
hear the creak of leather, the occasional jingle of spurs, the sound of voices. They must be at the
crest of the hill where Diego had halted to cut her
free. She could no longer hear the horses. Were the men on foot now, searching for their trail?

Now! She shoved the rock as hard as she could
and felt a surge of hope as she heard the rumble
of a small landslide. Diego turned toward her, cursing under his breath. Selena listened, hoping
to hear the approach of the men.

There were no shouts, no cries. Hadn
’t they
heard the slide? Again hooves clattered over the
rock shelf. The sounds receded, grew faint. They
had not heard her. They were leaving, following
the false trail of Rosita and the man called
Ramon. Selena shrank within herself.