In the Season of the Sun (8 page)

“Sleep? When I could be doing this?” He lowered his lips and darting tongue to her breasts.

“Mmm. Better than sleep. But I fear you begin something maybe you cannot finish.” She reach down to stroke his leg and after a moment's exploration discovered for herself that he was still hard.

“My sweet stallion,” said Cecilia Rodrigo.

If the shoe fits, thought Tom. And he slid between her parted thighs. After two months buffalo hunting on the plains west of the Sangre de Cristo, being with a soft-skinned hot-blooded woman was heaven.

Tom closed his eyes and concentrated on how good Cecilia felt beneath him. Suddenly, his only worry was if he'd be able to contain the fire he had begun. Senora Rodrigo might blaze out of control and consume him. With her, anything was possible.

In the alley below the window, where Tom's brown mare cropped at the weeds sprouting at the base of the stucco wall, a man materialized out of the shadows. The mare lifted her head, caught a familiar scent, and gave no warning to the man upstairs. Skintop Pritchard had a score to settle with Tom Milam. He'd had no use for Tom as a boy. And less now that he was grown to manhood. Tom had stolen the squaw Skintop had fancied and Pritchard was bound and determined to exact his revenge. He'd bided his time and now in Santa Fe Milam had provided the opportunity for his own downfall.

Pritchard stole soundlessly alongside the mare, with a flick of the wrist untethered the animal, and led her from the alley and down the darkened street toward the plaza where the lanterns lit the night and laughter and music filled the air.

Pritchard quickened his pace, anxious to find the alcalde or one of his subordinates and tell them the terrible news about Senora Rodrigo's infidelity. Pritchard had just entered the plaza when a couple of uniformed dragoons accosted him, noticing at a glance this man in greasy buckskins standing out like a sore thumb amongst the nobility of the Santa Fe community. Pritchard, licking his chops, had started toward a table laden with
“pan dulce”
and clay pitchers of sangria when a sharp command and a drawn saber stopped him in his tracks.

“Hold there,” a dark-haired, moustachioed officer ordered and slapped the flat of his steel blade against the hide hunter's chest. “Where do you think you are going, gringo? Back to the Road of Kings or I'll have you chained to the stockade walls.”

Skintop Pritchard retreated to the edge of the plaza, his features transformed into an angry mask. No one talked to him in such a fashion. His lips curled back in a ruthless sneer. His hand was halfway to the tomahawk in his belt when the mare behind him whickered and caused him to remember the purpose of his visit to the plaza.

“Your pardon, Senor, but I must see the alcalde, Don Rafael Rodrigo,” Pritchard said in his most subservient tone.

“He is not here,” the officer said. “I am Captain Elizarro. You may state your business to me and I will relate it to Don Rafael.”

“I'll speak to the alcalde myself.”

“Not without a tongue, which is what such impertinence will cost you,” the captain retorted. The elegantly clad gentlemen and their ladies near Elizarro and the hide hunter moved away from the confrontation, not wanting any part of such unpleasantness. At a gesture from the captain, a pair of stern-faced junior officers joined Elizarro at the fringe of the festivities. The officers were obviously displeased at being summoned from the willing arms of such beauties. Pritchard tried to defuse the situation, holding his hands palm outward in a gesture of peace; a false smile lit face.

“Now see here. I have important news for the alcalde.” Pritchard scratched his hairless skull and tried to figure out how things had gotten so much out of hand.

The officers took up position on either side of the hunter. Captain Elizarro, taking courage from the arrival of his men, now advanced on Pritchard.

“I will decide whether your ‘news' is important enough to bother Don Rafael with,” the captain flatly stated.

Pritchard, glancing at the soldiers surrounding him, finally shrugged.

“Aw, what the hell. You want to be the messenger boy, go to it. I'll tell you. Just make sure you pass it along to the alcalde pronto or it will be too late.”

8

C
oyote Kilhenny almost made it to the fiesta where gaily lit lanterns were strung on poles and crisscrossed the spacious town square, illuminating the plaza in a dancing glow. Kilhenny had always deemed himself worthy of rubbing elbows with the town's aristocracy. Here was his chance, courtesy of Nate Harveson's letter to the half-breed—here—and then gone. Just as the mayor and his contingent of officers turned onto the Via Publica, Captain Elizarro spied them and galloped straight for the alcalde and reined to a halt alongside the corpulent little mayor.

“Don Rafael, a word with you,” the captain said in a grave voice. His horse lost its footing in the dirt and gravel, reared and pawed the air before Elizarro could bring him under control. Kilhenny, unrattled by the man's sudden arrival, eased back in the saddle of the horse he had borrowed from in front of the cantina. Judging from the captain's attitude, there must be trouble somewhere, but Kilhenny doubted it concerned him. He watched as the two men distanced themselves from the company of dragoons, and out of natural curiosity the half-breed tried to overhear what the officer and the alcalde were discussing in such lowered voices. Suddenly, Rodrigo straightened, made sort of a choking noise, sputtered, then wrenched his horse back around.

“Solados
, follow me!” he snapped. “My apologies, Senor Kilhenny, but you must see to your own amusement!” And with that, the diminutive official lashed his poor mount about the neck and flanks and rode at a breakneck pace down the night-darkened thoroughfare. The dragoons swarmed past the hide hunter, spattering Kilhenny with grit from the wheel-rutted road.

Coyote Kilhenny didn't take offense. The truth be known, he was anxious to hit the trail for Independence. So the half-breed stroked his red beard a moment in thought, then started back the way he had come, determined to allow Pike and Skintop and Tom one night to blow off steam.

Tomorrow morning they'd collect their belongings and start east. It bothered him that he didn't know where Tom and Skintop had wandered off to. Not that Tom couldn't take care of himself. Kilhenny took pride in the boy. He'd raised him on the raw edge of the wilderness. The boy had come of age under Kilhenny's guiding influence. He'd taken his first pelt at ten, his first hide at eleven, his first Injun scalp at twelve. The mountains too had been a hard and ruthless teacher, but the half-breed had grafted his own code of honor and morals on the youth. By the time Tom Milam had reached his twenties he could hold his own with any man, red or white. In a fight, Tom was quick and mean and fierce as a bobcat. Oh, he was a wild one and reminded Kilhenny of himself twenty years younger. Kilhenny took pride in the similarity, though it was cause for concern. Twenty years ago Coyote Kilhenny would have ridden into Santa Fe prickly as a hedgehog and looking for trouble. Maybe the kid would show more sense.

Then again, the lad was too much like his father. Unpredictable. Kilhenny felt no remorse for the past. What had happened eleven years ago near the banks of the Platte River had been as much Joseph Milam's doing as anyone's. Once the firing started, there was no way to hold the Shoshoni braves in check.

Kilhenny considered the man Tom Milam had become. No matter his birthright, he was cut from the same cloth as the half-breed trapper. Coyote Kilhenny grinned, sensing the irony, for the one person Tom cared for and trusted the most in all the world was his father's killer.

Life was funny that way.

Tom woke with a start. He hadn't meant to doze off, but the bed had been so warm and the woman so comfortable beside him that slipping off to sleep had seemed only normal. The fireworks in the plaza at the end of the block had awakened him. He looked at the empty place alongside the bed. The candle in its brass holder hadn't burned any lower, so he must have only just nodded off. He looked around the handsomely appointed room with its colorful
serapes
draped like rainbows across the whitewashed adobe walls and the comfortable arrangement of dresser and end table and two wing chairs near the fireplace and there standing naked by firelight, Cecilia Rodrigo, her coffee-colored limbs aglow. She wore a thin silver chain around her neck on which hung a gold-wrought serpent, coiled into a ring.

Tom's hand shot to his throat, then loosing a low growl, he sprang from the bed and toward the woman. Cecilia gasped and backed away and plopped into an easy chair. The ring dangled between her large melon-shaped breasts and as Tom reached for her the woman tried to cover her bosom. But he was too quick and grabbed the chain from around her neck.

“Don't touch this.”

“Ow! Bastard. You scratched my ear!”

“You had no right to take it.” Tom slipped the chain over his head and paused a moment to study the coiled serpent, his memories slipping back through the years to another day and to a pair of frightened boys whose world was about to change irrevocably. “Brothers forever,” Tom said softly.

“I thought you might want to give me something, to remember tonight by,” Cecilia Rodrigo pouted.

Tom laughed softly in derision and pulled on his woolen trousers. “Senora, you will have forgotten me before I reach the end of the hall.”

The alcalde's wife glanced up as if to offer protest. But she grinned instead and her anger melted away. She was once again the kittenish flirt Tom had danced with at the fiesta and charmed into an illicit rendezvous.

“But my sweet stallion, you are not down the hall yet,” she added and invited him to her embrace. When he did not immediately comply, she reached out and caught him by the trousers. He knelt between her thighs and kissed, then shook his head no.

“And I thought you were a man of iron,” Cecilia chided, her expression one of playful disdain.

“A man of iron can rust if he's not careful,” Tom replied, his blue eyes reflecting the firelight. He cupped her breasts; she sighed. “There is tomorrow, you know. Who's to stop us from meeting again?” A loud hammering shook the door. It sounded like a gun butt battering the wood. “Don't answer that!” Tom finished. He leapt to his feet, grabbed the rest of his clothes, and headed for the balcony and his horse tethered below in the alley.

A gunshot rang out and the door latch blew away. Cecilia screamed and ran toward the bed as wood splinters showered the throw rug. The woman pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it about herself as Rodrigo charged into the room. He slashed the air with his saber, then his wild eyes spied Tom leaping like a cat through the window. He demonstrated his agility even more as he bolted over the stone wall and dropped out of sight.

“Husband, he attacked me,” Cecilia moaned as the alcalde turned toward the wife. “See the welts,” she added, keeping well in the shadows. “He forced himself on me. Thank the saints I am rescued!”

Don Rafael Rodrigo hurried to his wife's bedside and wrapped her in an embrace. He stroked her tousled hair while she wept and sobbed and thanked the Holy Family for her deliverance.

Down below the balcony, Tom Milam landed hard and fell back on his rump, slamming his head against the adobe wall and jarring all his bones. He groaned and tried to stand and heard laughter. When his vision cleared, he was ringed by dragoons on horseback and staring down the barrels of their muskets. His own horse was gone, wandered off … no … he'd trained the horse to stay put. Well, the animal was gone, and with it, his chance for escape.

He managed to stand, winced at the pain, and rubbed his rear end.

“I am Captain Elizarro, Senor,” an officer said from among the soldiers surrounding Tom. “Permit me,
por favor
, to offer you the hospitality of our jail.” Elizarro walked his mount forward and into Tom, nearly knocking the young man off his feet. He slashed down with a riding crop and cut Tom's cheek. “And in the morning, I am certain the alcalde will have many things to discuss with you, eh? Many ‘painful' memories for you to recall.”

The soldiers laughed at the hapless prisoner in their midst. It was useless to resist. So Tom shrugged and suppressed his volatile nature.

“Maybe I will drop by,” Tom Milam said. And he wiped the blood from his cheek … and smiled.

9

T
he jailhouse was a solitary, solid building set blocks off the Via Publica, facing a narrow street and set apart from the other buildings that pertained to civic government. Situated about twenty-five yards from the jail, the nearest structure was a barracks for the city's military police, in this case Captain Elizarro and a dozen men. Elizarro could keep watch from his second-floor apartment while his men, quartered below, were close enough to be called upon at a moment's notice.

Two soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the building, keeping a wary surveillance and challenging anyone who approached. The building itself, behind its adobe walls fifteen feet to a side, housed a single room, a broad open space fronted by a heavy oaken door, bolted from the outside, and two small windows, barred and, as the night was cool, shuttered against the chill. It was up to the prisoners within to feed wood to the iron stove and nurse the wick of the single oil lamp. Five cots were scattered about the room. Skintop Pritchard was sprawled across one. He lay with one hand propping up his head, the better to keep an eye on Tom, who was busy tending the fire in the stove and had hardly spoken a word to the trapper for what seemed the better part of the night. While Tom slept, an early morning chill had crept into the room and roused him from his thin blanket and a fitful rest.

At least Elizarro allowed me to keep my clothes, Tom thought to himself. That was more than Cecilia had done. Tom's grin became a grimace and he gingerly touched the cut on his cheek where Elizarro had slashed him. He stirred the embers and added several blocks of wood, coaxing a timid curl of fire into an honest blaze while he relived the previous night's entertainment along with the alcalde's luscious bride and the confrontation that followed. Before her husband, Cecilia had bemoaned her treatment at the hands of Tom Milam. She accused Tom of luring her to the hotel room and locking the door to prevent her escape.