Marco and the Devil's Bargain (25 page)

There was no sound of humans above them now.
What a strange storm!
Last year, Marco had told her of lightning in winter, but she had put it down to a tall tale. Through a slit in the buffalo robe, Paloma blinked at the lightning, and then the close roar of thunder, as snow fell, and then icy sleet, as if the elements couldn't decide what to do.

“
Just be alive,” she whispered. She wrinkled her nose at the odor of blood and her own rank fear. She pressed her head against the rocks of the canyon wall and closed her eyes.

But there was Ayasha. The Spaniard in Paloma told her to make polite conversation. “Do you belong to the woman who rode away with Toshua?”

“
I belong to no one,” came the quiet answer.

“
I have been there,” Paloma whispered back.
Pray God I am not there again
, she thought.

Buciro would probably have handled the lightning better, but Marco had no other complaints about his mount. He shook his head when Toshua offered to show him the Comanche way to take a scalp, and could only hope that thunder obscured his retching at the wet sound as the Comanche finished his circling cut around the dying Apache's head, then grasped the deep gash at his neck and yanked away his entire scalp.

He heard the little doctor vomit when Toshua, with a certain savage flair, placed the scalp in his lap. All that earned Antonio Gil was a look of great contempt from the author of the butchery.

Marco couldn't help himself as he added his own meanness to Antonio's induction into life in Comanchería. “This is what you asked for, when you made your bargain with me,” he snapped. “Would to God it was
your
scalp and we could go home.” He winced as Toshua's woman—who
was
she?—took another scalp. “But I don't like it either,” he muttered under his breath to the man still leaning from his horse, retching up his toenails now.

When the other Comanches finished their business of death meted out most painfully, two of them retrieved Marco's pack horses. The woman guided her horse around the carnage, paying no attention to the lightning, thunder, and snow. She nodded, evidently satisfied that they could do no more damage. Leaping off the back of the woman's horse, Toshua mounted an Apache stallion. The animal rolled its eyes in terror. After a few sharp jerks, it kept still, though it was hardly docile.

“
Follow me,” Toshua said, pointing south with his lips. “Let's find my little sister.”

In single file, riding parallel to the rim of the canyon whose vastness was revealed by lightning, they rode to the place where the Apaches had waited, before so foolishly charging them. Marco leaned out over his saddle, relieved to see the trail below. It wasn't wide enough for two horses abreast, but he knew something of narrow trails.

Apparently Antonio Gil did not. Marco heard him whimper, but he followed, probably because the Comanches behind him were in no mood for cowardice. The storm lifted even as darkness came. They descended slowly, until Marco was able to make out a dark mound on the trail. He squinted closer, the bottom dropping from his stomach as he saw all the blood in the fading light.
Oh please no
, he thought, as Toshua dismounted, knelt by what proved to be a buffalo robe, and pulled it back.

Marco looked closer and sighed with relief to see his wife and another woman, their arms tight around each other, alive.

“
Paloma,” he said, and she looked up, her concentration so fierce that he wondered if she recognized him. Toshua helped her along the trail and lifted her into Marco's saddle, as Toshua's woman swung up the other one.

She still wore her heavy cloak, but it smelled of blood and death. She gripped a knife tight in her hand. Gently he tried to loosen her fingers, but she shook her head. Very well, then; he knew something of terror. The knife could wait.

“
Paloma, my love,” was all he said, even though he wanted to say so much more.

Marco reckoned an hour passed before they reached the canyon floor. By now the storm was a distant rumble, even though snow still fell. Darkness encircled them, until he noticed little points of filtered light here and there. He looked closer. They were in the middle of a Comanche village, and the mellow light shown through buffalo hide tipis. It was a small encampment, pitifully so.

He listened; no dogs. He sniffed; larger fires had burned here earlier. Ahead of him, Toshua dismounted and simply stood there, looking around him. The woman dismounted and stood beside him. As Marco watched, amazed, the Comanche put his arm around her.

“
That's his wife,” Paloma whispered, the first thing she had said since Toshua put her into his saddle. “He told me her name but I can't remember it.”

Marco tried again to take the bloody knife from her and this time she surrendered it. “I stabbed a man and pushed him off the ledge,” she whispered again. “I have also learned to be very quiet.”

He dropped the knife in the snow and put his arms around her, holding her tight until she stirred and looked around. “The other one with you?” he asked.

“
Ayasha. She has no one.”

Paloma leaned back against him, a sudden heavy weight. “I am so tired,” she whispered.

She offered no objection when Toshua held out his arms for her. He carried her to the woman as Marco dismounted. After a low-voiced discussion, the two Comanches walked into the circle of tipis. Paloma looked around for him and held out her hand. Marco followed, stiff and sore, feeling every pain of the encounter with the Apaches.

“
What about me?” Antonio Gil asked.

Marco ignored him, then remembered he was still a Christian, a
juez,
and a kind man, generally. “Come along, little man,” he said. “Paloma would say we are having an adventure.”

“
I hate adventures!” he snapped.

Marco wondered again why God in His infinite wisdom had saddled them with an idiot. Where was this written in his charge as
juez de campo
from the governor and the viceroy in Mexico?
I swear that if I survive this, I will give up that job
, he told himself, not for the first time.

Paloma was on her feet now, reaching for him. Marco grabbed her and held her to him, doing nothing more than breathing. In a moment the woman touched his arm and gestured inside. He ducked into the tipi with Paloma and sighed with the pleasure of sudden warmth.

He thought Paloma would relax, but she stiffened, as if remembering something, and moved to the tipi flap. She stepped outside.

“
Paloma?” he asked, following her.

She ignored him and walked to the horse where the younger woman was just dismounting. “Where will you go?” she asked.

“
I have a place with the Old One,” she said. With a little wave, she disappeared into the gloom.

“
Paloma? It's cold out here,” Marco said gently.

“
Ayasha taught me to be silent in danger.” Paloma put her hand in his, her expression troubled. “I knew that once before, and it saved my life. I suppose I had forgotten.” Silent now, she let him lead her back to the tipi.

Once inside again, the woman—Toshua's woman, Marco supposed, but there was an explanation owing—unclasped Paloma's cloak with sure fingers and tossed it to one side. While Marco just gaped stupidly, worn out with terror himself, the woman worked fast, unbuttoning Paloma's wool sacque. She had started on Paloma's basque when she backed away. “Let Marco help me,” she whispered, her eyes on Toshua. “Please, lady, do you speak Spanish?”

“
Claro
,” the woman said. She turned to look at Toshua and said something sharp in Comanche.

Toshua nodded. He glanced at Marco with faint embarrassment. “Sometimes I forget how shy you people are,” he said as he left the tipi.

The woman stepped back, and Marco finished undressing Paloma, who was visibly shaking now, perhaps from both cold and fear. The woman pointed to the pile of buffalo robes and pulled them back, motioning to him. He guided his trembling wife to the pile and helped her down, covering her.

“
You, señor,” she said next. When, in his own stupor, he didn't move fast enough to suit her, she yanked at his belt and started to tug on his breeches.

“
I can do that,” he said hastily.

She gave him a look faintly reminiscent of one from his sister Luisa, as if she wondered how someone could be as old as he was and yet so silly. “Do your own business then.”

He knew she wasn't going anywhere, so Marco resigned himself to stripping in front of her. He smiled a little when she gave him a push on his bare bottom toward the robes. He lay down beside Paloma and gathered her close. They warmed each other until Marco felt his shoulders, so tense, begin to relax. He was aware of the woman gathering up their clothing and putting it somewhere. He felt a puff of cold air as the tipi flap opened and then closed. He heard low voices, then the sound of more clothing dropping, then silence.

Marco lay there a long moment, naked and defenseless and deeply unused to such feelings. The soothing sound of his wife's deep breathing calmed his heart, and he slept, too.

A
lert to strange sounds, Marco woke once during the night, careful not to jostle Paloma, who had burrowed even closer. In the dim light from the fire, he watched her eyelids flutter. He had seen her do that early in their marriage, when he knew she suffered from nightmares. He had not noticed it in recent months, so the sight saddened him.

But she hadn't wakened him. He turned over slowly, facing toward the center of the tipi, curious.

They were doing their best to be silent, but Marco knew enough about Comanches to turn his back again, shy himself, even if they weren't. Paloma said the woman was Toshua's wife. Marco smiled to himself; all evidence did seem to point that way. As Toshua panted softly, and the woman sighed, Marco felt himself relax even more. Yes, he was shy. He hardly ever even kissed Paloma outside of their bedchamber, but there was something so oddly peaceful about what was happening in that tipi, deep at the bottom of a canyon in winter.

For the first time in his life, he was seeing Comanches as people. True, he had become used to Toshua far sooner than Paloma had, but there was always that wary separation he did not know how to overcome, because it was engrained in him since birth. One must fear the Comanche always and never let down any guards. To do so meant death, and not any ordinary death, but death so painful that he could not bear to think about it. The people in whose tipi he and his wife slept were masters of torture and intimidation. And here he lay with Paloma, calm, faintly embarrassed to have heard what he heard, but comforted. He suddenly knew, as deep as he knew anything, that Toshua meant him no harm. Paloma had begun the bond when she saved Toshua's life the first time, even if she wasn't entirely aware of this yet. It had come full circle in Marco's own difficult life, and he wanted to praise God.

Te deum laudamus
, he thought, knowing that to even whisper those holy words would alert Toshua, because the man truly had powers that left Marco in awe.
Can you even hear my thoughts?
he asked himself.
If you can, please know that they are kind thoughts. I am in your debt forever.
In complete peace, almost as if he had received sexual release, too, Marco slept again.

When he woke, morning had come and the tipi was light. Someone had piled on more wood, because he was pleasantly warm for the first time since their journey began. He opened his eyes and looked directly into Paloma's.

“
Great God, you are beautiful,” he whispered.

Her gaze was just as serious as his. “And we are still alive, husband.”

He laughed, and she put her hand over his mouth to hush him, but he just rolled onto his back in complete peace and stretched. He glanced toward the other side of the tipi. Toshua's woman was up and dressed. She turned around to look at him, and he understood why she was alive, and not even now a frozen corpse on the Llano with those who must have been forced from this tribe because they were diseased.

Smallpox had not been kind to Toshua's woman. Her face bore the scars of a distant encounter with what Toshua called the Dark Wind. To look at her gave him some idea how old Toshua might be, perhaps a little older than him, perhaps not. He—
juez de campo
of the most dangerous place on earth, bar none—looked into her eyes and saw nothing but kindness there. He could not have been more relieved.

“
Thank you for saving us,” he said simply, in his most careful Spanish, unsure of her language skills. “We owe you our lives.”

She merely nodded, and he thought he had embarrassed her. He hoped he saw good humor in those expressive eyes set in a ruined face. Her hair was cut short in typical Comanche woman's fashion. She wore what appeared to be a much-used deerskin dress, with the high boots of winter. There was little beadwork on the dress, and it was patched in places. Recent years had not been kind to her.

Marco put his hands behind his head, completely vulnerable. “I would like to know your name,” he said.

“
Eckapeta,” she replied. She dipped into a copper pot near the rim of the fire, poured what looked like broth into a wooden bowl, and held it out to him. “Sit up now, so you do not spill on my robes.”