6
The bright glare of the rising sun splashed the countryside. The man called Brewster stood in the middle of the road glaring at Fargo, on the Ovaro. Fargo’s hand was on his Colt.
“Get going.”
“You never said anything about taking my horse.”
Fargo shrugged. “Think of it as your good deed for the year. The Sisters of Apostolic Grace thank you.”
“It’s stealing,” Brewster angrily declared, “and they hang horse thieves in this part of the country.”
“They hang bastards who try to rape women, too.” Fargo nodded in the general direction of Santa Fe. “On your way.”
Brewster appealed to Sister Angelina. “How about you? Are you going to let him do this to me? You’re supposed to be a woman of God, for God’s sake.”
“When was the last time you were in church?” she asked.
“What?”
“You heard me, Senor Brewster. When was the last time you attended services? Recently, perhaps?”
“Hell, no. Not since I was a kid. My mother always made me go on Sunday and I hated it.”
“Have a nice walk,” Sister Angelina said.
Brewster stared at the sisters Dalila and Paloma mounted double on his horse. “Don’t you let anything happen to him, you hear? I’ll be coming for him one of these days.”
“Walk,” Fargo said.
Brewster turned and tramped down the road, an overdressed toad who would stop in a while and wait for dark when it was cooler. Fargo reckoned it would take him two to three days to reach Santa Fe, and by then they would be well into the mountains. He reined the Ovaro around and headed up the trail that would take them into the heart of the Sangre de Cristos. It was wide enough for two horses to ride abreast so he wasn’t surprised when the stallion acquired a mule shadow.
“You have something to say, say it.”
“You have me at odds with myself,” Sister Angelina said. “Part of me is appalled at what you did.”
“And the other part?”
She grinned. “The other part believes he got what he deserved.”
“No, what he deserved was a trial and a necktie social,” Fargo said. “Or a bullet. But you didn’t want me to do that.”
“You are a hard man, senor.”
“It’s a hard life.”
“Yet here you are, helping me take the senoritas to the convent. Maybe you are not as hard as you pretend to be.”
“I won’t be pestered the whole way,” Fargo said.
“Is that what I am doing? I thought I was complimenting you.” Sister Angelina chuckled and fell back to ride next to her charges.
To Fargo, there was a simple explanation for him agreeing to help her: He was a lunkhead. He should have told her to take a leap off a cliff. He almost did, until he set eyes on Dalila. All it took was a pretty face and a nice pair of thighs, and he was like a buck in rut. He couldn’t get enough. With other men it was liquor or cards. With him it had always been women. “Damn females,” he muttered. But he wasn’t fooling himself. It was his craving for them that got him into trouble, not the women themselves.
Beyond the hills the trail climbed steeply, winding like an earthen snake. The mountains reared stark and formidable, ancient ramparts reaching to the clouds. The Sangre de Cristos lived up their name; when the sun was right, the upper slopes were bloodred.
Some people, Fargo reflected, would take that as an omen.
They saw no one else all the rest of the day. Few were intrepid enough to dare the haunts of the Apaches and roving bandit bands. Even the cavalry rarely penetrated this far in.
Fargo rode with every sense alert, his hand nearly always on his Colt.
Sister Angelina, on the other hand, acted as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She smiled and chatted with the Vallejo sisters. One moment she was enthralled by a high-flying eagle and the next by a scampering squirrel. Toward the middle of the afternoon a snake slithered across the trail and she squealed in delight.
“Oh look! Did you see that?”
“Another damned rattler,” Fargo said. He would have shot it if it had coiled to strike at the horses.
“I’m beginning to suspect you do not appreciate the great diversity of life,” Sister Angelina said.
“A snake is a snake,” Fargo said. “Don’t make more of it than there is.”
“But that is my point, senor. All forms of life are a gift from our Creator, given to us that we might enjoy them.”
“Don’t start.” Fargo would take them to the convent but he wouldn’t be preached to.
“You are touchy on this subject.”
“I’m touchy about people telling me what to think,” Fargo clarified. “You see things your way. I see them mine. Let’s leave it at that.”
“I see them God’s way.”
Fargo shifted in the saddle and stared at her.
“Oh, very well.” Sister Angelina’s face lit with amusement. “I will behave. But it will be hard.”
“I’m obliged.”
An hour before sundown a rabbit did the same as the snake. It made the mistake of pausing to look at them and twitch its long ears, and Fargo snapped a shot from the hip that cored its head. After they made camp he skinned it and rigged a spit and speared dripping pieces of meat with a sharp stick.
“I’m hungry enough to eat a cow,” Dalila remarked. She was seated on her blanket, her sister a few feet away on hers.
“You always eat like a bird,” Paloma said, “so you won’t lose your figure.”
Sister Angelina was lying on her side, resting. She propped her head on her hand and said, “Once you put on one of these”—she touched her habit—“how you look will no longer matter.”
“It will to me,” Dalila said.
“You are young yet. But you will change. You will come to realize that the spirit is important, not the flesh.”
“You sound like my mother. She’s the one who should have been a nun.”
Sister Angelina laid her head back down. “God works in mysterious ways.”
Fargo hoped they didn’t bicker the whole way. He’d put a stop to it quick. He touched the coffeepot but it wasn’t hot enough yet. Settling back, he scanned the miles-high peaks with their phalanxes of timber and treacherous talus. The sun was gone and dark was descending.
“May I ask you a question, senor?” Paloma said.
Fargo was surprised. She hardly ever spoke to him. “Sure.”
“Are all gringos like you? We have not met many of your kind. My mother says you are animals.”
“Paloma!” Sister Angelina declared.
“Well, she does.” To Fargo Paloma said, “You are the first gringo I have gotten to know. So I ask you again, are all gringos like you?”
“Are all of your people the same?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then don’t ask stupid questions.” Fargo turned the stick so the meat roasted evenly. The delicious smell made his stomach rumble.
“I thought as much but I wanted to be sure.”
Fargo scanned the mountains again and a tingle ran down his spine. He sat up. Far off in the gathering gloom glowed a solitary pinpoint of yellow-orange light. Another campfire. He rose to his feet.
The women looked in the direction he was looking and all three stood and clustered around him.
“What do you think?” Sister Angelina asked.
“Could be anyone,” Fargo said. “Prospectors. Bandits. Soldiers.”
“Apaches?”
“They’re too smart to make a fire where it can be seen.”
Dalila dismissed it with a gesture. “They’re not anywhere near us so I don’t see why you’re so worried.”
“They’re not near us now.”
Fargo sat back down. Presently the rabbit was done and he passed out pieces of juicy meat to the ladies. They ate with their hands. Paloma held her piece as if it were fragile and took tiny, delicate bites. Dalila wolfed hers. Sister Angelina chewed slowly.
Fargo leaned on his saddle. They were safe for the moment and he could relax a bit. When the coffee was ready he poured a cup for himself and for Sister Angelina. The girls didn’t want any. The wind had picked up, as it often did at night, and brought with it the keen of wolves and the cries of coyotes. Once a mountain lion shrieked. Other than that, the night was quiet.
A few times Fargo noticed Dalila looking at him as if she were studying him. When he looked at her she looked away.
Paloma was the first to say she was tired and lay down to sleep. Sister Angelina was next.
Fargo went on sipping and listening and after a while Dalila glanced at her sister and the nun as if to assure herself they were asleep, and turned toward him.
“You are very handsome, senor.”
Fargo swirled the coffee in his tin cup.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said you are handsome.”
“You’re sitting right there.”
Overhead, a meteor streaked the sky.
Dalila quietly stood, came around the fire, and sank down beside him. “Now I am right here.”
“What are you up to?”
“What do you think?” Dalila rejoined, and placed her hand on his thigh. “I would like for us to become better acquainted.”
“Been with a lot of men, have you?”
Dalila lost her grin. “What does that have to do with anything? I find you attractive. That should be enough.”
“Oh really?” Fargo put down the tin cup and covered her beasts with his hands and squeezed. She went rigid with surprise, and pulled back.
“Senor!”
Chuckling, Fargo picked up his cup again. “Quit playing at something you’re not.”
Dalila seemed confused. “Don’t you want me?”
“Any man would,” Fargo said. “How many have you made love to?”
“There you go again,” Dalila huffed. “But for your information, I have lain with more than you have fingers and toes.”
Fargo choked off a belly laugh so as not wake the others. “Liar. The most you’ve ever done is daydream and touch yourself.”
“Senor!” Dalila blushed a deep red. “You are no gentleman.”
“Never claimed to be.” Fargo leaned toward her. “Ordinarily I’d be glad to hike those skirts of yours. But I gave my word to the nun to protect you, and that includes protecting you from me.”
“That’s silly, senor.”
Fargo shrugged and sat back. “A man’s word should mean something or he’s not much of a man.”
Dalila fell silent. Several minutes went by before she coughed lightly and said in a near-whisper, “I have a confession to make.”
“This should be good.”
“I am serious. You mock me, yet only you can save me from a fate worse than death.”
“This should be really good.”
Dalila slid closer so their shoulders brushed and her face practically touched his. “We must keep our voices down so Sister Angelina doesn’t hear.”
“I’m listening.”
“I don’t want to be a nun, senor. You already know that. I argued and argued with my mother but she wouldn’t listen. I appealed to my father but he always does whatever mother wants.”
“She wears the britches in your family.”
“Britches? Oh, I see. Yes. My mother had always decided what the rest of us will do. She decided when I was little that I would be a nun one day. I hate the idea. I told Sister Angelina I hate it. But she said I must honor my mother and father and do as they ask. So here I am.”
“You could have said no.”
Dalila shook her head. “You don’t understand, senor. As much as I want to, I can’t. She is my mother. I must do as she bids me.”
Fargo never could savvy why some folks let others ride roughshod over them. He never let anyone tell him what to do.
“I am in what you would call a predicament. But there is a way out, a way for me to keep from becoming a nun without disobeying my mother.”
“Well, try that then,” Fargo said.
“It’s why I am talking to you,” Dalila said. “You see, my way out is you.”
“What the hell can I do?”
“How do I put this?” Dalila said, more to herself than to him. “One of the, ah, requirements for becoming a Sister of Apostolic Grace is that the candidate can’t be tainted. Pure in mind and body is how Sister Angelina put it.”
Fargo saw where this was leading. “The women have to be virgins.” He wondered how they tested to prove it.
“Sí. My sister and I have never been with men. So if I was to lie with one before we reach the convent, I would not be acceptable. The nuns would turn me away. It wouldn’t be the same as openly defying my mother, and it would leave me free to live the kind of life I desire to live.”
“You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.”
Dalila put her hand back on his thigh. “I want you to fuck me.”