CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After a couple days cooped up in the house, Kate Kerrigan had had enough of idleness. She decided it was time to ride and test her injured shoulder.
“I’m so glad you agreed to let me come with you, Kate,” Doña Maria Ana said later as she and Kate stood together in the barn. “Small houses always make me feel so closed in and restless.”
Kate ignored the jab at her spacious, four-pillared mansion and smiled. “It will be a pleasure to ride with you. What about your shadow?”
“Rodolfo? I told him he must remain at the ranch, that this was a trip for women alone. He didn’t like the idea, but he’s staying. Kate, I suggest we head toward the Rio Grande and see if there’s any sign of Don Pedro. It’s been a week, and my heartless beast of a husband still hasn’t come looking for me.”
Kate watched Shorty Hawkins tighten her saddle cinch, his knee pressing into the roan’s ribs, and then said, “I thought you never wanted to see him again.”
“I don’t,” Maria Ana said. “But by now, I expected he’d be here on bended knee begging me to come back to him.” Her dark eyes flashed. “Men are such cold, unfeeling brutes, and Don Pedro is the worst of all. I hate him.”
Kate wore her usual range clothing: a plain gray shirt, suede riding skirt, scuffed boots, and a battered, shapeless hat.
Doña Maria Ana, on the other hand, looked ready for a canter along London’s fashionable Rotten Row bridle path. As she had done so many times in the past, she reminded Kate that her riding companions included the Prince of Wales, the divine Sarah Bernhardt, a friendship she shared with Gabe Dancer of all people, and the notoriously rich Alva Vanderbilt, who, even when riding, wore the pearls that once adorned the neck of Catherine the Great.
In contrast to her usual black, Doña Maria Ana wore a bright red but severely tailored riding habit consisting of a hussar-style pelisse trimmed with gold bullion lace. The front of the jacket featured parallel rows of frogging and loops with two rows of gold buttons. Her skirt was unadorned and full, split at the front for riding, revealing polished red thigh boots. She wore a red top hat with a black veil that covered her eyes and cheekbones and carried a red leather riding crop.
Comparing herself to that gorgeous creature, Kate felt quite dowdy, before reminding herself that the vast West Texas range was far removed from the civilized bridle paths of Europe. Still, as she and the stunning Maria Ana rode sidesaddle out of the stable, attracting admiring and other looks from the hands, Kate felt like a frump.
The two women rode south through a cool, sunny morning that was coming in fresh and clean.
By one o’clock, when Kate judged that they were halfway to the Rio Grande, she suggested they stop for lunch. Jazmine had provided a picnic basket that Shorty Hawkins had strapped to the back of Kate’s saddle.
Kate opened the basket under the thin shade of a mesquite, a plant she normally considered a noxious weed because its thorns injure cattle, horses, and cowhands and its extensive root system demands more than its fair share of water. But in West Texas shade is shade, and for now she’d live with it.
She kneeled and sorted out the contents of the basket.
Maria Ana, heedless of her scarlet finery, plopped herself down on the sparse fall grass and said, “Let’s eat lunch, Kate. Suddenly I’m hungry.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt, produced a small, brass telescope, and scanned the land to the south. After a while she angrily palmed the telescope shut and said through a deep sigh, “Nothing. Still no sign of that wife-abuser, the unspeakable Don Pedro. He’s abandoned me to my fate, and soon I must surely starve to death.”
Kate smiled. “I won’t let you starve, Maria Ana. Let’s see if Jazmine has done us proud. Ah . . . ham, beef, and . . . let me see . . . yes, chicken sandwiches, pickles, a bottle of Jazmine’s cold tea that she flavors with sugar and lemon. And for dessert . . . Huzzah! . . . gingerbread. Are you ready to make a trial of everything?”
Doña Maria Ana most certainly was, and while she ate, she kept up a running narrative about the sundry cruelties she’d suffered at the hands of Don Pedro. “Can you believe it, Kate? He even insisted I abandon my longtime chaplain, the aristocratic Padre Alfonso Daniel, and confess my sins to the resident hacienda priest.”
“Why would Don Pedro do such a thing?”
“Because, Kate . . . listen to this . . . he said Padre Alfonso was so old he kept reminding him of death and Judgment Day. And then he said, my husband said, mind you, that reciting twenty rosaries was too severe a penance for squeezing the tit of a servant girl. And he said, “It was a small tit. Imagine how many rosaries I would’ve had to say for a big one.”
“He said that?” Kate was shocked.
“Yes, and despite my tears, he then threatened to banish Padre Daniel from our lands forever.”
“Forever?” Kate said.
“Forever,” Maria Ana said. “Never to return.”
Kate crossed herself. “Imagine banishing such a holy priest forever. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and all the saints in heaven protect us.”
“Yes, Kate, and now you know what a selfish . . .”
“Lecherous.”
“. . . fiend Don Pedro really is. Mmm . . . the chicken sandwich is really good.”
“And you must try the gingerbread.” Kate’s eyes fixed on movement in the distance. “Maria Ana, I thought you said you saw no sign of riders.”
The doña’s face lit up. “Is it Don Pedro?”
“I don’t know. Two men, I think, and they’re headed in this direction.”
“My telescope isn’t very good, yet another of Don Pedro’s tawdry gifts.”
Kate stood and watched the riders as they came closer. They were on Kerrigan range but all kinds of travelers used it as a throughway to the New Mexico Territory or the Nations. The riders could be punchers hunting work or just a pair of wandering Mexicans, but an insistent alarm bell rang in Kate’s head. They could also be outlaw border trash on the scout.
Maria Ana read Kate’s stiff posture and sensed her tension. “Kate?”
“It may be nothing.”
“Or it may be something,” Maria Ana said.
“Yes . . . or it may be something.”
“We best keep an eye on them.”
“I intend to do just that.” Kate’s hand dropped to the British Bulldog in her skirt pocket, taking reassurance from its cool steel. She knew she might be overreacting, but in West Texas any strangers met on the range were treated as potential enemies until they proved otherwise by sociable talk and honorable intentions.
“Maria Ana, are you armed?’ Kate said.
The woman shook her head. “No. I never had the need while Rodolfo was around. Kate, are we in danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I hope not.”
“So do I.”
“I hope they don’t spoil our picnic. I haven’t even tasted the gingerbread.” Maria Ana dropped her half-eaten sandwich into the picnic basket and stood next to Kate. “Well, if worse comes to worst, I have claws and teeth. I will be a tigress in a fight.”
Kate nodded and smiled, Maria Ana rising in her estimation. Whatever else she might lack, the woman had sand.
“We could mount up and outrun them,” Kate said. It was more question than statement.
“Doña Maria Ana de la Villa de Villar del Aguila does not run from danger. From an ogre of a husband, yes, or the jealous wife of a lover, but never from common brigands.”
“Kate Kerrigan doesn’t run either. Besides, we don’t know that they are common brigands or any other kind of brigands.”
“Time will tell, won’t it?” Maria Ana glanced at the burned-out sky. “Hot, isn’t it?”
“Odd for this time of year,” Kate said, her eyes on the riders.
“Paris in the fall is . . . how do you say it? Ah yes, magnifique.”
“I was in London in the fall,” Kate said, her growing anxiety clouding her smile. “It was cold, damp, and foggy.” She looked up at the riders, two bearded, rough-looking men astride good horses that looked like they could run. Outlaw mounts, she was sure.
Beside her Maria Ana said, “A rough-looking pair.”
“Outlaws by the look of them.”
When the men rode close and drew rein, Kate said, “Howdy.”
The older of the two men touched his hat, a good sign. “Howdy, ma’am. Picnicking, are we?”
“Seems like.” Kate smiled. She kept her hand in her pocket and was sure the older man knew why.
“Hot to be out.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I mean, for this time of the year.”
From Maria Ana came a long, drawn-out shriek. “What have you done to him?”
It was only then, previously hidden by the legs of the horses, that Kate noticed a slat-sided, tan and white dog attached to the younger man’s saddle by a length of thin, hairy string. The dog, its tongue lolling, lay down with his scarred muzzle on his paws, the string biting deeply into his muscular neck. She thought the mutt looked like a tough customer until Maria Ana kneeled beside him and the dog laid his head on her lap and allowed her to stroke his head.
“What have you men done to this dog?” Maria Ana said. “He’s got scars all over him.”
“That’s because he’s a fighting dog, lady,” the younger man said. “We paid fifty dollars for him in Old Mexico and figure to unload him for ten times that much up El Paso way.”
“He’s thin,” Maria Ana said, her brown eyes hard and glittering. “This poor dog is half-starved.”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Makes him meaner and a mean mutt is a fighter.”
“Kate,” the doña said, “bring me a couple sandwiches. I’m going to feed this poor, starving animal.”
“Don’t feed that dog,” the man said.
“He’s hungry,” Maria Ana said.
Suddenly the younger man’s expression turned hostile, scowling, his mouth thinning to a tight gash. “I told you not to feed him. Listen to what I’m telling you, lady.”
“You go to hell.” Maria Ana gently lifted the dog’s head off her lap, rose to her feet, and stared defiantly at the man. “This dog will never have to fight again. He’s coming home with me.” Then, turning, “Kate, do you have a knife? I need to cut the string off Toro’s neck.” She smiled. “From now on that’s his name because he looks like a little bull.”
The older man spoke directly to Kate, and his tone was ominous. “Lady, we came up on your picnicking and we was prepared to be sociable and maybe partake of the delicacies, but that’s all changed. So, heed me. Rein in your friend or—”
“Or what?” Kate said.
“Or something real bad might happen to her.”
“Kate, do you have a knife?” Maria Ana asked again. Her eyes were large and bright, betraying no fear.
Her gaze moving between the two men, Kate said almost absently, “There’s a knife in the basket.”
Maria Ana found the knife and walked back to the dog, who was watching her intently. She kneeled beside Toro, who wagged his tail and butt as though she’d been gone for hours.
Things went downhill from there. And mistakes were made.
As Maria Ana opened the blade of the knife with an almond-shaped scarlet fingernail, the younger rider slid the Winchester from the boot under his knee and reversed it, planning to use the rifle stock as a club.
Kate watched in alarm as the man growled in his throat, leaned from the saddle, and raised the rifle above him like a headsman’s axe. She frowned. Well, that tears it!
Kate drew the Bulldog and triggered its bark.
The big .455 slammed into the younger man’s right forearm midway between elbow and wrist, smashing bone. The man screamed and the Winchester cartwheeled out of his hands.
Time accelerated for Kate. Her entire body throbbing in alarm, she swung the Bulldog on the older man, expecting him to make a play. There was none.
Calmly, evenly, both hands on the saddle horn, he said, “I don’t draw down on ladies.”
Half deaf, her ears ringing from the report of the Bulldog, the .455 a notoriously loud cartridge, Kate heard her voice as though it came from the far end of a tunnel. “I’ll shoot you if I have to.” Looking back on it later, she realized she’d told the older rider nothing he didn’t already know.
The wounded man was more vocal. He grabbed his bloody arm and cursed at Kate and Maria Ana, the words bitches and whores repeated often.
Her hearing slowly returning to normal, she said to the older man, “Ride on out of here and take your profane friend with you.”
The man smiled. “A heller in a skirt, ain’t you, lady?”
“Mister, you better believe it.”
“And we’re keeping the dog,” Maria Ana said.
“Hell, where did a beautiful lady like you learn to shoot like that?” the older man said.
“The slums of New York city and later right here in West Texas. And I’ve had some mighty good teachers. Now get out of here.”
The older man said to his groaning companion, “We’re moving on. You need a doctor to attend to that arm.”
“Head east a couple days and you’ll come up on the Clay range,” Kate said. “You’ll find a doctor there.”
The younger man spat out his words. “Hell, a couple days I could lose my arm.”
“You should’ve thought about that when you were fixing to brain my friend,” Kate said. Her gun still in her hand, she picked up the man’s fallen Winchester, racked it dry, and then shoved it into the boot under his knee. “Like you say, mister, time is a-wasting. When you get to the doctor, tell him to wash out your mouth with soap. It sure needs it.”
* * *
Kate didn’t slip the Bulldog back into her pocket until the two men were out of rifle range.
Maria Ana sat with the hungry dog, feeding him the last of the sandwiches. “Kate, who do you suppose those two were?”
“Nobodies,” Kate said. “But they’re the kind of nobodies who will steal what they can if they think they can get away with it.”
“They rode blood horses.”
“And probably stole those. Outlaws are mighty picky about horseflesh. They need mounts that can run fast and far.”
“Well, we did a good deed,” Maria Ana said. “We saved Toro. He’s got bite scars all over him, poor thing. May I have a piece of gingerbread?”
“For the dog?”
“No, for me, silly.”
“I’m sorry our picnic was spoiled.” Kate laid a thick slice of gingerbread on a plate and handed it to Maria Ana.”
The doña looked startled. “Spoiled? My dear Kate, it was wonderful, a great adventure. Who knew you could shoot a pistol like that?”
“I did,” Kate said.
“And I saved this mistreated dog, abused in the same way Don Pedro the Cruel abuses me,” Maria Ana said, chewing gingerbread. “Although I will say that he loves dogs, horses, and children. It’s only his wife he has a problem with.”
Kate said, “What are you going to do with him?”
“Don Pedro?”
“No, the dog.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll take Toro back to the ranch. When I leave, he’ll leave with me.”
Kate smiled. “Well, thanks to my sons and Frank Cobb, we have a dozen dogs at the ranch, twice that many cats, and a three-legged raccoon. I suppose another dog won’t make any difference.”
“Toro will be very well-behaved, I promise. He doesn’t want to fight anymore.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes, he did.” Maria Ana held a piece of gingerbread to the dog’s nose. “Here, Toro-kins, this is for you.”
The dog ate the gingerbread, licked his lips, and smiled.