36

Condemned to Live

Rico’s grandfather was berating him, which was odd. Don Bonifacio rarely scolded him, not because Rico was a well-behaved child—he wasn’t—but because a look from the Old Man served as reprimand enough. Odder still, for once Rico couldn’t think of anything he’d done to deserve a scolding, yet the tirade went on.

He opened his eyes and rubbed his elbow and arm, numb from the weight of his body leaning on his shoulder. His heartbeat marked the passing of several seconds while he tried to get his bearings in the darkness. He squinted at the bars silhouetted in the languid light of the candle stubs guttering in niches in the hall and remembered where he was.

The angry voice that he had woven into his dream came from the guardroom. Maybe Rubio had become drunk enough to decide not to wait for daylight. Maybe the thought had occurred to him that murder was most wisely done in the dark.

Footsteps approached in the hall. Rico took a position at the center of the cell’s back wall. He rolled up his sleeves and bounced lightly on the balls of his feet like a boxer. He sucked in a lungful of the fetid air that expanded, solid as armor plate, inside his chest.

He figured if he put up enough of a fight they would shoot him now and spare him the humiliation of a hanging. He smiled at how angry that would make Rubio. If Rubio knew that by murdering Rico he was sending him to meet his beloved he would be even more furious.

Rico was still smiling at the prospect of a good brawl when four shadowy figures gathered outside the door. One of them rattled an iron key, big as a jaguar’s femur, into the lock. The door swung open. The man who walked through it wore a peasant’s hat whose cantilevered brim threw an opaque shadow across his face.

“Captain, come quickly,” said the hat.

“Who are you?”

“José Perez.”

“Socorro’s father?”

“Yes.”

Even though Rubio had attacked José’s daughter, the soft-spoken, mild-eyed potter was the last person Rico expected to see here in the lion’s den.

“We must hurry, Captain.”

José held a torch high, and Rico hurried after him through the maze of corridors that led deeper into the prison. As Rico passed a cell at the rear of the building he saw two guards inside. They were tied up, gagged, naked, and unhappy.

José used one of the keys to open a side door and Rico breathed in the night air, perfumed with the flowers that filled Cuernavaca in every season. The three other men each grasped José’s hand, arm, and shoulder in a quick embrace, then hurried off around a corner and out of sight.

A small figure waited in the shadows with a pale horse and a grizzled mule. The horse and the boy’s white cotton trousers and shirt gave off a ghostly glow in the moonlight. José and Rico followed him down a side street lit by a single, sputtering street light. When the boy handed Rico the horse’s reins he recognized her face under the hat.

“Socorro!”

“May God, the Holy Virgin, and all the saints bless you, Captain.”

Rico looked at the white horse. The street lamp’s dim light outlined the hammock-curve of his spine under the clumsy wooden burlesque of a saddle. This was not an animal he would ride if his life depended on it.

José was apologetic. “They will not look for you on this creature.”

Rico did not say, “They will not find me on this creature,” but he thought it.

“I thank you, maestro, but my horse is in the Colonial’s stable.”

“Maybe he is there. Maybe he is not.”

“Rubio?” The thought of Rubio in possession of Grullo made him angrier than the general throwing him into jail and plotting his execution.

“Tonight he was bragging in his favorite whore house that he had acquired Don Bonifacio’s famous gray.”

Rico did not ask how José knew what Rubio said in a bordello this evening. José was no fool. He had almost certainly kept track of General Fatso’s whereabouts so he would know when it was safest to come to the jail.

José gave him a satchel made of supple leather. “The general left your pistols in the guardroom strongbox. Before the guards and I had our difference of opinion, they told me he intends to kill you with one of your own guns before sunrise.”

“Even Rubio isn’t stupid enough to think he can get away with murder.”

“Not murder, Captain. Suicide.”

Rico could feel the slender barrels of the Navy Colts inside the sack. He felt the grips, worn to fit not only his hands, but his father’s, grandfather’s, and great grandfather’s. He buckled on the gun belt and returned the Colts to their holster. Now he felt dressed.

“Thank you, Maestro Perez.”

“We tied the guards up tightly. With luck no one will discover them until sunrise. That gives you a five-hour advantage.”

Socorro held out a cotton feed sack. “These are farmer’s clothes, Captain. They are old, but clean and mended.”

Rico started to say he would not need a disguise, then thought better of it. Her eyes pleaded with him to allow her to help him, to pay him back in some small measure, for what he had done for her. He took them with a bow.

He knew that the longer José and his daughter stayed here with him, the more the danger to them.

“And now I shall say good night and pray that God watches over you.”

José took a big key off the ring of them and gave it to Rico. “This will open the side door of the Colonial’s stable.”

“The same key that opened my cell?”

“Yes.” José glanced toward heaven. “God arranges everything.” He held out the reins again. “Take the horse, Captain.”

Rico started to refuse, and José raised a diffident hand ever so slightly, to stop his protest. “If your gray is in the stable, you can leave this one in his place. Imagine the look on Fatso’s face when he finds him there tomorrow.”

Rico chuckled at the image and accepted the reins. As he led the old horse off into the night, Socorro whispered to her father, “Why didn’t you tell him you know where Señora Knight is?”

“Even if General Fatso is mad at him, Captain Martín is still el gobierno, my daughter. He is still the enemy. I could not take him back to Angel’s camp with us, could I?”

“No, Papi.” But tears glistened in Socorro’s moonlit eyes.

Socorro did not speak much in her months working at the Colonial, but she saw a great deal. She knew as well as anyone how much the handsome captain and Señora Knight loved each other.

“What will become of him?” she asked.

“Do not worry about Captain Martín. His grandfather will use his influence to resolve everything for him.”

Just as he always has, José thought.

José knew that Cuernavaca was as dangerous for his daughter and himself as it was for Captain Martín. The two of them mounted the mule and headed out of town. José knew a cave where they could sleep for the rest of the night. At first light tomorrow they would ride to the canyon where José’s wife and the others were camped.

“When you see Mamacita, do not tell her about what happened at the Colonial. Do not tell her we saw her captain.”

“Why not?”

“We have meddled enough with fate tonight. When God wills it, if God wills it, they will find each other.”