DUANE OPENED HIS EYES, AND IT WAS dark in the pueblo. He kissed his woman lightly on the cheek, strapped on his Colt, and tied the holster to his leg. Doña Consuelo looked like a sleeping peasant girl as the first glimmer of dawn appeared over the tops of mountains.
“Where are you going so early?” she asked sleepily.
“Lots to do.”
He put on his cowboy hat and was out the door. The sun rose in the sky as he passed the altar and ascended the stepping stones to the exit from paradise. The sky brightened, as stars faded into the morning, and birds sang happily. He entered the vault, got down on his hands and knees, and made his way to the exit on the far side. As always, he approached carefully, raised his eyes over the ledge, and examined every blade of grass and cactus as far as the eye could see. The Apaches had hammered vigilance into his skull, and he repeated the ritual every time he went out.
Nothing seemed out of order, and he couldn't imagine danger in the offing. He stalked down the incline, holding his rifle in both hands, ready to fire. Suddenly, out of the peace and purity of the morning, he heard the familiar voice of Don Carlos de Rebozo: “Don't move, Braddock—or you're a dead man!”
Duane's heart stuttered—he was taken totally by surprise, and didn't know whether to collapse or go blind. Don Carlos and his vaqueros materialized out of the desert, all aiming rifles, shotguns, and pistols at him. The Pecos Kid thought he was going to faint from shock.
“Drop the rifle,” said the bedraggled Don Carlos, who resembled Rip Van Winkle. “We won't hesitate to shoot.”
Duane considered reaching for his Colt, but didn't have a prayer in hell. He was too far from the cave to run back, so he grinned, shrugged, and said: “Looks like you've got me.” His rifle clattered to the ground.
“Now lay your revolver down . . . slowly.”
Duane was afraid they'd shoot him like a dog, and he had to make a play. Fear pumped powerful chemicals into his bloodstream, and he dove to the side like an Apache, rolled over, and came up firing. Two vaqueros were hit. Then he rolled out and ran in a zig-zag toward the cave, as bullets flew like bees all around him. He was certain he'd be killed at any moment as he dived into the entrance, and a bullet pierced his left calf as his head cleared the opening.
He jolted in pain, his head hit the roof of the tunnel, and he nearly knocked himself cold. But potent glandular juices enlivened his muscles, and he squirmed into the main vault. Blood dripped into his boot, but he ran toward the rear crack and hobbled down the steps. Doña Consuelo looked out the window, an expression of panic on her face, her rifle in her hands. “What happened!” she cried.
“Your husband has arrived,” replied Duane, as he hobbled across the clearing, “and he's got his whole private army with him. Get your head down.” She ducked as he entered the pueblo, dropped to his stomach, and said, “Fix my leg.”
She rolled up his pantleg, and saw the ugly wound. “I think that the bullet is still in there.”
“Cut it out. Put your knife in the fire first, to sterilize it.”
“Duane, I . . .”
“Don't worry about hurting me. I can handle the pain.”
It was ferocious, and he required all his strength to keep a straight face. He didn't want to scare her, but then a terrific explosion rocked the canyon, and Doña Consuelo dived to the floor. Flying rocks struck the outer wall of the pueblo, while a few flew through the window. The sound echoed thunderously around the walls of the canyon, and Duane knew that he and his woman were in serious trouble. They looked at each other fearfully in the bright dawn light as the voice of Don Carlos came to them from the smoking mouth of the vault above. “Braddock—can you hear me!”
Duane looked at Consuelo and whispered: “He's your husband—what do you think we should do?”
“I know him very well, and maybe I can manage him.” She crawled toward the open door, and shouted outside: “Don Carlos—it's me!”
There was a pause, then: “Thank heaven! Are you all right?”
“I was fine. What are you doing!”
“I have come to save you, my dear.”
“Don't tell me that you've followed me all the way here, Don Carlos. Have you gone mad?”
“I am madly in love with you, and I want you to come back with me.”
“Never! Leave me alone!”
It was silent for a few moments, and Consuelo thought she heard coughing inside the vault. Then Don Carlos replied: “I don't believe you're speaking with your own free will. For all I know, Braddock has got a gun pointed at the back of your head. Let's have a family discussion, just the both of us, where he can't influence you. Then, if you decide that you want to stay with him, it's all right with me.”
“Let me think about it,” she replied.
“You have five minutes.”
“Only five minutes?”
“My dear, there's something you don't seem to understand,” said Don Carlos icily. “You have disgraced my family name and yours too, you may be interested to know. But I am willing to forgive you, if you renounce the error of your ways. Otherwise, and I'm not bluffing here, I'll blow that pueblo down around your ears.”
There was silence for a few moments, then she replied: “You'd kill me?”
“Without hesitation, because you have killed something in me. It is only because I love you that I am willing to take such an extreme step.”
Doña Consuelo turned to Duane. “I think he's serious.”
“I've always thought there was something odd about him, but he's your husband, not mine.”
“Perhaps I can talk sense to him.” She moved closer to the window and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Don Carlos—we can have a family discussion in neutral territory, such as the middle of the clearing. That way I don't have to trust you too much, and you don't have to trust me.”
“How do I know that Braddock won't shoot me?”
“How do I know that you won't shoot me, after what I've done to your family honor . . . ?”
“It's Braddock I don't trust.”
“If he shoots you, your vaqueros will not let him leave this place alive. But if we talk, perhaps we can work out an arrangement.”
There was silence for several moments, then Don Carlos said: “Very well. If Braddock kills me, my blood will be on your hands.”
“Nobody wants your blood, my dear husband. The problem is that you want ours.” Then she turned toward Duane. “I wish I had a mirror. How do I look?” She pinched her cheeks, bit her lips, and smoothed her hair. “I will do my best.”
Duane watched her leave the pueblo, while Don Carlos warily descended the rock staircase, his rifle in his right hand, as his vaqueros sat at the edge of the vault, guns in their hands. Duane's left leg was turning numb, the bleeding had stopped, and a hunk of lead had taken up residence in his flesh. He held his knife over the fire, feeling guilty about stealing Don Carlos's wife. I'm an adulterer, I'm going to be a father, and I probably won't survive this day, thought the Pecos Kid.
Doña Consuelo walked confidently across the open ground, heading toward Don Carlos, who had come to the bottom of the stone steps. He looked like a tall Santa Claus in a wide-brimmed estancia hat, as he smiled gallantly. “You're looking well, and your life in the fresh air must agree with you. Shall we sit like civilized people and discuss this matter from a rational point of view?”
She dropped to a cross-legged position opposite him, astonished by how old he'd become. His gray beard made him appear grandfatherly, while his jaunty vaquero hat gave him a droll aspect. This is my husband? she asked herself. My God.
He unscrewed his canteen and passed it to her. Above them, high in the sky, three old buzzards circled hungrily, while singing insects greeted the new day. “I never thought you'd leave me, Doña Consuelo,” said Don Carlos sadly. “What happened?”
“I have fallen in love with Duane Braddock. It was not my intention, and I meant you no harm. You shouldn't blame him, because he was as afraid as I.”
Don Carlos examined his wife carefully, and she appeared a feral desert creature, her dignified manners vanished. “Are you happy?” he asked.
“Very,” she replied.
His heart felt whacked by a meat cleaver, while his wife had become more beautiful, glowing with good health, eyes sparkling, with new grace and confidence. But what Don Carlos lacked in youth, he made up in experience, deviousness, and low cunning. “You must love him very much to live like this,” he said, gazing at the ruined old pueblo. “How do you get along without your maids?”
“I don't require maids,” she replied, “and sleeping on the ground isn't bad once you get used to it. Of course, the diet is fairly monotonous, and there's always the danger that an Apache will cut our throats, but other than that, life couldn't be better.”
“In other words, you're not coming back with me.”
“I am sorry to hurt you, but I am afraid that is so, Don Carlos.”
He smiled bitterly. “I guess you never loved me at all.”
“You were kind to me, and we've had wonderful times together. But I have fallen in love with another man.”
Don Carlos gazed at the pueblo where Duane was hiding. “What is it about him that you love?”
“Everything,” she replied without hesitation.
“But is love merely physical passion? What about the spiritual side of life?”
“We have that too.”
A new barb entered the nobleman's heart, because he'd believed that he and Doña Consuelo had enjoyed a sacred inner bond. “You don't miss the old hacienda at all?”
“I must be with my man.”
He reached his long bony fingers toward her face, then let his hand hang in the air. “Has he put a spell on my dear little Doña Consuelo? He's not mistreating you, is he? Has he threatened to kill you, if you don't say the right things?”
She looked him in the eye. “Don Carlos, I am aware that this is very difficult to accept, but it is not the end of the world. The Church will grant you an annulment, and you will find another young wife soon, because you are still a handsome man.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked, hoping against hope that the morning sun revealed him in an attractive new light.
“Of course,” she replied, because his aging narcissism had been her companion for three long years. “Wherever Don Carlos goes, women throw themselves at him. Perhaps you should make a more intelligent choice next time.”
“But you were so beautiful, and you are even more beautiful now. I cannot live without you, I'm afraid.”
She tried to make light of it. “Soon you'll grow accustomed to another woman, and be happier than you ever were with me.”
“I do not fall in love every day,” he said darkly.
“Neither do I,” she replied.
“I've seen your kind before,” he warned. “One day that killer of yours will throw you out, and you'll go from man to man until your self-respect is gone. Then you'll drink yourself to death in some tiny little room, impoverished, toothless, and alone.”
“You say that you love me, but you do not know me at all. It would be funny were it not so tragic.”
He narrowed his eyes and pinched his lips together. “There's something you don't seem to understand, my dear little Consuelo. You have disgraced me, and I'm a proud man.”
“The Bible says that pride goeth before a fall, my dear husband, but it's not your fault that I'm a slut, and you should be glad to get rid of me.”
“But I'm not,” he replied. “I still love you in spite of myself.”
“You're not the first man whose wife has left him, just as my mother wasn't the first woman betrayed by her husband. You have many good years left, but you're wasting precious time on someone who has proven unworthy of you.”
He leaned toward her, raised an eyebrow, and said, “It's not going to be that easy, because I have a reputation to uphold. You may call it conceit, but I will kill Duane Braddock for what he's done. After that, you can go where you please.”
The nobleman's eyes glittered with madness, and she shuddered uncontrollably. She and Duane were trapped, while the vaqueros were waiting with sticks of dynamite. “But I don't love you, Don Carlos. How can you force me to go back with you?”
“If I can't have you, neither will anybody else. And the most pathetic part is that you would tire of him after a few years. He's probably seduced men's wives before. What would you do if he left you?”
“He'd never leave me,” she replied adamantly.
He smiled, as he peered into her eyes. “But my dear—you've made the same solemn vow to me before the altar of Christ, in the presence of the bishop, and look at what you've done. No, none of us can trust each other—how about your mother and father, for example? You possessed wealth, reputation, and family, but you gave it up for a dab of cheap romance.”
“I love him,” she insisted. “That's all I know.”
“Come back to your husband, and all shall be forgiven. You can have your own apartment within the hacienda, and help me manage the estancia.”
The offer was tempting, and she'd be heiress to two great fortunes soon. Don Carlos saw her weakening. “You wouldn't have to sleep with me ever, if you didn't want to,” he whispered. “Just as long as you're my wife outside the bedroom.”
Doña Consuelo recalled Duane lying in the cave, a bullet in his leg. Duane represented ecstasy, whereas Don Carlos was a fine gentleman of the old school. Doña Consuelo was forced to admit that she preferred the ecstasy. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I can't leave him.”
Her remark struck Don Carlos like a slap in the face, and Spanish anger filled his veins. “You're trying my patience,” he said testily. “Are you really prepared to die for this vagabond killer? How'd you like to be crushed to death beneath tons of rock?”
“You must love me very much, to want to kill me.”
“Correct,” he replied.
She swallowed hard, and the little voice in her ear said, Don't you think your child should have a say in the matter? “There's something I haven't told you, Don Carlos,” she began. “You may be interested to know that your heir is sleeping in my belly even as we speak.”
His ears perked up. “You're pregnant?”
She nodded, and made her mysterious smile. Don Carlos felt as if the Pinta, Niña, and Santa María had fallen onto him. He gasped, coughed, and nearly choked to death, as he clutched his throat. “Are you lying to me?”
“You kill me,” she replied, “you kill your son or daughter too.”
“You mean Braddock's son or daughter.”
“Legally I am married to you. The boy, if he is a boy, will be the son that you've always dreamed of.”
Don Carlos was seldom at a loss for words, but his tongue felt welded to the roof of his mouth. He tried to peer into her uterus, to see the next of the proud Rebozos, born of the magnificent Doña Consuelo. As for the baby's father, no one had to know the truth. “Let's make a deal,” said Don Carlos. “I'll let the gringo go free if you come back and have my child. I will give you my word and anything else you want, including your own hacienda.”
“And after the child is born?”
“You may go wherever you want, and I'll never bother you again. If you really love the gringo, it seems a small price to pay for his life, no? And yours too, for that matter, although you don't seem to care much about it these days. I give you the word of the Rebozos, but if you choose to be stubborn, I shall proceed to destroy you and your gringo Romeo. Think it over carefully, my dear Juliet. Three lives hang in the balance here, and you can save them all.”
Doña Consuelo shivered, terrified by the destructive power of love. Don Carlos had guns and dynamite, while her only resource was a boyfriend with a hole in his leg. “You're a swine to do this to me, Don Carlos. I will curse your name forever.”
“And I will curse yours, so we're even.”
She knit her brow in contemplation. A year without Duane would be better than seeing him dead, and the little creature within deserved a chance at life. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “I have your word that you won't kill Duane Braddock?”
Don Carlos raised his right hand. “On the bones of Don Diego de Rebozo, I swear it.”
“Would you let me say goodbye to him?”
“I'll give you a half hour, and I hope you won't let him talk you into dying for him.”
She returned to the pueblo, her heart heavy. She didn't know how to tell Duane the truth, because he was capable of rash acts. He sat in the room, tying a rag torn from an old shirt around his calf. “I took the bullet out myself,” he said, holding it up. “What did your husband have to say?”
She kneeled in front of Duane and looked into his eyes. “Listen carefully, querido mío, because we are in a very bad situation here. My husband is madly in love with me, unfortunately, and is willing to kill the three of us, if I don't go back to him for a year, and give him this baby.”
“But it's my baby!” countered Duane.
“It is going to be a dead baby, unless we accede to the demands of Don Carlos. He is perfectly capable of blowing up this pueblo onto our heads. I have decided that it's better for all of us to live than die, and after a year, you and I can be together again.”
“You'll never come back to me,” he said in a low voice. “You'll get used to your big feather bed and your maids, and you'll forget about this poor old cow-poke who loves you so much.”
A tear came to her eye. “Let's not argue with each other, querido mío, because we have only a few more minutes left together. Kiss me, and don't make it worse than it is.”
He clasped his arms around her, but was dizzy from pain. Together, they dropped to the blanket, and lay on their sides, her breasts pressing his chest. “I don't know how I can live without you for a year,” he said.
“It's not so long. We can meet in any border town that you name.”
“I'll come for you, but I'm afraid you'll change your mind.”
“Never,” she replied. “I'll wait for you forever, and I swear it on my baby's life.”