Texas Woman

Chapter 16

SLOAN STARTED TO RUN WITHOUT HAVING ANY clear idea where she was going. She shoved Cruz to move him out of her way, but he backed up quickly to keep himself between her and the front door.

“Sloan, stop! Where are you going?”

“I heard you with the Englishman, Cruz. Or should I call you Hawk?”

Cruz’s face turned ashen. “Wait. I can explain.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can,” she said with open sarcasm. She paled as a thought came to her. “Am I supposed to die for having seen the Englishman?”

“No. Christ, no! Let me explain-”

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, Hawk.” She tried to brush past him again, but his hands came up to frame either side of her face. He forced her to look up into his eyes.

She didn’t believe what she saw. He couldn’t be hurting. He couldn’t be in pain. She was the one who had just had her heart torn out.

“I love you. I have always loved you,” he said. “This other business has nothing to do with us.”

Her eyes flashed with disdain. “I’m sure Tonio would have told me the same thing-if he had lived long enough to explain himself.”

“Dear God. Please, Sloan, listen to me.”

She jerked herself from his grasp and backed away from him. “I see I’m Sloan now. What happened to your precious Cebellina? I guess pretty love words aren’t necessary any more to keep the blinders on my eyes. Don’t follow me, Hawk. I never want to see your face again!”

While he stood watching her in stunned disbelief, she fled past him out the front door. His bayo was still tethered to the rail out front and she grabbed the reins, leaped into the saddle, and kicked him into a gallop.

An instant later Cruz came out of his stupor and realized that not only was Sloan leaving him, she was doing so in the worst spring storm they’d had in years. Lightning flashed, reminding him of the danger.

He raced outside in time to see her gallop through the fortress gates. He ran to the stable, taking time only to slip a bridle on the fastest horse he had, a half-broken buckskin stallion, before he slipped onto its bare back and headed after Sloan.

He yanked the buckskin to an abrupt halt outside the fortress walls. Lightning flashed again and he saw hoofprints in the mud, already filling with rainwater. He heaved a sigh of relief when he realized she wasn’t headed in the direction of Three Oaks. It looked as though she had decided to go to Golden Valley, where her sister Bay lived.

He grasped a handful of black mane and tightened his legs on the buckskin’s ocher sides before spurring the half-wild stallion. The animal responded by rearing in protest, neighing its refusal to be dominated by either man or nature, before it bolted away from the fortress into the black abyss created by the storm.

Sloan hadn’t planned a particular destination when she had fled the hacienda. She was merely running and had given the stallion his head. It was only when the bayo began to tire that she realized she was headed toward the huge live oak where she and Cruz had first kissed. If there was a more dangerous place to be during a thunderstorm, Sloan didn’t know where it was. Yet she was so overwhelmed by Cruz’s betrayal she truly didn’t care right now whether she lived or died.

It was only now that he had betrayed her that she realized she loved Cruz Guerrero with a depth of soul and spirit she had never imagined possible when his brother had broken her heart. Though that wound had somehow healed, she was certain this one never would.

When she reached the ancient live oak, she was awed by its majesty in the face of the elements. Its gnarled branches took on grotesque proportions in the flashes of white light, refusing to bow to the wind’s demand, while its leaves rustled a furious defiance. She pulled the exhausted bayo to a halt beneath the glorious oak and sat there, shoulders back, chin high, recklessly waiting for lightning to strike.

There was something exhilarating about flaunting the fates, daring them to end her life. She raised her face to the drops of rain that fell like tears from the giant tree and let them mingle with her own. Suddenly, her face contorted and her jaws opened wide for the inhuman howl of pain that wrenched its way out of her mouth.

Cruz heard the ululating wail of human agony carried on the wind and spurred the stallion to even greater speed. A moment later, a flash of lightning revealed Sloan’s silhouette on horseback beneath the towering oak. Cruz wanted to howl himself. How dare she take such a chance with her life! She belonged to him!

He knew she must have seen him in the same bolt of lightning, yet she remained beneath the natural lightning rod she had chosen for her resting place.

Cruz cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Cebellina! Get away from the tree!” But the wind captured his warning and carried it away.

She did not move.

And so he had no choice except to join her in her death-defying venture.

When he reached her, he yanked the buckskin to a sitting stop and shouted over the wind, “You are gambling with your life. Come away from here, and we will talk.”

“Don’t like the odds, Hawk? Maybe you had better leave, then. You see, my luck hasn’t been too good lately and-”

He grabbed the bayo’s reins to lead him away from the danger, but Sloan saw what Cruz was attempting to do and simply slid out of the saddle. Cruz had only gone a few steps before he realized what she had done.

Once the stallion no longer had a rider to control him, he attacked the half-wild buckskin Cruz was riding. Cruz’s mount half-reared and kicked at the bayo with its hind legs. The bayo danced skittishly away, pulling at the reins and forcing Cruz around so the two stallions faced one another.

In an instant the air was charged with expectancy, the storm forgotten as the two great beasts arched their necks, nostrils flaring, ears flattened against their heads as they tested one another in an instinctive effort to establish supremacy.

The bayo reared, stripping the reins from Cruz’s hand, and pawed the air, trumpeting a challenge that was quickly answered by the half-wild buckskin.

Sloan saw the danger to Cruz and, acting without thought to her own safety, rushed forward to try and catch her horse’s reins and bring him back under control. As she reached out a hand for the trailing leather, the bayo reared again and its hooves struck her on the hip, sending her tumbling to the ground.

The pain was excruciating. Sloan barely had time to acknowledge it, however, before she was blinded by a piercing white light. She felt her eyebrows being singed as she threw up her hand to cover her face. For an instant the hairs stood up all over her body. A deafening crack of thunder followed.

When the sound had at last shuddered to a stop after a series of rumbling echoes, Sloan’s face wrenched in an agonized expression of remorse and relief. By some miracle she had survived the bolt of lightning that had struck the magnificent oak.

Then she heard the sharp crack of splitting wood.

The live oak had been cleaved by the lightning, but the ancient tree had only been strong enough to withstand for a short time the pull of gravity that began to take its toll.

Sloan watched in horror as a fissure opened down the length of the tree and fully a quarter of the giant oak started its plunge downward to crush her. She tried to escape, but found it hard to move quickly with her injured hip.

She saw Cruz shaking his head to clear it. He was on the outer edge of the area where the branches would fall.

“Cruz! Look out!”

Cruz had been thrown from his horse by the repercussion from the lightning bolt. At the same moment he heard Sloan’s warning, he identified the awful sound of wood splintering and sensed, rather than saw, the heavy branches of the shattered oak on their downward arc.

It only took one frightening look to see Sloan wasn’t going to make it out on her own. It never occurred to him to save himself. He headed for his wife on the run.

He had mere seconds to reach Sloan, mere seconds to get them both to safety. He didn’t have time for grace. He simply snatched Sloan up in his arms like a rag doll, and ran.

He had nearly reached the limits of the tree’s vast umbrella when the outer limbs caught his shoulders and shoved him downward. He barely had time to drop Sloan into a narrow ravine and cover her body protectively with his own before the weight of the gnarled limbs crashed down on him.

Sloan woke to bright daylight but couldn’t figure out where she was. Her hip ached abominably, and something heavy was weighing her down, making it hard to breathe.

Then it all came back to her. The weight, of course, must be Cruz’s body.

“Cruz?” she whispered tentatively. “Are you awake? Are you all right?”

When she received no reply, she closed her eyes and prayed, reaching out searchingly with the hand she could move easily. Cruz’s hand lay beside her on the ground, but it was cold and limp. She felt for a pulse at his wrist but couldn’t find one.

She shuddered at the thought that he might be dead, and fought against panic. A small tremor sped through his body and she realized he must be alive.

“Cruz,” she murmured from a throat swollen closed by guilt. “Please don’t die. Please, for me, try to stay alive.”

Surely someone would have noticed this morning that they were gone from the hacienda. Cruz’s vaqueros would already be searching for them. But how would they know where to look? The storm would have washed out all signs of their journey. It could be hours before they were found-if they were found at all.

Sloan uttered several colorful curses before she managed to control her tongue. She had gotten herself and Cruz into this mess. It appeared she was also going to have to get them both out.

Sloan first tried to slide sideways out from under Cruz, but soon realized that was impossible because a limb had pinned them in place. However, the ravine into which they had fallen continued along for several feet beyond where they were lying. She began to work her body forward and out from under Cruz. It was slow going because a sharp pain ran down her leg each time she moved her hip.

It took much longer than she had thought it would to finally free herself, and when she did, it was frightening to realize that Cruz still hadn’t regained consciousness. She forced her way upward through the layers of branches until she was standing upright.

The surrounding tree limbs only reached as high as her hips. Cruz had nearly managed to carry her to safety. Ten feet beyond where they were lying, the tree’s branches ended, and several yards beyond that, the bayo stood munching grass. She wondered why he hadn’t bolted for home until she realized that the dragging reins had gotten caught in a scrubby mesquite tree and tethered the horse as neatly as if she had done it herself.

She worked her way to clear ground and limped painfully to the bayo, praying that the saddlebags contained the necessities to help them survive. She could have cried for joy when she found a small ax for chopping firewood, matches, a blanket, some beef jerky, a bandanna, a small knife, and a canteen of water. She hugged the ax to her bosom while she drank some of the water.

“Cebellina! Where are you?”

“Cruz! I’m here! Wait, I’m coming.” Sloan experienced a searing joy at the sound of Cruz’s voice, which dimmed as she realized all that stood between them now. She hissed in pain as she jarred her hip. Soon she was straddling a tree limb beside him.

“I have tried to roll over, but my legs are caught,” he told her.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“I have a devil of a headache,” he said through clenched teeth. “What about you?”

“I’m fine.” There would be time enough later to mention her hip. “Lie still. I found an ax in your saddlebags and-”

“The horses did not head for home?”

“The bayo’s reins got caught on a mesquite. We can ride home as soon as I get you free.”

Cruz wondered if Sloan realized what she had said. We can ride home. Did she consider Dolorosa home? Did this mean she was coming back to stay with him despite what she now believed about him? He could not bring himself to ask, so instead he said, “What can I do to help?”

“Just lie still. I can handle this.”

It turned out that Sloan had been slightly optimistic when she had spoken. The ax was small and the limbs were thick. Also, her hip bothered her, and she had to rest frequently to take her weight off it. That soon became apparent to Cruz, who exclaimed, “You are hurt!”

“My hip got bruised when the bayo struck me with his hooves,” she said, dismissing his concern. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Neither of them spoke as Sloan continued hacking away at the branches of the live oak, but a conversation was taking place, nevertheless, in both their minds.

Why did he agree to work with the Englishman?

I should never have agreed to do it. I knew the chance I was taking that she would find out.

I don’t understand how this could have happened to me twice in one lifetime.

Do I dare tell her the rest of it?

Oh God! I can’t turn him in to the Rangers. But how can I stay silent about what I know?

I will tell Sir Giles I am out of it. I will quit.

And I can never trust him again.

I love her, but I cannot explain all of this to her yet. She will simply have to trust me.

“I’ve about hacked through this branch,” Sloan said at last. “I should have you free in a minute.”

She had been lifting away branches as she chopped them off and had cleared an area around Cruz’s head and shoulders. As soon as there was space, he had tried to sit up, but had felt a searing pain in his head when he tried to lift it.

Sloan had finally threatened she would make it hurt a lot worse if he didn’t lie still until she was finished. She had seen the dried blood on his temple, and that, coupled with his pain, made her worry that he was more seriously injured than he was letting on.

The sheer size and weight of the limb pinning Cruz’s legs made it difficult for Sloan to move it, even though she had freed it from the rest of the tree. At last she managed to drag the branch out of the way. She stooped down and laid her hand on Cruz’s shoulder. “Can you turn over by yourself?”

He moaned. “I thought you said you never wanted to see my ugly face again.”

Sloan drew in a sharp breath. “This is no time for jokes.”

“No, I guess it is not.” He hissed with the pain as he hugged his arms to his body and slowly rolled over. Once he was flat on his back, he groaned again.

“How do you feel?”

“I do not think anything is broken, but I have one hell of a headache.”

Sloan knelt beside him and ran her hand impersonally over his rain-damp clothes, checking to make sure he was telling the truth. She felt the muscle and sinew that lay beneath the cloth and wondered if she would ever be able to give herself freely to him again.

She forced her thoughts away from the future to the here and now. When she was done with her examination, she confirmed, “Nothing’s broken as far as I can tell, unless you’ve cracked your skull.”

“I do not think it is that bad,” he said with a wry grin.

She had to accept his word. She expressed her tremendous relief by easing her aching body down onto the grass, crossing her arms, and raising them to cover her face as she leaned her head back against a fallen branch.

Cruz dragged himself up onto one elbow and reached out a hand to comfort her by softly stroking her hair. “Please do not cry. I could not bear it.”

Sloan sat up, eyes dry, and said, “I wasn’t crying. I was thinking.”

“Oh? What have you decided?”

“If we can get ourselves up on that big palomino stallion, we can be home by dinnertime.”

There it was again. The reference to Dolorosa as home. Cruz let himself hope. It was all he had left.

Sloan struggled upright, then leaned over so Cruz could hook his arm around her shoulder.

Cruz’s head spun once he was upright, and he had to stand still for a minute before he regained enough balance to move. “That was some bump on the head,” he muttered.

Together, they made their way to the bayo. Sloan helped Cruz drink a sip of water from the canteen, then drank some herself. She dampened the bandanna with some water and washed the blood from his face as best she could. She tied the bandanna around his forehead to keep the dust out of the cut until they could get home and stitch it up.

She bit back a moan when he gave her a push to help her into the saddle. He moaned when he stepped up onto the stallion behind her.

They traveled at a walk, since anything more than that would have been painful. Cruz slipped his arm around Sloan’s waist and pulled her back against him. “We must talk, Cebellina.”

Sloan sighed.

“I am sorry you found out the way you did that I have been working with the Englishman.”

Sloan closed her eyes and bit her lower lip to keep from crying. Until now, there had been some faint hope she might have been mistaken. But Cruz had just confirmed her worst suspicions.

“I can only tell you I have my reasons for what I am doing.”

Sloan searched Cruz’s face for the answers he hadn’t offered and found only the aristocratic pride that demanded her trust. She wanted so much to be able to give it. But too much had happened in the past for her to remain silent.

“Did you know Alejandro Sanchez was still alive when you married me?” she asked.

“No, not until later. A bandit named Jorge Gutierrez was hanged in Alejandro’s place. His face was covered with a black bag. I saw Alejandro’s turquoise and silver bracelet and assumed it was him.”

Sloan grunted. So he hadn’t lied about that, at least.

“Are you all right?”

“I jostled my hip. I’ll be fine.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“I’m not sure I can ever trust you again, Cruz. And I don’t think I could bear a lifetime of doubt and suspicion. Maybe it’s time I went home to Three Oaks.”

Sloan felt Cruz’s arm tighten around her and the swift exhalation of his warm breath on the back of her neck.

“Dolorosa is your home,” he said fiercely. “You cannot go back to Three Oaks now. You still owe me two more months-”

“Surely you can’t expect me to abide by that agreement after everything that’s happened.”

“Oh, but I do. I have told you this other business has nothing to do with us.”

“It does if it means you have to lie to me.”

Cruz swore under his breath. “I cannot explain myself now. You will have to trust me.”

“You ask the impossible,” she whispered.

Cruz’s hacienda should have been a welcome sight, but there was too much left unsaid that they knew would never be spoken once they reached their destination. Yet neither of them slowed the bayo when he picked up his pace as they neared the fortress gates.

Sloan didn’t mention leaving again, but she had made up her mind to return to Three Oaks as soon as her hip was mended enough that she could sit a horse comfortably.

They rode through the fortress gates to exclamations of relief from the pobres, who had been told to be on the lookout for Señora Sloan. Tomasita had discovered her missing early that morning, and Cruz’s vaqueros were out even now searching for her. Runners were quickly sent to carry word that Don Cruz’s wife was safe.

“Patrón! Patrón! You have found the señora. Gracias a Dios!” Josefa cried, running out of the house to greet them with Cisco and Betsy clinging to her skirt.

Tomasita followed close behind her exclaiming, “You are hurt, Don Cruz. What happened?”

Doña Lucia remained on the veranda, her lips twisted in disgust as she realized that once more an opportunity had come and gone to be rid of her son’s gringa wife. “Come inside, Josefa, and bring the children. Tomasita, your presence is not needed here. Go to your room.”

Once satisfied that Josefa and Tomasita had responded to her commands, Doña Lucia turned to the mestizo servant beside her and ordered, “Sancho, send for the curandera, María. We have need of her.”

Cruz carefully eased his aching body off the stallion, then reached up to help Sloan down. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, walking with her up the steps of the veranda to greet his mother.

“Good morning, Mamá.”

“I will not ask why you thought it necessary to go riding in a thunderstorm,” Doña Lucia said to Sloan with icy hauteur, “but when you risk my son’s life with your childish games-”

“That is enough, Mamá. Please excuse us. We are both hungry and tired and need to avail ourselves of María’s healing hands.”

Cruz tightened his grip on Sloan and stepped around his mother, unaware of Doña Lucia’s whitened knuckles fisted in the folds of her satin skirt or her eyes that stabbed Sloan’s back.

“Thank you,” Sloan said once they were inside the adobe hacienda.

“For what?”

“For defending me.”

“I apologize for the fact that I should need to defend you. Mamá is set in her ways. It is not easy for her to accept the fact that I have chosen my own wife.”

Sloan’s limp was worse because her bruised muscles had stiffened in the saddle. Cruz simply picked her up, his eyes daring her to protest, and carried her to the bedroom, where he laid her on their bed. He removed her boots and sat down beside her while they waited for the curandera to arrive.

Doña Lucia arrived in the doorway moments later with a tray containing two silver goblets and a bottle of brandy. “I thought you might need something to fortify yourselves until María arrives.”

Cruz had to admit a brandy sounded good. His mother turned slightly away to fill one goblet with the golden liquid and offered it to Sloan, who had inched herself upright with the pillow supporting her back. Then she filled a second goblet for Cruz.

Doña Lucia waited to see Cruz take a sip of brandy from the goblet she had handed to him-she wanted no chance of a deadly mistake. This time she would be rid of that woman for good, and her death could be blamed on some injury she had acquired in the storm.

Satisfied that she had accomplished what she had come to do, Doña Lucia left the room, saying, “I will go see what is keeping María.”

Cruz sat back down on the bed beside Sloan and touched his goblet to hers, offering a toast, “To long life. To happiness. To love.” He lifted the goblet and took another sip of the fine brandy.

Sloan lifted the goblet to her lips and held it there for a moment, as she contemplated whether she could honestly drink to such a toast. But in her mind’s eyes she saw nothing of happiness and love, and despaired of a long life spent without them. Distraught by the shattered images his words had conjured, she felt the goblet slip from her hand, soaking the sheets in brandy.

“Oh no!” She stared at the brown stain, thinking how quickly what had once been pure was now unclean. “I don’t know what happened. I thought I could handle-oh, Cruz!”

All the pain she had held in abeyance during the crisis just past came flooding across her. “I can’t bear it. How could you do it? How could you lie to me just like Tonio?”

Her head fell back against the pillow, and she turned her face away from him, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the tears, gritting her teeth to contain the sobs.

Cruz slipped farther onto the bed next to her and laid his head on the pillow beside her. He gently eased his arm across her waist and felt her flinch beneath his touch. “I am sorry for your pain, Cebellina. You will never know how sorry.”

He lay beside Sloan, holding her, until he felt the tension ease from her body. She was asleep when Cruz realized how drowsy he felt himself. He closed his eyes, just to rest a moment until María arrived.

The curandera, María, was a wizened old woman, who wore ragged clothes and generally smelled of the poultices she devised. When she entered the room, she found Sloan and Cruz both asleep on the bed.

She checked Cruz first, clucking her tongue and shaking her head as she pried open his eyelids and peered into his eyes. She rinsed the blood from the wound at his temple and decided that it would not need stitching if she pulled it together and bound it that way. With quick, sure hands she checked to make sure he was otherwise uninjured before turning her attention to the woman.

She remembered Señora Sloan well. She had first met the señora a year ago when Cisco had been knifed by a Comanche, and Don Cruz had defended the señora’s right to stay with her son when the curandera had demanded that the room must be cleared of those who had no need to be there. Doña Lucia had left. Señora Sloan had remained and efficiently assisted María as she had stitched the wound closed.

The curandera had seen the adoration for this woman in Don Cruz’s eyes when he had thought no one was looking, and she had thought then that Señora Sloan would make a worthy wife for her patrón. She wondered, as she gently woke the señora, whether the young woman had learned to return Don Cruz’s affections. If so, she would need all her courage to face the news that María had to impart.

“Señora, wake up,” the curandera said, gently slapping Sloan’s cheeks.

Sloan blinked her eyes open. “Is Cruz-”

“I have done what I can for El Patrón. Now it is time to take care of you.”

“I’m only a little bruised-”

María shook her head and clucked her tongue as though chiding a small child as she helped Sloan strip off her clothes and put on a chambray wrapper. “That is a bad bruise on your thigh, señora, and needs something to reduce the swelling.”

“What is that?” Sloan demanded, her nose wrinkling in disgust as María applied a strong-smelling poultice.

“Something that will have you feeling much better soon,” the curandera assured her. “But I am afraid I must bring you more pain, señora,” María said as she covered Sloan with the sheet.

“What do you mean-more pain?”

“Don Cruz-”

“What’s wrong!” Sloan turned frantically to look at the man who, until now, she thought had been peacefully sleeping. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“No, señora. He sleeps.”

Sloan turned back just as quickly and frowned at the curandera. “If he’s just sleeping, then what’s wrong with him?”

“It is not only his body that sleeps,” María explained, “but his soul as well.”

Sloan all too quickly realized what the curandera was trying to say. “Oh my God. You mean he’s in a coma? He’s not going to wake up?”

“Be calm, señora,” the curandera said. “I do not know how long he will sleep. It may be he will wake in the morning, his body and soul rested. But it may also be that he will take longer to wake.”

Sloan stared at Cruz in horror. “He might die?”

They were interrupted when Doña Lucia appeared at the door and announced, “There is someone here to see you, Sloan.”

“Who is it?” she asked.

“He says his name is Louis Randolph. He says he has come for Betsy.”