Twenty-three
Antonie felt a strong sense of acceptance of her fate as she was led out into the dawn. Feeling removed from it all, she stood still as she was stripped of her clothes. Her emotional detachment wavered a little however, when she was tied to the rough wood, her feet several inches off the ground and her legs parted by lashing her ankles to small stakes in the ground. She struggled to eradicate the sudden clear memories of the remains of others Raoul had executed in the same manner.
“Easter already?” she murmured.
“Your blasphemy is ill-timed,” Raoul snapped.
“I think, Raoul, that you blaspheme when you use this style of scaffold.”
He shrugged as he checked his branding iron, then placed it back in the fire. Antonie knew that where he put his brand would be the one part of her that would remain otherwise unblemished. Raoul liked to have any who found his victims know just who had left them. It was a successful way to breed fear and Raoul liked to be feared.
She tried to ignore that slowly heating branding iron, but even though she averted her eyes the image of it was clear in her mind. So, too, was the image of what it would do to her skin. It made her stomach churn, and reminding herself that it would be the least of the pains Raoul would inflict before death rescued her was no help at all. She stared at Raoul, hatred clearing the fear she suspected had shown briefly in her eyes.
Royal’s body jerked violently when he saw the branding iron. The thought of how it would soon touch Antonie’s creamy skin made him want to bellow with rage and challenge the beast who threatened her. Only a gray-faced Cole’s grip on his arm stopped him from running to her. He watched Oro still inching down the rise but his face was white and a fine tremor ran through his slim frame. It was clearly as hard for Oro to continue cautiously as it was for him. The fear that they would not be in time to save her from all Raoul planned made caution a hard-won thing.
“You will last a long time, I think,” Raoul said as he tested the sharpness of his knife.
Praying that God would mercifully stop her heart before she suffered too much, she spat on him. A fierce rage blazed in his eyes but he fought it. That was not something she found encouraging. She wanted to drive him into such a fury that he killed her quickly, but it was clear that he had guessed her plan and was prepared to fight it.
“If the knife is hot when it slides through the flesh there will be not so great a loss of blood,” Raoul chatted amiably and tested the sharpness of his heated blade against her shoulder, breaking the smooth skin. “Do not think to escape by swooning. I will wake you and continue.”
“When you die, as you surely must,” she said coldly, fighting to ignore the sting caused by the shallow cut, “Juan will be waiting for you in hell.” She smiled grimly when he paled. “Julio and Manuel will be at his side. Manuel owes you for Tomás.”
She saw him fight to hide his fear from his men as he pressed his knife point to the inside of her arm. It was a shallow cut but it stung, making Antonie grit her teeth. She pulled herself together enough to glare at Raoul as he did the same to her other arm.
“The soles of the feet can be used to bring a person much pain,” Raoul murmured, his gaze on the blood that trickled from the cuts on her slim arms. “Marco, the coals.”
She could not fully control the shudder that tore through her when Marco picked up a small shovelful of hot coals. The reasons for the hollows beneath her feet were now apparent. It would be a slow process, the heat of the coals gradually searing her tender feet, the agony slowly increasing and, because it was going to be a slow process, the pain would last a long time.
Just as Marco straightened up from filling the second hollow with coals and raking his gaze over her, a shot rang out. Antonie watched as Marco’s look changed from a lustful grin to one of surprise. His body fell over the hollow, his blood flowing over the coals, cooling them before the heat had done any more than uncomfortably warm the soles of her feet.
Antonie realized that her fate had become of very little concern to Raoul. The surprise attack and four good shots had neatly lessened Raoul’s strength by four. The four men left thought only of escape, although they fought fiercely in their futile attempt to flee. When a bullet tore through Raoul’s chest, Antonie watched, the knowledge of his impending death showing clearly on his face. She tensed when he turned toward her, for he obviously thought of taking her with him. But even as he started to aim his pistol at her, another shot tore through him and he fell.
She stared at him, feeling almost weak with relief that he would never again threaten her. For one brief instant she bitterly resented the quickness of his death, but violently pushed that thought aside. She would not sink to his level.
It was Cole who reached Antonie first, the two men between him and her quickly dispatched. He kicked sand over the coals to further insure that they were no danger even as he bent to cut her feet loose. Sheltering her with his body, he cut loose one arm and caught her as she slumped. Cutting free her other arm, he lowered her gently to the ground, her back against the wooden scaffold.
Despite her aches, Antonie was feeling exhilarated. She was rescued. By some miracle, they had found her before Raoul had gone too far in his nefarious plans. The cuts on her arms and shoulder stung and her body ached all over, but she smiled brilliantly at Cole, thinking how beautiful he was.
“Honey, I don’t know where the hell you get the strength to smile.” Cole shook his head.
“It is easy,” Antonie almost laughed, her relief was so strong. “I am alive.”
He smiled back at her. “You are that.” He then sobered. “I’m no good at doctoring.”
“It can wait. My hurts are small. May I have your shirt?”
“Sure thing, sweet.”
The other three men arrived just as he was helping her into his shirt. Royal weakly returned her smile, aching to talk to her, but needing privacy. He knew there was a lot of explaining to do, his feeling enhanced when she blinked at him as if recalling something and hastily looked away. She still thought no doubt that he had chosen Marilyn over her.
“Tomás,” Antonie began, tears filling her eyes as she sought the words to tell Oro of his twin’s death.
“Is alive. O’Neill brought him to the ranch. Our compadre was sent by fate, I think.”
She briefly closed her eyes in relief, then looked at the big Irishman crouched at her side. “It is good to see you again.”
“And you, lass. While you’re getting better, I’ll bore you with tales of what I’ve been doing this past year. Now,” he stood up, “I’ll get our horses here. In my bags is something that might do for doctoring your wounds.”
“Is there a bed in that shack?” Cole asked as he stood up and brushed himself off.
“Sí, Cole. Two. I . . . I cannot walk. I have been tied too long.”
“No one expected you to walk,” Royal said as he picked her up.
There was something in the way he held her that made Antonie’s heart soar, letting her believe that he cared. So strong was the feeling that it was a struggle to remember the scene she had witnessed between him and Marilyn.
When the memory finally came, she felt her hopes die. She was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If she said nothing, he would marry Marilyn and she would lose him, knowing what he would suffer. Yet, if she told him all she knew of Marilyn, even if he believed her, he would undoubtedly hold it against her. Few people can forgive the one who shattered their dreams. There would always be the question of how deeply her own rejection had motivated her.
“Do you want to sit or lie down?”
“I will sit, Royal. O’Neill will tell me how he wishes me to help in the doctoring.”
“We had to wait to rescue you, little one,” he said, his voice hoarse with concern.
“Sí, I know this. Surprise was your best weapon. There is nothing to be sorry for. Raoul did little to me.”
Thinking of what had driven her from the safety of the ranch, Royal winced. “Antonie, we have to talk about—”
“Here we go, lass. I have all that’s needed to fix you up as fine as ever.” O’Neill looked at Royal. “Why don’t you go and send that fool Oro in here. He’s clearing away signs of the fight, pushing his leg further than it should go. If the fool doesn’t get off the bloody thing and rest it, it’ll never heal right. Sure ’n that is a pure fact.”
Antonie watched as Royal left and then sighed. She had not gotten away and now knew that distance would never free her. Although she felt she had always known that, she had managed to ignore it for a while.
“Don’t look so sad, lass,” O’Neill muttered as he gently sat down on the bed. “It’ll turn out fine.”
“No, it will not, O’Neill. He is a rich man or can be again, a man of property. Juan Ramirez’s niña is not for him.”
“Then he’s a fool and not worth your grief. Ah, Oro, glad you saw reason.”
“I had little choice, amigo.” Oro limped toward the bed.
“Settle yourself with the lass. I’m going to be doctoring her soon and I might need her held still. Your arms are still useful.”
“Your flattery humbles me,” Oro drawled as he settled himself on the bed with Antonie.
“How’s the baby feeling?” O’Neill asked as he tended to her shoulder wound first.
Gasping a little from the sting of the whiskey O’Neill used to clean her wound, she finally asked, “You know?”
“Could see it clear enough when you were hanging out there buck-nekked but, also, Tomás kept babbling about it.”
“Then Royal knows.”
“Sí,” Oro replied, holding her with a gentle firmness. “He was not pleased to hear of Tomás’s plan, eh? Not when he was headed out after you.”
“He was coming to find me? But why?”
“You did not say goodbye.”
“Oro,” she hissed, then flinched as O’Neill touched her feet.
“Speak to him, little one. It is not for me to say. In the middle is not where I wish to be.”
“He’s right, lass,” O’Neill agreed. “Settle it yourself. Your wounds aren’t bad, love. Still, you’ve had a shock and a bad knock on the head. Best to stay off these pretty little feet for a few days.”
“Feet are not pretty,” she said weakly as she turned to lie on her side, her head on Oro’s strong thigh.
“Depends on whether they are running to or from a body. They’re real pretty when they’re a woman’s, bare and toe upwards, set either side of a man’s, bare and toes down. Aye and when they start curling with delight.”
“You’re a rogue, Liam O’Neill.”
“Sure ’n don’t we all know that.”
“Are they all dead?” she asked.
“Not all,” Oro replied.
“Think some will talk?”
“Sí, maybe, but I think the Bancrofts will find out very little.”
“Ah, that will not please Royal.”
* * *
Royal moved to help Cole drag one of the dead men around to the back of the building. Cole asked, “How’s Antonie?”
“Damn hard to tell,” Royal answered. “She’s so damn stoic. Have you talked yet to any of the ones who are alive?”
“Only one of those left. Best do that before he goes, too,” Cole moved to crouch before a man whose wound was slowly but definitely mortal. “Who hired you?”
“A gringa.” The man’s expression was a ghastly parody of a smile. “A fine-looking puta and hungry, eh?”
“That doesn’t tell us a hell of a lot.”
“Red hair, tall. Pretty.” His voice grew weaker as he lost his battle against encroaching death. “Collins. Señorita Collins.”
“Well, there’s your suspicions confirmed,” said Cole. “Dear Marilyn and her darling papa have been behind all this.”
Royal shook his head. “The word of a dead bandido won’t hang anyone for our parents’ murder, not when we’re the only ones who heard it.”
“Could do to scare them far enough away so that they can’t bother us anymore.”
“True, but they’ll find other victims. Maybe there’s something in the cabin.”
“Let’s finish this first. If anyone sees this mess, they’ll know something ain’t right.”
“Think someone might be coming, Cole? More men?”
“Can’t say. The only one who could’ve is dead now. It can’t hurt to be careful though.”
As he continued with the grisly work of hiding all signs of battle, Royal’s mind was on Antonie. He had made a lot of mistakes with her. The biggest had been not taking an honest look at how he felt. Blindly he had stumbled along, thinking only of possession and need. Passion and jealousy had directed his every step.
Worse, in the back of his mind, he had never forgotten her background. He had not let her erase whatever taint there might have been, and there was no ignoring the fact that she had sensed that. It was undoubtedly the reason why she had been so quick to believe that he would make love to her one night and propose marriage to Marilyn the next morning.
Picking up a shovel, he joined Cole in digging a shallow grave, after searching the bodies for papers. There had been nothing. With Cole having worked for the law, their word might be enough to put the Collinses in jail, if not hang them. Royal still wanted hard proof to erase any chance of their slipping through the law’s fingers. If all he accomplished was to run them out of the area, he knew he would always wonder who they were hurting.
“What are you going to do about Antonie?” Cole asked, interrupting Royal’s dark thoughts.
“Hell, Cole, I’m not sure,” Royal admitted, “but she’s damn well not going to go back to Mexico, and she’s not marrying Tomás.”
“You going to marry her?”
“Yes, even if I have to tie her up to get her before a preacher. Degas is a fine name but not for my child.”
He wished he had as much confidence as he was able to put into his voice. Antonie could well be finished with him, and he could not really blame her if she was. Then again, she had never spoken of love either. What had led her into his arms had been “the fire” as she had called it, and for all he knew, that fire could have fizzled out.
When he went back into the cabin, he prepared some coffee. Cole had gone to relieve Justin, who was bringing most of the horses to the cabin. No one had eaten since last night and Royal, with what he could find in the place, began to make breakfast. That started, he brought coffee in to Antonie, O’Neill, and Oro.
“Ah, this tastes much better than the warm tequila which Raoul serves,” Antonie sighed after savoring a mouthful of coffee.
“How’s it look, O’Neill?” Royal sat down on the other bed.
“She will heal,” O’Neill replied. “With luck these shallow cuts will not scar.”
“I am getting a very big collection, eh?” Antonie winked at a grinning O’Neill. “Add the one on my arm and the one under my ribs and that could make five.”
“Which is five too many,” Royal grumbled. “How is the baby?”
“A man of great subtlety,” Antonie murmured, causing O’Neill and Oro to laugh quietly. “The child is fine.”
“Are you sure, lass?” O’Neill asked, frowning at her. “That is the one thing that needs watching. No pain or pressure?”
“No, O’Neill,” Antonie replied. “The child moves even now. It is well settled.”
“How settled?” Royal asked, fighting the urge to put his hand on her abdomen and to feel his child himself.
“You think now maybe it is yours?” Antonie snapped.
“Don’t be an ass. It would be nice to know just when I’ll become a father.”
“In a little less than three months,” she muttered, her weariness and the situation with Marilyn making her short-tempered.
“Good God,” Royal breathed, realizing that that took them back to the first night or shortly thereafter.
For a moment his thoughts were sidetracked. With all the trouble and the cattle drive, he had not realized how time had slipped by. His thoughts then became a hasty cataloging of all that had occurred during that time.
She had done a lot of hard riding, spent hours in the saddle, been shot at, been hit, and on and on. Through all that she had been carrying their child. Antonie had been carrying on like a ranch hand and a hired gun at a time when a woman should be coddled and cared for. She could not only have lost their child, but done herself a great deal of harm.
“You are sure you have so little time left?” Oro asked while Royal was caught up in his thoughts. “It does not show at all.”
“Sí. When I got to thinking back, that is the length of time I came up with.”
“You went on a long, hard cattle drive while pregnant?” Royal snapped.
“I did not know I was with child when I went.”
“Well, just when did it occur to you?”
“There is no need to be sarcastic. What do I know of these things?”
“You must have noticed something.”
Antonie scowled at Royal, wondering what was putting him in such a temper. She was the one in pain. It seemed to her typical of a man to think that, just because she was a woman, she should know certain things, things no one had ever told her.
“I noticed a thing or two, but there could be many reasons for these things, eh? How am I to know my stomach thickens not from too much food but from a baby? You think Juan or Manuel or Julio or Oro or Tomás or any of the other bandidos sit me down to say, ‘Antonie, this is what will happen if you get with child?’ Did you?”
“Enough. You made your point.” Not ready to give up, Royal added, “You could have talked with a woman when, well, when things started to happen that had nothing to do with whether you were eating well.”
“I did, after the drive, when I got back to the ranch. Stop yelling at me.”
“I’m not yelling.”
“Sí. You are. Between your teeth and quietly.” She flashed a glare at the laughing Oro and O’Neill. “Why did you not notice?”
Royal felt a light color seep into his cheeks. He should have noticed something. Despite all the misunderstandings that had kept them apart for a time, there should have been an interval here and there when nature put a short halt to their enjoyment of each other.
“She has you there, laddie,” O’Neill said jovially, then ignoring Royal’s scowl, turned to ask Antonie, “Got a name for the babe?”
“Sí, I have, O’Neill. I will call my son Juan Ramirez.” Her eyes narrowed when she saw Royal’s expression. “You do not like that?”
“You’re spoiling for a fight, aren’t you, darlin’,” O’Neill murmured, laughter trembling in his deep voice.
“Juan is a fine name,” Royal snapped. “Juan Ramirez would be a fine name, too, if it did not belong to the most notorious bandido in Mexico. I will not have my child named after a bandido who was one of the most wanted men for over a thousand miles around.”
“Sí,” Antonie replied, anger tightening her voice. “He was the best. And, this is my child and I will name him what I want.” Her look dared him to argue.
It was a dare that Royal was preparing to heartily accept when Justin suddenly walked in, saying grimly, “Someone’s headed this way.”
“One rider,” Cole said as he followed Justin in. “I think you can guess,” he added with a meaningful look at Royal.
“Now maybe we can get our proof.” Royal started toward the door.
“One sight of you fellows and whoever it is will be off before you can blink,” O’Neill said, stopping Royal’s confident advance.
Royal frowned at O’Neill, knowing what the man said was true. “You have any suggestions?”
“I do. You stay hidden here and I will meet this envoy.” O’Neill stood up and dried his hands. “The only ones of Raoul’s men I knew are lying out there. No one knows me around here. I also think I look suitably rough and nasty.”
“Only to those who don’t know you,” Antonie said with a small smile.
“You think you can convince the one coming well enough to get some information?” Royal asked.
“Royal, this gringo before you could sell a glass of water to a drowning man,” Oro said. “He also knows enough about bandidos and their ways to act like one. Even if the one who comes did not know you, none of you could do that.”
“I reckon you’re right.” Royal sat back down. “I want a confession.”
“Get you as much of one as I can,” O’Neill assured him. “Any hard proof as well, I suspect.”
“The paper to hang them with would be wonderful. I’ll settle for whatever you can get, O’Neill. A confrontation will at least send them to their heels. Hard proof will put them where they can’t pull this stunt again, and that would be fine indeed.”
“Aye, and I’ll do my best to get it. I’ve an idea or two on what’ll suit. Not a sound out of you, no matter what you hear. Just keep in mind that I’m playing me a game or two. I’ve got to convince this person that I’m one of Raoul’s mad dogs, and if I do it right it just might be convincing you, too.” As he went out of the door, he paused and added, “If this is a false alarm or anything goes wrong, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Shutting the door, he went into the other room only to hastily return with most of the breakfast Royal had begun. Returning to the outer room, he settled himself at the table with a small breakfast and a cup of coffee. As he waited, he tossed around a few ideas on how to conduct himself.
Within the small room, Royal took O’Neill’s place on the bed by Antonie. Cole and Justin settled themselves on the other bed. They all ate quietly and quickly, finishing by the time the rider reached the cabin. Everyone watched the door, their bodies tensed as they listened closely. Antonie watched Royal move to the door. She, too, was tense but not only because of what was to happen. She felt that Royal knew who was coming and she dreaded watching how he would react.