Matanza
1
Mexico City, February, 1913
Maguire had eaten well, drunk moderately and checked the card tables and roulette wheel. Now a faint, rambling melody concocted by the piano player followed him across the alley behind his casino, El Madronito. The winter night was brisk at this altitude and the music sounded more brittle than it really was. As always, he stopped halfway to the door. There the music and the raucous banter of men balanced finely. Another step and the music would fade completely, obliterated by shouted bets and cries for more tequila. Always more tequila.
The step taken, he listened carefully. The voices were muted tonight. The men were waiting. Good. There would be plenty of excitement in a few minutes when Fuentes arrived. Maguire checked his clothes. He flicked an ash from the arm of his heavy pin-striped coat, which was beginning to make him sweat. The creases in his trousers, black and straight as a pipe, were knife sharp. He pulled a strip of cloth from a rear pocket, reached down and dusted the hand-tooled black leather boots made by a craftsman from Oaxaca. Polished to a fare-thee-well, the boots literally glowed in the faint light.
His coat parted, Maguire touched his good luck amulet and checked his watch. Two minutes to midnight, the appointed time. Pensive, he considered Fuentes’s arrival and the challenge it presented. Trouble followed Jesus Fuentes like a mongrel pup its bitch.
Maguire snapped closed the lid of the watch and dropped it into his vest pocket. The gold chain drooped across the black silk vest stitched with silver thread in configurations of Aztec origin. He smiled. This was a Maguire who would surprise Fuentes. The last time they’d met, Maguire was dressed for the mountains. He had been a gringo mercenary then. Now he bore the manners of a gentleman of stature. The change was reflected in his dress, an elegant mixture of Mexican and Anglo, much like the man himself.
It was time. Casually he strode to the door, opened it and stepped inside. Immediately an expectant hush spread over the crowd. Heads turned and necks craned. Maguire had arrived.
Maguire touched the silver grip of his walking stick to the brim of his bowler in informal greeting. “And where is this gachupine and his hen?” he said, slowly and clearly.
The insult was received with hoots of good-natured laughter. Gachupine was a term of derision for the upper class pure blood Spaniards born in either Mexico or Spain. The gachupines remained aloof from the masses. Supported by the blood and sweat of those they deemed to be less valuable than animals, they lived luxuriously in Mexico City, Paris, London or New York, and rarely visited their vast, magnificent haciendas, the uncounted acres over which they ruled with the haughty disdain of absolute monarchs. A hundred years earlier the bond with Spain had been broken. A hundred years of revolution and counter-revolution had followed, and still the chosen few, well served by hated lackeys, retained their positions of authority. If there was a middle class at all to fill the yawning gulf between the supremely wealthy and the innumerable utterly destitute, it was composed of men like those who crowded the triple circle of seats around the clay ring in the center of the room. All were marginal entrepreneurs like Maguire, moving between two worlds and earning a precarious living in the midst of impermanence. There were more of them now that Porfirio Diaz was gone and Francisco Madero was president, and their existence was a little easier. For this, no one was more thankful than Maguire. He had known good times and bad, but none better since the day Madero became Mexico’s president. Since then things had been looking up. Riding high with his own casino, money in his pocket and, if not the affection, at least the tolerance of those in power, Maguire was determined to see the present state of affairs continue. When a man hits a string of good luck, he’d better play it to the bust. An old warrior and soldier of fortune he had known in the Philippines had offered this advice and Maguire had adopted the credo.
The crowd parted and Maguire made his way to the pit in the center of the room. Dark, oily smoke from hand-twisted, stumpy puros, the cheap cigars manufactured from the dregs of Valle National’s export crop of tobacco, darkened the air. Gray white coils of smoke from cigarettes writhed upward to the rafters, glided snakelike over the weathered beams and seeped through the thatched roof. Hands clapped Maguire on the back with rough familiarity, offered him earthen jugs of tequila and pulque. The men liked Maguire not so much out of friendship, but because they admired his success and identified with him. He had known the devil hunger, as had they. He too was of mixed blood—a half-breed. His light coppery skin and thick black hair now tinged with a sprinkling of silver allowed him a freedom norteamericanos seldom found south of the border. A six-foot frame and sharp blue eyes recalled an Irish father who had enjoyed a brief liaison with his mother. The Irishman disappeared after discovering she was with child. When Maguire was nine, his mother took him across the border into Mexico to her father’s scrubby little farm. There, until her death, when he was thirteen, he slaved in the fields. Then he ran away for good. The men around him could read it in his face—Maguire had learned survival the hard way.
“Aaaieee!” A piratical-looking figure sprang upright at the far edge of the pit. Stretching to his meager five-foot height, he flapped his hand in pain and cursed. “Damned gallo! I’ll give you to Rosita to make enchiladas with! She’ll stew the meat from your worthless bones.”
“And we’ll be out a casino, my friend.” Maguire laughed, making his way forward. Riciotti Lucca sucked the blood from his wounded palm and spat onto the clay floor. “Here is a man who I’ve seen fight with three bullets in him,” Maguire said to the crowd, “and he howls when a chicken pecks him. Some great warrior, eh?” Lucca snarled a reply. “What happened?”
Lucca pointed to the crate, then held out his hand. A chunk of skin a quarter-inch wide and deep and four times as long was missing. “Some bird,” he growled, grinning with pride, for he himself had trained the rooster.
Maguire squatted by the box and peered through the slats at the fighting cock within. “Ah, Torrito. You forget your size when you bite Lucca. That rooster is no match for you. Save your anger for Fuentes’s hen.”
An orange beak snapped at his fingers but he snatched them away just in time. As for Lucca, everyone enjoyed themselves at his expense. In retaliation, he grabbed a bottle of tequila from the nearest reveler. The mestizo cursed and started to take back his bottle, but Lucca’s eyes narrowed and his hawklike bearded face hardened. The other man pulled back and watched silently while the Italian took a long draught. There was a point beyond which the feisty Lucca would not be pushed. Slowly he drank. Slowly he returned the bottle, then flashed the donor a wicked grin.
A door at the other end of the room opened. The crowd quieted much as it had when Maguire entered. A voice muttered against the chill wind and several men gained admittance. Others shivered, but whether from the night air or the presence of the men who entered, it was hard to tell.
Jesus Fuentes paused, allowing the drama of his entrance to reach those who had yet to discover his presence. When the room was sufficiently quiet, he strode through the quickly opened lane of men. He could sense the hostility of those he passed among and enjoyed it all the more because he knew they feared him. Fuentes’s features were those of the high born Castilian: aquiline, lightly olive-toned, almost white. Light blond hair bleached by the sun hung to his shoulders. His sombrero of brown felt trimmed with gold rested on his back, held there by a leather cord tied about his neck. His dress, which was showy and gaudy—a short jacket and tight riding pants, both laden with heavy gold trim—contrasted sharply with that of the motley arrayed crowd that surrounded him.
Most chilling was the black patch covering Fuentes’s left eye. On it a perpetually open, staring orb was emblazoned in gold—an evil eye to chill the hearts of the superstitious and weak-willed. Compounding the horror of his disfigurement, a jagged line of scar tissue started above the bridge of his nose, disappeared under the patch and reappeared to run halfway to his ear. What lay underneath was left to the imagination. As a result, few mistook him for the fop he appeared. Those unfortunate enough to miscalculate his prowess seldom lived long enough to regret their error. Jesus Fuentes had killed his first man at the age of fifteen. A dozen more, not counting those who fell in revolutionary battles, followed over the years.
Fuentes’s men, dressed in black sombreros, jackets and breeches of colorless gray, entered behind him, heightening the dangerous mood. Mottled black and gray blankets rolled into thick, ugly snakes hung over their left shoulders and met below their belts behind holstered pistols. Coiled snakes stitched in white on the holsters stood out in bold and terrifying contrast.
Los Serpientes, as they were called, were in the pay of Gregor Bortha, the political and military force in Chihuahua. Officially designated rurales, the rural police force, they were in reality a private army of fifty efficient and ruthless murderers. Though Bortha paid them, Maguire knew Los Serpientes owed their allegiance to only one man—Jesus Fuentes.
Fuentes reached the edge of the pit and, hiding his surprise, smiled at Maguire. Maguire smiled back. No one mistook them for friends. “Good evening, Maguire.”
Maguire nodded in return. At the same time a voice from the edge of the crowd called out, “One-Eye.” The crowd tensed as Fuentes searched the sea of impassive faces for the source of the insult. One Eye, in spite of the macabre decoration on his patch, was the one name that could shatter his icelike composure and bring him down to the elemental level of those around him. The five Serpientes accompanying him moved toward the sound but he stopped them with the slightest movement of his hand.
“I have waited, Maguire.” He touched the patch. “One year, ten months and four days. If I had known where you were, I would not have waited so long. But no matter. I say this to your face. Tonight is the beginning of my revenge. First your casino, then … Perhaps an eye for an eye.”
“You talk too much, Fuentes,” Maguire said. There would be time for words later. Perhaps by that time he would know why Fuentes had brought his rurales to Mexico City.
Fuentes stared in disdainful silence. “Adolfo,” he finally said. One of the Serpientes, a burly, flat-faced man, stepped forward and jumped into the pit. A second man set a box made of pine slats fastened with leather on the edge of the ring. Adolfo opened the lid and lifted out a black rooster.
The crowd sighed in admiration. The bird was magnificent. Jet plumage, shaved at the breast and the back of the neck, gleamed richly. What had once been a proud, high comb had been cut low to the skull so it would offer no purchase. Still, the bright red was a slash of color that drew the eye to the proud head. A third Serpiente brought forth a small chest and set it on the rail enclosing the ring. When Fuentes nodded, the man opened the chest to reveal a glitter of gold coins. A greedy stirring rippled through the spectators. None had ever seen such a fortune.
“Twenty thousand,” Fuentes said in a near whisper. “One thousand twenty-dollar gold pieces, norteamericano. If you wish to count?”
Maguire shrugged. “I trust you.” He ran a finger along his moustache and stared at El Negro, the fighting cock Fuentes had brought; then he reached inside his coat and pulled out a white envelope. Inside was the deed of ownership to El Madronito. He placed it on the edge of the fighting pit. “Take him out, Lucca.”
The Italian nodded, took a final swig of tequila and jumped into the pit by the box. “You bite me again, gallo, so help me …” he muttered. Torrito had smelled his adversary, though, and no longer gave thought to the man’s hands. Already brain and blood were aware of one overriding fact: another cock was nearby.
Fuentes and his men knew the valor of a fighting rooster was not measured by his appearance. Still they laughed when they saw Torrito, for he was a ratty-looking beast. Rust-colored feathers extended in every direction from his scarred, battle-worn body. One eye was permanently cast to the left, the result of a previous close encounter. His comb, a mass of hardened scar tissue, was a mottled knob of indeterminate color. The initiated observer looked past Torrito’s ugly exterior and appraised the strength of his legs and the musculature of his breast.
El Negro and Torrito, king and knave. Both had been shorn of feathers at the breast and the back of the neck to make them equally vulnerable. Both waited—tense and expectant. They would fight natural, meaning using only their own leg spurs and not the razor sharp metal spurs in vogue in some places. El Negro’s spurs were a full quarter inch longer than his opponent’s, but not as thick as Torrito’s, which were stubbier and less likely to snap.
Personal feelings among the spectators toward Maguire and Fuentes disappeared. Like Maguire or not, the issue now was a cockfight, and the bets shouted across the ring considered only the relative strengths of the birds. The crates were removed. Maguire and Fuentes stepped out of the ring, leaving Lucca and Adolfo alone. The official, a silver-haired man by the name of Anselmo, climbed into the pit. Old enough to make the two-foot descent look an ordeal, Anselmo’s feebleness was far outweighed by his experience and the legendary fairness of his decisions. Landowner or campesino, Anselmo played no favorites and would abide no infractions.
“It is understood,” the old man said, “there is to be no handling. This is a fight to the finish. I will see the birds, now.” He inspected the black first, checked the bird’s eyes, wings, breast, legs, spurs and vent, and wordlessly handed him back to Adolfo. A similar minute inspection of Torrito followed. “The roosters are acceptable,” he announced to owners and crowd, “but …” A rising murmur of expectation faded. He turned to Maguire. “Your red is a quarter kilo lighter than the black, señor. You understand the black has the advantage.”
“I understand, and accept the disadvantage,” Maguire said flatly. A dozen new bets followed the announcement.
Lucca and Adolfo wasted no time. Adolfo poured tequila into his hand and wiped El Negro’s neck and breast. Lucca accepted a proffered bottle, filled his mouth and sprayed the red’s head and breast, then flipped him and spat more of the fiery liquid onto his vent. Torrito struggled, angry at last.
Anselmo waved the two men together. The crowd stilled, anxious to watch the billing. Lucca and Adolfo stopped at arm’s length, and with a firm hold on their birds, extended them toward each other. Black and red, at close range at last, pecked viciously at each other. When a spot of blood appeared on the black’s stubby comb, Anselmo signaled again and the handlers stepped back and knelt at opposite sides of the ring. In dead silence Anselmo raised a bandana and held it high in the air. When it fell, the fight would begin.
The crowd was roaring before the flag hit the clay. Lucca and Adolfo loosed the cocks and jumped out of the ring. The birds needed no urging. Without hesitation, they charged, rose into the air and, feet extended forward and slashing, crashed into each other and fell to the floor. A blurred flurry of feathers later, they backed away, initial contact over.
The crowd held their bets. Legs stiff, wings extended down and back, the roosters circled, heads low, bobbing and weaving. The black, heavier, stronger and with the boldness of relative inexperience, lunged, leaped into the air and raked downward with his spurs. The red rose a fraction of a second too late and fell backward with a gash across his breast.
“Three pesos for one on the black!” a voice screamed.
“Five for three, the black!”
“Done. One for two, the red, anyone?”
Los Serpientes were cheering and betting as profusely as anyone and, though they did not wish to anger Fuentes, trying to keep the odds on the black as low as possible. One for one, after all, was much better than three to one. Brown faces looked worriedly to Maguire, who remained impassive though his booted toe edged forward to cover the envelope.
The birds were in the air again. Neither gave ground willingly. Generations of breeding and weeks of arduous daily training made each seek the advantage. The black, by virtue of his weight, continued to gain. Torrito was bleeding from comb and breast. A drop of blood had formed at the corner of his beak. Again the black attacked, rising high in the air. Torrito anticipated and rose higher. Both birds slashed and beat at each other, fell and rose again in quick, feinting hops. They were panting now, out of breath with the fury of battle. The black fluttered into the air but the red, too tired, side stepped. When El Negro came down, he staggered to one side. By common consent both birds crouched, resting.
No killing blows in the first three minutes meant a prolonged fight. The winner would be the cock with the most stamina. The betting swung heavily to the black.
No animal in the world is as game, or has so much courage, as a well-bred fighting cock. No animal, pound for pound, will battle so tenaciously or so viciously. Maimed, bloodied and lamed, a valiant fowl will fight until his strength is utterly depleted, or he is dead. The black and the red, beaks open, bodies heaving, staggered to their feet, ready to fight again. Spurs raking, beaks stabbing, holding and tearing, they circled, closed and traded punishment like two old prizefighters, finesse long forgotten, standing toe to toe and trading brutal blows with no pretext of defense.
Pesos changed hands, voices offered new bets. Maguire ignored them all. Even Lucca’s hand, tight on his arm, went unnoticed. The world had receded and he was alone, strangely detached and aloof. Sweat was running down his sides and, for reasons he couldn’t identify, he wished he were in the mountains again, far away from the noise and bustle of Mexico City. Then his eyes met Fuentes’s across the ring and he looked back to the fight. There, in the battle on the clay floor, lay the determination of his fate. There. With a battered, losing rooster.
His spirits sank as Torrito fell to one side, wings flapping feebly, from what seemed the worst of wounds. “He’s finished!” Fuentes bragged, echoing the sentiments of everyone else in the room.
The black seemed to know. Strutting, he circled the red, arched his neck and let loose a ragged crow of triumph. Torrito lay without moving, panting so fast one could not count the breaths. But slowly he struggled to his feet, game to the end, and the black was forced to acknowledge that his adversary was not yet dead. Determined, he raced toward his stricken prey.
Suddenly, what had been a wounded, helpless victim erupted straight into the air. Torrito was not finished fighting. His heart would not let him. Faster than the crowd’s imagination, his stubby, sharp spurs flashed downward on the black, whose momentum carried him underneath the red. There was a cry, drowned out by the excited babble of voices.
Only when both roosters fell to the ground could the spectators see what had happened. One of the red’s spurs had stabbed into the black’s left eye and caught there. Frantic, both birds struggled to free themselves. The crowd was going mad. Those who had thought themselves sure winners cursed; those who thought themselves losers howled with glee.
Torrito finally jerked his leg free and stumbled to his feet. One wing dragged in the dirt. Immediately he retreated, too tired for the moment to follow up and kill the black. El Negro fluttered to the center of the ring. He was bleeding from the beak. His left eye was gone and he was disoriented, still wanting to fight, but confused.
The crowd pressed close around the ring, waiting for the red to finish off the black. No one knew who sent up the first cry, but immediately a second voice joined. Then the whole throng, winners and losers, with the exception of Los Serpientes, were shouting the name. For both El Negro and Fuentes, it certainly fit.
“One Eye. One Eye. One Eye!”
Building, crescendoing. “One Eye. One Eye. One Eye. One Eye!”
Suddenly it was quiet. Fuentes had drawn his pistol. The Colt .38 raised slowly and the crowd swayed backward, unable to run, uncertain as to what would happen. A thunderous report filled the room and the black rooster’s head exploded. In the stunned, ringing silence that followed, El Negro, spurting crimson streamers of blood, danced a death’s jig and then collapsed.
Maguire tensed as the revolver swung to cover him. Holding his breath, he knelt and picked up the envelope. Slowly, he opened his coat to show he carried no weapon, then tucked the deed into his pocket. Every eye around the pit was focused on Fuentes who, sensing the time was not ripe, slowly holstered the gun in the brown sash around his waist. “Another day, Maguire,” he said softly, his real eye gleaming with hatred. “Another day.” Thin lips tight, he spun on his heels and left the arena without another word, leaving the box of gold behind. Though Los Serpientes followed without paying their debts, not a man stood in their way. Nor would they have, for all of Moctezuma’s treasure.
Maguire leaped into the pit and crossed the bloodied floor. He ignored the wet, red gamecock picking at the corpse of his opponent and headed for the ornate mahagony chest. The crowd sighed. Maguire closed the lid, grabbed the handles and heaved. Gold is heavy, but to the owner, light enough. Grinning triumphantly, he raised the box high over his head.
The spectators went wild. Money was money, but defeating the hated gachupine was worth infinitely more than mere pesos. Jugs and bottles of sour-smelling pulque and sweeter, potent tequila were passed freely as toast after raucous toast filled the thick air. Caught in the fervor of the moment, Maguire sat down and opened the chest, removed a fistful of gold coins and tossed them among the delirious celebrants. Fuentes’s threat forgotten for the moment, he struck a pose, hands on hips, and roared with laughter at the pandemonium that followed.
2
Blue preferred to be called Patrick Henry, but folks somehow always used his last name. Blue sounded less important, less prestigious than Patrick Henry. He would have settled for Mr. Blue, but had ceased taking issue. What was the use?
Feeling bored and sorry for himself, he followed the blaze of the train’s single headlight as it stabbed across the jacals of yet another tiny settlement nestled along the tracks. Beyond the light, hidden by night, were the hills and mountains, plains and tortured gullies of the state of San Potosi of Old Mexico. They’d be in Mexico City by the next afternoon if their luck held. Ahead, a shrill whistle blew and the locomotive started around a right-hand turn. The headlight disappeared. In its place was his own reflection, and a further cause for dismay. A wry, boyish face, complete with freckles, peered back at him from under a shock of violent red curls. He looked younger than a man of twenty-one should, even though he packed over two hundred and twenty hard pounds into a gangly six foot, four inches. Oh, the girls back East had liked him well enough, but here in the Southwest, a tougher, weathered exterior seemed in order.
The train slowed, then shuddered on an upgrade. Up and down through Mexico. He could file a hell of a story on that, boring as it was. On the summits, the train would gather speed and then plunge downhill. Groan going up, quiver and shake going down. Either way portended peril to the faithless, for if the train broke down or flew off the tracks the passengers would be stranded and afoot with Mexico City a grueling hundred-mile hike away. But of course they wouldn’t stop. Even if they did, only the norteamericanos, with their affinity for maintaining schedules, would mind.
As usual, the train paused at the crest and started back downhill. Blue sighed in relief and then tensed, his knuckles white on the edge of the seat. They were slowing! And then stopping. The silence was uncanny, weird. After two days of pounding noise, there was nothing. “Damn!” Blue said. “Damnation!”
Darkness. He pushed up the window and poked out his head. Utter darkness, still, and then the winking light of a swaying lantern. No one seemed very concerned. As nearly as he could tell, they were on a siding. The lantern went out. The train slept.
Well, that’s it, he thought. Here we are in the middle of nowhere. Wind kicked down from the foothills and moaned around the cars. Somewhere high in the eastern mountains lightning flickered eerily. Shadows in the fields took on lifelike aspects. God only knows what was creeping up on them. Writing would help. Anything to keep from dwelling on what might be out in the strange, almost barbaric country so different from the manicured farmlands of his native Connecticut. The train would move soon enough. He’d tidy up a paragraph or two, relax and get some shut-eye.
The story of Alpine Ranch lay scattered all over the seat. Harvard Van Allen had assembled the original acreage back in 1840. His son, Harvard, Jr., had increased the holdings. By the time Lee Van Allen married Corinne Madison, more than 2 hundred thousand acres of prime West Texas cattle land were inside his barbed wire fences.
Lee Van Allen was known as a proud, driven man. Bad leg or no, he was a hard worker who expected no less of himself than the lowest paid man on his ranch. Blue’s association with Van Allen had been brief: the rancher had rejected him out of hand and then ignored him, making it difficult for Blue to remain as objective as a good reporter should be. As a result, Blue had to keep reminding himself, the rest of his information was based on rumors and whispered, whiskey tales. Trouble between Lee and Corinne Van Allen. Bad blood between Lee and Maguire, the man Mrs. Van Allen had vowed to find in Mexico City. The relationships were murky, but of two things Blue was sure. There had to be a story, and he’d get it.
Blue began to write, and had grown accustomed to the preternatural silence when someone tapped at the door. He jumped. Another knock. “Yes? I mean, si?” Maybe it was the porter. He hoped so, even if his faltering Spanish was disastrous. The door opened to reveal a mass of disheveled, golden hair.
“What happened?” Acting as if she were an old friend, Mrs. Van Allen slipped into his compartment and closed the door behind her.
Blue blinked rapidly and tried not to stare. He’d seen peignoirs before, and Lord knows he’d seen Mrs. Van Allen a lot during the last week; but this was different. Far different. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know. Nothing important.”
Hoofbeats thundered nearby, followed by a cannonade of shots. Blue slammed down the window and closed the curtain. When he turned back, Mrs. Van Allen was at his side, trembling. “It’s all right,” Blue said, trying to convince himself. Cries of “Viva Madero” rang through the night. “See? Just a bunch of Mexes carrying on. Here. Let me, uh, let me …” He stacked the papers, closed the typewriter and shoved the whole pile under the seat. “You want to sit down?”
“Thank you.”
Blue stood, anxiously wondering what was happening. He had bet his last two hundred dollars this would be the story that would vault him to success, and so, with Corinne Van Allen’s grudging concession, had bought a ticket and joined her. To date she’d avoided him as much as possible without being rude. Now here she was in his compartment, and in a nightgown and peignoir, no less. The combination was unnerving. “I, ah, I’ve been working. A little something for my editor. Train travel through Mexico. Inspiration, you know.” The lie sounded flat.
“Oh? May I see?” Mrs. Van Allen reached for the pile of papers.
“Later,” Blue said, kicking them farther under the seat. “It’s only a first draft, and I’d rather …”
“I understand.”
The silence was deafening. Blue waited, unsure of what to do or say. Up until now Mrs. Van Allen had been uncommonly circumspect. Always dressed properly, a lady of manners. But the way she was sitting caused her peignoir to part and fall away from the bow at her throat. Underneath the light nightgown revealed and accentuated trim, rounded breasts swelling above a slender waist, and molded itself to her thighs.
Blue forced himself to look at her face. She met his gaze without a trace of coyness. Blue was the one who blushed.
“You are a handsome boy.” She leaned forward, eyes glistening with playful wickedness. “There was a time, dear Mr. Blue, when I would have …” She sighed and sat back. “But those days are long past.”
Blue gulped as quietly as he could, gingerly sat next to her and crossed his legs in the hope she wouldn’t notice what she was doing to him. “Well, I wouldn’t say you’re decrepit, Mrs. Van Allen.”
“I am thirty-two years old.”
“And one of the most beautiful women I have ever met.” That was better. He’d found his tongue again.
“For that, Mr. Blue, I shall buy your breakfast. If morning ever comes.”
“And if there’s anything to buy.”
“Yes. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Silence again. Blue wanted to start a conversation, but didn’t know how to begin. The air in the compartment was close. What did the woman want? Why had she sought him out? Comfort? Protection? He was big enough, to be sure, but it rankled to be noticed only because of his size. He wished he knew what time it was, for some reason. Wished his stomach wouldn’t growl. Wished he could think of something brilliant to say. Wished he didn’t feel like a bump on a log.
Suddenly the night exploded as another train, unheard as it had rushed down the hill toward them, rocketed past, whistle blowing. Blue wasn’t sure how she got there, but Mrs. Van Allen was in his arms, huddled against him, her head pressed to his chest. She was quivering with fright, like a small animal, only infinitely more soft and warm.
“It’s all right,” he said awkwardly when the train had passed. “It’s all right. We’ll be moving now.” Proving him right, the faint sound of their own train’s whistle piped down the tracks and the car jerked into motion.
Timidly Blue let his hand touch, then stroke her hair. Mrs. Van Allen stirred against him. He could feel her breasts through the thin silk of her gown and the thicker cotton of his shirt. When she raised her head to look at him, he thought her eyes the bluest he had ever seen. Her fingers touched his jaw and a jolt of electricity passed through him.
He couldn’t help kissing her back when her lips touched his. Again they met, and a third time. Her tongue parted his lips and she moved against him, a soft moaning deep in her throat. Blue’s hand found her breast, caressed the soft flesh until it began to swell and harden.
“No!” She struggled to free herself. Blue tried to ease her back onto the seat. “No! Please!” she repeated angrily, pushing him away.
She meant it. Face burning with shame, Blue stood abruptly, and, forgetting his height, cracked his skull on the ceiling. Stunned, he dropped into the seat.
“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Van Allen laughed, then realized he’d really hurt himself and sympathetically reached out to touch his head.
“Ang foo rit …” Blue garbled, brushing her hand away. “I’m all right.” Completely embarrassed now, he just wanted her to leave.
Mrs. Van Allen pulled her peignoir together and adjusted her hair. The silence returned, grew intolerable. “Do you know what loneliness is?” she finally asked in a small voice. “I don’t mean the word you write on some silly page. I mean the awful kind you live.”
“Ma’am?”
“It was mean of me, the way I’ve behaved. Mean and just not very nice. I’m sorry. I suppose at thirty-two a woman begins to wonder, but that’s no excuse.”
“Mrs. Van. Allen …”
“Corinne. Call me Corinne.”
“You don’t have to apologize for anything.”
“But I do. Well, maybe not apologize. Let’s call it an explanation.”
“I don’t think …”
“Really,” she interrupted, the words rushing out of her. “What else have we to do? Dark night, long journey, fellow travelers. The perfect time for stories, isn’t it? And you’re a writer, after all. Perhaps you’ll understand me a little better.” She paused awkwardly, hands clenched at her sides. “Maybe I will, too.”
His head ached. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to understand, but the snug compartment and gentle, rocking motion of the train were conducive to revelation. And once begun, Corinne could not stem the tide of pain, betrayal and love that spilled from her.
The story began in 1897, in Washington, D.C. Corinne Patricia Madison was a vivacious, willful girl of eighteen suffering from naïveté and ennui, and when Lee Van Allen happened along, she fell in love with him. Six months later, blissfully married against her parents’ wishes, she accompanied her new husband to Texas.
Shortly after their arrival, Lee’s father died and the ranch was hit by the recession of ’98. As the hard months passed, Lee was transformed from the cheerful, relaxed companion Corinne had married to a harried, work-ridden shell of his former self. Lee rarely smiled. He had few words and less time for his wife. He disappeared for weeks, driving himself mercilessly in an attempt to save the ranch. Lonely and depressed though she was, Corinne forced herself to hope for better times, and fought to save their love.
Then Maguire arrived. Maguire and Lee had been friends since 1885 when Harvard Van Allen, Jr. took in the wiry, work-hardened orphan from across the border. Five years later, eighteen years old and bridling at the bit, Maguire left to see the world and become a soldier of fortune. Ten years passed, the last one spent fighting the Moros in the Philippines, before he returned, haggard, pale, and suffering from unhealed wounds of both body and spirit. Since the Van Allen holdings demanded the bulk of Lee’s time, the task of caring for the prodigal soldier of fortune fell to Corinne. As was inevitable, they became friends.
Unspoken memories, indelible, pressed into the fabric of her soul like a leaf caught between the pages of a book. The memories flooded back and Corinne grew silent, listening to past yearnings and never-forgotten pains. She remembered a rainy day.
Rain … Rain singing to the ground.
What a lovely sound.
Drop by drop through the dark.
I can’t tell them apart.
Poetry amused Corinne, filled the lonesome hours and painted over, more than once, the drab days with a special mantle of acceptability. Rhyme and meter whirled her away on flights of fancy from the harsh West Texas landscape.
The messenger from Alpine had left an hour earlier. Now lightning glimmered and the muddy ground shone electric blue before succumbing to darkness once again. A particularly violent crash of thunder sent her reeling from the window. “Oh!” she screamed, backing against Maguire. She spun, saw it was him and regained her composure.
His hair hung in thick tousled lengths, black as the stormlit sky. Firelight danced on his naked torso. A shiny black belt encircled his midriff and hugged the soft doeskin trousers to his slender waist. “I couldn’t find my shirt. Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I just wasn’t expecting you to sneak up behind me,” she said.
“I called to you twice.”
Corinne softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound shrewish.”
“Lee is staying the night in San Antonio?” he guessed.
She nodded. “He sent word. A rider from Alpine delivered the telegram. I should be used to it. The ranch. Always the ranch. Ever since Harvard’s death Lee has driven himself, put this damn …”
She blushed. Maguire stood with his back to the fireplace. Golden light outlined the sloping muscles of his shoulders. His hands were spread to the flames. Corinne and a Mexican servant had nursed him back to health, and had vanquished the shroud of weary illness that had draped him on his arrival almost two months earlier. He had filled out since then. Color had returned to his flesh. Corinne suddenly grew aware of the pressure of the wind against the outside walls of the house. And though the wind was whining out of the north, the room felt warm. The simple calico gown she wore felt heavy and close. She stepped close to Maguire, then past him to a nearby seat. Chess pieces carved of horn were neatly arranged on a checkered field of battle. Maguire sat opposite her. Had that been a glint of desire in his eyes as she moved past him? The thought provoked her, led to other, more forbidding conclusions.
She moved first, a familiar queen’s pawn. He caught her hand before she could withdraw it. Lightning crackled down the sky. It darted through her blood and quickened the already rapid beating of her heart.
“I’m sorry,” he said, removing his hand. She looked at him, puzzled. He stammered an excuse, “You’ve cared for me, tended my wounds. I was so damn weak I figured I’d be dead by now. And I would have, if it hadn’t been for you.”
Golden curls spilling forward, Corinne lowered her face. Maguire reached out and loosened the ribbon in her hair. But then he stood and stalked to the fireplace and leaned against the mantelpiece. “What the hell are we doing?” he asked in a tension-filled voice.
Corinne rose. Slowly, her legs and feet acting without conscious will, she went to him. Hand trembling, she touched his back. “I think we’re about to make love,” she said.
Loneliness. That was the excuse they clung to. Loneliness … To betray a husband. To betray a friend. Loneliness … But the word rang hollow. She had bathed him in fever and had watched over his delirium as he relived some awful agony. She had brought him food and sat with him. Even fed him until his strength returned. And laughed as he entertained her with stories of the Orient, San Francisco, Peru and the Philippines. She had never known a man like him. Never known a man with whom she could share the loneliness.
Both of them knowing, yet both needing each other. Their bodies moved together, and he carried her into the inner room. There, caught in slow, entwining passion, he swept aside her clothes.
This is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong …
Both of them knowing; both incapable of stopping. At last they were one—two bodies caught in the timeless motion—and loneliness became love.
“Friends,” Corinne said. “And then more than friends,” she added, her voice catching as she recalled their first time together, and the sweet aftermath she’d never known with Lee. From that moment there had been no turning back.
“And then one night Lee returned a day early and found us together. He had a gun.”
Corinne leaned against the seat. As vividly as yesterday she could see herself twelve years earlier, standing in the doorway to her bedroom and watching the two men struggle in the firelight. She would never forget the animal sounds they made, nor, more horribly, the roar of the gun and Lee’s scream of pain. Nor would she forget the look of anguish on Maguire’s face as the awful realization of what he had done struck him with full force. Once again she relived the wild, careening ride, Maguire driving while she cradled her husband and wondered how her world could crumble so.
“Lee’s shattered knee was beyond repair,” she whispered. “He has been a cripple ever since.”
“And Maguire?” Blue asked when she hadn’t spoken for a long moment.
“I stood on the porch of the doctor’s house the next day and watched him walk down the street to the train station. The train was a half-hour late. He had been standing alone on the platform, I remember. When the train left, he was gone.”
They had stopped again. Blue opened his eyes one at a time, reached out with his left hand and pulled back the curtain over the window. The train had stopped on another siding. It was still dark, but dawn couldn’t be far away because the tops of the mountains were silhouetted against a faintly gray sky. Corinne, as Blue had finally gotten accustomed to calling her, slept sitting up and leaning against him, her peignoir pulled tightly around her. Her hands looked tiny in her lap. Blue realized he couldn’t move without waking her. “Corinne?” He touched her arm, gently shook her. “Corinne?”
“Mmm?”
He liked the feel of her weight against him. “It’s almost morning. We’ve stopped. You’d better wake up.”
Eyes not yet open, she stretched. The peignoir pulled apart and Blue swore not to look, then decided to hell with it. Corinne opened her eyes and closed the peignoir. “Just friends, remember?”
“Maybe you better get dressed. I can’t stand too much of being just friends. At least not when you’re dressed like that.”
Vendors outside the train were hawking food. Corinne laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Very well. I owe you breakfast, remember? Give me two minutes to dress.”
“Yeah.”
Corinne stopped at the door to the compartment. “I wish you could see yourself. You really do look funny,” she said. The door closed with a soft click.
Funny? Hell, crap and damn. Three hours of sleep, at the most. His mouth felt like someone had let in the desert. His eyes burned. The knot on his head hurt and he was stiff as a board from sleeping sitting up. Funny!
Blue groaned, hauled out a canteen from under the seat and drank a few swallows of tepid water before splashing some on his face and checking himself in the mirror. He looked weary, but passed it off. Who wouldn’t be bone-tired after spending half the night listening to a beautiful woman in a nightgown tell all about the man she loved. Men she loved. Two of them. “Too late for complaints, Patrick Henry,” he told himself. “Your last buck is on this and you’ll have to stick with it to the end. Nobody ever said being a famous reporter was easy. Besides, at least she’s friendly now. Shouldn’t be any problem getting her to introduce him to this Maguire. He might have a story or two himself.”
Determined to think positively, Blue locked his door and knocked on hers. It opened immediately. “We’d better move if we’re going to find something to eat.”
“I’m ready.” Her hair was pinned up and she looked even more desirable in a simple, hastily donned ankle-length violet dress. A brightly decorated wool shawl covered her shoulders. “Blue?”
“Ma’am?”
“I led you on and then talked your ear off. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”
“Mrs. Van Allen, it’s nice to be needed. And trusted.” Every inch the gentleman, he offered her his arm.
They paused on the top step of the train. The station was in the middle of a plain that lost itself in the predawn distance. Three or four ghostly gray adobe houses reflected tremulous lantern light. Here and there cooking fires inside mud-wattled jacals leaked orange streaks of light. The air was pungent with the smell of cooking fires, of coffee and sizzling goat meat. Always the earthly odor of tortillas and frijoles. And soft voices, waiting patiently for the sun.
“It’s so beautiful, don’t you think?” Corinne asked. Blue’s stomach growled. Corinne laughed. “A practical answer, sir. Shall we?”
Blue jumped down. Grasping her waist, he deftly lifted her to the ground. Most of the first-class passengers were still asleep, but the entire second-class section had scrambled out of their cramped quarters. Packed together more like animals than people, they took quick advantage of any excuse to escape the din and smell inside the tiny cars. To Blue the marvel wasn’t that there were so many of them, but rather that he could detect no complaining or quarrelsomeness. He wouldn’t have put up with what they were forced to endure. Not for a second.
They chose the largest fire. Corinne spoke fluent Spanish of the West Texas variety, and before long they’d drunk coffee and eaten some of the freshly cooked goat meat wrapped in tortillas. A strange breakfast, Blue thought, as he watched Corinne put a half-dozen more of the makeshift sandwiches into a colorful handwoven cloth she’d bought from the girl who’d served them. Not bad. Not at all.
The whistle blew and the second-class passengers dutifully trooped back inside. “Wait,” Corinne said, stopping at one of the fires where a vendor displaying a few pots had set up shop. “Hay café?” she asked.
“Si, señora.”
Haggling quickly, they settled on a price. The vendor filled one of the pots, handed it to Corinne and accepted the coins she gave him without offering to make change. When at last she told him not to bother, his face, dark in the dull glow of the fire, revealed no trace of satisfaction. Sullenly he doffed his hat and wished the lovely señora a pleasant day.
The conductor signaled once again and the steam engine inched forward. Corinne and Blue hurried to their car and jumped aboard. Blue remained on the platform in order to watch the first light of the new day spread cross the empty land.
3
A .38 wouldn’t stop them. Not when they were worked up. Good advice, but worthless. Maguire yanked a small caliber gun from a dead man’s belt. The .38 was all there was as the Moro leaped the barricade and, still in midair, cut down a man with his short-curved blade. Already bleeding from a half-dozen wounds, the native charged. Maguire held the revolver with both hands. He couldn’t afford to miss. Not now. He absorbed the weapon’s kick, brought it back into line and fired again. Practice makes perfect. Each shot scored. Flesh pocked where the bullets struck home. The Moro, knowing death was at hand, wanted to kill one last time. A primordial shriek filled the air. The Moro leapt, bolo raised, crimson steel describing a vicious, slicing arc. The .38 clicked empty.
Maguire bolted upright. A coffee-colored hand reached out, touched his bare arm above the coverlets. “A dream mon amour. Nothing but a dream.” The woman stroked his naked back. She loved the way the muscles fit snugly to his shoulders, marveled at the rippling layers across his scarred torso. “You were not with another woman?” she asked, jealousy barely disguised.
Maguire rose from the bed, crossed naked to the windows and threw open the shutters. Bright, clear light pierced the room. He breathed deeply and stretched until the bone in his shoulder where the horse had rolled on him popped.
So Dauphine had come to him. He didn’t even remember her climbing into the bed. Too much brandy. Two days had passed since the cockfight, and during that time he’d allowed himself an unrestrained debauch of drinking and gambling. Every man needed a celebration now and then to leach his system of cares and tension. A small chest of coins, part of his winnings from Fuentes, lay open on the dresser. Dauphine would have pilfered a few. Squirreled them away in the hem of her gown, probably, or in the lining of her purse. He grinned. Well, why shouldn’t she? If she was too proud to ask for money, the least he could do was let her steal some honorably. She wouldn’t have taken much, in any case.
“Another woman? Hardly, Dauphine,” he said.
Death was no stranger to him. He had faced it many times without undue fear. But the Philippine experience still haunted him, because of the sheer implacable insanity of the Moros. To be shot was one thing. To be beheaded by a maddened fanatic who wouldn’t die, was quite another. Worse, he’d come away from the fiasco ill and penniless, and had to work his way home on a tramp steamer.
“You did not call.” Dauphine pouted. “Three days I did not see you.”
“Who let you in?” Maguire asked, facing her.
Dauphine chuckled throatily. “Riciotti would do anything for me.”
“And you rewarded him,” Maguire said sarcastically. “I can imagine.”
She gave him a murderous look. “No other man for as long as I have known you, Maguire. Six months! Me!” she exploded, stabbing her chest with her finger. “Do not say such a thing again.”
“All right, Dauphine. I’ll even apologize, okay?”
She sighed and watched as he turned back to the window. His hips were narrow and his shoulders wide, showing little of his age. “I love you, Maguire,” she said.