After Eden Read online

  Tía wished she could see El Gato’s face. Would it be as handsome and fine as his lithe body?

  “Thank you, patrón. Thank you,” Elvira said, sobbing into her hand. Tears streamed down her face in a continuous sheet. Tía would be sick of hearing about this day long before Elvira tired of telling about it.

  “El Gato Negro, as God is my witness, my grandson, though wild, is a good, hardworking boy. He is innocent. Save him, El Gato Negro! Save my boy!”

  Racked by sobs, Elvira flung herself forward to kiss El Gato’s dusty boots.

  Tía snorted and shook her head. Leather creaked and groaned as three sombreroed bandidos dismounted.

  The stranger grinned over at Tía as if pleased she was not taken in by the wonder of El Gato. His deep-set black eyes twinkled with a look Tía thought was either admiration or appreciation. He swatted at a fly that had buzzed down. His arms, at least as much as she could see beneath his turned-up shirt-sleeves, were covered with silky black hairs. In so many ways he looked like Papa, a healthy animal himself—richly colored and fairly bursting with masculine vitality.

  The stranger looked at Tía, and she turned her attention back to the street.

  With the awkward stride of men crippled by too many hours in the saddle, the bandidos limped toward the jail. Mexican men near the jail pointed to the north. El Gato’s men hobbled back to their leader.

  “Bring him to me!” El Gato Negro thundered, his deep baritone voice filling the town and sending a chill down Tía’s back.

  El Gato’s men mounted their dusty horses, whipped their tired mounts, and disappeared beyond the cloud of choking dust they left behind. Tía gritted her teeth at this display of needless cruelty to the beautiful animals.

  “I’d like to whip them until their own folks wouldn’t know ’em from a stack of fresh hides,” the stranger muttered.

  Tía flashed him a look of gratitude. The crowd on the street waited expectantly, silently, except for the shuffling of feet against the rough wooden sidewalks and an occasional jingle of harness or stamp of iron-shod hoof on the dry, powdery surface of the rutted road.

  The man beside Tía eased himself around, leaned his back against the window, and crossed his long legs. Within seconds his breathing evened out.

  Tía poked him. “You asleep?”

  One narrowed black eye opened slowly and looked at her with chagrin. “Not anymore.”

  “I can’t believe you’d go to sleep with fifty men outside waiting to hang you.”

  “You’d believe it if you knew how hot it is out on that desert and how long it’s been since I cooled my saddle.”

  “What’s the heat on the desert got to do with it?”

  “You see that coyote dun across the road over there?”

  Tía rose up slowly and located the dun with a dark stripe down the middle of its back. “Yeah. He’s a little coon-footed, isn’t he?”

  “He is not. Pasterns are a little low, but he’s a clear-footed hoss if I ever had one. He’s never once stepped in a gopher hole.” He shook his head in disgust at her attempt to downgrade his horse. “Like a fool I left him out in plain sight. He’s the sum total of all I own or love in this world, and he’s too winded to ride another yard. He needs a long walk, a heap of rest, and water and grain. I’m damned sure not going to high heel it out of this town.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “They didn’t chase you all this way to show you the danger end of their guns for nothing. Don’t lie to me if you want me to help you.”

  “I can’t even imagine anything you could do to help me against them. They spot a pretty little thing like you I’ll have to kill a whole passel of ’em just to save your neck.”

  Tía grinned. “It isn’t my neck they’d be interested in.”

  The honesty and lack of pretension in her statements caused Johnny Brago to look closer at the girl. Her sardonic eyes shone with a sassy light that tickled his funnybone. She lived in the same world he did. He’d suspected it when he saw how she reacted to the bandits whipping their tired horses. She had round blue eyes, the color he called flag blue, and the sweetest curve of cheeks and swell of lips he’d ever seen. A fringe of short blond hair poked out of the pretty gray bonnet she wore.

  “It didn’t seem like much, anyway. One of El Gato’s men rode into the saloon where I was having a drink, and I had to shoot him.”

  “You had to shoot him? How come?”

  “He tried to drag a woman off on his horse.”

  “You were asleep then, too, weren’t you?”

  Johnny pondered how she knew he had been asleep. He’d dozed off in one corner of the saloon. Beer too early in the day made him sleepy. But he’d been so thirsty that nothing in the world had satisfied him but a beer. Some Indians he knew got mean, but he just got sleepy. To his way of thinking, sleepy was better. Of course he was only one-quarter Indian, which might not count for anything since he looked like a carbon copy of his father who had no Indian blood at all.

  “I woke right up,” he protested.

  “He rode a horse upstairs?” she asked, raising one pale blond eyebrow.

  “How’d you know that?” Johnny looked at the mouthy little blonde with new respect. She was either durned smart or one of the best guessers he’d ever met. The Mexican bandit had ridden his horse right up the stairs, snatched up one of the whores, and was on his way out the door with her when Johnny woke up and plugged him. Folks asked him why he’d done it, and he couldn’t think why exactly except that he didn’t think a woman ought to be carried off against her will. His friend Tom had said, “Hell, she was just a whore,” but her being what she was didn’t matter to Johnny. She hadn’t wanted to be kidnapped. And he hadn’t liked the look of the bandit anyway. Johnny hadn’t killed the bandit. That was probably his mistake. If he had killed the drunken bandido, the man wouldn’t have brought fifty more bandits down on his head.

  Tía laughed at the young man’s discomfort at her knowing what he’d been up to. Every town had some kind of whorehouse. According to the gossip around Mama’s kitchen table, all the cowboys went upstairs at least once a week, more often if they could afford it and could find some way to get into town. They claimed some of the gamblers and bandits who lived in the hotel went upstairs every day if their money held out.

  “What’s your name?” she demanded.

  “Johnny. What’s yours?”

  “Tía.”

  The blast of a shotgun rattled the window. Tía turned and peered through the curtain. She didn’t dare call attention to them by moving the curtain. One of El Gato’s men lowered the shotgun he had fired into the air. Slender young vaqueros, rosy-cheeked girls, stoop-shouldered old men, smooth-faced, buxom women, and round-eyed children—barely breathing in their excitement—lined both sides of the road and crowded as close as they dared to their hero and protector. Tall and broad-shouldered, El Gato sat his horse like a king. Tía could easily fall in love with a man who sat a horse like that. She wished he would turn around so she could see his face.

  A sharp biting sound—like the sudden yip of a coyote—caused Tía to look south. Belly down, arms folded over his face for protection, flailing at the end of a rope tied to the saddle horn of one of El Gato’s men, Bethel Johnson bounced over the rough, scorched ground. A funnel of red dust floated above him.

  Tía had never liked Bethel—whenever she passed him on the street his gaze crawled over her body like ants over sweet bread—but her heart pounded with dread and fear for him now. Where were his deputies? Usually the three of them were inseparable. Tía looked at the stranger beside her, who had also turned to look out. His warm shoulder brushed hers. Tía felt that one spot of contact travel the length of her body.

  Johnny glanced over at the pretty little blonde. Her look seemed to accuse him. Johnny shook his head. “He ain’t done me no favors. That’s how I got into this spot—minding other folks’ business.”

  Two of El Gato’s men jerke
d Bethel to his feet. He staggered drunkenly as if from a blow to the head and faced the dress shop. For one moment his gaze—wild, drenched with fear—seemed to connect with Tía. She shivered helplessly.

  Other men brought Elvira’s son, Fidelio, from the jail. Now Fidelio and Bethel faced Tía and waited. In a stern voice El Gato questioned Bethel and then Fidelio until he seemed satisfied he had heard the full story from each of them. Then he raised his arms and spoke to the Mexicans, who crowded around his horse. Tía held her breath. Turn around, she prayed. If I’m going to be in love, I want to see your face.

  “All those who believe this swine’s story, raise your voices in his behalf,” he yelled, pointing to Bethel. Raised in anger like that, El Gato’s voice sounded vaguely familiar to Tía. She strained forward, wondering where she might have heard that rich baritone before. Could El Gato be someone known to her? Perhaps one of the hunted men who rode in and out of Tubac?

  On the street, silence reigned. No white man stood in this crowd, and no one stepped forward now to defend the trembling marshal. Tubac was a Mexican town, but the men who ran it were white, no doubt a holdover from the days when Tubac was a garrison town. The Mexicans were accustomed to being ruled by either the Spaniards or the Americans. Tía had mixed loyalties. Her father was Spanish, her mother English, from an upper-class family in Albany, New York. But the Garcia-Lorcas lived among the Mexicans as if they were Mexican.

  Mama laughingly said that it allowed her more freedom. White women were trapped in what she called the “Anglo myth of virtue.” Simple Mexican women were free of that stifling Anglo myth and could—outside the shadow of the Church—live almost as they pleased. So amazingly, even though she was as blond and blue-eyed as Tía, Rita Garcia-Lorca lived as a Mexican. People believed her rather than trying to explain to themselves how a white woman could live in such a fashion. Her fate was no different from that of Mary de Crow. Mary had been one of Mama’s few white friends in Prescott. She’d come from Texas with a black man, lived with him for two years, then left him for a Mexican man. Respectable folks—brown, black, or white—had no trouble believing Mary was Mexican. Somehow only the unrespectable ones seemed to know she was white. That’s how Tía knew Mary wasn’t black or brown. When Mama moved back to Tubac, they’d lost track of Mary.

  El Gato Negro turned back to Bethel Johnson and waved his hand. Bethel’s knees buckled. Three bandidos stepped forward, caught him, and half carried him to a horse standing in front of the saloon. A bandido in a patched serape helped them hoist Bethel onto the passive horse, swishing its tail at flies. The other two rough men supported Bethel’s weight so he didn’t fall off.

  The bandido with the patched serape put a rope around the sagging, dazed marshal’s neck and led the confiscated horse nearer the saloon. He threw the free end of the rope up and around a wooden porch overhang and secured it. Then, without ceremony, he slapped the horse from under Bethel.

  Tía shook her head and glanced meaningfully at the man beside her. “Maybe you better git.”

  Johnny’s dark eyes flashed with humor and appreciation at her astuteness. “Reckon I better, but I doubt I can walk fast enough to outrun fifty bandits, even if their horses are a mite tired.”

  Outside, a glad cry rose from the crowd. Other justice was dispensed, but Tía preferred not to watch. While she wished folks no harm, she was practical enough to know she couldn’t stop El Gato’s justice. She contented herself with waiting and sneaking looks at the man beside her. He’d been riding hard. His clothes smelled dusty and sweaty. Even his dark leather vest was covered with a fine mist of dust. At some point she noticed the noises from the crowd outside had changed.

  Then El Gato’s voice rose to ask if the citizens of Tubac had any further cases for him to judge. No one responded.

  “Now that the three oppressors have been dealt justice, we will have a celebration!” Whoops and hollers reverberated in the street.

  Bandidos, firing guns into the air, spurred their horses toward the several saloons in town. Bullets zinged overhead, and the window above Tía was hit.

  The stranger scrambled over her instantly and flattened her to the floor with his body. The window quivered for a moment, then shattered and fell. Pieces of glass hit the floor by Tía’s face. Gunshots zinged overhead and ripped into the wall at the back of the small shop. Tía gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, dreading the feel of bullets slamming into her flesh.

  Then, as suddenly as it had started, the firing stopped. Tía didn’t move. The stranger felt too still. “Are you dead?” she whispered.

  “Don’t know.” His voice sounded odd, sort of tight and harsh.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered. Tía wiggled around until she turned over beneath him to face him. His eyes were open. The look in them reminded her of how she felt when she rode Cactus Flower and got herself all steamed up.

  He raised his eyebrows at her in a look that seemed to fuel her agitation, then he sat up and carefully brushed the glass off her. A faint pulse rose and then throbbed insistently between her legs. Tía gasped and moistened her lips. She felt a shocking connection with Johnny. Looking into his eyes, she suddenly knew what men did to women and why. It must be this overpowering feeling of connection that drove men to spend all their money with whores. Only this feeling could explain why they made such fools of themselves over women. And why women found them so comical and helpless at times. Tía was relieved to have finally figured out the puzzle.

  Johnny’s face was too close. Her eyes felt as though they might cross from trying to see him plainly. His warm breath fanned her cheek. She wanted to look away, but something in his eyes had captured her interest and would not let go. Tía licked her lips nervously. His gaze darted from her eyes to her lips and back again.

  His mouth opened, as if to speak, but then without seeming to move, his warm, open mouth touched her lips. A spear of heat rushed inside her, and she was shocked by the feel and taste of Johnny’s tongue, tantalizing her and moving inside her, causing a rush of feeling that made her knees as weak as water.

  An involuntary shudder rippled through her body, and she felt herself somehow moving from not touching him to being pressed dangerously against him. Her arms slipped up to tighten around his sturdy neck. Tía knew next to nothing about kissing, but this couldn’t be kissing. Elmo had kissed her only last week. Elmo’s mouth had felt wrinkled and dry. Johnny’s mouth felt as smooth and hot as sun-steeped apricots after you got past the skin—all heated and ripe and soft inside. His mouth moved, and strangely her mouth did, too. She kissed him with a hunger so deep it would have scared her if she’d been warned about it, but since it was only happening this second, it didn’t scare her at all. Something she’d never felt before guided her body, and she sighed, content that she would feed here until her body was satisfied. Her body was following its own wisdom now.

  Johnny had rearranged Tía, so she was pressed against the length of him. Under her clutching fingers, his shirt and the incurving part of his back were wet with sweat. Freed up to move as she wanted, she still couldn’t get either close enough or satisfied enough to let go of him.

  Suddenly she heard a loud voice: “Find that gringo and bring him to me.” In her mind’s eye she saw the contemptuous curl of her papa’s lips. No one said gringo with the same growl and snarl as Papa.

  Jolted back to reality, Tía opened her eyes and tried to get loose, but she only managed to poke Johnny in the eye with the brim of her bonnet.

  “Take this thing off,” he protested, tugging at the bonnet. “You almost blinded me.”

  “No…” She held tight to it. It was the most elegant bonnet she had ever tried on. If El Gato discovered them, she wanted to be wearing it.

  Johnny relented and kissed her again. Then Tía remembered where she was. And who was outside. That had not been Papa’s voice. It was El Gato. Slowly she relaxed back into Johnny’s arms.

  Johnny expelled a frustrated breath. “I gotta go,” he whispered.


  “You sure do.”

  “You live around here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me tomorrow or the next day or the next. I’ll get back here as soon as I can. Will you meet me?”

  Tía nodded in agreement.

  He touched her cheek. “Tía,” he whispered. “It suits you. Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out two dollars. “Buy that blasted bonnet you love so much.”

  Tía started to protest, but Johnny pulled her close and hugged her so hard she felt sure her ribs would crack. Even so, it wasn’t quite tight enough for that hungry part of her.

  “Stay here,” he ordered. “Don’t even look out there. They might see you. And I can’t save you from all of ’em.”

  He let her go and crawled toward the back door. His booted feet disappeared into the alley. Unable to help herself, Tía struggled up and looked out the window. Now three gringos hung from ropes—three men who only moments before had been as alive as she.

  As if the peasants had gone mad with the freedom that was theirs as long as their champion, El Gato Negro, ruled Tubac, the town filled with the sounds of revelry—laughter, music, loud bragging, and the shouts of jubilant children.

  Tía stood up and walked carefully toward the back of the store. Cactus Flower was tethered to the hitching post two stores down, in plain sight of El Gato’s men. She would have to walk.

  The alley was empty except for a scrawny yellow cat that meowed loudly and plaintively when he saw her step into the alley. Staying in the middle, as far away from either side as she could get lest someone reach out and grab her, Tía walked as fast as she could without wearing herself out. It was a long walk home. Johnny was nowhere in sight.

  Bright, hot sun beat down on her, and the alley gave way to a side street bordered by faded wooden shacks set back from the wide road. With the sounds of the revelers behind her and only the barking of dogs, whinnying of horses, and the soft, crunching sound of her boots pressing into the sand to keep her company, Tía quickly regained control of her self.