“But you will tell me that you want me, puta…loudly! If you want to save your husband, you will do what I tell you to do.”
She knew with a dim part of her barely conscious mind that she was saying what he wanted her to say, parroting the words he had whispered to her, hating him but compelled to obey in the hopes that she could stall for enough time to warn Steve of his danger.
Then Luna’s hand clamped down on her shoulder, pushing her down until her knees struck the hard floor. Her heart pounded furiously and there was a ringing in her ears like fire bells.
Kneeling on the rough floor, her knees pressed against hard planks, she curled her fingers into her palms until the nails dug half-moons into her skin.
“Perhaps,” he said, his voice penetrating the thick mist of her fear, “you need some wine to cool you off.”
Ginny tried to twist away, but he forced her to drink some of the wine. It splashed over her white silk shift, over her ribs and belly, and onto her thighs. She swallowed some, choking on it before he took away the bottle. A coughing spasm wracked her. In a moment he came back to her and knelt in front of her, his hand bringing her chin up so that she had to face him.
“Now, perhaps you will be more agreeable, chica.”
Ginny swung a hand at him. He grasped her wrist, bending her arm backward, and laughed at her gasp of pain. She was pulled swiftly to her feet, falling forward into his arms.
He held her hard against his chest, ignoring her struggle to free herself as he laughed softly. “Ah, it is time, I think, for it to begin….”
It was then that Ginny heard the door slam open and heard Steve Morgan say, “Let go of my wife.”
35
It was all a horrible blur after that. Later, she would vaguely recall watching in numb, silent horror as Steve and Rafael fought, viciously, with a savagery that held her unwilling gaze.
Rafael Luna had planned well. With the Rurales he had hired posted just outside the door, Steve Morgan had walked into a trap, and Luna smiled triumphantly.
“It is customary for you to choose the weapons, I admit, but time has not permitted me to be so generous. You will pardon me for the breach of etiquette, Morgan, but I have taken the liberty of providing swords for our duel. I find pistols so…crude.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. Just get on with it.”
Steve sounded impatient, hard, his lean body and dark, piratical face reflecting nothing but hostile competence.
A faint, mirthless smile touched Luna’s mouth, the dark shadows behind him illuminated by a leaping red-and-orange glow of lantern light that seemed hellish and terrifying to Ginny’s dazed mind as she huddled on the dirt floor and fought waves of burning nausea. In her befuddled state of mind, she thought for a moment that it was Ivan Sahrkanov who stood staring at Steve with such a cruel smile of grim satisfaction.
But then the images swam away again and she shuddered as a new wave of nausea washed over her. She closed her eyes against it. When she opened them again, the two men each held a glittering saber, the lethal blades sparking faint glimmers of lamplight in tiny starbursts.
It was obvious that Rafael Luna was a master swordsman and confident of his ability. He moved with the fluid grace of a dancer, the gleaming tongue of his saber darting in and out, the clash of steel against steel a ringing, brittle sound in the turbid air of feeble lamplight and shadows.
But if Luna had thought he had the advantage over Steve Morgan by using the sword—after all, it was the acknowledged weapon preferred by gentlemen and aristocrats instead of hard-eyed American mercenaries—he discovered that he was very much mistaken. As proficient as Luna was, he quickly saw that he had grossly underestimated his opponent.
Air gusted from flared nostrils as Luna parried the smooth, seemingly effortless kiss of Morgan’s blade against his own. What had begun as a swift, methodical and efficient execution became a fight for survival. Beads of sweat dotted Luna’s brow and upper lip, dampened his skin so that his thin shirt clung to his chest.
They fought silently, moving across the floor of the room with savage intensity. At the door of the posada men crowded to watch, necks craning as they made bets on how long it would take the so excellent Spanish criollo to disarm and kill the blue-eyed norteamericano.
“Dios! He fights well for a gringo,” one of the Rurales muttered, disappointment in his tone at the thought of losing his bet—and perhaps the lovely puta crouched on the floor. “But no matter, for there is only one of him and there are many of us, eh? We have our orders, after all, and there is the woman…”
Sergeant Rameriz laughed softly. “We take no orders, even from Spain. The woman is ours, whether he wins or loses. We will have her and the silver he promised. Then we will take her to el capitán, and be rewarded for our generosity. Perhaps we will even visit with Cortina, eh?”
Rubbing his crotch with one hand, the sergeant shifted the rifle he held beneath his arm forward, a casual gesture but significant. The others laughed.
Ginny heard them and shuddered, terrified even in her fog of confusion.
These were men who had ridden with Juan Cortina, the ginger-haired Mexican who had been the scourge of the Rio Grande and Texas until recently, the bandit who had killed white settlers and collected hefty ransoms until the Texas Rangers pursued him across the border. To be at the mercy of these men—! Pressing her fist against her mouth, she fought back a scream, teeth digging into her knuckles until she tasted blood.
The two men moved in the glow of lamplight and shadow. The
