Kate went into the trees and looked back. Fraconi was at the fire, his back to her. She bathed a little, splashing water on her face and shoulders. Then she put on her blouse and returned to the fire.
“Eat,” he suggested. “There may be much riding.”
She accepted the cup he offered and took bacon from the pronged stick hanging above the fire. She had not realized she was so hungry.
“You are an interesting woman,” he said.
She looked at him coolly, not sure what was in his mind. “Each in his own way may be interesting,” she said.
“You would kill a man, I think.”
“If it were necessary. One does what one must. One survives,” she added.
“Back there,” he waved a hand at the woods, “I found a dead man. His throat was badly torn. I think he choked on his own blood.”
She felt a little sick, and said nothing. “One dead man,” he added, “but two hats. One floating on the water.”
“Everybody,” she said, “should learn to swim.”
He cut strips from a slab of bacon and hung more on the prongs.
“I am no longer hungry,” she said.
“Eat!” he commanded. “We have much riding, and we do not know when we will eat again. Drink much coffee … it will help.”
He walked away from the fire to listen. When he came back he said, “They are moving again, gathering on the beach, I think.”
“But you cannot see them?”
“Of course not. They are far away. Nevertheless, I think that is what they do, and I think the Travens look for you.
“Last night I tell myself this. I look for the Travens. They look for you. So if I wait with you, they will find you, and I shall find them. So, it is simple, is it not?
“Besides,” he added, smiling, “it saves much riding, much looking, much trouble. I am, as I have said, indolent.”
She looked at him over her coffee-cup. “I do not think you are indolent. I also think you are a gentleman.”
For the first time he looked slightly embarrassed. “I am complimented.”
He sat silent for a few minutes, and then he said, “It is good of you to say so, but in all honesty I must confess I am something of a rascal, and Captain Connery knows it well.”
“And yet he has you working for him?”
He looked up, some pride in his words. “He trusts me, senorita.”
“You are not Spanish?”
“Italian, but I grew to manhood in Spain and in the Canary Islands.”
He saddled the horses and led them to water. Kate waited, listening for some sound from the forest or the beach. It was such a relatively small area, and yet with so many enemies about neither those who looked for her nor she herself dared attract attention, for fear it would be the attention of the wrong people.
She had for what seemed a long time lived only from hour to hour, even minute to minute, so that she longed for home – her own kitchen, her own yard, her own people. And Dal was out there, perhaps wounded and dying.
Fraconi lingered. “I would take you to Captain Connery despite the fact that he sent me for the Travens, but we should go after dark when we can cross the open plains without being seen. Those salt grass meadows offer no cover except here and there a low spot.”
“I want to find the Travens. I believe we should look because if we do not they will continue to look for me, risking their lives all the while.” They rode out, toward the beach. The wagons remained where they were, but there were neither horses nor oxen near them, and the beach itself was white and empty. Drawn up on the beach were three boats, but there was not a man in sight, not any movement.
Puzzled, Kate stood in her stirrups … nothing. Fraconi looked equally puzzled. “Three boats? Each, I think, will carry twenty men, although I doubt they carried so many. Yet how many? And where are they?”
There was a stilling behind them. Fraconi turned like a cat … too late.
There were a dozen men there, seamen by the look of them. All had guns. The man in command was a surly-looking ruffian. “Lift no hand if you wish to live,” he said, “and get down from those horses!”
Kate slapped her heels into her mount and as the horse leaped forward she dropped to the for side of him, Indian-fashion. The horse leaped into a run and was plunging for the sand-hills when a shot rang out, then another.
She felt the horse shudder as he took the bullet, but as he started to fall, she sprang free. She had not grown up on a ranch for nothing.
She sprang free, tumbled upon the sand, and got up and started to run.
Then they were all around her, and two men grabbed her arms, jerking her roughly around.
“Do her no harm,” the officer said, “that was most expressly mentioned. She’s worth a thousand in gold if she’s unharmed.”
He glanced at her appraisingly. “I’d give two thousand, myself!”
He glanced around suddenly. “Damn it all! Where’s the other one?”
Fraconi was gone.
He swore bitterly. “Did none of you see him?”
“It was her we were sent to get, sir,” a seaman said. “When she tried to get away, we tried to stop her.”
The officer shrugged. “Very well, forget him. He was of no importance, anyway. Take her now. She goes aboard ship.”
Then he lifted his hand. “Hold up! We must let Captain Hammond know, and Colonel Ashford as well. Jamie,” he said to the boy with them, “run off for the Captain now. Do you be telling them we’ve captured our prize. We will wait here.”
The boy ran off, and there was silence. The officer glanced at the men. “You may smoke,” he said, “but be watchful. She’s a tricky lass.”
“And a niece to Captain Martin Connery,” she said.
There was an absolute silence, then the officer said, “What was that you said, ma’am?”
“I said I was a niece to Captain Connery, whose ship the Golden Vanity lies in Mission Bay, if you will but look.”
She’d heard it said that seamen knew of each other as landsmen often do and that reputations travel far. It had been said that seamen, wherever they might be, knew of Martin Connery and his ship.
“Mr. Masters, sir?” He was a tall young man with blond hair. “We didn’t reckon on this, sir.”
“And neither did I,” Masters said irritably. He glanced at Kate again. “Ma’am? You are niece to Captain Connery, of the Vanity?”
“I am, and was with him only two days ago or so. The man who escaped works for him. By now he will be well on his way, and he can be,” Kate lied, “at his home within the hour.”
If a fast horse would not get her away a fast tongue might. “The Vanity,” she said, “has eight guns and a Long Tom …” she had that from a story she’d read, “and he can be at sea in a matter of minutes.”
Masters swore bitterly. “What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Kate … Katherine Connery.” Masters swore. The men were uneasy, glancing around, then toward the sea.
He turned to her. “Did Colonel Ashford know who you were?”
“He knew, but he is not a man of the sea. So he knew yet he did not know.”
Masters paced, swearing softly, bitterly. “Will that boy only hurry?”
Seventeen
Sometimes a half-truth is better than none. When one deals with the enemy one uses what tactics one may, and she was not being actually dishonest. She simply said, “Captain Connery said anyone who bothered me he would personally see skinned alive.”
“He’d do it, too!” the blond man exclaimed.
“He knows you are here?”
“I rode back with Colonel Ashford to see the other girls freed; then they took me prisoner.”
“What of the others?”
“They are gone, taken off to Refugio, and by now the people there know what is going on. There should be a posse leaving Refugio by now,” she added.
Masters swore again, and the blond man said, “Mr. Masters, sir? Running guns is one thing, even slaving, but who wants to challenge Martin Connery? Who, sir?”
“Be still!”
The morning wore on, and there was still no word from the forest. Masters sat on the sand, paced, swore, and looked off to sea.
Masters was wishing he was back aboard ship and standing out to sea. Whenever he got off a ship’s deck he got himself in trouble. At sea he knew he was, as a seaman, one of the best. Ashore he always seemed to stumble into trouble. But no man in his right mind went crossways of Martin Connery, and there were stories by the dozen of men who for one reason or another tried to get the better of him. Not one of them was now afloat.