“I-I need to move you a little. I’ll try not to hurt you.” With gentle care, she rolled him onto his side and placed a second thick cotton pad over the entrance wound in his back. By the time she finished binding the makeshift bandages in place, using a strip of petticoat wrapped around his broad chest, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely tie the knot.
Ramon’s long fingers gently tightened around her wrist. “Do not be frightened,querida.We have made it this far, we will make it the rest of the way. We can do anything… as long as we are together.”
A painful lump rose in her throat. “I didn’t tell them, Ramon. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t me—I swear it.”
His eyes came to rest on her face. “Never once did I think that. You have never betrayed me. If one of us has failed the other, it is I who have failed you. Mine is the only betrayal.”
She glanced away from him, her heart aching, unwilling to meet his gaze. “There’s something I have to tell you. Something I should have told you long before this.” She turned to look at him, uncertainty making the words come out soft and a little too strained. “I-I’m not who you think I am. My family wasn’t wealthy… the way my uncle made everyone believe. I was born in a Pennsylvania mine patch. I’m nothing but a poor miner’s daughter. Compared to your family’s lineage, I’m not fit to carry a de la Guerra’s shoes.”
“I wondered how much time it would take before you told me.”
A mist of tears touched her eyes. “You knew? How could you possibly have known?”
“You talked about it when you were ill, those days at Llano Mirada. It made no difference then. It does not matter now.”
“But surely—”
He pressed a long dark finger against her lips. His hand smoothed her hair, slid under the thick dark auburn strands at the nape of her neck. Urging her toward him, he brought her mouth down to his for a soft, gentle kiss.
“Te amo, mi corazon,”he whispered.“Te amo como jamas he amado.”I love you, my heart. I love you as I have never loved before.
She started crying then. Big, salty tears that scalded her cheeks and splattered onto his bandaged chest. She loved him so much. She couldn’t bear it if she lost him.
Ramon smiled with tenderness, lifted her chin with his hand. “Now is not the time for crying. You can cry along with my mother once we are safely back home.”
Carly sniffed and her head came up. “You’re going to ride?”
“Si,that is the only way we will get there.”
“But you’ve lost so much blood, and—” Carly stiffened her spine. The thick cotton bandages were helping. The blood pumping out of the wound had begun to slow. If they could make it back to Las Almas, his mother and Tia could help her take care of him. They could make him well again—she would make sure of that herself. “Can you make it to your horse?”
“Si.For you,querida,I can do anything.”
Leaning heavily against her, he climbed unsteadily to his feet and together they limped over to the horses. She helped him shove a boot into his stirrup. Ramon swayed forward and Carly heaved him up in the saddle. After tying her mare’s reins so they wouldn’t trail on the ground, she let the little horse roam free, knowing it would follow, then led the black stallion to a rock and climbed up behind Ramon. Wrapping her arms around him, she turned the stallion toward Las Almas and they set off in that direction, the mare jogging along a few feet away, Carly praying she could handle the fiery black horse.
A hundred times, she thought they wouldn’t make it. Or that even if they did, that it would be too late. The rough ground they crossed had his wound bleeding badly again, leaving him barely conscious from loss of blood, groaning with pain at each agonizing jolt of the horse’s hooves. Several times, he slipped into blackness and only the hold she kept tightly around him kept him from falling off the horse.
All the while she kept praying, calling on God and the Blessed Virgin to help them get back home.
The night seemed endless. Darkness stretched like a curtain in front of them, the tiny sliver of moon all that lighted their way. The screech of an owl erupted from the shadows, followed by the howl of a wolf, and later the low-pitched growl of a bear somewhere ahead of them in the darkness.
Carly shivered to think what might happen if one of the prowling beasts attacked, or even frightened the stallion enough that she would lose her tenuous grip on the saddle. And the trail itself was a problem. They had taken a lesser-used path that was heavily overgrown and sometimes disappeared completely.
Just when she was certain she had somehow lost their way and would never get home, she crested the rise above the rancho and spotted the small adobe hacienda in the valley below.
“Thank God,” she whispered, never meaning it more. Relief slid through her while renewed hope lifted her spirits. Nudging the big stallion forward, she headed down into the valley, and a worried Mariano rushed out to meet them. Two Hawks appeared, little Bajito yapping at his heels, followed by Tia and Mother de la Guerra.
“Santa Maria,”Tia Teresa whispered, hurrying toward them on her long, spindly legs.
“Ramon’s been shot, Tia. I’m afraid he’s injured very badly.” Even as Carly said the words, the ache returned to her throat. On the trail, she’d been able to keep her fears under control—there wasn’t time for hysterics. Now that his family was there, it was all she could do not to crumble into a fit of tears.
Mariano and Two Hawks carried Ramon into the house.
“Don Ramon is strong,” the boy said. “He will be all right, senora… now that you are home.” He gave her an encouraging smile, then went out to rub down the lathered horses, grain them, and put them away. Tia helped Carly limp into thebedroom, then Carly and Ramon’s mother began to strip off his bloody clothes while Tia Teresa went outside to help Blue Blanket boil water to cleanse the wound.
“It is not so bad as you think.” Ramon’s soft voice drifted up from the middle of the bed. “I have survived far worse.” Now that he was home, some of his strength had returned. Though his face looked pale beneath his dark skin, his features drawn and tight, he smiled at Carly with warmth, and she reached out to clasp his hand.
“I am not going to die,” he said, “though perhaps I should pretend to such a thing. I am not above doing so, if I thought it would bring you back home.”
