Texas Blue

chapter 25



DUNCAN BEGAN TO WORK HIS LEG, EXERCISING until he was sweating. If he was going to break out of this place, he had to be strong enough to overtake Ramon in seconds, before the big man could alert any other guards. From bits and pieces he’d picked up, there were a dozen men working for Toledo and they took their meals in the kitchen just beyond his locked door.

He had no idea where they were the rest of the time, but pacing seemed to help him think. The sheet wrapped around his waist was bothersome, but necessary. She’d washed every part of him, but he couldn’t see himself standing nude in front of Anna, be she child or woman.

She watched him with her huge dark eyes as if she had no idea what he was doing. He thought he saw a slight reaction when he pulled his clothes from under the bed and found his guns tucked between the layers.

A few nights ago, after he knew they’d been locked in for the night, he motioned for her to sit on the floor.

She looked wary as if fearing he might be tricking her. Duncan started to take her hand, but she jerked back and he knew her fears. He lowered himself to the floor and hoped she’d follow.

She sat down slowly a few feet away, and he pulled a burned stick from the fire. With the ashes, he drew a square on the rock floor. “If this is the house, where does the sun come up?”

She watched him for a moment, then pointed to the left of the box he’d drawn.

“And where is this room inside the house?” He offered her the stick.

She drew a tiny square in the back away from the sun, and then she began adding squares to his drawing as if she understood what he was trying to figure out. A barn to the north with a corral. A road running northeast and then south just beyond the barn.

He smiled and whispered, “Horses?”

She pointed.

“Stores of supplies?”

She drew a circle to the left of their room.

For the next half hour, he whispered and she showed him on their crude map where everything was, down to the guards’ stations.

“Thank you,” he finally said as she handed him the stick back and began to wash the map away.

Duncan stood and forced himself to pace, working out the soreness in his leg. He listened at the door and heard nothing. The kitchen must be closed for the night. Which meant that Ramon, or maybe some other guard, was sleeping on the other side of the door.

Exhausted, he finally climbed into bed. Every night he was managing to do more, but he worried that he wasn’t recovering fast enough.

Anna moved to a dark corner and removed her clothes. Every night she wore a soft gown that had been washed so many times it looked little more than a rag. She climbed onto the bed beside him, curling into her ball next to him, almost touching him. Since the night she’d cried on his chest, she hadn’t come so close to him. He knew she wasn’t afraid of him as she was of Ramon, but she still didn’t trust him completely.

He moved so that he could whisper near her ear. “Ramon said you came here more than six years ago. He said he heard you were six or seven at the time. How old were you, Anna, when you came to stay?”

She sat up on her legs and looked at him as if no one had asked her such a question or expected her to respond. Slowly, she lifted her hands and held out all her fingers, then closed one fist and held two up on the other hand.

“You were twelve?” He found it hard to believe that even with her small build, the old woman had missed her age by five years.

She nodded.

“That would make you about eighteen now.”

She shook her head.

“Nineteen?” he guessed again.

She nodded, and he thought she was brilliant to be able to pull childhood off for so long.

“Why didn’t you, or did you try to run away?” He thought he remembered Ramon telling him one night that Anna had tried to run once and she’d almost died from the punishment.

She turned her back to him, then unbuttoned a few buttons of her gown. Holding it in the front, she let the garment slip free at her shoulder and showed him the thin long scars on her back from the years-ago beating. There were fresh bruises as well along her arms, as if some hand had jerked her suddenly.

Duncan got the picture. It wasn’t all that hard to break a twelve-year-old; a few beatings, but as she got older, Toledo must have begun locking her in. It crossed his mind that maybe the old woman knew or suspected that Anna, though small, was fully grown. Duncan wouldn’t put it past the old witch to make Ramon wait for his prize as long as possible, but Duncan had no doubt that one day she would turn her great-niece over to the man. Toledo had plans for Anna, and they were too horrible for him to imagine.

When she started to pull her gown up, he stopped her with a gentle touch. “No,” he whispered. “Let me see them all. I don’t ever want to forget what the old woman did to you.”

She didn’t move, but sat with her back perfectly straight for a few minutes, then slowly pulled button after button free until the gown fell to her waist. The thin scars, some layered on one another, ran to her waist and beyond, he guessed.

“No one should be beaten like this. No one,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. He brushed his hand over the scars, wishing he could brush away the memory of the pain she must have suffered. “Anna, tell me, how did you survive?”

She looked at him over her shoulder, but she didn’t say a word as she buttoned up her gown. Somewhere along the way she’d been trained too well not to talk, even to someone she trusted.

When he raised his arm, she moved into his hug. For a long while he held her, his hands spread across the damage that had been done to her so many years ago.