“Then you need to relearn how to be bad in order to be a decent vaquero,” he said, taking a bite of acecina and rolling the tough, salty meat over his tongue. “Fortunately, you happen to be riding with an expert.”
She shot him a sideways look. “So I’ve heard,” she said archly. “Your gringo friend sows stories like wildflowers.”
Néstor’s heart stumbled darkly, as if it were a horse who had lost its footing over pocked earth. Beto had promised to be unerringly polite when he kept guard over Nena. He had sworn he would be.
But other vaqueros talked. Hadn’t they all been surrounded by vaqueros on the road to Matamoros? It was not impossible that Nena had heard about the bar fights, the wagers, the rumors of his relationship with Celeste Romero of Rancho Buenavista. Had she heard about Celeste? What if she had? What would she think of him?
He had never cared what women or other vaqueros thought of him in the past. He was happy to play the part of a wealthy woman’s plaything. It got him what he wanted: better wages, better jobs. A precious look into what running a rancho could be like.
Nena was not the same.
His fears shifted beneath his skin; new ones rose and grew thorns. He did not know what he meant to her. Vaqueros may call me se?orita, or better yet, say nothing to me at all. He feared that he was nothing to her. That if he offered her his heart, she would take it and drop it in the dust to bleed whenever her father called.
That alone meant Nena could shatter him, mind and soul.
The realization left him unhorsed, defenseless, vulnerable.
And he hated that feeling.
He threw up defenses, swift as a reflex.
“Then you can trust my expertise,” he said, putting on the flirtatious mask that had won him the admiration of Celeste and so many others. “Imagínalo: I’ll take you to a big town, somewhere where no one knows who you are, and I’ll teach you to be bad.” He left acecina between his teeth like a cigarillo and spoke around it as he counted off on his fingers. “First, we’ll go to a bar. I’ll teach you how to do shots. Then, we’ll play cards.”
A scene unfolded in his mind as he waited for her reply: the two of them at a bar in a dark room, surrounded by laughter, the clink of glasses, and curls of blue tobacco smoke. Him standing close to her, facing her, dressed in his finest as he had been the night he returned to Los Ojuelos. Rings on his fingers and spurs of silver on his heels. As good as any hidalgo from a land grant family. Good enough for a woman like her. The sounds of the room around them fading as he met her eyes. Her taking the small glass of pale liquid that he offered her and clinking it with his.
“Can I wear a red dress?” she asked.
“As red as fruta guadalupana,” he said. The image in his mind shifted, dressing her in a frock as bright as the fruit’s glistening, ruby seeds.
“I want it to be bloodred,” Nena said firmly. “And cut so low the tías talk about it for weeks.”
This alteration to the reverie sent a bolt of longing through his chest. He cleared his throat and refocused his gaze up ahead, on the horizon. “I’ll buy the fabric myself,” he said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw a smile twitch at one side of her mouth.
“It’s a deal,” she said. “What then?”
It was intoxicating, how much he wanted her to trust him. To relax around him. To smile as she used to, when they were children. Broad and unguarded and sweetly dimpled, her teeth flashing like a loaded pistol in the sun. He would happily be shot dead by it any day of the week.
“I’ll teach you how to cheat, and then I’ll teach you how to shoot,” he said, “in case you get into a fight after you’ve swindled a man.”
This drew a laugh from her, a laugh so golden it pushed back at the dark clouds hovering at their backs. It created a halo of safety around them, a brilliant torch against the deepening shadows.
“Here’s another idea,” he said, egged on by her response. “In Laredo I’ve been to a brothel that has a bar and gambling inside, so we can do multiple bad things at once if we went—”
“You’ve been to brothels?” Nena asked, voice razor-sharp. Her good mood had vanished like the slam of a door.
Shit. He scrambled for purchase.
“I’m being honest with you,” he said. He gestured to his chest, miming wicked self-assurance: “I’m a bad man.”
“Then really be honest with me, bad man,” Nena snapped, echoing the epithet with a dose of venom. “How many women have you slept with?”
He paused. Let the silence stretch long. If he lied, he did not doubt he would be caught in it eventually, the falsehood tightening around his neck like a noose. If he told the truth?
He cast his dice.
“Eighteen, I think? Twenty?”
“You think?”
“There was usually a lot of alcohol involved,” Néstor offered with a light shrug. He could regain his footing. He could play it off by reminding her how bad he was. This was what Celeste and others liked, after all: he was the allure of vice in their otherwise tight-laced lives. He was their rebellion.
This did not help: Nena gave him a cold look, then scoffed. She nudged her horse to a trot.
“Nena—”
She held up a hand to silence him. “Don’t talk to me until we pass that maguey,” she said over her shoulder. Streaks of dusky purple loomed on the western horizon; the sky above it was a muted, faraway slate. She pointed vaguely up ahead.
“What maguey?” Néstor called.
“Exactly.”
18
NENA
NIGHT DEEPENED TO full darkness around them as they rode, thickening the silence between them. Made them more prone to swiveling their heads toward small noises in the chaparral. The calls of birds fell silent, but no song of insects filled the husk of their wake.
Occasional forks of lightning split the sky behind them, wicked and grasping. The air pressed against her skin, heavy with the promise of rain.
“There,” Néstor said at last, pointing into the dark.
Nena squinted at the jacal that emerged through the gloom. Overgrown huisaches engulfed half the patio, making its roof sag on one side; the doorway looked like a tall, toothless mouth. There was no door, no sign that anyone had been there for months, if not years. It was no fortress, but it was shelter. It was a wall to have at their backs through the long night. It was enough.
It would have to be enough.
Over the last hour, she could not rid herself of a feeling skittering over the back of her neck, down her spine. They had not seen a single soul on the road; this, she decided, was good, even if the isolation gave an eerie taste to the night. Even if she could not shake the feeling of being watched. Once the sun set, she even admitted to herself it was good Néstor was behind her, a pistol at his side. A machete for clearing chaparral attached to his saddle and bullets slung across his chest in a bandolier.
Still, she had not spoken to him for hours. She kept her silence as they dismounted near the jacal. She made to step onto the patio; he held up a hand and drew his pistol. He released the safety with a soft click.
“Stay with the horses,” he said, handing her his mare’s reins. “I’ll check it out first.”
He was light on his feet on the patio until he reached the doorway; then, staying to the side of the rotted opening, he stamped one boot loudly. Peered inside, pistol at the ready.
Silence.
“It’s empty,” he said, slipping his pistol back into its holster. She brought the horses onto the patio and returned his mare’s reins to him.
“We should never assume we’re the only ones looking for shelter out here,” he said by way of explanation.
“That’s clever,” she said.
“I should tell you about the time I nearly got mauled by an ocelot in a cave,” he said dryly. “Then you won’t think I’m clever.”
It was too dark to read his expression. There were times when he looked so much like the boy she had known that she felt a pang in her gut akin to a physical blow. This was not one of those times.
This man was a stranger.
“If you make the fire, I’ll unsaddle your horse,” he said. “Deal?”
“Deal.”