Soon, they would be on the move. So, too, would he and Nena. The air clung to a bite of spring cold, but it would not last: the sky overhead was cloudless and pale. By noon, the heat would be blistering. They had to cover much ground before then.
Néstor checked Nena’s boots—abandoned by her side as she slept—for scorpions. Then, satisfied, he put a hand on Nena’s shoulder to wake her. She was warm with sleep. Part of him wished he could let her dream for as long as she wanted.
“Nena,” he whispered. “Time to go.”
Her eyes fluttered open. She sat up, casting a groggy look at their surroundings. Carreteros were passing around tin cups of coffee and warming tortillas. He helped Nena to her feet, and while she rolled and stowed the blanket on Luna’s saddle, he spoke to Diego about supplies. Soon he had a cloth sack full of food—tortillas and carne seca and some fruits—to keep them fed for the rest of their time on the road. He brought this over to Nena and the horses, and the two of them set to packing the supplies across their two saddles.
“One more thing.” Diego appeared over Néstor’s shoulder. When he turned, the older man handed him a small bag that fit into his palm. It felt as if it was full of sand.
Nena peered at the leather bag and brushed a few white crumbs off it.
“Salt,” she said.
Néstor searched Diego’s face. This man knew that what prowled the night were not simply beasts.
He knew.
“Be careful out there,” he said, then turned on his heel and walked away.
Néstor wanted to pull him back, to ask him a thousand questions. But the man was whistling to his people and preparing them to break camp before the sun was fully risen. He exchanged a look with Nena, who looked just as surprised as him. He handed her the salt to put with the supplies attached to her saddle.
After a few more minutes of tightening girths and saddlebags, they were settling into their saddles. He lifted his hand in farewell to the carreteros, then he and Nena took off at a trot into the gray dawn.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THEY RISKED TAKING the main road for several hours and covered a good deal of ground, keeping near the portion of the river that passed Camargo. At noon, they let the horses drink at the riverbank. It was silent but for the click of metal horseshoes on stones, the sound of the horses drinking in long, greedy drafts. Néstor scanned the riverbank opposite them as he refilled their water flasks. No dark forms. No glinting bayonets. The day had been quiet.
Too quiet.
No chachalacas cried at the cloudless sky. No chicharras hummed around them. When she was finished drinking, Luna tossed her head, ears flat against her skull.
A rustling in the undergrowth lit his anxiety. He froze, hand hovering over his gun.
A sharp squeal; Nena yelped at the sound. His gun was in his hand, his heart in the hollow of his throat.
A skittering of hooves over pebbly earth. A group of six javelinas burst through the bushes, bolting away from the riverbank as if the Devil himself were on their heels. He lowered the gun.
A soft laugh from Nena. “There goes dinner,” she said dryly as the dust left by the fleeing javelinas settled.
But unease slipped over his shoulders like a fever’s chill, slicing through the heat and driving down to bone.
Something was watching them. Whatever had spooked the javelinas lingered nearby, and he did not want to find out what it was.
He gestured to Nena, and they moved on quickly.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
BY SIESTA, THE horses were spent. Néstor found a thick patch of trees where they could rest in the shade, close enough to the river that they might get the occasional respite of a breeze. Heat rippled over the chaparral, wreathing him in the kind of sweat he felt would never dry in this humidity. Even the shade provided little relief as they watered and unsaddled the horses.
Gingerly, he removed his sling and tested his arm, swinging it forward and back. It was sore, but functional enough to groom Luna. He paused as he curried Luna’s back to watch as Nena walked down to the riverbank to refill their water flasks. Noon dripped over her silhouette; the harsh glitter of sun on the river beyond surrounded her like the halo of a saint.
Her comments yesterday about the scapular and the red dress lingered under his skin, irritating as burrs. God knew he had saved and saved and fully intended to fulfill both promises. The thing that irked him was that she had teased him based on the assumption that he couldn’t. For he was a vaquero, was he not? A man of dust who lived in debt to his patrón for the privilege of working the rich man’s land? A man who saw no reward for his labor until the day he died? He wanted her to know that he was a free man. He wanted her to know that he had the means to buy land and be a man worthy of asking for the hand of Don Feliciano’s eldest daughter.
Perhaps that was why he overreacted at her balking to pretend to be his wife before a group of carreteros. Because he wanted it with an ache as sharp and as present as the pain in his shoulder.
And when he had asked her what she wanted?
Her silence was like a mule’s kick to the chest.
He knew exactly what he wanted. He meant to marry her. To build a house for her and make a home with her. To fall asleep smelling wildflower soap in her hair every night for the rest of his life, whatever Don Feliciano and Do?a Mercedes thought be damned.
But if he said so much out loud?
Even at a time like yesterday, when she kissed him with a need he thought was only possible in his filthiest dreams, it would have stopped her in her tracks. It might have shattered everything they had built so carefully between them.
Not if he’s the right one, she had whispered last night. Nose to nose, their breath mingling.
In another place, that would have spelled the end of this dance. If they had been alone, if they hadn’t been in the midst of a dozen strangers, he would have confessed everything: every coin he had saved and what he meant to do with them. How, ever since he had returned to Los Ojuelos and discovered her alive, he spent each night staring at the stars choosing which words to ask her to marry him. Praying she might one day listen.
Perhaps she might. When the time was right. They had come far from her seething proclamation that vaqueros may call me se?orita, or better yet, say nothing to me at all. Still, he was cautious. Saying too much too soon could ruin everything. Saying too little, as he had yesterday, might be just as damaging. He walked a delicate balance, caution keeping him centered when he feasted on sights like the one before him now: the vision of her striding toward him up the riverbank, their filled water flasks in hand. She handed him his flask, closing her eyes and drinking from her own as she stood next to him. Water dripped on the front of her shirt. He followed the tilt of her chin down her throat and found each damp spot on her shirt. They drew his eye to the curve of the shirt over her breasts, which naturally led to him thinking about what lay underneath the fabric.
Caution kept him centered. Barely.
Keep it together, Duarte, he told himself sternly.
He stepped back from her and lowered his eyes. They caught on the pistol and holster at her hip.
“Do you want to learn how to use that?” he asked when she was finished drinking. To answer her curious look, he pointed at the holster.
“What use is it against vampires?” Nena asked flatly.
That was a fair point. “We have Rinches to worry about too, you know,” he said.
They walked slightly away from the horses and the hum of chicharras toward the river. He took the pistol and, as he unloaded it, pointed to different parts and named them for her.
Then he handed it back to her. Their fingertips brushed as she took it.
“Now aim at that tree and show me how you think you should hold it,” he said.
Nena cast him a suspicious look, then did as he said. She squared off with the tree and held the gun in a stiff pose with both hands, face creased with concentration. A surprised laugh cracked out of him.