“Did Richard ever beat you?”
Sarah laughed without humor. “Beat me? He burned me with his cigar. He soaked me in a bathtub full of ice. He plucked out my eyebrows, he tore my toenails off. Did he ever beat me? I would have begged for a good honest blow.”
Longarm said, “Damn. I would never have thought a man could be that mean.”
“Oh, he’s well beyond mean.”
“How does he explain your absence? Surely, a lot of people knew he was married.”
She laughed. “Oh, shortly after the incident I was killed on a trip to Monterrey. I forget the exact details but Richard had me declared dead. So for all practical purposes, Sarah Jane Harding, Thompson, which was my maiden name, no longer exists. My parents were told and a memorial service was held in my hometown in Kentucky. I am dead except I insist on going on living.”
Longarm said grimly, “That makes two of us, honey. I promise you this, Sarah Jane, we’re both going to come out of this mess alive and well. Mr. Richard Harding will think he’s penned up with a dozen rattlesnakes before I am through with him.”
She suddenly reached out and clasped his hand. She said eagerly, “Oh, do you really think so? Mr. Long, do you really think there’s a chance?”
He looked around at her. “I know there’s a chance. I’m going to need your help, though.”
She looked distressed. She asked, “How can I help you? I’m just a woman, a watched woman at that.”
“Can you get me a gun?”
Her face fell and she made a hoot of humorless laughter. She said, “A gun? I couldn’t get myself within half a mile of a gun. Don’t you think if I could have laid my hands on a gun by now that I would’ve taken great pleasure at shooting everyone on this ranch? All these people who have treated me like dirt and slop—these banditos who work for Richard? Don’t you think I would have hidden that gun and waited for one of his infrequent visits and then shoved it into him and then pulled the trigger as many times as I could? A gun, God, I would die for a gun. Yes, I would be willing to die if I could get my hands on a gun and use it on him.”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Well, I guess that’s out.” He thought for a moment. “Sarah, how many men are there on this place?”
Sarah said, “Seven.”
“Seven?” Longarm was surprised. “He’s got seven pistoleros here?”
“Oh, you mean those gunmen like Miguel and Chulo?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, there’s only one besides them. His name is Martin. He’s Miguel’s brother. The other four men work around the place, tending the cattle and the horses and the goats.”
“How many women?”
She thought for a moment. “There are six grown women. Two or three are Richard’s putas, his whores. They are young and beautiful. They don’t do anything but lie around. The other three, or maybe four, do the work around the house and the cooking for the Mexican men, and then, of course, there’s me.”
“And you do the scullery work?”
“I do whatever they tell me to do.”
Longarm said, “There’s no way out of this wing of the house except through that hall door?”
She shook her head. She said, “There are rooms on this side and each one is just like this one. In fact, I sleep in the one at the other end of the hall. It’s not as nice as this one–it’s very small. That door leads into the main room of the house. Beyond it, there is an office and a dining room and a big bedroom and then another bedroom and then, of course, the kitchen.”
“So this is a pretty big place?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Don’t they have a place where they store guns? A glass case? A rack on the wall?”
Sarah nodded her head. “Yes, there is a rack where guns are kept in the office—rifles, not pistols—but they are all chained. You would need a key to the lock. I know that I couldn’t get one.”
Longarm said, “Let’s quit thinking about it for a while. I feel so good having you here with me that I feel nearly free. But I do want to say one thing. I’m worried that your husband-“
She broke in quickly to say, “Don’t call him that. He’s got another wife, in fact. At least that’s what he’s told me.”
“He’s remarried with you still alive?”
“You forget that I’m dead.”
“Anyway, I’m worried about how fast Richard Harding can proceed. I hadn’t counted on him being a federal district judge. That makes him a good deal more dangerous than I thought.”
Sarah looked up at him. “I don’t know why, but I feel safe with you even though we’re both prisoners. Lying here beside you, I don’t feel that anything bad could happen to me.”
“I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. I’m going to get us both out of here as quickly as I can think of a way.” Longarm reached out his hand and began to caress her right breast. It was firm and silky smooth with a big hard nipple, but still she stiffened up at his touch. He said, “Here now, what’s the matter? I’m just trying to gentle that horse down that you’ve got to get back up on and ride.”
She said, “I can’t help it. You must forgive me, it’s been so long.”
Longarm slid down on the bed and leaned over and kissed her on the corner of the mouth. “Are you willing to take instruction?”
She turned on her side to meet him and said, “Yes. Oh my, yes. I’m willing to learn anything that you want to teach me.”
For the next hour they slowly and gently made love. Longarm took great delight in leading her down a path she hadn’t walked in so long that it was almost as if she was on virgin ground again. The fact was, she had never been taught very well to begin with. Her husband had been a cruel, selfish lover with no knowledge of how to please a woman. When it was finally over and Sarah had been stirred beyond heights she confessed to Longarm she never even dreamed existed, she told him how different it had been, that she had never thought lovemaking could be so beautiful, so sensual, so gentle. She said, whispering to him, “It was almost like two people sharing a wonderful secret together, a secret that no one else knows about or will ever know about.”
After a while, they both drifted off to sleep. Sometime during the night she got up and left the room. She had warned him in advance that she would need to be back in her own room before dawn. She had also warned him that when she came in with his breakfast the next morning she couldn’t act any different. She’d said, “I’ll be laughing and gay inside, but you won’t see it on the outside. I have to act that way so they won’t suspect that we are in league together.”
“I understand.”
“And you’ll be thinking of how I can help us escape?”
“You can bet on that,” Longarm said.
He woke the next morning with the sun well up. Sarah hadn’t brought his breakfast and for that he was grateful. It gave him time to get up and wash his face and brush his teeth and run a razor over his cheeks. He did the best he could with stroking his hands over his hair, but without a brush, he knew it was still a tangled mess.
He hated to put his jeans back on—he had been wearing them for a week—but he wasn’t about to walk around in a sheet the rest of the time, so he reluctantly climbed back into the well-worn denim pants.
It was near eight o’clock by his watch when Sarah let herself back into his room. She was wearing the old robe made from blue blanket material. He tried to act nonchalant, as if there was nothing between them, but she immediately came up and kissed him hard on the mouth, probing her tongue into his. He pulled back and glanced down the hall.
He asked, “What’s going on? I thought we had to be careful?”
Sarah said, “They are not watching me so closely this morning. They locked the hall door after me—no one followed.”
“Are you Sure there’s no one in those other rooms?”
“Yes, I looked.” She nodded her head vigorously. She suddenly began to unbutton her robe.