Beowolf's Companion

By JoEllen Conger

Attacked by banditos, Tonya Baldwin and her personal maid, Mindy face the perils of wild Mexico. The bandits shoot and kill her driver as well as her body guard. Tanya realizes she must escape before the bandits discover the wooden chest they have stolen from her does not contain gold. The ladies are rescued and hosted by a rich landowner, Senor Carlos Molinaro. Beowolf, an aging Russian wolfhound, grieves for his lost mistress. The hacenado pleads for Tanya to stay "while this old dog still lives." Her professional journey temporarily brought to a standstill, she stays at the desert rancho to companion the dying dog. But once he is gone...what will become of her then? Will the swarthy-eyed owner, Carlos, beg her not to leave?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613093689

Book preview

Beowolf’s Companion

JoEllen Conger

A Wings ePress, Inc.

Historical Novel

Edited by: Melody Bancroft

Copy Edited by: Jeanne Smith

Executive Editor: Jeanne Smith

Cover Artist: Trisha FitzGerald-Jung

All rights reserved

NAMES, CHARACTERS AND incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Wings ePress Books

www.wingsepress.com

Copyright © 2019 by JoEllen Conger

ISBN  978-1-61309-368-9

Published In the United States Of America

Wings ePress Inc.

3000 N. Rock Road

Newton, KS  67114

One

1880 Mexico

Blinking back the insistent deluge of tears flooding down her cheeks, Tanya Baldwin lifted her chin, determined not to make an unladylike display of her grief. She refused to wipe away her tears by reaching between her breasts to retrieve her handkerchief. She watched as the rancho’s battered green buckboard pulled her damaged carriage around the corner of the spectacular hacienda. The two-story ranch house seemed larger than life with its brindle-red leg-tiles marching across the roof lines in rows upon rows like French braids. The unrelenting shades of intense color of the tiles contrasted with the brilliant whitewashed walls, ablaze in the mid-day sunlight. With trepidation pounding in her breast, because she did not know a single soul at this rancho, Tanya stood rooted, just where the elderly driver of the green buckboard had disembarked her in the middle of the hacienda’s service yard.

As she stood there in the heat of the day, she watched the carriage disappear around the corner. In her imagination, she pictured the buckboard and the carriage looking as though they were having a sexual encounter, and for a moment she silently wondered what would result from a coupling between a buckboard and a carriage? She was grateful that her timid handmaiden couldn’t see her blushing. She hoped her flush was misunderstood by anyone watching her as her response to the beastly heat of the day.

She lifted her hand to check a palm against her cheek, feeling just how hot her cheeks burned. She was grateful her maid wasn’t aware of her thoughts about her coach’s sexual dalliance with the buckboard. On the whole, Tanya always tried to make a grand effort to present herself as a lady. She shut her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath when her body responded to the vision of the two coupled wagons. She tried to ignore the picture her carriage made with its front wheels raised up into the bed of the farm buckboard.

As the two wagons disappeared around the corner, they created a cloud of drifting silt that settled slowly in the afternoon heat. Tanya’s team of bays followed placidly without question, tied securely to the rear end of her wrecked carriage. Not knowing where her horses were being taken, her heart felt a sadness as she watched them disappear from view. It had taken an incredible amount of her earnings to acquire the team of horses in the first place. If she lost them now, as well as the carriage, there would be no recovering the lost investment.

The old man who had rescued her from alongside the road had promised he’d look after the team. She didn’t even know him, but she felt obligated to trust him nonetheless. She had been at his mercy. She gazed after them as they disappeared from sight, fretting she might lose them out here in this wild country where law was nonexistent. The horses and the carriage had been quite a financial investment when she and her guardian and financial overseer had landed in Puerto Vallarta.

With a broken front axle and two of her employees shot to death, except for her maid, what was she going to do? She was miles from anywhere civilized. She stood ankle-deep in the rancho’s red dust, feeling it invade her dress pumps. A sense of foreboding engulfed her. Without a common language, the old man had simply dropped her off at the back door of the hacienda without so much as a simple introduction to the inhabitants. What would become of her concert career while she was stuck out here in the middle of nowhere? What would happen if she were to just fall off the face of the Earth? Tanya lifted her ankle-length skirts out of the dirt and shook the residue from the folds of her blue silk gown before she navigated across the dusty yard toward the stone steps leading up to the inlaid stone veranda. A clamorous gaggle of black-haired children of all sizes hurtled past her down the flight of stone steps, as they fought amongst themselves to take possession of a soccer ball.

Gasping, Tanya stepped aside and surveyed them, thinking they were certainly well dressed for common country-bred children. She noted their new tunics and corduroy breeches as they, in their bare feet, kicked up a dust cloud in their exuberant play. As an artist, what that meant to her was that the owner of the rancho must treat his people exceptionally well. This simple fact heartened her.

That in itself might be good news. Perhaps the broken axle isn’t such a catastrophe after all, she thought, eyeing the large estate holdings. There might even be a commission for a portrait or two waiting here for her to paint.

The playing children seemingly had paid as little attention to her standing there as had the chickens in the dooryard. They scratched about in the desert soil, pecking up scraps, which an older woman tossed on the ground out of her gathered up apron. Yet, Tanya knew perfectly well the children all watched her. They couldn’t help but notice her. She was completely out of her element, standing in all this grit in her raw silk gown and matching pumps. Motioning to her maid, Mindy, to pick up their bags, Tanya turned and climbed the short flight of concrete stairs leading to the vast veranda. The old man had motioned for her to wait here for the owner. There was no telling just how long it might be before the owner finished whatever he was doing and come to speak with her.

A brown-skinned woman met her and her maidservant halfway up the steps and wrestled the luggage away from her maid’s grip. The woman’s square shoulders rippled under her faded dress. Her heavy, single black braid undulated across the center of her back as she turned to speak to Tanya, her broad smile exposing bright, square teeth.

"Bienvenida, Señorita."

"No comprendo," Tanya muttered, berating herself for understanding so little of the local language. If it hadn’t been for the stimulus of her longtime sponsor and his scheduling her performances all through the United States, South America and Mexico, she might never have agreed to travel through this backward country. Now here she was traveling alone without a chaperone...without a proper escort, or a man servant...with only her silly maid for companionship. She was on her own. She hoped her deliberate attempt at matronly appearance would see her through. She didn’t want to look as lost and immature as she felt.

The heat on the veranda shimmered. Sweat trickled down Tanya’s temples. Finally taking the handkerchief from between her breasts, she dabbed at the sweat trickling down from her eyebrow. Her Spanish wasn’t good enough to make any sense of the woman’s conversation, yet she followed her without question into the broken shade of the grape arbor near the open kitchen doorway.

In hospitality, she was offered a wooden, straight-backed chair. Glancing about, she could envision the peonadas in their worn work clothing, eating at these very tables at mealtime, their melodic voices filling the quiet patio.

Tanya waited while her handmaiden wiped the scattered crumbs from the seat of the offered chair. Reluctantly, Tanya sat down. She felt the chair  wobble beneath her grip and wondered whether the flagstone was that uneven, or the chair that unsteady. She eased down onto the unpainted chair, feeling the rickety seat flex beneath her.

My dress will be ruined, but I can’t afford to be unpleasant. If only Martin had been manly enough to handle those bandits, I wouldn’t be stranded here in the middle of this god-forsaken land without so much as a personal interpreter. She clutched her bosom just thinking of her bodyguard lying dead in the dirt with a bullet hole through his middle. Some armed guard he turned out to be!

Tanya waved Mindy, her maid, to come sit, but the silly girl refused to leave their baggage...what there was left of it. She stood over the bags as though someone were going to steal them...and with good reason. They had been robbed just that afternoon.

Tonya propped her elbows up on the sticky oilcloth nailed to the table. The faded tablecloth had been outdoors so long, large cracks streaked across its surface, now well impregnated with this morning’s syrup. Lazy flies circled in investigation.

The Mexican woman slapped the flies away with a tea towel and patted Tanya’s hand in sympathy as an older woman limped from the kitchen with a cup of steaming black coffee. She placed the cracked cup before Tanya, and offered a huge soupspoon, a crock of dirty-brown raw sugar, and a pitcher of cream, its spout closed off with a twist of rag to keep out the flies.

Tanya eyed the ragged cloth, not allowing her dismay to show on her face. She threw up her hands, and then chuckled. What can be done? This is Mexico. It hasn’t killed me yet.

She reached gratefully for the broken cup and helped herself to both sugar and milk, then reinstated the rag into the can’s pour spout. She stirred, breathing in the acid nectar before she lifted it to her lips to savor its aroma. Who knew how long it might take the land baron to be summoned? She may as well enjoy this moment.

While her maid remained stoically guarding their luggage, the other two women smiled at her sigh of pleasure before they returned to their duties in the kitchen.

Thankful for the filtered shade under the arbor, Tanya’s eyes wandered toward the boisterous children in the yard. She could detect nothing that implied the game’s boundaries or goalposts, or even whether the game had a purpose. The children, however, were enjoying the game with great excitement. She noted they had a real ball, which she saw by its cleanliness, was most likely brand new.

The boys that she had observed in the cities were fortunate simply to have an old sack filled with rags or sand...tied tight at the top. Its trajectory was haphazard at best, whenever compared with a commercially created ball, which made the playing kick-ball on the cobblestone streets much more challenging.

Suddenly, the dull clanking of a crudely cast mission bell brought the game to a halt, and the gang of children marched off the playing field toward a small adobe building. With serious expressions, the older boys herded the younger ones inside. The yard became as suddenly silent as the desert breath, whipping up funnels of red silt in the distant fields.

School, Tanya muttered under her breath. I must be so far out in the desert that not even a school is nearby. What have I gotten myself into? And yet, she had been relieved when the gray-haired Mexican had stopped to offer his assistance. Who knows what might have happened to them, had the banditos returned before help arrived?

Two

It had all started so innocently. It was the first patch of wild flowers Tanya had spotted in this dry, desperate landscape. Pull over, she had cried with excitement. Having difficulty, the driver finally located enough room at a narrow pull-out to ease Tanya’s carriage off the roadway. She used her key to unlock her small wooden chest, and selected art supplies to sketch the field of wildflowers she hadn't expected to see in this desert. After choosing a small canvas, several tubes of pigment and a small brush, she relocked the lid and motioned for the chest to be stored away again. Tanya picked up her portable easel and hiked back to where she had sighted the unexpected field of flowers. She set up her easel at the edge of the road and began mixing paints to match their magenta and bright red colors.

As she painted she had lost all sense of time, when sudden gunfire startled her. Her hand jerked, smearing a streak of red across her painting. Damnation! she