Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  “Wonderful!”

  His eyes gleamed with admiration. Samantha exulted in the glow for a moment, before he turned back to his plans. She glanced lingeringly at his broad, tapering back and then wandered to the window. Halfway between the house and the creek, near where the Indians camped, she saw Nicholas squatting in the grass.

  “Come here,” she said to Steve. “What is he doing? Spying on those Indians?”

  Steve walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. “I’m surprised at you, Samantha Forrester. Any kid worth his salt knows what he’s doing.”

  “What?”

  Steve laughed. “Didn’t you ever try to weasel your way into playing with a kid you didn’t know? The first thing the outsider has to do is show interest. He does that by squatting in the grass and watching. Pretty soon, if I know anything about kids, a boy will run out and pick a fight with Nicholas.”

  “He does, and I’ll—”

  “Whoa!” Steve said, holding up a hand.

  “I won’t have them come here and fight with my son.”

  “How else is he going to learn how to get along with people?” Steve knew this was none of his business, but she was wrong to coddle the boy so. “May I ask you a hypothetical question?”

  “I guess,” she said grudgingly.

  “What are you doing with Nicholas?”

  “I’m raising him.”

  “With what goal in mind?”

  “To be sure he survives.”

  His face said, No wonder you’re doing it wrong.

  Anger flashed in her. “He’s alive, isn’t he? He’s been a very sickly little boy. All his life I’ve had to fight just to keep him alive.”

  “According to the Indians, the Great Mystery decides when people live and die. As a parent all you have to do is be sure what you raise turns into a man.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple, and even if I did, I don’t know how to do that,” she admitted.

  “That’s why most kids have two parents, one male and one female. The woman can show the girls how to be women, and the man can show the boys how to be men.”

  “Even if I believed what you say, which I don’t, I still say women are perfectly capable of doing anything they set out to do. All I need to teach him is how to be a person. And I can do that.”

  “Does he have a grandfather or an uncle nearby?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  “My son is fine!” she snapped. This felt too much like an attack on her for not remarrying. She’d heard that too many times already. At one time or another, every member of the Kincaid family had urged her to marry again, to provide Nicholas with a father.

  Steve shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “This happens to be a touchy subject with me,” she admitted grudgingly.

  “No!” he said, grinning.

  A sound halfway between laughter and a sob escaped from Samantha just as Juana walked into the room.

  “The trays are ready, señora.”

  Samantha followed Juana back to the kitchen, glad of an excuse to escape for a moment. She took a tray for Sender; Tristera took the one for Ramon.

  Samantha kept busy all day, but Steve’s comment about Nicholas nagged at her, made her feel so cranky she couldn’t concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing. Finally she walked back into the dining room. Steve wasn’t there, so she studied the building plans until he returned.

  “I think I want two more doors from the basement,” she announced casually.

  “Two more?” He looked startled.

  “I see no reason why I should have a basement with only one door. The basement is as big as the rest of the house. Why shouldn’t it have as many doors?”

  “The idea of a basement…in the past,” he said, “was as a safe place, accessible only from inside the house. Standing the door upright was a big enough change, I thought.”

  “Well, I like the idea of several doors. Unless you have a better reason than that, I don’t see why I should be constricted within my own house. Will you please make the changes?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” For once his usual sense of humor seemed to have deserted him.

  Samantha turned away, smiling. If he could tell her how to raise her son, she could tell him how to build a house.

  At dinnertime, Juana stood by the back door and called Nicholas, who returned looking flushed and hot. “Wash your face and hands, mono. Dese prisa! Mama espera!”

  “Don’t call me a monkey,” Nicholas said, protesting.

  Juana laughed and reached under his arm to tickle him. “You are a mono. Why shouldn’t I call you one?”

  Laughing, Nicholas ran down the hall. Samantha and Steve seated themselves at the table and waited until Nicholas joined them. “Did you get to play with the Indian boy?” she asked as she passed the platter of chicken to Steve Sheridan.

  “Dumb Indian! Who’d want to play with him?” Nicholas said, flashing her an angry look.

  Samantha lifted her eyebrows at Steve. See, he isn’t interested in playing with the Indian boy.

  “I even took my ball, but he didn’t care. He was hunting rabbits,” he said, sneering, then frowning in frustration at his plate. “It wouldn’t have killed him to let me help.”

  Steve winked at her. Samantha felt her face grow hot and averted her eyes, concentrating on the food in front of her.

  After dinner they moved into the parlor, which was well lit by kerosene lamps. Samantha picked up her knitting and settled on the sofa. Nicholas sat beside her, reading a storybook. Steve sat in Jared’s big leather chair and studied the house plans. No one spoke, but it was a companionable silence. Samantha felt strangely content.

  As the grandfather clock next to the front door struck seven o’clock, someone knocked on the front door.

  Samantha set aside her knitting and walked to answer it. Charlie Turner, the rider she’d sent to find and report on Ramon’s lost flock, tipped his hat to her.

  “Evening, ma’am.”

  “Evening, Charlie. Did you find the sheep?”

  “Mr. Sheridan was right about them rascals. They didn’t stop running until they reached the heavy brush in them canyons. It’ll take an act of Congress to get ’em outta there.”

  “Thanks. You’ve missed dinner, but Juana will have something around back for you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Samantha closed the door and turned back to the parlor. Steve had put aside the plans.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I’m going to get them back.” She picked up her shawl and headed for the door. “I shouldn’t have bought that herd, but I did, and I’m not going to lose it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to hire Silver Fish.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Me, too, Mama.”

  Samantha wanted to tell him no, but it wouldn’t hurt to let him come. His bedtime wasn’t for another hour yet.

  Steve got a lantern, and, with that little bit of light, they walked through the darkness toward the Indian camp, where the family danced around a smoky fire. The men moved with exaggerated, energetic steps, prancing like peacocks. The women danced with little outward movement, but the dance quivered through their bodies. The children copied the parent of the same sex.

  Suddenly all eyes turned their way; the dancing stopped. Silver Fish’s two male companions edged toward their rifles, leaning against the tepee. The children moved nearer their mothers. Silver Fish stepped forward, looked at Steve and Samantha, and waited. It appeared he held her no rancor, even though she had bought his herd while he was drunk—and he had ended up with nothing.

  “I have come to ask Silver Fish for his help to find a runaway herd of sheep,” Samantha said firmly.

  “The white woman, she has lost the sheep?” he asked, looking at Steve instead of her. Steve remained quiet.

  “I’m afraid I have,” she said loudly.

  Silv
er Fish grunted. “You pay wage?”

  “Forty dollars a month per man.”

  “We four go,” Silver Fish said, pointing at two men and a boy. He waited a moment. When she said nothing, he nodded at his wives in farewell, pulled his blanket around him, and led the way toward the horses tethered in a grassy spot beside the river. The youngest boy’s eyes pleaded with him to let him go also, but Silver Fish shook his head.

  “You stay here. Keep the fire.”

  The men saddled their horses. Silver Fish slipped onto the back of his and kicked him into a gallop. The oldest boy and the two men followed, two sheepdogs running behind them, barking their excitement.

  At breakfast the next morning Samantha asked Steve to ride with her to her favorite spot on the mountain. “I want to show you where to build the house.”

  “Don’t get too attached to any one site. We have to let the test results tell us where to build.”

  “I thought you could build it anywhere I want.”

  “If I was fast enough,” he drawled, “I suppose I could even build it on quicksand.”

  “I might not choose a site with quicksand on it.”

  Steve grinned. “Just giving that as an example.”

  He saddled two horses for them, and they rode in silence for a while. As they started up the side of the mountain, Samantha leaned forward in the saddle to help her horse with her body. The trail grew steep, the trees taller. A mountain laurel sang in the high branches overhead.

  “What has to happen first?” she asked, looking for the briefest of moments at his lithe, smooth-muscled body as he, too, bent and swayed to ease Calico up the hill.

  “Find a solid granite base for the house, find drinking water and soil with good percolation for the sewer system. We have to build a road to the site. Order supplies. Hire men. Have my building tools delivered. Level the site and clear it of underbrush, trees, rocks. Dig a basement. Build forms for bricks. Lay pipes…”

  “Heavens!”

  “…build a toolshed and shelters for workmen and stock. Order Portland cement, lime, lumber. Hire blacksmiths to forge nails and other things we’ll need. Maybe build a reservoir or a water tower, or hire a well driller. And not necessarily in this order.”

  “How do you decide where to site the house?”

  “Based on a number of things—the land’s ability to support the structure we want to build, availability of water, and the type of soil we need for a cesspool. Also how you want it to look on the outside and what you want to be able to see from the inside. Do you want it to face south, north, east, or west? Do you want to be able to see a moonrise from your veranda? Or a sunrise from your dining room? Or the reverse?”

  “What do you mean, how I want it to look on the outside?”

  “I can explain that more easily when we get to the site you’ve picked.”

  “All I need now is a good ramrod. Maybe I could hire one from among the men who already work for me.”

  Steve shook his head. He’d walked through the bunkhouse earlier, checking to see if he’d find a man to depend on. There wasn’t a-one he’d want in charge of his cattle. “They’re no doubt fine men, but all of them are young and inexperienced with gunplay,” he said.

  Her lovely eyes flashed in frustration. Steve didn’t tell her that the men who worked for her had probably been chosen by Bush for their inexperience, so they wouldn’t interfere with his plans.

  “Next time I go into town I’ll see if I can find a man,” he said.

  “Why not wait until we all go into town? Why make a special trip?”

  “I’m a fairly patient man, but I do like to make a few of my own decisions.”

  Samantha recognized the note of restlessness in his voice. He didn’t like being questioned this way, but she couldn’t help herself. “Ham Russell might kill you.”

  Steve laughed. “I guess if I rode in unarmed and blindfolded he might.”

  “No, really. Ham Russell is a vicious killer who might shoot you from ambush.”

  “He might, but I expect him to get busy doing other things. Let’s hope Chila Dart has work for him to do.”

  The climb grew steeper. They dismounted to lighten the horses’ loads, and climbing left little breath for discussion.

  About noon they reached the place Samantha had picked from her own trips up the mountainside. Steve walked the site for ten minutes before he came back to where she sat under one of the towering pines. A cool, resiny breeze whispered through the pine needles, sounding like the patter of rain. Birds screeched overhead. Their horses munched ferns growing up through the pine needles.

  “It’s a beautiful site. Might work, but you won’t be able to see the moon at all. It’s mostly in the southern sky.”

  He liked her site; she was pleased. “How long will it take to test the site for all the things you mentioned?”

  “A week or so.”

  “Why so long?”

  “There’s only one of me and a lot of testing to do. It’s much easier to move a house or a wall with an eraser than it is to move a building put in the wrong place.”

  Steve walked over to where the horses grazed and mounted Calico. “Are we going back?” Samantha asked, disappointed. It was so beautiful up here.

  “No. I want to see another face of this mountain.”

  The afternoon sun grew warmer as they rode south. Steve led the way around the mountain and stopped where one of the contours of the mountain provided an almost level shelf about halfway up. The desert spread out all the way to the southern horizon. The vista of pale sand and distant mountains, bluish and ghostly, was framed by a rugged growth of trees and bushes.

  “Wouldn’t this be hard to reach?” Samantha asked.

  “We’d have to build a road to either site.”

  “But it’s farther away.”

  “Not from anything important. Once you move the house up here and build a road, it’s only another hour to the old house and your spur line. You’ll be able to see the moonrise from your bedroom.”

  “It’s wonderful!” she said, knowing she had already fallen in love with it.

  Steve helped her dismount and led her to a spot in the middle of the plateau. Behind them on the mountainside, trees soared fifty feet high.

  “This is your bedroom,” he said, “and this is your front door, framed between these oaks.” He led her to the southern-most edge of the plateau and turned her around, so she could look at the spot where she’d just been. Her waist tingled beneath his warm hands; she felt conscious of every breath.

  “Now imagine the house soaring up two and a half stories above the ground. The basement will be half buried in the mountainside,” he said, framing the center of the plateau with his two hands. “Arriving carriages will see the gateposts framed between those two giant oaks. With the house gleaming pink, and the green pines towering in the background…”

  The image he painted was so beautiful she felt speechless. It would be worth whatever she had to pay. “I want it here,” she whispered.

  “Don’t decide yet. I still have to do some drilling, check the base, the soil, and find water.”

  “Find it all here.”

  Steve chuckled with pleasure. Samantha liked the way he laughed…and the way sunlight glinted off that tiny gold filling in his canine tooth. Darkly masculine, he looked as strong and sure of himself as a healthy male panther.

  He must have sensed her thoughts. “You look beautiful with your eyes shining like that,” he whispered.

  “So do you.” She hadn’t meant to say that.

  Steve leaned down and brushed her lips lightly. Her hand slipped up his vest to touch the short hairs on the nape of his neck.

  “You know if I kiss you, I might not stop,” she said, using a line one of the Kincaid girls had used to shock one of her beaus.

  Steve laughed. “I guess I can complain to the builder’s union if I need help. Should only take them about six months to get here.”

  Steve reached o
ut to pull her into his arms. His eyes flashed with desire, and she felt her body respond with a hunger that surprised and frustrated her. It wasn’t fair that she could experience such intense feeling for a man she didn’t even love, and yet her body burned and her head spun.

  With deliberate slowness, Steve lowered his mouth to hers. His lips, so warm and smooth, melted something inside her. She recognized her own voice moaning low and pitifully in her throat, but he gave her no quarter. His kiss deepened—and his arms pulled her so close she could feel the outline of his manhood against her belly. His lips burned into her, igniting fires on the inside, and she went weak all over.

  Steve must have felt her collapse. He picked her up in his arms and carried her toward a grassy spot. Sheer panic gave Samantha the strength to resist. “We’d better…get back,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  Steve searched her eyes a moment and nodded. He put her down and steadied her.

  “You okay?”

  “I shouldn’t have left Nicholas alone so long…”

  Steve narrowed his eyes but didn’t respond. He helped her mount and led her down the mountain.

  It was hotter this time. Sweat streamed down her temples and between her breasts. Confused, she concentrated on controlling her horse. The old house appeared much sooner than she had expected. Despite all that traveling they were only about an hour from the ranch house. She felt disoriented somehow. Could it be Steve’s presence confusing her so?

  At the barn, Steve helped her dismount. Again her body tingled at the touch of his hands on her waist. Samantha thanked him and moved quickly out of his grasp.

  He turned abruptly and led the horses into the barn.

  “You’ll join us for dinner, won’t you?”

  Steve stopped and looked over his shoulder. Narrowed hazel eyes told her very little, except that he wasn’t pleased.

  “I’ve got at least a week’s work up there. Might as well get started.”

  Samantha wanted to call him back, to explain why she had seemed to lead him into kissing her and then backed out; but she wasn’t sure she knew herself. Before she could think what to say, he turned and walked away.