Perhaps his own fear of a woman’s anger explained why he’d just walked away from Caroline, breaking off what had been a good relationship. He had a history of not giving two chances to any woman. Looking back, he realized the breaks had always come after some show of anger by the woman. Only Samantha Forrester had ever been able to show her anger and not drive him away.
Oh, he’d wanted to go at first, but the house had held him. Then he’d stopped wanting to leave. Samantha was different. Her anger lacked the bite and venom of a Chila Dart. Samantha never got so angry she forgot what was important. And her anger was based on fear, usually for her son or someone she cared about.
At least now he realized what had held him here in spite of his proclivity to run away from any angry female. Samantha was the woman of his dreams, but unfortunately he wasn’t the man of hers. He had done everything he could to win her, but she was still in love with Kincaid.
Steve ached from that knowledge. But even aching, he knew that when the house was truly finished, he’d leave. She had cared enough to try to keep Chila Dart from killing him, but not enough to ask him to stay. She wasn’t about to do anything that would tie her up in case her beloved broke free of his wife. And now, loving her the way he did, Steve understood even that. If he had even a tiny hope she might someday love him, he’d do whatever he had to do to stay free for her.
But that was an empty hope. He would finish her adobe palace and ride away to pursue a career that now felt like an albatross around his neck. He would spend the rest of his life loving her from a distance. Samantha Forrester was the woman he could never forget and never have.
Knowing what he knew now, he could truly forgive his father. Probably loving Chila, feeling all the guilt of his betrayal, and knowing Chila had once loved his son, he’d held on, hoping she would come to her senses.
Steve may have dozed off. He opened his eyes feeling slightly startled. Some sound had jolted him. He waited, but heard only bird calls and the sounds of men working below. A few hammers smacking into wood, a few lusty cries, a child’s piping voice. Probably Nicholas.
Poor Nicholas.
Suddenly Steve knew what was wrong with Nicholas. Samantha had gotten her release after the Indians fell ill. She had wallowed chin deep in their pain and misery. She had held them while they died, felt their deaths all the way to her soul, and cried over their graves. But Nicholas hadn’t. He’d suffered all that guilt and pain alone. Nicholas needed what Samantha had had. He needed to be part of it, suffer it, and let it go.
But how? His mind stayed blank a long time. Then he knew. He would send a messenger to Uncheedah. She’d help him.
He should have done this a long time ago, but he realized he’d lacked the courage to push Samantha as hard as he’d have had to. But now, knowing what he did about his own past—and that he had absolutely nothing to lose anyway—he could do what needed to be done.
Steve woke at four o’clock in the morning. He dressed quickly and walked to the barn to saddle one of Samantha’s horses. He wrote a note for Ian and gave it to the head cook, so no one would worry about him, then slipped away before dawn.
The desert was still gray by the time he reached the foot of the mountain. He pointed his horse southeast. The sun came up and rose steadily in the sky behind him. He rode past flowering turpentine bushes and the soaring saguaro cacti that were the hallmark of the Papago Indian Reservation. By noon he entered the small settlement at North Komelik and spotted the Indian agent’s house. It was better built than the others. Steve had been gone before this one was built.
Steve dismounted at the door. A woman inside looked up and walked to the door. “Yes?” she asked.
“I—is—” Steve couldn’t find the words.
The woman peered at him a moment. “You’re here to see your father, aren’t you?”
Steve nodded, too stricken to do more.
The woman turned away. “Arden, your son is here.”
Those words jolted Steve all the way to his heels. He had ridden all this way without figuring out what he was going to say or how.
Chandler grunted and strode to the door. He looked as startled as Steve felt. For a moment Steve just looked at the man who had fathered him.
“Sir…you didn’t ask—and I don’t even know that it’s necessary—but I wanted to tell you—” Steve swallowed. What had seemed so necessary in the middle of the night that it had gotten him out of bed now seemed ludicrous. But the look on Chandler’s face was of a man dying inside. The woman, slightly to the left of him, seemed to wait without breathing.
“Yes…Go on, boy.”
Feeling like a fool, Steve took a breath and wished he’d gotten lost in the desert instead. He’d probably imagined that Chandler had wanted his forgiveness. But it was too late now. “I wanted to tell you…in case you might feel like you need it…that I…I forgive you.”
Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Chandler cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “I can’t believe we just left you standing in the sun. Come in. Come in out of the heat and have some of Selena’s lemonade. She makes the best lemonade this side of the Mississippi.”
Next, Steve rode to Uncheedah’s house. Seeing Crows Walking sitting in the shade of the ramada, smoking his pipe, upset Steve. He knew Samantha had won her court case against Crows Walking. And that only made him feel more love for his foster father. He realized he still wanted Crows Walking’s approval and love, though it might never be forthcoming in any recognizable way. Uncheedah saw him and stepped outside to greet him.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, smiling at the woman who’d raised him. Uncheedah was not demonstrative by white standards, but her smile—shy and hopeful and filled with the same love he had seen beaming down at him when he was a boy—caused his heart to swell with happiness.
“It is good to see you again, too, my son.”
“I think you gone to Comanche country long time ago,” Crows Walking said, his voice gruff.
“I intended to, but I took a job here instead.”
After a dinner of corn cakes and government beef, Steve told them what he needed. That night he slept on the ground—near where he had slept as a boy. He thought he might lie awake most of the night, but he barely remembered lying down.
The next morning he rode back to Samantha’s house. He arrived in time to eat lunch and fall exhausted into his bed, where he stayed until the next morning. The next day he had two men load a wagon with staples, then drove it down the hill to the old house crushed under the rock.
Uncheedah and Crows Walking were already there, camping beside the creek.
“You build this smashed house?” Crows Walking asked.
“No. A different one, up on the mountain.”
Crows Walking grunted his acknowledgment. Steve turned to Uncheedah. “Did you ask for the ceremony?” He’d asked a lot of her. To request a ceremony obligated her to feed all the dancers who participated.
She smiled. “Everything, just as you asked.”
Others arrived all that day and evening—some singly, some in pairs, some in groups of a dozen or more. Two dozen tepees sprang up. Uncheedah’s family and friends helped her prepare the food Steve had brought in the wagon.
The Indian leaders, Hopi and Papago, formed a group near one of the tepees and began the negotiations. They smoked, sang, prayed, and built an altar. It was decided that since it was November, Kamiyaw, the month of the Dangerous Moon, they would combine a Hopi Soyal ceremony with masawi, a ritual to beseech the god of death. Several men erected a standard. The old men, the leaders, argued over the wording of the announcement, directed primarily to the clouds.
Uncheedah and the women ground corn, cooked meat, and made crisp, rolled blue corn piki wafers to give to the dancers. At the council, Uncheedah did a good job of seeing to it that Steve’s concerns were dealt with. Steve sat off to one side, watching and listening. When everything was rea
dy, he rode back to the new house to get Nicholas. He had no idea if Samantha would let him bring the boy, but he was going to try.
“You want me to what?” she demanded.
“I want you to let Nicholas go to an Indian funeral for Young Hawk and his family.”
“No! Absolutely not! I don’t want him to have anything to do with it. I’ve kept him away from all that. He’s getting better.”
“Nicholas is still sick and feeling guilty about their deaths. It helped me to learn the truth about my folks. It might help him to bury Young Hawk and his family.”
“I don’t believe in your Indian superstitions.”
Steve realized he’d handled the situation all wrong. Samantha looked like a woman cornered by a reality too awful to confront.
Nicholas trudged into the room like a boy carrying a heavy load. He looked from Samantha to Steve and tensed slightly. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Samantha glared at Steve. Her look clearly said, If you tell him, I will never forgive you. Steve had wrestled with the effect his defiance would have on her. He had faced the fact that even though he loved her, his duty was to a boy struggling with a life-and-death decision. This would be his going-away present to Nicholas.
“The Indians are having a funeral celebration for Young Hawk and his family. I came to invite you and your mother.”
Samantha’s eyes flamed with outrage. Nicholas brightened instantly. “Can I, Mama? Please!”
“No!”
“Mother, I have to! Young Hawk was my friend! He was my friend! I have to!” Tears streamed down his cheeks.
Samantha turned to Steve with hell and damnation in her eyes. “Now see what you’ve done!” Her voice was tight with frustration and fury.
“Let him go,” Steve urged.
“Please, Mama, please!”
Samantha flashed Steve a look, then said, “No, Nicholas. And that’s final.”
Steve knew he had failed—and had only made things worse for the boy. Feeling so low he could have slipped under the door, he turned and left the two of them alone.
Samantha put Nicholas down for a nap. She heard him crying two rooms away. Her jaws ached from gritting her teeth; her whole body shook with rage. She wanted to strangle Steve Sheridan.
Finally Nicholas cried himself to sleep. But nothing helped to calm Samantha. Juana tried to tempt her with food, but just the thought sickened her.
That night Nicholas’s temperature soared to a hundred and four. Samantha did everything—garlic compresses and alcohol rubs—but his fever defied her and stayed high.
Elunami came in at two-thirty to relieve her. “Get some sleep. I will sit with the boy.”
Samantha raised agonized eyes to Elunami. “Did I do the wrong thing?”
“About the funeral?”
Samantha nodded.
“Indians believe it is better to let go of the dead.”
“Then why wallow in a stupid funeral ceremony?”
Elunami chose her words carefully. “Tuvi, the wisest elder in our tribe, said it is better to embrace the dead than to try and hide from them. To withdraw from pain and death is to die. If we embrace the pain and suffering of others, we live fully. It is more painful for a moment, but it quickly subsides. When my father killed my mother, my older brother just ran around a tree and screamed. But my sister went to my mother’s body and lay with her, crying. My brother still seems crippled by what he saw—my sister does not.”
“Oh, God…” Samantha was stricken by the images and by her own fear for Nicholas. “But if I let him embrace Young Hawk’s death, Nicholas might die.”
Elunami shook her head. “No. One does not die by acknowledging death. One dies by denying it.”
“I’m so scared for him.”
“Then trust Nicholas. Perhaps he knows best for himself.”
“He’s just a boy…”
Elunami shrugged. It seemed self-evident to her. Samantha had imposed her will on Nicholas—and he had moved closer to death.
Samantha saw Elunami look at her son; she followed her gaze. “You think he’s sick now because I won’t let him participate in me funeral?”
Elunami shrugged.
“You do, don’t you?”
“Sí.”
They sat in silence, waiting for dawn.
Samantha was glad of Elunami’s presence. Except for the weeks right after Jared had died, she’d never felt so alone. She had never trusted anyone where Nicholas was concerned. He was her responsibility. She’d even thought Jared too easygoing, too daredevil to be trusted with her son. Nicholas was hers really. Jared had only fathered the boy. True, Nicholas had belonged emotionally to Jared, and the boy had never recovered from the loss of his father. In that he was like her.
Now Steve was trying to take Nicholas away from her. And Steve was as reckless in his own way as Jared had been. She hated this in men. They got ideas in their heads and acted on them, no matter what the cost. A man would start a war, join the fight, and die without once realizing it was all nonsense. Wars solved nothing. After all the men were dead, the survivors would negotiate a settlement they could have negotiated before the war and life would go on. But not for the grieving widows and orphans. Steve could decide Nicholas needed something and give it to him…and then just watch him struggle with it or die. He didn’t care. Nicholas wasn’t his son.
A small voice within objected. Her mind flashed on a picture of Steve holding Nicholas while he cried. Steve loved Nicholas, and Nicholas loved Steve. Did every mother of a young boy resent the headstrong masculinity in her husband because she could see her son admiring it, copying it, preparing to make it his own? Perhaps, but the paradox was that a woman could not truly admire a man who didn’t have those qualities. And they had to be acquired sometime.
Maybe Steve was right. Maybe she was the problem—standing between her son and his life as if she could stop the flow of it long enough to keep him safe.
But what if she was the only thing keeping Nicholas alive? What if she let go and he died?
Hot tears filled her mouth and eyes. Panting, she fought down the sobs that ached to burst out of her.
“Mama…”
Nicholas’s voice startled her. Samantha wiped her eyes with her skirt.
“Yes, dear?”
“What’s wrong?”
She started to lie to him. “I’m scared.”
“Wolfess?”
“No.”
“Wolfess go away if you’re nice to them,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“You told me. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes…Yes, I forgot.”
Samantha felt Nicholas’s forehead; it was cooler now.
“Mama, I want to go to Young Hawk’s funeral.”
“We’ll see tomorrow morning. If you’re well enough.”
An hour after dawn, a messenger came from Samantha, summoning Steve to the new house.
“Is Nicholas all right?”
“The missus didn’t say.”
Steve saddled his horse and rushed up the mountain. The house looked dark. Expecting to be met by gunfire, he opened the front door and stepped into the dim entryway.
Samantha’s voice floated down to him from the top of the stairs. Then she appeared, gliding down to greet or kill him.
She saw him halfway down and stopped. Her gaze met his and held for several heartbeats. Pale and slim, poised above him, she was so beautiful Steve felt her in every cell in his body. His blood beat hard against his temples. At least this woman was worth dying for.
She looked away first, glanced down at her hand on the banister, and then proceeded down the stairs. She hadn’t forgiven him, that was clear, but she seemed different.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Looking at Steve Sheridan, seeing how solid and sure and masculine he was, she wanted to double her fists and beat on him.
Her thoughts were bitter as quinine. You’ve been pulling me toward this moment since th
e day I met you. She’d seen herself being pulled toward her destiny, a lone woman against a team of strong horses, and she’d been right. Except what had been pulling her was him, this one man, and no matter how she had struggled and fought, he’d drawn her forward relentlessly.
If she’d ever once guessed Steve would force her to the point where she would have to risk her son’s life in the hopes of saving him…But it was too late for that. She and Nicholas were here, and there was no turning back without loss. She was helpless to stop the events unfolding without precipitating what she’d tried so hard to avoid.
“If I let Nicholas go to this funeral, will you take care of him?” She couldn’t say what worried her. “See that he doesn’t overexert himself?”
Steve nodded.
“Then take him,” she said bitterly, grimly.
Steve searched her eyes, hoping for a clue as to why she’d changed her mind so quickly, but her eyes revealed only her fear and resentment. His heart sank.
“It starts tonight after sunset,” he said, forcing his voice to be brisk and sure. “It’ll be cool after dark. Bring a wrap for you and a coat and some blankets for Nicholas. It will probably last three or four days. We have food.”
They reached the creek at sunset. It was a shock to see the old house again. To remember that if not for Steve Sheridan, she and Nicholas might have been inside when the boulder crushed it.
The area around the creek was crowded with tepees and campfires and horses. The air was filled with sounds of women chattering, men chanting, and children playing. The Indians were busy with many tasks. It was such an ordinary scene, Samantha was slightly relieved. Maybe Nicholas wouldn’t feel the presence she and Elunami had felt that day.
It was odd, though. The Indians couldn’t have known where the dead family’s tepee had been—Steve had cleared away the burned remnants of the fire—but they had avoided that area. Not one camp had been placed there, even though the rest of the area was crowded with campsites.
Adobe Palace Page 53
