Dust Devil
Page 5
Then, striking westward, the buckboard left the life-giving Pecos River for the high desert, an ever-changing land of shifting sand dunes where there was nothing. No sign of habitation or life. Suddenly it seemed they were rimmed in by the foothills of the Pedernales Mountains. Here and there the candlebush waved its flaming tapers and cholla cactus glowed silver with new growth. Rabbits scurried under the chaparral from the wagon’s approach, and prairie dogs crossed their arms as if they were praying. To the far north a spring shower blew across the sky like a torn curtain.
Immediately before her on a rocky mesa was a pueblo of not more than a dozen hogans which looked like part of the rock. They were dome-shaped structures made of saplings plastered with sand-baked clay. In a corn field two young women were hoeing. They wore long full calico skirts that covered the top of their knee-high laced moccasins and full velveteen shirts outside their skirts, their waists hugged by brightly colored woven belts.
At the approach of the buckboard the two women stopped and looked up. The taller one dropped her hoe and ran toward the wagon. "Lario!”
"My sister, Toysei,” Lario said.
The second girl followed shyly at a distance. The two young women halted now and guardedly moved closer as their doe¬eyed gazes took in the woman with skin as creamy pale as the white flowering Spanish bayonet and hair the color of autumn’s aspen leaves — neither red nor brown but somewhere in between.
"Adala, a neighbor,” Lario said, introducing the second young woman. “Es Senora Rhodes,” he told the girl as he climbed out of the wagon.
Adala greeted her with the Navajo two-toned, "Ahalani,” but Lario’s sister stiffened and spat something else in Navajo. Rosemary could not understand his reply but knew it to be a command. The young woman stalked off toward the hogan.
He took her arm, and again the weakness swept through her. Pregnancy nerves, she told herself. "Come inside. My mother will have cool water for you.”
Her heels dug in, and she held back as visions of a torch-lit night in Meerut, India, zigzagged through her mind like a bolt of lightning.
He turned to face her. "You are afraid. Why?”
What to tell him — that another race of people massacred her family and she was therefore afraid of all swarthy-skinned people? How silly it sounded. A tight, tremulous smile curved her lips. "Only a little—one hears about how savage the Indian is.”
"And you think we shall scalp you?” His laugh was short. "A Navajo mother tells her children if they are not good the white man will steal them in the night and sell them for slaves.”
Her lashes dropped to hide the shame in her eyes; for the children in her own house were slaves, though the New Mexicans called it by a euphemism — debt peonage. It came under the statutory law dignified with the title of "Law regulating contracts between masters and servants.” But what it was actually was that parents driven into a "state of slavery” because they could not support themselves had the right to bind their children out as peons, thus becoming slaves for life.
He turned away, and she followed him through a spacious yard enclosed with a palisade of mesquite stakes. Nearby stood a clumsy Mexican cart with dislike solid wooden wheels. Inside the hogan the walls were smoothly whitewashed. A rug of gray jerga lay on the packed earth floor.
As her eyes focused, she saw in one corner a woman weaving on an upright loom. The woman, Lario’s mother — War Blanket —nodded solemnly at the introduction he made in the Navajo tongue. She was an older version of Toysei, only the hair braided about the willow hoops at her ears was gray rather than a lustrous black.
In the next moment Rosemary perceived the old man sitting on the floor. To her he looked terribly old. His skin was a leather layer of wrinkles, his eyes hooded; yet there was an agelessness about him. Maspha did not acknowledge her presence but quickly destroyed the painting he had created with the different colored layers of powdered rock on dirt.
"It is a curing ceremony for someone my grandfather knows is ill,” Lario said. "But no outsider may watch.”
The old man looked up then, and she was struck by the intensity of his gaze. He said something, and Lario frowned. "What is it?” she asked.
He glanced at his grandfather, then at her. "He has been expecting me to bring you, he says. He claims he has seen you in his sand paintings.” He shrugged, saying with maddening tranquility, "Would you like to wait here while I give the horses water? I will not be gone long.”
He turned to Toysei. "The Senora is thirsty.”
Rosemary did not want to be left alone. While Toysei grudgingly poured water from the olla, Rosemary forced herself to be calm and looked about the room, seeing the fox pelts and strings of waxy red peppers on the walls. There was a firepit in the hogan’s center, and near the walls richly colored blankets were folded in piles for sleeping. From the well-smoked vigas, roof poles, hung a cradle of deerskin by thongs, and she crossed to it. Inside lay a tiny form with thick black hair and eyes and a pink face.
"How precious!” she murmured, taking the clay cup Toysei held out to her. The maternal instinct in Rosemary was stirred, and her free hand went to her stomach. Not long to wait, she thought. "The baby —I s it yours?”
Toysei nodded, and Rosemary noted the young woman’s guard seemed to relax as she gazed at her baby. "It is a boy child,” Toysei replied, spacing her words with difficulty. "Lucero.”
"Your husband—?” she asked unthinkingly.
"Dead,” Toysei said flatly. "The White Death.”
She shuddered. She had come to learn that tuberculosis ran rampant among the Indian tribes. "Where did you learn English?” she asked, moving away from the sensitive subject.
"Lario taught me. My mother and brothers cannot speak the English. Some Spanish, though.”
It occurred to Rosemary that perhaps she could teach English to those who wished to learn, in exchange for Navajo, though she was certain she would never master the language that was based on intonation rather than prescribed grammar. Perhaps she could even eventually overcome her aversion to the Indian people.
"If you would like, Toysei, Lario could bring you and your brothers to the Castle sometimes, and we could practice English and Navajo together.”
Toysei’s flat face closed over. "I do not like it there.”
"Oh? Then you’ve been there before?”
"Si. Once as a child. After your husband, Senor Esteban, took the land, I do not go.”
Rosemary looked to the mother, who smiled, nodding her head, and continued her weaving. The rhythmic thump of the warp against the loom was the only sound in the room, for the grandfather, with his eyes closed in his drooping head, appeared to be sleeping now. "What do you mean, 'he took the land’?”
The baby starting fussing, and Toysei lifted it from its cradle. The back of his head, like that of a lot of Navajo babies, was flattened from the cradleboard. "My words are like the air,” Toysei said, turning away. "They are nothing.”
"Please explain for me. I want to know.”
The baby began to howl now, and Toysei pulled aside her blouse and gave him her nipple. "The land — it belonged before su esposo, your husband, to the familia DeVega. The son of Senor DeVega, he liked the games of chance played at the casa of Dona Tules Barcelo. Many times he lost to Senor Esteban. Much money over a long time. Then he lost the land to Senor Esteban and... he hangs himself from the lights of candles.”
"Oh, no!” she breathed.
As if glad to horrify the woman, Toysei continued, "And his father, Don Emiliano, tells Senor Esteban he will fight with pistoles. And Don Emiliano is killed.” Toysei shrugged her shoulders. "He was a very old man.”
"Toysei!” It was Lario. A scowl narrowed his eyes.
CHAPTER 9
Silence strained the ride back to the Castle. When it became unbearable, Rosemary said, "Your sister has exaggerated, has she not? And even if Stephen did acquire the DeVega land grant by gambling, it’s happened before.”
Lario looked at her,
and, though he said nothing, she read the accusation in his gaze. "But it was Don Emiliano who challenged Stephen!” she cried out.
"Maybe,” Lario replied, using the English word most often spoken by the cryptic Indians, and switched his gaze back to the land that was crisscrossed with a maze of tracks made by Navajo wagons.
Mentally she defended Stephen. She knew beyond all doubt she would protect Cambria had she won it, even if it meant killing for what belonged to her. Still, she meant to ask Stephen more about the DeVega episode when he returned.
But a week before Stephen was due back, while she went over the household account, pains began to sear her back, then wrapped about her sides to invade her womb. The pen dropped from her fingers and spattered ink on the neatly penned columns. She took a deep breath to ease the pain, but its intensity grew as did her ragged breathing. "Graciala!” she called out to the newest servant girl, and within seconds the girl was at her door. "Senora! Que pasa?”
Rosemary doubled over. El bebe. Help — ayudame!”
The girl fled and returned immediately with Consuela. The old cook lumbered across the room as rapidly as her thick legs would carry her. She took one look at Rosemary and shouted over her shoulder, "Vaya por Lario!”
Rosemary was next aware of Lario’s smoky dark gaze, of being lifted, supported against the wide expanse of his chest, as he carried her to her bedroom. She moaned in spite of herself, and he whispered in Navajo, "Enui”— it is all right.
But it was not. No one had told Rosemary about child birthing, yet she knew she was in labor far too soon by her calculations. Almost three months too soon. Above her, beyond the haze of pain, she heard Consuela’s voice whispering in Spanish, "She is too narrow to carry.”
"Stephen . . . , ” Rosemary managed to get out. She was failing him.
She opened her eyes to see Lario’s grim face. His strong, slender fingers smoothed back the hair that clung to the perspiration dotting her temples. "I will go for him, Senora.”
"No!” Rosemary grasped at his hand, holding it tightly as another pain cut through her abdomen. She had witnessed Stephen’s wrath. She did not want him with her now, not now. "Go away — everyone,” she said weakly after, the pain had ebbed.
Lario cast a sharp glance at Consuela, and the old woman nodded her graying head.
For the next seven hours Rosemary was aware of very little but the scissor-like pains. Occasionally the mist cleared, and she knew that Consuela was with her, bathing her forehead and murmuring gentle words of comfort. And as the pain took hold, never leaving her at the end and as her body sought to rid itself of its six-months’ burden, she knew it was Consuela’s big-boned strength which held her arms pinioned, who urged her between gapped teeth, "Empuje— push!”
At last she knew immediate and great relief as she felt the solid mass force itself out. The pain was over! "I want to see my baby,” she gasped.
The silence told her everything. She forced her eyes to focus. Consuela’s black cotton dress was blood-splattered. In the woman’s hands was a tiny, lifeless, blue-gray form.
"Noooo!” she cried out.
When next she awoke, bright sunlight fell on the girl Chela, who sat near the bed in the rocking chair. "What time is it?” she asked in a whisper.
"It is eight in the morning, Senora. You are better, no?”
She had slept the whole night through. "The baby. What was it?”
Chela hesitated. She fidgeted with one of her braids, her eyes downcast. "A son, Senora,” she said softly.
She closed her eyes against the tears. How could the loss of a child she had never known bring so much pain, spiking grief, draining depression? But she had known the child. Had felt is shifting and stretching and kicking just under her ribs.
The girl said, "Lario is burying your son now.”
At once she tried to sit up, but Chela said, "No, you must rest, Senora!”
"I want to be there. ’Tis my son. I must be there!”
Chela paused, then said, "I will get Lario.”
By the time Rosemary struggled to get into the chenille robe at the foot of her bed, Chela was at the door with Lario towering behind her. "Senora?” he asked.
She pulled the gown closed around her neck, conscious of Lario’s Indian eyes that never missed anything. "Take me to my son’s grave.”
A mother’s keening over her dead child Lario must have understood. As he bent over her, she saw in his solemn face sympathy, but it did not bother her as did the pity she had seen in the face of the servants. Pulling a blanket from the bed, he enfolded Rosemary in it as if she were a child like Chela and scooped her up against him. "You will be all right.” he said as he carried her from the house and placed her on the seat of the buckboard. It was a statement, not a question.
She nodded, brushing away the tears that continued to stream down her cheeks.
"The heat – it was necessary we bury the baby now.”
For a moment she forgot that Lario was an Indian, the hated enemy. She placed a hand on his arm. "Thank you,” she said simply.
The half-closed eyes searched her face, searching there for what he must have heard in her voice.
At that moment she hated anyone seeing her, knowing that under the unforgiving sunlight she must look haggard, but she reasoned that by now she had no looks to lose, and so met his scrutiny unflinchingly.
He drove the wagon to the edge of the knoll. Beneath the gigantic, twisted cottonwood was a small mound of freshly turned earth. "I thought you would like him here,” he said solemnly.
She went rigid. Then, blanket gathered around her, she stumbled from the wagon and fell on her knees in the dirt. Child of her flesh! Deep breaths expelled from her body as she steeled herself against the tears that threatened yet once again. She had failed Stephen. Her body had failed the child. And she had failed Cambria.
She thought of the wooden cradle waiting in her bedroom. And the pile of baby clothes she had sewn and knitted. And her shoulders heaved with unspent tears. A wave of horrible loneliness, a feeling of desolation, washed over her
Some minutes later she was aware of Lario lifting her, cradling her in his arms as he carried her back to the wagon. Her head was resting just above his heart, and she could feel the regular, reassuring beat beneath her cheek. Wrapped in the blanket and held securely by his arm, she was relieved of any effort of any kind. It was enough to lie with relaxed muscles. With a start, she was fully aware of whose arms were around her and upon whose chest her head was resting. Her heart beat with sudden fierceness. What was the matter with her? Why did she not shrink from the pressure of his powerful arms and the contact of his warm, strong body?
Only later, as she sat alone in her darkened study looking out at the shadowed turn of earth beneath the great tree, did she wonder how he was aware that the cottonwood, like Cambria, was a special source of strength and peace and security for her.
* * * * *
Stephen kissed her forehead, and his mustache and beard tickled her skin. "I should have insisted you get more rest, dear. Are you all right now?”
"I’m fine, Stephen. Really.” She glanced through the sweep of her lashes to see how he took the loss of the baby. The tone of his words was noncommittal. She stretched out a hand, grabbing his as he turned away. "There will be other children, Stephen.”
His eyes looked as empty as abandoned mines, and her heart went out to him. "Rita delivered a daughter last week,” he said. "Inez Rosamaria Victoria Sanchez y Chavez.”
So, Rita had named the child for her. A burden doubly difficult to bear at the moment, Rosemary reflected despondently. "How did everything go in Santa Fe?”
The black eyes seemed to gleam with life again. "Excellent, Rosemary. When Caden’s term expires, he’s agreed to be our delegate to Congress. And you remember that old nester down on the Wild Cat Camp — while I was at the Governor’s Palace I was able to buy off the auction block his fifty head of cattle and the cabin — a ramshackle place it is.”
"His credit was overextended. And no one seemed to want to buy his holdings — so he was forced to auction.”
She bit her lip. "I see.”
He rose to leave but halted at her bedroom door as he remembered something else. "You be recalling that young chap you traveled with on the Mail Stage?”
Rosemary nodded. "Lieutenant Raffin?”
"Aye. He’s courting Caden’s daughter. Louis and I were thinking — it might do well to keep the young chap in mind for a place in the party.”
"You mean the Santa Fe Ring?” Stephen’s brows rose in surprise, and she said, "I’ve heard the Ring mentioned when you and the others discuss politics.”
Stephen crossed back to her bedside. His hand caught her chin gently and tilted it upward. "I dinna give you enough credit. You are unlike other women. When you are well again, Rosemary . . .”
Her eyes met his in acknowledgement. She owed him a son.
And as if he knew the exact day her flux had run its course, he came to her, shutting the bedroom door quietly behind him. She had not been sleeping. The intense summer heat combined with her vague unrest prevented sleep. At the sound of the door opening and closing, her lids snapped open. Stephen leaned over her and pulled the yellow eyelet coverlet from her now-slim body. "Rosemary.” It was a whisper.
Obediently she raised her arms to admit her husband into her bed. Inwardly she stifled the resistance which ate at her as his hands worked impatiently at the ties of her flannel gown. His hands cupped her rounded breasts, squeezing them while his mouth devoured hers. But mercifully the foreplay lasted only seconds. He maneuvered Rosemary’s legs into the most conducive position for conceiving, and she knew she need endure only minutes more before he would empty himself.
An invasion! her mind screamed. A wife’s duty, she reminded herself. How many more nights — fourteen, fifteen — before she would know if she had conceived?