“Paul thinks the caves interested her most, and they’d offer shelter. We can have a look at some of them. It depends on how far she’d be willing to wander off the main path, whether we’ll find her or not. If she’s here, I suspect it won’t be far.”
“But if she really wants to hide—”
“If she really does,” Gavin said quietly, “then she can elude us. But I suspect that by this time, if she’s here, she’ll want to be found. Paul was pretty ready with information about where she might be. It could have been planted.”
I did not understand in the least why Eleanor Brand had suddenly run away from home to spend the night in so unlikely a place. Or why any information about her would be “planted.”
However, I knew he would explain none of this. There had been an edge to his voice when he spoke Paul’s name, and I decided to be bold, asking my question swiftly.
“Why don’t you like Paul Stewart?”
He gave me a look that said this was none of my business, but he answered. “Dislike can be a complex matter. For one thing, he has an avidity for stirring up trouble. Stay clear of him.”
Perhaps I would, or perhaps I wouldn’t. In any case, I meant to go my own way.
The sun was out now, but the air was chilly and I was glad I wore a sweater.
“Doesn’t it get pretty cold here at night?” I asked.
“Decidedly. But Eleanor could manage if she chose.”
I wanted to ask why—why? But his manner held me off.
Near the small building of the Visitor Center, Gavin parked his car and we got out. He glanced at the low-heeled shoes I’d worn for travel and nodded.
“You’ll be all right. It’s not a difficult path or very long.”
The narrow road had been paved for comfortable walking, and it wound into the open along the floor of the canyon. Again I had the sense of a world wholly new to me. The canyon ran straight, with steep cliffs going up on either hand, wooded on one side, bare rock on the other, so that it was as if one walked into a wide slash in the earth, shut in on both sides, protected. On our right the sheer cliffs rose toward the sky and at their base in the pockmarked volcanic rock were caves that Indians had used. There were dozens of these and one could climb to them only over rough ground.
Gavin saw the direction of my gaze and shook his head. “If she’s here, she’ll probably choose the easier way. We’ll follow the trail.” He seemed assured in his knowledge of her and not particularly worried.
There were the ruins of kivas along the path—those buildings which had once been used as meeting places for religious and ceremonial rites. There were stone ruins in the ground where the ancient pueblo of Tyuonyi had encircled a central plaza. It had once been three stories high, accommodating a hundred people or more, Gavin told me. At another time I’d have been more interested.
The trail turned toward the base of the cliffs and began to climb until we were edging along just below the caves and reconstructed cliff dwellings. For the first time I grew a little breathless at this slight exertion, responding to the unaccustomed altitude. Gavin noticed and slowed his pace, not without a certain consideration.
Now he stopped before each cave and looked inside. Where a wooden ladder was propped against the cliff, he climbed up to peer through the opening. We had mounted fairly high above the canyon floor, and there were occasional steps cut into the narrow, rock path. The cliff face was uneven, with indentations or sections that thrust outward, so that the trail turned like a string twisted across its surface. Only once did other visitors pass us, coming from the opposite direction, and the floor of the canyon, far below, with its winding stream and groves of trees, seemed empty. The vast reaches of Bandelier could swallow hundreds. We began to alternate now. I took one cave, and Gavin the next, so we could increase the speed of our search.
It was I who found her. At first, when I climbed the short ladder to look into shadowed cavern depths, I saw nothing. Then something at the back moved and I glimpsed a face peering from a sleeping bag on the rocky floor.
“Eleanor?” I said.
There were sounds at the back of the cave as she came out of her bag. But she did not approach me. She merely sat crosslegged upon the bag, staring at the patch of dark I must have made against the brightness outside. I could not see her clearly in the dim light.
“Who are you?” she asked, and I heard for the first time the light, rather musical voice that belonged to Eleanor Brand. It was a voice which lent itself to mockery.
I told her I was her cousin Amanda Austin, but she cut me short with a wave of her hand that seemed imperious.
“Is Gavin there?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ve been helping him look for you. He’s been concerned.”
“Has he really?” Here was more mockery, and she still made no move to come out of the cave.
I waited helplessly on the ladder as Gavin crawled out of the next cave and came toward me. When I gestured and descended the ladder, he went up it at once, calling to her through the opening.
“Come out, Eleanor. The game’s over for the moment. So roll up your bag and come out.”
Her soft laughter, issuing from the cave, had a faintly vindictive sound, but I could hear her preparations as she rolled up her bag. Gavin backed down the ladder, and she came to the rocky lip of the cave and tipped her sleeping bag over, letting it drop to the path. Then she backed out, her short alpine hikers finding the rungs of the ladder, blue jeans, thick blue pullover sweater and long blond hair coming into view, until she stood on the path beside us, and I had my first view of my cousin Eleanor.
She was older than I by five years or more, I judged, and for all her unconventional position at the moment, she was a poised and confident woman. And a very beautiful one, with her violet eyes and thick lashes, her full, slightly pouting lips, and that fine hair cut in bangs across a smooth forehead, falling in a sheen over her shoulders. It seemed untangled, as though she might have been calmly combing it recently. She paid no attention to Gavin, but looked straight at me, still mocking, hardly friendly.
“So you’re Doro’s daughter? How much like her are you?”
It was not a question I could answer, and I made no attempt to reply. She was not really interested in me anyway, in spite of her attempt to ignore Gavin.
He spoke to her curtly. “You were supposed to meet Amanda at the airport at Albuquerque. Sylvia had to go in your stead.”
“I supposed she would. Juan should never have asked me to go in the first place. Why should I be happy about Amanda’s coming, considering the plotting he’s likely to do? So I went off by myself for a while. To state my independence and let you all worry a little. I had a lovely night. There were a million stars, and all those Indian ghosts were stirring down there in the canyon. I’m sure I heard their drums.”
Gavin ignored this flight of fancy. “There is such a thing as consideration,” he said.
She laughed softly again, maliciously. “Have I ever bothered about that?”
Gavin remained unmoved by what seemed a deliberate effort to irritate him.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her.
“Of course not. I had sandwiches and cans of orange juice. I’ve finished everything up.”
“You planned well,” he said dryly. “My arrival is properly timed.”
“You can never let me go, can you? You always come after me!” Tall as she was, she was not as tall as Gavin, and she tilted her head back to look up at him with a look that challenged and provoked.
“Your grandfather was worried. He wanted me to find you.”
“I thought he would be. That was a bang-up fight the three of us had yesterday, wasn’t it? Maybe you’ll both begin to think about what I want now.”
Gavin turned away from her. “Let’s get back to White Rock. We can pick up your car there and phone Santa Fe.”
I had the feeling that this woman had the power to hurt him, and I felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for Gavin. I’d known what it
was like to be hurt by someone you loved.
He went ahead of us along the cliff’s face, carrying Eleanor’s sleeping bag, and she gave me a small smile filled with malice and triumph as she went after him.
I followed uneasily behind. Something stubborn stirred in me, stiffening my resistance. It looked as if I would have to stand against them all. Well, Juan Cordova had asked me to come, and only he mattered.
When we were in the car heading for White Rock, no one spoke. We sat in the front seat, with me in the middle, and the miles of curving road wound away in heavy silence. What was unspoken throbbed beneath our quiet.
At White Rock we picked up Eleanor’s abandoned car, and a change was made. She and I were to return in her car, while Gavin followed us in his own. I would have liked to protest this arrangement because I felt an instinctive reluctance to be alone with my cousin Eleanor. Even more than the others, she seemed to oppose my coming, and her uninhibited frankness about this left me thoroughly annoyed. Gavin, however, was ordering us both, and this was not the time to argue. At his biding, I got reluctantly into the passenger’s seat of Eleanor’s car, and he went around to the driver’s side to speak to her.
“You’d better go straight back to Santa Fe,” he said. “Amanda has been traveling most of the day, and I’m sure she’d like a rest.” His manner toward her was withdrawn, remote, but I sensed that it covered some deep emotion—whether of anger or frustrated love, I couldn’t tell. His guard of indifference hid a deeper seething, I was sure. What would he be like if he exploded? More likable, perhaps—more human?
Eleanor smiled at him brightly and he walked away to his own car. Without waiting for him to get in, she switched on the motor, and by the time we turned onto the highway we were going fast, and Gavin was nowhere in sight behind us. Eleanor seemed to relax a little, her hands assured on the wheel. I noticed the diamond-set platinum band on her left hand, and the large turquoise and silver ring on her right. They were beautiful hands, with long slender fingers, the sinews hidden by smoothly rounded flesh. I hid my own utilitarian hands in my lap. Mine were working hands, square, with spatulate fingertips. It didn’t comfort me to know they were an artist’s hands.
My cousin threw me a sudden questioning glance, bright with reckless promise. “We don’t have to go back to Santa Fe, you know. There’s a choice of roads. Gavin will be wild if we’re not back at Juan’s by the time he gets there. Shall we provoke him?”
The prospect of driving aimlessly about the countryside with this woman who didn’t like me had no appeal, nor did it seem anything but pointless for her to defy Gavin and our grandfather any further.
“I think we’d better go back,” I said. “I want a room of my own and a bed I can stretch out on.”
Her lips curled in a smile that dismissed me. “I didn’t think you’d pick up a challenge. And I suppose we do have to go back. I don’t mind making Juan angry—but not too angry. Why did you come with Gavin to look for me?”
“He asked me to.”
“Of course,” she said. “Women usually do what he asks. But why did you come to Santa Fe? Whatever possessed you to say ‘yes’ to Juan’s letter?”
“I suppose because I wanted to know the other half of my family.”
This seemed to strike her as amusing. “You’ll regret that soon enough. Juan will want to know what I think of you. What shall I tell him?”
“How can you tell him anything?” I was beginning to feel tired, and her behavior was increasingly outrageous. Any sympathy I might have felt was now on Gavin’s side. No wonder he tried to remain distant and untouched. “You don’t know me yet,” I pointed out, a bit sharply. “There’s nothing to tell.”
She smiled secretly to herself, and I let the matter go, though I could not help wondering what she might find to tell Juan Cordova.
By the time we reached the main highway, dark clouds were boiling up over the Jemez Mountains behind us, but Eleanor only shook her head when I commented that it looked like rain.
“Clouds often come up like that, but we seldom get much rain. We need it badly.”
Far ahead across the countryside a whirlpool of dust rose in a spiral like a miniature cyclone, spinning along above the junipers. A dust dance, I thought, and knew that the phrase had again come, unbidden, out of memory. I had seen those spirals before and been fascinated by them. I glanced at the woman beside me.
“I don’t remember you at all,” I said. “Can you remember me?”
“I can remember your sitting on Grandfather Juan’s knee. I can remember being jealous. But that was when we were babies, of course. I don’t need to be now.”
Yet she was, I thought. She deeply resented his sending for me.
“I wonder what’s happened since I’ve been gone,” she went on. “What have you heard?”
“I haven’t been to the house yet,” I told her. “Sylvia Stewart took me next door, where I met Gavin and her husband, Paul.”
“Gavin at Paul’s house? That’s quite mad. They don’t like each other.”
“Gavin was concerned for you. And it was Paul who suggested Bandelier’s caves to him.”
“Good for Paul. I really didn’t want to stay another night. But I had to let him find me dramatically.”
“Why did you go off in the first place?” I asked her bluntly. “Why stay there at all?”
She seemed not to resent my questioning. “That’s complicated.” Again there was the sidelong look. “Mostly I had to give Gavin and Juan a chance to cool off and start worrying about me. They’re both a little afraid of me, you know. They don’t dare push me too far.”
I wondered if the quarrel she referred to had in any way concerned me, but I didn’t ask. Eleanor had wanted news and I volunteered the only bit I had in order to see her reaction.
“It seems that Aunt Clarita found some sort of pre-Columbian stone head in Gavin’s room. Sylvia said it had been missing for a week.”
The light laughter came again. “That’s lovely! Though I’m glad I wasn’t there or they might have said I’d planted it. Juan will be furious. What did Gavin say?”
“Merely that he’d have to look for you before he gave his attention to anything else. I’m afraid I don’t understand what all this is about.”
“You don’t need to,” Eleanor said. “You won’t be staying in Santa Fe long enough for it to matter.”
I was silent, not knowing how long I would be there, and not liking the way she had put it. There seemed something that was almost a threat underlying her words—and I wouldn’t be threatened.
“He’s very hard to please—Grandfather Juan,” she went on. “You’ll irritate him like everyone else, and he’ll soon send you away. I’m the only one he can tolerate these days. I’m the only one he listens to. Except perhaps Gavin. But he’ll stop listening to him soon. Gavin’s grown too highhanded, too overconfident. This stone head, for instance.”
“But of course he didn’t take it,” I said.
“Of course he took it. He’s been slipping things out of the store for the last year or so. I suppose he has a market where he can sell them. Juan’s got to wake up about him sometime.”
I didn’t believe any of this, and my sympathy for Gavin increased. His wife was completely vindictive toward him, and I wondered how much he was hurt by this.
Eleanor was silent for a time, and I made no further effort at conversation. When she spoke again, her question startled me.
“I supposed you’ve learned by this time why Juan has brought you here?”
I hesitated. “I thought he wanted to see Doroteo’s daughter.”
“Oh, that’s the angle he’ll undoubtedly play up. The daughter of his favorite child and all that. He’s been rubbing it in with the rest of us. But there’s a better reason than that. If you don’t know, you soon will.”
“Is it something to do with Paul Stewart’s book?”
“So you’ve heard about that? I’m the one who put Paul up to it, really, and now h
e’s determined to carry through and write it, no matter how Juan Cordova feels. Grandfather’s furious.”
“Then why do you want to see this book written?”
The mocking little smile was on her lips again. “Family scandals don’t bother me. And this annoys Juan. After all the hushing up he’s done over the years, he doesn’t want it all dug up again now. But I don’t mind. It may give me a lever over him.”
“Hushing up of what?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t remember anything, and I’m getting tired of all this hinting and secrecy. What on earth is it all about?”
“I could tell you, but I won’t. Not after the orders Juan has laid down. No one is to talk to you about it until he does.”
By this time I was thoroughly discomfited and angry. It was clear that my mother had been involved in something quite dreadful, and I could only cling for reassurance to the thought of Katy’s letter and what she had written my father. But I didn’t want to tell Eleanor about that, and open myself to more derision.
“Anyway, I haven’t any memories about Santa Fe to tell anyone,” I said.
“If that’s true, Paul will be disappointed. But it’s hard to believe you don’t remember anything. Perhaps it will begin to come back, once you’re in a familiar place.”
I thought of the tugs of unexpected recognition I’d already felt, and wondered if this was true.
By this time the outskirts of the city were coming into view and from the northern approach there was less honky-tonk than from the Albuquerque direction. I was relieved to find our journey ending, as I felt an increasing distrust of Eleanor, and a growing conviction that if she could injure me with Juan Cordova, she would.
In a short time we were driving through Santa Fe streets at a more decorous speed, and I tried to rouse myself in preparation for the encounters that were to come. After all that had happened since my arrival, I felt emotionally drained, and it was difficult to recover any sense of anticipation. If anything, a feeling of dread had replaced all eagerness.
We took a wide avenue that led uphill to the Canyon Road area and found our narrow lane with its adobe houses. The Cordova garage, with room for several cars, was tucked into a corner of the property where it abutted on an adobe wall. I got out of the car and looked around, wishing I could recapture my first feeling of excitement at sight of the house.
The Turquoise Mask Page 4
