Deep Purple (21 page)

Fanny moved her myopic gaze from Brig
’s face long enough to say sweetly, “It would do a world of good for you, child.”

She can
’t wait to get rid of me
! “I don’t want to go, Uncle Sherrod. I know everything I need to know for living at the Stronghold.”

“
But you won't always be living at the Stronghold,” Sherrod said patiently. “One day you’ll marry and leave.”

“
I don’t want to ever leave!”

Sherrod chuckled at her vehemence. “
Well, it’s nothing we have to decide today. We'll talk about it later.”

But later never came.

As the small wood-burning engine, puffing clouds of black smoke from its funnel-shaped smokestack and drawing small wooden cars behind it, chugged into the station, as the cannon roared and the cavalry band trumpeted above the hysterical yells of the citizens, as Sherrod cracked the bottle of champagne over the engine . . . he clutched at his left arm and twisted forward to slump on the platform.

It was the end of his life and the beginning of a change in Jessie
’s.

CHAPTER 27

D
ead of a heart attack! Incredible, people said. Sherrod Godwin was still so young. But privately Jessie thought it was an old-young. He seldom had laughed, and the eyes had always seemed dolorous.

The Methodist Episcopal Church was filled for the memo
rial services. Men waited outside the church in the hot sun, hat in hand. The burial had been held the day after Sherrod's death because of the spring heat. But the memorial services were postponed a week for his daughter's train to arrive from New York.

T
he service was being officiated by an elder up from the Mormon town of St. David. A respectful hush lay over the throng. This was a Godwin being buried. All places of business were closed, including the saloons and gambling establishments. Never before had so many people assembled for a service. Outside, the bells of the San Agustín Cathedral could be heard crying their mourning. An American flag draped the altar.

All eyes in the church were trained on the Godwin family, who sat at the front. But rather tha
n on the grieving matriarch, Elizabeth Godwin, or the heirs, Brigham and Abigail, and her husband Ira, the gazes were directed on Jessie Howard. Or was it Davalos? There was so much gossip that one never knew what the real facts were, who Jessie's father really was.

It was not just the mystery about the girl that caught the imagination. There was the promise of her wild beauty, though to look at her at that moment, sitting between Brigham and the rigid Elizabeth, one would have doubts about that promise. Sh
e was really too tall for a child her age. And the tawny hair fell about her shoulder blades like a lion’s mane. Not at all the ladylike prettiness of the young lady on the other side of Brigham, Fanny Roget. Only the pale-green eyes thicketed by black lashes lent any immediate relief to the wrathful-looking creature.

An ungovernable child, certainly, though Elizabeth Godwin never did say so in such terms on the occasional trips she made into Tucson. But then Elizabeth was not the kind to complain. The way
she had been made to endure her husband's bigamous love affair with the Davalos woman would have been enough to drive a weaker woman to her grave. But not Elizabeth. The fact that she had survived the Davalos woman's death, her daughter- in-law’s, her husband’s, and now her son's was testimony to her endurance.

And then Elizabeth was so charitable, taking in the Spanish woman's bastard grandchild. Her husband
’s own illegitimate grandchild A wicked strain ran through the Davalos blood. And it would show up in Jessica Davalos! Time would tell.

The memorial service was at last over, and Jessie stood stiffly at Brig
’s side as the mourners filed past the Godwin family to pay their respects. Her face was bleached beneath the suntan. In spite of the loss Brig felt at his father’s death, he sensed the greater need of his cousin. Thirteen was too young to have death come knocking so many times.

In the moment of respite that followed, his hand slipped to her side to squeeze her chilled fingers reassuringly. “
It’s all right, Jessie.”

She glanced up into the face pale with its own grief, a face that looked like a dark angel
’s. “You won’t leave me, will you, Brig?”

“
Not for a long time. Not until you’re ready to leave yourself and go out to find a husband.”

He had misunder
stood. “But I don’t want a husband,” she said, staring now straight in front of her, too proud to let him see what was in her eyes. “I don’t want things to change.”

Brig sighed. “
But things do, Jessie. You’re old enough to know that. But our friendship won’t change, I promise.”

Roget and his wife, who looked to Jessie an older, plumper version of Fanny, accompanied the Godwins as far as Ronstadt
’s stables. Elizabeth thanked the Rogets politely for their support in the time of bereavement, and Fanny hugged Brig tearfully. Jessie turned away and climbed in the spring wagon’s back seat.

On the long trip back to the Stronghold, Elizabeth sat beside a grave Brig, who drove. Her lips pressed tightly against her clenched teeth. In the back, sitting with Jessie, was
the stolidly silent Ira, and Abigail, who talked fitfully, as if trying to keep back the tears with conversation.

“
I so wanted Father to see his first grandchild,” she said, her voice cracking.

Ira patted his wife
’s shoulder with a clumsy hand. “It’s all right, Abbie. You’ll bear a child yet.”

“
But the doctors give so little hope. Three times now . . .” Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she took her handkerchief from one of her cuffs to blow her nose.

“
You’ll have to take to your bed for the full nine months then,” Elizabeth said, turning to fix her granddaughter with stone-gray eyes. “There can be no shirking of duty, Abigail. There must be children to keep the Stronghold going.”

Privately Jessie thought that Elizabeth made the Stronghold sound lik
e some biblical stone idol that needed a blood sacrifice to be propitiated. And it wasn’t! Behind its impregnable walls Jessie found warmth and security. Inside those walls were found treasures not to be found in any of the other homes throughout the territory.

Oh, not the tasteless Victorian bric-a-brac that seemed to clutter the drawing rooms she had occasionally visited with her uncle and Brig, but real
objets d art
that Uncle Sherrod had purchased for his wife those last years of her life—the Waterford glasses and Spode and Sevres porcelain, the antique blackamoor statue, and the first piano in the territory, the Chickering grand piano. And Lucy had added items that reflected her own elegance and good taste—the five-piece Aubusson salon suite, a pair of Queen Anne shepherd’s-crook armchairs, and a Venetian three-panel folding screen

When the grieving family arrived at the Stronghold, Jessie went immediately to the cool privacy of her room. She wanted only to be alone, but Elizabeth summoned her to Don Fra
ncisco’s old office that had become Sherrod's. Brig was pacing the floor, his hands behind his back. Elizabeth sat behind the desk. "Come in," she told Jessie, who hesitated in the doorway.

Abigail, her eyes red, sat in the hard-backed chair, and Ira stood
behind it. Jessie noticed he would not meet her eyes. Brig turned toward her, and she saw the anger burning in the dark- blue gaze. She frowned, not understanding the reason for his agitation.

"I was just telling Brigham," Elizabeth said curtly, "that the
Roget family will be coming to stay with us for some months. Mr. Roget and I will be closing the deal that Sherrod initiated before his death. They will, of course, be paying us a large sum for the mineral rights—for the excavation rights to whatever mines are discovered on Cristo Rey.”

She addressed her grandson and Ira now. "I don't need to tell you that the initial down payment alone will compensate for the money Cristo Rey has lost in its cattle investments. The drought, cattle rustling, and overgrazin
g will wipe us out without the Roget money.”

Abigail gasped, and Brig mumbled, half to himself, "Father mentioned the problem, but I had no idea.”

In the silence that followed. Ira said. "You have to bend with the wind, Mrs. Godwin. You're doing only what has to be done. After all, if I understand it, it's only a five-year lease.”

Brig jammed his hands in his pockets and turned to pace the floor. Abigail fidgeted with her handkerchief. Jessie was beginning to wonder why she had been included in this family
council when Elizabeth said, "I have decided that Dona Dominica’s room”—and Jessie noted how Elizabeth’s voice seemed to hiss like water on a hot stove when she pronounced the name—“will be given to the Rogets.”

Brig rounded on his grandmother. “
And where will you put Jessie? All the other bedrooms are much smaller.”

Elizabeth's back stiffened, and she rose from behind the desk. "It
’s as good a time as any to bring the subject out into the open. Jessie Howard will have to find a place down in the
rancheria
.”

Howard?
Jessie stood stunned, listening to Brig and Elizabeth argue as if she were not present.

“
What?” he thundered.

“
Even then,” Elizabeth continued calmly, coolly, “it is only because of my goodwill that Jessie is fortunate enough to have a roof over her head. If it weren't for my promise to your father, Brigham, I would see that she never set foot on Cristo Rey again.”

Brig went to stand before the old woman. A muscle jerked in his temple. “
Good God, Grandmother, have you taken leave of your senses? Father would never hear of it!” His fist slammed against the desk. “And I won’t either!”

Elizabeth looked at Jessie for the first time since the argument began. “
No,” she said, “I haven’t taken leave of my senses.” A faint smile twitched the withered lips. “I am at last tying up the loose ends. Your father is dead, Brig. And he appointed me as administrator of Cristo Rey until you reach twenty-five years of age. And even then I will still hold half the interest in Cristo Rey. So my decision, my authority, is irrevocable. I want the bastard child out of the Stronghold today—immediately!”

CHAPTER 28

J
essie leaned low over the pony. Its tail streamed behind, blown by the wind, as was Jessie's own mane. She laughed, exulting at the exquisite feeling of flying over the earth, of pacing the man-made machine—the train that bellowed and snorted as it raced along the narrow-gauge railroad track beside her. But she knew she would win; she would reach Cristo Rey’s southern boundary, Camp Huachuca, first because she could take the short cuts the New Mexico & Arizona train could not.

The watering hole, banked by a
copse of acacia and iron wood, came into sight, and Jessie pulled up short, almost setting her calico on its haunches. She watched the train, its black smoke rising to faint white puffs in the sky, diminish in size as it edged its way around a bluff and chugged toward Nogales. Then she wheeled about and began the long trip back to the Stronghold’s rancheria.

She rode the pony bareback, like an Indian, with her skirts hitched up above her knees, exposing the long, smooth line of calf and the bare feet sanda
led in huaraches. She could no more imagine riding sidesaddle, as had her mother, than she could imagine living anywhere but Cristo Rey. She loved its vibrant colors and drastic change of landscape, as she loved the people— the Papagos and Mexicans she worked and lived with—as she loved Brig Godwin.

She wondered sometimes that it did not show
—the wild, sweet stirrings when he came near her, when their hands touched as she served him food when he ate with the other cowboys. He spent more time at the
rancheria
than he did at the Stronghold. She liked to believe it was to be near her, though she knew the problem of getting the cattle ranching back on its feet demanded much of his time outside the Stronghold.

And she knew that she was only fooling herself, hopin
g that he could ever love her, for he had become engaged to Fanny two months before, in June. Fanny and her mother were gone now, escaping the summer heat by shopping in New York for the trousseau for the coming fall wedding. And Hugo had opened an office in Tucson, from which he directed his various mining ventures that included the gold and silver ore taken out of Cristo Rey’s rich earth. Elizabeth had achieved everything she had planned.

Thinking about the woman, Jessie dug her heels into the calico flan
ks more roughly than she intended. She had always known the old woman detested her. But now, only as she neared her seventeenth birthday, did she realize the reason for Elizabeth’s enmity all those years. Elizabeth feared to lose Lorenzo Davalos's half of Cristo Rey to his daughter.

The woman was possessed by Cristo Rey, made mad by her love of it. Jessie knew she would never have made any claim to the land. As long as she could have lived there, could live within sight of Brig, it would have been enough. B
ut for Elizabeth to declare her illegitimate in order to retain control of Cristo Rey— that put Jessie beyond Brig. For how could he have ever come to love or marry a bastard?

A bastard. She had not even known what it meant when first she heard the name on
Elizabeth's tongue. Now she carried the name as a
penitente
did his flagellum. Once more a mat was her bed and her hands were reddened and roughened with work.

She knew Elizabeth was lying yet knew no way of proving it. She knew of no one who had witnesse
d the ceremony between her mother and father.

And Brig, what did he think? How did he feel? If whirlwinds twisted deep inside, no hint of emotion played across his face that had these days the cold stillness of sculptured stone. There was no swashbuckler b
luster in Brig. He thoroughly and efficiently carried out all the tasks of actually running Cristo Rey.

She could not help but ask herself if he carried out so thoroughly his courtship of Fanny those months she lived in the Stronghold. Had he kissed Fanny
on the long rides the two had taken? Jessie could remember counting the hours until she saw the two ride back through the Stronghold’s gates. And always the ravishing Fanny looked . . . slightly ravished.

Damn her red hair and big bosom!

Jessie kneed the calico into a gallop. The pony crested a catback hill that overlooked the Stronghold and its
rancheria
, slid down the pebbled sides to the Cienega’s sandbar crossing, and streaked for the outbuildings.

Her eyes searched among the cowboys gathered about the
corral, but she did not see the one man she was looking for. Neither was he in the mess hall later that afternoon when she and old Marta served the hands their lunch. When Elizabeth had banished Jessie from the Stronghold, Brig had asked the old Mexican woman to take Jessie in. Marta had given her work to earn her keep and in return served as a substitute grandmother.

Halfheartedly Jessie joked with the cowhands as she spooned the red beans over the fry bread. She passed by Red who threw a beefy arm about h
er waist. “Jessie, tell Slim you’re my sweetheart.”

She struck Red
’s arm with the wooden spoon. “The only sweetheart who’d have you. Red Mahoney, is that sow sleeping in the mud out back.”

The men clustered about the long table punched each other in the ri
bs and winked. A few openly laughed at her sally. Although Jessie Davalos was an eye-catching wild beauty, not one of them dared approach her on any but the friendliest terms. The boss had made that clear the day the scrawny kid had moved out of the Stronghold. Whatever stigma of bastardy rumor had it Jessie carried. Brig let it be known that as far as he was concerned she was his cousin and therefore lived and worked at the
rancheria
under his protection.

But sweet Jesus, some of them thought as they watch
ed her move out of Red's encircling arm, a man could withstand only so much temptation. And Jessie Davalos was a young woman grown now, sweet and ripe for the taking.

From the mess hall's screen door Brig watched the scene in progress
—the men admiring Jessie’s golden beauty and Red’s arm about her waist. The door slammed shut behind him as he stepped inside, and whatever jest Red might have made to Jessie died on his lips. Talk turned to other subjects, and the men nodded respectfully as Brig made his way to Slim.

Jessie's heart galloped as she watched Brig pull out a thin yellowed sheet of rice paper and roll himself a cigarette while he talked to his foreman. Slim was a man twice his age and twice as leathery-looking. Long hours spent in the sun had only l
ightly tanned Brig’s skin below the Stetson, but the rough range work had molded the tall, slim body into sinewy strength.

He said only a few words and was removing his spurred boot from the bench to leave when Jessie gathered her courage and took the init
iative. "Want some lunch, Brig?”

When the intense blue eyes fell on her, she did not see the usual gentleness in his gaze. Suddenly she felt a stranger to this man with whom she had grown up, who to her was more than a step-cousin. His lids drooped, curtai
ning his expression. "No, Jessie, I lunched at the Stronghold. I’ll just have a cup of coffee.”

She had to refrain from smiling, for Brig had never drunk coffee at the Stronghold out of deference to his father
’s Mormon leanings. He himself had once confessed to her as they sat before the door of Marta's
jacale
watching fireflies that he had his doubts about the revelations his namesake had experienced. Since she had not been raised in a church, she had never given the subject of religion any special thought other than a passing curiosity for the
retablos
hanging on her grandmother’s bedroom walls.

When Jessie returned with the cup of coffee, she found Brig
’s eyes studying her. Her steps slowed, and she could not help the pleasure she took in the way his gaze ran from her sloping neckline above the peasant blouse down to the short length of calf and bare ankle that peeped beneath the full skirt. A surge of heat leaped out like tongues of fire through her stomach.

It was not the first time this had happened. Sh
e could be alone in the
jacale
she shared with old Marta, and the thought of Brig crushing her against him in a passionate embrace could cause the same aching feeling. But this was the first time he had looked at her like that—a look that made her knees go weak as water, so that when she passed the cup her hand trembled and the coffee sloshed over her wrist.

With a gasp she dropped the cup. It shattered on the table, splashing scalding liquid on Brig. He shot to his feet. His plaid flannel shirt was soaked.
At once she began to rip open the shirt. Buttons flew everywhere. “Brig, Brig,” she murmured over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“
It’s all right,” he reassured her, but already large red welts roped across the chest that was forested with dark curling hair.

Once the cowhands realized no real damage had been done, they returned to their eating and raucous conversations, sounding for all the world like magpies. Beneath the noise she persuaded Brig to at least let her give him a clean shirt as she led him
out of the mess hall.

“
I have several laundered shirts left over from the washing,” she told him over her shoulder, pushing open the plank door to her quarters. In one comer of the darkened room was a large woven basket, and she knelt beside it as she dug through the mound of clothing. “Here," she said, rising and crossing to Brig. "This should fit just about right.” She held up the shirt to his shoulders, measuring their width. In the semi-darkness she did not see the probing gaze he directed at her.

She began removing his own now-tattered shirt, saying, “
As long as you've gotten your shirt off, Brig, you might as well let me apply some salve to those welts.” Nervously, she crossed to the crude cupboard and returned with a tin of balsam of myrrh.

Brig stood watching her. His muscle-corded arms hung limply at his sides, but as she approached him she noted the way his thumbs rubbed against
clenched fingers. She stopped within inches of him, feeling the tension that erected a glass wall between them. Brig’s face froze into marble as she scooped the unguent from the container and touched his chest. The muscles beneath his feverish skin reacted visibly to her touch, twitching and flickering like a muleskinner’s whip.

She glanced up into the rigid face. He was looking beyond her at nothing in particular. Hesitantly she massaged a small area where the burn was the worst, then moved on to the next
red patch, always acutely aware of the pale smooth texture of his skin beneath her fingertips. Almost absently her fingers entwined with the short, wiry curls that tufted the skin about the small, hard nipples, then followed the dark thatch that swept down the center of the ribcage and taut stomach to enwreathe the navel.

Her hand halted its progress. The seconds ticked off like staccato beats of an Indian cottonwood drum. At last Brig grasped her wrist in a painful grip. She raised her eyes to meet the ey
es that burned in their sockets like cholera’s raging fever. “Jessie,” he grated.

She gasped at what she saw in his eyes, and the breath seared her throat. “
Brig . . .”

His lips cut her short. Like a newborn blindly seeking nourishment too long denied, he
covered her lips, her lids, her temples with soft, nipping kisses. Her head lolled backward. Her body trembled when his lips followed the graceful line of her throat down to the rising globes of flesh exposed above her blouse. She gave herself up to his ravishment, not even feeling the hands that bit into her arms with the agony of having something too long withheld.

“
Jessie,” he murmured, his breath hot against her skin. “You’re just a child. Too young. My cousin.”

“
A step-cousin,” she cried out as he moved to set her from him. Her hand grabbed at his and brought it up against her breast, forcing him to feel the furious thudding of her heart. “Feel me. Brig! I’m not a child any more! I’m a woman—with a woman’s needs!”

“
Good God,” he groaned, closing his eyes. “Jessie, I’m getting married next fall. This can’t happen."

She wouldn
’t let him pull away. “I think I've loved you since I was a child, Brig. I’m not going to give you up. You can’t make me stop loving you!"

His lids snapped open. “
I have to marry Fanny, don't you understand! There’s Cristo Rey to—”

“
Damn Cristo Rey!” she rasped and stood on tiptoe to claim the full mouth, her hands cupping his head to pull it down to hers.

Sunlight flashed through the shadowed room. "
Chiquit
a,” Marta’s voice began, “there are the dishes to do, and—” the old Mexican woman’s words dropped off like falling stones as the couple broke apart.

Brig
’s fingers dug into Jessie’s arm, as if he wished to transfer his agony to her. Then he spun away and stalked from the room.

Marta
stepped aside as the tall young man strode past her. She looked at Jessie who stood like a statue. “
Dios ayudate
,” she said, sadly shaking her head, “for you need all the help God can give you,
chiquita
."