Desert Hearts (9 page)

“You were willing to taste it anyway,
bilagaana!
”

“ ‘Tis the polite thing to do, you understand,” said Michael with a twinkle in his eye, broadening his brogue. “And at one time in me life, I learned to eat anything,” he added more seriously.

“When you speak like that, you sound different from the other
bilagaana
,” Antonio remarked.

Michael paused. “I come from a small green island, Antonio. To get there, you would have to travel many weeks to the east and then cross the ocean.”

Antonio frowned. “I’ve heard of the ocean before, but to the west.”

“That is the Pacific. I came from over the Atlantic. Anyway, I left home when I was young because of a great famine. I’ve been here for many years, but I have never lost me brogue completely.”

“It has a soft sound, this ‘brogue.’ I like it.”

“Thank you, Antonio.”

Both men were silent for a moment, sensing that the first and fragile threads of friendship were now between them.

Michael broke the silence first. “You are Manuelito’s nephew. That means you must know a little about the situation here. Do you think it is likely to remain peaceful?”

Antonio scooped up a handful of pink sand. He held it out in front of him, almost openhanded. “There are many Diné and when they are held loosely like this, Sergeant, only a few of them slip away.” He closed his hand tightly and small pink streams of sand slid through his fingers. “The tighter the people are held by the
bilagaana
and their own headmen, the faster they slip away.” He waved his hand, letting the sand fall in an arc. “This is Dinetah. The Holy Place. It is bounded by four mountains. We only ask to live here, within them. But we are being pushed further west by every piece of paper we sign.”

“But you
have
signed them?”

“Yes. Manuelito and Armijo and Barboncito and the others have signed. They have given their word. For themselves, this means the treaty will not be broken. But there are always the
ladrones
, Sergeant. Amongst all people,” he added bitterly. “Yet it is only the Diné the army punishes.”

“I want to ask one more question,” Michael asked carefully. “I wish to better understand the Diné and I ask it respectfully.”

Antonio nodded, giving him room to speak.

“There has been sheep stealing and killing and slave taking, Antonio. That is why the army is here.”

Antonio frowned and was quiet for so long that Michael was afraid he had just broken the threads of their beginning friendship.

“I am so filled with anger at this that it is hard to speak,” said Antonio with controlled passion in his voice.

“I am sorry for asking then,” said Michael, beginning to apologize.

“No. It is only by talking that anything can be understood. It’s just that I have heard my uncle say this
many
times and he has never been heard.”

Michael waited patiently, still fearful that he had caused an irretrievable break….

“But I think you want to learn. You didn’t drink at our spring. You didn’t gloat over your winning, like Stringy-Ass Cooper does.”

Michael had to smile at that.

“Listen,
bilagaana
,”—Antonio was talking softly, but with pent-up anger and frustration—“we have been at war for hundreds of years with the Mexicans. We steal their sheep and their children. They steal ours. But at least when we steal children, it is not to make them slaves. Stolen Diné children are made to work for their whole lives. We make Mexican children part of our families. You
bilagaana
, you New Men, were also at war with the Mexicans. You should have welcomed us as allies. Instead, when you make peace with them, you make them your friends and us your enemies. Why should only Diné return stolen sheep and children? Why is it that only the Mexicans are believed? Why must we deliver up the
ladrones
amongst us? It is something we cannot understand. My uncle and the other headmen have asked these questions many times and never got an answer. But the headmen realize how much power the
bilagaana
have. So they see the necessity of making treaties. But the reasons are hard to explain to the Diné, especially when you know they are right.”

Michael had to agree with him. He knew only a little history of the territory, but he had seen the same pattern over and over again in Nebraska and Dakota: an agreement made and then broken by a few renegades. Many perished for the transgressions of a few. And the constant pushing, pushing of the tribes west, by both army and settlers.

“I have seen the same thing before, farther north,” he admitted quietly.

“This year has been a prosperous one for the Diné. There has been no need for raiding. And Haastiin Keshgoli—you call him Sandoval—seems to have been quiet,” he added bitterly.

“Haastiin Keshgoli?” Michael struggled to pronounce it correctly.

“We call him an enemy because he takes part in the trading of his people.”

“There are men like that everywhere,” said Michael. “In Ireland, we had the
gombeen
men.”

“Gombeen?”

“They were the men who took advantage of bad times and loaned money for food at very high interest.” Antonio still looked puzzled. How could one explain the concept of charging interest for borrowing money needed to stay alive to someone whose people believed in taking care of their poor and hungry?

“It is a foreign custom, Antonio. Hard for me to explain, because it is hard for me to understand too. For the most part, my people had a tradition of sharing and hospitality. They were not pushed away from their own country,” continued Michael. “Pushing us too far west would have meant pushing us into the ocean. We stayed, but paid with our blood and sweat and children to work the land that had once been ours. And even then, we starved and died.”

“So, maybe that is why you can hear me, Sergeant.”

“My name is Michael, Antonio. Michael Joseph Burke.”

Antonio was silent for a long time. Michael had found it hard over the years to get used to native peoples’ silences, for he came from such a talkative people. But he had tried to respect it and found, after a while, his own chattering mind calmed down.

When Antonio resumed the conversation, it was only to trade joking insults and challenges about their respective mounts. “I have a Spanish burro that could beat your mule,” he claimed.

“You think so?” said Michael. “Just you be sure to bring him in on the next race day and we’ll see whose arse gets over the finish line first!”

They both laughed and Antonio unfolded himself from the ground. “I must go. I’ve been away for three days and my wife will be getting worried about me. You have a wife, Sergeant?”

“I haven’t found the right woman, yet, Antonio,” said Michael with a smile.

“You’d better find one soon, before you get too old, or don’t you want children?”

Michael’s face softened. “I do want them.”

Antonio gestured to his companions and they all mounted their horses. “I look forward to the next race,
bilagaana
,” he called to Michael as they rode off.

Michael turned to his men. “Private Spratt.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sprat, jumping to attention.

“Did ye really want to start the next Indian war?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so. Next time, ye’ll know to wait till your sergeant tells you when to draw your revolver.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In my own experience,” Michael continued, “when less than ten Indians ride right up to you, they usually have no hostile intentions. It is when you
don’t
see them that ye have to worry. Mount up, men.”

Michael could hear Mahoney and Spratt talking away behind him. No doubt Mahoney was giving Spratt his considered opinion on Michael’s judgment. Well, the boy could grouse all he liked, thought Michael, as long as he kept his fingers off his holster.

“I haven’t met the right one yet.” His response to Antonio’s question popped into his mind. He had met many women who had attracted him over the years. Bridget McNamara, for one, who’d been the kitchen maid for the stable owner he had worked for in New York. He had stolen his first kiss from her sweet lips. But he had been sixteen and she fifteen and soon after that he had joined the army. There had been Sally, a laundress he had visited regularly while he was stationed in Wyoming, but she was not someone to be considering for a wife, however fond he had become of her. And Miss Samantha Plummer, daughter of his captain at Fort Kearney. He had fallen head over heels in love with her, he supposed. But it was a hopeless thing, which he’d known from the start, for he had only been a corporal and she an officer’s daughter, the apple of her father’s eye. She had eventually gone back East to marry an old friend of the family and for a while, Michael had thought his heart was broken. But when he hadn’t died from it, he realized it had only been a young man’s dream: beautiful, but not realistic. These last few years he had accepted the fact that he was unlikely to meet the right woman anytime soon, and had let himself enjoy the casual liaisons available to him. As he was now enjoying his evenings with Mary Ann. But he did have to wonder, he admitted to himself, why, when Antonio had asked him, Mrs. Elizabeth Woolcott had come to mind.

Elizabeth hated it when it was her husband’s turn to act as officer of the guard. It meant that every third day he had to spend twenty-four hours at the guardhouse and she only saw him for a few minutes when he was allowed to come home for very rushed meals. When he was younger, it hadn’t taken much out of him, but now it was obvious to her that the loss of sleep affected her husband. And, truth be told, herself. They never spoke about it directly, but Thomas knew that she slept very little when he was away. Ever since he had found her, she had had a hard time being anywhere alone at night. When she was living with his sister, she had felt safe. And when she married him, she felt she had come home.

When he was away for any extended period of time, he made sure she had company, usually arranging for one of the strikers to camp out in their extra room, which served as a storeroom. But for guard duty, Elizabeth would have felt foolish asking for company. “You don’t need to pamper me, Thomas,” she had told him. But it took both of them a few days to recover from their lack of sleep when he was on guard rotation.

Two weeks after the dance, Thomas’s rotation came up and Elizabeth’s good-bye on that morning was longer than usual.

“Now, Lizzie.”

She wrinkled up her nose in distaste. She hated it when he called her that.

“Now, Elizabeth,” he started over, in mock genteel tones. “You know I could get Bruner to stay with you.”

“Now, Thomas,” she intoned back at him, “you know I will be fine. And I will see you at lunch and dinner.”

He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the cheek and she surprised both of them by pulling his face down again and giving him a lingering kiss on the lips.

“I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow night in my own bed,” he told her.

“If you don’t fall asleep over dinner,” she teased.

“No chance of that if I have this waiting for me.”

She watched him walk down the line and disappear around the corner and then turned to busy herself with household chores to keep her anxiety at bay.

After lunch and a hurried visit from Thomas, she pulled out her pile of mending. But within an hour she was too restless to concentrate and so she changed into her riding skirt and jacket and walked down to the stables.

It took a few minutes for Private Stack to respond to her call and when he finally emerged from one of the stalls, he had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and was wiping his hands on his trousers.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, ma’am, but I have been with Mr. Cooper’s bitch. She’s just about to deliver her pups. I’ll saddle your mare directly.”

* * * *

Once she was outside the fort, Elizabeth gave her mare her head and had a satisfying long canter down the valley. The feeling of the wind on her face and the rhythmic movement of her horse under her was relaxing and when she returned to the fort her restless, nervous feeling was gone.

Private Stack was there to meet her when she dismounted. As he took the reins of her mare to lead her in, Elizabeth remembered Mr. Cooper’s greyhound.

“Has Misty become a mother yet, Private?”

“Gave birth to three fine pups. Not that Mr. Cooper thinks so,” he added under his breath.

“May I see them?”

“Yes, ma’am. Although this may be your only chance.”

Elizabeth couldn’t puzzle out what he meant, but when she made her way down toward the stall, she could hear Cooper’s voice. “Goddamn you, Stack. I ought to cashier you for letting her out when the Navajo were here. It’s clear that some filthy little mongrel mounted her before you got her back in. And here I thought the mating with Major Wheeler’s dog was successful! Drown them all.”

“Oh no,” said Elizabeth without thinking, as she came up behind him.

Cooper turned. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Woolcott. You shouldn’t have been exposed to such language. But there is nothing else to do with the little mutts.”

The stall door was open and Elizabeth went inside. Misty was lying there, her head curved toward three blind and squirming little creatures, alternately licking them and nudging them to nurse. Two appeared to be purebred greyhounds, brindled and fine-boned like their dam, albeit with longer hair than one would expect and broader faces. But the third was a fuzzy black-and-white ball of fur, clearly resembling his sheepdog sire. Elizabeth fell in love with him instantly.

Private Stack came into the stall with a burlap sack.

“Oh no, you can’t just take them from her!”

“It is easier this way,” said the private apologetically.

“I’ll not have her wasting her time nursing these little mutts, Mrs. Woolcott. I intend to breed her with the major’s dog and I want it done as soon as possible.”

Private Stack scooped the two brindled puppies up and dropped them into the sack while Misty was busy licking the black-and-white one. She growled as he picked up the fuzzy baby and started to get up, but Cooper quieted her with a sharp “Down!”