Dust Devil (13 page)

"I’ll be fine,”
she murmured again as she went to stand before the fire that roared in the marbled fireplace. She stretched out her hands to clutch the mantel. "Just give me a few moments. Yellow Dog frightened me more than I realized.”

Consuela looked at the slim body and taut face with its angular contours and frowned. "It is not Yellow Dog,
Senora
, that makes you so.”

She
turned from the fire’s warm blaze when she heard the certainty in Consuela’s voice. "What?” she asked, puzzled.

"You no can tell, Senora? You are
embarazada
.”

She
took a step backward. "’Tis impossible! I couldn’t be pregnant! I haven’t . . .”

Why had she not been aware of her body’s changes? She had been pregnant before. Twice. Enough to realize this time. But before, she had been eagerly awaiting the indications that she was with child, and this time
. . .

Her gaze went back to Consuela’s face. And she knew that Consuela was also aware of the truth.

Sweet Jesus, Stephen would tolerate a lot for the sake of Cambria. But not a child that was not his.

* * * * *

Stephen leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. Rosemary and Consuela exchanged looks. The cook nodded her head once in affirmation before trudging into the kitchen.

"I’m worn out,”
he mumbled. "Three days it took us, but we drove those bloody bastards out of Santa Fe and all the way back down Mesilla Valley.”

"And Grant?”
she asked softly. "Is he all right?” She wore an off-the-shoulder dress of midnight blue satin and had her hair dressed in ringlets rather than the usual chignon. What lay before her was a distasteful, repugnant act. But it had to be done. She would not be driven from Cambria. She would not give up her home.

Stephen opened his eyes and raised the glass to his lips, swilling the whiskey quickly. "Grant carried the day at Peralta. It will earn him his major’s rank for certain.”

She wanted to ask about Lario for she had not seen him ride into the village with the other men, but she was afraid of arousing Stephen’s suspicion. He saved her from her agony, saying, "Lario was no less daring. The damned Indian took chances the troopers would not. As if he did not care for his safety.  Hell, I can’t afford to lose a
caporal
as good as he.” The last came out on Stephen’s tongue with a slur, and he set the liquor from him.

She
felt ill with the realization that Lario could have been killed. She wondered if he was now in the village below with some flashing, dark-eyed maiden or had returned to his pueblo and Adala. By an effort of will she forced herself to rise and walk around the table to stand behind Stephen. She put her hands on his shoulders. "Come to bed, Stephen. You’re tired.”

He
squinted up at her and shook his head, trying to shake away the alcohol’s fumes that clouded his mind. Something that might have been suspicion furrowed deeper the crease between his brows.  Then he laughed aloud.  "Come’n Rosie,” he said and grabbed her about the waist for support to pull himself up out of the chair. “Funny, how liquor can get to you when you are this dead tired. Don’t know when I’ve had been this drunk.”

She
shut her eyes and forced her rigid limbs to relax as he fumbled at the buttons of his pants. She heard his erratic footsteps as he stumbled in the dark looking for her bed and felt the give of the feather mattress when his hands searched for her body. "Here,” she whispered, for once instructing him.

"Ridin’ you not so bad, Rosie.” His breath quickened, and he increased the tempo of his movements so that within moments he fell limply across her, panting. "Not so bad,” he mumbled. "Not so bad.”

When his staccato snorts of sleep reached through to her self-induced trance, she cautiously slid from beneath the heavy weight of his right side. His sour breath assailed her, and she turned her face away and closed her eyes . . . only to find the black eyes of another face painted on the canvas of her mind.

* * * * *

Grant stood much too close, the passion of his face exposed to anyone who looked for it. Rosemary cast a surreptitious glance at Libby, but the young wife, ballooning in the first months of her own pregnancy, seemed not to notice. She sat on one of the benches that lined Fort Sumner’s mess hall, which was now cleared of its long tables, and talked desultorily with the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Kit Carson, Josepha of the rich Jaramillo family.

"You’re not listening to what I’m saying, Rosemary,” Grant whispered at her ear.

"What?” she asked distractedly. Her foot tapped with the fiddler’s rapid rendition of the "Pigeon Wing.” She longed to join the reel in progress, but the idea of a pregnant woman dancing was scandalous. She did not know why she even bothered to make the full day’s trip for the fort’s valentine party; and yet that was not entirely true.

During the day’s journey she had been able to catch glimpses of Lario when he returned to the buckboard to discuss with Stephen the terrain ahead or the next halt for water and rest. Hungrily her eyes devoured his lean frame and caressed the sinewy muscles of his shoulders. If Lario had not made the journey at Colonel Carson’s request, she doubted if she would have gone.

"I said,” Grant repeated with some exasperation, "that if I did not know better, I would accuse you of having a lover.” Rosemary’s gaze flew upward to Grant’s handsome face. Was he only joking? "I do,” she said lightly. "My husband. We’re expecting a child also, Grant.” Indelicate to tell a man of such a condition but necessary at this point, Rosemary told herself. "In about five months.”

In about four
months to be more exact, she thought. Thank goodness she was tall and carried the baby low. She was still small, though the tightly laced stays were cutting into her ribs.

Grant covered his surprise, saying, "That explains the sparkle in your eyes. You’re positively radiant.”

She wanted to change the dangerous subject. "That little man who just walked outside with Lario and Stephen— is he the famous Kit Carson?”

A smile twitched Grant’s mustache at her obvious ploy. "The same. With the withdrawal of the Union troops back to the battlefronts in the East, the Indian attacks have increased
.  Carson’s been ordered by General Carleton to take the New Mexico Volunteers and put a halt to these attacks.”

She
shivered, remembering the old prospector that Lario had brought in the week after Yellow Dog’s visit. The old man dangled over the back of Lario’s Arab, his mangled head already covered with maggots.

"Come along,” Grant said, his hand taking her arm possessively. "I’ll introduce you.”

The three men stood in the center of the fort’s parade grounds. Stephen was pointing out the new barracks, the hospital, and the ice house. "I have been explaining to Colonel Carson,” Stephen said when she and Grant joined them, "that the fort will make an excellent reservation post. I’ve arranged with the Secretary of the Interior to lease our land that surrounds the fort to the government.”

So Stephen was turning another penny, Rosemary thought sourly. She looked at Lario who hunkered on one knee, calmly smoking. The cigarette’s flare lit his inscrutable face. "What reservation are you talking about?” she asked, making a
halfhearted attempt to be sociable.

"You must realize, Mrs. Rhodes,” Kit Carson said, and she found it odd that this fearless man had such a high-pitched voice, "that the War Department’s withdrawal of troops from the Territory is, from the Apache and Navajo point of view, a victory. They reason that the white soldiers have given up and retreated to their own country. No white man will be safe until every Apache and Navajo Indian is patrolled on the reservation. Captain Raffin here will be in charge of the reservation, ma’am.”

Rosemary looked around her, recalling the barren, flat land that stretched outside the fort and finding it difficult to believe the government wanted people to live there. Her gaze halted on Grant. Another feather for his cap, she thought, but the mention of Lario’s name drew her eyes back to his dark face. She wished she could read his thoughts or that he would say something, but he only waited patiently as Kit Carson continued.

"I’ve been hoping to persuade Lario Santiago to convince his Navajo people there are advantages to living here on the Bosque Redondo Reservation. Raffin has here a clinic, and the fort’ll soon have a doctor. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is having built a trader’s post just outside the fort to distribute to the Indians beef and flour, and they will be taught to farm.” Kit squatted down now to face Lario. The old scout’s keen eyes in the seamed face glowed intently. "Your people must understand that warfare will solve nothing.”

Lario’s voice was soft but firm. "
Naat’aani
,” he said, using the Navajo form of address for headman, "my people, the
Dine’e
, and the Apache, they are not farmers,
Naat’aani
. They are shepherds and herdsmen. They would not like being tied down like a hobbled horse. They would die. But I will talk with the Navajo
Naat’aani
—Manuelito.”

"Tell your chiefs also,” Grant said, the dislike he had for Lario showing in his eyes, "that if they do not come peacefully, every man, woman, and child found off the reservation will be shot. All your pueblos’ food supplies will be destroyed—as will your race. These are orders from General Carleton.”

Lario rose. His black eyes rested only a fraction of a second on Rosemary before his burning gaze went to meet that of Grant’s. "Maybe much blood will flow before you are finished.”

"I hope you can help to avoid that,” Kit said.

In the moonlight the scout’s silvery hair was as light as Lario’s was dark. But the blue eyes of the scout and the black eyes of the Indian were both filled with unfathomable sadness.

CHAPTER 15

Rosemary looked down at the fuzzy red head of hair that nuzzled at her breast, tugging so hard that the nipple hurt with the flow of milk. A great love for the child coursed through her. The baby was a tenacious thing.  Weighing less than five pounds at birth despite being carried past full term, the infant was squalling mad, refusing to give up its birthright in its fight to survive.

She
had immediately named her daughter Stephanie lest there be any doubt as to the infant’s paternity. The child had her bright red hair, but her eyes were as black as Stephen’s. Their almond shape, slightly tilted at the corners, gave an indication of her true heritage only to the most suspect observer – the eyes and, perhaps, her caramel-colored skin.

"She is beautiful, isn’t she?” Rosemary murmured, and Consuela, who had served once more as midwife, nodded in agreement. In her devotion to
la patrona
, her mistress, her wise eyes never betrayed what they both knew.

According to everyone’s calculations, except for those of the two women, the baby came
a month early. Stephen, therefore, was still in Santa Fe. Had he been at Cambria at the time of Stephanie’s birth, Rosemary doubted he would have shown any marked interest. He had his son.

And Lario? Was he aware that another child had been bo
rn in the Castle? Probably not, she thought. And most certainly he did not know it was his child. For should he learn the truth she had no misgivings that, as fond of children as the Navajo were, Lario would never permit her to keep the child in Stephen’s household.

But on tha
t point she need not worry, because he was still in the western part of the New Mexican Territory, which had been severely reduced in size now that a portion of it had been made into the Territory of Arizona. Whether he was succeeding at his peace mission was debatable. According to
The Las Vegas Gazette
, a Navajo chieftain, Barboncito, was credited with the robbery of several stages and the destruction at Raton of the "iron street”.

Stephen was furious; for her husband, always the entrepreneur, had invested heavily in the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad which, if completed, would create a new aristocracy from the wealth it would engender.
  He was in Santa Fe negotiating with representatives from Washington to buy portions of the checkerboard plots of land on either side of the railroad that were to be sold once the War Between the States ended, as everyone felt it would surely end soon.

When Stephanie was not quite three months old, Rita travel
ed to see the child, cheering Rosemary with the latest gossip. "I am sure Esteban will tell you when he returns from Santa Fe,” she said after Consuela left the room, "but it is said that Congress has again refused to grant our Territory stateship.”

She chuckled
. "Statehood, you mean.”

"Si. Because we have slaves it is said.” Rita tapped her foot angrily. "The peons
— how would they live, what would they eat, if we did not take care of them?”

The question of the debt peonage seemed a vicious cycle to Rosemary, who as a child had three servants at her dis
posal.  It seemed to her the solution, the freeing of all indentured people, could take decades to bring about.  "I thought you did not like to discuss politics, Rita,” she said in an effort to turn the subject in another direction.