Dust Devil (39 page)

A band of sweat broke out again on the little man’s forehead. "But you must understand. We’ve clerks and secretaries and cooks’ salaries to pay out of this.”

"What of teachers and nurses?” Swanbeck asked with a grimace. "It doesn’t appear that your students are in the best of health.”

"Teachers and nurses won’t work for that kind of salary,” Jackson whined. "We’re doing the best we can.”

"I don’t believe you are,” Cody said. "We saw one child, a boy of not more than five or six years, dragging a ball and chain about his ankle. A ball and chain, my God!” Cody was surprised at how incensed he was over the matter. I’m getting old, he thought. Used to be, nothing rattled me.

"He’s a problem child. Chase-the-Wind has been running away continually since he came here six months ago. On top of that Mrs. Duffy—our matron—reports he’s a bed-wetter.”

"Get him,” Cody said.

"What?”

"You heard me. We want to talk to some of these children ourselves.”

The superintendent searched for Chase-the-Wind’s files while the boy was being sent for. Cody pulled out his pocket watch. He was almost sorry he had suggested the investigation. If they didn’t hurry, they’d miss the season’s opening of the Santa Fe Opera House that evening, one of the few pleasures he allowed himself when he came to Santa Fe. That evening Texas Guinan, a vivacious woman who reminded him much of Stephanie, was playing in
The Gay Musician.

The boy stumbled in, followed by the matron. Beneath his razor-cropped black hair his black eyes moved warily from Swanbeck to the superintendent to Cody before they abruptly shuttered over. The little brown face seemed to rigidify with hatred.

Cody undid his lanky frame from the chair and crossed over to the boy, stooping so that he was eye level with him. "Tell me, Chase-the-Wind, why do you run away from here?” he asked gently.

The boy bared his teeth at Cody, then spat into his face.

"See!” Jackson exclaimed. "They’re savages! You can’t civilize them. You can put pants on them, but ’fore you know it, they’ve gone back to the blanket.”

T
he child stepped back, apparently expecting Cody to strike him, but Cody calmly pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the spittle away, all the while watching the boy’s face. By the time he stuffed the handkerchief back in his coat pocket, his hand was shaking. There was something about the look in the boy’s eyes. The daring, the impudence, the flash of spirit. Still kneeling before the boy, he said, "Tell me what’s written in the boy’s file.”

The old man looked from Cody to Swanbeck with raised brows and shook his head in bewilderment. He opened the file. "Hmmm. Not much. Father, an Apache sub-chief. Died last year of trachoma. Boy’ll be five next February—big for his age, ain’t he?”

"The mother?” Cody prompted.

"Let’s see. Not much that way either. Never is. Here
— mother died at birth. Hemorrhaging.”

"Was there a doctor present?” Swanbeck asked.

"Well, of course. But those things do happen. Even to a white woman. And look here—” the man’s knotty fingers flicked the folder’s pages, "she was forty-three when she had the kid, her firstborn. That ain’t young. Specially for an Indian. Why they looked like mummies by the time they reach twenty-five.”

Cody had begun to tremble. The boy’s eyes were steady on him. The solemn mouth turned upward in contempt. He saw the white man’s weakness.

"The mother — ” Cody’s voice came out in a croak, and he tried again. "What was the mother’s name?”

The superintendent licked his thumb and turned a page. "No Nose.” He looked at the two men with a knowing grin and winked. "A camp whore, no doubt. That’s what the bucks do to the ones that sleep around
— chop off their noses. Had one myself one time, when I was younger. Real grateful they are to a white man.”

A rage built in Cody. He wanted to spring at the old man. But he never took his eyes from the boy’s piercing gaze. "What tribe?” he demanded.

"Doesn’t say. So most likely a half-breed.”

"The father’s name?”

"What is it?” Swanbeck asked Cody, sensing there was more to Cody’s questioning than just the casual investigation the man had proposed.

"The father’s name?” Cody repeated. Stuffy air permeated the cluttered room. Cody could feel the perspiration break out in his mustache and at his temples.

The superintendent’s finger ran down the page, then stopped. "Yes, here it is!” he said, glad to finally find some concrete information. "Satana.”

Cody rocked on the balls of his feet. His heart slammed against his chest, then missed a beat. He forced himself to relinquish Chase-the-Wind’s gaze and rose to steady himself. "I want the boy released to me.”

Both Jackson and Swanbeck gasped simultaneously. "That — it can’t be done, Mr. Strahan. I mean there’s red tape of all sorts. I mean it’s just not the sort of thing that’s done.”

"Then today will be a first,” Cody said.

"Cody, have you lost your mind?” Swanbeck asked, his bullhead jutting forward in disbelief.

"No, I haven’t. I may have finally found it again.” He hunkered down before the b
oy again. "My name is Cody Strahan,” he said very slowly. "I knew your mother before she was a
yisnaah
, a captive. Do you understand me?”

The boy’s eyes widened at the sound of the Indian word but he gave no other indication he understood Cody. But Cody knew. "I want to help you. I will take you with me. Give you all the food you want. Clothes.” And sudden inspiration made Cody add, "A horse
— a pinto pony. Do you understand?
La’aa
?”

The eyes blinked. But still not a word.

"You can’t do this. Everything has to be cleared first with the Indian Commissioner!”

"Then do it!” Cody ordered. He looked at Chase-the-Wind. "I shall return next week for you
— Monday. But you must not run away. It doesn’t solve anything.”

Cody smiled wryly and added, "If you want to change things for the better
– or worse, become a politician.” He held out his hand. The boy looked from Cody’s face at last to the outstretched hand. "You have my word,” Cody prompted.

Cautiously the boy’s thin, grimy hand stole out to lay in Cody’s big one. Cody smiled. "Things are gonna be different for us two lost souls.” But when Cody went to withdraw his hand, the boy would not turn it loose.

Cody knelt once more. "Here, son. Do you know what this is?” he asked, drawing forth his pocket watch. "It’s very valuable and tells the time. It’s yours. That way you know that I’ll come back for you.
La’aa
, all right?”

Slowly the boy nodded. Once, then twice. And Cody could have sworn a smile curved the stoic lips.

Friday. June 17, 1910

Dear Rosemary,

Four times now I’ve started this letter to you. I’ve followed your progress through the newspapers; learned of Stephen’s death two years ago, your discovery of uranium o
n Cambria last year, your prized black angus winning world fame, and the contract with Phelps Dodge to mine coal on Cambria.

My own life has been in comparison relatively quiet, considering a quarter of a century has passed since last we saw one another. Quiet until last month, when I agreed to be a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Which brings me to what I’ve been trying so unsuccessfully to
relate to you from the beginning.

While in Santa Fe I took a tour of the Santa Fe Government Boarding School for Indians. I found there
— and I hope you are prepared for a shock (you always were) — a boy whom I know to be your grandson. It’s all on the file at the superintendent’s office.

As you by now
must realize, it was, indeed, Stephanie you and I found that day. But she refused to come back with me. Later 1 shall make a confession of the inexcusable reason for the lie. Right now I just wanted to prepare you. As soon as the convention is over, hopefully within the month, I shall be bringing Chase-the-Wind to Cambria to meet his grandmother and see the empire that will one day be his.

Cody

It was as if a great burden had been lifted from Cody as he slipped the letter in the envelope. He would address it then and give it to the landlady to post the next day. He had never been goo
d at penmanship, but this was the most important missive of his life, and he carefully penned each letter on the envelope . . . and with each letter the joy grew in him. The joy of release — excitement that his life had meaning. But the excitement became too much for him.

His heart began beating erratically as it had earlier that day in the superintendent’s office. His hand trembled before he had even affixed the "Mrs.” and "Rosemary,” and with the first letter R of the surname, his hand slipped
in a sliding down-stroke.

"No,” Cody cried, "not yet!” though actually the words never reached the tip of his tongue, and his lids closed before his body thudded to the floor.

CHAPTER
42

August, 1938

Ra
mah Navajo Indian Reservation

The sawmill and every inch of the thirty-one million feet of timber belonged to the Indians. And up until two years before the Indians had cut and towed the timber along the Zuni River to Ramah for processing. Then Joseph Lomberg secured the exclusive right to operate lumber on the river — by agreeing to employ Indian labor in preference to other labor on equal terms.

Since that time old Lomberg began to bring in carloads of Austrians, Swedes, and Germans, and Ramah’s population leaped from four hundred to eleven hundred. Now more white
men lived on the Indian Reservation than Indians. Now the white men worked in the forests, and the Indians sat idly with their squaws.

Carefully Chase laid the length of the board against the sharp teeth of the edger. The sawdust flew through the heated room like snow, clogging his nostrils and powdering his raven hair. It coagulated with the rivulets of sweat which snaked down the brown-sheened, muscle-ridged torso that was naked from the waist up.

With each whir of the edger Chase imagined Lomberg’s dwarflike body stretched out on the platform. The old man writhed and twisted as the sawtooth blade crept nearer to his ostrich neck. He begged, pleaded, cried out for forgiveness. And then the bright red blood spurted to mat on the floor with the sawdust.

The whistle sounded, and Chase finished the board he sawed and shut down the edger for the day. The other workers, mostly Zuni and Navajo, were already at the door, struggling into their shirts and jesting good-naturedly, for it was Friday. An hour would find them in one of the back canyons around El Morro and Inscription Rock, having their afterwork drinks. But the drinks would be fermented corn whiskey, not gin; and they would be drinking around a blackened firepit, not before a long oak bar in one of the speakeasies that, along with the bawdy houses and dance halls, flourished in the towns that bordered the reservation, places that were forbidden to the Indian.

Anxious to begin the weekend, the Indian workers clambered into the back of buckboards or buggies. No longer did they bother to invite Chase Strawhand with them. Chase, they agreed, was different — neither Indian nor white. Billy Whiteshield claimed Chase was a Pueblo, his father a cacique. No, George Caballo declared. He had to be Navajo. Look how much taller he was than most of the other Indians. Only the Navajo grew that tall. All agreed Chase Strawhand was quick-tempered and dangerous, especially with the hunting knife. And so they left him to himself, which was how he preferred it.

The hike from the sawmill to the closest border town, San Jose
— which perched on the Continental Divide — took Chase a little over fifty minutes. Rather than return to the isolation of the log hogan he had built, he made the hike every Friday afternoon, arriving before the Blue Top Bar almost exactly to the minute at six o’clock. With his bottle of illegal but potent
tiswin
that old Mary Two-Cows sold him, he would plant himself on the granite boulder that jutted over the forested two-lane highway running in front of the bar. He would sprawl there, his back against a spruce, and watch in the late afternoon sunlight as the tough lumberjacks and railroad men began to arrive in their battered Packard and Ford pickups.

He listened to the way the loggers talked and swore, watched the way they walked—how their steps went unplanned—and noted the type of clothing they wore, only slightly different but enough to set them apart from their Indian counterparts. He missed his former job as a logger that took him outdoors
— the freedom of the sun and the wind on his face. But those highly paid, much-desired jobs belonged now to those Anglos.

And as he weekly watched those Anglos go in and out of the Blue Top, his resentment of the white race grew, increased by each swallow of the
tiswin
. The white matron who had beat him with the rubber hose each time he wet the bed, the white man who had promised him the world and had given him nothing but a pocketwatch, and the half-white woman who had given birth to him but denied him a birthright ... the desire to bring revenge down upon the white race, the
bilagaana
, was as bitter and as strong as the
tiswin
. The thirst for revenge consumed his every waking moment, even burrowing like a prairie dog into his dream-tossed sleep.