Dust Devil (41 page)

He turned on his heel, and Will said, "No, it’s your problem now, Chase. You’re getting paid to investigate these malpractices of the
BIA.”

Slowly Chase turned back and looked at the old man,
looked past the bright blue eyes, trying to look into the man himself. Was it another trick? But he saw only a tiredness there. The same tiredness with life that he himself felt.

"Get yourself a jacket,” Will ordered
.  He looked embarrassed and confused at his sudden softening. "One that matches some pants. And get that horse’s mane cropped. Next thing I know those artsy boys up on Camino del Monte Sol will be prancing round here looking for a job.”

For the first time Chase smiled, an authentic smile, and Will snapped, "I want you to meet me at the Capitol tomorrow for the afternoon session. The Senate Finance Committee’s reviewing Senate Bill 263.”

* * * * *

The twill jacket was too tight across Chase’s broad shoulders and certainly did not match his faded overalls. And the haircut he had gotten
— it felt odd not to feel the hair brushing his shoulders, now curled at the nape of his neck, still too long by civilized standards.

H
e left the house on Castillos Street where he had rented an attic room the day before and set off in search of the State Capitol Building. During the thirteen years he had spent at the Indian Boarding School he had been outside the grounds only twice and knew little of Santa Fe’s maze of winding streets. And he had too much pride to ask where Galisteo Street crossed Montezuma.

Finally with only five minutes remaining before the opening of the afternoon session he came upon the Capitol, a magnificent structure composed of two wings and a large central dome. In spite of all his scorn for civilization, he stood in awe before the building. It represented all the greatness, all the power the white man was capable of wielding.

This was his enemy. This was what would break him, as it had so many of his people; this symbol of the white man’s laws would reduce him to the groveling dregs of humanity that so often wound up on the suicide lists — if he did not break this enemy first. A surge, almost like the feeling from one’s first kill, swept through him, and he took the shallow steps three at a time in anticipation of the confrontation.

It was exactly three o’clock when he found Room 205. The Senate Finance Committee it read on the door, with a schedule of the times the different Senate bills were to be considered for that day. Chase ran his finger down the list to the time marked 3:00 p m and found SB263, the Conservancy Act.

Quietly he opened the door to a smoke-congested room. An U-shaped table dominated it. About this table were men in suspenders and vests, their long sleeves rolled up. He felt conspicuous in his ill-fitting jacket. The men, maybe sixteen or seventeen of them, appeared to be listening to the testimony of a plump man who sat at a small, square table before them. To the rear of the room were several rows of wooden folding chairs, and Chase spotted Will there signaling to him.

"Much better,” Will whispered, eyeing the chopped haircut as Chase took the empty seat next to him. "We’re up after the next recess.”

The bill presently before the Senate Finance Committee dealt with the Labor and Industrial Commission, and Chase found himself spellbound by the manipulations, the innuendos, and the intricacies that went into its consideration, so that when someone made the motion the bill be passed, followed by a second and the scraping of chairs as the Senators prepared to recess, Chase sat dazed.

"Chase!” Will said, and Chase turned his head to find Will shaking his shoulder. "Let’s get some coffee. We’re next to face the Solid Seventeen.”

In the dingy cafeteria Will anxiously went over his notes, muttering to himself and making a check at some crucial points he wanted to stress. Chase listened as Will made comments, but his attention was distracted by the noisy entrance of a man of medium height. Reporters’ flashbulbs exploded about the man, and a barrage of questions was hurled at him. Square-set with powerfully built shoulders, his face had an intelligent forcefulness about it that magnetized the eye.

But it was the woman at his side who riveted Chase’s attention. Tall and slim, she possessed the same fair features as her companion. The silver gilt hair was long, in a page boy that fell over one brow, so Chase could not see her eyes. And suddenly it seemed to him the most important thing in the world to look into those eyes.

Her movements were fluid, like liquid silver, her smile dazzling, as she took the coffee cup her companion handed her. As if she sensed the intensity of Chase’s gaze, her head turned slightly. From behind the peek-a-boo wave her glance met that of his. The eyes above the sculptured cheekbones were a pale green in contrast to the tanned skin, and Chase thought it was like looking at a mountain meadow covered by frost. Their gazes held for a naked half-second before she turned her interest back to whatever it was her companion was saying.

"Who is that?” Chase asked Will.

"What?” Will looked up from his notes and took a hasty sip of the cold coffee. "Oh, that’s Philip Masters —t he Senate Finance Chairman. A charming man when he wants to be.  Unfortunately most of the time objects rather than people interest him. Power and profit are the clues to his — shall I say — dynamic personality.”

"No, not him
— the woman with him.”

Will chuckled. "I am getting old.” Then, "So it’s not Deborah.”

It was his turn to ask, "What?”

Will shook his shaggy head and gulped the rest of the coffee. "Nothing. In answer to your question, the woman is Christina Raffin. She’s old man Raffin’s daughter. And in case you don’t know who Wayne Raffin is, he’s a retired senator and still the most influential man in Santa Fe county
— and probably the State for that matter.”

"I don’t want to know about him. It’s his daughter I’m interested in.”

"Obviously,” Will said dryly. "If a stare could undress a woman, Christina Raffin would be naked by now — a highly unlikely state since she’s as closely guarded as Fort Knox.”

"How old is she?” Chase asked, his intense gaze never leaving the couple. "And is she married?”

"She’s twenty-two or three, she lives with her father in a mansion in the Barrio de Analco, and she’s a registered lobbyist for the Labor Unions—the only woman lobbyist. And no, she’s not married. Anything else?”

Later, when Chase sat at the small table before the Senate Finance Committee with Will and Senator Katchmeyer, who had reluctantly agreed to sponsor the bill, he spotted Christina in a serious conversation with another of the Senate Finance members, but Philip Masters called the Committee to order, and she took a seat at the rear of the room behind Chase.

He forced his attention now to the case Will was presenting against the Conservancy Act. "The Santa Fe Railroad’s scheme is fraught with menace to the Rio Grande Valley Indians by taking almost half of their arable land and leasing it to Anglos and applying all the rental fees on the Indians’ debt for their part in the flood control works.  The result of this action will be to alienate the land for two more centuries from the Indians who have tilled its soil long before Leif Ericson ever sighted the North Atlantic.”

Chase thought the speech eloquent, reminiscent of the Navajo War Chieftains. He had not yet made up his mind about Wilbur Fairchild
— if the old man was only out for a piece of the action, or if he truly cared about the Indian cause.

One senator leaned and whispered to the man on his right, who promptly motioned the bill be temporarily tabled. "We’ve gotten a reprieve,” Will said, as he gathered his papers and rose to go. "Now it’s your turn. I want you to dig up some facts for me. You can start at the University’s law library. Then
. . .”

But Chase was not listening. His gaze was fixed on Christina Raff
in’s delightful curve of buttocks beneath the silk sheath dress as she leaned over the table to say something to old Senator Farrell. He felt the stirring in his groin, and he had the great urge to take her there on the table and mount her like a stud horse an untried mare before the whole bunch of damned sanctimonious senators who would deny having such lustful thoughts.

H
e shook his head. He’d better high-tail it to the nearest reservation because he knew he was hard up when he started sniffing out pale flesh.

CHAPTER 44

Chase ran his long fingers through his hair. The letters and words blurred before him. Twelve years of schooling and all the white man had wanted to teach him were harnessmaking and horseshoeing — dying trades.

His hawklike face scowled at the words that seemed so alien. He flexed his shoulders. He ached to be out of the musty and confining library. In the open. He needed to be swinging an ax again, getting the kinks out of his muscles, feeling the hot sun on his back.

Once more his eyes scanned the notes he had taken, hoping it was what Will wanted. He felt his own rage mount as he reviewed again his notes from the "Hearings before a Subcommittee, February 17, 1938.”

The Indian Bureau, as a guardian of its Indian wards, had agreed to the cost per acre of $67.50 in constructing the flood control works, when it knew the same work could be done for $35 or $40. Further, it countenanced without even a questioning expression the newer figure of $109.50 despite the second provision of the Tribal Council prohibiting it. And furthermore, it was a higher charge than was made against the acres of the whites.

Chase closed the large volume, Congressional Records, with a thud. He was bone tired after a year of working six days a week and trying to make the classes two nights a week in Albuquerque. He pulled out the smoothly worn pocket-watch. Eight forty-five. He had already missed the last train out to Santa Fe. He shrugged. He could not afford the fare anyway.

As Chase shoved the watch back in his pocket, his fingertips brushed the initials CJS grooved into the gold-filled case, and he was reminded of the white man’s last words to him
— that if he wanted something changed, become a politician. Chase knew then he was tired . . . if he could actually be contemplating becoming a politician.

It just was not done. Not by an Indian anyway. Thirty- eight percent of the population, over one-third, was of Indian origin, yet they were excluded from state citizenship by the New Mexico constitution. He’d have to be crazy to think about mounting a one-man campaign to change the law.

Damn the white man’s law!

Out in the open, away from the confines of the library,
he came alive again, inhaling the rain-freshened October evening. He shrugged into the patched woolen sweater and set out at a steady trot along Albuquerque’s darkened streets. Only twice before had he missed the Santa Fe train. Once a fruit truck had picked him up, but the other time he had trotted the entire sixty miles, making it in a little less than nine hours. The next day he had fallen asleep at the desk of AID’s small, seedy office.

With the same cat-footed grace of his ancestors, he ran smoothly, wasting no breath. The University’s grounds were three miles behind him when he heard the hum of an approaching car. He veered off to the road’s edge, waiting for the car to pass, but the decreased revolutions in the motor told him the car was slowing alongside of him.

He laughed to himself, hoping it was one of the local college toughs spoiling for a fight with a red man. He had seen their looks of disdain and knew by their sneers that he had violated a sacred Anglo institution by registering for classes. Not only was he older than the others, he was an Indian.

The muscles rippled beneath
his shirt and sweater in keen expectation of a fight. He wanted to pulverize every bone in their snotty, white-fished bodies. They revolted him as much as he did them.

When still there was no sudden snap of a door swung open, Chase, never losing the rhythm of his pace, slanted a glance to his right at the roadster that moved along with him. He recognized the sleek lines of the 1937 silver Mercedes Benz, having seen it in the Capitol parking lot several times. And when the husky voice asked, "Want a ride, Mr. Strawhand?” he knew the driver’s identity.

He halted. His eyes pierced the darkness, making out the pale iridescent beauty of Christina Raffin. He put a foot on the running board. A sleek woman for a sleek car. What was she doing out that late alone? "Is this 'do a good turn for an Indian’ night?”

She laughed. "Don’t try to frighten me with your Indian scowl, Mr. Strawhand. The Indian Wars ended with Geronimo’s capture. Besides, I don’t frighten easily.”

His gaze was clamped on Christina’s knees, where the dahlia-blue crepe dress had ridden up to expose the long legs encased in silk hosiery. He could well imagine the pale flesh beneath that molded all the way along the thigh bone, and the blood began to roar in his ears. Nothing but a humping buck, he thought. He did not know if he trusted himself to get in the car. Never before had he needed to bother about restraining his impulsive libido, but obviously Christina Raffin knew nothing about rape. She was an emancipated female, career and all.

Chase groaned inwardly and swung open the door, hoping the darkness concealed the bulge in his pants. "Once in a While” drifted up from the car’s radio. Christina reached over and flicked it off, and Chase caught the subtle scent of her L’Aimant perfume.