Harvest of Fury (31 page)

His home consisted of a single room with a window facing the western mountains. There was a stone fireplace built into the adobe with adobe
bancos
on either side of niches for cooking needs: a cast-iron skillet and several clay cookpots, one half full of dried-up stew which Cat, wrinkling her nose, carried to the edge of camp and scraped out for the dogs.

She put the pot to soak and then finished looking around James's home. A table of rough wood, a washtable with a basin, garments on pegs, riding gear in a corner. And the bed where they'd been together and talked, the sweetness of that blotting out those frightful moments when James had thought she was that persistent whore.

Doubtless lucky it had happened that way, breaking down his reserve, forcing him to be honest. Cat smiled as she carried the serapes outside and hung them across some manzanita bushes to air. She scrubbed out the stewpot, cleaned the rancid skillet, and went across to the company store, where she bought several strings of red chilis which would be decoration as well as seasoning, a chicken ready for the pot, apples, rice, cinnamon, cones of raw sugar, tortillas and sweet breads just made by the storekeeper's wife, and other things to make the house more homelike: several bright cushions, colorful mats, handblown glasses and a jug, candles and pottery candleholders, several woven baskets, a mirror, and a blue-robed Guadalupana standing on a crescent moon. She charged these to her percentage of the mine's revenue, telling the storekeeper to take his bill to the bookkeeper.

Returning to the house with her booty, she arranged her purchases for utility and ornament: the mirror above the washtable where it reflected the smiling Guadalupana fitted in a niche above the bed; the chilis beside the fireplace; cushions and mats on the
bancos;
one candlestick in a niche near the bed, the others on the table.

In the meadows beyond the camp, where children were having a hilarious game of seeing how many could pile on a gentle burro before the last was pushed off, Cat watched and hoped she and James would have, oh, at least four children, two boys and two girls, with one to carry her father's flaming hair. She gathered golden-rod and asters, then wandered to the trees along the stream, collecting yellow aspen and flaming maple leaves to complete the bouquet she arranged in one of the clay pots.

At Don Buenaventura's for a light noon meal, she explained her morning's labors to the old woman by saying that James was her foster mother's brother and she'd promised to do what she could to make him comfortable. At this, the woman's nose-twitching, disapproving manner vanished. She said that in the future she'd see that the young man, who was decent and civil though he kept to himself, was eating properly. There was always food left from Don Buenaventura's table, so it would be no trouble.

Cat thanked her warmly and went back to the store, where she bought the finest rebozo and gifted the housekeeper with it before she went to the little house she loved to be in where she could think of James.

Someday his bed would be hers, too, for all the rest of their lives.
Till then, when you lie here, remember me
, querido,
the way we were last night
.

Everything was done. She added wood to the fire to keep the chicken cooking, stirred the rice for the stew she was making him, and felt like a woman able to manage a house and care for her man.

She'd hoped to be at the house when he saw all she'd done, but she also wanted to look fresh and comb her hair, and so she didn't see him till supper.

“The Three Kings must have gotten mixed up and visited me today,” he said when he joined them for supper. “I thought I'd gone into the wrong house or was dreaming; but when I rubbed my eyes and looked again, it was all still there.”

Cat flushed as her brothers looked at her in surprise. Miguel laughed. “You're the one who worked the miracle, James, if our wild one set your house to rights. Talitha says Cat never threw out anything in her life—or put it up, either.”

Cat kicked him under the table and said sweetly, “That's what Juri says about you.”

Belen said, “Young birds don't furbish their parents' nests, but when the time comes they know how to make their own.”

Patrick plunged through the banter to ask Don Buenaventura if it were true that rich copper ores had been spotted in the Mule Mountains to the south.

The manager shrugged. “Much copper. I've seen it myself. But only silver or gold is worth the risk of Apaches and bandits, Don Patricio.”

“That'll change. Marc says more and more inventions will need copper parts.”

Miguel sighed. “You'll never be happy, will you, as long as you have your skin in one piece?”

“I just like hunting for hidden things,” retorted Patrick. “Branding calves and fighting screwworms isn't how I want to spend my life!”

“Get married,” advised his twin. “That'll keep ranch life exciting enough even for you.”

Patrick snorted. “I'd have married Juri, but you beat me to her, and I haven't met another girl I'd want to settle with. Reckon after Christmas I'll just have to go see what I can find. Like to throw in with me, James?”

For a moment James hesitated. Then the interest in his eyes vanished as wind might snuff out flame. Cat knew he was remembering that, traveling with a white, he'd be expected to side against his people in case of any conflicts. “I'll stay here,” he said.

Cat was sorry he felt trapped but relieved that she'd at least know where he was. Once they married, she was sure, she could make him feel that with her he had a place, a home where he belonged.

Everyone was tired. James went to his house shortly after supper, and the twins began to make down their bedrolls. Cat went to the bedroom. After she'd brushed her hair and washed, she blew out the candle and leaned against the window, waiting till her eyes could make out the vague outlines of James's house.

No light. He must already be stretched to his tall length on the bed they'd shared last night. Did he remember? Did he wish she was with him now?

She longed to steal across the clearing, enter his house, slip into his arms. For a moment she closed her eyes and imagined it before she made herself get into Don Buenaventura's big bed.

There was always the chance of being discovered; but, more imperatively, instinct warned her not to crowd her lover. He needed time to get used to the truth bared between them.

Smiling in the dark, she skipped over that terrible beginning to remember everything he'd said, his caresses, the way he'd begun to like to kiss.

She was his. He was hers. One day the whole world would know it.

James had gone to work before they were ready to leave next morning, but Cat hurried into his house long enough to smooth his bed and look about, assuring herself that he couldn't forget her with all the signs of herself she'd left him.

It was less than three months till the Roof Feast. Then it was nine months till her birthday, but surely she'd see him in between. And perhaps he'd change his mind if she could convince him she was really grown up before that.

She scarcely heard anything the twins or Belen said as they traveled the long miles home, arriving after dark. Hugging Talitha, Cat answered her unspoken question.

“James is fine. And, Tally, he says he'll try to come for the Roof Feast!”

Talitha relaxed visibly. With quick sympathy Cat understood something of how Talitha had worried over her brother all these years. “He's going to be all right,” she said softly, squeezing the older woman's hand. “It's going to be fine.”

But when she glanced up to find Jordan's hazel eyes on her, hurt naked in them for an instant, she realized guiltily that for him it wouldn't be happy.

From the first, territorial Democrats had believed the federal appointees were black Republican carpetbaggers out of political favor in their home states sent to Arizona to “fatten at the public crib.” The big issue that fall of 1870 was who should serve as territorial delegate to Congress, Richard McCormick, a former governor, or Peter Brady, a respected Tucsonan who'd been active in business and politics since coming to the region in 1853. Talitha remembered that he'd passed through the ranch with Gray's surveying party and had been at the defeat of a large Apache raid on Calabazas. Selected by the Democratic convention that had met in Tucson September 17, Brady was certainly much more a man of the territory than McCormick, a New Yorker appointed to the governorship in 1866.

Two of the three territorial papers hurled nasty epithets at McCormick and his supporters, but he won the November election—through fraud, the papers accused. In Arizona City, four hundred ineligible Indians, men and women, had voted.

“
We believe in the right of women to vote,
” wrote the editor of the
Weekly Arizonan
, and went on to say that he thought it would have been more gallant of the merchandise company that had arranged the fraud to have “first extended this right to the white ladies of Arizona City and compelled the squaws to remain for next season.”

The paper gave McCormick a withering send-off to Washington, naming him a Republican “of the blackest dye,” a carpetbagger clothed in “apostasy and degradation” and “mired down in filth and debris of bartered principle.”

“Thank goodness that circus is over,” said Marc, who'd run as an unopposed Independent and been overwhelmingly elected in spite of having fought for the Union. He smiled grimly. “I see the way voting works here, the way the press and speakers try to stir people up rather than touch their reason, and I wonder if this is what I fought for so long ago in Berlin.”

“You were elected,” reminded Talitha. “So were lots of good men. Even with fraud and abuses, surely it's better for people to decide who'll make their laws rather than have them decreed by a king. And it's something, after all these years of chaos, to finally have a government of our own rather than being an afterthought of Santa Fe or Mesilla.”

“You're right.” Cheered, Marc nodded. “I think Safford will be a fine governor. I want to help him get those schools started.”

The ranch sold most of its beef that fall to Camp Crittenden and Camp Lowell in Tucson. The flare of autumn leaves along the creek and mountainsides faded, harvest was over, and snow crowned the Santa Ritas. It was time for the Feast of the Roof.

Cat helped eagerly with the preparations, helping Anita wrap tamales in cornshucks by the dozen, cracking thin-shelled piñon nuts for use in candy and cakes, grinding acorns for stew, spreading squash seeds to dry for use in
pipian
, the spicy sauce used on turkey and vegetables.

Cat had hoped James would come the night before, and as the day wore on she began to imagine all sorts of horrible things. Perhaps he'd been waylaid by bandits or Indians. Maybe he was sick. He could have been hurt or killed in a mine accident. He could have gone back to the Apaches.… One disastrous possibility after another chased through her mind. Of course, the feast wasn't held till evening. It was a long day's ride. If he hadn't left till that morning, he could still be on his way.

It was almost sunset when she saw a rider coming from the east and ran out to watch him approach. Soon, from the way he sat his horse, she was sure it wasn't James. Drooping, she was turning to the door when Jordan spoke, shielding his eyes.

“Wrong man, Katie? Looks like Lieutenant Frazier to me.”

Mouth sour with disappointment, she went to help Anita, leaving Frazier's welcome to Talitha and Marc. They invited him to stay for the festive meal, of course, and he behaved as if he'd never stopped calling, though he hadn't been at the ranch since the day he'd challenged James to help track Apache raiders. She heard him say that he'd been out with Governor Safford's volunteers.

“We covered six hundred miles and stayed out twenty-seven days, but we never caught a single Apache,” he growled to Marc. “Most discouraging duty on the face of the earth.”

Helping serve the food, Cat managed to avoid him till after the meal; but when she sat down to listen to the singing, he found a place beside her, so close that she was flinchingly aware of his hard-muscled arm pressing against hers, of the taut, hungry eagerness of his young body.

“I've missed you, Caterina.”

She had no answer for that. He turned to her, his face only inches from hers. She smelled mingled male odors: tobacco, leather, sweat, and soap. In spite of his youth, sun and weather had formed lines at the corners of his gray eyes. He looked older, leaner, tougher, till a winning smile softened the lines in his face.

“There's going to be a Christmas dance at Calabazas. Would you let me take you?”

“Thank you, Lieutenant, but …” She had no desire to hurt him, cast around for an excuse, and realized she did indeed have an unarguable one. “I'm engaged.”

His jaw dropped. “Engaged?” he echoed blankly. Glancing around, his gaze fell on Jordan, who was, undeniably, watching them. “To him?”

“No.”

Their eyes locked. The edges of his nostrils showed white and his lips thinned over his teeth. “I can deal with a refusal, Miss O'Shea. No need to invent an engagement.”

“I'm not inventing.”

A slim ash-colored eyebrow lifted. “If you're going to marry the man, it's strange that you seem ashamed to name him. Or is this … engagement a secret from your guardians?”

There was no way out, though Cat wished she'd simply refused the lieutenant's invitation. Was it tempting fate to pretend that what she prayed for, what James had promised to consider after her birthday, was accomplished fact?

She
was engaged; James wasn't. But there was nothing for it but to face the young officer haughtily. “I'm going to marry James Scott, Lieutenant.”

“James Scott?” It actually wasn't his name but was all that Cat could think of. Frazier's eyes flicked to Talitha, then swept back to Cat with sudden shocked comprehension. “The half-breed? That Apache?”