Harvest of Fury (42 page)

“You do that,” she said. In his white nightshirt he looked like a wingless angel. Raven hair, skin a trifle darker than Chris's, startling blue-gray eyes. Gravely, Talitha shook his hand. “We want you very much, Sant. We feel very sad about your mama and daddy, but we'll try to do for you what they would have. We'll love you as they did. Tomorrow you can start knowing us, but for now I'll leave you with Chris.” At Chris's whisper, she said of course a bed could be moved in, the men would do it now.

Then she was gone with an efficient whisk of skirts. Chris perched on the edge of the bed. “Start your soup while it's hot,” she admonished. “And now I'll tell you about that cradleboard. Mangus Coloradas was a great chief …”

So Chris and Sant had grown up together, playing with the ranch children, sliding on and off burros, learning to use small
reatas
, reenacting the Earp-Clanton shoot-out at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, or playing soldiers after Geronimo.

By the time Sant was six, he decided that he was too old to sleep in a girl's room and asked if he could live in Cruz's small adobe. Cruz, though he remained Chris's particular and watchful guardian, was glad to have Sant, though a somewhat jealous Chris remarked that they reminded her of Jack and the giant in the beanstalk story, for Cruz was some inches over six feet tall, and his broad chest was like a drum. He was a blacksmith and presided over the ranch smithy, hammering out everything from horseshoes to wheel rims and plows.

Chris and Sant had ridden together, helped work cattle, gentle horses. Sant could do all those things, but it was at setting bones, curing infected wounds, rubbing away headaches, and tending orphaned wild birds and animals as well as the ranch ones that Sant excelled.

Those who had known his father said Michael had been the same. Talitha taught him the Papago cures she'd learned from Tjúni, and what James had told her of Apache medicine. Cruz remembered some of his grandfather Nōnó's cures. The other ranch people were eager to share their favored
remedios
with young Santiago, named both for his grandfather, James, and the vaquero who had loved Socorro and who slept on the hill beside her. Talitha said his golden eyes looked out of Sewa's face.

Chris was glad to carry his blood in her, united at last with that of Socorro and Shea. She was proud, in fact, of all her blood: that of Talitha and Marc; Judith and Jared Scott; the Irish Don Patricio who must have been a gay and gallant man; Socorro's Spanish strain; Santiago's mingled Apache, Opata, and Spanish. All had played their parts in this land of mountains and deserts, of high grass and luxuriant giant trees growing in watered cañons and along creeks and rivers.

After years of darkness, she could never see enough of trees, flowers, birds, people, horses and cattle of all colors, the graceful cats descended from Talitha's Chusma, brought by Santiago in Gold Rush days, or of changing light on mountains, near and distant, the far ones looking pink or pale blue or purple, soft, enchanted colors; though you knew that in reality they were harsh rock, here and there covered with a little earth and determined plants and trees that could dig in tightly to defy the wind and torrential rains, which after long droughts came down in fury that sluiced away the earth.

Even though Rancho del Socorro had been careful to shift its cattle from range to range, giving the grass time to reseed, it was no longer the deep, luxuriant growth older folk remembered. Cattle trails made channels for the heavy rains to erode. These grew into gullies, chisled deeper by each thunderstorm, down which the waters poured, carrying off good soil.

The San Pedro Valley to the west, once high with sacaton grass and pleasant groves of trees, was now a criss-cross of arroyos and mesquite thickets. This had happened in the lovely Verde Valley in the north. Droughts of the early '80s continuing into the '90s had caused cattle to eat the grass right down to the ground. With no rain and no time free of grazing, the range was devastated.

Then the rains came—in floods, torrents. But there was nothing to hold them, no small plants and grasses to suck them into the depleted earth. Instead, rivers, creeks, and gullies stripped the earth to its rock skeleton. The once rich, life-sustaining topsoil of grazing lands roiled down the Verde to the Salt and Gila, into the Colorado, and dumped into the Gulf of California.

Eighteen ninety-one saw the peak of the cattle industry in Arizona. The next year saw its disaster. An unusually severe drought and lack of water forced the sale of thousands of head and by summer of 1893, when a great panic in the east caused a punishing drop in beef prices, Arizona ranches lost half to 70% of their stock.

The Socorro lost less than most, having steadily reduced herds to fit the graze. Red and white Herefords grazed now where only only the tough little Mexican cattle, with a mix of curly-haired Texas
chinos
, had ranged. But the horses were still mostly descendants of those early ones Talitha had told Chris about—Shea's blue-gray stallion, Azul, Socorro's pretty chestnut, Castaña, Santiago's Noche, Talitha's beloved Ladorada—and some of the many burros had the doughty blood of Viejo, who'd survived the clawing of a mountain lion and killed it with his hoofs.

Chris smiled now, even as she sighed. Remembering her home, the family, ranch people and animals, the place of her grandparents and great grandparents, Chris felt a wave of desolation even as her eyes delighted in the play of the hawks. She belonged at Rancho del Socorro; at Los Robledos, she was one of El Senor's luxuries, not a necessary part of the place's functioning.

This gnawed at her as she walked slowly toward the big house, walled like a fortification on top of a small hill. If only Sant were here!

Suddenly, she could no longer deny how much she missed him. He'd been like a brother till that spring when Fayte stopped by the ranch on business and began coming as often as he could. He'd been there for her sixteenth birthday, celebrated by a barbecue and baile, attended by friends and neighbors from all over southern Arizona.

From first sight, she thought Fayte the most excitingly attractive man she'd ever met. When, accidentally, their hands brushed, sweet fire hummed through her. His gray gold eyes, unexpectedly encountered, made her stiffen with shock. She liked the ironic quirk of his mouth, the way his broad shoulders tapered to lean belly and flank. But he seemed quite old to her. The notion that he might watch her with the same interest she surreptitiously fixed on him had never entered her mind till he danced her away from the lights of the fires and lanterns.

“Mr. Riordan—”

“I want to talk to you without shouting.”

Pausing by the ramada, he held both her hands. As her sight grew accustomed to the dimmer light, his eyes seemed to glow, filling her with tremulous delicious fear.

“Christina,” he said softly, “I want to marry you.”

XXII

She gasped. It was the first time he'd called her by her first name, even! “Why, I … I …”

He took her face between his long hands, laughing tenderly. “You haven't guessed? Come now, sweetheart, you can't think I've had that much business with your grandfathers!”

“I … I didn't think.”

He made an impatient sound. His mouth found hers. He kissed her like that, hands still tilting up her head. She could feel him trembling, leashed male force fighting his control. This weakened her till she would have fallen if his arms hadn't closed tight around her, bringing her against the strange, lean hardness of his body, which turned her soft, made her melt. His kiss was no longer light, tentative, but hungry, pleading and, urgent.

He didn't touch her breasts with his hands, but they crushed against him as he pressed her so close that her nipples ached. Wild longing for relief made her cling to him, blinded, receiving him, craving more, all, of this new, delightful wonder.

At last, with a strangled breath, he lifted his head and stepped back, though he still supported her. “Oh, Lord, honey! I knew you'd be sweet, but—” Staring at her, his eyes darkened. “Would I be first?”

“First?”

His hands tightened impatiently. “Oh, not to kiss you. Any man would try for that and you couldn't stop him. But are you—has anyone—”

Flustered, he broke off as Chris angrily jerked free. “You mean, am I virgin? Are you?”

Dull red mounted to his tawny hair. “What the hell kind of a question is that?”

“You asked me.”

“Damn it, girl, that's different! What kind of man could be twenty-six years old and never have had a woman?”

“I don't know,” she said frostily. “But your question is insulting. If you want someone who'll certify her virginity to merit your proposal, you can look elsewhere.”

His eyes narrowed. The curve of his nostrils whitened and the pulses hammered in his temples. “Looks to me like a girl would be proud to say she was pure.”

She laughed cuttingly. “I don't see why she should say anything. Good night, Mr. Riordan.”

She whirled and left him. The rest of the evening she flirted and laughed and danced, sparkling with vivacity powered by outrage.

Pure? Virgin? She was. She had never been kissed before, but she'd die before she'd tell him so. The important things about a man were bravery, good humor, the will to work for what was important, loyalty, tenderness, the ability to love and share and comfort. Surely these were what counted in a woman, too?

Talitha and Sewa had them in abundance; from what Chris had heard, so had Socorro and Caterina. So much proving hadn't been demanded of Aunt Vi or her own mother, Katie, but Chris was sure they possessed the strength of those other shining women, whose faith and courage glowed like lighted candles in her mind.

Virgin, indeed! Socorro and Talitha went ravished to their marriage beds; Caterina was with child by James-Fierro when she married Jordan Scott. Their men had prized
them
, not a piece of membrane.

Sant didn't dance, but he sensed that she was exhausted, as he always seemed to know things about her. Bringing her lemonade, he made her sit down with him on one of the benches at the rim of the firelight.

“What's wrong, Chris?”

“Wrong?” She laughed brightly, though she couldn't meet his gaze. “Why, nothing! I'm having a lovely time!”

“You're angry. You've been that way ever since Fayte Riordan took you to the ramada.”

Blood heated her face. “Sant! I never thought you'd spy on me?”

‘I watch you.” His voice was calm, as if he spoke to a petulant child, though he was a year the younger and for a very long time she had watched after him.

That had changed, she realized suddenly. When? Somehow, imperceptibly, in the past year or two, he'd begun to look after her—and she hadn't even noticed!

“I watch you,” he said again. “Only in case you need me. Only in case you might get hurt. I don't spy.”

She chuckled. Impossible to be out of the sorts with him. Touching his hand, she laughed and felt herself relaxing. “You're right, Sant. I was angry. But it just seems ridiculous now.”

‘What?”

“That Mr. Riordan asked what he did and that it made me so furious.”

Sant's face went bleak, skin tightening over bone so that he looked suddenly all Apache. “Riordan … what did he ask?”

Close as she was to Sant, she was embarrassed to tell him. Besides, he looked in the mood to pick a fight. Well grown though he was, he was no match for a man in his early prime who'd grown up in mining camps.

“He asked me to marry him,” she evaded.

Starting, Sant looked as if he'd been stabbed before he controlled his face and looked at her intently. “That made you angry? I thought girls liked proposals even if they didn't want the man.”

Chris sipped busily on her lemonade, then attempted to banter. “Now what would you know about girls, Sant?”

“Not much. But I know a lot about you.”

“Well, there's nothing for you to look ireful about,” she assured him. “I can handle Fayte Riordan.”

“Are you going to? Marry him, I mean?”

“No!” Then she remembered that kiss, the ecstatic, tempting promise of Fayte's embrace, and felt her first tinge of regret for dismissing him so peremptorily. “That is,” she finished lamely, “I … I don't think so.”

“Chris, don't do it.”

“Why?”

“He has a room of trophies. Grizzly, elk, bighorn, jaguar.”

She closed her mind to that. Predators who took too many calves or colts had to be killed sometimes, but she always hated it. “What's that to do with me?” she asked.

Sant said grimly, “You'd be a trophy, too. In his bedroom.”

She sprang to her feet. “I don't know why everyone's being horrid tonight!”

She'd seen no more of Fayte that night of her
baile
, but a week later he was back, leading a beautiful buckskin mare whose silver-mounted saddle glinted in the sunlight.

Chris had been watching Sant gentle a colt and turned from the corral at the sound of hoofs. Fayte Riordan swept off his soft gray hat and looked at her.

“Will you marry me, Christina Revier? Will you ride home with me on this mare I've brought for you?”

She stared up at him, trembling inwardly, feeling his gaze caress her as they both remembered. “Do you have any other questions?” she asked clearly.

“No.”

She moved forward to stroke the mare's smooth withers. “Then I will marry you. If my parents agree.”

“I've already talked to them. They said it was your decision.” He laughed delightedly. “They'll be down from Phoenix for the wedding in a day or so. Preacher's coming, too.”

“You were mightily sure of yourself!”

He grinned and swung down from his big black horse, giving the reins to a vaquero as he took her in his arms. “I've always been lucky.”