The Enchantment (26 page)

"It's for you."

Frowning, she untied the strings and peeled back the brown paper wrapping.

Her breath caught. It was the skirt and blouse Dr. Stanton had given her.

Gratitude at Larence's thoughtfulness filled her. It was so like him to think of her comfort—even back in Albuquerque when she'd been so spiteful toward him. She could just imagine how it had happened: After Emma had stuck her nose in the air and informed Dr. Stanton that "Emmaline Amanda Hatter didn't dress like a Mexican peasant," Larence had no doubt whispered to his friend. Give them to me, Henry; she might change her mind. . . .

Emma smiled. Carefully setting the blouse—what had Dr. Stanton called it, a camisal—and skirt out of the way, she pulled the cap off the rain barrel's exposed pipe. Cool water splashed her face and plastered her dirty cotton chemise and petticoat to her body.

She scrubbed every trace of dirt from her body and clothes, then peeled off the clinging wet undergarments

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and slapped them over her woolen skirt. Standing directly beneath the pipe's mouth, she lolled her head back. The water splashed her exposed throat and pelted her breasts and arms. Beneath her feet the planked floor rattled from the onslaught.

She stood there until her skin felt tingly and alive and clean. God, she'd forgotten how good it felt to simply be clean.

Finally, reluctantly, she replugged the pipe and dried off. Plaiting her waist-length hair, she flung the thick skein over one shoulder and picked up the camisa. It was cotton, the hue of faded denim, with long, full sleeves and a drawstring neckline. Small gold buttons marched single file from neckline to hem. A pale gold string peeked in a dotted line along the shoulders and throat, coming together in a little bow in the center.

She shoved her arms through the sleeves. The blouse fluttered around her head for a second, then slid into place. She plucked the drawstring taut, and found to her dismay that the top of the sleeves came no higher than the crests of her shoulder. Her entire neck and collarbone area was exposed, as was a good swell of breast. And with no underwear on underneath, the outline of her nipple was unmistakable.

She shivered. The moist fabric clung to her naked breasts. Without a chemise, the feel of the damp cotton against her nipples was strangely erotic.

It was entirely too revealing, of course, but there was nothing she could do about that—other than putting her dirty clothes back on. And there was no way she'd do that.

Slipping into the skirt, she exited the showering area. When she was halfway to the campfire, Larence looked up.

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Their eyes met and held. There was something in his gaze she hadn't seen before. It sent an icy-hot shiver through her body. She ground to a halt, suddenly acutely aware of her nakedness beneath the skirt and blouse. A sigh of breeze slid through the campsite, jostling the fire and teasing the flyaway hairs around her face. At the sudden chill, her nipples hardened, poked against the thin cotton. She felt surprisingly . . .

desirable.

Larence cleared his throat and looked away.

Emma wrapped her arms around herself, tilted her chin, and walked resolutely to the fire.

They sat there for a long time, side by side, both lost in their own thoughts; Larence staring up at the twinkling scattering of stars in the sky, Emma staring at the flames licking on the twisted mesquite root of their fire.

She wondered what he was thinking about.

He wondered what she was thinking about.

But neither of them said a word. Instead they listened to the quiet strains of their mingled breathing and the snapping crackle of the fire.

The cabin door cracked open and banged shut. Slow, shuffling footsteps came toward them.

Emma stiffened instinctively, shrinking toward Larence as the old man moved unerringly toward them.

"I join you," he said without question.

"Of course." Larence pointed to the rock across from them as if the man could see.

Pa-lo-wah-ti sat. Folding his wiry legs beneath him, the old man pulled a buckskin bag of tobacco and a cigarette paper out of his breast pocket. Rolling a smoke with quick, sure fingers, he stuck the pointed end in his seamed lips and lit up. Smoke curled across his face. His eyes narrowed, boring through the gray cloud to fix on Larence. "What brings you here?"

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The words were spoken casually, but they sent a tendril of ice sliding down Emma's back. Perhaps it was the tone of his voice—deceptively low, with a razor edge—perhaps it was the complete lack of question in the question. She didn't know. But something bothered her. . . .

Larence scooted forward. "Cibola."

A sharp, mirthless laugh shot past the dangling cigarette. "Legend. Myth."

"No—it's more."

Pa-lo-wah-ti pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tapped it. Flecks of grayed ash fluttered to the shadowed earth. Then he, too, leaned forward, until his face and Larence's were almost touching. "Many have tried to find this place. All have failed. Some have died."

"I'm different."

Another harsh laugh. He leaned back. "How?"

"I have proof."

The old man took a long, wheezing drag and expelled a cloud of charcoal gray smoke. "There is no proof."

Emma looked into Larence's eyes at that moment and was reminded of the first time she'd met him. Once again the believer's passion shone from his eyes, turned them from comforting, bottle green eyes into something else. Something mystical and compelling.

Larence began slowly to speak.

"Three hundred years ago a priest named Fray Marcos de Niza set off with a few other priests and a Moorish slave named Esteban to find the famed Seven Cities of Cibola. As they walked northward from Mexico, through pueblo after pueblo, the Indians spoke of the Seven Cities; they told of riches beyond belief, of gold and silver and turquoise."

At the word "gold," Emma perked up.

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"Fray Marcos sent Esteban ahead to scout for the Seven Cities, instructing him to send word back if Esteban found something of value. He was to send a 'white cross the size of Marcos's palm' if it was a good find; a larger cross if it was a great find; and an even larger cross if the find rivaled the Aztec riches.

A few weeks later, Esteban sent the first cross."

"How big?" she breathed.

' 'It took two men and a mule to carry it."

"Tuh," Pa-lo-wah-ti repeated with a wave of his skeletal hand. "Children's stories."

"With respect, I disagree."

Anger flashed in the old man's muddy blue eyes. "Fray Marcos was a liar. He claimed to see the city with his own eyes, but when the Mexican government sent Coronado to rape the gold from Cibola, there was no city. None at all."

"True," Larence answered simply.

"Fray Marcos claimed to see the city?" Emma said with a frown. "What about Esteban?"

Larence grinned. "That's just it. Esteban sent two crosses—two—and then disappeared. The textbooks say he was killed during a battle at a pueblo east of here, but no one saw him fall. He just . . .

disappeared. No one ever saw him again."

Pa-lo-wah-ti spat into the fire. The goo hissed on the log and turned into a spiral of gray steam. "You think Esteban, a heathen, matters?"

"He matters," Larence answered simply. "He and another man, a young Spaniard named Diego Parroquin de Escobar, found the city. And I found their diary."

Pa-lo-wah-ti puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, his sightless eyes trained on Larence's downcast face.

Wind swirled between them, jostling the yellow-gold flames

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until they quivered. The sharp scent of wildness, mingled with the pungent tang of cigarette smoke, gave the night a hard edge. "A dead man's words will not lead you to the city. That which seeks to remain hidden will not be found."

Larence looked up suddenly. His gaze captured the old man's, held it. They stared at each other for a long, breathless moment. The fire hissed, sending a spray of red-gold sparks in the night-dark air, and Emma felt a quiver of energy leap between the two men.

"I don't need the diary to find the city," Larence said in a soft, compelling voice. "That's just the proof I needed to get money. The real map is in here." He patted his heart. "I've seen the city a thousand times in my dreams."

For the first time, Pa-lo-wah-ti looked nonplussed. A frown pleated the tired skin between his bushy gray eyebrows. He looked at Larence sharply, and it seemed to Emma that the muddiness in his eyes evaporated, leaving twin ice blue pools. "A vision?" He took a deep, thoughtful drag. Smoke curled across his face. "Describe it."

"Streets paved with gold, hammered silver doors and doorways, turquoise windowsills ... a great kiva hewn in a moon-shape against the red-gold sandstone, a pool the color of the finest jade ..."

"Cibola." The word slipped out of the old man's mouth. Slowly he shook his head, spraying ash across his crossed legs. "This vision came disguised in sleep?"

"Dreams, yes."

Pa-lo-wah-ti eased the cigarette from his wrinkled lips and tapped the cone of gray ashes into the flames.

His eyes never left Larence's face. "You are not like the THE ENCHANTMENT

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other white men who have sought this place. You believe."

"Yes."

Emma couldn't contain her excitement another minute. "Streets paved with gold—really? Silver doors—would that be sterling silver? And turq—"

"Emma." Her name was buried in a sigh of disappointment. "Can't you see the historic value?"

Pa-lo-wah-ti shook his head, and a peculiar sadness flitted through his eyes. "You are not like the other white men who have come, Larence; destroyers of the land and intruders on the past. But she is."

"All I did was ask a sim—"

"Leave." At the hard, cold word, Emma's sentence stopped midstream. The old man stabbed her with his eerie, sightless and yet all-seeing eyes. "Now. While you still can."

The next day Emma woke slowly. Half the night she'd lain awake, wishing they could simply steal away from this deserted-looking homestead like thieves in the darkness. It was only the knowledge that Larence would laugh at her fears and suspicions that kept her from speaking out. And so she'd waited, patiently, all through the long, sleepless night. It had been nearly dawn when she'd finally fallen into a fitful, troubled sleep.

But now it was dawn, and it was time to go.

She pushed up to her elbows and brushed the thick curtain of hair from her eyes. Larence's sleeping bag was gone. She got tiredly to her knees and crawled toward the tent flap fluttering in the early morning breeze. She poked her head out and immediately squinted. The dawn was like all the late spring morn-244

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ings before it: crisp and clear, with a sky so big and blue, it stung the eyes.

She turned around and crawled back into the tent. The pale, white canvas curled protectively around her.

She plucked up her carefully folded clothing and felt a sharp surge of joy. New clothes!

Her corset slid out from its hiding place between the skirt and blouse. It plopped like a surrender flag onto the drab green fabric of her sleeping bag.

She groaned. The thought of worming her way into that torture device made her stomach drop.

Why bother? she thought suddenly. What good did it do out here in the middle of nowhere? An hourglass figure didn't mean anything if you couldn't breathe, and she hadn't taken a decent breath since arriving in this godforsaken state. She shoved the corset deep in her sleeping bag.

Feeling better than she had in weeks, she donned her clean underclothes and slipped into the new clothes. Crawling out of the tent, she quickly rolled up her bag, disassembled the tent, and stuffed it back in its canvas sack.

Then she stood, stretching as she inhaled the fresh morning air. Her skirt swung gently against her legs, and the blouse allowed soft fingers of breeze to graze her flesh. For the first time since boarding the train in New York, she was actually comfortable. She could breathe.

She felt so good, in fact, she could almost forget about the horrid old man and the way he'd looked at her.

Leave. Now. While you still can.

After uttering the blood-draining words, he'd stared at her. No, that wasn't quite accurate. He'd stared into

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her. She'd felt those impossibly sharp eyes bore into her, and a bone-rattling shiver had shaken her.

She'd felt alternately cold and hot and—craziest of all—afraid. Not of the old man, either; that's what made it so crazy. She was afraid of herself. Afraid for herself.

The expression on his seamed, sun-darkened face had been unmistakable. He'd seen deep into her soul and found nothing of value.

She shot a worried glance at the closed cabin door. No smoke was rising from the chimney. The place looked as deserted as it had when they'd first arrived.

She breathed a quick sigh of relief that he wasn't awake yet. Plucking up her skirt, she crossed the small backyard and headed toward the corral, where Larence was just finishing packing and saddling the animals.

"Hi," she said, scooping the saddlebags off the ground and holding them out to him.

Turning, he started to reach for the bags. "Thanks, I—" He looked at her, and his sentence ground to a halt. He stared down; she stared up. Neither of them said a word.

The silence seemed charged with invisible sparks of electricity.

Larence's slid down her exposed throat, stopped fleetingly at the swell of her breasts, then kept going.

All the way to her toes. A breeze kicked up, molded the thin cotton to her body. The sun seemed suddenly hotter, brighter. Emma's skin tingled; she was acutely aware of the missing corset.

Touch me. The two words charged like a bolt of lightning through her mind. Instinctively she leaned a hairbreadth closer, tilted her face up.

Larence turned to ice. His fingers tingled with the need to touch her skin, to feel the beat of her pulse. He 246