Desert Angel (2 page)

“The West is hard on a woman,” Hank agreed. ” ‘Specially someone as gentle-like as Miss Melanie.”

“Don’t be worrin‘ none about her, boy. We’ll keep our eyes open.”

Jim’s gaze moved to the house in the distance, an eerie, sensation of alarm creeping up his spine. Trying his best to ignore the warning that leaving her now was the last thing he should do, he nodded to the men and moved toward the open range.

By the time she had climbed the long flight of stairs to the attic, Melanie was breathless. Leaning against the door, she stopped to rest, rubbing the gnawing pain low in her belly.

If she had been another month along in her pregnancy, she would have been concerned that it was the first sign of labor. But she vividly remembered the night the child had been conceived, and knew that she still had three or four weeks of waiting before its birth.

A shiver of distaste at the memory of the last time Jim had used her body to satisfy his male needs made her move away from the wall. Not for the first time, she thanked God that Jim seldom demanded his husbandly rights. He had not bothered her once since the babe’s conception and already she dreaded its birth, because it would free him from that restriction. Mama had warned her that it was a duty she must allow, but she hadn’t been thorough enough in her explanation. Surely if a woman knew exactly what was expected of her, she’d never consent to marry!

With a shudder, Melanie opened the door. So newly constructed that it was nearly dustless, the huge attic was bare except for a few boxes and traveling cases. She searched for the trunk that was filled with the many ball gowns she had insisted on bringing to Arizona.

Kneeling in front of the heavy case, she unbuckled the straps, and threw open the lid that had remained closed since it had been packed two years earlier in Vermont. Tissue paper crackled as she freed one gown after the other from their confinement.

“Oh,” she whispered, “I’d forgotten this one.” She pulled out a ball dress of striped pink and white satin. The gauzy overskirt with its gathered flounce was made to drape over a tiny bustle. “I wore roses in my hair that night. Remember, Mama, how you fretted over those pink roses, because they wouldn’t stay where you wanted them to?” Melanie smiled to herself. “You got so frustrated that you said a naughty word, and it startled us so much that we got the giggles and I was nearly late for the party”

The added weight of her pregnancy making her ungainly, Melanie grunted as she climbed to her feet. Holding the dress to her, she swirled around the empty room to the music only she could hear, smiling at the shadowy partner visible only in her mind. She batted her eyelashes coyly and lowered her head.

“My fan! Where’s my fan, Mama?” Dropping the dress, Melanie dug through the trunk until she found the fan made to match the dress. Snapping it open, she held it in front of her face, just at chin level, and smiled sweetly “Why, Mr. Granger, whatever would people say if we were to dance together again … Mr. Holland, you turn a girl’s head with your sweet words … oh, Mr. Walters, you flatter me . . . “ Lost in her fantasy world, hours drifted by and the attic grew warm as Melanie flirted with her imaginary lovers. Gowns of every imaginable color turned the floor into a rainbow of silk and satin.

Finally the heat and her own cumbersome body forced her to sit down on one of the boxes. She looked at the dresses scattered over the room and relived the memories from each.

“I’ll miss the spring cotillion,” she muttered, as her irrational thoughts carried her further into the past. “There’s barely time to have a gown made! Why, I might have to accept a readymade.” A shudder of distaste shook her. “Mama, you can’t let that happen … me, in a readymade at the grandest event of the year! Never! Whatever will people think!”

Climbing to her feet, Melanie hurried out of the attic and down the stairs. “We’ll go to town today, Mama. I saw the prettiest piece of yellow satin … well, of course, I can’t wear yellow with my complexion … overskirt of green? No, I never thought of that … “

Melanie left the house, her slippers no protection against the rocks and thorns of the desert floor. Before she was out of sight of the house, her feet were bruised and several thorns were imbedded in the tender flesh.

. . just the smallest train, such a problem when I’m dancing. Mama, do you remember last year when Alice Orson lost the entire back of her skirt, because Peter Simmons stepped on it?”

A ripple of inhuman laughter floated into the clear afternoon sky. The sun, a giant, blazing yellow ball, burned away the gentleness of the spring afternoon. Without the protection of a hat, the fair skin of her face soon showed signs of burning.

“I will not dance with him! Mama, how can you ask that of me!”

Melanie stopped and stamped her foot, unaware of the pain of multiple lacerations. Somewhere along her wandering path of hallucination, she had lost a shoe and was heedless of the bloody trail that marked her way.

“… My hair! What will I do with my hair? Leave it down again … something like the style Mary Ann wore last Sunday, only with flowers … no, pearls!” She fluffed her mahogany hair. “Pearls will be so dramatic …”

Catching her breath, Melanie looked around the desert and saw the town of her youth. She smiled graciously at the people who passed, the men tipping their hats in respect. She listened to the rumble of carriages and the voices raised in argument or amusement. Breathing deeply, she smelled the odors of food cooking and the fragrances from the perfume shop they passed, but above all was the scent of spring.

Spring in New England; trees and flowers and grass, all with their own distinctive scent, a scent that had been denied her for two endless years.

“Here it is, I was beginning to fear that someone else had bought it.”

Melanie knelt down and plucked the tiny yellow flower from the cactus, heedless of the blood dripping from her fingers, as a multitude of thorns imbedded in her skin.

“What do you think? … no! I won’t! … You’re so mean … I shall ask papa, he gives me anything I want! … I will not wear a fichu like some old woman or that flat-chested Letta! I am a young lady, and it’s time I allow the evidence to be seen! … She’ll be so jealous, my bosoms are so much fuller than hers … “

An unearthly laugh filled the silence, floating up and away as insanity grappled for supremacy of a mind eager to relinquish the harsh realities of life.

The sun began its descent, but was no less fierce than before. Wherever it touched, it relentlessly burned skin unaccustomed to exposure. Melanie’s dress hung in tatters, shredded by contact with the cruel thorns of the cacti. The tender skin on her arms and face was slashed and badly burned, but her madness had driven her past that knowledge, far past the realization of the deadly game she played.

“It’s so warm in here … Letta, dear, how lovely you look … my but that fichu is such a lovely addition, and so concealing … no, dear, I’m not chilled, in fact I was just commenting on the heat … a stroll in the garden, Mr. Walters? How lovely, yes, let’s find a breath of coolness … I expect you to remember that you are a gentleman . . . “

There was no witness to her twirling dance of insanity. No one to stop her from falling into the arms of the giant saguaro or tripping over the smaller cholla, which left its silvery spines in her skin.

With the lowering of the sun, the life- threatening dehydration was lessened, only to be replaced with the very real possibility of hypothermia. The spring nights were still cold, making a coat a welcome addition. Without one, Melanie was in as grave a danger as she had been in during the burning sunlight.

“It’s so cold, Mama,” she muttered, her little- girl voice quivering. She folded into herself as much as her oversized stomach would allow. “Burr… it’s dark! I’m scared … light a lamp, Daddy … please, don’t leave me in the dark! … my belly hurts … I’m sorry I was bad… Mama, don’t be mad …”

A barely visible sliver of moon drifted slowly on its journey across the dark sky. Stars, like diamonds thrown from a giant’s hand, twinkled merrily. The rustle of unseen night creatures and the lonely cry from a far off coyote were her only companions as the darkness, and madness, lingered.

“Damnit, you
couldn’t
have watched the house all day, or you’d have seen her leave!” Jim rubbed at the muscles tightening the back of his neck with tension. He was exhausted and dirty, irritated by the necessity of the long ride back to the house.

After a day filled with one problem after another, it had been well past midnight before he had gotten back to the house. The front door had been slightly ajar, alerting him almost immediately that something wasn’t right. Irritation had slowly turned to a gut-wrenching fear, when his initial search for Melanie had proved fruitless.

Now, more than three hours later, every room in the house, every closet, every cubbyhole, had been thoroughly investigated. The barns and all of the outbuildings had received the same vigorous inspections. A lantern had even been lowered to the bottom of the well. He didn’t suspend the search for his wife, until he was finally forced to accept that she was gone.

“Been right over there by the bunkhouse all day,” Hank defended himself. “Ain’t moved ‘cept to get a bite to eat now and again, and to make water.”

“Been there beside him. Played a couple of games of checkers, took a little snooze midday, been sitting like a broody hen waitin‘ on her chicks to hatch,” Woods added, pulling up his drooping galluses. He and Hank had been sleeping soundly, when Jim had come into the bunkhouse and roused them out of bed to help in the search.

“Didn’t you think to check on her this evening, when there wasn’t a light showing from the windows?” Jim asked in disgust. His answer came from the startled look that crossed the faces of the old men, confirming that neither of them had given it a thought.

“It weren’t like Miss Melanie wanted company,” Woods stated. “If ‘en we’d a’comed up on the porch, she’d have chased us off with a broom.”

“Miss Melanie is … ah . . Trying to be as diplomatic as possible, Hank searched for words that wouldn’t offend his boss. It wasn’t necessary to point out to the man that his wife was a pampered, spoiled missy, who needed her fanny warmed. “Miss Melanie, why, she appreciated us stayin‘ at the bunkhouse.”

“Like I said, unfriendly as a bobcat with a thorn in his paw,” Woods added bluntly. “She didn’t like us none, and we did her the favor of stayin‘ out of her way.”

Jim knew that criticizing the two men was unfair. Melanie had made it plain to anyone who would listen, that she didn’t want any of the hired men around her. She also objected to the people on nearby ranches, and those she had met in town. In fact, in two years she hadn’t met anyone she felt was suitable to be a companion.

A neighboring ranch had thrown a party when she had first arrived from the East. She had complained bitterly that their welcoming friendliness had been crude and unrefined, their speech uncouth, their manners vulgar. Melanie Travis had not endeared herself to any of them.

“Wanna go lookin‘ for her tonight? We’ll saddle up.” Hank’s concern was genuine. He had lived in the desert long enough to be on first- name basis with its dangers.

“She can’t be far,” Woods offered. “Miss Melanie hates the desert almost as much as she hates us.”

Jim looked out at the darkness as he pulled his watch from his pocket. Flipping open the plain gold top, he was surprised to see that it was nearly four o’clock. The search for Melanie around the immediate area had already consumed several hours, and dawn would begin lightening the sky in another hour.

He was a decent tracker in the light of day, but knew his own limitations at night. His greatest concern was that he’d inadvertently destroy her trail in his blind wanderings, then she would be lost. . . until the circling of buzzards marked her location.

She didn’t deserve that, he thought, as anger from his own helplessness threatened to override his common sense. She didn’t deserve any of this. He should have taken her back East long ago, but he’d kept hoping she’d adjust.

But she hadn’t. Far from it, in fact. As time had gone on, she’d slipped further and further from his grasp, until he no longer even recognized the woman he had married back in Vermont.

Until he’d realized that he didn’t love her, had never loved her. Until she became a burden he didn’t have time to handle.

When he had realized how drastically his feelings for her had changed, Jim had been immersed in guilt. He knew he’d only been infatuated with the delicate girl, hardly more than a child, that he’d married and left behind.

During the years of their separation, he had worked hard to build a home for them and to get the ranch going, to make his dream into a reality. At night, when exhaustion forced him to his lonely bed, he’d dreamed of Melanie. Gradually, he had imagined her to be so much more than she really was, that by the time she’d arrived in Tucson, no woman could have matched his expectations. Gentle, refined Melanie had never stood a chance.

“Shame Breed ain’t here,” Hank said, interrupting Jim’s useless recriminations.

“He’d find her, ain’t no doubt. Yes, sir’ee, Breed can track a mouse after a stampede!” The man known as Breed was the foreman on the Falling Creek Ranch. Jim had hired him in spite of the rumors that followed him wherever he went. With blond hair and blue eyes there was no doubt that the man was fully white, but it was widely known that he had been raised by the Comanche to be a Comanche. Even though he now lived as a white man, the past still clung, making him a formidable and intimidating presence.