Desert Hearts (26 page)

“Hush, Orion, hush.” The dog dropped back on his haunches and looked up at her with such an expression of idiotic delight on his face that she laughed out loud.

“I wasn’t gone for that long, you foolish dog,” she scolded as she untied him. Once again, he was down and squirming at her feet one moment and trying to lick her face the next.

“Come inside with me. Heel, sir,” she said firmly, and he followed her into the kitchen.

When the dog whimpered, she said with mock sympathy, “Poor Orion. No one here to see that you were properly fed!” She crumbled some bread into a bowl and added milk and an egg and put it down for the hungry dog. “That will have to hold you for now.”

She made herself a cup of tea and sliced a piece of bread for herself. Mrs. Gray must be on an errand somewhere, she thought. And although she was eager to tell the story of her adventures, she was happy to have some privacy. As she drew her legs underneath her, her left heel hit the chair rung and the pain brought back everything from the last two days. She sat there, hands around her mug, kaleidoscopic images not at all in sequence taking her back to the ceremony. She relived her race and her dream. She had experienced something profound, but had no name for it. She only knew that she felt different: more herself, Elizabeth Jane Woolcott, than she ever had. That felt very satisfying. At the same time, she felt a deep longing for something, she wasn’t sure what. A part of her longed for the woman in her dream. For Changing Woman, if it had indeed been she. For something that was missing in her life. Something…she could only call it something holy. She had thought holiness was only found in churches. A church was a holy place. A minister was a holy person. God was holy. At least that is what she had been taught. Yet she had also felt holiness approaching her in that dream in the guise of a woman. If she told that to anyone, he would think her sacrilegious. Divinity in a woman’s form? Yet that had been her experience. And that is what the Navajo believed.

As she sat and drank her tea she wanted more than anything in the world to have her mother sitting opposite her. They would drink tea together and Elizabeth would tell her everything and ask her if she thought God could take a woman’s form. Then she would pull out her drawings and unroll them at the table and show her mother how much she had come to love this country. “I know I was a terrible traveler, Mother,” she would say. “I resisted every step of the way. But now it feels like home.” Her mother would smile and praise her drawings and tell her what a fine woman she had become.

Elizabeth was crying. Except when Thomas died, she hadn’t cried for years for her mother or her father or herself. She had shut herself off from all memories until today, when somehow her mother had felt very present. She cried until she drained herself and when she finally stopped, she realized that opening to the old pain had finally brought her a sense of peace.

Her eyes were swollen and her face sticky and salt-streaked. She filled the washbasin with water and as she washed, she glanced up into the oval mirror above the washstand. She had almost expected to see a fourteen-year-old girl, she realized as she calmly surveyed the woman’s face looking back at her. How had she remained fourteen for all these years? She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a twenty-three-year-old woman.

What had Thomas seen when he looked at her, she wondered. Had he seen the young Elizabeth whom he had rescued? Or the woman? Whom had he loved? And who had loved him these past six years?

As she sat there, something her mother had once said came back to her: “What a terrible thing it is not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl.” For the first time, she felt like a woman, and she cried again that she had not been able to give Thomas Woolcott what he so deserved.

She had worked hard to make every posting a home. She never complained about the hardships. She was a good hostess and kept the light of friendship burning in their home. And she had never turned away from him in their bed. Why did it all of a sudden not seem very much?

She had given him a happy marriage. She had given him Miss Elizabeth Jane Rush. She had given him her mother’s daughter, who had learned what a wife’s role was. But she had never given him herself or her own desire. She had loved him with a grateful love. He had rescued her twice: once from Comancheros and then from a single woman’s existence, and she had loved him for that. And she had, as he had said, “let him love her.” Oh, but what an ungenerous love that seemed to her now.

* * * *

She told the Grays her story over dinner, and all during that next week the other officers’ wives approached her and asked for details. With the exception of the colonel’s wife, they all were both curious and resentful. They wanted to know everything about “heathen practices,” but after she gave them a very abbreviated account, they looked at her as though she were an oddity.

“Imagine cooking in the dirt!” Mrs. Taggert said when Elizabeth told of the
aalkan
. “I surely hope you didn’t eat any of it, Mrs. Woolcott.”

“It would have been impolite not to,” she answered in her best Boston manner. She wanted to slap the woman’s sanctimonious face and was very glad she had shared only a few details of the ceremony.

She found herself wanting to talk to Michael. He had understood what an important experience it had been. He respected the Diné. And her. She wanted to complain about the post women, with their narrow-mindedness.

But he was very elusive that week, Sergeant Burke. She couldn’t have sought him out directly, but she had tried to be at the stable with a treat for her mare at the time when he should have been returning with his men, and she missed him by a few minutes each time.

Probably he had forgotten all about their shared experience, she thought. Probably he was spending his spare time with Mary Ann! Not that it was any of her business!

* * * *

“This is the first time you’ve come to see me this week, Michael,” said Mary Ann.

Michael forced a big smile. “Sure and I have been busy, darlin’. It is only that I’m tired. Mr. Cooper is workin’ me hard to make up for the time I was away.”

“I can’t understand why you don’t just request another detail.”

“From whom? Mr. Cooper? He’d just love me to come beggin’ to him. And ye know ye can’t go over your commanding officer, Mary Ann.”

“I know. It just seems such a shame to waste you.”

“I’m just thankful it has been peaceful.”

“Are you going to be racing this week?”

“I think I’ll be giving Frost a rest and just be watching this time.”

“I have put a week’s wages down, and on an Indian, no less,” Mary Ann told him.

“Oh, so ye think Manuelito can beat Cooper and his quarter horse?”

“To tell you the truth, I haven’t any idea, Michael,” she confessed with a giggle. “I just
want
the lieutenant to lose.”

“If he is up against Manuelito, he probably will.”

“Let’s have our own race, Michael,” she teased, pulling him on top of her. “You are an expert rider, or so I’ve been told.”

Michael groaned and collapsed in mock exhaustion, his head on her ample breasts. “Oh, darlin’, I don’t think I’m up for any ridin’ tonight.” Or any other night, he realized. He said his good-bye, knowing that it was the last time he would be visiting Mary Ann alone. Desire and love, which had been two separate streams, were at last united in one river, which flowed only toward Elizabeth Woolcott.

By Sunday, it seemed everyone, white and Navajo, had heard about the big race at noon and men were betting everything they had, money or trade goods.

Cooper’s strutting like the cock of the walk, thought Michael as he watched the man move back and forth between clusters of officers and their wives. His horse had been brushed until he shone and his mane braided with red ribbon. To tell the truth, he was a sweet mount, thought Michael, and in any other contest would likely run away with the race. But against Manuelito? The man rode like most of the Diné, as though he and the horse were one creature.

Michael made his way around the crowd to where he could see the headman and Antonio giving his pony one last going over.

“So, do ye think I’ll win my wager on ye today?” Michael asked. He didn’t know Manuelito that well, but the headman smiled at the question.

“I thought most of the
bilagaana
would put their money on the yellow-haired lieutenant.”

“I expect they did.”

“I think your money is safe, my friend,” said Antonio with a smile. “This is the pony he saves for the shorter races.”

“Sure, and he looks fresh and eager,” said Michael, stepping back as the pony turned to nip him.

“I apologize, Sergeant Burke,” said Manuelito with exaggerated obsequiousness belied by the glint in his eye.

“This horse of mine, he has never liked the
bilagaana
blue uniforms…!”

“Well, ye’d better hope he doesn’t stop to take a chink out of Cooper.”

“Manuelito can handle him,” said Antonio.

“I am sure he can. So sure in fact that I’m off to put down a wee bit more.”

As Michael moved off, Manuelito turned to Antonio and said, “I like your friend. Too bad more of them aren’t like Sergeant Burke.”

Antonio nodded.

* * * *

Elizabeth was disappointed that she only had a few minutes to say a quick hello to Serena before the races started, but she arranged to meet with her afterward. She was standing on the viewing platform with the colonel’s wife to keep her company since the colonel had been summoned to Fort Wingate.

“Have you been placing any bets, Captain Taggert?” Mrs. Gray asked.

“I have, ma’am.”

“On whom?”

“Why on Mr. Cooper, ma’am. That quarter horse of his loves the short-distance race. And Manuelito is too tall and heavy not to get in his horse’s way.”

“Is Sergeant Burke racing today?”

“I don’t think so, ma’am. I haven’t seen his horse out with the others.”

“Oh, there he is, over there next to Private Elwell.” The colonel’s wife pointed him out and Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from looking. But why shouldn’t she look? He was a friend now. They had gotten to know one another better. She couldn’t help it if she thought him handsome. She couldn’t help remembering how it felt to fall asleep against him, or be held in his arms.

“The quarter mile is just starting,” said Taggert, and the ladies pulled their eyes from Sergeant Burke.

The first few races went well and the winners were balanced between Navajo and cavalry. Antonio, who was riding his blood bay, won his race easily, and when Elizabeth glanced in Michael’s direction, she saw that he was shouting and clapping his friend over the finish line.

It was only a few minutes before the last race of the day, the one between Manuelito and Mr. Cooper. The sun was strong, but the air was crisp and cool and as Elizabeth looked around, everyone and everything stood out vividly: the blue of the uniforms, the winking brass buttons, the bright reds of the Navajo blankets, the shiny conchos on their leggings and belts. Even Mr. Cooper’s hair had looked wheat gold in the sun as he had ridden out, she thought with a smile. What a wonderful morning.

There were three others in this race, but they might as well have been invisible. Everyone knew where the real contest lay: between Cooper’s chestnut and the Navajo’s black.

When the mirror flashed, Elizabeth could only see a cloud of dust and then the chestnut and black emerged from it, running neck and neck. There would be no hanging back and then last-minute bursts of speed; they were neck and neck all the way.

All of a sudden, Manuelito’s black veered off the track and Elizabeth could see that he was stretched over the horse’s neck. She couldn’t understand what had happened; had the horse been spooked by something? Even though his rival was no longer next to him, Cooper kept his horse at a full gallop and when he crossed the finish line, he was surrounded by soldiers clapping him and each other on the back. All of them had bet heavily and had expected a close race. The anticlimactic finish was too good to be believed.

Once Elizabeth had seen that Cooper had won, she turned her eyes to Manuelito. He pulled his horse around to the right in a tighter and tighter circle and at last had him under control. He came in at a canter and as he drew closer, a loud muttering began among the Navajo. Manuelito was only holding one rein, the right one. What remained of the left rein was hanging from his horse’s bridle. Luckily it wasn’t long enough for the gelding to trip, but it was slapping at his neck and Elizabeth could now understand how the headman had lost control.

“How could leather just snap like that,” wondered Mrs. Gray aloud.

Captain Taggert frowned. “I am afraid it must have been cut, ma’am.”

“Cut! But who would be stupid enough to do something like that?”

Elizabeth’s first thought was of Lieutenant Cooper. He already had a grudge against Manuelito and his vanity was beyond reason. But for a cavalry officer to cheat? It was unheard of.

Manuelito dismounted and his face grim, he examined the rein. He held it out to several of the men who had surrounded him and then led his horse over to the judges, followed by a large group of Navajo. It was clear that they were asking for another race and it was even clearer that the judges were denying it. Mr. Cooper finally climbed the platform and was declared the winner. When he came down and pushed his way past the gathered tribesmen, not even acknowledging Manuelito with a glance, Elizabeth thought she had never disliked anyone so much.

“The man is a fool,” said Mrs. Gray, “although I admit I shouldn’t be saying so. The least he could do is offer his sympathy to Manuelito. And the judges are acting even greater fools,” she added.

Cooper’s whole company gathered around him and then two of his men lifted him up on their shoulders, starting a victory parade into the fort. It took the Navajo spectators a moment to realize what had happened: their rider’s bridle had been cut, the
bilagaana
judges had refused a rematch, and all of them had lost heavily, having bet everything on their headman.