Dust Devil (21 page)

In preparation to leave, Rosemary packed the few belongings they had on the travois secured to the back of a calico pony. She was not sorry to be leaving the camp, but she wished she and Stephanie and Lario were leaving the Apaches — where the three of them could go, she did not know.

Lario came up and held the pony’s bridle, steadying the horse. "The wires talk of Grant Raffin,” he said, and she knew he was watching her. She turned and faced him, waiting. "He has been made Colonel of the Fourth Cavalry,” Lario continued, his eyes never releasing her. "He claims he will not rest until the last Navajo, the last Apache, is wiped from the Territory.”

At last Lario looked away, saying, "When we reach the Rio Grande, I am sending you home. A war camp is no place for a woman — ” And then he smiled at her, a sad but relentless smile.  "Not even a squaw.”

She
turned her back on him and began strapping the remainder of the articles on the travois. "I will not go back.”

He jerked her about, and for the first time ever she saw emotion blazing in his face. His grip hurt her arms, but she did not cry out. "I don’t want you here. You are in my way. You are going home!”

Her words were almost lost in the wind’s howling. "You are my home, Lario.”

He swung away, and she wanted to cry out to him, but she knew that this time she could not yield.

She found Stephanie playing with the horsehide cards with another child, a game her daughter was almost as good at as a Mississippi riverboat gambler. She bundled Stephanie in the thick blanket, which, though smoky and smelly, had no holes and put her on the back of the pony. With Rosemary leading the pony, they fell in line with the rest of the women, and the band began to move out.

Somewhere ahead of them Lario and the other braves re-connoitered the terrain while the older children and the men
too old to fight brought up the rear, driving the remaining sheep and cattle.

For two days the band fought the bitter cold that slammed against their faces like doors of ice as they picked their way down along the treacherous trails out of the Mongollons. Several times a sheep or cow, precious sustenance to the camp, strayed off.

At night she and Lario slept together but not touching despite the cold. Both remained adamant in their decisions. Come morning she would see his stony countenance and sorrow would knife through her. Soon they would reach the basin, and it appeared that there could only be a bleak resolution to their personal battle, regardless of who was the victor.

However, the forces of
nature were the main foe to be dealt with immediately. The previous summers had been dry ones, and the last two winters had not brought enough snow in the mountains to water the dry arroyos of the semi-arid plateaus. Now when the caravan of Indians reached the basin, they found only dry waterholes, saw only flats of alkali.

She
watched the single-file string of gaunt steers approach an arid wallow or a Navajo mother suckle a lamb at her breast and knew what it was to cry in one’s heart. And when Stephanie’s lips cracked with the bite of the dry cold, she was tempted to approach one of the adobe houses she saw in the distance, looking dingy and dilapidated without whitewash. But the fear of civilization held her back.

There was no mush to be had from the mescal plant nor bear or fish meat, for the latter two were taboo to the Indian, and so the band continued its nomadic life, migrating steadily eastward toward the Rio Grande out of necessity.

One afternoon, as she watched the awkward speed of a fleeing roadrunner, she saw the dust churning against the northern horizon. An hour later a scout lathered his pony toward the band of women and children. "Many soldiers! Many
petiltows
—rifles! Flee!”

Like a well-organized army the band of women and children swerved back and began their retreat toward the foothills of the San Mateo Range. All but
her. She stood next to the calico pony as the horde streamed past her in flight. Then she began walking toward the dust cloud that billowed on the horizon. Without the others to break the sweep of frigid wind she found each step forward more difficult.

"Mama,” Stephanie wailed from beneath the protective layer of the blanket, "I’m cold!”

She looked back at her daughter who rode the pony bareback as well as any Apache child. "We shall be warm soon,” she shouted.

Muffled by the blanket
she leaned into the wind, ducking her head. Each step took her closer now to the Fourth Cavalry, to civilization. And to Lario. Her heart beat faster with the fear that even now he might be dead. But some instinct told her he was not. Not yet. She would know, she would feel it deep within her heart. If he managed to escape the soldiers, he would return for Stephanie and her. And if he was taken captive . . . then she would find him.

* * * * *

The sergeant saluted the officer behind the pine-paneled desk. "Colonel Raffin, sir. There’s a squaw outside who demands to speak with you. Says she’s a citizen of the United mates.” He paused, then added, "She does speak English.”

It was late in the evening, well after eight, and Grant was tired. Libby would be peeved that he was late again. What he needed was a stout whiskey.
What he really needed was a less frigid woman that Libby to warm his bed.  He’d have to forego the whiskey if he wanted to maintain his trim physique.  He didn’t need to forego a warm and willing woman.  Not with Dona Luna or, better, one of her girls so available for him in Santa Fe.

He
sighed and set aside the report the lieutenant had brought him on the last detail. The engagement with the Apache would result in the complete subjugation of the warring tribes. Only Victorio had eluded him, but it would not be long now before the wily chief, without the aid of his warriors, submitted.

Grant’s troops had known neither summer rest nor winter quarters but had pursued the Indian foe relentlessly month after month, night and day, over mesas and deserts and rivers, under boiling suns and rough winter snows, killing and capturing them in their most chosen retreats.

Now, with all but Victorio and a few renegades incarcerated, the Apaches’ and Navajos’ spirit would be broken. Grant glanced again at the figures—over seven thousand Navajo and four hundred Apache living on the Bosque Redondo Reservation, a tract of land forty miles square with six thousand acres of arable land. It had been a successful campaign, resulting in, he hoped, his appointment to succeed General Carleton as Commander of the Department of New Mexico.

"Ahhm.”

Grant looked up at the sergeant. He had completely forgotten the soldier’s presence. His fingers massaged his forehead. Too many days and night spent at the damned fort. He needed to get into Santa Fe.  "Send the squaw in, Barstow,” he said tiredly.

When next Grant glanced up, a rail-thin woman stood
before him. She had the high cheekbones found in the Athabascan tribes, but her straggly, lank hair, a dirty shade of brown, was not dark enough for a Navajo or Apache. Perhaps a stray Pueblo caught in the roundup, he thought, looking at the haggard woman. Well, he’d get this over with and get to bed. "Yes?” he snapped.

"Grant.”

It was such a hoarse whisper that he did not think he heard correctly. His eyes narrowed. "What was it you said?”

The woman
put a hand on the desk to steady herself. With distaste he eyed the ragged and dirty fingernails and wrinkled his nose as the odor of her unwashed body hit him. Bloody tracks made a path on the puncheon floor from the door.

“I’ve walked three
hundred miles,” she said raggedly but with what might have been a smile of pride at her accomplishment.

The sight of her macabre grin and t
he ghostly grimace of a skull startled Grant.  His fastidiousness caused him to shrink inwardly from the woman across from him. He had a horror of the diseases the squalid Indians carried. "What is it you want?” he asked impatiently. What was it the sergeant said, something about her claiming to be a United States citizen? Impossible!

"I want your help, Grant,” she managed to get out. "I want to find Lario Santiago.”

His blue eyes widened then narrowed disbelievingly. "Rosemary?”

She looked down at herself with a smile of self-derision. "Aye,” she replied, looking back to
him. "’Tis the same.”

"Good God, Rosemary!” He hurried from around the desk and pulled out a chair for her. "We believed you dead these last three years.”

"Sergeant!” he bellowed. The young man stepped inside, and Grant said, "Rouse the cook. I want a hot meal within the hour.”

When the sergeant left, he quickly went to his desk and pulled out the bottle of whiskey and poured a glassful, handing it to
her. Even now he could not bring himself to touch her as she accepted the glass. "Now’s not the time for questions, though I have many. I’ll have Libby find clothing for you. A bath and you’ll be your old self.”

He
rattled on, disconcerted by her own composure in the face of what she must have gone through, and he realized she would never be her old self. Finally, as he told her that Stephen, still grieving over her supposed death, had not remarried, she broke in, saying, "Jamie — how is he? What does he look like now?”

"He’s doing fine, Rosemary. We
— Libby and I and our son Wayne, he was born not long after your disappearance — were at Cambria last month with Rita and Jiraldo to celebrate Jamie’s fifth birthday. He’s a tall lad — I guess he got that from you.”

For the first time
she took a sip of the whiskey. She scowled.  “It burns all the way down, but it warms me when I thought I would never be warm again.”  She took a deep swallow this time, as if to steady her next words.  “I was kept separate from the warriors taken in the cavalry’s surprise attack and was been put with prisoners taken in previous roundups and marched to Fort Sumner. I’ve asked . . . but no one knew anything, much less cared . . . Grant, what do you know of Lario Santiago?”

He
poured himself a glass and matched her own deep swallow. So that was how it was. Incredible! She was in love with the Navajo. An Indian! He looked into the large eyes, always before so expressive. Now it was like looking at a wall. Had she lost her reasoning? Gone loco living among the savages? He considered lying to her, telling her the buck was dead, but decided against it.

"I’ll check the roster of prisoners as soon as the captain completes it, Rosemary. But you must understand if Lario survived the attack, he will be executed along with the other Indian males within the week.”

"You can’t! He’s done nothing that you haven’t done, Grant. He’s fighting for his survival! Is that so wrong?” The whiskey sloshed from her glass, and she set it on the desk with a trembling hand.

"That’s Carleton’s policy
— either they yield to removal to the reservation or be exterminated. Too many peace treaties have been broken because they declare it’s bad Indians doing the killing and stealing. They’ve got to know we mean business this time.”

She
sagged in the chair. He put his own glass down in alarm. "I’ll take you home. You can eat there. The quarters aren’t much, but they’re the best the fort has to offer.”

* * * * *

It was only a large, round wooden bucket, and Rosemary had to stand while she washed, but to feel the lye soap and heated water, the first in three years, cleanse away the accumulated dirt — it was an almost unbearable pleasure.

Libby poked her head inside the bedroom door, and Rosemary did not miss the gloating look that settled on the woman’s now-plump face as she took in Rosemary’s emaciated body. "I got you a dress. But it’s certain sure going to hang on you.”

Rosemary refused to cover herself. "Thank you, Libby. Do you have anything that Stephanie could wear?” So many words at once. She had forgotten how talkative the Anglo race was.

In the corner of the room stood a Wabash bedstead. On it lay Stephanie in exhausted sleep. Libby glanced at the child, whose long gangling legs stuck out from beneath the blanket.
“It’s our Christian duty to help.  She sighed, as if it were her cross in life to endure the heathen visitors for her husband’s sake.  “I don't think my Wayne’s knee pants would fit your daughter.”  Her mouth pulled tightly, as though she were afraid Stephanie would contaminate the boy’s clothing. "The commissary clerk’s wife — her girl died of the croup last year. She might still have clothing that’d fit the child.”

After Stephanie had awakened and
Rosemary washed and dressed her, they joined Grant and Libby and Wayne at the long puncheon table for dinner. Rosemary felt awkward handling the utensils and had no desire for food, not until she learned of Lario’s fate. But Stephanie dug into the roasted venison, ripping the meat with her teeth and hands. Rosemary saw Libby eye Grant in horror at the child’s table manners.

I won’t apologize! If their son had lived as we had, he would know no better either!

Grant touched his napkin to his lips. "Rosemary . . .” He hesitated and looked around the table. "The — ah, friend you asked about is here.”

She nodded, but he saw the blue-green eyes cloud over like the murky waters of a lagoon. "He has two weeks,” he said.

Rosemary drew a shaky breath. "And there is nothing I can do to change the orders?”