Dust Devil (3 page)

"Rosemary!”

She whirled around as the coach’s door was swung open. The crowd parted now for a man of medium height but with massive shoulders. His curly hair was brick red, matching the short, well-trimmed beard and walrus mustache. It was a forceful face, with full lips and narrow nose. But it was the eyes, darker than the coal of Wales, that held her fast. She saw there the pride and strength of will.

Stephen lifted her from the coach. Before everyone his head lowered over her face, and her eyes closed as his lips claimed hers. It was her first kiss, and Rosemary trembled as his mouth seemed to devour her. Her head swam with this first taste of passion, and her knees buckled.

At last he released her. "We’d best be wed tomorrow,” he laughed breathlessly. "I’ll have no man accuse our first-born of a doubtful birthright.”

She
was as tall as Stephen, and their gazes locked as they read in each other’s eyes the deep conviction that this marriage was preordained. At that moment she could envision their children’s children and their children riding over the miles of the Cambria Ranch they would one day inherit from Stephen and herself. As Stephen had written, they would create a glorious dynasty.

Then what was it in Lario’s
wide disturbing mouth and velvety black eyes that burned in her brain so?

CHAPTER 5

If Rosemary could ignore the macabre string of Indian ears that festooned one wall of the Palace of the Governors, the party following the wedding in the
Palacio
’s chapel was comparable to any royal ball she had ever read about.

The
Palacio
was the oldest public building in the United States, antedating both the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements, and it showed its age. Many of its offices were separated by cotton curtains hung from heavy beams blackened and stained with age, and a few of the floors were still nothing but packed dirt. In some of the rooms bleached muslin had been tacked to the beams to prevent the dirt roof from sifting through the burlaped ceiling, and figured calico was nailed halfway up the walls to keep the whitewash from coming off on clothes.

The largest room of the
Palacio
, the council-chamber, was packed that afternoon with people, almost all men, enjoying the opportunity to celebrate anything. At one end of the room a refreshment table had been set up with a large glass bowl of grape brandy from Bernillo on one side and two heavy crocks of the fiery Taos Lightning on the other.

At the opposite end of the room on a raised platform ornamented with red muslin drapery a five-piece military band played romantic waltzes and the lively songs, "Oh, Susanna” and "My Nelly Was a Lady.”

Stephen was a good dancer, holding her at just the proper distance as he led her about the room to the music of the banjos, clarinets, and harp, but too often he was interrupted by men hungry for the sight and touch of a white woman. And Stephen good-naturedly yielded, especially to Lieutenant Raffin when she generously explained that the officer had been prepared to defend the stage against an Indian attack.

"’Tis glad I am that you were able to come today,” she told Grant as he took her in her arms for a waltz.

"Do you think I’d miss seeing the most beautiful belle in Santa Fe?” he teased.

Even in the exquisite wedding gown of ivory lace and rose satin, Rosemary knew she could not be called beautiful. She turned her head away, saying, "Your flattery is wasted here, Lieutenant.”

"Grant,” he corrected.

A giant of a mountain man, a trapper with hair plastered down with bear grease, interrupted, begging a dance, and Grant saved Rosemary’s feet from another trampling, saying, "We were just going for a cup of brandy.”

But even then the two were detained. "There you are, Lieutenant Raffin!” the governor’s daughter said. She tapped her fan saucily on Grant’s sleeve, even while her cornflower blue eyes coolly surveyed the tall, thin woman with him. Relief that the newcomer was at once plain of face and married flickered across Libby’s vapidly pretty features before she said, "Don’t you know all the women are dying to meet Mr. Rhodes’s bride?”

Grant bowed gallantly. "I surrender to the charm of another citizen of the South. Kentucky, isn’t it?”

"Why, sir, you do have a memory.” She flashed the officer another confident smile and spread her hoops in a curtsey.

"Now you simply must tell all the women about the latest fashions,” she informed Rosemary as she led her away.

All what women, Rosemary wondered. There was Libby’s mother, the sad-looking Clara Caden. And the birdlike Hilda Goldman. But other than those two, there was only a scattering of Mexican matrons who had either married the few well-to-do Mexican land-grant recipients or the growing number of American men who were coming to claim the opportunities offered in Santa Fe. The Mexican women merely smiled behind lazily swishing fans, and Rosemary felt helpless about conversing with them. In India the tutor had taught her Italian and French but no Spanish.

However, Clara, who sorely missed the comforts of civilization, barraged Rosemary with questions. Did the women in Ireland wear hoop skirts also? Had she ever been presented to the Queen? What about the hound’s-leg sleeve and the fichu
— were they out of style now?

For a few moments Clara’s pale, lackluster face radiated with enthusiasm, and Rosemary wondered if this was in store for her also
— the slow withering of the mind and body in an alien land.

At last Stephen rescued
her, telling her it was time to leave for Cambria. In one of the Palacio’s small offices, protected only by a curtain, she quickly changed into a navy blue gabardine traveling suit. When she joined Stephen outside, the two of them were pelted with rice as they departed in a buckboard wagon packed with wedding gifts and provisions needed for the three-day trip to Cambria.

Following the Old Santa Fe Trail, they reached Glorieta Pass late that afternoon, and when Rosemary looked over her shoulder she could see the three mountain ranges that encapsulated Santa Fe against time’s progress—the Sandia and Manzana to the south, the J
emez Range to the west, and the Sangre de Cristo.

In many places the mountains crowded close to the wheel-rutted trail, and in other places the wagon rolled perilously near yawning gorges.
Stephen was easy to chat with, and his features grew animated when sharing about Territory of New Mexico so that the time passed quickly.  “Tis, indeed a land of enchantment . . . made more so now that you are here.”

His gaze was warm, and she didn’t know what to say and finished lamely with, “I’m glad to be here.”

When it was almost too dark to see the trail, he halted the buckboard in an alpine meadow dotted with tall aspen and fir and laced by a narrow stream that rose up out of the Truchas Mountains and rushed toward the Pecos River.

He lifted her from the wagon and led her across the damp grass out onto a rocky spur from which could be seen a wide valley, already in deepening shadows, and the vague spread of purple plain beyond. Three thousand feet below, the land spread at their feet like a huge relief map. He held her before
him, her back against his chest. "Cambria,” he said, making the name sound like an incantation. "As far as you can see — and still further.”

"Oh, Stephen, I don’t want to stop here! I’ve waited this long, can’t we spend our first night on Cambria soil?”

"’Tis too dangerous to travel any further tonight. This is Apache country now.”

"Will there be trouble from the Apaches?”

"Lately ’tis been the Utes and Arapaho who have been raiding the smaller ranchos, stealing horses mostly — sometimes a Mexican child to sell as a slave to the tribes. But Lario is up ahead, scouting. We shouldn’t run into trouble. Besides, Indians dinna like to move around at night.”

"Do these Indians
. . . do they ever attack Cambria?” She held her breath, afraid even in the safety of his arms.

"Not since last spring.” Unaware of her latent fear, he led her back toward the wagon. "Lario made a gift of twin lambs to Perro Amarillo
— Yellow Dog. He’s chief of the Cibola Apache band, the most warring of the tribes in this area. So far, his band has bypassed our three ranches.”

"Three?”

He laughed. "I be forgetting you know so little about Cambria. So large it is that we have three smaller ranches—camps they be called—so the vaqueros and shepherds don’t have to make the long trip back to the main ranch every evening. The Wild Cat Camp runs our few cattle, and we’ve the Alta Pinon for our winter grazing in the Cuervo Mountains, but the largest, Cimarron Draw, is sharecropped out for sheep by Lario’s band.”

"He’s a chief?”

Stephen shrugged and began to remove the canvas that covered the mound of provisions in the wagon. "He could be, I guess. But the Navajo live in family communities, and unless warring, dinna be looking to any one man as their chief.”

While
he began to build a fire, she broke out the supply of beans and smoked meat. Never had she smelled the distinctively sweet odor of burning pinon, and as the coffee perked, she sat with her arms about her knees against the evening’s sudden chill, for it was colder there in the mountains. Stephen came and placed a blanket around her, his hands lingering at her shoulders.

Over dinner they made
small talk to bridge their unfamiliarity and their uneasy awareness of their bridal night to come. "When I was eight,” he said, "I began working in the coal mines, and as I passed the lighted homes where the gentry entertained, I promised meself I would one day be me own man.” He looked down into his coffee cup with a cynical smile. "I learned to ape their mannerisms and studied to improve me speech, so that when I did succeed no man could question me right.”

"Is that when you decided to come to the United States?”
she asked gently.

"Yes... when I finally had enough money to escape those black holes.” He looked up at
her then, and she saw the haunted look in his eyes. "I was twenty-two when I made me way to America, where one heard titles and aristocracy did not make the man. But in New York wealth did — and I had none. So I came west on the Santa Fe Trail to trade.”

"And made your wealth,” she supplied.

"Aye, but ’tis more than that — ’tis the excitement, the challenge. I dinna know if I can explain it to you, but it be sort of like a card game, like whist or monte. Me freighting company I started out with, the Santa Fe Trading Post, then Cambria... they be markers along the way. Indications of me success.”

"Then ’tis the game you enjoy
— not its reward.”

"Exactly!” he said, pleased that her female mind had grasped so easily what he himself could merely hint at.

"Nevertheless,” she pressed, "a poorly timed bluff could cost you more than your markers.”

"You’ve played cards before,” he accused and found himself somewhat pleased at the scandalous idea.

She shook her head. "Mah-Jongg. I learned to play it in India. ’Tis a simple game played with bamboo tiles, but the scoring system is complicated. A marker like Cambria would not be overlooked in Mah-Jongg.”

He
tossed out the dregs of his coffee cup. "I’ve risked me life many times over the years for every vara of that land grant. Tis something I dinna take lightly. Just as a wife I dinna take lightly.”

Embarrassed by
his intensity, she concentrated on her dinner, but too soon it was finished and he was banking the dancing flames. The fire’s light illuminated the vigor and power in his face, which the beard could not hide. She found it difficult to believe that he was more than twenty-five years older than she. He seemed closer to thirty than forty.

As Stephen made the bedroll, his freckled hands moving as deftly as a cardsharp’s,
she trembled with the knowledge of what was to come. Asian girls were taught early in life the duties of pleasing a man. But so soon! cried out something inside her. Not two years before she had had her first menses, discovered with a mixture of guilt and pleasure the sudden burgeoning of her breasts.

He
turned toward her. His black eyes met hers across the flickering embers, and she thought how those eyes smoldered just as hotly as the fire’s coals. "You are little more than a child, sixteen, yes.”

It wasn’t a question but a statement.  The way he said it, the words weren’t disparaging.  No, almost, breathless.  His
next utterance was forceful.   “Rosemary.”

There could be no further delay. Payment for Cambria was due. Rosemary raised her arms in a genuine gesture of warm welcome.

* * * * *

The Navajo sat astride the chestnut stallion, his knees hooked under the lariat tied loosely about the animal’s barrel. The small ears of the Arab horse pricked forward as they picked up the sound of what the Navajo had been watching for the past quarter of an hour.

From the view of the bare sandstone butte, Lario followed the progress of the lone wagon across the lush gamma grass that carpeted the Pecos Valley below. The man in the wagon represented the end to the way of life of the Indian’s people, the
Dine’e
. The others — the small ranchers, the prospectors, even the soldiers, most of whom would return to their families in the States when their time was up — represented no permanent threat.