Dust Devil (43 page)

"Excuse me, Fred,” she said to her Princeton escort. "I need to repair my make-up.”

As she made her way past the tables toward the door she nodded here and there at the party’s workers who had earned their ticket to the New Year’s Inaugural Ball. Impatience to reach Chase before he was swallowed up by a gaggle of socialites made her short with the sycophants who sought to detain her.

"Hello, Chase,” she said quietly, ignoring Margaret Maxwell, the prominent patron of the arts and founder of the Maxwell Galleries. T
he bleached blond, with a half-empty champagne glass in one hand, was seductively tracing the folds of Chase’s red cummerbund with the forefinger of her free hand while she talked about what the Democratic Party could do for AID.

"Hello, Christina,” he said. "I take it I owe you a thanks for the invitation?”

She turned to the woman who blinked with surprise at the interruption. "Isn’t that your husband over there on the dance floor, Marge? I think he’s motioning for you to join him in the Conga Line.”

When the woman had departed in a huff, Christina said, "I thought you might enjoy the New Year’s party.” The way his inky-black eyes watched her
— it made her nervous. And the way his raking gaze moved leisurely down the plunge of her cleavage, she wondered if he even noticed the $750 frothy lilac gown from John-Frederics. "I didn’t think you would come,” she blurted. Then, "You’re bored, aren’t you?”

Chase slanted a brow. "Aren’t you?”

She surveyed the crowded room. Wasn’t this what she had worked for — the power so long denied the woman in politics? She looked back to Chase, tilting her head up in spite of her five feet ten inches. "Good Lord, yes — and I’m just realizing it!”

"Come on,” he said, taking her wrist. "We’re missing a better party.”

The band was playing a swing rendition of Glen Miller’s “Blueberry Hill,” and from the corner of her eye she could see Fred making his way toward her. Wordlessly she nodded her head at Chase.

He
took her glass and handed it to a passing waiter in purple livery. "Let’s go.”

* * * * *

Chase did not need to take his eyes off the winding Cerro Gordo Road to see the exhilaration that shone in Christina’s eyes each time the flare from her cigarette lit up the elegant bones of her face. A woman of power and wealth and beauty. A dangerous combination. He would be a fool to let himself get involved with her. He imagined she would be like the female species of the whip vignaroon scorpion that inhabited the New Mexico alkaline flats — cohabitating with her mate, then stinging him to death. If the mate let her.

His
lips flattened out in a dry smile as the realization occurred to him that he was looking forward to a duel with this woman. He felt her eyes on him, and he glanced at her.

"Where are we going?” she asked.

"I told you. A party. Of sorts. We’re going to an Enemyway Chant — a squaw dance.”

She
laughed, a tinkling brittle mockery. "Are you going to make a squaw out of me?”

"I think that would be difficult. We won't be seeing what the ordinary tourists see. We’ve a special invitation to the medicine hogan.”

"What’s going to happen there?”

"That’s where the Native American Church meets.”

"A church meeting!” her eyes narrowed. "You dragged me away from the party of the year to attend a church meeting?”

"You said you were bored. Wait. If you change your mind. I’ll see that you get back.”

Christina did not miss the implications in his words. Chase Strawhand was not a man to be gelded. He would probably send her back with some fat, blanketed chief with a stovepipe hat jammed on his head. Well, this is what she had wanted. And being out under the stars with a man like Chase, even if he was not wild for her like Serge, was better than suffocating at the tedious ball. And where was Serge? she wondered. The latest gossip had it that he had followed up her rejection by pursuing Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress—or was it the movie actress, Alice Faye?

Chase maneuvered his Torpedo Ford through the flow of horses and buckboards, past the main grounds of the pueblo where most of the tourists would be found on a weekend snapping away with their Kodak Brownies. "We’re not stop
ping here?”

Chase shook his head. "Un-uhh. Further back in the canyon of the pueblo reservation is a small band of Navajos. They’ll be having their own ceremony tonight.”

"At the
church
?” she asked, somewhat skeptically.

"Mmm-huh.” Chase kept his attention on the road as the Ford bounced over a series of ruts.

The January air was colder there where it whistled down the narrow valleys, and Christina shivered despite the heavy mink coat. Then, back in the trees a dim light flickered, growing steadier as they neared a log and mud hogan. Four or five ponies and a Model-T were off to the hogan’s left near a lean-to.

Her
desire for the warmth of the cabin drained as Chase switched off the engine. A ribbon of mist swirled about the hogan. From inside came mournful wailing occasionally broken by a shrill chant. "Will they be angry — that you’ve brought me?”

Chase’s
expression was unfathomable. "I think the shaman’s expecting you.”

* * * * *

Christina smiled, uncertain if Chase was joking. And he was not sure himself. The previous summer he had made a cursory tour of the pueblos along the Rio Grande to get a better idea of how much of the flood control project was involved in the Conservancy Act. At one pueblo he had stopped before an old shaman who was sandpainting. Half¬fascinated — half-derisive, Chase had stood with the crowd of tourists and watched the old man dribble the colored powders on the ground, painting some ancient divinity.

The chanting that accompanied the sandpainting meant little to Chase. But there was something commanding about the shaman who looked almost mummified. Furrows ribbed the taut skin about the great hawklike nose, and long, straggly, bone-white hair framed the arresting face. About one veined wrist was an unusually designed bracelet of silver and turquoise.

After some minutes Chase realized the old man’s piercing gaze had singled him out from the crowd of tourists. Still in a sing-song chant, the shaman began to speak to Chase in the common Navajo. "There is a medicine hogan — not meant for tourists’ eyes. Come some evening, and I shall tell you of the Long Walk made by your mother’s mother.”

Chase’s laugh had been mocking, "Your hocus-pocus won’t work on me, grandfather,” he replied, uncaring that the tourists stared at him now during this
incomprehensible interchange. "My mother’s mother was a white woman.” That much he knew for sure, reluctantly revealed to him by his father. That and the information that his mother’s father had been a Navajo of the
Tahtchini
clan.

The shaman let the sand play out between his horny fin
gers, never looking at the form the grains made. "Nevertheless your mother’s mother made the Long Walk. You will make the Long Walk.” His eyes at last released Chase, and Chase felt as if a hypnotist had snapped his fingers.

"You are old, grandfather. You don’t know what you say.” Without looking up this time from the sandpainting he
continued to make, the old man said, "Bring the woman of the moon. Her pale beams reflect on your past.”

Glad that he had broken away from the traditional su
perstition that bound so many of his people to ignorance, Chase had turned away with a half-pitying, half-scornful laugh for the old-timer, who was known as Guayo Santiago.

But, curiously, over the past months he had been drawn
back to the medicine hogan on the few weekends he had no assignments due or research work needed for AID. And each time the old man had mentioned the pale moon woman.

No one looked up when Chase and Christina entered. Seven other people lined the sides of the octagonal log hogan.
Smoke drifted up from the firepit through the smoke vent in he center of the hogan. But it was not the smoke that pervaded the small room with the acrid smell.

The smell was that of peyote. Although the possession of
peyote was a crime under New Mexican law, the Indians were subject only to federal law, and under federal ruling peyote was not a narcotic and could thus be used in the religious ceremonies of the Native American Church.

On the room’s west side the old shaman sat near a half-
formed sandpainting. To his left was another Indian with a massive, bulldog face. "That is Cedar Chief,” Chase whispered. He will help the Road Priest, the old man making the sand-painting, by sprinkling powdered juniper on the fire. Before Road Chief is the altar — there, with the large peyote blossom.”

Christina wrinkled her nose at the bitter smell, and he said, "It’s the peyote you smell. Later, when the Road Chie
fr
eadies the kettle drum and the ceremonial praying and singing begin, you’ll smoke the peyote.”

"I think I’d rather have one of my own cigarettes, thank
you.”

He shrugged
. "You might change your mind. Wait.”

He took a seat on the dirt floor,
cross-legged, and Christina did likewise, carefully arranging her skirts and floor-length fur coat around her.

Sacramental food was passed around, a
pozole
of corn, and the mournful wailing began again. A person here, an old woman there. "They are confessing their sins,” Chase explained in a whisper.

A middle-aged woman with a
rebozo
covering her head began weeping, and Christina said, "Good Lord, if I began confessing my sins we’d be here all night.”

"We will be.”

She rolled her eyes upward, muttering, “What have I gotten myself into?”

T
he old man whom Chase had named Road Chief began stopping before each person with a shallow basket filled with what appeared to be rolled cigarettes.

"Take one,” Chase advised. "You’re about to begin your journey on the Peyote Road.”

"And Daddy warned me against smoking,” Christina said with a mocking sigh as she took one.

Road Chief returned to his place before the sand-painting. Cedar Chief began the slow, steady beat of the hollow, deep kettle drum. It was eerie
— the weeping and wailing of confession, the ceremonial praying, the singing and smoking.

“It’s
pleasant,” Christina murmured, “but not as strong as I had expected.  But shortly after midnight the old Road Chief passed about peyote buds that had been sliced and dried.  One bite, and Christina had to know she was taking her Road Trip.

A Road Trip was like a series of timed depth charges. Chase, watching her, could judge her progress from his own past experience. The unsettling of the stomach, and thirty minutes later, the flushed face. Pupils dilating, salivation increasing. Christina’s eyes grew wider, and she smiled — a slow smile, and he recognized she was experiencing a sense of exhilaration, like the swift intake of pure oxygen.

His own exhilaration was more muted, more reverent. The old Religion of the Gods formed more a part of his introspective thoughts than he realized
— despite the fact he had denied both the old gods and the white man’s God the missionaries at the Indian boarding school had so vainly tried to instill in him.

He could
interpret by Christina’s closed eyes that she was focusing her own energies inward.  As for him, ideas seemed to flow as rapidly in Chase’s head as the hummingbird. He was on an intense plateau, and his thoughts were uncannily luminous. He would rule the white man, not the other way around. He would make the laws. He would rule with the white woman beside him. Of course, that was what Road Chief, Guayo Santiago, had been telling him!

It was a dawn to dusk affair, and with the first light of
the sun the religious services ended. The attendants moved awkwardly, but there were no aftereffects. Chase helped Christina to the Ford. Her lovely pale-green eyes were glazed, but he could not tell if it was from the lack of sleep or the shock of her experience.

"Whhew!” she breathed after she had settled her long skirts inside the car and tucked her loose wisps of hair back into the fashionable pompadour. She flashed him a smile that was touched with embarrassment. '"Leaping Lizards,’ as Little Orphan Annie would say. That was some experience! I knew I had the solution to the world’s problems sometime during the night, but it seems to have slipped away.”

"It’s customary now to take a steam bath to purify yourself,” Chase said as he whipped the car around and headed back down the bumpy, overgrown road.

For him, every nuance, every gesture, was magnif
ied.  He caught the tell-tale pulse beating at her throat and forced himself to breathe deeply, slowly.

“My
father will probably have the state police out searching for me, but I’m not ready for our adventure to end.”

He
was not yet ready for the night to end either. He wanted Christina now more than he had ever wanted anything, and it had nothing to do with the peyote experience. She was the embodiment of beauty, womanhood, and power; she possessed the strength and grace of the female puma . . . and he would tame her.