Dust Devil (44 page)

"There is a summer hogan,” he said slowly as the idea took shape in his head.
His smile was wicked now, all male.  "Not a sweathouse like our people use. But it’s empty now with the winter here. However, we could manage to sweat away our impurities there.”

She slid him an inquiring gaze but didn’t reply and
uttered no complaint even though he half¬dragged her through rough undershrub when the Ford could go no further, tearing the frothy organdy and net gown.

A cool mist still hovered in the morning air. Further through the trees
he spotted the summer hogan. Beehive-shaped, it was formed of stout pinon poles overlaid with thick evergreens. Scrutinizing through the half-open door, he was conscious of a warm darkness broken by shafts of dawn’s light that poked through the leaves and filled the central smoke-hole. Inside the sweet smell of the night’s dampness pervaded everything, awaiting the two of them.

He pushed the door wide for their entry, and
Christina let the mink coat slide to the earthen floor and turned to face him. He saw the pulse beating at the hollow of her neck, and saw both her fear and her thrill.  She was readied to be mastered.

He
buried his hands in her hair, tearing loose the carefully arranged rolls of curls. He hurt her, but he could not but take now how she trembled with the pain he caused and her justified expectation of pleasure that was to come.

* * * * *

The gown tore away easily beneath his determined hands, and Christina wondered how she would ever get past her father’s gimlet eye. "I’m a grown woman,” she thought rebelliously. "I don’t have to answer to him.”

Then all thought was driven from her mind as Chase’s mouth scorched a passionate path from her parted lips to her eyelids and brushed the shell of her ear before nuzzling the hollow at the base of her neck. Her head lolled backward. "Oh, love me, Chase,” she whispered when his head moved lower to the bare breasts exposed above the wire strapless bra.

She watched breathlessly as he pulled away and shed his tuxedo — and the last vestiges of civilization. Petting in the rumble seat after a date at the ice cream parlor had revealed to Christina the composition of the male sex. But Chase’s coppery physique, corded with muscles by years of hard work during the summer in the Kansas beet fields as a child and later, after he had graduated, as a lumberjack, made that of her college dates seem immature in comparison.

Her fingers fumbled at the waistband of her long silk slip, and her nylons, garter belt, and panties fell away
— as the remnants of her reticence fell away. After twenty-four years of waiting, she was ready now. Ready for Chase. Wanting him, needing him, immediately. She wrapped her arms about his shoulders, pulling him down into her own soft, sweet dampness.

Chase took her there
at his own leisure tempo on the deep, luxuriant fur of her mink coat with a slow pounding, driving tempo that wracked her body, so that the initial pain was diluted by the intensity of their need. Perspiration rolled off both of them to fall on the fur. Christina thought she could not get enough of him. The mounting ecstasy was more than she thought she could stand, and she wanted to cry out. But his lips silenced hers, driving her into a forgetfulness.

* * * * *

For Chase all thought was heightened, like the effects of the jimson weed, like the peyote bud. He envisioned the old gods, the
Ye’ii,
frowning down upon him for betraying his people, for coupling with the unclean pale-skinned woman. He had had other Anglo women, mostly the lower class who had frequented the reservation’s bordertowns, and one or two society matrons since coming to Santa Fe, women who found him a novelty.

As perhaps Christina did
— a diversion. But she was unlike any Anglo woman he had possessed before. She was the White Queen, the Woman of the Moon.

And he would not let the primitive, ignorant fear of the
Ye’ii’s
revenge keep him from having her.

CHAPTER 46

Chase and Will bent over the map of New Mexico as Chase’s blunt finger traced the course of the Rio Grande River that divided the state in half. "This plat — and here, this plat — those there . . . these are the acreage that Bill 263 will tax. With Elephant Butte Reservoir going to — ”

The door of the office opened, and Deborah came in. It was the first time in two months Chase had seen her, since Christmas when she had come by the AID office with a gift for him, a sweater she had knitted to replaced his hole-filled one. She had stayed only a moment, but
he had been slightly surprised at the change in her. There was still a gamine expression to her childlike face. But there all resemblance to a child ended.

Her lovely dark brown hair was no longer coiled in braids but hung loose, touching the small of her back, with the sides and front rolled away from her face, emphasizing the full cheekbones and tilted cinnamon-brown eyes. And she had been dressed in spiked heels and a wraparound print dress that displayed her soft curves and shapely legs.

Today her small figure was outlined in a tightly fitting paprika-colored sweater and men’s khaki trousers. "What do you think?” she asked the two men as she twirled for them. "It’s the latest rage.”

"Then it’s true?” Will asked with a straight face. "Eleanor Roosevelt’s doing away with the female sex?”

Deborah made a face at Will. "No! And besides the slacks make it easier to work with the outdoor props that Roger’s photographing — which brings me to why I’m here.”

She turned pleading eyes on the two men. "I’m running up to Taos to set up an exhibition for Roger at one of the galleries, and I thought you two
— and May, if she can get away from the kitchen long enough, Will — would like to go along. I’ve got Roger’s Stutz Bearcat, and I thought we could stop off at the Picuris pueblo on the way. They’re holding a ceremonial dance tonight — the last of the season.”

"Count me out,” Will said. '"Gangbusters’ is on tonight, and you couldn’t pry me away from the radio with a crowbar.”

Deborah looked at Chase and flashed an elfin smile. "It’s a Mountain Chant. Say you’ll come.”

Chase slid down in the swivel chair, his hands clasped behind his head. He wanted nothing better than to go back to his attic room and crash for the night. But there stirred in his blood the childhood memory of the mysterious Mountain Chants
— the succession of ceremonial dances, the jugglery and legerdemain that took place around a huge fire from sundown to dawn, the eerie shadows that leaped and the wild beat of the rattle and the drum.

And there stirred in his blood the more recent memory of the New Year’s Peyote Ceremony held in a back canyon. Eight weeks had passed since that night
— eight weeks of seeing Christina’s aloof expression at the Capitol or occasionally at the nearby Tapatio Restaurant where many politicians met for lunch or an after-work drink; and always Chase wondered what Christina was thinking behind that mask of cool control.

She had avoided him the one time he had happened to meet her alone
—in one of the Capitol’s corridors. She had drawn away from him as if his touch burned her. But Chase had pinned her against the tiled wall, his hands on either side of her as his mouth angrily took hers, and her hands had slipped up around his neck to entwine in his collar-length hair. Yet when Senator Folley had called out for her, Christina had seemed relieved the spell was broken.

Chase grabbed his corduroy hunting coat. "See you tomorrow, Will.”

They made one stop, at the St. Vincent’s Sanitarium where Deborah lived. "The good sisters have more rooms than patients,” she explained, laughing at Chase’s surprised expression. "And besides, they offer excellent accommodations and good food for a modest sum. I’ll be just a moment — I’ve some paintings I have to cart up to Taos for Roger.”

When she returned to the car, a good-looking young Indian with clean-cut brown-black hair and a friendly face helped her with the paper-wrapped paintings. "Gregory Red Bird,” she said, introducing him to Chase.

The young man, who was of medium height, took Chase’s hand.

"Greg’s taken the room down the hall from me. His sculpturing class was called off, and I invited him along.”

Greg smiled wryly at Chase. "I’m a full-blooded Navajo, but you’d never know it. I’ve never seen a night chant before, so Deborah thought it was time.”

Deborah’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Chase could only agree, though as he shifted the Stutz into second he
could not figure out why the man’s presence should irritate him. He found himself feeling more than ever like Deborah’s big brother, and when Greg put his arm on the seat behind Deborah who sat between the two of them, he felt like asking just what Greg’s intentions were.

As Chase maneuvered the Stutz around the hairpin curves and along the narrow Highway 68, Deborah explained to Greg the nature of what he would see that evening. From that point their conversation turned to exhibitions and galleries and New Mexico’s creative giants like Ellis, Weston, and Lawrence.

The sunset was a brilliant hue of purples and oranges when Chase finally wheeled the Stutz off the main highway onto a rock-studded road that twisted through several ridges dotted with cottonwoods and junipers and littered with tin cans and beer bottles — products of the white tourist. But tonight few white men, if any, would witness this ceremony. As the car neared the enormous clearing, surrounded by walls of evergreens, the road became crowded with other Indians, most from Picuris, arriving by burro, an occasional pickup, and on foot.

Nearly a thousand Indians were standing and sitting as the first of the spectacular performances commenced. It was a fire dance, with the dancers’ bodies painted white with clay to ward off the heat as they raced around the blazing bonfire. Each clutched a burning brand and struck the dancer ahead. They circled wildly, coming closer and closer to the leaping flames.

He and Greg, with Deborah between them, shouldered their way through the Indians to find an empty place on the ground to sit. A blanket-wrapped Indian moved past them, juggling rounded stones. To their left a clown burlesqued the priests, dancing out of step, and the children laughed at his antics. The sight of the families, the close-knit clans, awakened in Chase a yearning for the family he had missed as a child.

Toward midnight, as the more sacred ceremonial dances began, small bowls of
penole
and
piki
began to circulate among the group along with the ubiquitous
tiswin
. The night air had turned cold, and he noticed that Greg had taken the opportunity to put his arm around Deborah possessively. Chase’s eyes, shielded by lazy lids, turned away to watch the barbaric splendor of the primitive dances. The rattle of the tortoiseshell and the thud of the cottonwood drum lured him back to a primeval time.

* * * * *

Deborah felt a same stirring in her blood, watching the rites, letting the savage sounds fill her until there existed nothing else; a stirring, she thought, that Christina Raffin and her kind could never know. She wanted to spring up, loose the fetters of Greg’s arm, and lose herself in the ever-quickening tempo of the dance. But she willed the stoic calm in herself, watched Greg as he partook of the
tiswin
, noting that Chase drank little.

One dance faded into another, children grew sleepy and crawled up in their mothers’ arms, the ancient wandered off to exchange a beer and tales of their youth while the younger ones took up the passionate beat of the dance.

Toward dawn Greg’s arm fell away as he slipped into a nodding doze. Now was the time, she thought, the real purpose for which she had invited Chase. She turned to him. He would not be able to hear her above the throbbing music. She touched his shoulder and rose. Chase looked up, as if disturbed from a trance. She mouthed the words, "Follow me.”

She
wove her way through the sleeping mounds and huddled bodies, deeper into the encircling forest. The air was purer there, but the insistent pagan music, though muted, still followed them. The pine needles crushed beneath Deborah’s espadrilles, whispering seductively, as she followed the trail that led to the Rio Grande’s banks.

Chase caught up with her and took her arm, and she turned to face him. "What’s this all about?” he asked.

Although the darkness surrounded them, she could still see the concern that showed in his self-contained countenance. "Chase, you’re the only family I have near, and . . . and.. . “She broke off, not knowing how much to tell him.

He
took her shoulders. "What is it?”

"Greg asked me to marry him yesterday.”

Chase’s hands fell away. "Oh. He seems — nice.” He looked away into the darkness. "With your common interest in art, you should make a very happy couple.”

"I
— I was hoping you’d say that. I wanted your approval . . . being as you’re like a brother.”

"You have my best wishes, Deborah. When’s the wedding?”

"There’s something else I had to tell you, and tonight seemed as good a time as any. The wedding is six months away. After I return from a photographic tour of the European war front. Tonight is good-bye.”