Dust Devil (9 page)

"I shall miss you, Rita,”
she said, avoiding answering her friend’s question.

And she meant it, for Rita’s vivacity kept Rosemary’s loneliness at bay, stilled the emptiness that gnawed within her
— an emptiness that could not be assuaged by Stephen’s gifts or his intense attentions when he was not occupied by his political affairs, for he could be overwhelmingly charming when he chose to do so.

And as she thought about Stephen, it dawned on her that he would soon be directing his more intimate attentions toward her; for a healthy man like Stephen could not go long without sexual release. And Rosemary sensed Stephen was the type of man who would want a long line of children to glorify his existence and his name.

But on this point she erred. For Stephen did not deign to visit her bed as she had expected.

One morning, when Jamie was almost seven months, she
teasingly questioned Stephen about brothers and sisters for Jamie.

Stephen paused in sipping the thick, black coffee. "I have me son,” he answered and went back to reading his weekly New Mexican newspaper.

And have his son he did, for Stephen spent every free moment with the child, pitching him in the air and rough-housing with him until Rosemary’s breath caught in fright for the baby. She sensed that Stephen planned to monopolize his son; that he would exclude her from his son as much as she was excluded from his office.

She told herself she should be happy that Stephen cared so much for
their son. And did she not have what she wanted— a healthy son, a husband, and a home . . . Cambria? In the space of less than two years she had come a long way from the penniless waif she had been.

She
would repeat these blessings to herself at night, like counting sheep, to bring the escape that sleep offered. But some nights even sleep was denied her, for Jamie would wake screaming, and she would hurry to him.

Jamie awoke continually one August night, which was so hot even the thick sandstone walls could not keep out the heat. Rather than relinquish the maternal role to one of the servant girls, Rosemary herself went to the baby’s side each time he awakened. For a few moments she held the small, precious form, feeling his soft breath in the hollow of her neck. "’Tis all right, my pet,” she whispered a
s he whimpered in his sleep. She laid him back in the crib, wiping the damp auburn curls from his forehead and fanning him until he quieted.

Instead of returning to her adjoining bedroom, she padded to the kitchen on bare feet in search of the fresh water preserved in the large adobe
jarra
. From beyond the kitchen in the direction of Stephen’s forbidden offices came the staccato bursts of sobs. Rosemary set aside the dipper, straining to listen for the soft recurring sound that was almost lost in the the vast house.

She thought she caught the crying again and felt her way through the darkened hallway to the sound’s source, Stephen’s office. Light seeped from beneath one doorway. When her light knock brought no response,
she opened the door.

Shock washed over her like ice-cold water. The sputtering candlelight in the wall sconce flickered on the horsehair sofa opposite the desk. The sofa’s two occupants, their nude bodies
pale in the room’s dimness, turned to stare—revealing Stephen’s enraged face and Magdalena’s tear-stained one.

One of her pigtails unraveled, t
he little girl huddled against one end of the sofa, her head hanging abjectly. Stephen sprang up. "What the bloody — ”

Rosemary took a step backward from the man who snarled like a rabid dog. "You bitch—what be you sneaking about me place?” He took a step toward her, and she whirled and ran. Behind her she heard him groping for his pants, swearing vile words, the meaning of which she had not the slightest idea.

Her hands clapped over her ears to shut out the shouted curses even as her bare feet sped across the Castle’s hardwood floors out onto the veranda, and down the pebbled drive. The stones ground into her feet. Somewhere behind her she heard voices. A lantern flashed in the darkness.

Driven by animal instincts,
she fled the wide road that wound down toward the village and struck out in the darkness across a sparsely vegetated slope. Moments later she stumbled over a greasewood bush and went sprawling in the gritty sand. She sat up, gasping. Her knee burned where she had scraped it, and her flannel gown was ripped up one side.

Then Rosemary began to become sick to her stomach. The sight of the child, naked and crying...and Stephen—dear God, her husband, what kind of man was he? She had heard whispered words about people such as he—perverted—but her own husband? And the poor child... and how many other children?

She retched, feeling as if the dry heaving of her stomach would tear her insides out. When at last there was no further churning, she crawled weakly to her knees, then her feet. Behind her every window in the Castle was alight.

Run! Run! a voice within her screamed. And once again instinct directed her steps down the slope toward the more sluggardly swing of the Pecos, where its sandbars afforded a crossing.

The rest of the night she kept her feet moving through sheer volition. One foot in front of the other. With no sleep she moved blindly across the terrain, only vaguely aware of the sharp rocks of the lava beds that bruised her feet or the juniper-covered hills that crowded in on her. Thirst ruled her tormented mind and nagged her parched throat — a thirst that blotted out everything as the torturous sun began its climb in the bright cobalt sky.

Sometime that day, when the sun seemed like a red-hot
coal pulsating just above her head, she sank to her knees. In the distance what looked like a tornado of sand, a dust devil, danced on the rim of a red mesa. A dust storm may come, her brain recorded numbly. My footprints will be blotted out. Then thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus and patches of wild pumpkin rose up to meet her as she sagged forward with the final thought—one of relief— I will not be found.

But she was.

CHAPTER
11

Rosemary awoke to find black heavy-lidded eyes that regarded her inquiringly. "You are all right?” Lario asked.

She nodded. Tentatively she raised up from the blanket and rested on one elbow, her long hair spilling over one shoulder like
blood red wine. White-plastered walls of a one-room adobe hogan encircled her. "Where am I?” It came out like a croak.

"In my home,
Senora
. The pueblo of my people. I brought you here this evening — out of the sandstorm.”

The dust devil
, a preamble to the sandstorm — it was the last thing she remembered. Rosemary’s hand went to her head, only to feel the grit encrusted on her skin and scalp. "My husband — ” she began, not knowing exactly how to phrase her thoughts.

"He does not know you are here.” The eyes
, so bottomless black she could fall into them, were shuttered, revealing nothing of the Indian’s thoughts. He rose from where he crouched over her and said, "You are hungry. Soon we will eat. Rest.”

Relief flooded
her that Lario did not seem to expect an explanation from her. Indeed, it seemed he expected nothing, and she was only too willing to lay there as he moved about the room — gracefully, leisurely, but with purpose.

From the firepit in the room’s center drifted the
mouthwatering odor of roasting mutton. The blazing pinion logs painted red shadows on the plain white walls. Above the fireplace were indented shelves where blue candles burned in their tin holders. Her gaze strayed upward to fasten on the cinnamon-colored shafts of pine which held up the low ceiling. These vigas carried with them the memory of forests—Irish forests—and Rosemary shut her eyes. Ireland. She should have stayed there. She had been foolishly willful to come to a strange country, to a strange man, and hope to make a home.

Stephen with Magdalena. My God, the girl was only ten
or eleven! No wonder so many children came and went in the Castle, both boys and girls. She recalled the strange look she had often caught in the children’s eyes. She had thought it merely the aloof attitude of Mexican and Indian children... but it had been the haunted look of fear and confusion. Why had she been so blind to what was going on in her own home?

She
opened her eyes to find Lario standing above her, watching. "You knew?” she asked.

He hunkered down and spread another blanket over her. "It gets cold at night this high up.”

"You knew!” she accused this time.

"Should I have told you,
Senora
— that your husband likes children?”

"Why
— why do they stay?”

He
shrugged. "Hunger. Shelter. Their parents owe money. There are many reasons.”

Lario
rose before she could ask more and went to kneel at the fire. When he returned to squat before her, he had a bowl in his hands. Wordlessly he spoon-fed her as if she were a child. The mutton was delicious. When she finished the last bite, he stood up. "I will stay the night in my mother’s lodge,” he said as he crossed to the
jarra
and filled a gourd with water. "You will be safe here.”

"You aren’t going to take me back?”

He knelt at her side and offered her the gourd, saying, "That is for you to decide,
Senora
.”

Over the gourd’s rim her eyes challenged him. "And if I don’t want to go back—what will you tell my husband?”

He smiled.   A tantalizing smile that stopped her breath in her throat.  "That the
Senora
could not be found.”

She tossed beneath the blankets throughout the night. There was the rattle of the wind like sleet upon the dead leaves of the tree-branch roof to keep her company, to echo her
rattled thoughts.  At last, exhaustion drained her and she slept a deep, dreamless coma in the bed of her childhood enemy.

When morning came, Toysei was at the hogan’s door with a bowl of
corn mush for Rosemary’s breakfast. Behind Toysei Adala hung back like a shy doe. The girl had delicate brown skin with soft, brown, long-lashed eyes. "Lario is in the mountains with his brothers,” Toysei said without preamble. "He will return tonight.” Then the two young women were gone.

The dust storm grew worse that day, yet a surge of restlessness agitated Rosemary into escaping the hogan where she was plagued by
Lario’s unseen presence. The sight of his possessions—an anvil to one side of the doorway, his bedroll on the other, the leather vest on the wall peg—distracted her from the decision she must make.

Muffled in the Indian blanket which she kept drawn up over her mouth and nose,
She left the hogan to walk under the aged, wind-distorted cottonwoods. She followed the wagon-rutted path that led downward to the plateau rather than upward where she might encounter Lario or his brothers.  Her bruised and cut feet, which she discovered had been anointed during the night with some kind of healing balm, were still tender, and she winced all too often when not careful where she stepped.

Just where would she go? She could return to Ireland. Stephen’s gift, her golden earrings, would buy her passage back there. She could never return to her aunt’s dominion, but perhaps she could support herself as a tutor or governess.

But what about Jamie? She knew she could not give him up... and she knew Stephen would never let her leave with the baby. But did she really want to leave? She had come to love the land. The wildness of it. Cambria! Its exotic beauty. Its dangerous nature. She sensed Ireland would be boring after life in the New Mexico Territory.

And yet she could never let Stephen touch her again. The very sight of those freckled hands would repulse her now. To even be in the same room with him would be revolting to her. But to look forward to a life that stretched on in emptiness . . . she could find no answer.

The air, shimmering with the turbid pink light of the storm, was a moving tapestry of sand. The longer she walked, the greater blew the sand and wind. She lifted her face to its blast, as if the sand would cleanse away the shame and horror of the day before.

Eventually the storm’s intensity grew so great that it was impossible for
her to see where she walked. The thought that any moment she might wander from the trail and plunge into some gashed canyon snapped her out of her cataleptic state. She halted and, like a bat without the aid of sight, tried to sense something solid near her to protect her from the wind’s blast — a boulder, a gully, a ridge.

The sand stung her face and clogged the air so that breathing was
now a real effort. Panic pricked her. She whirled about, uncertain now of which direction she had come. It was nigh impossible to stand erect. When the wind whipped the blanket from her, she crouched and shielded her nearly nude body from the sand’s blinding onslaught.

Suddenly she was engulfed in blackness and lifted, to be thrown roughly across something hard that knocked the breath from her. Stunned, some seconds passed before she
realized she was wrapped once more in a scratchy blanket and slung across the saddle of a mule or horse. She struggled, and a hand swatted her behind. "
Dulce
!”