Harvest of Fury (45 page)

Fayte was one of the men taking aim. His rifle pointed at Cruz, and his eyes must have been as they were when he killed an animal. A fusillade rang out. Bullets spun men around, sent them staggering. Cruz flung up his great arms as he pitched backward. As the unhurt strikers fled Chris ran toward him and fell on her knees.

Blood pumped from a great hole in Cruz's back. She tore off her shirt, trying to stuff it into the wound, even as he whispered her name.

Then his blood was the blood of Tomochic, the lumberyard blaze the burning church, before both swirled into blackness.

She couldn't see, but she could hear. From the whispers of the servants, she learned that over two hundred Bisbee volunteers had crossed the border Saturday morning and offered their services to Governor Izábal, who waited on the other side, having made an all-night trip from Hermosillo. General Torres swore the men into the Mexican forces, and they were soon on their way to Cananea.

When the train pulled in, Greene raised a cheer for the governor, though none of the townsfolk joined in. Apart from their dead and imprisoned men, it was a blow to their pride to see the Sonoran governor jump at Greene's whistle. The volunteers marched to the smelter, and Greene and the governor made an inspection by auto.

By noon, the crowd had swelled. Izábal tried to speak, but the crowd shouted him down with their grievances. Greene spoke next, telling the men he was their friend and had always tried to treat them fairly, paying them as much as he could.

He had no answer, though, to satisfy the repeated question of the murmuring crowd: Why didn't he pay Mexicans the same wages as Americans?

The Bisbee volunteers got back on the train and stayed there till Colonel Kosterlitzky rode in at sunset with his
rurales
. He sent word to all parts of town that anyone, Mexican or American, found on foot in the streets after dark would be shot. He also told the Bisbee men he could handle things, and by ten that night the volunteers had left for Arizona without having fired a shot.

On Sunday Colonel Greene went around the camps, urging the men to go back to work. He also let it be known that he knew who the Western Federation of Miners organizers were, and that they would be arrested. About three hundred union members left town. Meanwhile, Kosterlitzky searched out a score of the
huelguista
leaders and jailed them. He also reinforced Greene's invitation to the men to go to work by saying that those who didn't would be drafted into the army and sent to fight Yaquis. Next morning, all the men who were not dead, jailed, or union organizers were back at work.

But Chris still could not see. She lay in the big bed and drank thirstily, though she refused food. When Fayte forced some broth between her clenched teeth, she vomited it.

“I want to go home,” she said, speaking for the first time. She had heard Fayte, the doctor, the Greenes, talking to her before but had not been able to make the effort to answer.

Fayte wiped her face with a cold cloth. “You are home.” He sat down, drew her into his arms. “You're not really blind, sweetheart. You can see again when you make up your mind to.”

“I never want to see your face again.”

His body went rigid. “Cruz had no business down there.”

“He went to try to persuade the strikers to stop fighting.”

“How in hell could we know that?” Fayte's hands tightened. He gave her a shake. “Damn it, you could have been killed! If you hadn't pulled off your shirt—”

“I want to go home.”

His breath sucked in. His weight lifted from the bed; she heard the door closing. Then he stripped away the sheet and roughly pulled off her gown. He took her like a storm, willing her to respond to him, kissing, caressing, handling her first roughly, then with patience, but she endured his passion and gentleness alike.

When he was through, when he lay spent, head on her breast, she felt a certain grief for him, but it couldn't erase the way he'd looked as he fired into the men. He'd recognized Cruz. But he hadn't given him a chance to say why he was there.

Teresita!
she thought, and tried to call up the
santa
's face. But there was only darkness.

When the doctor came again, and told her she must eat and build up her strength, she said she wished to go back to the Socorro.

After the doctor left, she heard him arguing with Fayte, giving his opinion that she would recover much better in her childhood home. “She's young and delicate, Mr. Riordan,” said the physician. “I understand your reluctance to send her away, but I believe the sooner you do, the sooner she'll be restored. She's not maliciously refusing to eat. Her body is rejecting nourishment because, temporarily, she has no will to live.”

“That's crazy!”

“It's my best advice, Mr. Riordan.”

“I won't let her go! Damn it, she's my wife!”

Chris felt separated from it, as if they were talking about a stranger. Still, tears squeezed through her eyelids before she drifted into the sleep that seemed always to be waiting.

Sant was there. She knew his hands closing warm and strong over hers before his voice touched her like balm. “Chris. Are you all right?”

She couldn't answer, but she gripped his hands more tightly. If only she could see him.… Why had she ever married Fayte, why had she left Socorro? Cruz would still be alive if he hadn't followed her.

Fayte's tone was harsh. “You're upsetting her, boy. The doctor says there's nothing the matter but female hysterics.”

Chris clung desperately to Sant and was grateful when he made no move to withdraw. “Maybe she should come home for a while. Grande Talitha's worried about her.”

“My wife is staying where she belongs, in my house.”

Chris struggled up, so weak she fell back immediately. “I want to go home! I want Talitha!”
I want Sant
.

“I'll get better doctors,” Fayte said stubbornly. “I'll do anything to cure you, but you're not leaving.”

“I won't be married to you anymore, Fayte. If you keep me here, I won't eat.”

“You don't know what you're saying!”

“I do. Whatever the law says, I haven't been your wife since you fired at Cruz.”

“Christina!”

She turned her face from the sound of his voice. “Get yourself another trophy. Someone to decorate your house and be an admirable Señora Riordan.”

His tone thickened with outrage. “You can't forget your damned family, can you? Revier y O'Shea! You've always belonged more to them than to me!”

“Their blood is mine. I'm proud of it.”

“Prouder than of being my wife?”

“I'm not your wife anymore.”

Fayte drew in a shuddering breath. “No use talking to you now; you're not responsible. Go home with your cousin. In a few weeks, I'll come to see you.”

Drained, she didn't argue further. He was holding himself on a tight rein and might release his anger on Sant. He rang for the women to help her dress and pack.

“The
señora
requires only enough for a few weeks,” Fayte told them, and again she didn't protest. To be free of him, free of this house, that was what mattered.

Sant had brought Miguel's Packard. Fayte carried her to it, crushed her against him for a long moment. His mouth bruised hers. “Get well, my love. I'll see you soon.”

But I will not see you
.

“Good-bye, Fayte.”

With all her will, she fought back tears till Sant had turned the auto and they were a distance down the road. Then she wept.

Back at the Socorro, her sight returned slowly as she talked with Talitha and her family and went around the place with Sant patiently guiding her. First she saw dim shapes, then the light behind them; then distinctness increased till she saw as well as ever.

When she remembered Cruz falling, the bleeding wound she couldn't staunch, blackness welled up again, but Sant helped her through those times, holding her, touching her eyes with his hands.

So she could see her husband when he came early in July, a month after the strike, driving one of Colonel Greene's autos. He was lean, somehow ragged-looking in spite of his expertly tailored clothes.

“Christina!” His eyes glowed as he sprang up on the veranda and took her in his arms. “You're all right! You can see!”

“Yes.” She pitied him, couldn't believe she'd ever loved him, ever hungered for his touch.

“Wonderful! We can go home tomorrow.” He smiled at Talitha, Miguel, Juri, Patrick, and Sewa, who had all been enjoying the evening view of the mountains. “You've been good medicine for my wife. I can't thank you enough.”

Patrick, Chris's grandfather, got to his feet, his thick mass of red hair only lightly veined with gray. “Sorry, Fayte, but—we thought you understood. Our lawyer's started divorce proceedings.”

Fayte's arms tightened convulsively around Chris before he pushed her away, eyes blazing like a cornered mountain lion's. “The O'Shea lawyer will get the divorce because there's a Revier in the state legislature and your family's been here forever and owns half of southern Arizona! Isn't that right? A latecomer from Colorado who lives in Mexico might as well keep his mouth shut!”

The earlier trace of embarrassed apology left Patrick's voice. “A big public show isn't to anyone's interest, Fayte, but if you want to try to keep a woman who doesn't want you, go ahead. Just let me say that whatever the court decides, Chris stays where she wants to be.”

For a terrible moment Chris thought Fayte would draw the revolver he wore buckled to his waist. His hand paused above it, then dropped heavily. Ignoring the others, he looked at Chris. Her heart wailed for the pain in his face, but there was no way back to him.

Between them lay Cruz, dead men who'd wanted only to be paid as much as Americans, and, in an obscure but intensely felt way for Chris, the murdered of Tomochic who'd died for their rights.

Not fair, perhaps, or rational. Fayte wasn't an evil man. But he craved riches, and to gain them he was willing to see other human beings simply as machinery, to be maintained as cheaply as possible, and scrapped when they were worn out or broken down.

“This is what you want?” His voice was a whisper.

Tears brimmed to her eyes. She nodded silently.

He turned without a word. When he was gone, she went into Talitha's arms and cried till she was empty, light as a dead leaf.

She hadn't seen him again. Cananea had been one of the sparks that blazed into the still raging conflagration of the Mexican revolution.

Eleven years later, Chris still felt as if there were a small empty hollow in her heart, though she was usually too busy to notice it. Not only did she teach the Bisbee miners' children through the week, but on Saturdays, and several days a week through the summer, she took them walking, trying to show them what wonderful plants and creatures lived in the desert and how they managed to survive.

On this day in early June, up Tombstone Canyon, she had shown them how cacti grew under nurse plants which protected them while they were small, though the cacti might later grow up through the tree's limbs and even flourish after it was dead. There'd been a pack rat's nest under a vast clump of prickly pear, and Chris had told the wide-eyed youngsters how he was an ornery old bachelor who lived alone except when mating. Females were solitary also, except when rearing young.

“You're sol'tary, too, Miss Revier,” blurted Sulev, one of the Slovak children. “You ever goin' to rear any young?”

She laughed in spite of a pang and tousled his yellow hair. “You take all my energy! And I guess I am about as cantankerous as the grouchiest old pack rat.”

He squeezed her hand shyly, letting it go before any of the other children could notice. “You're not
real
grouchy, Miss Revier. And on Saturdays you're not like a grown up at all.”

Most of the foreign-born miners were Mexican or Slav, but Chris taught Cornish, Irish, Swedish, Austrian, and Italian youngsters, too. The mixture made for colorful holidays. Last month the Cinco de Mayo dance had been held in the Pythian Castle just two days after the Day of the Holy Cross when Mexicans marched up Brewery Gulch to a cross on the hill. Serb and Polish members of the Greek Orthodox Church celebrated January 7 as Christmas and St. Savo's birthday on January 27. In spite of this mingled population, no Chinese were allowed in town. The local laundries wanted no competition and that was the business Chinese often went into. Chris had spoken against this to the mayor and various other leading citizens, who either looked blank or reminded her that such emotionalism was the reason why women had still not been given the vote.

Near Castle Rock they stopped to watch leaf-cutter ants stripping a small tree and carrying the severed bits to their hill where the stored leaves would mold and provide food. Thousands of workers streamed in and out of the hill that might be sixteen to eighteen feet deep. Chris found their industry depressing, though marvelous. No time for play or meandering or friendship, just a round of mechanical labor to ensure the continuance of the colony.

“Remind you of something, lady?”

Startled, for she'd heard no steps, she looked up into a face paler than most one saw in this sunny region.

Rebellious chestnut hair curled close to the young man's skull, looking as if it had been hewed off with a knife. His mouth turned down like a wing, bittersweet, and deep gray eyes watched her as a wild thing peers out from its stronghold. He wore work shoes, faded Levi's, and a blue shirt, and his flesh hadn't caught up to his height yet, so that his bony wrists and frame gave an impression of immaturity belied by mouth and eyes. He had a guitar slung over his shoulder.

“I—I was wondering if that's how people look to God.”

His mouth quirked. “I'm not God, but that's how the main lot of people look to me. Except they don't always even get their food and a place to shelter. They store up riches for their bosses while they get just enough to keep them going. When they can't go anymore, they're kicked out.”