Harvest of Fury (48 page)

What was he to her?

A lover in the darkness, conquering because of his youth and vulnerability, and some matching of their bodies that drove them to stay part of each other as long as it was possible, feel bereft when that primal joining failed them though they still lay in each other's arms? A man who was hungry, whom she fed? Someone fated and strange to whom she wanted to give such rest and happiness as she could?

She couldn't imagine spending a life with Johnny, or what he'd be like without the cause to which he so utterly gave himself. For this time and place, she felt the need to be a refuge for him, a solid ledge for legs trembling from the cliff they were scaling. She gave him peace. He gave her ecstasy.

As she started home an auto speeded past, then squealed to a stop in front of her. It was Fayte. He climbed out of the gleaming vehicle and in two long strides confronted her. A bit heavier, a little gray in the brown-gold hair, grooves at mouth, and eyes deeper.

“Chris! What are you doing out here so close to these damn red-flag Wobblies?”

“I brought lunch to one of them.” She threw back her head, knowing that his tawny eyes were devouring the way the wind blew her clothes against her body.

He towered over her, eyes blazing. “Have you gotten yourself mixed up with that gang of scummy traitors?”

“What I do and with whom is none of your business, Fayte.”

She started past him. He caught her wrist, bruising it when she tried to twist free. “Chris, for God's sake, keep away from those Wobblies! You could get yourself killed or hurt if trouble breaks loose!”

“Did you come to start it?”

“I'll back Douglas any way I can. He helped me at Cananea.”

“Why aren't you at your own mine?”

“Villistas took it over last week.” He grinned, and she felt a moment's liking for him, “Good for a man to start over every now and then. Keeps him interested.”

“Good luck,” she said. But he still held her.

“I don't suppose you'd invite me to your place for something to eat and a cup of coffee?”

“That wouldn't be a good idea.”

“Let's stop at a restaurant, then.”

“Fayte, we've got nothing to talk about.”

His hand slid caressingly up her arm. “We don't have to talk. At least, let me drive you home.”

So you'll know where to find me? “Thank you, no,” she said.

His smile died. He let go of her wrist, but his gaze held her even more inescapably. “Chris, I want you back.”

Mutely, she shook her head. His eyes hooded. She knew he was remembering having her, how they had made love. She had to remember, too, writhe inwardly as she recalled how she'd tried to placate and please and humor this man who'd treated her like his possession.

His mouth twisted. “Do you think you're in love with one of these damned radicals? Or is your heart just bleeding for the downtrodden?”

“That's none of your business.” Turning away, she walked up the hill but didn't go to her house till after his auto had blasted away.

He could easily find out where she lived, of course, but she counted on his pride to keep him from hounding her. She hoped his pride would also keep him from asking around about her involvement with the strikers. If he knew about Johnny—

Fear twined about her heart like a strangler's cord. Why had she blurted out that she'd taken one of the IWWs his lunch? Throughout the rest of that long day she was taut with apprehension.

Afraid that Fayte might strike at Johnny if he saw her with him, she got Sulev to take Johnny's lunch to him next day. The boy came back with untouched food, his snub nose wrinkling in perplexity.

“Mr. Chance says he needs to see you more'n he needs something to eat. They're really upset, all the strikers, my da, too. The union took away the Bisbee local's charter.”

“The Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers?”

“I guess. Said the men here had shown treachery to union principles.” The boy frowned. “That's not true, is it, Miss Revier?”

“I don't think you can pay much attention to anything you hear about treachery the next few days.” Forcing a laugh, Chris gave him milk and cookies before he went home, then stared at the rejected lunch.

What a lot of trouble men let themselves in for with their stubbornness! She'd take Johnny his meal, but he had to understand that she couldn't go on jeopardizing him.

He understood nothing of the sort. Refusing to accept the food, he said coldly, “Don't bother, if you're so scared of what your once-was husband is going to think.”

“It's not what he thinks! It's what he might do! Listen, I saw him kill a man at Cananea—”

“You think I haven't seen men killed? That I don't expect it for myself during a strike like this?”

“That's still no reason to invite trouble. If Fayte sees us …”

Johnny looked at her with the cynical, hopeful eyes of a waif. “I'd rather he saw us, pretty lady, than that you wouldn't come to me.”

The strike had absorbed him till anything outside it was hazy, unreal. What mattered to him about her now was that she stand beside him in front of Fayte and the town, that a member of the privileged sided with the strikers.

And that wasn't it at all. She cared for Johnny, the man, the wanderer, not for his obsession. If the workers' demands had been negotiated privately, without fanfare, she believed, Phelps-Dodge would have acceded to most of them. What was going on wasn't a battle for improved pay and conditions as much as it was a showdown between management and labor. Who was to have the whip hand in the mines, the men who owned them or those who worked there?

Chris didn't see how that question could ever produce anything but strife. A successful answer must be to the benefit of both sides. Maybe if the workers had shares in the company, a fair voice in management … But she wasn't a negotiator, a striker, or a manager. If Johnny, knowing the risk, wanted her to come to him on the picket line, she would.

XXV

On July 10 Phelps-Dodge held its first annual picnic. There were prizes, races, and free food, but only two hundred and twenty-five people attended. On July 11 sixty-seven IWWs were rounded up and shipped out of Jerome in cattle cars. With water but no food, they were turned loose at Jerome Junction, twenty-seven miles away, and warned not to come back.

Next day the headlines of the
Bisbee Review
screamed: WOMEN AND CHILDREN KEEP OFF STREETS TODAY. Beneath, down the center of the page, ran a letter from Sheriff Harry Wheeler announcing that a posse of twenty-two hundred Douglas and Bisbee citizens were going to arrest all strange men on charges of vagrancy. The park was closed to public meetings. Workers who didn't return to their jobs would be dropped from the employed list: The paper said most of the strikers were Wobblies or foreigners, Austrians who were trying to sabotage the war effort because their loyalties were with the Kaiser.

Chris stared at the incredible words, scarcely able to believe them. Then, remembering Cananea, the marching workers with their dead, Cruz falling under Fayte's gun, she realized the same thing, only much worse, could happen here.

With trembling hands, she picked up the telephone and phoned her father in Phoenix. He promised to call the governor at once and see what could be done, though he grimly added that he thought the strike was unjustified and that the Wobblies were begging to be martyred.

“They don't just want a fair wage, Chris. They want an end to the wage system, a classless society; and though that sounds utopian, people being what they are, it won't work.”

“I don't know about that, Dad, but I do know most of the strikers live here and many have families. That posse's going to be armed. It could be a small war.”

“I'll do what I can,” he assured her. His tone sharpened. “Chris, you stay out of this, hear? You've been blind twice in your life. Isn't that enough?”

“Third time's the charm.” She hung up and went down the streets, where no other women walked, in search of Sheriff Wheeler. She found him outside the Pythian Castle, not far from the jail. He was a good-looking, strong-jawed young man who took off his hat at her approach and asked if he could help her. Surely she knew it wasn't safe today to be outside.

“It's safer for me than for the strikers.” His face hardened, but she went on, pleading. “Sheriff, the workers have a right not to work. They have a right to ask for better wages and conditions.”

“They can leave if they don't like it,” he said brusquely. “We think they have dynamite and weapons. It's my duty to protect property and law-abiding citizens.”

“Especially property?”

His weather-browned face flushed. “Ma'am, you better go home. Right now.”

They stared at each other. His eyes were implacable, his jaw firmly set. He believed he was doing the right thing, protecting the town from rabble-rousers who might explode into a looting, pillaging mob.

“I've called my father, Senator Revier—”

Wheeler's eyes flickered with recognition. He cut in brutally. “Did you tell him, ma'am, what sort of company you're keeping? I don't care who you call! I'm here to keep order, and I will.”

She hadn't heard steps behind her and whirled at Fayte's voice. “I know this lady, Sheriff. I'll see her home.”

“Good.” The sheriff looked relieved. “See if you can't talk sense into her, Mr. Riordan.”

If she objected, she thought, Wheeler would turn a blind eye to any force Fayte might use, or even help him. In angry silence, she walked till they were out of Wheeler's sight past Brewery Gulch.

“You don't need to come any farther,” she said.

He smiled. “I told the sheriff I'd take you home.”

His tone was pleasant, yet something in it chilled her. She glanced desperately around, but no one was near. If anyone had been, who'd interfere with a deputy enforcing the sheriff's order to keep off the streets? He set his hand under her elbow, moving her forward. She had to either walk or struggle. The latter would only make a public spectacle for those watching from behind curtained windows.

He turned into Opera Drive. So he'd found out where she lived. As they approached her house, dread seized her, a physical horror of this man.

“Fayte, please—”

He drew her inexorably up the steps, opened the door, brought her inside her own house. As she pushed frantically at his binding arms, he swept her up and carried her back to her bedroom.

She fought him then, but he only laughed.

When at last he pulled on his clothes, Chris kept her eyes shut. Soiled by his sweat and smell, she felt she could never get them off her. Fayte sat down heavily by her and lifted her head between his hands.

“I still want you, Chris. I'd like to marry you again.”

“You can say that—after what you've done?” Twisting from him, she turned and retched. “I wonder if there's any chance Wheeler would arrest you for rape?”

“Not after you've been carrying on with that damned Wobblie.”

“My father—”

“The senator can't shoot half as well as I can. You know that. You'll keep your mouth shut for his sake.” His eyes traveled deliberately over her. “I'll be back.”

“If you are, I'll kill you!”

“Got a gun? How ferocious you've gotten, sweetheart.”

She moved for the bedside table in the same instant he did, but his arm blocked her as he opened the drawer and slipped her revolver into his pocket. His teeth showed in a white flash.

“If you don't want to see me, you can always leave town. I understand that's what you've been invited to do.”

“I'm staying right here. And I'll make sure your posse gets the credit for whatever it does.”

“Thanks,” he said mockingly.

When he was gone, she filled the tub. Sobbing, desperate to get the memory of him off her, she washed herself, rinsed, and washed again, but her nostrils still detected his faint acrid odor. She longed for Sant but knew she mustn't call him. He'd want to take her away; if he stayed for her sake, he could get hurt.

She was certainly not going to be in this house when Fayte came back. Putting overnight necessities into a shopping bag, she called Nicodemus, but he was lying on a neighbor's garage roof and loftily pretended not to hear. She put out fresh water and food for him, then went to the Silver King Hotel and took a room.

“I'd like one near a fire escape,” she told the clerk, who fortunately didn't know her, so she registered as O'Shea. “I'm nervous of fires.”

He smiled indulgently and handed her a key. “Here you are, ma'am. Better stay in today. There may be trouble with the Wobblies.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Oh, the word is Sheriff Wheeler's going to round them all up and ship them out of here on the train. They're supposed to have weapons and dynamite, so it could be quite a fracas.”

At least Wheeler didn't intend mass lynching. Chris was sure Johnny didn't have a gun, but some of the other strikers might. She wanted to go see him on the picket line but knew that any woman would be turned back.

Any woman.

She laughed out loud as she saw a way to be with Johnny, to elude Fayte. Going downstairs, she smiled prettily at the clerk and explained that her younger brother wanted her to buy him some clothes. Since it wasn't safe for women to be out, could he send someone to do the errand for her? She'd make it worth their time.

“Jed'll be glad to do it,” said the clerk heartily, motioning over a boy of thirteen or fourteen who was polishing the windows. “Just tell him what you want, ma'am.”

An hour later Jed was happily conscious of the dollar in his pocket, while a youngster in stiff new Levi's, boots, and blue work shirt was climbing down the fire escape.

Knots of volunteers guarded the city park and clustered around saloons and rooming houses. Chris didn't see Fayte or Wheeler. The tension of a storm waiting to break charged the heat of the afternoon.