When the Women Come out to Dance (2002) (19 page)

Yes, she had been living there, married a few years, whe
n she went to visit her family, who lived on the Gila abov e Painted Rock. Well, some Yavapai came looking for food. They clubbed her parents and two small brothers to death an d took the girl north with them. The Yavapai traded her to th e Mojave as a slave. . . .

"And they marked her," Ruben Vega said.

"Yes, so when she died the spirits would know she was Mojave and not drag her soul down into a rathole," Diego Luz said.

"Better to go to heaven with your face tattooed," Rube
n Vega said, "than not at all. Maybe so."

During a drought the Mojave traded her to a band of Tont
o Apaches for two mules and a bag of salt and one day she appeared at Bowie with the Tontos that were brought in to be sent to Oklahoma. Among the desert Indians twelve years an d returned home last spring.

"It put age on her," Ruben Vega said. "But what about he
r husband?"

"Her husband? He banished her," Diego Luz said, "like
a leper. Unclean from living among the red niggers. No on e speaks of her to him, it isn't allowed."

Ruben Vega frowned. There was something he didn't understand. He said, "Wait a minute--"

And Diego Luz said, "Don't you know who her husband is?

Mr. Isham himself, man, of the Circle-Eye. She comes hom
e to find her husband a rich man. He don't live in that hut n o more. No, he owns a hundred miles of graze and a house i t took them two years to build, the glass and bricks brought i n by the Southern Pacific. Sure, the railroad comes and he's a rich cattleman in only a few years."

"He makes her live there alone?"

"She's his wife, he provides for her. But that's all. Once
a month his segundo named Bonnet rides out there with supplies and has someone shoe her horse and look at the animals."

"But to live in the desert," Ruben Vega said, still frowning, thoughtful, "with a rusty pump . . ."

"Look at her," Diego Luz said. "What choice does she have?"

It was hot down in this scrub pasture, a plac
e to wither and die. Ruben Vega loosened the new willow-roo t straw that did not yet conform to his head, though he ha d shaped the brim to curve down on one side and rise slightl y on the other so that the brim slanted across the vision of hi s left eye. He held on his lap a nearly flat cardboard box tha t bore the name l . S
. weiss mercantile store.

The woman gazed up at him, shading her eyes with on
e hand. Finally she said, "You look different."

"The beard began to itch," Ruben Vega said, making n
o mention of the patches of gray he had studied in the hotel-roo m mirror. "So I shaved it off." He rubbed a hand over his jaw an d smoothed down the tips of his mustache that was still ful l and seemed to cover his mouth. When he stepped down fro m the bay and approached the woman standing by the stick-fenc e corral, she looked off into the distance and back again.

She said, "You shouldn't be here."

Ruben Vega said, "Your husband doesn't want nobody t
o look at you. Is that it?" He held the store box, waiting for he r to answer. "He has a big house with trees and the San Pedr o River in his yard. Why doesn't he hide you there?"

She looked off again and said, "If they find you here, they'l
l shoot you."

"They," Ruben Vega said. "The ones who watch you bathe? Work for your husband and keep more than a close eye o n you, and you'd like to hit them with something, wipe th e grins from their faces."

"You better leave," the woman said.

The blue lines on her face were like claw marks, thoug
h not as wide as fingers: indelible lines of dye etched into he r flesh with a cactus needle, the color worn and faded but stil l vivid against her skin, the blue matching her eyes.

He stepped close to her, raised his hand to her face, an
d touched the markings gently with the tips of his fingers, feeling nothing. He raised his eyes to hers. She was staring at him. He said, "You're in there, aren't you? Behind these littl e bars. They don't seem like much. Not enough to hold you."

She said nothing, but seemed to be waiting.

He said to her, "You should brush your hair. Brush it ever
y day. . . ."

"Why?" the woman said.

"To feel good. You need to wear a dress. A little parasol t
o match."

"I'm asking you to leave," the woman said. But didn'
t move from his hand, with its yellowed, stained nails, that wa s like a fist made of old leather.

"I'll tell you something if I can," Ruben Vega said. "I kno
w women all my life, all kinds of women in the way they loo k and dress, the way they adorn themselves according to custom. Women are always a wonder to me. When I'm not with a woman I think of them as all the same because I'm thinkin g of one thing. You understand?"

"Put a sack over their head," the woman said.

"Well, I'm not thinking of what she looks like then, whe
n I'm out in the mountains or somewhere," Ruben Vega said.

"That part of her doesn't matter. But when I'm with th
e woman, ah, then I realize how they are all different. You say , of course. This isn't a revelation to you. But maybe it is whe n you think about it some more."

The woman's eyes changed, turned cold. "You want to g
o to bed with me? Is that what you're saying, why you bring a gift?"

He looked at her with disappointment, an expression o
f weariness. But then he dropped the store box and took her t o him gently, placing his hands on her shoulders, feeling he r small bones in his grasp as he brought her in against him an d his arms went around her.

He said, "You're gonna die here. Dry up and blow away."

She said, "Please . . ." Her voice hushed against him.

"They wanted only to mark your chin," Ruben Vega said
, "in the custom of those people. But you wanted your ow n marks, didn't you? Your marks, not like anyone else. . . . Well , you got them." After a moment he said to her, very quietly , "Tell me what you want."

The hushed voice close to him said, "I don't know."

He said, "Think about it and remember something. Ther
e is no one else in the world like you."

He reined the bay to move out and saw th
e dust trail rising out of the old pasture, three riders coming , and heard the woman say, "I told you. Now it's too late."

A man on a claybank and two young riders eating his dust
, finally separating to come in abreast, reined to a walk as they reached the pump and the irrigation ditch. The woman, walking from the corral to the house, said to them, "What do you want? I don't need anything, Mr. Bonnet."

So this would be the Circle-Eye foreman on the claybank.

The man ignored her, his gaze holding on Ruben Vega with
a solemn expression, showing he was going to be dead serious.

A chew formed a lump in his jaw. He wore army suspender
s and sleeve garters, his shirt buttoned up at the neck. As old a s you are, Ruben Vega thought, a man who likes a tight feel o f security and is serious about his business.

Bonnet said to him finally, "You made a mistake."

"I don't know the rules," Ruben Vega said.

"She told you to leave her be. That's the only rule there is.

But you bought yourself a dandy new hat and come bac
k here."

"That's some hat," one of the young riders said. This on
e held a single-shot Springfield across his pommel. The foreman, Bonnet, turned in his saddle and said something to the other rider, who unhitched his rope and began shaking out a loop, hanging it nearly to the ground.

It's a show, Ruben Vega thought. He said to Bonnet, "I wa
s leaving."

Bonnet said, "Yes, indeed, you are. On the off end of
a rope. We're gonna drag you so you'll know the ground an d never cross this land again."

The rider with the Springfield said, "Gimme your hat
, mister, so's you don't get it dirty."

At this point Ruben Vega nudged his bay and began mov-W
i ng in on the foreman, who straightened, looking over at th e roper, and said, "Well, tie on to him."

But Ruben Vega was close to the foreman now, the ba
y taller than the claybank, and would move the claybank if th e man on his back told him to. Ruben Vega watched the foreman's eyes moving and knew the roper was coming around behind him. Now the foreman turned his head to spit and le t go a stream that spattered the hardpack close to the bay'
s forelegs.

"Stand still," Bonnet said, "and we'll get her done easy. O
r you can run and get snubbed out of your chair. Either way."

Ruben Vega was thinking that he could drink with thi
s ramrod and they'd tell each other stories until they wer e drunk. The man had thought it would be easy: chase off a Mexican gunnysacker who'd come sniffing the boss's wife. A k id who was good with a rope and another one who coul d shoot cans off the fence with an old Springfield should b e enough.

Ruben Vega said to Bonnet, "Do you know who I am?"

"Tell us," Bonnet said, "so we'll know what the cat drug i
n and we drug out."

And Ruben Vega said, because he had no choice, "I hea
r the rope in the air, the one with the rifle is dead. Then you.

Then the roper."

His words drew silence because there was nothing more t
o be said. In the moments that Ruben Vega and the one name d Bonnet stared at each other, the woman came out to the m holding a revolver, an old Navy Colt, which she raised an d laid the barrel against the muzzle of the foreman's claybank.

She said, "Leave now, Mr. Bonnet, or you'll walk nine miles to shade."

There was no argument, little discussion, a few grumblin
g words. The Tonto woman was still Mrs. Isham. Bonnet rod e away with his young hands and a new silence came over th e yard.

Ruben Vega said, "He believes you'd shoot his horse."

The woman said, "He believes I'd cut steaks, and eat it too.

It's how I'm seen after twelve years of that other life."

Ruben Vega began to smile. The woman looked at him an
d in a few moments she began to smile with him. She shook he r head then, but continued to smile. He said to her, "You coul d have a good time if you want to."

She said, "How, scaring people?"

He said, "If you feel like it." He said, "Get the present I
b rought you and open it."

He came back for her the next day in
a
Concord buggy, wearing his new willow-root straw and a cutaway coat over his revolvers, the coat he'd rented at a funeral parlor. Mrs. Isham wore the pale blue-and-white lace-trimme d dress he'd bought at Weiss's store, sat primly on the bustle, an d held the parasol against the afternoon sun all the way to Benson, ten miles, and up the main street to the Charles Crooker Hotel where the drummers and cattlemen and railroad men sitting in their front-porch rockers stared and stared.

They walked past the manager and into the dining roo
m before Ruben Vega removed his hat and pointed to the tabl e he liked, one against the wall between two windows. Th e waitress in her starched uniform was wide-eyed taking the m over and getting them seated. It was early and the dinin g room was not half filled.

"The place for a quiet dinner," Ruben Vega said. "You se
e how quiet it is?"

"Everybody's looking at me," Sarah Isham said to the men
u in front of her.

Ruben Vega said, "I thought they were looking at me. Al
l right, soon they'll be used to it."

She glanced up and said, "People are leaving."

He said, "That's what you do when you finish eating, yo
u leave."

She looked at him, staring, and said, "Who are you?"

"I told you."

"Only your name."

"You want me to tell you the truth, why I came here?"

"Please."

"To steal some of your husband's cattle."

She began to smile and he smiled. She began to laugh an
d he laughed, looking openly at the people looking at them, bu t not bothered by them. Of course they'd look. How could the y help it? A Mexican rider and a woman with blue stripes o n her face sitting at a table in the hotel dining room, laughing.

He said, "Do you like fish? I know your Indian brothers didn'
t serve you none. It's against their religion. Some things are fo r religion, as you know, and some things are against it. W
e spend all our lives learning customs. Then they change them.

I'll tell you something else if you promise not to be angry o
r point your pistol at me. Something else I could do the rest o f my life. I could look at you and touch you and love you."