Dust Devil Read online

  At four that afternoon the burly driver and his bewhiskered shotgun messenger halted to dine and graze the horses at Robledo, the last way station before the Jornado del Muerto, the Journey of Death. That evening the stage would leave the fertile green valley of the Rio Grande River and begin the long stretch of nearly one hundred and fifty miles across the desert.

  The evening was wondrously clear, and in the soft atmosphere of New Mexico’s southern latitude the stars shone with great brilliancy. Moonlight traced the Sierra Caballo’s serrated peaks and outlined the tall soap-weeds that grew upon the Jornado. A profound hush lay on the desert so that the only noise to be heard was the clatter of the horses’ hooves and the rumbling sound of the wheels upon the hard alkaline road.

  As the night deepened, Grant and the minister dozed. Rosemary struggled hard not to fall asleep and was aghast when she was jolted awake the instant her head touched Lario’s shoulder. A quick sidewise glance at him showed her only his moonlit profile – and the mirthless twitch in his lips. Sometime after dawn a rest was permitted, and the horses were watered. She stretched her legs, walking over the deadly glitter of the gypsum bed that was snow white but bone dry.

  "Better keep close to the coach,” Grant cautioned as he caught up with her. Beneath his mustache he flashed an irresistible smile. "You wouldn’t want to lose your hair to Indians.” One gloved hand came up to touch a wayward tendril. "I’ll bet your hair is lovely hanging loose,” he said in a husky voice.

  Rosemary’s gaze went past Grant’s face to Lario, who had climbed on the stage’s roof to scan the land. His Sharp’s carbine cradled in one arm, his gaze rested on her. Did he think she was flirting with Grant Raffin? No doubt he’d go straight to Stephen and report everything she did. She tossed her head, and for a brief moment the calm blue-green eyes danced with mischievous flirtation. "Ah now, Lieutenant Raffin, only Stephen will be knowing that.”

  Grant’s eyes, as dark blue as his dress uniform, narrowed, as if uncertain of what they had seen. “Ahh, you have spirit?”

  She shrugged. “I have crossed an ocean and half a continent on my own.”

  “I wonder if Stephen Rhodes realizes the value of his mail-order bride?” Before she could think of a suitable reply, he said, “But then it would seem Stephen Rhodes is a man who knows about worth – and a man worth knowing.”

  The stage resumed its journey, but a tension seemed to hang in the coach’s air as heavy as the morning mist over the desert floor. Even Grant seemed preoccupied. He caught her watching as he checked his Navy Colt, spinning the chamber. He nodded toward Lario. "It appears your guardian expects us to see Apaches before the day is out.”

  The vinegarish minister paled at the mention of Apaches. Tugging nervously at his long beard, his glance slid to Lario. "And what’s to prevent his kind from turning on us?” he asked with a jerk of his head toward the Indian.

  Lario’s stony gaze flickered over the three passengers, surely not missing her repulsion mixed with fright. "Right now there are only the Apache out there for you to worry about,” he said in carefully measured words. "And they are the Navajo’s sworn enemy.”

  Her own nerves grew more taut as the minutes passed. At about noon the excited shouts of the driver ripped through the coach’s silence, and the next moment she spotted Indians, in sight and out again, as they rode single file over the sand hills two miles distant.

  At the same time the stage’s speed increased, careening around the trail’s curve. Lario threw open the door and, gripping his carbine, hauled himself atop the stage’s roof. The minister jumped back from the window as if he had seen the Angel of Death. "Do something, Lieutenant!” he choked.

  Grant leveled his Colt out the stage’s window. "I can’t do a damn thing — pardon me, ma’am — until they get within range, Reverend. Now why don’t you try praying?”

  Then, to Grant’s astonishment, she grabbed at his pistol, crying, "No!”

  "What in tarnation do you think you’re doing!” he yelled as he wrestled with her for the pistol. "Watch it, it’ll go off!”

  She stopped struggling but did not relinquish the gun. Her lower lip quivered. "I hate the Indian more than you could ever know—but I hate killing worse. Maybe they don’t mean any harm, maybe it won’t be necessary to shoot.”

  His dark-blue eyes rolled up in despair, and he eased the pistol from her grasp. "And maybe they will, then what will—”

  At that moment shots interrupted whatever he was about to say, and the messenger shouted down, "Hold your fire!”

  Grant edged his head out the window and drew it in quickly again, this time smiling. "A caravan of Mexican freighters are coming this way. Looks as though they’ve scared off our visitors.”

  From the stage’s far side legs appeared, and Lario slipped agilely through the door’s window. He slid into the seat beside her and a few minutes later closed his eyes, as if prepared to sleep despite the previous excitement and the raucous shouts of the caravan’s bullwhackers and mule-skinners that now passed by.

  As the stage drew nearer to Santa Fe, it passed more and more traffic — mule trains, ox carts, covered wagons, and near-naked Indians leading burros almost hidden under heavy loads. At last, late that afternoon, gauzy clouds lifted their fogbank to reveal the camellian Sangre de Cristo mountains whose foothills curved like two arms about the Villa de Santa Fe de San Francisco, and she felt the thrill of anticipation course through her.

  From the distance the adobe buildings with their flat roofs looked like little mud boxes. Upon closer inspection the town appeared no better. "This godforsaken village is the capital of the Territory?” the reverend muttered to no one in particular.

  Her gaze took in the drab, squat adobe houses that, along with an occasional cornfield, haphazardly lined the irregular pattern of dusty streets and found the city no worse than the squalor of Delhi. Indeed, the surrounding landscape possessed a savage beauty that appealed to her Oriental-developed values.

  Peeping out of the doorways were many women whose faces were besmeared with crimson clay, giving them the appearance of wearing masks. In response to the startled look on her face, Grant’s lips widened in suppressed amusement. "It’s the juice of the alegria plant,” he explained. "The women protect their skin from the sun this way.”

  The lathered horses eventually plodded to a halt in the plaza before the only hotel in Santa Fe, the Exchange Hotel, more commonly known as La Fonda. A two-story adobe building with a covered walkway running its length, it took up an entire block. Beneath this portales a crowd had gathered to greet the mail coach’s arrival.

  Anxiously, she searched the throng of people. She saw soldiers on leave from Ft. Marcy, vaqueros in leather chaps, a few grubby prospectors down out of the Cerrillos Hills, and here and there a well-dressed civilian in frock coat and top hat. A wry smile touched her lips when she realized she had no idea of what Stephen looked like.

  "Rhodes has hair the color of the sunset—much like yours,” Lario said.

  She turned from the window to see the Indian’s sulphur black eyes crinkle with humor, and for a moment she wondered if the Navajo could read her mind as easily as he read the puma tracks he had pointed out near a bone-dry creek where the stage had halted with a warped wheel. In the coach’s shadows, his mouth was surprisingly sensual.

  "Rosemary!”

  She whirled around as the coach’s door was swung open. The crowd parted now for a man of medium height but with massive shoulders. His curly hair was brick red, matching the short, well-trimmed beard and walrus mustache. It was a forceful face, with full lips and narrow nose. But it was the eyes, darker than the coal of Wales, that held her fast. She saw there the pride and strength of will.

  Stephen lifted her from the coach. Before everyone his head lowered over her face, and her eyes closed as his lips claimed hers. It was her first kiss, and Rosemary trembled as his mouth seemed to devour her. Her head swam with this first taste of passion, and her knees buckled.

  A
t last he released her. "We’d best be wed tomorrow,” he laughed breathlessly. "I’ll have no man accuse our first-born of a doubtful birthright.”

  She was as tall as Stephen, and their gazes locked as they read in each other’s eyes the deep conviction that this marriage was preordained. At that moment she could envision their children’s children and their children riding over the miles of the Cambria Ranch they would one day inherit from Stephen and herself. As Stephen had written, they would create a glorious dynasty.

  Then what was it in Lario’s wide disturbing mouth and velvety black eyes that burned in her brain so?

  CHAPTER 5

  If Rosemary could ignore the macabre string of Indian ears that festooned one wall of the Palace of the Governors, the party following the wedding in the Palacio’s chapel was comparable to any royal ball she had ever read about.

  The Palacio was the oldest public building in the United States, antedating both the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements, and it showed its age. Many of its offices were separated by cotton curtains hung from heavy beams blackened and stained with age, and a few of the floors were still nothing but packed dirt. In some of the rooms bleached muslin had been tacked to the beams to prevent the dirt roof from sifting through the burlaped ceiling, and figured calico was nailed halfway up the walls to keep the whitewash from coming off on clothes.

  The largest room of the Palacio, the council-chamber, was packed that afternoon with people, almost all men, enjoying the opportunity to celebrate anything. At one end of the room a refreshment table had been set up with a large glass bowl of grape brandy from Bernillo on one side and two heavy crocks of the fiery Taos Lightning on the other.

  At the opposite end of the room on a raised platform ornamented with red muslin drapery a five-piece military band played romantic waltzes and the lively songs, "Oh, Susanna” and "My Nelly Was a Lady.”

  Stephen was a good dancer, holding her at just the proper distance as he led her about the room to the music of the banjos, clarinets, and harp, but too often he was interrupted by men hungry for the sight and touch of a white woman. And Stephen good-naturedly yielded, especially to Lieutenant Raffin when she generously explained that the officer had been prepared to defend the stage against an Indian attack.

  "’Tis glad I am that you were able to come today,” she told Grant as he took her in her arms for a waltz.

  "Do you think I’d miss seeing the most beautiful belle in Santa Fe?” he teased.

  Even in the exquisite wedding gown of ivory lace and rose satin, Rosemary knew she could not be called beautiful. She turned her head away, saying, "Your flattery is wasted here, Lieutenant.”

  "Grant,” he corrected.

  A giant of a mountain man, a trapper with hair plastered down with bear grease, interrupted, begging a dance, and Grant saved Rosemary’s feet from another trampling, saying, "We were just going for a cup of brandy.”

  But even then the two were detained. "There you are, Lieutenant Raffin!” the governor’s daughter said. She tapped her fan saucily on Grant’s sleeve, even while her cornflower blue eyes coolly surveyed the tall, thin woman with him. Relief that the newcomer was at once plain of face and married flickered across Libby’s vapidly pretty features before she said, "Don’t you know all the women are dying to meet Mr. Rhodes’s bride?”

  Grant bowed gallantly. "I surrender to the charm of another citizen of the South. Kentucky, isn’t it?”

  "Why, sir, you do have a memory.” She flashed the officer another confident smile and spread her hoops in a curtsey.

  "Now you simply must tell all the women about the latest fashions,” she informed Rosemary as she led her away.

  All what women, Rosemary wondered. There was Libby’s mother, the sad-looking Clara Caden. And the birdlike Hilda Goldman. But other than those two, there was only a scattering of Mexican matrons who had either married the few well-to-do Mexican land-grant recipients or the growing number of American men who were coming to claim the opportunities offered in Santa Fe. The Mexican women merely smiled behind lazily swishing fans, and Rosemary felt helpless about conversing with them. In India the tutor had taught her Italian and French but no Spanish.

  However, Clara, who sorely missed the comforts of civilization, barraged Rosemary with questions. Did the women in Ireland wear hoop skirts also? Had she ever been presented to the Queen? What about the hound’s-leg sleeve and the fichu — were they out of style now?

  For a few moments Clara’s pale, lackluster face radiated with enthusiasm, and Rosemary wondered if this was in store for her also — the slow withering of the mind and body in an alien land.

  At last Stephen rescued her, telling her it was time to leave for Cambria. In one of the Palacio’s small offices, protected only by a curtain, she quickly changed into a navy blue gabardine traveling suit. When she joined Stephen outside, the two of them were pelted with rice as they departed in a buckboard wagon packed with wedding gifts and provisions needed for the three-day trip to Cambria.

  Following the Old Santa Fe Trail, they reached Glorieta Pass late that afternoon, and when Rosemary looked over her shoulder she could see the three mountain ranges that encapsulated Santa Fe against time’s progress—the Sandia and Manzana to the south, the Jemez Range to the west, and the Sangre de Cristo.

  In many places the mountains crowded close to the wheel-rutted trail, and in other places the wagon rolled perilously near yawning gorges. Stephen was easy to chat with, and his features grew animated when sharing about Territory of New Mexico so that the time passed quickly. “Tis, indeed a land of enchantment . . . made more so now that you are here.”

  His gaze was warm, and she didn’t know what to say and finished lamely with, “I’m glad to be here.”

  When it was almost too dark to see the trail, he halted the buckboard in an alpine meadow dotted with tall aspen and fir and laced by a narrow stream that rose up out of the Truchas Mountains and rushed toward the Pecos River.

  He lifted her from the wagon and led her across the damp grass out onto a rocky spur from which could be seen a wide valley, already in deepening shadows, and the vague spread of purple plain beyond. Three thousand feet below, the land spread at their feet like a huge relief map. He held her before him, her back against his chest. "Cambria,” he said, making the name sound like an incantation. "As far as you can see — and still further.”

  "Oh, Stephen, I don’t want to stop here! I’ve waited this long, can’t we spend our first night on Cambria soil?”

  "’Tis too dangerous to travel any further tonight. This is Apache country now.”

  "Will there be trouble from the Apaches?”

  "Lately ’tis been the Utes and Arapaho who have been raiding the smaller ranchos, stealing horses mostly — sometimes a Mexican child to sell as a slave to the tribes. But Lario is up ahead, scouting. We shouldn’t run into trouble. Besides, Indians dinna like to move around at night.”

  "Do these Indians . . . do they ever attack Cambria?” She held her breath, afraid even in the safety of his arms.

  "Not since last spring.” Unaware of her latent fear, he led her back toward the wagon. "Lario made a gift of twin lambs to Perro Amarillo — Yellow Dog. He’s chief of the Cibola Apache band, the most warring of the tribes in this area. So far, his band has bypassed our three ranches.”

  "Three?”

  He laughed. "I be forgetting you know so little about Cambria. So large it is that we have three smaller ranches—camps they be called—so the vaqueros and shepherds don’t have to make the long trip back to the main ranch every evening. The Wild Cat Camp runs our few cattle, and we’ve the Alta Pinon for our winter grazing in the Cuervo Mountains, but the largest, Cimarron Draw, is sharecropped out for sheep by Lario’s band.”

  "He’s a chief?”

  Stephen shrugged and began to remove the canvas that covered the mound of provisions in the wagon. "He could be, I guess. But the Navajo live in family communities, and unless warring, dinna be looking to any one ma
n as their chief.”

  While he began to build a fire, she broke out the supply of beans and smoked meat. Never had she smelled the distinctively sweet odor of burning pinon, and as the coffee perked, she sat with her arms about her knees against the evening’s sudden chill, for it was colder there in the mountains. Stephen came and placed a blanket around her, his hands lingering at her shoulders.

  Over dinner they made small talk to bridge their unfamiliarity and their uneasy awareness of their bridal night to come. "When I was eight,” he said, "I began working in the coal mines, and as I passed the lighted homes where the gentry entertained, I promised meself I would one day be me own man.” He looked down into his coffee cup with a cynical smile. "I learned to ape their mannerisms and studied to improve me speech, so that when I did succeed no man could question me right.”

  "Is that when you decided to come to the United States?” she asked gently.

  "Yes... when I finally had enough money to escape those black holes.” He looked up at her then, and she saw the haunted look in his eyes. "I was twenty-two when I made me way to America, where one heard titles and aristocracy did not make the man. But in New York wealth did — and I had none. So I came west on the Santa Fe Trail to trade.”

  "And made your wealth,” she supplied.

  "Aye, but ’tis more than that — ’tis the excitement, the challenge. I dinna know if I can explain it to you, but it be sort of like a card game, like whist or monte. Me freighting company I started out with, the Santa Fe Trading Post, then Cambria... they be markers along the way. Indications of me success.”

  "Then ’tis the game you enjoy — not its reward.”

  "Exactly!” he said, pleased that her female mind had grasped so easily what he himself could merely hint at.