“Mrs. O’Quinn, I simply want . . . to get you out of this . . . fracas.” He huffed, obviously intolerant of the high altitude. The sun glanced off his glasses, so that she couldn’t read his eyes. But his tight little mouth betrayed his tight little spirit. “And all of this . . . this media attention clearly . . . can’t be good for your husband’s campaign. If you won’t consider yourself,” he said unctuously, “at least, consider others.”
“I am.” She half turned and pointed to the Indians visible at the doorway and windows. Among them was her beloved, who watched her and those around her with scrutinizing concern. “I am considering the welfare of the Taos Indian Tribe. My question is, as Secretary of Interior, are you?”
“Please, Ali, come away with me.” He must have seen the distrust in her eyes. He hurried on. “I’m not asking you to stay with me if you don’t want to, but, at least, let me take you away from this minefield. Tempers are hot, nerves are frayed. Let the men settle their differences among themselves.”
“Don’t you mean get me out of here, along with the media, and let your armed men slaughter those unarmed men . . . not to mention the women and children with them?”
Brendon took her arm. It was a purely conciliatory gesture, but out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Man, moving forward from the cabin doorway. “Now, Ali, you’re getting upset. That’s not . . . .”
“Not until we have trust title to the shrineland.”
“We?” That had been Man’s response, too. “So you consider yourself one of them?” He shook his head, as though confronting something incomprehensible. “My God, you sleep – ” He bit back his words, then jammed his hat on his head and stalked away.
Fall, glancing quickly from his departing figure to her, said, “Mrs. O’Quinn, we are quite prepared to wait this out. Eventually your friends there are going to run out of food and water and will have to give up.”
“Or starve. That’s not going to look good in the headlines, is it?”
Likewise, he squashed his hat on his head and followed Brendon back to the line of trees, to the soldiers crouched like lurking jackals with aimed rifles.
She pivoted to start back to the cabin and saw Man striding across the peaceful, sun-cleansed clearing to meet her. She liked how he fell into step with her, as they often had when they had simply walked out on the desert. He didn’t talk or ask questions. As if just being with her at that moment was enough. As if she were far more important than the outcome of the meeting with Brendon and Fall.
When they reached the cabin, she said beneath her breath, “They’re going to wait us out, Man.”
His eyes twinkled. “Wait is good.”
For her the waiting was like scratching on a blackboard. By now, after three days, a baby’s squalling made her stiffen. The food situation was not as bleak. Possibly, another five or six day’s ration by Man’s calculations.
She did not ask, And then what?
That evening, as she watched Man hold his daughter while Mud Woman looked on, Alessandra again felt that profound sense of loneliness. She had neither Man nor her own kind. She was isolated. That moment she determined when the standoff was over, she would take Jeremy and leave. As much as she loved northern New Mexico, Man’s propinquity was more than she could bear. She was learning that she could love with all her heart, but with some people it was better to love from afar. Paradoxically, both Brendon and Man were in that category.
She made up her mind then and there. She would not return to Washington and Brendon. No, she would go straightway to San Francisco, where she would file for divorce. The city called to her with its unrestrained barbaric innocence that came with living at the edge. The edge of a frontier, the edge of the ocean, the edge of the desert. Hadn’t Peg had once told her, He who lives with passion lives on the edge of the desert?
It didn’t matter. What did matter was at the edge passion waited for her. Man had shown her that passion comes only with risk-taking. Anything else was a rut. Mere existence.
As if sensing her desolation, Man glanced up. He smiled, handed the baby back to Mud Woman, and rose. Alessandra watched him come toward her and felt an incredible ache clench inside her, an ache she knew would never be assuaged.
“Come. I show you something.” He drew her toward the rear door, holding it open to expose the roofless lean-to.
“What?” she asked, dragging her feet. Already the malodorous fumes swirled around them.
Releasing her, he lit a match, then knelt, holding the flame aloft. “Look.”
Reluctantly, she drew close to the entrance. “At what?” Her hands went to her hips. “If you dragged me here to look at a turd, Man, I’m going to . . . .”
“No. That. There.”
Her eyes followed where he pointed, where the match light shimmered on a spot in the far corner. Incredibly, amidst all the muck . . . or, perhaps because of all the muck, bloomed an exquisite mariposa lily.
She began to laugh, even as silent tears brimmed at her lids.
Chapter Eighteen
Another day in the standoff passed, and fuses shortened. The dry spring, summer, and fall had resulted in a forest that was like a tinder box, needing only a singular spark to set it aflame. Cloud Eagle felt giving up control of Blue Lake’s outlet and occupying the ranger’s quarters peacefully had been mistakes. That evening, he had a room vacated and called a council meeting of the men.
Concern etched in their round faces, the women hushed their children and waited. Alessandra stretched out on her bedroll of blankets beneath the cabin’s southeast window and also waited.
From the window, she could see the rocking chair moon. If she rose on her elbow just so, she could see the yellow rays of moonlight on the lake’s serene water, where, while watching Man fish, she had, at last, come fully alive. She had discovered the realm of taste, touch, aroma, colors with the pleasure of a hedonist. The experience and the memory could never shame her. Living life was not a shameful thing.
Not to live was.
In that mystical time she had discovered the phenomenal power of sex in all its mystery and beauty and radiance. Had discovered the Indian’s Way of Life: the surrender of self to those unseen forces, which she now realized resulted in giving one true meaning and purpose.
She lay back down, draped her forearm across her eyes, and tried to sleep. Sleep came in snatches now. After more than three hours, close to eleven o’clock that evening, the men filed from the back room.
Checking first on his sleeping daughter, murmuring a word to his wife, Man crossed to Alessandra, at last. She noticed how his commitment to do no harm, was so strong and so contagious that worry and fear left the hearts of those in his presence. Tonight, his eyes were not impassive but distant. Anxious to hear what transpired, she sat up and pushed the hair back from her face.
Hunkering down beside her bedroll, he said quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping children, “Two times in four-hundred years, our tribe go to war. Once, three hundred years ago, when Popé threw out Spanish. Again, seventy-five years ago, when we threw out Americans. Cloud Eagle think again time. I warn him Spanish came back then. Americans came back then. Americans, they will come back yet again. This time, try peace.”
“Did he and the others agree?”
He shrugged. “They say they will wait. We wait.”
Waiting was something she merely endured. Man seemed to thrive on it. During the daylight hours, he patrolled the rooms, counseled a young man, comforted a whiny tot, ministered to an ill and coughing woman.
But at dawn, and at dusk, he would sit cross-legged in an out-of-the-way corner of a back room, alone, drawn inside himself, although his eyes were at half mast. He appeared hardly to breathe. It scared her.
On the eighth day at dusk, while Man sat in that meditative state, apart from the others, Lt. Rheingold hoisted his white flag on the lantern he held aloft to indicate he wanted a meeting. Rather than distract Man, she signaled to Grandfather Turtle. Together with Calf M
an and Cloud Eagle, Grandfather Turtle and she went outside.
The last light had scurried from the sky. As if it knew the muddy machinations mankind was about that evening. Long awaited rain began to fall in light mist, as if to veil mankind’s activity.
The four crossed midway in the semi-dark to the beckoning pool of lantern light. At the light’s rim, she found not only the lieutenant but Brendon waiting. Taking her cue from past actions of Man’s, as well as her three Indian companions, she said nothing.
Brendon wore a harried look, so unlike him. His eyes were black pools. “Alessandra, I have a telegram. A rider just brought it up the mountain. Washington has agreed to give the Indians trust title. All the Tribe has to do is agree to let the Forest Service dispose of the over-mature timber.”
Disappointment slammed between her shoulder blades. Now what? “I don’t think they’ll accept that, Brendon. After all, over-mature timber has been in the area for thousands of years and no harm has resulted. Your way — nothing will change. The Forest Service will go on, doing its damage to the Indian’s land, letting intruders run riot with their cameras and waste during the ceremonies.” Her shoulders sagged. “But we’ll take your message to the people.”
“Alessandra . . . .” He suddenly seemed to slump, as if he had been pricked like a balloon and all the air went out of him. “I’m sorry about everything I said. Everything I have done. I’ll do whatever I can to make this land thing right with the Indians. Only . . . at least, let me safely escort you out.” Holding out his hand to her, he glanced with entreaty at the lieutenant.
The lieutenant took the hint. Saluting, he said, “I’ll move away a few steps, sir.”
For her, it was not a hint. It was blatant. So, it had come down to this, her last card. Give herself up to Brendon, and he would arrange for her Indians to regain their shrineland. The last light of the lantern was retreating from where it had pooled in the small glade around them, and her soul shriveled. All of these years, the efforts to make up for her flaws, her selfishness, her hopes to create something better, something finer . . . .
Trembling with nigh crippling exhaustion and her utter personal defeat, she surrendered her sweating hand into Brendon’s. His eyes flared in ultimate triumph. In he next instant, she thought the flash of metal she saw was twilight glancing off her bracelet, man’s bracelet, then realized the flash was from the trees, from Potts’ Enfield. But by then it was too late.
* * * * *
Bear Heart’s lids snapped fully open. His mind’s eye saw it coming, the metal ripping through flesh, before he actually heard the explosive cracks.
At once, he was on his feet, running. Through the short hallway and cluster of rooms, through the front door. Zinging bullets lit its darkness like darting fireflies. Screams burst in his ears. The scene of wholesale killing horrified his soul. His gentle, terrified people had fled from the front and back doors of the bullet-riddled house and stumbled straight into the line of fire. They dropped dead like flies in winter. Sprawled in grotesque positions. Blood. Blood. Everywhere blood.
His gaze swept the moonlight clearing and the littered bodies. The mist made identification difficult. There! In a flashpoint, his breath incinerated. There was Mud Woman’s red and blue-fringed shawl! He started toward her. A pain flashed in his thigh. He staggered Crawled toward his wife. Their child Isabelle lay half beneath her. His hand groped beneath the shawl. Found Mud Woman’s ribs. Next his blood-dripping fingers encountered his daughter’s tiny hand, fingers curled like wilted flowers. Emptiness. Only fleshy shells remained. Their spirits had already traveled far away, not wanting to stay amidst the horror of the hate.
He bellied across the clearing, instinctively heading toward the lantern, tilted crazily on the ground yet burning tranquilly in the midst of carnage. Dust pinged around him. Bullets still ripped through the night . . . and through his people. Screams and more screams deafened the hysterical howl of the coyotes.
Beyond the bodies of Cloud Eagle and Grandfather Turtle, he found Alessandra’s husband. The man lay over Alessandra, covering her body. “She’s been hit,” the man groaned.
Bear Heart blew out the lantern. “We pull her . . . there, in the trees.”
The man grabbed Alessandra’s left arm, and he the other, and like inch worms they hauled their beloved. Crawling, slithering, humping over scattered personal belongings. Here a willow basket. There a knee-high boot.. The rifle shots slowed to sporadic intervals. They made it to the safety of the trees.
He collapsed alongside Alessandra. On her other side, her husband lay on his back gasping.
“What for this happened?” he asked of the man.
Rain or tears or both glistened on his face’s pale skin. “It was that guide. Potts. Drinking in the camp. Rheingold and I were meeting with three of your chiefs and Alessandra. Dear God in heaven . . . Potts murdered her.” His voice came in sobs then. “Rheingold took him out, but . . . after that, I guess, the soldiers panicked. Started shooting up everything . . . everyone.”
The silence rung loudly around Bear Heart this time. Fear welled in him. He took the opportunity to listen for Alessandra’s life force. His fingers pressed against her throat. They came away sticky.
His howl curdled the blood of soldiers and Indians alike, and the moon covered its face with clouds. He cradled her against him. No life pulsed in her thin body. His bloodied fingers ripped away her bodice. one small breast glowed as milky white as the mariposa. The other was disfigured by a small dark hole. Yet he sensed her spirit still hovered near. Fiercely, he stared down at her pallid face, the sightless half-closed eyes, and blood-speckled nostrils and lips, as if to will her spirit back into them.
Brother Raven whispers, “Be Careful. One does not tamper with destiny. Some things can be changed. Some should not.”
He knew he would defy destiny.
He splayed his huge body over her small, limp one, splayed his massive hands over her waxen ones, melded his warm animated lips with her rapid cooling ones. Focusing intently, he began to synchronize his heartbeat to the heartbeat of the earth, the pulse of its drum, and the thud of his life’s blood to the rhythm of the Universe. He aligned his energy with that of the cosmic pulse.
Once aligned, he embarked on his shaman’s journey to where the rules of the Ordinary World were suspended. Then he transported himself, not out there beyond the earth, but inside, where he could travel to the realities beyond normal perception. Once there, anything was possible . . . even transforming suffering into joy.
And death into life.
At last, he felt that Life Force surging through him. With enormous effort that drew the sweat from all this body’s pore, that caused the veins in his temples, neck, and forearms to flicker like hot wires, he breathed himself into her. His journey had begun. He would find her again, even if it meant journeying through all eternity and all the endless eternities.
I come, Alessandra. I come.
So Speaks Bear Heart
Shaman of Taos Pueblo Tribe
T H E E N D
Post Script
U.S. Interior Secretary Fall became the first American cabinet figure to be sent to prison for a crime committed in office. The resulting Teapot Dome affair is considered the worst modern political scandal before Watergate. Because he was the only person convicted in the scandal, the term “Fall Guy” became a part of the American language. Fall was paroled in 1932 from the New Mexico Penitentiary. He died twelve years later, penniless.
Rather than the outright mass murder of Taos Pueblo Indians by U.S. troops at Blue Lake, as depicted in Indian Affairs, U.S. courts waged stall tactics for almost another agonizing fifty years against the patient, peaceful but persistent tribe. In the late 1960’s resistance in Congress finally crumbled, and the U.S. Indian Claims Commission decided at last that the Taos tribe had proven title to their sacred Blue Lake and its full fifty-thousand acre watershed.
A bill confirming the commission’s decision cleared the House of R
epresentatives with an unanimous vote. Finally, on December 15, 1970, the Senate passed the bill by an overwhelming vote of nearly six to one for President Richard M. Nixon to sign into law.
The victory for the Taos Indians not only reaffirmed basic principles of justice but demonstrated the urgent need to honor differing cultures and beliefs within our larger fabric of society.
T H E E N D
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Indian Affairs (historical romance) Page 31