“This isn’t right, Ramon.”
He reached up and touched her hair, which she wore long and loose. “After all these years and all we have been through to get to each other, you say it isn’t right? To continue to deny what we have always felt, mi querida, that would be wrong. I am not saying we have to do anything more than admit how we still feel. I am only saying we no longer have to deny it. If what we have always felt for each other should now finally grow, we are free to let it. We both deserve some happiness, Irene.”
“I wasn’t sure…I mean…I’m older now.”
“And I am not? You are as beautiful to me today as when I first held you.”
She shook her head. “This is all too soon. We shouldn’t be talking this way.”
“You are right. We shouldn’t be talking at all. We should be holding each other.”
She searched his eyes and saw the old sparkle of love there. “I do need to be held,” she whispered.
He grinned. “I will tell you a secret, mi querida. I also need to be held.”
She studied the handsome face, the need in his eyes. He was still the same Ramon she had always known and loved. She reached around his neck, and his arms came around her as he stood up, pulling her up with him. She burst into tears of vented love and need and hurt, deciding it felt good to let someone else be strong for her, to let herself openly feel her real emotions, to be honest about them and not to have to pretend anymore.
“Don’t let go, Ramon,” she wept. “Don’t ever let go. I’m so tired of pretending.” Where had she heard those words before? She had said them to Hank. Now she realized Hank had just been a gift from God, to be there for her when Ramon could not. Perhaps all along God had meant for them to be together, and they had been too young and too afraid to act on what should have been.
“I will never let go,” he said softly, kissing her hair. “In my mind and in my heart I have held you this way so many times, mi vida. It feels so good to be able to do it freely.”
“It feels so wonderful, Ramon,” she sobbed. “I love you so. I’ve always, always loved you. For fifteen years, I’ve lived a life of lies…I’ve been so miserable. And now…I wasn’t sure what you…would think of me because of my Indian blood.”
“Hush, mi querida.” He put a strong hand to the back of her head, holding it tightly but gently against his shoulder, wrapping his fingers in her golden hair. “Why would your Indian blood matter to me? I understand prejudice firsthand, Irene.”
“I’m so sorry…so sorry for how my mother treated you—”
“That is all behind us now. Now we have each other, and nothing can come between us—nothing, Irene.”
She raised her face to look into his eyes, but he was a blur through her tears. She only knew that his face was close, and that in the next moment his mouth was covering hers in the kiss they had both needed to enjoy for so many years. He groaned as he met her mouth almost savagely, his tongue searching deep, hinting at a much more pleasurable way in which he would like to invade her.
It felt so right, tasted so good. He released the kiss, but instantly smothered her with more, many lighter but searching kisses, as though savoring a delicious fruit. A thousand pent-up needs were unleashed in her soul, and she knew in that one embrace that even Hank had not brought out the total woman in her. That was for Ramon to do.
He shuddered, gently and reluctantly leaving her mouth but keeping her close. “We cannot do this yet,” he told her, his voice gruff with desire. He tangled his hand in her hair and she could feel him trembling. “Much as I would like to, Irene, we have waited so long. I want it to be a splendid event, something celebrated, something done when the time is just right. I love you so much, Irene. And if you still want me after all these years, I want you to be my wife.”
She touched his chest. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted since I was sixteen years old. Are we crazy to be talking this way so suddenly?”
“Suddenly? You just said yourself you have loved me since you were sixteen.” He grasped her arms and looked down at her. “For fifteen years we have denied ourselves so that we would do what we thought was proper. We have both suffered terrible heartache and loss on this long road to finding each other again. There is nothing sudden about this, Irene, maybe to others, but not to us.”
She smiled through tears, her heart feeling as though it might explode with love and happiness. “Then, yes, I want to be your wife. I’ll become a Catholic if it’s necessary. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”
He pulled her close again, kissing the top of her head. “It is true I would want to be married in the Catholic church. But there is something more that must be done first, Irene, something you have to settle within yourself.”
She raised her eyes to meet his. “I don’t understand.”
He kissed her forehead. “I want so much to take you off right now and make love to you, to make you my wife and have it done. But I said earlier I think you are hiding down here, Irene. You said you were tired of pretending, but you continue to pretend when it comes to the truth about your heritage.” He felt her stiffen in his arms, and he refused to let go of her. “You must face the truth, Irene, and not just within yourself. Before we marry I want you to be a whole person, and that means accepting your Indian blood and being proud of it. It also means facing your brother.”
She frowned. “What!”
“He is your brother, Irene.”
“He was probably at the Little Big Horn. He probably took part in that terrible massacre of Custer and his men last year!”
“Perhaps he was. But most of them have been hunted down and are now on reservations in the Dakotas. I think you should try to find Yellow Eagle.”
She shook her head, pulling away from him. “I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. I want you to be a whole person, Irene, to be truly free. You will not be until you find him and recognize him as your brother. He is a closer brother to you even than John, because he is a full-blood brother.”
She thought of the day of the attack, how Yellow Eagle had looked at her. “He killed Hank.”
“He did not know who you were until it was too late. And you have never let yourself understand the reasons for some of the things they have done, Irene. You know only the bad things about Indians. You must learn to understand the good things, the heart of the Indian. Some of the things they have done have not been because they are savages, but because they thought they were protecting their own, their land, their children, their sources of survival. A man is capable of many things when he thinks he is doing them to protect his loved ones. I have seen your father, Irene, and I know that his heart is broken over all of this. Not only is it killing him to have you turn your back on him, but he also longs to meet and know his Indian son. I think you should go to Denver and talk to him, ask him to take you to the Dakotas to find Yellow Eagle. Your soul will never be at peace until you do. It is the same for your father.”
Yellow Eagle! He was her brother. She had tried to ignore that fact, but she knew Ramon was right to say she was hiding here at the ranch not just for the children’s sake, but to run away from the truth about herself. “I couldn’t leave the children—”
“They have all the care they need. Rose and Jenny love them, I am sure. And maybe it would be good for your mother to see her grandchildren, have them with her for a while. I am told she is not well, Irene. Would you want her to die with things the way they are, or to have Yellow Eagle die without your ever seeing him?”
She met his eyes in alarm. “Mother is ill?”
“You know I hold no fond feelings for her, but no one deserves to die with hard feelings still in the heart of their loved ones. I got the news through Red, who was told by business associates that your mother has not been coming to work the way she used to, that sometimes when they take papers for her to sign, they find her in bed.”
“Mother?” She looked away. “She’s always seemed so…so strong…the rock of the family.”
/> “You are the rock, Irene, not her and not your father. At any rate I could not just come down here and sweep you away and marry you and just let you keep hiding down here.” He moved behind her, touching her shoulders. “Someday I am going to make love to you, mi querida, and it will be the most wonderful thing either of us has ever known. It is torture for me now to do nothing more than just kiss you. But it will not be right for you if you continue to be plagued by ghosts from your childhood, or by the guilt I know you will carry if something happens to your mother before you have a chance to make amends. You have to go back to Denver and face them, Irene, and you have to learn to be proud, learn that you don’t have to run away from these things. When I marry you and take you to my bed, I do not want just part of you. I want all of you, with no more secrets, no more shame, no more hard feelings that block out the kind of love I know you are capable of giving.”
She reached up and put a hand over his own. “Will you come with me?”
“To Denver? Yes. But I think meeting Yellow Eagle is just for you and your father. I will stay in Denver and spend time with your children so that they get to know me and Alex better. I will love them as my own, Irene. That is a promise. And when the time is right, we will marry. We will have many more children of our own.”
He moved his arms around her from behind, crossing them over her breasts. She leaned her head against his firm chest, on fire for him, wanting him as she had never wanted a man before, yet knowing he was right. How comforting it was to realize he was willing to wait, that he was not the groping animal Chad had always been. How wonderfully understanding he would have been on that horrible wedding night. How kind of him to care about and sense her frailties.
“I need to think,” she told him, grasping his strong forearms. “I’d like to go riding. Would you ride with me?”
“Like we used to do?” He grinned, kissing her hair. “It has been many years. Yes. I would like that very much.”
She turned in his arms. “Let’s ride to your old hacienda. The house is still there, Ramon. I went there one day, just to think about you. Another Spanish couple lives there. They work that end of the ranch for us.”
He sighed deeply. “I would love to go.”
“You can tell me about your grandfather and how it used to be there. And when we’re married, it will be yours again. Mother couldn’t keep it from you after all, could she?”
He smiled sadly. “No more than she could stop me from loving you.”
He leaned down and kissed her again, and she realized she could stand the wait, simply because she knew how much he loved her, that he would always be here for her. How much sweeter it was all going to be when she had settled other things that still burdened her heart.
“I’ll go to Denver,” she told him. “And I’ll go with Father to find Yellow Eagle. I’ll do whatever I have to do to be your wife. Besides, after all we’ve been through, I think a grand wedding right in Denver would be fitting, don’t you? Let’s give the News something to write about. I’ve always loved you, and now I want them all to know it.”
He grinned. “We will have whatever kind of wedding you want, as long as we just do it. All I care about is what comes afterward.”
The words sent arrows of passion ripping through her whole being at the thought of being in Ramon Vallejo’s bed…at last. She raised her face to his for another kiss, but he only touched her lips with his fingers. “We had better go for that ride before I change my mind,” he told her.
She smiled wryly. “You’re teasing me, Ramon.”
He ran his fingers lightly over her lips. “I intend to tease you. I want you to think about what is to come, to want it so badly that our wedding night will be the most beautiful experience of your life. I have a feeling your wedding night with Chad Jacobs was something better forgotten.” He watched the hurt come into her eyes. “Someday you can tell me. I only want you to know that it will be different this time. I will make up for it, Irene.”
She watched his eyes, so dark, so true. They were eyes she could trust, and it felt so wonderful to know that.
He gently pulled away from her, keeping hold of her hand as he picked up his lemonade and drank it down. “Let’s go saddle some horses. And go easy on me. Something tells me you are a much better rider now. You have been practicing while I have been pounding nails and digging pictures in wood.”
She laughed as he pulled her toward the door. She felt sixteen again, and in love, so much in love. She could feel the chains of lies and pretending being unloosed. She could see the road to freedom now, and Ramon would lead her down it. She would do anything to reach its end and be with him.
Chapter Thirty-eight
A tight feeling grabbed Irene’s stomach as she and Kirk rode onto the Cheyenne River Reservation in the Dakotas. They had taken a train to Cheyenne, Wyoming, hauling their horses along. Then they rode northeast to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and afterward with two soldiers in escort, they rode even farther north, a three-week journey by horseback.
It seemed unreal to Irene that these were really her people. Hundreds of tipis were sprawled in various circles across a vast expanse of open land, many of them perched along the Cheyenne River, others farther in the distance camped along the Missouri River. Irene gazed at the scene with a mixture of apprehension and sorrow, realizing how easily she could have been living among these people, a weathered, work-worn Indian woman with several children by now, forced to live in squalor and to wait for handouts from the government.
Smoke from several campfires filled the air, and dogs ran about freely. Little children played, so many of them looking just like little Sharron, except they ran naked and looked hungry. She felt strangely guilty riding her fine Palomino through the camps, wearing an expensive riding habit, free to travel wherever she pleased. Before she discovered she was half Indian, she had thought it seemed perfectly proper to put Indians on these reservations. Now that she saw. what life here was really like for them, she realized these people must feel as though they were in jail.
They had been told that Yellow Eagle was on this reservation, allowed to live here, even though it was a Sioux reservation, because his second wife had been an Oglala Sioux. She had since died, leaving behind a small son. Irene’s heart rushed with a mixture of anticipation and some fear at what they might find. Would Yellow Eagle even agree to see them?
One of the soldiers who accompanied them, a Captain Zimmer, pointed to an old woman who lay on a blanket looking shriveled and nearly dead. “Several of these people die every day,” he told them. “They contract white man’s diseases, die in childbirth, a lot of reasons. But mostly, it seems, they’re dying from broken hearts—literally—especially the old ones. Their pride can’t bear being forced to live in restricted areas, to beg for rations from the ‘Great White Father’ in Washington, rations that never come on time. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. We try to teach them to farm, but the men say farming is woman’s work, and most of them can’t stand tearing up the ground. They say it’s like tearing the heart out of Mother Earth.”
“You won’t change their way of living in a few days or a few weeks, Captain,” Kirk answered. “I could have told Washington that years ago. You’ll be lucky to do it in one or two generations. There’s a certain spirit among the Indians that can’t be changed—a need to be free, to provide for themselves from nature. They don’t want Washington’s damn handouts. They want to hunt and dig roots and pick berries. They need to follow the seasons and the buffalo—except that there are hardly any buffalo left.”
Irene could sense Kirk’s frustration and anger. Everything they had seen and heard so far had only upset him more. Near the train station at Cheyenne they had seen several box wagons loaded with buffalo bones, picked up off the prairie by scavengers called bonepickers. They were paid by the ton for the bones, which were used for fertilizer, buttons, combs, and other things by eastern manufacturers. The bones were what had been left behind by hide hunters, who for years ha
d been slaughtering buffalo by the millions, leaving the entire carcass for the buzzards and taking only the hides.
“And they call that progress,” Kirk had fumed. “The Indians never wasted one part of the buffalo. Nearly everything the Indian needed to subsist came from that one animal, and it didn’t cost the government one cent! Now they’ll spend thousands, probably millions, over the years keeping the Indian on reservations providing their food and everything else. It’s ridiculous!”
Irene had to agree. “Look at them,” Kirk was saying now. “Their pride is gone, Irene, their happy spirit has vanished. When I knew these people, they smiled and welcomed me. Now they look at us with frowns and suspicion and sadness in their eyes. These aren’t the Indians I knew. Look at that one over there, slugging down rot-gut whiskey. He’s so drunk he’s hardly aware of where he is.”
“Most of them drink heavily,” the captain told him. “We try to keep the whiskey traders off the reservation, but this is a lot of territory to cover.”
“They drink because it’s the only way they can feel good about themselves,” Kirk told him. “They feel ashamed, Captain, and I can tell you right now that the men are bored to death. This is no way for them to live! There’s going to be more trouble yet.” He looked at Irene as they headed for reservation headquarters. “When I lived among the Sioux and Cheyenne they roamed this land from Canada to Texas, lived in the mountains in summers and anywhere they pleased out on the plains in winter. They were proud, so proud. That’s what I see missing here more than anything else—that fierce pride.”
“Some of the younger warriors still have it, and you’re right, Mr. Kirkland. Our troubles aren’t over yet.”
Irene gazed at some of the old women, suspecting a lot of them were not nearly as old as they looked, wondering what her Indian mother would be like if she were still alive. She realized now that Ramon was right. She could not ignore this side of herself. These were her people, too, and she had to face that, in spite of how the public felt about them. She was beginning to understand some of the misconceptions about the Indian, beginning to understand why they retaliated against white intruders who had stolen so much from them, “white eyes,” who had brought diseases that killed them by the thousands and who murdered by the millions their primary source of survival.
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