Frazier glanced with awed admiration at Talitha. “A remarkable lady! So, when your mother died, she raised you, though she was only a girl herself?”
“She’s been my mother and sister both. When she was only six and captive in an Apache camp, she mothered her baby half brother, fed him on piñon-honey gruel when Juh’s wives would have let him starve.”
“Half brother?” The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed.
“Her mother became Juh’s wife. She died in childbirth.”
The lieutenant made a small whistling sound between his teeth. “Where is this half-breed brother?”
Cat stopped dancing. “Don’t call him that!”
“I’m sorry.” The lieutenant passed his hand across his eyes. “It’s just such a shock.” He smiled cajolingly and moved back into the lilting dance. “Where is Mrs. Revier’s brother?”
“We don’t know.” Cat bit her lips to stop their trembling and her eyes stung. If only James were here! She would give anything, yes, even Sangre, if James would come back. “He took some cattle to Mangus Coloradas, his foster father, a month or two before the chief was treacherously killed by soldiers early in 1863.”
Now it was the lieutenant’s turn to stop in his tracks. “Treacherously? That old scoundrel!”
“The white men pretended to talk peace, but when they tricked Mangus into their camp, his guards tormented and killed him.” Cat wrested free of the officer, glaring at him with clenched fists. “Mangus was my parents’ friend! My brothers slept in the cradleboard he gave them! And he took good care of James when he … went away for the first time.”
“Mangus was a bloodthirsty, murdering heathen!”
“You can’t call him that under this roof!”
Frazier’s jaw dropped. “Are you telling me to go?”
“Yes, if you’re going to talk like that!”
“But it doesn’t make sense! One minute you’re all talking about Larcena Pennington and how dangerous the Apaches are, and the next you’re furious with me for telling the truth.”
“What truth is that, Lieutenant?” asked Jordan. Slipping an arm around Cat, he drew her away. “In any case, you’ve monopolized our birthday lady much too long. I haven’t even had a dance.”
Frazier bowed. “Good night, Miss O’Shea.” His voice was tightly furious. “May I wish that this next year will bring you happiness—and, I trust, more … maturity?”
Swinging away, he sought out Talitha and Marc to take his leave. Jordan smiled down at Cat.
“Want to tell me what that was all about?”
“He—he called Mangus a murdering heathen!”
“Well, so he was,” said Jordan calmly.
Cat made a sound of outrage and tried to pull free, but Jordan held her inexorably, then dipped her so low she went off balance and only his arm and hands kept her on her feet.
“Listen, Katie,” Jordan began quietly. It was the first time he’d called her that, though it had been Shea’s name for her. A wave of longing for her father welled up so powerfully in Cat that tears sprang to her eyes and she averted her face. Jordan’s arm tightened. “Honey, why are you crying?”
“I—I—you called me Katie.”
“Is that so awful?”
“N-no. It’s just what Daddy called me.”
“It seems right for you. But if you’d rather I didn’t …”
“No,” she said hastily, freeing her hand to dash away her tears before she smiled at him. “It’s nice to hear it again. Caterina’s so long and Cat’s so short. Katie’s in between.”
“So it is,” he agreed seriously. “So, Katie, allow me to say that though I don’t especially like the lieutenant, you can scarcely blame him for saying of Mangus what, in fact, is true. It’d count more if you told your family’s experience of Mangus, which is equally right.”
She knew he was saying what was reasonable and wise, but she was still angry. Lifting her chin, she stared vindictively after the vanishing lieutenant and blurted, “He called James a half-breed!”
Jordan was still for a moment. “Ah,” he murmured. “So that’s what it was. You think a lot of James, don’t you, Katie?”
“I guess I love him more than anyone in the world.”
Jordan missed a measure, recovered, and said, “Why’s that, honey? I know you love your brothers and Talitha and Sewa. You seem to love all the ranch people. Yet James comes first?”
She nodded, remembering James with the aching sadness that overwhelmed her when she let herself think of him. “James doesn’t have anyone really his own. Talitha wanted him to grow up white. She loved him but hated the Apaches for what happened to her mother and uncles.”
“And James is part Apache.”
“Yes, and he’s proud of it. His father was a renowned warrior. Mangus was his foster father.”
Reflectively, Jordan said, “Sounds to me, Katie, as if you’re mixing sympathy with love.”
“I’m not sorry for James. He’d never allow that. But he’s … alone.”
“Maybe not.”
She frowned, glancing up. “What do you mean?”
“How old is James?”
“Twenty-two in July,” she said immediately.
“Haven’t you thought he might be married? He could even have a child or two.”
Such a thought had never entered her mind. Angrily, she rejected it. “I don’t believe it! He wouldn’t—”
“What better way to make himself all one thing?”
There was frightening reason in that. The idea of James having a wife, any wife, filled her with desolation. She didn’t understand why, except that he was hers in a private way she couldn’t explain.
“He’ll come back,” she said resolutely. “And he won’t be married, either.”
Jordan sighed. “Why do you feel this way about him? As far as I can tell, Cinco, your half brother, is in the same fix of being betwixt and between white and Indian.”
“Cinco was raised pure Papago. He and his Indian brothers and sister own Tjúni’s land. He’s never had a second’s worry about where he belonged. Besides, no one wants to kill or drive out the Papagos.”
They danced in silence, Cat tense and on edge, Jordan preoccupied. At last he said, “What if he never comes back, Katie?”
Her heart contracted. “Don’t say that! I couldn’t bear it.”
He lifted her easily from the doorsill, danced her down the porch. “Seven years. You were only nine. Can’t you be longing after someone you’ve dreamed over and imagined till you’ve created a James that doesn’t exist?”
“James is real. I haven’t made him up.” To convince Jordan, Cat pulled out a secret memory that she kept buried deep. “An outcast Apache caught me on the way into the mountains not long after James came back to us and was taking me away to sell. James followed and killed him. It hurt James a lot that the first man he killed was an Apache.”
“It would’ve been fine if it’d been a white?”
She twisted away. “You’re as bad as the lieutenant!”
“Am I?” Jordan caught her close. In the light from the window his face was grim, a stranger’s. “Has Frazier done this, then?”
Lifting her face, he kissed her, stopping her outraged protest with his hard lips, which burned punishingly at first as she struggled in shocked fury, then grew softer, caressing, beseeching as they demanded, draining her of strength.
Quiet in his arms a moment after he raised his head, she found his strength oddly comforting and felt an irrational desire to stay close to him, hearing that deep, steady pounding of his heart. It was Jordan who stepped back and held her at arm’s length.
“Well?” he said. “Has Frazier done that?”
Angry again, the curious truce of their bodies snapped by his scornful words, Cat flamed at him. “It’s none of your business!”
“It’s very much my business.” He held her firmly. Short of kicking or biting, she couldn’t escape. She wouldn’t let him drive her to such childis
h resorts.
Gritting her teeth, she stood as tall as she could, which wasn’t very. “Please enlighten me, Mr. Scott. When did whom I do or don’t kiss become your concern?”
“When I decided to marry you.”
Her heart stopped, then began to thunder in her ears. “You! Marry me?”
“That’s what I said.”
Curiosity overcame her half-flattered, half-outraged surprise. “When did you start thinking anything like that?”
He laughed dryly. “I started thinking exactly that about the minute I laid eyes on you June 18, year of our Lord 1868.” When she looked up at him in astonishment, he added softly, as if recalling a dream he didn’t want to lose, “When I rode in, you were in the corral, feeding an orphan foal, a black one. The wind blew your hair into its mane. I thought you were like a colt yourself—long-legged, wild, with a glossy new sheen on you.”
“Like a colt!” She choked with laughter. “My goodness, Jordan, what a compliment!”
“It’s not a compliment. It’s how I saw you.” His tone roughened. Letting go of her wrists, he put his hands on her shoulders. “I loved you then but knew I had to wait. It wasn’t hard for a while—as long as you still looked like that knobby-kneed colt. You don’t anymore.”
“Are you sure?” She tried to lighten the taut awareness building between them.
It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was strong and potent. She sensed its danger and wanted to control it till she understood it better, as one is wary on a strange, powerful horse while exhilarated by that leashed force. A tremor shook him.
“How can you understand?” His breath caught raggedly. “You’re still so young! It’s different anyway for women, I guess. I ache when I see you and hurt worse when I don’t, as if a grizzly had torn off part of me and the rest was raw and bleeding.”
The pain in his voice quenched her excitement, leaving her sorry and full of guilt. “Jordan—”
“Don’t!” he said between his teeth.
“What?”
“Don’t pity me. I’m not a starving foal or calf or raccoon or bird, like those you’re always taking care of. I’m a man. I’m going to take care of you.”
“But—”
“You hadn’t a notion, had you?”
Mournfully, she shook her head. He laughed in a veering of mood that again sent her off balance. “It’s all right, honey! I won’t die while I wait for you to grow up. You may even flirt with your captains and lieutenants, try your fancy paces.” He grinned and held her face between his long, hard palms. “Just remember I saw you first.”
He lifted her over the threshold, surrendering her to Patrick while he danced off with Juri.
No more than a few minutes had passed, yet Jordan’s kiss had swept Cat past a threshold as real as the one he’d physically danced her over, one she could never recross. Her mouth would never be the same again; nor her body, nor her heart. Was this how it was to be a woman? Would she love him? Was that what he’d made her feel, that tremulous, stormy, turbulent force? Whatever it was, she was glad to escape it now, in the refuge in her brother’s arms.
“Cat!” He was giving her a little shake. “What’s the matter with you? Why did Jordan take you outside?”
She made a face, hoping her tone was natural. “He gave me a scold for telling Lieutenant Frazier he couldn’t call Mangus a murdering heathen and James a half-breed under this roof.”
Patrick’s red-gold eyebrows arched up. “So that’s why Frazier stalked out as stiff as if he’d swallowed a bayonet! You may have lost your chance to marry a future general, Katie-Cat.”
“Why does everybody all of a sudden start to talk about my getting married?” She grimaced. “You’re a lot older than I am, five years! And Miguel’s almost a father. Why don’t you get married?”
He whistled. “Out of sorts, aren’t you? Truce, little sister! Marry when you will, and so shall I, but not for a long time! There’s lots I want to do without worrying about leaving a widow.”
“Like hunting for gold?”
“Silver will do. Copper, even.”
“When you go, Patrick, watch for James.”
“I will. But he taught me to track. He’ll see me first.”
“You—you wouldn’t kill him?”
“No!” The first shocked protest was followed by a wry qualification. “Not unless I had to. But if he comes at me with a lance or a club, Cat, would you rather have me die?”
“He won’t do that! Don’t you remember?”
“What?”
“Tally says he promised our mother, before she rode off for the last time, that he’d take care of you twins, that he’d never let anything hurt you.”
“Quite some promise for a seven-year-old,” teased Patrick. “We’re big boys now, Cat. Somehow we got through a war without James’s help.” He hushed her with I finger on her lips. “Don’t fret. Next to you, Miguel, and Tally, I love James. I’d sure never hurt him if there were any choice.”
It was time to dance with Miguel, then the vaqueros. Though she couldn’t keep from watching Jordan when she saw his reddish-brown head higher than that of the other men, he never asked for another dance. She didn’t know whether she was glad or sorry.
Patrick stayed at the Socorro for the fall branding and the baille given to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of himself and his twin.
The whole population of the Santa Cruz Valley from Magdalena to Tucson seemed to have turned out, including officers from Camp Crittenden and Camp Wallen, and of course all the El Charco folk were there.
Every person at the party lived under constant threat from Apaches and brigands, but for tonight they made merry and came together, neighbors in spite of the distances that separated most of them. Those who lived too far to go home would sleep wherever room could be found.
Two whole beeves roasted over fiery coals between the ramada and corrals. Iron and copper kettles of rice, beans and tamales simmered over smaller fires and tortillas, coffee and mescal were served from a wagon bed. Benches had been made for the comparatively few women, but they were so much in demand for dancing that none, from Sewa to an aged aunt of Doña Rosa’s, got to rest for long.
Claybourne Frazier was back for the first time since Cat’s birthday. If he’d watch his tongue, Cat could hold hers, so when he bowed and asked her to dance, she accepted.
“Amazing celebration!” He laughed. “I must write my mother all about it.”
“Where is she?”
“St. Paul, Minnesota. My father’s in command of the Department of Dakota, which was created in 1866 out of the departments of the Platte and the Missouri. Poor mother! She loathes cold weather, not to mention Yankees.”
“She’s from the South?”
“Both my parents are. South Carolina.” Almost truculently he added, “My father, who’s now a brevet major general, was an early West Point graduate. Unlike many of his Southern-born classmates, he thought his first loyalty was to the Union. Mother didn’t agree. They fought a highly uncivil war of their own all through the big one. Thank heaven, I was at the Point most of the time.” With a shrug, he dismissed the awkward subject. “How do you like being sixteen?”
Cat laughed. “It’s much like being fifteen.”
Not really true. But after kissing her that night, making his astounding declaration of intent, Jordan had practically ignored her. Of course, he’d been out branding most of the time, but what had he done tonight? Thus far he had danced with all the women but herself and—
Incredible! There he went with Sewa, dwarfing the dainty little girl. Cat smiled brilliantly up at the Lieutenant, who stifled an exclamation and drew her closer to him.
“Miss O’Shea! With your permission, I’d like to ask your guardian’s consent to call on you.”
“Call on me?” she echoed, wondering for a moment what he meant. Then she realized that he was again asking to visit her, not simply stop by the ranch. “Why, I—that’s kind of you, lieutenant, but—”
“No.”
Jordan’s one-sided proclamation and subsequent aloofness was scarcely courtship. Besides, he hadn’t asked her what she thought about it, just stated his claims like some conquistador saying a place belonged to some distant king no matter what the natives wanted!
“Do you find me distasteful?” persisted Frazier.
“You can be very nice,” Cat tried to think of a tactful way to say it, could come up with none, and simply blurted, “I don’t want to get married for a long time, Lieutenant Frazier.”
He laughed in a way that removed any sting from his words. “Bless you, neither do I! But I’d like to take you riding, escort you to the occasional festivity that’s fit for ladies. I promise not to importune or woo you fervently till I’m at least a captain—unless you want me to.”
Put that way, it didn’t sound alarming. Her eye caught Jordan swinging winsome Doña Gertrude in the firelight. Going to marry her, was he, after he’d exhausted himself with everyone else? Cat glanced at Frazier from beneath her eyelashes.
“Well?” he urged, gray eyes eager.
She nodded. “All right, Lieutenant. You may speak to Talitha. She’s my guardian.”
“But surely Marc Revier—”
“Father left Talitha in charge of us.” A new thought struck her. “Of course, the twins are twenty-one today! I suppose they might be my guardians, in a way. But it’s Tally you must ask.”
Frazier gave a bewildered chuckle. “It’s a complicated household. Do you and your brothers own the ranch and that mine I’ve heard mentioned?”
“Just shares. Father’s will left Tally a quarter, which isn’t really enough. Without her, the ranch and mine would have been lost during the war. Then, Sewa has her father’s shares.” At the officer’s baffled look, Cat tried to make it simple. “Our parents owned two thirds of the properties they shared with Santiago. That two thirds is quartered to my brothers, Tally, and me. Santiago’s third is Sewa’s, undivided.”
“Then she ought to be quite an heiress.”
Cat had never thought of it that way but had to nod slowly. “I suppose.”
It followed that the O’Sheas were a little bit rich, though wealth was only of relative importance in this region. It couldn’t buy your life from Apaches or bring rain when the fields were dry and cattle were thirsty. People were what mattered here, their courage, strength, and judgment.
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