His arms closed around her. Only for a moment. He put her from him. “What sort of life could you have with me?”
“That it is with you is what matters.”
“It’s easy for you to say that now—you, whom everybody has loved, standing in your home. But would you think it among strangers where you’d be just another miner’s woman?”
“Yes, if you wanted me.”
Violently, he turned from her and gathered the rest of his possessions into the bag. “Marry Jordan, Caterina. He’s a good man who will take care of you.”
“James—”
She broke off at the sound of approaching steps. Patrick and Miguel crowded into the room, while Marc stood in the door with an arm around Talitha.
“You’re not leaving because of what that weakling lieutenant said?” burst out Patrick.
Talitha was very pale. She watched her brother beseechingly as Marc spoke firmly. “We let Frazier know he was way out of line. You can’t pay attention to every coyote that yips, James. We don’t expect you to turn on your Apache kin.”
“I thank you for that. But the soldiers and your neighbors will expect it.” James gave a somber smile. “When I do not, in a while they may decide I am organizing or helping the raiders. Then all of you might be in danger. I am going.”
Patrick scowled. “Where?”
James grinned. “I think I will become Santiago Montaña and look for a job in the mines. Maybe there I won’t be expected to track Apaches or slaughter white-eyes.”
Color came back to Talitha’s face. Slowly, Marc nodded. “Not a bad idea, till the Indian troubles quiet down, at least. If you worked at the San Patricio, you could visit us when you had a mind to. I expect they’re hiring, but let me write a note to the manager, Don Buenaventura, just to be sure.”
Stiffly, James said, “If they don’t need me, I’ll find work at another place.”
“Don’t be a mule!” said Patrick forthrightly. “The way the turnover is, if they don’t need you this week, they will next. Anyhow, this way Miguel and I can ride over and we can all go hunting.”
Hesitating, James looked at Talitha, who watched him with her heart in her eyes. “All right,” he assented.
He rode away within the hour, but at least he wasn’t going back to the Apaches. He’d be little more than a day’s ride away. Now that she knew the truth of her feeling for him, Cat was determined to make him acknowledge it, too. When he was making his farewells and would have shaken her hand, she defiantly raised on tiptoe to kiss him. On the mouth. Feeling a wave of triumph as a tremor went through him, she smiled and said, “Come back for St. John’s Day.”
That was only ten days. She could wait that long. Maybe by then he’d see how stupid it was for them to be apart. He hadn’t said he loved her in words, but his arms had, and his startled mouth.
It would all work out. They’d marry in the sala, where her parents had pledged themselves before Guadalupana, where Marc and Talitha had spoken their vows. Then they’d live at the mine till it was all right for them to come back to the ranch. Her mind veered away from exactly what that meant. Surely it wouldn’t be long before the Apaches had to see that their only chance of surviving was to settle on reservations. Once they stopped raiding, James wouldn’t be under pressure to help hunt them down.
Patrick should be married by then, too, and they’d all have quarters added on, maybe forming a second courtyard, and their children would grow up together, no one caring that some of the cousins would be one-quarter Apache. Handsome children they should be, with blue eyes and dark hair, though she hoped at least one would carry her father’s red hair.
While she fed orphan calves and colts, helped spoil little Vi, and fought the summer battle with screwworms, Cat beguiled the time with such dreams. But James didn’t come the Day of San Juan, not for the feats of riding, the roping contests, the feasting and dancing.
As the evening wore on and she had to accept that he wouldn’t be there, Cat’s smile grew fixed. She longed to escape the merriment and sob out her disappointment and wrath against her pillow.
Telling Miguel, who’d asked her to dance, that she had a headache, she slipped away from the flaring light and shadows near the corral and was crossing the courtyard to her room when Jordan came up beside her.
“It’s not midnight, Cinderella! Anyway, you can’t run off till we’ve had a dance.”
“I don’t feel like dancing.”
He took her hand, moving toward a bench among the trees surrounding the well. “Then let’s talk a bit.”
“What about?” she asked guardedly.
“You.”
“I’d rather not. My head—”
“Your head might clear if you talked about whatever’s making you so strange. You’re always changeable, Katie, but of late you’re smiling to yourself one minute and looking ready to cry the next. What’s it all about?”
Since his announcement at her birthday almost a year ago that he was going to marry her, Jordan’s behavior had baffled and piqued Cat. He seemed to bide his time, tolerantly waiting for her to—what? Grow up? Well, whatever his plans were, she’d better put him straight on hers. She didn’t want to hurt him, but it would be worse to let him go on thinking that someday, when he judged her ready, he could claim her.
“I’m going to marry James,” she blurted.
His fingers bit into her wrist. “You’re what?”
“I will marry James.”
She couldn’t see his face, but she felt his distress in the shock of his fingers, the tension of his body. Sorry for it, but now certain that she must convince him that he must put her out of his heart, she added almost pleadingly, “I’ve always loved James.”
“Like a brother.”
“Not anymore.”
Jordan released her as if her flesh burned him. “What does Tally say about it?”
“I—I haven’t talked to her yet.”
He turned swiftly, taking her shoulders, giving her a little shake. “And James? I’ll bet you haven’t talked to him, either! Have you?”
“I have so! At least—anyway—” She floundered. “He knows!”
“Knows?” echoed Jordan grimly. “He may know what you want, but has he had a chance to say what he thinks?”
“He’s worried about being caught between Apaches and whites, but I can help him. Except for when he was little and Talitha fought to keep him alive, he’s never had anyone to put him first.”
“God!” said Jordan. “I don’t know whether to be jealous of the poor devil or feel sorry for him!”
“You needn’t do either,” she said frostily, trying to rise.
Jordan held her still. “I don’t take James for a weakling you can badger into doing something he figures is a bad idea, Katie. I like him; he’s a man. If you do marry, I’ll have to make myself big enough to wish you happy, and I will. But till the day you’re really married to someone else, there’s nothing you can do to keep me from believing you’re going to be mine.”
She thought he’d kiss her then and braced to deny him, but he only caressed her cheek and kissed her lightly on the forehead as he drew her to her feet.
At her door, he said, “Katie, I’ll always help you. Any way I can. Don’t be too proud to ask.” He touched her cheek again and turned into the darkness.
August was a terrible month along the Overland Road. Apaches killed two stage drivers, captured one stage and killed everyone on it, captured a pack train and killed all the men, and overran a stage station only twenty-two miles east of Tucson and killed all but one of the attendants.
The citizens of Tucson, alarmed and angry, raised enough money to send out a small company of militia, unmounted, to join with regular army troops in pursuing the marauders.
“Safford’s in command,” said Marc. “Spunky thing for him to do. And it certainly ought to help his Independents get votes away from the Democrats in the elections.”
Patrick said with scorn, “Foot soldiers af
ter Apaches? I bet they never lay eyes on one—though you can bet the Apaches will see them!”
“All the same,” said Talitha, “I’m grateful that James is at the mine.”
Silently, Cat echoed that. It must have taken him a while to get used to the work. Perhaps the manager wouldn’t let him off till he’d been employed for a time. Surely he’d come for her birthday.”
He didn’t.
Racked alternately by anger, hurt, and alarm, she scarcely slept that night. Next morning she went to Talitha and said that she wanted to ride to the San Patricio to make sure James was there.
Talitha frowned. “I’ll send the twins, or a couple of vaqueros. They can take some message to Don Buenaventura so that James won’t get his hackles up. I’d like to know myself that he’s settled in at the mine.”
“I want to go, too.”
Talitha’s face, the one Cat had known as a mother’s since infancy, was sad now and the blue eyes looked deep into her. “My dear, my dear, he can’t be tamed. I love him, he’s my brother, but until he has some peace in himself, he can only cause you grief.”
Though she wanted to throw herself into Talitha’s arms, pour out her hurt and bewilderment and hope, Cat made herself stand straight and proud.
“Maybe I can cause him happiness. Maybe that will give him peace.” The concern in Talitha’s clear gaze was hard to endure. Desperately, Cat invoked what everyone on the ranch knew but never talked about. “You loved my father, Tally. The boys say he drank too much and was lots older. He might have caused you sadness if he’d come back, but you’d have gone on caring, wouldn’t you?”
Talitha got to her feet and stared out at the brilliant autumn sky. “I still care. All my life I will love him, and all my death, though I love Marc, too.” Tears glistened in her eyes.
Tally never cried. Cat took her in her arms. They wept together, for Shea, for James, men they both loved; wept also for each, other as women fated to joy and pain. Then Talitha said, “I’ll talk to Miguel and Patrick. If you’re going, better it be with them.”
Belen came, too, for he’d made the trip a number of times and knew his way through the passes. Unencumbered by pack mules, they could make good time till they got into the tortuous mountain trails, so, rather than spend the night along the way, they left before dawn and carried grain to fortify their mounts since they’d have little chance to graze.
At the San Pedro they watered the horses, loosened their cinches for an hour’s rest, and gave them the grain. When they resumed their journey, the mountains grew more jagged and the trails, when visible, were often rock stripped of softening earth or grass by the wearing of wind and rain. Cat had never been this far west. Belen shook his head as they passed through several valleys where cattle had thinned the grass till none was left to anchor the soil and torrential desert rains had washed away much of the earth.
“Grass won’t grow on rock,” Belen said. “Once, in these valleys, the grama was waist-high. Along roads where freighters travel, it’s even worse. Oxen can’t find enough to eat so the freighters are using mules. When they can find nothing—” He spread his hands expressively.
Rancho del Socorro cattle were kept to a number that didn’t overgraze the pastures and were shifted from time to time to give the grass time to recover. When heavy rains came, the grasses and other plants kept it from cutting channels. Instead, it spread out over the valleys like a shallow lake and soaked in.
“More cattle are bound to come into the territory,” mused Patrick. “Right now, most of the beef for the army is driven in from Texas. That seems pretty foolish.”
“We can’t stock more heavily without hurting our grass,” Miguel pointed out. He shrugged unhappily. “But there’ll be cattlemen come in who won’t know or care about that. They’ll see the tall good grass and won’t realize how little rain we get and how hard it is to bring back a range once it’s destroyed.”
And as domestic animals used the graze there’d be less for wild things, deer, antelope. Less game for Indians, who’d have to steal more of their meat or go on reservations to be fed. Cat suddenly thought of K’aak’eh, and how the maimed hawk had never been able to catch its prey. The hawk had disappeared; for some reason, Cat had never wanted to ask James what had happened to him.
There were a lot of things she’d never ask James. Nevertheless, she loved him. Or perhaps because of them, wounds where his softer nature had eroded down to hardness like soil from a trampled slope.
The sun was dropping behind the western mountains as they descended the trail clinging precariously to the cliffside. Part of the way, they dismounted and led their horses.
A bugle sounded faintly. Belen grinned. “Good to know the guard’s awake even if it does seem to be payday!”
Indeed, the little plaza formed by the miners’ quarters, company store, headquarters, school, infirmary, and chapel was swarming with people. Belen explained that on paydays mescal peddlers, cardsharps, and anyone with something to sell flocked up from the nearest little Mexican town and helped the miners get rid of their wages.
They were met halfway to the camp by five armed miners and Don Buenaventura himself, a slender, sad-eyed man of middle years who waxed his mustache to points. He prickled Cat’s hand with them as he bowed low, seemingly overwhelmed at the unexpected pleasure of meeting one of his patronas.
After inquiring after the health of Talitha and Marc, he begged to escort them to the village and offer them his quarters. He would move in with the bookkeeper. Of course the young patrones and patronita mustn’t judge the camp by its payday aspect. The men worked hard at dangerous tasks. It was understandable that they were somewhat rough in their diversions.
He kept talking as they rode into the camp. In spite of the manager’s offering to help with their horses, they preferred to take care of them themselves, though Cat kept scanning the crowds around the monte dealers or mescal sellers.
“Is Santiago Montaña here?” Patrick asked Don Buenaventura as they started for the manager’s quarters.
“Oh, the man recommended by Don Marcos! To be sure. One of the best workers. But when not working he spends little time in camp. I saw him go up the cañon with his rifle this morning.”
“We want to see him,” said Patrick. “He taught us a lot about hunting when he worked at the Socorro, and was our friend.”
“Bueno.” The manager smiled. “He prefers to live alone, so he made himself that small house at the end across from the headquarters. He may spend the night out—often he does—but he’ll faithfully report for work in the morning—and not muy crudo like everyone else.”
Don Buenaventura’s spacious quarters were in one end of the headquarters, furnished with crude furniture bedecked with the best serapes and such touches of elegance as could be brought in by pack train: gilt mirrors, silver candelabra, lamps, pewter and copper-ware.
An old woman with an alert squirrel face and twitching nose hurried to make fresh tortillas and reheat sauced turkey and rice. Then, with the help of a young girl, she made pallets in the main room for the twins, and Belen, and fetched hot water to the bedroom so Cat could wash.
The window faced James’s small adobe, but there was no sign of him. Cat burned with impatience to see him, but at the same time she began to grow nervous. Would he be angry that she’d come? What would she say to him? How could she make him know that wherever he was, she wanted to be, too?
Don Buenaventura sipped coffee with them as they ate, obviously surprised that Belen sat at table with the O’Sheas. Patrick explained that Marc had wanted to be sure all went well at the San Patricio but was too busy with the coming election to come himself. The twins had volunteered, wanting to see their old friend Santiago, and their sister had come along for the outing.
Don Buenaventura frowned. “Such outings can come to tragic ends in this wild country. God guard you safely home, patronita.”
After the meal, Patrick wanted to play monte and Miguel went along to keep him out of trou
ble. Don Buenaventura took himself off to the bookkeeper’s, the girl and old woman were busy in the kitchen, and Cat was left to her own devices.
It was dark now. Outside, merrymaking continued by several fires, and a dance was getting underway to the strumming of guitars. During supper Cat had kept an eye on James’s house, but no one had entered and it remained dark.
In sudden determination, she went back to arrange the pillows and coverlets in Don Buenaventura’s big bed so that a hasty glance in candlelight would show what seemed to be a sleeping form. Her brothers might decide to look in on her. She brushed out her hair, took a clean chemise from her saddlebag, blew out the candles in the big room, and stole carefully across the clearing to the house her love had made for himself.
She couldn’t see in the darkness, but her hands found a shirt of his hanging on a peg. She pressed it to her face and drew deeply into her lungs the scent of him, mixed with that of woodsmoke. A table. A bench. His bed was straw matting covered with serapes.
As she touched where his body had lain, Cat’s blood seemed to slow, run heavily molten. Her breath came jerkily. Standing to undress, she touched her breasts, wishing her hands were his. She put on the chemise and lay down, sinking luxuriantly into blankets that had held him.
Even if he didn’t come home before she’d have to get back to the manager’s bed, it was balm to lie in his bed, in his house. She wouldn’t sleep. Just rest here and think of him, his eyes and hands and mouth.
Querido. My love. James.…
XVI
She woke to violent hands, a hoarse, enraged voice that panted in Spanish as a hard knee parted her legs, “Have it, then, whore! I need a woman, even you!”
Something rammed painfully at that secret place which had occasionally, when she was riding, brought her an urgent pleasure she hadn’t known how to bring to a finish, which had one time throbbed to delight in a half-waking dream of James. But this was a nightmare. She cried out, writhing: “James!”
The cruel rigidity thrust convulsively deep, then seemed to melt, no longer hurting, laving her torn entrance with a slow, warm seep of juices. Shuddering, he wrenched himself from her, setting his hands on either side of her face as if that would help him see her in the darkness.
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