She thought a few minutes, shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! So much has happened to us. I’ve felt so much with and for Matt that I’m numb!”
“Do you love me?” Those smoke-crystal eyes demanded the truth.
“I must,” she cried. “But I can’t leave Matt. I don’t know how I feel about him, but whatever it is, it isn’t finished. I don’t think it will be as long as we live.”
“But you love me.”
She looked up and down the river, at the bluffs and sweep of green dotted with her flocks, the desert and distant foothills beyond which peaks towered, hiding the valley which had become her home. Once she had feared this country; now she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
“Please stay, Nels.”
“No.” He got up, buttoning his shirt. “In another week, the sheep will be all right with Santiago, and in a week, I’ll leave. You can meet me here, ready to cross the Rio, or I’ll be gone and in a few months you’ll probably think you dreamed all this.”
“Nels, please!”
“Your choice,” he said roughly.
He helped her mount Lady. “Remember, I’m leaving a week from this morning. Don’t come until then, and only if you’re ready to go with me.”
“Good-bye,” she said.
He shrugged and stepped back. “Good luck to you, Rachel, if we don’t meet again.”
She couldn’t answer, rode swiftly up the valley.
She couldn’t leave. She loved Nels in some desperate fashion, but Matt was her husband. He held her in a hundred ways. She couldn’t ride to Nels in a week or any time. It was over.
She scarcely ate, slept fitfully in the warm nights, hungering for Nels, scorning the hunger. She’d be glad when he was gone; there’d be no use in thinking of him, remembering his mouth and strange eyes that compelled her soul. Let him go on to his lost causes and fighting!
But she turned Lady into the outside meadow so it couldn’t be the work of impulse to catch and saddle her. Days went by, then a week. Rachel was tense, listened for hoofbeats. She couldn’t believe it would end like this, without his coming to see her at least once more. But she left Lady in the far pasture, the day passed, and though she sobbed into her pillows that night, she felt a kind of relief as if a spell were lifting, an interlude of madness.
Four days later Juanito came shouting that cattle—many and many!—were entering the pass.
Lupe and Juanito hurried to watch, but Rachel went on getting dinner. She was putting biscuits in the Dutch oven when Matt came in. He stood in the door. Her heart felt like a lump of iron beneath her breasts. This was the man she had chosen. Now Nels was the dream, Nels who’d made her feel alive and beautiful, a woman to be pampered, not abandoned and humiliated.
Matt said nothing, didn’t move. Could he know? Alarmed, Rachel set the biscuits on the coals, straightening to look at him.
The misery in his eyes smothered the words on her lips. “Matt!” she cried, running to him. “Matt, what’s wrong?”
“Nels is dead.”
“Nels?” she repeated stupidly. “Dead?”
He nodded. “He met us a day south of the Rio, and camped with us that night. Something spooked the cattle. He tried to turn them, and they ran him down.”
Why did Matt watch her with such appeal? Why were his hands halfway outstretched? How could she help him? Nels was dead! Feeling as if her vitals had twisted into a tight searing knot, Rachel stared at Matt.
“The cattle!” she said. “Just like Changa!”
“Rachel!”
Her knees wanted to go out from under her. She leaned against the wall. “I hope those cows are worth it to you, Matt!”
“Damn it, he was my friend!”
“And my lover.” The words ripped from her lips before she could stop them.
“Your lover?” Matt’s eyes blazed in his haggard face. He stepped forward, checked as if drained by a secret wound. His face seemed all bone, a death mask. “Nels? Your—lover?”
To that face, to that agony, she must tell the truth, once she had blundered. “Yes.”
She waited for him to strike or choke or curse her, but he did a crueler thing, a harder thing to bear. He watched her with naked, tormented eyes, then turned and left the house.
In a few minutes, she heard him calling to Quil. Coldness settled on Rachel’s heart. She couldn’t stay here. Even if Matt somehow forgave her, even if she forgave him.
She stared for a moment at the set table, smelled the baking biscuits, the bubbling stew. Then she made a bundle of her clothing, took some jerky and dried fruit, and went outside, hidden by the house from the people down at the corral. She’d have to walk to the far pasture for Lady, but Santiago should still be awake when she reached the sheep camp.
Lupe came first. Matt had apparently not told about Rachel’s confession, but Rachel thought Lupe guessed. “Come home,” she said urgently. “We miss you.” Rachel only shook her head and went on trimming saplings to roof the house Nels had begun.
“This is loco!” Lupe scolded. “You cannot hate the cows that much!”
Oh. The easiest thing to let the others think. Rachel turned to her companion of so many years, the lonely years, and was filled with a great, heavy sadness.
“Lupe, I’m sorry. I love you and Juanito. But I can’t live anymore in the meadow.”
“What of Mateo?” Lupe demanded.
“He has his cattle.”
“He needs his wife! If you could see him—Surely you must pity him for Señor Layne’s death.”
“I do.”
“But you won’t come back?”
Rachel shook her head, her throat too tight to answer. Lupe surveyed the rock cabin. “Winter will be here soon. And what if robbers come through, or marauding Indians?”
“They might also strike the valley. In fact, now the cattle are there, it’s a much more tempting target. Anyway, there’s Santiago and the dogs.”
“Rachel!” groaned Lupe. But she finally had to give up. “Don’t stay here out of stubbornness,” she adjured. “If there’s trouble, send for Santiago. I will keep a home for Mateo, but you also are my friend—even though you’re crazy. And wicked!” Lupe’s eyes flashed as she mounted Quil’s horse. “Yes, wicked! For you’re hurting Mateo terribly!”
She cantered off, stopping at a distance to give a mournful, pleading wave, and when Rachel only waved back, she turned the horse and rode on.
Quil came next, on the pretext of dropping off supplies for the camp, though it was well-supplied.
“Matt needs you,” he said abruptly as she brought coffee and corn bread. “The cattle, everything he does, it’s for you.”
She didn’t answer. Quil gave her a serious look. “Tell you something else, Rachel. You need Matt. You sure do. Now stop hurting the both of you and come back where you belong.”
“I belong with my sheep.”
He made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. “You belong with your man!”
“Matt’s done as he pleased. I guess I can do the same.”
Quil left without a second cup of coffee. Rachel was sorry for that but glad both he and Lupe seemed to blame her self-exile on the cattle’s displacing her flock.
Juanito came next, all the way on his seven-year-old legs. Rachel fed him and hugged him, and they played in the river, which was still warm. Gravely, he inspected the sheep and said he’d come to stay at lambing time.
“And I’ll come see you often,” he said as she kissed him good-bye, sending him off so he’d get home before real night. “You—you’ll always be my Tía, won’t you?”
“Of course I will!” she said, and held his wiry little body close, feeling the first warmth, the first peace, she’d had since hearing Nels was dead.
By the time Matt came, she knew she was with child. It could be Matt’s but she’d certainly been far more often with Nels. When she’d meant to live alone for at least a time, her body decreed she wouldn’t. She was sick in the mornings, somew
hat frightened, and if Matt had approached her softly there might have been a different outcome.
But he rode right up to where she was bathing in the river, around the bend from the camp, and shouted at her.
“Get on your clothes! You’re coming home!”
“I am home!” she yelled back.
“Hell you are!” He sent Storm into the river. “Come on or I’ll get you. I’ve had enough of this crap!”
She stood with the current thrusting at her knees, aware of her naked body, the life begun in it, hidden from Matt’s angry gaze.
She said deliberately, watching him closely, “I’m going to have a baby.”
His eyes went the color of a lightning-rent sky. It took all her pride and strength to stand erect, endure the way he scanned her. She saw his knuckles were white as he gripped the reins.
“No doubt about it then, is there? You’ve got to come.”
And because he’d hesitated, and because she was afraid, and because he didn’t ask the question she could almost see burning into his mind, Rachel shook out her wet hair and turned away from him.
“There’s a good chance the baby is Nels’. You wouldn’t want a questionable heir for the meadow and those valuable cows!”
He didn’t speak for a few minutes. When he did, he sounded so tired she almost repented her taunt. Almost.
“Stop it, Rachel. Come home and have the baby, whosever it is, and let’s get on with our lives.”
His dogged acceptance of her baby like some kind of natural catastrophe to be endured and ignored sent waves of guilt and anger through her.
“I shall have the baby, Matt, and if it looks like you, then we can talk about what to do.”
“You can’t mean to do such a crazy thing! Have your baby here with no one to help!” Matt paused for breath, and when she didn’t answer, he went on savagely, “If it’s Nels’ child, do you intend to raise him with your damn sheep?”
“Exactly!”
“Why, you crazy little—”
“The sheep are mine, and I certainly have a right to this land. My child will have an inheritance without your grudging it!”
“God damn it,” Matt thundered, “I’ll call the little bastard mine if he has horns and a forked tail!”
“Oh, no, you won’t! You’ve got one bastard down in Mexico.” Her throat hurt, and she fought back furious tears. “I thought that was how you’d feel—and I’m glad you let it slip now instead of later! My child won’t be a bastard for you, Matt, even if it turns out to be yours!”
He started toward her, guiding the big horse with his knees, beginning to loop the reins loosely about the horn to free his hands.
“Don’t do it,” Rachel whispered. “If you take me to the meadow, I’ll run away, and I don’t think you’ll find me.”
He stopped, gazing at her in baffled anger. Then he squared his shoulders and started on.
“We could have had a child!” she cried, clenching her fists. “You rode off to war about the time I was sure. I miscarried a few days later here on the river. We should have had our baby then, Matt!”
He stared at her a long time. At last, sighing, he picked up the reins. “I won’t force you. I guess, since I left you, I have to let you leave me, if that’s what you want. But I swear that anytime you come back, I’ll call your child my own, and we’ll start fresh. Leave the past behind.”
“Good-bye,” Rachel said. In another moment she’d be weeping, reaching up to him, relaxing in the strength of his arms.
“Send if you need anything,” Matt said. “In the spring Lupe will come to help.”
Wheeling Storm, he splashed ashore. Rachel watched, a numb heaviness pressing against her heart. “I’ll call the little bastard mine even if he has horns—” Only the echo of those words kept her, naked, barefoot, from running after him.
XIX
Any other woman would have said the baby was his, tried to make peace and have a safe nest. Damn her stiff neck! Matt could have broken it with pleasure. And yet the way she’d stood, proud and naked, clothed in sun …
Maybe she’d come around as she grew heavy, when she’d had time to get over Nels—and wasn’t that one hell of a thing? Matt ground his teeth to think of Rachel with his friend. Had she loved him? Was it spite over Anatacia and the war and those sheep getting moved from the valley?
God damn her, why had she done it? Raw, aching, Matt told himself it’d be good for her to shift for herself. But then he had to grant she’d been shifting for herself during the years he’d been gone. And she had lost a baby, a baby he hadn’t even known about. That made it harder than ever for her to learn about Roque. He and Anatacia had been in Chihuahua when Matt came for cattle. With perfect courtesy the Don had asked Matt to send a messenger ahead when he planned to visit so the boy would not be at Tres Coronas.
“Roque is my heir, Mateo. I don’t want him hero-worshipping you and wanting to live in Texas.”
Matt shrugged. He saw the sense of it, but it went against his grain to completely ignore the blood tie. He thought, too, that Don Celestino asked too many questions about Rachel. On the whole, Matt was glad to conclude his buying and start home.
And he had three lost years and rustled herd to make up for! The night he returned from seeing Rachel, so lovely in the river he’d groaned silently with wanting her, he said to Quil, “Tomorrow we’ll make steers out of a bunch of young bulls and save them lots of trouble.”
“I can go?” begged Juanito.
“You’ve got to go!” said Matt. “Aren’t you our top hand?” The boy wriggled with delight and followed them in to dinner.
“Going to sell these cows to the army post if it opens up?” Quil asked as they rode in late next afternoon, streaked with dust, sweat and blood. Juanito had held his rope on the struggling yearlings while Quil held them down and Matt squatted atop and cut.
Matt got rid of more dust than liquid when he spat. “The war’s over, but I’m not ready to feed Yank troopers.”
“Just me,” grinned Quil.
“You’re my partner.”
“The post would be the closest market.”
“We’ll find another! Or, hell, if you want, sell your share of the herd to the army!”
Quil’s white teeth flashed. “May do just that! Depends on how good a choice you give me.”
“Some partner,” grumbled Matt.
The work and being with Quil and Juanito had made him feel a little better, but in the sunset he gazed across the mountains toward the river, braced rigid against the desire in his loins, the terrible void in his life.
At least he knew where she was. At least she was no other man’s.
He believed in his heart that when winter settled in, she would surely come, but snow gleamed on the high mountains, then the foothills, hoarfrost shone on the palisades, and there was no sign from her.
But there was work, and he drove himself. To handle the spring cattle work, he’d need at least three or four more men. Don Celestino had promised to recruit able and willing vaqueros and send them to the meadow by the end of winter, so when they weren’t changing the cattle’s range or burning pines off prickly pear for fodder or digging water wells or hunting, Matt and Quil, with Juanito stoutly helping, worked on adding a long room to the bachelor quarters.
If Lupe minded doing all the woman’s work alone, she never said so. She was cheerful at mealtimes and on the long winter evenings when the men worked on horse gear or braided ropes she sat sewing or weaving on the handloom Quil had fashioned.
Her presence was a powerful reminder of Rachel’s absence, the only thing lending softness and warmth to their angular male lives. Matt had always been aware of Lupe as a magnificent woman with a strong physical lure, and now the awareness was almost a fever sometimes when he longed for Rachel and needed a woman. Matt was thankful Juanito still shared her room.
One chill twilight, Matthew was hunting north of the meadow, riding into the pass with a mule deer behind his saddle whe
n Storm shied at a shadow near the rocks.
“Who’s that?” Matt called, for the shape was not an animal’s—nor was it Rachel’s, he decided after a heart-wrenching instant of hope. Too small. “Juanito?”
“Yes, Don Mateo.”
“What’re you doing out here with dark falling? Want to worry your mother?”
“I’ll run very fast!” Juanito started up, but Matt scooped him into the saddle.
“Now, you young rascal! Where’ve you been?”
The boy hung his head, then threw it back and watched Matt with big eyes. “I’ve been to Tía Rachel!”
Matt felt as if a giant fist had struck him in the belly. He wet his lips, swallowing. “How is she?”
Juanito hesitated. Matt gave him a shake. “What’s the matter? Is she sick?”
“No, Don Mateo. She’s well.”
“Is her house warm?”
“Very warm. There’s a fireplace. Her door faces the morning sun and a window gets the evening light.”
“Has she got plenty of food?”
“Don Santiago gets rabbits with a throwing stick or his sling. Sometimes they have fish, and Quil took beans and corn enough for the winter.”
“Have you been there often?”
Juanito’s thin body stiffened, but he spoke clearly. “I visit Tía Rachel each week, Don Mateo, And in the lambing season I’ve promised to help.”
“Oh, have you? What about our cows who calve about the same time?”
“Cows can look after their calves. Ewes are stupid, Don Mateo. Many must be forced to feed their kids.”
“So why raise them?”
“For wool and meat,” returned Juanito sagaciously. “Besides, I like to watch little lambs skip and dance and play! And I like the way the rams’ big horns twist around their ears.” As Matt absorbed this information, Juanito added firmly, “I like cattle, Don Mateo, but I also like sheep. When I grow up, I shall have both.”
“Not in this meadow, you won’t!” said Matt between laughter and vexation at this boy who was already more expert with the rope than he could ever be.
“Ay, Don Mateo,” said Juanito, almost giggling, “somewhere on this river there’ll be room for me—and my sheep and cattle!”
A Woman Clothed in Sun Page 24