by Come Sunrise
"Good, good! Real glad to hear that. Hope you pass a comfortable night. Diego will take you out to your spread in the morning."
That night Tommy made love to her for the first time since she left the hospital seven weeks earlier.
All during dinner the intensity of Amy's excitement showed in flushed cheeks and shaking hands. She sat beside her husband in the hotel dining room and picked at fried chicken and thought, I want to have a baby. Right away. I must have a baby in this place. Then it will belong to us.
In their small nondescript hotel bedroom she took Tommy's hand and laid her head against his chest. "I'm so happy," she whispered. "I feel so alive now that we're here."
"Yeah, I know. I'm glad you're happy." He kissed her and murmured something about getting undressed.
She removed her clothes with fingers suddenly clumsy, and didn't wait to put them away, but dropped them on the floor and turned to him. She was quivering all over, and he picked her up and carried her to the bed.
Amy pulled him down on top of herself and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and spread her legs. When his climax came she was exultant. She almost believed that she could feel conception happening inside her.
Tommy turned away from her and faced the wall and suddenly said, "Why did Luke come to see you in August?"
She was so startled she almost denied it. Then she thought about Tommy's recent mood and understood. It was too late for denials. "How did you know?"
"I ran into Suzy Randolph a couple of weeks before we left New York. She made a point of telling me she'd seen him leaving our house."
"She would," Amy said. Her mouth was dry and her brain was racing. "Look, he was in town to see a doctor. He came to talk to us because he was having doubts about staying with the Dominicans."
"Us?" Tommy questioned with a small laugh. "Come off it, baby. He knew I wouldn't be home during the day."
"He planned to wait," Amy said. She struggled to make her tone normal. "We talked a bit, and he saw that his doubts were silly. Just nerves. He wanted to go back to Dover right away. And he made me promise not to tell you. He was ashamed of himself."
There was silence when she finished this explanation. Amy couldn't bear the thought that they would begin their new life with a fight about Luke. "Please," she said, stretching out her hand and touching his shoulder, "believe me, that's all there was to it."
"Ok," he said tonelessly. "Whatever you say."
14
LOPEZ HAD TOLD THEM DIEGO WAS AN INDIAN FROM Pueblo Cochiti. He came to the hotel while they were having breakfast. "I'm ready when you are." His speech was marked only by the slow southwestern drawl Amy heard everywhere.
They followed him outside. Their trunks were piled high on a rickety buckboard. Tommy inspected the vehicle. "Is this what we travel in?"
"It belongs to Santo Domingo," Diego said.
"Are the horses ours too?" Amy studied the two animals. They were big and looked strong, and their coats were shiny.
"Yup."
She smiled with satisfaction. She started to climb aboard, but Tommy told her to wait. He looked up and down the street, then spotted what he wanted. "Stay here a minute. That's Lopez's office, according to the sign. I want to see him."
He hurried across the road and Amy waited, studying the beauty of the mountains all around them. "This is the Sangre de Cristo range, isn't it?" she asked.
Diego nodded.
A procession of half a dozen burros led by a small man in a serape and sombrero came into view. The animals were laden with wood. "Pinon logs from the mountains," Diego said. "For firewood."
Before Amy could answer, Tommy and Lopez emerged from the office. They stood in the road beside Lopez's black Model-T Ford. Amy went to join them.
"Good morning, Mrs. Westerman," Lopez said with a broad smile. "I trust you're rested from your travels. Mr. Westerman here is trying to buy my motor car. I keep telling him there aren't many roads out to your place. And none of 'em is paved."
Tommy signaled to the Indian. "Diego, come here a minute." He joined them. "You know anything about the Model-T?" Tommy asked.
"A little."
"Go anywhere, right? You can drive it over anything?"
"That's what they say."
"What do you think? Will it make it to Santo Domingo?"
The Indian sucked in his cheeks, and Amy saw his eyes dart to Tommy's buil-tup shoe, then back to the car. "Yeah, I think it might."
"Good. I think so too. How about it, Mr. Lopez?" Tommy took out his wallet and withdrew two hundred-dollar bills. They crackled with newness. "Almost as much as you paid for her."
"This flivver is practically new. I just went down and got her from Albuquerque four months ago."
"And she cost you ... what? Three-fifty?" Lopez nodded. Tommy took out another hundred. Amy swallowed hard. Their working capital had just shrunk by three hundred dollars.
Lopez stared at the car and the money. "Okay, you're a nice young fella, and you're just starting out. I'll take it."
There were handshakes all around. On their way out of town they stopped at the telegraph office and sent a wire to Lil and Warren. "Arrived safely. Everything beautiful," it said. Then they set out on the last leg of their journey.
Amy rode in the buckboard with Diego while Tommy followed behind in the Model-T. They came down through the foothills into the desert, and she didn't try to absorb it all because she knew she couldn't. For now, it was enough to sense the vast bronzed land through which she traveled. Later she would become as intimate with it as once she'd been with the African bush.
Soon Santa Fe became a smudge to the north, and the sun grew hotter. Amy removed her jacket and opened the neck of her silk blouse. Diego reached behind and gave her a tattered parasol. "Used to be a canopy on this thing," he said. "It got torn."
"Well, we'll have to replace it right away," Amy said. Then she wondered if Diego was in her employ. "Do you work for us?"
"When DeAngeles was the owner I was foreman."
"And now?"
He shrugged. "Up to you."
They rode on in silence across a flat mesa studded with cacti and low scrub, and roofed by the blinding blue sky. In some places the vegetation was thicker than in others. Once they saw a huddled mass on the horizon which Diego identified as Pecos Pueblo.
She wanted to ask him about the pueblos and if he lived in his or at the ranch. Just when she had decided to broach the subject Diego signaled a halt. They stopped and Tommy joined them by the buckboard. "She's doing fine. I knew the flivver wouldn't let us down. How about you?" he asked Amy. "Sun too much?"
"Not for me. I'm used to it, remember?"
"You been out here before?" Diego asked, handing them a drink of water from the canteen he carried. "I thought you was eastern folks."
"I was brought up in Africa," Amy explained. Diego look blank.
"It's a lot like this," she added. "And it's just as hot. "
He nodded. "I stopped here so's you could get your first look at the place," he said.
"Our place, you mean?" Tommy asked, surprised.
"Yup, Your land begins at that line of cottonwood trees. "
"It's not exactly a well-defined border," Amy said softly.
"Fences are no part of the code of the Old West," Tommy said. "Isn't that so, Diego?"
"Mr. DeAngeles had a fence once. Least his pa did. It ain't been up for years."
They took their places and began traveling again. The next time Amy checked her watch it was after one. When she looked up there was a shadow in the distance ahead of them. "That's it," Diego told her.
The arch was of wrought iron, and it stood unmarked by time, a surreal incongruity on the earth. Whatever fence it had once been part of was gone without a trace. The words "Santo Domingo" were carved deep in a wooden sign swinging from the apex of the arch.
They passed beneath the useless thing, as if going around it would break some ancient taboo, and pulled up by a clutter of des
erted buildings. "That's the main house," Diego said pointing. "Ain't been no one living in it for years."
"I thought Mr. DeAngeles left just a few weeks ago," Amy said.
"Yeah. But far back as I can remember, Mr. DeAngeles lived in there." Diego pointed to a small shed standing a few feet away.
Amy ignored his pointing finger and took a step closer to the structure he'd identified as the main house. It was made of adobe, like everything else, and turned to the world only a long blank wall pocked with ruin. It had been washed pink some time in the past. Now it was faded to a dark earthy terracotta. "It's a beautiful color," she said to Tommy. "I'm going to have a look." Her voice was slightly shrill.
"Wait a minute," Tommy said. "Don't go alone."
She paid no attention, but walked in her high-heeled patent leather city shoes across the pebbled ground.
There was a single opening in the wall and she pushed at a door of splintered, sun-bleached wood. It fell backward off rotted hinges. Amy had to clamber over it to make her way inside. Then she was in a small square room with doors in all the walls. She hesitated, then turned right. Tommy's step sounded on the newly formed wooden bridge. "In here," she called.
He came up behind her, and they walked from room to room, neither touching nor speaking. The house was built as a quadrangle. Each space led to another. One corner room had a second story, but the staircase had long since rotted away and only the opening in the ceiling remained.
"This must be the kitchen," Tommy said when they arrived at a place with a big chimney in one wall and a waist-high shelf running around the other three. "Here's the famous 'Water laid on to the house.' " He touched a rusty pump handle and it fell apart in his hand.
"There's a patio," Amy said. "We haven't seen it yet." The center of the quadrangle was occupied by an open area, still showing the chipped remains of a tile floor. In the middle, dominating all else, was a massive gray-trunked tree that spread its branches across the roof. Diego sat beneath the tree waiting for them.
"This here's special," he said patting the trunk. "Mr. DeAngles told me to tell you about it, so's you'd understand. His grandpa went to Spain once and brought the tree back with him. It was about two feet tall when they planted it. Then they built the house."
"It's a eucalyptus, I think," Tommy said, gazing up into the leafy branches. "Can't say for sure which one. They're called gum trees."
"This is the only one in New Mexico," Diego insisted. "It ain't got a name."
"Of course it has a name," Tommy said in disgust. "Everything does."
Amy was surprised. She had not known that Tommy knew anything about trees. "Does it flower?" she asked him.
"Can't say without knowing the variety."
"It has flowers in the spring," Diego said sullenly.
"What color are they?" Amy asked. She was holding her breath.
"White. Very small, but they smell sweet."
She tried not to show her disappointment. If he had said the flowers were red, everything else might not have mattered so much. "We were told the house was furnished," she said-as if that were the only deception she had noted among so many.
"There's some stuff in there." Diego jerked his head in the direction of one of the rooms.
Amy went to look. She discovered a few pieces of heavy carved oak. They were thick with dust and pushed far back into a dark corner. Much of the house was dark and cool, for the windows were small and few.
"We can't live here," Tommy said when she came back and reported on the furniture.
"The shed's got a bed and a few things," Diego supplied.
Tommy looked at him with loathing, as if it were the Indian's fault that they had bought a crumbling ruin. "Show me," he said briskly.
They went outside and Amy waited while Tommy made an inspection of the shed. "It could be worse," he told her when he came out, "but not much."
"We'll just have to wait until we can have a good look around," she said as brightly as she could. "Then we'll figure out how to get all this in shape." She turned to Diego. "Tell me, where are the cattle?"
He looked at her in puzzlement.
"The cattle," Amy repeated. "Where are they?" In Africa they had kept their livestock in a large fenced stockade behind the house.
She craned her neck to look for such a structure, but saw nothing.
"You passed most of 'em," Diego said. "I don't understand." Her brown eyes studied his brown face.
"The open range," Tommy said through clenched teeth. "The cattle are running free on the range. Isn't that it, Diego?"
"Yeah." He didn't meet their eyes.
"Anybody out riding herd on them?"
"Ain't nobody working the place now. Not since Mr. DeAngeles left."
"And for how long before that?" Tommy asked softly.
"A year, maybe two," was the muttered reply.
"Oh, sweet Jesus." Tommy took his silver hip flask from his pocket and uncorked it. "Here memsahib, have a drink. We're going to need it."
She shook her head, and he looked at her and laughed without mirth. Then he took a long deep swallow.
15
"WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE LOPEZ LIED?" AMY asked. She smoothed the threadbare blanket over the cot. Her nails snagged on the shredded wool.
"Don't know." Tommy put down his razor, wiped the last of the soap from his face, and carried the chipped enamel basin to the door. "But I sure as hell mean to ask."
"Don't!" she called swiftly.
"Don't ask?" He turned to her in amazement, still holding the basin.
"Don't throw out the water. We have to conserve. Here, I found this bucket to collect slops."
He stared at the dirty water. "Am I supposed to wash in this again?"
She managed a despairing laugh. "No, I'll use the second-hand water for cleaning this place."
It was a two-room adobe shed; low-ceilinged, dirt-floored, with a cot, a table, and a chair in one of the rooms, and a rudimentary kitchen in the other. An outhouse out back provided the only sanitary facilities, and near the splintered and sagging front door a hollow scooped in the earth held evidence of past cook fires. It was the home DeAngeles made for himself when he left the rotting hacienda. Now it was theirs.
Tommy dumped his offering into the tin bucket she indicated, and went back to stare at the sunrise.
Finally he turned his back on the splendor of the morning. "I'm going into Santa Fe. Lopez will have to help get our money back."
"Do you think he will?"
Tommy shrugged. "I don't know. But I can threaten him with disbarment. Lawyers can't practice if they get tossed out of their private club."
"Well," she said, "it's worth trying. And I'll give you a list of things to get in Santa Fe."
"Listen, let's talk about that some more. The hotel in town isn't bad. For God's sake, Amy, you can't mean it about staying here."
They had spent all the previous afternoon and most of the night arguing that question. Now she squared her shoulders as resolutely as she had yesterday. "I mean it," she said. "We made our bed, Tommy, and we're going to lie in it until something better comes along. At least I am," she added quietly. "I can't make you stay."
"I can't very well leave you here alone. You're not offering me any real choice."
Amy didn't bother to answer. She went to the open trunk in the corner and looked for something to wear.
Tommy made a gesture of disgust, then walked off to check the gasoline tank in the flivver. It was low, so he topped it off from the spare can on the running board. Amy came out. He looked up from his task and stared at her in astonishment.
"Clothes from home," she said. "What all the ladies wear in Africa. What do you think?"
She was dressed in buff-colored cotton twill. The blouse was simple and loose-fitting. She had rolled up the sleeves and left the neck unbuttoned. The skirt had a center seam that divided it into wide-legged trousers.
"You look like you're wearing pants. Like a man," he said.
&n
bsp; "It's practical. You're always having to climb over things in a place like this. Good for riding too."
He busied himself with some adjustment to the car. "You ride well, don't you?"
"I've done it all my life."
"Yeah." He wiped a tool with an oily rag. "Good for you. Any chance of getting some breakfast around here? Or don't you do that sort of thing when you're dressed like one of the boys."