Indian Affairs (historical romance) Page 2

  With disgust at herself, she ground out her cigarette as Brendon hurried off to victory on another field. When she had been younger, healthier, she had never backed away from a fight. “A little scrapper,” her father had once declared with pride.

  Of course, she had yet to oppose him.

  * * * * * *

  How long before the General and Brendon found out that she was withdrawing Jeremy from his spring semester at Foxhurst? Abducting him, for all intents and purposes, with the excuse his estimable grandfather was terminally ill.

  Foxhurst’s headmaster, an incredibly tall, thin man with a laurel leaf of brown hair around his balding head, challenged her authority. “Senator O’Quinn did not notify us you would be withdrawing Jeremy.”

  Her gloved hands, hidden in the fur muff, began to tremble, but her tongue found the courage to blurt, “Didn’t you know? My husband has been engaged in a filibuster the past two days. He doesn’t know when it may end, so I have come to collect our son.”

  The eyes hooded. “Edmund?” the headmaster called out.

  A man not much taller than her son appeared as if by magic at the open door. His thumbs riffled through his fingers. “Sir?”

  “Check Jeremy O’Quinn’s folder. Who’s on the Authorized For Class Removal list?”

  Edmund’s head bobbed. “Yes sir.” He vanished.

  Foxhurst was only blocks from Capitol Hill, and twice a year, as regularly as spring and winter solstices, Brendon had delivered and collected Jeremy from the prep school. Her name wouldn’t be on that list.

  The headmaster circled his paper-orderly desk to take a seat, his hands locked before him. “Please have a seat, Mrs. O’Quinn. I’m sure you appreciate the fact we have rules to – ”

  “I prefer to stand.” Her mouth was desert dry. “I have little time. And however much I might appreciate your rules, should the General die without seeing his grandson, your rules might appear harshly rigid to others.”

  His knuckles crunched. The only visible impact her stance had on him.

  She delivered another punch. “Alumni might reconsider their donation pledges.”

  “Sir?” The brownie appeared at the door again.

  “Yes, Edmund?”

  “Senator O’Quinn is the only name on the list, sir.”

  The headmaster’s brow climbed to his laurel leaf hairline. A satisfied smile stretched his pale lips. He placed his palms flat on his desk and rose. “Well, there is nothing, then, that I can – ”

  The anger she had kept tamped down since the family meeting with Dr. Silverman the month before exploded finally. For far too long she had been compliant. Made it too easy on them. How the hell had she let this happen? “Now you listen to me, asshole. You release my son to me or your position is in jeopardy.” Being a military brat had its merits. “Get my son in this office. Now!”

  Amazing how a few choice words backed by a belligerent attitude could work Presto Magic. Five minutes and she and Jeremy, his trunk in tow, were leaving Foxhurst.

  Five minutes – five months. Five months, she estimated, standing with Jeremy at the top of the prep school’s steps, until the summer holidays. Five months before her father and husband would probably realize one of their own was missing in action.

  An icy band of January air slapped her in the face. What was the penalty for this crime she had committed? As the General was fond of warning, “There will be hell to pay.”

  Chapter Two

  The ugly, smelly Denver & Rio Grande coach swayed back and forth with its crowd of young people returning from Christmas holidays. Sand and alkali dust coated everything. In the evenings, a kerosene lamp lit each end of the cramped coaches. By day, Jeremy pressed his nose against the soot-smudged window and stared at the bleak plains stretching monotonously beyond the limit of his vision. “My professor says Taos, New Mexico, gets its name from the Chinese term for Right Way.”

  She set aside the latest issue of Mercure de France, which she had been only half-heartedly reading. The French magazine subscription evoked memories of her year at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts. Afterward, she had unsuccessfully tried her hand at book and magazine illustrations. Then Brendon persuaded her she’d do better as his wife.

  She looked out at the emptiness. Instantly, she felt overwhelmed. She couldn’t let Jeremy know how much she hated and feared the vista before her. A grin tweaked one side of her mouth. “Hey, kiddo, what would the Chinese know about a cluster of mud pueblos in the middle of America’s high desert?”

  Jeremy turned an earnest gaze on her. “My professor says that the Chinese walked over some kind of land bridge . . . and that the Indians here are their descendants.”

  Needing to touch this child as dear to her as her next breath, she brushed the rebelliously corkscrewing hair from his eyes. Both of them had inherited impossibly curling, dark brown hair from her maternal grandmother, an Italian from the old country. Alessandra had been among the first women in the capital to bob her hair, an ineffective method of curl control that incurred both her father’s disapproval and her husband’s disappointment. Which was probably why she had cut her wealth of hair. Small displays of rebellion, because she lacked the courage of a soldier’s daughter to openly defy.

  “I see,” she replied in as light a tone as she could muster. “Your professor knows a lot.”

  For God’s sake, the professor couldn’t even spell the name ‘Alessandra’ right. “Hmmmm. I thought I read somewhere that the name Taos comes from an Indian word. Red willow . . . or something like that.”

  “Oh,” he muttered.

  So much for her extensive reading on northern New Mexico after Dr. Silverman’s visit.

  Jeremy’s gaze remained fixed on a sun-blasted landscape better suited to the spirit than the flesh.

  His dismissive “oh” struck her heart like a dart. One of many lately. She shouldn’t have made her comment. It sounded like a challenge. When would she learn to keep her mouth shut? The gods knew how she hated being challenged; her words and actions reduced to insignificance. Insignificance. That was a damning word. Damn it!

  The closer their little train chugged toward Lamy, the nearest depot to Santa Fe, the more restless and agitated she became. The land’s vastness, its strangeness, constricted her breathing and made her pulse race. This was a foolhardy journey, doomed from the start. Even so, since committing herself to it, she had been almost eager to reach her destination.

  To end this shallow existence she called Life. Adventure, for better or worse, awaited her.

  She unpinned her lace handkerchief, gritty from the dust filtering into the coach, and wiped her face. Her foot was bobbing in that habit that annoyed Brendon so much. She stopped the motion.

  A cigarette. God, could I use a cigarette. Whatever possessed me to give them up? I should do just one thing at a time. Isn’t removing myself to the isolation of a mountain outpost challenge enough?

  Blue daubs of snow-capped mountain ranges expanded to claim the horizon. Stark mesas and rocky canyons appeared. Earth striped in tones of copper and dusty orange and turquoise dazzled her eye. The dread and lethargy she felt were still there, but there was something else, too.

  What?

  Anticipation?

  With Death breathing down her neck, Alessandra found herself probing her thoughts ever more deeply. Evaluating feelings. Analyzing actions.

  What am I about? Was I born only to procreate and die? And what is this new feeling, this anticipation? Of what? A life outside of dull, little lives scraped out in warrens of clammy, cramped cities. A life outside damp, mildewed backwoods of a dreary landed gentry? What unseen hand is it that grips my apathetic soul so tightly?

  With her face pressed against the train window beside her son’s, she suddenly realized what it was that disturbed her so. The light.

  The sunlight vibrated, like an unseen but powerful presence. Closing her eyes against its invasion was futile. She felt the light transfusing her. She felt lightheaded. Light-hearted.
As if her depression was being diluted.

  When finally the train pulled into Lamy, she stepped from the coach and felt herself involuntarily inhaling deeply. The air swept her nose, her mouth, her lungs, painfully gorging them with crisp, clean, sweet scent. A blue plume of smoke rose from the depot chimney. The pungent incense of burning piñon prickled her nostrils. She shivered from exposure to the first surge of life she had felt in a long time.

  The depot was a single story of gray, weathered boards. Beyond it, a dirt road pointed toward the mountains dominating the landscape. The setting sun painted them an intense red. The Sangre de Cristos, blood of Christ, the peaks were called. Mystically, the light was melding into hues of rust, magenta, and rose.

  Her cloche, its narrow brim turned down, wasn’t shade enough to shield her eyes from the intense light. As she paced, briskly rubbing her arms, a chilly wind played with the pleated hem of her indigo serge skirt and the long, peacock-patterned silk scarf at her neck. Even at this altitude, the cold didn’t cut through to the bone like the raw damp of Washington’s dreary winters.

  Sand crystals slithered about her patent-toed, button boots, bringing her back to the here and now. A sudden coughing spasm seized her, and she fumbled yet again for her soiled handkerchief.

  Jeremy retrieved it from her cuff and unceremoniously held it up. “Mom, where’s the man who’s supposed to take us on to Taos?”

  His anxious gaze told her he felt as unnerved as she. She felt like a little girl. Abandoned. Mother dead; father away at war; brother, crying, clutching at her hand too hard.

  Madness this coming to the ends of the earth, so far from family and friends.

  Merely to die.

  No. To live!

  She wrapped an arm around her son’s narrow shoulders. Besides her wayward hair, he had also inherited her small-boned frame. She flashed him a reassuring grin. “I’m sure Mr. Genét will be along soon.”

  Next to the depot platform, two cowboys in sheepskin coats sat easily on their horses, waiting for the last of the train’s stragglers to descend. A stagecoach, probably older than the depot, was parked at the platform’s other end.

  “Oh, swell!” Jeremy piped enthusiastically when he spotted the stagecoach. “Mom, can we ride in it?”

  “If we have to . . . and no more ‘swells’ please, if you don’t mind.” His eager smile softened her admonishment.

  Yes, she had only to get through the next twelve months. Then she could escape this desolate land and its backward people and return to civilization.

  At that moment, a swirl of dust poured over the hill. An old Auto Blanche, a sort of prairie schooner on a Chevrolet truck chassis, clattered and wheezed toward the depot. Its cloud of dust settled only after the truck pulled to a stop.

  “If that’s our ride, Mom,” Jeremy muttered, “maybe we’d better take the stage.”

  A slight man unfolded stiff legs and climbed down. He wore breeches, a suede riding jacket, and an umber beret, which he removed to reveal deep yellow, crinkly hair. “Mrs. O’Quinn?”

  “I’m she.”

  He offered his hand and a sunny smile formed by a mouth that easily stretched like India rubber. “I’m Henri Genêt.”

  She liked him at once. He wasn’t much taller than her five-foot-two frame and his snub nose was constellated with freckles. Wire-rim glasses magnified his lively blue eyes. She guessed he was in his early thirties.

  “Sorry, I’m late.” He glanced with loving disgust at the prairie schooner. “This vehicle has a mind of its own.” His tenor voice carried no trace of a French accent. “I’ve reserved rooms at the La Fonda Hotel for the night. Tomorrow we can get an early start for Taos.”

  Disappointment swept over her. “It’ll take that long?”

  He hefted her bags and carried them to the truck. “Well, it’s not the traffic hour here. It’s the road system, mostly dirt. Is this all you brought?”

  She nodded toward the platform. “And that steamer trunk. Oh . . .” she tried a tentative smile, “ . . . and the saltwater taffy you requested in your telegram.”

  Though the trunk was as large as Jeremy, Henri finally got it loaded into the truck. Jeremy sat in front with their escort and the bags. She climbed in back with the trunk. The vehicle’s once shiny leather seats had split, the horsehair padding now poking through. A well-used Underwood typewriter and a mandolin case also shared the back seat with her.

  Once stopped, the Auto Blanche refused to start. With an embarrassed grin, Henri climbed down and knelt in front to crank the engine by hand. The cowboys and stagecoach passengers all watched his performance. He churned the crank, muttered, wiped his brow. Then, with more intense resolve, he whirled the crank some more. At last, the truck throbbed to life,

  Back in the driver’s seat, Henri raised his voice to make himself heard over the engine noise. “Unfortunately, the adobe your husband rented for you isn’t, er, presentable yet, so I’ve arranged for you to stay in the meantime at Peg’s . . . ah, Mabel Dodge Luhan’s . . . hacienda.”

  Only Jeremy’s presence kept Alessandra from groaning his Oh, just swell!

  “Anyone who’s someone eventually does,” he added with a wry grin. “You might say Peg presides over Taos society.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.” Scandal mongers loved the notoriety-seeking woman. Mabel Dodge Luhan had three marriages behind her. In her younger days, she had had an affair with the promiscuous poet-turned-Red, John Reed. Five years ago, she had taken up with – no married – an uneducated Indian in moccasins and long braids, and ever since newspapers nationwide had been caricaturing her. “Greenwich Village obviously wasn’t to her liking,” Alessandra said.

  “She does seem to have found happiness in Taos.”

  And I will, too. Even if it kills me.

  “She’s letting you and Jeremy temporarily sleep in the log cabin she built for her son. He’s on his honeymoon in Florence. But I think Georgia O’Keefe’s due to occupy the log cabin in a several weeks.”

  “How long have you and Senator Bursum been friends?” she asked conversationally.

  “Barely know him. I met him at a Matachine Dance performed by the Nambe Pueblo Indians for his inauguration. Now those dances are not to be missed. The inaugural balls on Capitol Hill can’t rival the pageantry of an Indian dance.”

  Santa Fe’s plaza and hotel took almost an hour to reach from the Lamy depot. Had Henri failed to point out the Governor’s Palace, she still would have recognized it as a building of importance. It was that unmistakable. With its portico, the Governor’s Palace occupied one long wall of the plaza.

  “The adobe building,” Henri told her, “has served as a Spanish capitol long before the first Pilgrim set foot on Plymouth Rock.”

  So much for Father’s illustrious Mayflower lineage he lorded over Mother’s impoverished Italian heritage! The Spanish hidalgos were here long before that.

  Alessandra had never seen Indians before, except at Madison Square Garden, when Buffalo Bill had brought his marvelous Traveling Wild West Circus to town. The Indians squatting under the plaza’s portals to display their silver and turquoise jewelry possessed none of circus Indians’ fierce bravado. These scrawny women all had their hair chopped short at the jaw, sort of a Buster Brown-fashioned shingle. The men, faces expressionless, were stolidly wrapped in red-and-black patterned blankets.

  Quite a few people, mostly Americans with Kodak box cameras, still strolled the dusty, treeless plaza. Others inspected the jewelry displayed on the Indians’ brightly colored blankets. “Why so many Americans?” she asked.

  Henri looked askance at her. “They’re taking the cure . . .T.B., you know.”

  “Oh, of course.” She refrained from asking the success rate.

  His flustered expression made her wonder if he knew the reason she was there. She had pointedly asked Brendon tell no one of her affliction. She preferred the Taos community of painters, writers and other intellectuals believe she was taking a respite from Washingto
n society.

  Henri nodded toward the plaza’s multi-story adobe hotel, recently rebuilt. Before the balconied La Fonda, several automobiles shared parking spaces with a brown and yellow Harvey car inscribed Southwestern Indian Detours.

  Her weariness must have shown, because Henri said, “We can stay an extra day before setting out for Taos if you’d like, Mrs. O’Quinn.”

  “Alessandra, please. No, I want to get settled in what’s to be my home for the coming year.”

  “As I said, the house you’re to occupy isn’t much, a run-down, four-room adobe. Well that and an outhouse.”

  “That’s all right. I can have repairs made. If we have to, we can live in the outhouse. Right, Jeremy?”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “That’s no baloney.”

  She gave him a narrow-eyed squint of reproof but was feeling too good to say anything. Where her optimism was coming from, she had no idea. It was as if some wellspring within her had burbled to life, right in the middle of the barren high desert.

  * * * * *

  Light, crystalline light, probed through the shutter slats to awaken her. The first rays of daybreak warmed her, eased into all her pores and seeped deeper into her tension-taut muscles. La Fonda’s whitewashed walls reflected the lambent light so that if she lowered her lids and peeked through her lashes, the room actually seemed to pulsate.

  She lay on the metal-frame bed with its thin mattress atop hard springs and savored the newfound serenity. No, the room’s appointments hadn’t created the sensation. The thick clay walls made the room feel cavernous. An oak bureau and a wash stand bearing a heavy china set were the only other items in the chamber.

  Yes, it was the light. Lifting her spirits. Almost lifting her body. Dissipating its heaviness. Promising something. What? If her last days were to be spent in this mysterious land, she vowed, she meant to find a way to appreciate every precious minute.

  Later that morning, still early by Eastern standards, barely eight o’clock, they left Santa Fe, following a corduroy road toward infinity. A place out of time, not bound by any restrictions. An intriguing thought.