Authors: Parris Afton Bonds
"Grant Raffin was like a Roman deity, Wayne. But he was not Lario. For me there was only Lario.”
The old man hunched over his plate, squinting to better see his venerable opponent. "What was he like . . . this Indian whom you preferred over my father?”
"Lario was a simple man. A man capable of great tenderness and gentleness despite his savage Navajo blood.” Rosemary stared down into her glass, not seeing the ruby wine but images of a time never to be repeated. "I used to think of him like the fierce dust devils
— you remember the way the sand would get in your eyes so you couldn’t be seeing anything else? Lario was like that, except he got in my heart and mind so there was nothing else.”
"Not even your husband?” Wayne asked with a touch of spite.
Rosemary looked up sharply. A tight smile added to the creases in her face. "Stephen could see only a great dynasty controlled by his Anglo-bred children. ’Tis a great visionary he was, only I don’t think he ever planned that the heir to one day rule the state of New Mexico would be an Indian.” Her lips twisted wryly. "A fitting retribution.”
Wayne shoved his plate from him. "What makes you think this Chase Strawhand is your grandson
— Stephanie’s child? And why are you just now bringing it to light?”
"Cody found Chase
— and his record s— in one of the Indian boarding schools thirty-five years ago. He immediately wrote me, but it seems that with his death the letter was never mailed but boxed in a crate with the rest of his personal effects and shipped back to his ranch. Last year the family who bought the ranch went through the old boxes and trunks stored in the attic and forwarded the letter they found to me.”
The old man made an elaborate pretense of folding his napkin. "I see, but
— ”
"I hope you do—I hope you see that it’s a fair chance I want Chase to have in the governor’s race.”
Wayne laughed shortly. "I hate to disappoint you, Rosemary, but the Indian doesn’t stand a turkey’s chance on Thanksgiving.”
"I’d think ’tis glad you’d be if he broke off the marriage with your daughter,” Rosemary said, unperturbed.
"Hell! He’s made a laughing fool of her. An Indian rejecting a white girl — a senator’s daughter! No, that damned redskin’ll have to come crawling back, first.”
"That he won’t be doing.”
Wayne shrugged his stooped shoulders. "Then he’ll never see the swearing in.”
Rosemary sighed. She took the folded piece of paper from her dress pocket. "What’s that?” he asked.
"’Tis a copy of a letter I received nearly sixty years ago. The original is in my safekeeping. ’Tis from your father — asking that I keep you at my ranch. It was the summer after your scandal.”
She watched a shudder pass over the old man as he read it. The parchment skin around his eyes and mouth changed like a chameleon’s to a dull gray. He looked up, his hands shaking. His voice cracked. "So even then he knew about me?”
"He had heard the discreet rumors about your affair with that young man at the University, the one that was your best man, I believe. Your father thought if I kept you busy that summer you might forget your — what is it they call it these days — lover?”
The shoulders sagged. "Then it’s blackmail?”
"Tis justice,” she said tiredly.
It was odd, she thought. So many times when she had writhed at the blows dealt her, life had twisted everything around, somehow tying up all the loose ends, making everything right with age. Lario’s fatalism would have appreciated life’s joke.
* * * * *
Chase repeated the last words with his hand on the Bible. He was now governor. The first Indian governor of the state of New Mexico! His dark eyes swept over the assembled crowd to pause on the old woman seated in the front row in the wheelchair.
His grandmother, Rosemary Rhodes!
He had found it hard to assimilate
— if what she told him was true. And somehow, he knew it was. His joy should have been complete. But out there in the audience he did not find the one particular face he was looking for, the pair of laughing eyes. They had been like guiding lights in his mind — like the campfires of his youth, bright and warm.
He had sent her the invitation to the Inaugural Ball, but apparently she was not going to come. And Chase knew that the inaugural events could go to hell. He’d search out every house in Santa Fe, every shop, until he found her. He’d go back to the reservation if he had to.
But a peculiar kind of fear, foreign to him, seized hold. In all his masculine ego, he had never believed that Deborah might have married Miguel Montoya. Was it too late?
He stepped up the tempo of his acceptance speech, and when he finished, the reporters and people in the audience surged forward to congratulate him. He shook their hands, all the while his eyes searching.
His gaze crossed that enigmatic one of his grandmother. And something about the look she directed at him before she instructed the Mexican to roll her away told Chase she knew about Deborah. Why wouldn’t she? Didn’t the old woman know everything?
He edged his way through the people, shaking hands, politely thanking them for their support, as he tried to catch up with his grandmother. At the exit, he excused himself from the others and rushed to block the old woman’s way. His hands grasped the arms of the wheelchair. "You know, don’t you, Grandmother?”
Rosemary smiled. “I’m pleased with my grandson’s passion. I’ve seen the same blazing look of love in Lario’s eyes. Aye, the two of you look very much alike now that there is the touch of humility in your eyes. I’d never liked the bitterness I’d seen there.”
“Deborah, Where is she, Grandmother?”
"Deborah? You may find her at Cambria. Not too long ago I asked her to do a painting of the old Castle for me — I’m donating the painting to the Museum, you know.”
* * * * *
Deborah tilted her head and looked from the ugly cottonwood tree and the Castle that stood starkly against the backdrop of the Pecos escarpment to the image on her canvas. Somehow she did not think she quite caught the Castle’s grandeur. It was something you could not paint. It was like character. The house, the old lady — it had taken years to make the two the strong characters they were. She imagined the Castle — the old woman — had seen years of love and sorrow and joy and disappointment. Somehow the two seemed entwined with each other. Strength and beauty of spirit.
It was generous of the old woman to offer the place for her to paint. From what Miguel told her artists had been besieging the old woman for years to paint Cambria’s Castle. Yet Deborah felt no triumph in having secured the honor. The sight of the occasional Navajo shepherd boy, the wrangler, the store’s clerk
— too often she saw the same dusky eyes, the bronzed skin to remind her of her own people . . . and of Chase.
She must shake him from her mind. For years he had
occupied her every thought. Now he was governor. He had his life to make . . . as she must make hers.
She shook her head, as if she were indeed shaking Chase from her mind, and returned her concentration to the old house. She blinked her eyes, not quite certain of what she saw.
It was a man striding through the tall grass toward her. The red flannel headband marked him as Navajo. But it was the arrogant way he walked, the powerful build, that caught her attention and finally held her spellbound. She knew then as he moved inexorably closer and she saw the spellbindingly handsome face that it was Chase. Her heart began to beat in time to some primeval drum.
Chase took the paintbrush from her motionless hands and put it on the easel. In spite of her longing to clasp him to her, to rain impassioned kisses on that uncompromising face, she stiffened. "Chase,” she begged in a hoarse whisper as he drew her into his arms, "please, I can’t
. . .I won’t be a stand-in for — ”
"I’ve only three days before I have to return to Santa Fe to assume my duties,” he told her, his lips kissing her eyelids. "But it should be enough time for the singers to perform the Navajo marriage ceremony and a judge the civil one.”
Not quite believing that after all those years her secret childhood fantasy about this one man was coming to pass, she abandoned herself to the fierceness of his kisses. "There’s time enough later for the singers,” she whispered and let him draw her down into the concealment of the tall, sweet grass.
* * * * *
The old woman sat in the wheelchair beneath the ravaged cottonwood and watched her grandson stride across the land that was his — to the woman that was his. She felt no embarrassment, as the very old often do, when the young couple came together in a passionate embrace. Tactfully her gaze moved away. For a brief second it rested on the nearby headstone that bore the name of Lario Santiago. Her beloved would have been proud of his grandson, she thought.
Then her gaze moved beyond to the red-tinted horizon, and a small smile belied the glistening eyes that watched what surely had to be a dust devil dancing on the rim of Cambria’s far, far boundaries.
T H E E N D
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DUST DEVIL, I hope you will consider recommending the novel to your friends, as well as writing a good review for the novel at:
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Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of more than thirty-five published novels. She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in maj
or newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages. She donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.
Connect with Parris at http://parrisaftonbonds.com