Trilby (29 page)

Fall came to Louisiana as well as Arizona. Alexandra Bates was sipping tea with her mother in the parlor when the maid announced a gentleman caller.

“That Harrow fellow again, I fear,” Mrs. Bates said, with resignation and a wistful smile at Sissy. “We will have to have him shot, Sissy, or he won’t go away. Well, show him in,” she told the maid, who curtsied and went out. “Why does your father have to go off on these hunting trips and leave me to field your persistent suitors!”

Sissy smiled, but not with much enthusiasm. She was still mourning Naki. Over the months, her spirit had dwindled and she took little interest in anything. She had given up her studies, almost life itself. Richard
had grown up, changed for the better, and had become engaged to a kind, sweet girl. Ben had gone to Texas, of all places, to become a Texas Ranger. Sissy was the only sibling still living at home. She wondered if she would ever be able to feel again. The Mr. Harrow to whom her mother referred was a widower who had taken a shine to Sissy, much against her wishes. She grew fatigued with finding ways to avoid him. She wanted only one man, and he was dead. She’d mourned him forever, it sometimes seemed.

Mrs. Bates greeted the caller before Sissy saw him. It was definitely not Mr. Harrow. This man was tall and elegantly dressed. He had a faintly Continental look, as a Frenchman would have, with black hair neatly cut and combed and eyes like liquid black pearls. He was incredibly handsome and refined, and the suit he wore was as immaculate as his highly polished black boots.

“Mrs. Bates?” he asked the elder woman, smiling. “I was told that I might find Alexandra here. Ah, yes. There you are!” he added, glancing past the older woman to where Sissy sat on the upholstered sofa.

Alexandra Bates, in her dark dress, sat and stared at him from a face that grew whiter and whiter, until not a drop of blood was left in it.

“Look out, she’s going to faint!” Mrs. Bates exclaimed, shocked.

Naki leaped forward to catch her, his powerful body easily absorbing her weight. Her thinness tore at his heart.

He laid her gently on the sofa, and Mrs. Bates, fluttering, called for the maid and sent her for smelling salts.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, what’s wrong with her?” Mrs. Bates moaned worriedly.

“Does she have these spells often?” Naki asked, his eyes clinging hungrily to Sissy’s beloved, unconscious face.

“No. But she hasn’t been the same since she came home from Arizona months ago. She’s mourned that man…” She remembered that she had a guest, a stranger, and stopped speaking. She smiled. “It’s of no importance. You haven’t yet introduced yourself, young man.”

“Haven’t I?” he murmured absently, because she was stirring now. He possessed Alexandra’s soft little hand and held it tightly. His fine dark eyes searched her face. “Sissy,” he called gently.

She opened her eyes and they dilated. She shivered. “You’re dead!” she whispered brokenly. “Naki, you’re dead, you’re dead!”

“No,” he whispered tenderly, smiling. “How could I die and leave you behind?”

“Naki!” Her voice ripped with emotion. She held out her arms, and was lifted and cradled fiercely against his heart. His eyes closed. He rocked her, his arms enfolding her a little roughly as the months of loneliness boiled over, the emotion on his smooth features evident even to a blind woman, which Mrs. Bates quite definitely was not.

“Well,” she said, clasping her hands before her as realization set in. She smiled. “I must say, young man, you are nothing like the mental picture I had of you.”

He looked at her over Sissy’s dark head with a soft, slow smile. “I daresay you expected feathers and war paint?”

Mrs. Bates chuckled. “Exactly. Do you like tea?”

“With plenty of ice,” he said, “if you please. Mexico is short of that particular commodity.”

While Mrs. Bates left discreetly to supervise a tray for them, Naki helped Sissy into a sitting position and searched her radiant face warmly.

“I had a few close calls, but I’m all right. I’ve earned some land of my own, Alexandra. I bought a tract of it near Cancún,” he said, without preamble. “It will be foreign to us both, I’m afraid, but we can live there in peace and without prejudice. I will always be Apache, and I have no intention of hiding my race or denying my pride in it. But heritage doesn’t depend on geography. I can be an Apache in Mexico as well as I can in Arizona.”

“You’d be giving up everything!” she protested weakly.

“Not quite,” he replied quietly. “But the alternative is to either take you to the reservation, where you would suffer the prejudice, or try to live in a white world and suffer it myself. I think Mexico is our only choice.” He searched her eyes hungrily. “You have to decide if sharing my life is worth giving up your home and your way of life.”

Her eyes registered the enormity of what he was telling her. She smiled and went soft in his arms. “What a small thing to sacrifice, when I would gladly give up my life to stay with you,” she said simply.

His eyes closed. It was profound, this feeling. More profound than anything he’d ever known. In his mind, he could picture Alexandra in his arms on tropical nights, the thunder and lightning crashing while he made himself master of her soft, virginal body. He shiv
ered with the thought of the ecstasy they would share. He looked at her and thought that such a dream would be worth anything. Even, as she had said, life itself.

“Yes,” he said huskily. “I feel just as deeply for you. Shall we risk it?”

She smiled and shook her head. “There will be no risk.” She reached up and put her mouth hungrily against his.

“Even with love like this on both sides, it will not be easy.” He tried to speak through her kisses.

She smiled and kissed him harder. “I want children after we’re married,” she said solemnly. She put her hand over his mouth when he began to protest. “I want lots and lots of children,” she said again, each word measured and firm.

He sighed. “Alexandra, we have spoken of this mixing of races—”

“Which will go unnoticed in Mexico,” she finished. She smiled. “And our children will be especially beautiful,” she whispered, picturing them in her mind.

It was hard to argue with her. His hands framed her face and he smiled at her. “Beautiful children?” he breathed.

“Beautiful,” she emphasized. “We’ll tell them about their Apache heritage, and make them proud of it. And we’ll love them so much,” she said fervently, reaching up. “Almost as much as we love each other…”

He could find no argument with that. In the end, he began kissing her hungrily—and yielded with grace to the almost unbearable joy of a shared future.

T
RILBY AND
T
HORN
had a son late in the autumn, a handsome young man with his father’s dark eyes and his
mother’s coloring. He was named Caleb, for his late paternal grandfather.

Naki and Sissy, on the other hand, had five children, all of whom favored their handsome and very successful father.

Richard Bates married his debutante, who loved him all her life, despite his tendency to stray.

Teddy Lang grew up to be sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, and little Samantha Vance married a doctor in Douglas.

Ben Bates became a captain of the Texas Rangers.

Caleb Vance married a Spanish girl, ran for the United States Senate, and won.

As for Lisa Morris, she married her Captain Powell and surprised everyone by becoming pregnant the very next year.

F
RANCISCO
“P
ANCHO
” V
ILLA
, who had become well known in revolutionary circles after the Battle of Juárez, meanwhile, was deserted by Madero, arrested, and placed in jail. He later escaped. In late November of 1911, Zapata rose against Madero. Orozco formed an army to oppose him and was defeated by Huerta, who had deposed Madero and had him put to death.

On March 6, 1913, in the night, Pancho Villa left El Paso and crossed the border into Mexico. He had with him eight men, nine rifles, five hundred rounds of ammunition, two pounds of coffee, two pounds of sugar, and a pound of salt. By 1914, he had raised an army, the Northern Division, and chased the
Federales
out of the capital city of Chihuahua and the state of Sonora. Several years after Trilby’s experience, there would be a second, decisive battle for Agua Prieta, spearheaded
by Pancho Villa on November 1, 1915—the first battle that Villa was to lose in the state of Sonora to the
Federales.

Through the course of the revolution, despite his setbacks, Villa led charge after charge with his men and his cannon,
El Niño,
and was immortalized in a book by Harvard journalist John Reed, who rode with him. Among the foreigners who shared Villa’s joys and defeats was an American who later had a grand career as a motion picture cowboy—a fellow by the name of Tom Mix.

Villa finally surrendered in 1920, three years after a new constitution was legislated that provided for land reform and nationalism. Zapata was killed in 1919, Villa was assassinated in 1923. The revolution was effectively over. Col. Alvaro Obregón became president of Mexico in 1921.

Despite the revolution, nothing really changed very much. There were reforms, yes, but influential foreign investors still controlled much of Mexico’s wealth. The rural Mexican people still subsisted on meager wages. The only real change was the name of the man sitting in the president’s chair.

T
HORN AND
T
RILBY
sat on their front porch several years after the first battle of Agua Prieta, watching the local aviator’s biplane sail gracefully through the air in the early days of World War I in Europe.

“They say they’ll be using those things in an air war overseas,” he said, his fine dark eyes twinkling. “If I were a few years younger, I might try my hand at aviation. Those planes seemed to work well enough for Villa at the end of the revolution.”

“The planes and
El Niño,
” she mused dryly.

He leaned back in the swing, sliding an easy arm around her shoulders. Samantha had gone away to school in the East, and young Caleb was out back with Teddy, learning how to mend harnesses. And life was sweet.

“Do you ever miss the old life?” he asked suddenly, glancing down at her. “Louisiana and cotillions and genteel company, I mean?”

She pressed her hand flat against his chest and laid her cheek on his shoulder to stare up at him adoringly. “No,” she said simply.

“Not even a life without dust?” he persisted.

“I like dust. It’s pretty. It goes well with my skin.” She traced his nose and smiled. “I love you,” she whispered.

He sighed, appeased, and rested his cheek on her hair. “You’ve changed.”

“Oh, yes. I can shoot a gun and saddle a horse and wield an ax,” she replied jauntily. “Not to mention stitching wounds and participating in revolutions.”

He chuckled. “And I do at least have a semblance of party manners, so I won’t embarrass Samantha when she brings her young man home.”

“You’d never embarrass any of us, least of all me, my dear.” She slid onto his lap and eased her head into the crook of his arm. “But if you like, we can refresh your memory on manners. For instance,” she whispered, tugging his head down so that she could touch her warm lips to his hard ones, “a gentleman always helps a lady in distress.”

Under her hand, his breathing increased, like his
heartbeat. Her ability to rouse him never weakened. “Are you in distress?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said fervently. “Great distress. Do you think you could assist me to the bedroom and help me to lie down?”

He chuckled wickedly. “I believe I might.” He stood up, still holding her, and walked back into the deserted house. “I hope our son is very interested in mending harnesses.”

“The door does have a lock,” she whispered, laughing, and nibbled his ear as she clung to him.

He bent his head and kissed her back, smiling against her welcoming lips.

Overhead, the colorful biplane made a lazy loop in the sky and turned back toward Douglas, waggling its wings at two boys who stood watching it far out in the field. It sailed as if on angel’s wings, a giant butterfly in the sun. And far below, on the winding road, the yellow dust blew on.