Chapter 33
My beloved spoke and said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away with me.
âS
ONG OF
S
OLOMON
Several days laterâ
Â
The slow-rising sun flung crimson banners across the sky, but the valley was still in chilly shadow. Her pack mule heavy-laden with her belongings, which did not include any camera equipment, Stephanie stood beside Runner as the engine of the train belched large puffs of smoke into the air as it began taking the private cars away.
Stephanie shifted her gaze and felt a brief tinge of sadness as she watched the work gang ripping the tracks up from the ground, the private spur being dismantled. When she had sent a wire to Wichita, about what Adam had done, and about her decision not to give the Santa Fe shareholders any of the photographs that she had taken, an immediate corporate decision had been made to drop the plans for Adam's private spur and his town.
“Are you comfortable with your decision not to be on that train?” Runner asked, his eyes following the train as it picked up speed. “Are you certain that you want it to take away all of your photography equipment?” He turned his eyes down to Stephanie and took her hands, drawing her around to face him. “When we first met, your camera seemed most important to you. And now it is on the train, and you are here. How do you truly feel about that, Stephanie?”
“I must admit that I had some misgivings over knowing I won't be taking any more photographs,” she murmured. “It always made me feel so alive.”
“And now?” Runner persisted, his eyes searching her face. “How do you feel? Do you feel a heavy loss?”
She reached a hand to his cheek. “Not really,” she said, sighing. “You see, darling, I now only feel truly alive when I am with you. My career was important to me only because I had not yet found my true direction in life, or my true purpose for living.” She smiled up at him. “Darling, with you I have found the link that was missing in my life. You are my everything.”
Runner drew her into his arms and gave her a gentle, lingering kiss, then drew away from her and gazed at the pack mule. “You did not take many of your belongings from the train,” he said softly.
“I left most of my travel clothes behind,” she said. Leonida had promised that many beautiful Indian velveteen skirts and blouses would be awaiting her arrival in the village.
She looked at the train again, following it as it rumbled down the tracks toward Gallup. “Other than that, I am only taking with me what the mule can carry,” she murmured. “And that should be enough.”
“You are giving up so much,” Runner said, drawing her around again to face him. “Will you regret it later?”
“Never,” she said with determination.
“We have one last stop to make before going on to my village,” Runner said. “Are you dreading it much?”
Stephanie lowered her eyes to hide the despair in their depths over having finally faced up to the truth that Adam
was
a demon, someone she had truly never known.
“Am I up to seeing Adam taken from the holding cell at Fort Defiance for a trial in Gallup?” she said, slowly raising her eyes to Runner. “I must confess I will get no pleasure from it.”
“And then the trial?” Runner said, drawing her into his embrace again, hugging her. “That might drag on for months, Stephanie. Will you be able to hold up under that sort of pressure? You will be questioned over and over again about your stepbrother. Will you be able to testify against him, as you must?”
Stephanie twined her arms around him and clung to him, wishing that Adam and the trial were not there to spoil this happiness that she had found with Runner. “I will do what I must,” she said, then eased from his arms again.
Hand in hand, they walked to their horses. “I wish Damon had been found,” Stephanie then said, dread in her voice. “How could he stay in hiding this long? I would think that the authorities would have found him long before now.”
“I am sure that he has fled the country,” Runner said, helping Stephanie into her saddle. He went to his own and mounted. “Yet we must not ever let down our guard.” He glanced at Stephanie's holstered derringer at her waist. “It is good that you did not send your firearm back with your photography equipment. Until Damon is found and placed behind bars, or strung up in a noose, you must never be without protection when I am not with you.”
“I doubt that I could ever give up my firearm,” Stephanie said. “It seems to be a part of me, as though it were a third hand.”
They laughed and rode away, then grew solemn as they drew close to Fort Defiance. When they arrived, it was just in time to see Adam being taken toward a wagon, guards on each side, in a long line.
Word had spread that Adam was going to be taken away today, which had drawn a crowd of people, some Indians, some white settlers. They crowded around the soldiers, gawking and whispering and pointing as Adam was led roughly onward, the wagon now only a few feet away.
Stephanie and Runner dismounted and elbowed their way through the crowd and stopped only a few feet away from Adam. When he turned and his eyes locked with Stephanie's, memories of her past with him once again flooded her. She fought back tears, not wanting him to see that she still held some feelings for him deep within her soul.
Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted when a woman carrying a baby broke away from the crowd and rushed toward Adam. With a keen puzzlement in her eyes, Stephanie watched the lady holding the child out for Adam, screaming something in a Mexican dialect at him, which Stephanie could not understand.
When the brisk breeze of morning swept the blanket away from the child's face and Stephanie recognized Jimmy, Sharon's child, she emitted a sigh of relief that the child was alive, yet her eyes widened with wonder as the lady tried to push Jimmy into Adam's arms.
It was impossible for Adam to take the child: his wrists were handcuffed behind him. And Stephanie could tell that seeing Jimmy caused him anguish. His eyes wavered as he stared over at Jimmy, then at Stephanie.
“Stephanie,” he cried out. “Get the child from this woman. Raise him as your own. Jimmy is
my
child. Please . . . please . . . watch over him.”
Knowing what this confession meant, that not only was he Jimmy's father, but that Adam had to be responsible for Sharon's death, caused Stephanie to feel suddenly faint.
Runner slung an arm around her waist and steadied her.
The woman followed the direction of Adam's eyes and soon discovered who he was shouting at. She rushed to Stephanie and thrust Jimmy into her arms, then began speaking in broken English to her.
“When Adam brought Jimmy to me, to feed from my breasts, and paid me a good amount of money to mother the child until he was ready to return to Wichita, by train, I agreed,” the woman cried. “But today I was told that he would be taken to the jail in Gallup. That means he would not come and get Jimmy soon. I cannot continue feeding and caring for his child forever. The money he paid me has ran out.
Si?
Do you understand?”
Stephanie's head was spinning, finding all of this too hard to comprehend and accept. She gazed down at Jimmy, whose eyes were looking trustingly up at her, and in them she saw Sharon, and what she and Runner had promised the unfortunate woman.
Everything had changed when Sharon had been murdered, the child stolen from her arms.
Stephanie looked slowly up at Adam. When their eyes locked, she saw a soft pleading in his, but most of all, she was seeing the eyes of a killer. She held Jimmy closer to her bosom. She
would
take Adam's child and raise him as though she were his mother. But not for her brother: for Sharon.
“Stephanie?” Adam shouted as he was dragged onward, the wagon only a few feet away. “Will you, Stephanie? Will you be sure that Jimmy is cared for? I would have taken him from Sharon sooner, and seen to it that he had a clean, fine home. But I never knew about the child! Not until only recently! She was wicked to the core, Stephanie! She deserved to die!”
A sob lodged in Stephanie's throat. She turned her eyes away from Adam, then grew cold inside when she saw someone rushing through the crowd, toward Adam, a pistol drawn from his holster. Although the man wore a hat low over his eyes, to disguise his identity, she knew who it must be: Damon Stout!
He was hell-bent on killing Adam. He had surely also found out who was responsible for his sister's death.
Just as Damon got a steady aim, the wind whipped the hat from his head, revealing his identity to the soldiers. People scrambled as the soldiers turned their rifles on Damon and shot him.
But they did not shoot him quickly enough. He had already fired off one shot, which was enough to send Adam sprawling to the ground, a mortal gunshot wound in his chest.
Stephanie handed Jimmy to Runner. Sobbing, she pushed her way through the stunned crowd and fell to her knees beside Adam. Forgetting why she should hate him, she lifted his head and cradled it in her lap.
“Why, Adam?” she sobbed. “How did you change so much that your life should end in such a violent, tragic way?”
“Sis, I wanted too much,” Adam said, coughing as blood streamed from his chest and mouth. He clutched one of Stephanie's hands. “My biggest regret is disappointing you. Can . . . you . . . forgive me?”
“Adam, what about your mother?” Stephanie cried, purposely eluding his plea of forgiveness, for she was not sure if she ever could. “Didn't you think of Sally at all?”
“My mother never truly cared for me,” Adam said, his voice growing weaker. “She only cared for herself, and making sure she had a husband to keep her in her silken fineries. You are too fine a person to see my mother's imperfections.”
“There was also Sharon,” Stephanie said. “Why did you have to kill her? You
did
kill her, didn't you, Adam?”
“You saw how she lived? In squalor. Had I known about the child, I would have taken him from her long ago.”
“But killing her?” Stephanie persisted. “Why did you feel that to be necessary?”
“I did not want her for a wife, but I wanted my child.” He paused and coughed.
“I never thought that I would ever be connected with the killing,” he continued, then smiled clumsily up at her. “And I wouldn't have been, had Maria Gonzalez not come today and shown Jimmy to everyone.”
“You would have kept silent about your child?” Stephanie said, her eyes wide with disbelief. “I would have never known?”
“I was going to wait and see how the trial turned out,” he said, clutching hard to her hand as he now fought for each breath. His eyes closed, yet he continued speaking. “If I was to be hanged, my lawyer would have opened a letter stating that the child should be brought to you. Had I been set free, I would have gone for my child and no one would have been the wiser. Maria. Damn Maria. Because of her, Damon even found out somehow that I killed his sister.”
“Because of her, though, Adam, I now have Jimmy,” Stephanie said softly. “Had she not come today, and Damon still shot and killed you, how would she have ever known to bring Jimmy to me to raise?”
When Adam didn't respond, Stephanie stiffened. She stared down at him, scarcely breathing. “Adam?” she said, then shouted, “Adam! No, Adam. Oh, God, no.”
She leaned over and placed her cheek next to his, sobbing. “Oh, Adam,” she whispered. “No matter what you did, I still love you. Please hear me say that I still love you.”
A firm hand on her shoulder made Stephanie flinch. When she looked up, and through her tears saw that it was Runner, she nodded and turned one last time to Adam and let her gaze travel over his face, then slipped away from him and stood.
“It is best that he is gone,” Runner said, his voice drawn. “He was wandering down the wrong road of life. He had already traveled that road too far to find his way back.”
“I know,” Stephanie said, wiping tears from her face. Gently, she took Jimmy into her arms and made sure the blanket was tucked snugly around him.
Colonel Utley came to her and stood over Adam. “Do you want to see to his burial, or do you want to ship him back to Wichita?” he said gruffly, giving Stephanie a quick glance.
“If you will, send someone to stop the train that Adam arrived in,” Stephanie said shallowly. “Take Adam to his private car. Send him back to his mother that way.”
“It's as good as done,” Colonel Utley said, stooping to inspect the wound on Adam's chest.
“Let's get away from this place,” Stephanie said, looking up at Runner through bloodshot, tear-swollen eyes. “Take me and Jimmy home, darling.”
“We are not yet married and we already have a son,” Runner said, chuckling as they walked together to their horses. Once there, Runner held Jimmy while Stephanie mounted her horse, then he handed the child to her.
“We shall make the child the best of parents,” Stephanie said, snuggling Jimmy close to her bosom in the crook of her left arm.
“It will not be hard to find someone among our Navaho mothers to lend a milk-filled breast to Jimmy until he is weaned,” Runner said, swinging himself into his saddle.
As they rode away from the throng of people, Stephanie forced herself not to look at Damon as he was being carried away. Nor did she take a last look at her stepbrother; she had already said her last, solemn good-bye.
Her eyes widened when she remembered someone else that had to be told the news about Adam: Pure Blossom. And Pure Blossom had not yet gotten the courage to tell Gray Moon about the child that she was carrying inside her womb, much less about the man who had planted his seed inside her.