He reddened unexpectedly. "I wonder if I might have some of that delicious berry punch you served this afternoon? I find my throat very dry all at once."
For a prolonged moment, nothing interrupted the twilight quiet but the rasp and hum of insects. Suddenly, with a swirl of sun-faded skirt, Madeline ran to him. She threw her arms around his neck. "I love you, George Hazard." He felt her tears as she pressed her cheek to his and hugged him. "And don't misconstrue the reason. If you were penniless, I would love you just as much."
Then they were all moving forward, closing around the two visitors. Judith kissed each of them twice. Andy spoke a few words of admiration and gratitude. Jane said a soft thank you to both. Brett embraced them in turn. Last of all, Cooper shook George's hand, so overcome he could barely speak.
"God bless you, George."
Shamefully, George wished it were Orry standing there instead. He turned away so none of them would see his eyes.
138
Santa Fe was fly-infested and revoltingly Latin-Catholic. Ashton was sure the caverns of hell, if they existed, could be no hotter.
She had a clean but cramped second-floor room on a narrow street of yellow walls, just a few steps from a cantina and the cathedral square beyond. Three weeks of waiting, mostly in that room, made her feel old as a crone. The parched air created new wrinkles, especially around her eyes. At least twice daily she examined her wrecked face in a triangle of broken mirror hanging on the adobe wall beside the hard bed. Would Lamar be displeased by her dry, sun-reddened skin? The possibility agitated her every day and spoiled her rest every night. But no more than the waiting.
Even now she found it unbelievable that a woman of her background and breeding had endured all that was necessary to reach this benighted place. The unspeakably long, occasionally terrifying coach trip. Poor sleep. Foul food at filthy way stations. Crude Westerners for traveling companions. An escort of scruffy Yankee cavalry for a couple of hundred miles because of the Indian threat. Mercifully, there had been no incidents.
When she reached Santa Fe, she found Powell's letter and thus expected his two wagons within a week. The week passed, and so did another, then a third. Her optimism began to dwindle along with her funds. Only a few dollars remained in her reticule — barely enough for another week's lodging and the barbarically spicy food the owner's wife brought up from the cantina.
On Saturday at the end of the third week, a commotion drew her to the spacious, sunlit plaza along with several dozen other people. A cavalry patrol had arrived, causing great excitement because the blue-clad troopers brought the body of a young man stabbed three times before he died.
"Picked him up at Winslow's trading station, west of here on the Rio Puerco," explained the Yankee lieutenant in response to the questions of a paunchy, self-important man Ashton presumed to be some town official. Mighty pompous for a greaser, she thought as the lieutenant went on: "He crawled that far — two, three miles — with these wounds after the Jicarillas massacred the rest of his party."
Ashton's flesh froze. Above a great roaring in her ears, she heard the lieutenant's voice continuing faintly.
"Winslow cleaned and dressed the stab wounds, but even so, the lad didn't last twelve hours." No, Ashton thought, queasy. Surely it couldn't be Powell's party.
She was wild to ask questions but feared the troopers would be suspicious of her accent. They were the sorriest, most villainous-looking soldiers she had ever seen, far worse than those who had escorted the stage. There was a private with only one thumb. A corporal wearing an eye patch. One bearded man sounded like an Irish comic from a variety hall, and two others jabbered in some foreign tongue — Hungarian, perhaps. On the coach trip, a passenger had told her the hard-pressed Union government was having trouble filling the ranks of its Western army, hence would take the physically handicapped, immigrants who knew little or no English — even Confederates.
Finally, unable to contain her curiosity, she approached the cleanest of the lot, a sergeant. She asked the question of greatest importance to her.
"Can you tell me whether there were wagons with this party?"
The sergeant was from Indiana, but he was courteous and helpful in spite of that. "Yes, ma'am, the trader did say the dead boy mentioned wagons. Two, burned and pushed into a gully where the massacre took place."
She swayed, dizzy. The sergeant's eyes narrowed. What did it matter if he were suspicious? The questions must be answered; she asked the second most important one.
"Was the leader of the party a man named Powell?"
"Thats right. Some reb."
"And he's—?"
A nod. Only then did Ashton think of her husband.
"The rest, too?"
"Every one. Did you know any of them?"
"Mr. Powell — by reputation, not personally."
The answer clearly bothered the sergeant. If she had no connection with the victims, why had she asked about wagons? She knew it was a blunder and turned away before he could interrogate her. The lieutenant was talking to others about the wagons. She listened, haughtily ignoring the sergeant's scrutiny.
"After the young man died, Winslow and his two sons armed themselves and rode to the site. The 'Paches were long gone. Winslow saw pieces of a wagon wheel and a lot of ashes at the bottom of the gully, but that's all. The birds and the big cats got the other bodies."
She wheeled and set off up the street to her room, increasingly weak from shock. The Hoosier trooper watched her, asking himself questions about the puzzling behavior of the beautiful young woman in the gray summer dress. One thing sure; she obviously didn't hail from this part of the country.
In her room, Ashton sat on the bed, trembling. Two wagons containing three hundred thousand in gold — gone. And Powell, too. She had cared for Lamar Powell more than she had ever cared for any man. Her affection derived in part from his amazing sexual prowess, in part from his implacable ambition and where it could take both of —
No. That was over, and she had to face it. She was alone and abandoned in a wilderness, with no funds except those on deposit in Nassau. Her money and her dead husband's. All hers now.
A lot of good that would do her for the next two or three months. It would take at least that much time to supply the Bahamian bankers with evidence of Huntoon's death and proof of her right to the money. Could the funds be sent to her in Santa Fe? She couldn't answer all the questions arising from this newest, cruel turn.
But she knew one thing. She would live on that Bahamian money for as long as it took to locate the gully containing what was left of the wagons. The trader and his son hadn't investigated the wreckage, probably because it would never occur to any ordinary person that the ashes might conceal gold ingots.
What if the savages had carried the ingots away? It was a disturbing possibility, but not one that would alter her course. A fortune in gold that would double her personal worth could be waiting in that gully to the west, unknown to anyone except herself. The prospect helped soften her sadness about Powell. And the more she thought of the treasure, the faster her grief dwindled.
Concerning James, she could summon no grief at all. He had always been spineless, only marginally a man. Thinking of him did jog her memory. She dug in the bottom of her reticule for the sealed letter. Presuming it to be filled with sentimental twaddle, she had put it away in St. Louis and hadn't thought of it until this moment.
The letter was anything but sentimental. After a brusque salutation — just her name, followed by a dash — and a short paragraph of unflattering preamble, it said: